Danielle
Both Sides of the Blade
I really enjoyed the creative world-building, the unique take on traditional high fantasy races, the slight mix of magic and technology, and the writing style, which was very lush and descriptive. Personally I wasn’t a fan of the continuous descriptors of all the women characters chest and physical attributes - I’d rather their descriptions focus more on other aspects. I also found there was a lot of tell, not show. Rather than being told about the world and races and people, I prefer when books have you experience it through a character. These descriptions also often interrupted the action, which felt jarring. There were a lot of times that the perspective changed from one character to the next with no break or chapter change and I found that hard to follow at times, having to stop to figure out who I was following from one paragraph to the next. While I think those detractors prevented me from loving the book, I still overall enjoyed it and am really intrigued by the world and characters. It is very epic in scope and imaginative. Certainly a very good first book.
I really enjoyed the creative world-building, the unique take on traditional high fantasy races, the slight mix of magic and technology, and the writing style, which was very lush and descriptive. Personally I wasn’t a fan of the continuous descriptors of all the women characters chest and physical attributes - I’d rather their descriptions focus more on other aspects. I also found there was a lot of tell, not show. Rather than being told about the world and races and people, I prefer when books have you experience it through a character. These descriptions also often interrupted the action, which felt jarring. There were a lot of times that the perspective changed from one character to the next with no break or chapter change and I found that hard to follow at times, having to stop to figure out who I was following from one paragraph to the next. While I think those detractors prevented me from loving the book, I still overall enjoyed it and am really intrigued by the world and characters. It is very epic in scope and imaginative. Certainly a very good first book.
A wild and bizarre sci-fi/fantasy adventure, but I really enjoyed it! So unique, even though there are numerous nods to everything from King Arthur to Narnia to Alice in Wonderland to Harry Potter to Studio Ghibli and the most tropey fantasy (all favs of mine). Somehow it still is its own story. Though I didn’t really feel particularly connected to any of the characters, the journey was worth the read. Probably not everyone’s cup of tea, but I loved the absurdness of it all.
A wild and bizarre sci-fi/fantasy adventure, but I really enjoyed it! So unique, even though there are numerous nods to everything from King Arthur to Narnia to Alice in Wonderland to Harry Potter to Studio Ghibli and the most tropey fantasy (all favs of mine). Somehow it still is its own story. Though I didn’t really feel particularly connected to any of the characters, the journey was worth the read. Probably not everyone’s cup of tea, but I loved the absurdness of it all.
