Maryn

This book. was. EVERYTHING

I wasn't a big fan of Shadow and Bone. I thought it was just decent - a bit trope-y, with stereotypical characters, and a main girliepop that is just another frail tiny smol thing that suddenly has amazing powers and two love interests. Nothing I haven't read before.

This sequel made me fall in love with this story.

Siege and Storm is a lesson in how to do the second book in a trilogy WELL. Great character development, more worldbuilding, more intrigue. It changes the world from a small palace to a living, breathing place, with multiple parties all with different intentions involving themselves in Alina's life. Sturmhond, the Apparat... all amazing characters with their own motives and worldview.

Alina is finally likable. She's struggling with who she is, what her place in this world is - what she wants. She has power and is no longer afraid to wield it.

9/10 - an amazing improvement to the first book, and a great set-up for what is hopefully a grand finale.

"Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens."

I really had a hard time with this book. I had to switch from the e-book to the audiobook version at times because just reading the e-book felt like moving through quicksand - I was trying to move ahead but I was getting nowhere fast. A lot of the contents of this book can be summed up as 'walking and talking' - nothing truly happens and if about 40% of the story would have been cut, nothing would be missed.

It definitely has its moments and has beautiful prose and poetry, and lessons we can still learn from today.

"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement."

And more than anything, this feels like just the set-up. Like the preamble to a dark and eventful journey yet to come. It's only the beginning of the path to Mordor. I am excited to see where it goes, and hope it will be a little bit more eventful than what this first book in the trilogy has to offer.

I want to end this review by saying Sam Gamgee is everything. What a cutie, a 10/10 friend.

♡━━━━━━༺❀༻━━━━━━♡

7/10 - looking at it with a modern eye, it's far from perfect. The real adventure is yet ahead.

“Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer—except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs.”

Animal Farm is a story about a group of farm animals who overthrow their human owner, desiring a farm where all animals are equal. Initially, their revolution is succesful, but as time progresses, their great society turns out to not be much better than the one they fought to leave.

This story is still applicable to modern societies, where the few are able to hold power over everybody working for them. It is a lesson in learning to not trust blindly, and that leadership does not always have your best interest in mind.

Providing that lesson in the form of a group of farm animals rebelling works perfectly in my opinion. Who are more oppressed and used on a daily basis than these animals?

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.”

Does that not seem familiar to the way a lot of workers are treated across the world? How only those on the top are able to live lavishly, even though they aren't as capable or have to work as hard as those under them?

Even if you aren't looking at it from a political standpoint, or examine it based on the times in which it was released, there is still much in here that can provide food for thought. Orwell packages his message in a novella that reads away easily, and that will leave you upset for many of the characters. Because nothing is fair, nothing is equal. Not even animals.

A fairytale for young and old, with much to love and much that's completely up to taste. There isn't much depth to many of these characters, and everything that could be action-filled is written so matter-of-factly that there isn't much suspense to it. It's a specific tone that you either appreciate or not. I quite enjoyed it, but it still took my a long time to get through because it wasn't exactly thrilling.

Also, justice for all the ponies harmed in the making of this book :(

8/10 - A great journey there and back again.

“Killing you is not the worst thing they can do to you," I say. "Controlling you is.”

I'm actually of the opinion that this sequel is better than the first book. More world-building (exploring the factions/factionless) that was missing in the original, the return of minor characters and much needed character development in general.

It does feel like more of a long bridge rather than a rollercoaster - truly, nothing of great substance happens, but it gets you from the end of A to the beginning of C and does so pretty decently.