jules

1.5 stars you know i did really want to like this but unfortunately it's not very good u__u i understand that it's hard to pack everything you want to explore in a barely 100-page novella, but the book felt underwhelming to me. prose was amateur-ish (no subtlety, remember show don't tell?) and some dialogue/story beats were a little corny.

however it WAS nice to see all the viet names with the accents and everything. i've not read any viet-inspired fantasy stuff before which is the main reason i picked this book up.

so... even though i didn't like it very much i appreciate what it was trying to do, and again it's just nice to see viet characters even if in this case they're bland and frustrating. OH WELL

maybe i'm biased because i always enjoy vampires and werewolves but this is my favourite discworld book to date. it has everything! vampires! werewolves! igors! politics! and most importantly! SYBIL!!!

i just loved how characters who hadn't gotten much of the spotlight so far got a lot of attention in this book, sybil especially. she's never relegated to being vimes' damsel in distress, she's always very much her own person with a lot of agency.

carrot also isn't as much the unfailing hero he is in the other city watch books, so we get to focus more on angua (who i am in love with on account of me loving fictional women with issues<3) and her origins/character. i love her relationship with carrot by the way... they're so sweet.

i also love cheery/cheri as a character, and for how long ago this was written (1999!) i think the dwarf gender stuff is done pretty well.

lastly... the action scenes are engrossing, the darker moments hit just as hard as they need to while still feeling consistent with the usual lightheartedness of discworld, and the setting, though it's not Ankh-Morpork, is fun and fresh... just an all around good book. Night watch is next!! i'm excited for this one!!!

it takes a while to get going but it does pick up at around ~150 pages or so. nevertheless those first couple of chapters are an absolute slog to get through and could have used a lot more tightening up.

so! i finished this in 3 days... i'd heard this was a japanese-inspired fantasy standalone with magic similar to avatar: the last airbender, which got me interested. and overall... it was alright. first, my biggest gripe: the amount of just straight-up japanese. the author is east asian but not japanese, which explains sooo much. was there anything added by making characters count, “ichi! ni! san!” instead of just writing it as “one! two! three!” ? was there any need for the string of japanese sentences in the last chapter, even with the excuse of a character translating for someone else? why have characters use japanese phrases/expressions like “ano” when you're just going to write them saying “um” a couple pages later? it felt very... weeb-y. sorry. the dialogue being in italics if it was being spoken in a different language/dialect was also grating as hell, but you get used to it.

anyway that's not even mentioning the amount of in-universe jargon this book has. i read this on an e-reader and i was NOT about to flip back and forth between my page and the glossary every couple of seconds to see what the hell a numu or jijakalu (there's no ‘lu' sound in japanese btw) was. and what on earth was the point of inventing new units of measurement? all it did was overcomplicate things!

anyhow... i have other criticisms. the strange reverse-racism/reverse imperialists part of the worldbuilding left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth; making the stand-in for koreans an oppressor of the stand-in for the japanese was certainly... a choice. the eugenics element of the worldbuilding is also never really interrogated or dismantled. it's just there. also, i still hate takeru and think he should have killed himself. idgaf. piece of shit father, piece of shit husband, he didn't deserve any of the understanding or forgiveness he got at the end. him being abused by his father doesn't justify AT ALL how he treated misaki or his children, and, inb4 “he learned from his mistakes and is trying to be a better person,” I don't care. Guards, kill this clown.

the story, on the whole, wraps up in a weird spot. it's a standalone supposedly, but the story threads about the assassins goes nowhere by the end of the book and the implications of the ending (an army of elemental orphans?) feels more like the beginning of a series than it does a satisfying conclusion to a fantasy novel. overall, it just felt very... abrupt. the beginning should have been trimmed down to service what Wang wanted to do with the ending, or the story should have ended before everything just slides back from the fantastic action sequences to more dull monologues and info-dumping. speaking of info dumping... that history lecture in chapter 2 is ridiculous and almost made me dnf the book. but i guess one terribly-executed info dump wasn't enough, because later on there's a chapter dedicated to characters just talking about their religions. like why is this here?

Lol when i started writing this i had rated it 3 stars but i had to bump it down to 2.5 because of how many things annoyed me. however i do think the action sequences/fights were written well and some of the character work (misaki in particular) was very good. i'm not sure why people don't like misaki? maybe she's not the most likeable character but to me she's a very very compelling and interesting character (although i really had to suspend my disbelief when her backstory revealed that she and her friends, at 14 years old, were fighting fully-grown adult criminals and WINNING...) also i'm not going to pretend like i didn't cry, because i did. misaki and mamoru's relationship was so moving and her grief at losing him and wishing she had loved him better made me BAWL. so in all... 2.5/5. thought i would've liked it better, but oh well. it is what it is.

stayed up late finishing this... i wasn't going to but i only had half left and was having fun reading (this book is soooo funny but i've been saying that about every discworld book (i had to pause for like 5 minutes so i could catch my breath when colon decided to use "Al" as his fake name)) so i finished it! since i finally have time to read again.

i enjoyed it, lots of focus on vimes and nobby this time round, and i always love getting to see what vetinari's up to when he has a more active role. still hoping for more sybil...! i won't lose hope...!

putting this down cause i’m not really liking it much. maybe i’ll return to it someday but so far vetinari feels like he’s being overused ☹️

this book is so SO good. i adore the city watch cast and the mystery in this story is really engaging... and as always vetinari is a great character. he really shines when he's used sparingly

SO SOOO GOOD AND SO FUNNY how did sir terry do it... love the new additions to the guard, especially angua being kind of a pathetic wet dog and cuddy & detritus' sweet relationship. (spoilers) i miss cuddy :( curse you doctor cruces... i was so scared when i thought angua died too i was like NO? But what tips you off is that Death doesn't show up... clever...!

overall i enjoyed this a lot. hopefully there's more sybil in the other city watch books though because i like her a lot... onward to the next discworld book

"Mort," said Mort.

very very fun. enjoyed very much mort saying his own name like a pokemon throughout. also my favourite personification of Death i've ever seen. would go out for drinks with him.