A Far Wilder Magic

I badly wanted to love this, and was hoping that it'd live up to its gorgeous cover artwork, but the ending was so disappointing to me and knocked a few stars off of it.

There was a lot to like here from the beginning—it started strong—but the author just kept stretching it further and further until it was so thin and unsatisfying that it just kinda fizzled out.

Margaret and Wes are really great characters; they're interesting and complicated, and I was rooting for them. But by the end of the book they're surrounded by a bunch of filler characters, some of which are so cartoony by comparison that it undermines them a bit.

The world building was compelling at the beginning, but then all the useless details that were added along the way just muddied it instead of strengthening it, and I lost interest. It started off like, okay, it's rustic and we've got guns and carriages and alchemy, cool, that's fun. Wait... so we have motorcars now? Arright, steampunk, got it. Mmm right, and landline telephones. Okayyyy. Record players and flappers? So, it's 1920s but fantasy; sure, I guess. A literal condom in a foil wrapper!? Come on now. Shall we just whip out an iPhone and record a dance for Tik-Tok at this point? Ma'am, be serious!

The different religions, politics, and the science of alchemy were so promising when it was first set up, but none of it gets any real development or time to shine, and it's all overshadowed but the most banal and unnecessary romance that sucked all the air out of the room. So many missed opportunities, to be honest.

I don't mind a slow burn, so long as there's a payoff, but the whole Big Event™ that is built up from the beginning doesn't even start until the last 50 pages. And look, if you have a sequence where a magical, deadly, angry creature that you've literally been hunting just politely twiddles its thumbs while your main characters choose that moment to have a long deep'n'meaningful, you have properly lost me.

Don't get me wrong though, I didn't have a bad time, but it was just... fine?