Bitter Medicine

this book sucked ass lmfao. also it was weirdly preachy and self-aggrandizing about the fact that it didn't translate any of its non-english dialogue but the non-english dialogue was also terrible and also she did nothing at all with it. the french (i speak french hi) was like illegibly bad like i literally wish she'd translated it just so i can know for sure what she was trying to say lmfao

This was the most frustrating read of 2023 for me. Rounding up because I think the premise was so great and I do want to see what the author does next.

Bitter Medicone has a lot of my favorite tropes and I was really excited going in but this book never clicked (though I desperately wanted it to).

I felt like the magic system and world building were never really explained and the pacing didn't work for me — most of the plot happened in the middle 20% of the book, with the first 40% and the last 40% being very slow. A lot of plot points were set up and never resolved, so I ultimately found this a really unsatisfying read.

This was overall an enjoyable read with characters that I enjoyed getting to know and ended up caring about. The setting struck me as fairly typical urban fantasy à la Dresden Files or Valkyrie Collections, which, to be transparent, is not my favorite. In this world, magic folk exist in parallel to the mundane world, and there is some sort of sprawling magical law enforcement agency. Although the urban fantasy setting and tropes were well-executed, they didn't particularly grab me. The main POV character is Chinese, and so there was much more of an exploration of East Asian magic, mythology, and folklore than in many urban fantasies. I found those aspects really engrossing and wished there had been even more. The dialogue and banter were a lot of fun--snappy without being over the top. I found the plot propulsive and overall this was a read I consistently looked forward to. The romance element was more primary than I realized going in--this is really 50/50 fantasy-romance. Honestly, the romance didn't viscerally grab me, but it was definitely well-drawn and spicy. If there is a direct sequel, I probably won't pick it up, but I would definitely like to read more from this author.

4.5 stars, only for a somewhat flat, mustache twirling villain. I loved this book, I gobbled up the audio in a day! I guess at the end of the day this could be classified as a fantasy romance, but I thought the magic system was really cool and the book is a unique meshing of Eastern and Western magic and lore (imagine a place where vampires, fox spirits, elves, sphinxes, and much more are all live together with humans). I was apprehensive about going into this because the cover signaled it would be a romance (which I am not feeling right now), but I liked it A LOT, even the romance. Dual perspective POV and I suspect that at the least fans of Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke & Bone will like this one.

I'm biased, this is a friend's book, but I'd have rated it highly regardless. Does a good job of communicating the world in medias res — I discovered tonight that I have been incorrectly writing “media” for years — and I quite like the world and would love to read more books in it. Although the conclusion may preclude ones with the same groups and characters. Be warned there are some pretty graphic sex scenes, definitely not one for younger readers.

3.5

I heard about this book when I was doing my research on 2023 releases, I saw it was about an immortal woman who is a descendent of a Chinese goddess and a French half-elf spy and I was already hooked.

It did not let me down! It was such a fun read with focus on romance and with a great backdrop of a well-fleshed out fantastical paranormal world.