thelostvoid's reviews
802 reviews

Christopher Buehlman is so incredibly good at writing stories that are horrifying, heartbreaking and just expertly crafted. I am so glad I decided to pick this up, I was overwhelmed by how long and dense it seemed but my god was it worth the occasional need to google stuff. 

I cried a fair bit, mainly due to Thomas (my sweet, sweet father figure of a knight). Nothing hits quite like a grizzled, shamed older man having to travel with a bright young teenage girl, it's one of my favourite things and this was no exception.

I, like I am sure many others, have been seeing lot of people online talking about this recently and I figured, why not give the audiobook a listen. I watched a video essay about this last year by Wendigoon on YouTube so I came into it knowing, pretty much everything, but the performance by Harlan Ellison really made it feel like something new. 

Overall, a very cool concept that was well executed. I can absolutely see why it's such a classic piece of sci-fi/horror.

It is simply impossible for Neil Gaiman to write a bad book? Like fuck me this was so good. I can't really articulate how or why but it just has an essence of goodness to it. I cried at the end. 

I could like, push through and hope that I end up enjoying this, but I just did that with Court of Wanderers and it backfired and this was meant to be my year of DNFing shit I wasn't enjoying (or just getting it off the TBR in general) so we are not going to continue this. I just, don't care? And from other reviews this picks up halfway through, and I don't want to wait that long on the chance I enjoy the back half. 

Well ... this sure did happen. 

I came into this with pretty like, reasonable expectations I think. I liked the characters and worldbuilding of the first book, but I wasn't in love with it all and wasn't expecting or wanting any particular outcomes or explorations of specific things. And yet, this was hugely disappointing. 

Everything felt both rushed and mind-numbingly drawn out, and none of the angsty heartfelt interactions between characters happened. Like, at all?? Like everyone talked to each other, and sometimes said things that felt emotional but there was no development or build up so it all fell spectacularly flat. During some of the scenes I was also very confused about what was happening, or who was talking because people would be referred to by multiple different names/titles during the same conversation and I simply cannot deal with all of that on top of everything else.

If I hadn't bought this full price (and also recommended this duology to multiple people) I think I would have DNFd it but like ... it was fine.

Also why did we get such interesting fleeting glimpses into Malehk and all of his trauma and stuff but he was barely fucking in this?? He was just like, sometimes there and sometimes even spoke like ffs he's so interesting I would have loved like a whole goddamn book about his time in the Night Court and all of that, or even just more detail about it ahhh!

I have been putting off reading this for quite some time, it's very long and intimidating, but this 2024 is the year of me reading the books that intimidate me on my shelf, and I couldn't be gladder I picked this up. I am a huge fan of the 2020 film adaptation, and it was at the forefront of my mind (and the soundtrack played throughout) during my read of this. 

I love the absolute chaos of Highbury society and Emma's own machinations and faults, I think that Knightley and her have such an engaging dynamic and I absolutely loved this. I suppose it was a tad long, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself nevertheless.

This was a cool premise, and the characters were well written and had engaging dynamics but it really does feel like the first book in a duology/trilogy, as was the original intention, and I can't help but feel that loss of future development etc. Totally respect the author for not wanting to return to the mind space required to continue writing this, but it has impacted my enjoyment of the book for sure. 

Oh. My. God. This was spectacular. I was crying quite a goddamn lot during the last couple dozen pages my goodness. I absolutely love the way that this was written, I love the characters (new and old) and the world building and the tone and everything ahh.

Absolutely incredible stuff, it's books like these that remind me that people are inherently good and relationships between people are so precious and now I am rambling but yes. This book! This duology! Fuck yes!

I have never felt more sure that a book was inspired, at least partially, by NBC's Hannibal and I cannot express the vindication I felt when I saw it mentioned in the acknowledgements. As I have only just finished re-watching the show myself like 24 hours ago, I feel ya.

The entirety of the sentence "The sounds of his boy becoming filled the clearing" is just exactly Hannibal vibes and I could talk about just that for fucking ages, but I won't.

But yes, this was pretty good. I will admit, I wasn't the most engaged for the first like 60% but then shit sure as fuck picked up in pace and fuckery during that last 40% and I had a great time. 

I had vaguely seen this mention as being good for like, if you like NBCs Hannibal/in general reading books that are kind of strange and I decided fuck it and bought a copy for myself. Discovered that the audiobook is narrated by the same guy who voices Lord Asriel in the His Dark Materials audiobooks which I adore, which was fun. 

Anyways, this was surprisingly enjoyable and like, nuanced. I loved the way that scent was described, and the overall way that the story ended up going.

Yeah, even if you go on a whole quest to make the perfect scent to make people like you, you hate people and nobody knows that they love you because of the perfume you made so just go off and do something else with your life bestie