Review: The Ballad Of Never After

The Ballad Of Never After by Stephanie Garber
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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Like, Why Are You So Obsessed With Me?

 

I feel a need to address the elephant in the room.  For someone that hates the ACOTAR series as much as I do, I sure do talk about it a lot, don't I?  

I'm willing to admit that I'm somewhat hyper-focused on it, in a sense, but trust me, there's sound reasoning behind it.

First, love it or hate it, you can't deny that the books are a behemoth in the YA/Fantasy world, and publishing in general.  They're a phenomenon, for good or ill (mostly ill, but more on that later), so it's difficult not to judge other works in comparison.  Everyone wants to the next biggest thing, and right now these books are one of the biggest things.

Second, they were a gateway for me that led to other books I eventually wound up admiring and valuing more.  ACOMAF was probably the first book with smut I ever read, and it eventually led me to realize that hey I kind of like it so let me read more (I did, and let me tell you in hindsight the vaunted Chapter 55 is a joke).  It introduced me to the joys of Fae fantasy, and without it I would never had discovered The Folk of the Air books, which are straight up one of my favorites of all time now.

Review: Ink in the Blood

Ink in the Blood by Kim Smejkal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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Review: Fall of Angels

Fall of Angels by Kathryn Ann Kingsley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A review for all three books of the Halfway Between series.

This is the third complete series by Kathryn Kingsley I've read and it's safe to say at this point that I'm a fan.

Everything is present here that makes this a signature KK book, and thus a good read: clever dialogue, hilarious banter, engaging side characters, a crotch-tingling LI, and smut smut smut.

I'll admit that the latter has quickly become like my number one reason for reading her books, but definitely the only reason. Suffice it to say that if that's all I cared about I'd probably just watch porn. It's the added bonus of a great fucking story coupled with top-tier smut that makes Kathryn worth your time.

That said, I'm gonna shock you all and say that the smut here was NOT my favorite thing about this series. The story is stellar (all existential, meaning of life, origin of the universe and importance of religion and belief goodness) and while I certainly enjoyed the smut, it was secondary and the books would have been just as enjoyable without it.

Asmodeous is the standard KK dark hero, but of the three heroes I've encountered so far (Valroy, Simon, and Asmodeous) he's really the least dark of them all, which is kind of ironic given that he's a demon. He really isn't that bad at all when you get down to it, and unlike Simon and Valroy, Asmodeous's love of humanity extends beyond the singular object of his desire. He's definitely got a much more prominent moral compass.

My interest kind of inexplicably waned towards the end of the third volume, but in another unexpected twist I somehow actually became engaged by the Epilogue. Normally I hate epilogues in romance (oh, they got married and had a baby and lived happily ever after? Shocking), but for some reason this got to me. I'm thinking it's because of the epic nature of the story, and the "several years" later situation hits different when you're talking about immortals.

In any case, do treat yourself to a Kathryn Kingsley book or two....or eleven. They're on KU, so it will literally cost you nothing, and they're so goods they pay dividends pretty much immediately.

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When Great Books Make You Angry - Musings on a Revisitation of the Nevernight Trilogy by Jay Kristoff

Tric is too good for all of them.

Authors owe us as readers absolutely nothing.  No artist really owes their audience anything.  Creating art, I believe, is something that's done from an inherent need to create.  Putting it out there in the world and having people enjoy it is fulfilling, and it certainly makes relying on your art as a career a lot easier, but creating something popular doesn't preclude a subsequent responsibility to continually cater to the same group of people and to stop creating things that you like personally.

What I'm trying to say here is that an author doesn't owe their readers happy endings, the survival of certain characters, or even books that make logical sense, to be perfectly honest.  That being said, that doesn't mean that I, as a reader, don't have the right to criticize and complain about an author when they do something I don't like.  I have power as a consumer and as a fan and I always have the choice to say, I don't like this and I'm not buying it anymore.  It doesn't save me feeling cheated or anything, but not every investment is a good one.