memoir-of-a-soul

[memoir-of-a-soul]

[memoir-of-a-soul]

The social attitude regarding age is consistently getting weirder. You’re not ‘pushing 30’ you’re just in your late 20s. 30 is not old and neither is 40 while I’m at it. Growing older is an enormous privilege and displaying that age is a gorgeous component of life. Spending your days trying to reverse that grace breeds an eternally wasted life.

[memoir-of-a-soul]

[memoir-of-a-soul]

You can survive almost anything through the right combination of:

Bitching and moaning

Hater-ology

Doing a goofy little bit about it

Having a buddy say "that's so fucked up" at intermittent points (you can also be your own buddy)

Destroying the cursed amulet you carry everywhere, why do you even have that thing

[memoir-of-a-soul]

people have the audacity to equate vanilla with “plain”. the fruit of a delicate orchid pollinated by hand. worth its weight in solid gold and beyond. the fussy black-and-cream jewel of the american continent. you sick son of a bitch. imagine a world without vanilla. no blondies. no pound cakes. no crème br��lée, no coke floats. no cream soda. no satiny new york-style cheesecakes. no warm apple pie à la mode. no velvety complexity to bring out complex notes in chocolate desserts. no depth of flavour in your cakes and cookies and milkshakes. all in just a few precious seeds or grams of paste or perfumed teaspoons of liquid black platinum. what you don’t understand could fill the library of alexandria seven times over and then some. you ungrateful bastard i’m going to kill you

[memoir-of-a-soul]

“There’s nothing for me here, I’m tired of being a villain.”

“You were never a villain to me.”

Malice by Heather Walter….wow.

I picked this book up at the local library, alongside 2 other books, and I wasn’t expecting to be thrown into such a whirlwind of emotions upon opening the cover.

The world building in the first fee chapters was a bit tedious and seemed too simply spelled out, almost as if I was being told everything rather than shown, but my gripe was quickly thrown away by the sheer magnificence that actually IS Briar the details that went into creating such a magical setting.

Beyond the kingdom’s details, the characters only add to Walter’s ability to bring so much life and love to her story. I absolutely adored Alyce—her layers could rival Shrek’s favorite onion. And I adored Walter’s emphasis on Alyce’s history, both known and unknown, and what was to come by the end of the first novel. Her craving for connection, the complex emotions and reactions she has towards the unfair abuse hurled towards her on a day to day basis, her defensive-to-a-fault nature…Alyce my baby I know who hurt you and I’m so sorry. Alyce’s relationship with every character felt so natural, so raw, like it wasn’t a written and thought out work of fiction but a real telling of her life.

Callow, my sweet angel kestrel, you are so fucken cute man.

Aurora…oh sweet, sassy, feminist, lesbian Aurora…How I love thee. Kudos to Heather Walter for writing such a broad range of female relationships and personalities in one book, like…hello? But this portion is about Aurora. And my god do I love aurora. She is so sure of herself, so sure of what she wants, and even if she falters she picks herself right back up. She is a queen in her own right, both of blood and in how she carries herself.

🚨SPOILER AHEAD: SKIP TO BELOW DOTTED LINE

Kal, unironically, is probably one of my favorite characters. Not because I like him—I think he is disgustingly perverted and I am so glad he is dead—but simply because of the way he was written, the pure emotion his character made me feel during the big betrayal, and the symbolic nature of the relationship between him and Alyce.

Kal (as I’m sure was her intention) reminds me of the man who groomed me when I was 15-16. The way he engineered Alyce’s childhood, practically shaping and forcing her into the abuse she was dealt. The way he manipulated her emotions, lied to her again and again, and pretended to be her friend. Her teacher. Her kin. Someone who cared about her wellbeing without selfish intent, someone better than those in the Grace Houses or the King, someone who saw her for more than she was. But all he saw was a vessel for his lover, a body to use, an object to enact his own revenge on a people who didn’t even know he existed.

Kal is nothing but an old groomer, wrapped in pretty promises and trapped in a broken tower. And I would’ve raged and burnt down the kingdom too if my only true friend turned out to be nothing but a lie, nearly killed my true love, and ultimately lead me to nothing but more scrutiny than I ever would’ve gotten without him.

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Anyway…the gayness is perfect. The normalization is refreshing. And the amount of romance is PERFFECCTTTT. Its not a fantasy book with a romance plot that forgets its genre halfway through, its beautiful, and the recalls back to Sleeping Beauty are so well done I almost squeal every time.

Beside the somewhat dumbed-down world building in the VERY VERY beginning (it did get better, much MUCH better), the events that happened in the very end felt almost comical. The way it was described a bit confusing and hard to picture, but honestly THE WAY it happens is still what is important to me, and I enjoyed it.

Overall, ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 5 stars !!

And I would definitely read this again.

I literally drove all the way to the damn library to grab Misrule (book 2 in the duology) and parked in the lot before I remembered it was Sunday and the fucken library was closed…..

FREE MEE 😔

[memoir-of-a-soul]

Dream home omg.

home library so I never have to leave the house 📚

[memoir-of-a-soul]

[memoir-of-a-soul]

[memoir-of-a-soul]

a wonderful ao3 author note

[memoir-of-a-soul]

I don't read books.

I surrender myself to them, get emotionally wrecked, and then recommend them to my friends so they can suffer too.

[memoir-of-a-soul]

[memoir-of-a-soul]

[memoir-of-a-soul]

My god. Where do I even begin?

I gave this book a 4.25 stars on fable, and we can get into why it wasnt a 5 star read for me later, but for now we can dive right into the positives.

R.F. Kuang’s writing has always been my favorite. Ever since I found and digested the first two books of The Poppy War trilogy (still haven’t read #3), I knew I had found my new favorite author. This book only cemented that.

Never in my 20+ years of reading have I come across such an irredeemable protagonist and still felt such an urge to continue reading. As a chronic hate-reader, I have DNF’d many books over the years due to characters being so unfathomably stupid or problematic that I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die. June Hayward made my teeth ache. She made the wrinkle between my eyebrows and the crinkles around my eyes deepen—I have never squinted more at a book more than I did when reading her unfiltered, inner monologues.

Juniper Song Hayward is flawed. She is guilty of many, many…many…microagressions throughout the entirety of this novel (even tho some of them are more macro). She is lonely, she is insecure, and she is riddled with trauma and family issues no one wants to address. At times I forget I am reading the writings of Kuang, and not that of a white woman claiming she isn’t racist and have to remind myself of that fact constantly.

Even outside of fantasy, Kuang transports you directly into each character beautifully. It’s almost scary.

June becomes so wrapped up in her lies that she actually believes her stolen work is hers…she transforms her delusion to reality and cant tell right from wrong. She pushes herself into a cycle of plagarism that ultimately is her downfall in an honestly very entertaining twist that i really, REALLLLYYY enjoyed.

The ending, while insane, was also very true to June’s character. I loved every second of this book. I really did.

Though I did feel, for a brief moment, that some of the pacing towards the 55-60% of the book seemed a little misplaced ? Or added just to create more pages ? The conflict revolving around Geoff’s reveal seemed to resolve pretty quickly and didn’t really go anywhere.

Other than that, i loved everything.

Unique and complex characters all around. The Chinese Labour Corps, which I looked into and actually learned about (which I’m sure was also Kuang’s intent). Insight into the publishing industry and its racism from an author viewed similarly to Athena Liu. There is so much to appreciate and take away from this novel.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.25 / 5 stars

[memoir-of-a-soul]

me as a writer

[memoir-of-a-soul]

Do you think people who are virgin should write smut? I feel like most of them don’t even know what they’re writing and just write what they think sex is

the implication this ask suggests that people who write about murders, cannibalism, politics, magic, royalty au, sci-fi, wars, supernatural, time travel, medieval era, werewolves, vampires, mermaids or goblins must be murderers, cannibals, presidents, wizards, royalties, astronauts, ghost hunters, soldiers, time travelers, knights, werewolves, vampires, mermaids or goblins in real life is so funny to me

[memoir-of-a-soul]

no way ppl are using ai to write ao3. what happened to being a tortured writer. what happened to blood on the page. what happened to the ao3 curse. people used to get run over, have their houses burned down, break their entire spines and they still put in the work to finish a chapter. fuck you, using ai. y’all are weak