#But anyway the difference between these fantasy books and Maas’s is JARRING

[bookishfeylin]

I don’t think you truly understand how BAD Mrs. Maas’s fantasy books and the booktok copycats she spawned are until after you’ve broken out of that bubble. I genuinely enjoyed how unique Nobody’s Goddess was along with Noll being a refreshing protagonist, am living it up with The Promise of Aferi: The Wolf Queen Book 2, and I can’t wait for Beasts of Prey. Like I forgot how genuinely GOOD fantasy can be.

[meltotheany]

hello friends! i am actually writing this wrap up as my trip to chicago is wrapping up as well! truly, this month was a very good month! not only did i finally get all my yearly medical check ups done (after not doing them for many years because of the pandemic), but i was able to travel back to the east coast for the first time in a little while (also because of the pandemic >.< but anyways)! i am notoriously a bad reader while on vacations, but i was also a bad reader while traveling for this trip because i got a brand new episode of d20 (fantasy high junior year) each plane ride! but i was still able to read six things before i left at the end of the month! while putting this wrap up together i realized that i actually wrote full reviews for four of the six books i read in february! i know i’ve been saying this for over a year now, but i still don’t want to put pressure on myself with reviewing, but this makes me really happy and makes me think i could be truly getting back to where i want to be with book community things! ✨ ✨ The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden ⭐⭐⭐⭐ “It was so much easier to hate a man than a system: vast, inhuman, bloodstained.” i was able to have the opportunity to buddy read this with katherine arden (and a bunch of amazing booksellers and book content creators!) and the amount of research and respect and heart that she put into this novel is so very felt, but i really was lucky enough to experience that so much deeper. i was speechless at how much she knew and how much she dug deeper to learn so many personal stories of families during this time. it allowed me to have an even deeper level of empathy and just taught me so much in regard to understanding what life was really like during this time period all around the world. and i am still speechless that i was about to buddy read this book with one of my favorite authors of all time! ❤️ full review, with trigger and content warnings, on the blog HERE ✨ House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City, #3) by Sarah J. Maas ⭐⭐⭐1.) House of Earth and Blood ★★★2.) House of Sky and Breath ★★★ i had a good time reading this. I really loved lidia and ruhn’s storylines and they really made the entire book for me. I am also still so very in love with hypaxia, and the things i would do to get her pov. speaking of, I felt a little bored at some povs in hofas – mostly ithian and tharion (i am so sorry to these men, i love them and feel so much empathy for them, but it is true). and bryce’s pov made me feel a range of emotions, that’s for sure, but most of the time it wasn’t the best emotions. ultimately, i think there were too many povs in this book and sometimes the switching between them felt very jarring and unbalanced. i also feel like there was just so much going on, which valid, but instead of it being information that we started to learn in the first two books, it felt like sjm was kind of just throwing out every plot she could think up. and i think this all made the pacing of this book a bit weird feeling. but i did love that baldur’s gate unexpected cursed dot storyline a lot. ❤️ full review, with a spoiler section and trigger and content warnings, on the blog HERE ✨ Faebound (Faebound, #1) by Saara El-Arifi ​ ⭐⭐⭐ this is such a hard book to rate and review, because i truly loved so much of it. the characters, the set up, the setting, the messages and themes, even the writing was so perfect for me. But the plot of this? oh, friends, i was just unable to be captivated by it. i really found myself a bit bored while reading, and while waiting for these things i loved to make a plot that i equally loved, but sadly it just never happened. this is a story about two elven sisters, one blessed with battle and one blessed with prophecy, and their journey discovering that the fae are real when they are banished from their elven homeland. we get to see the underground world of the fae, their bonded animal companions, a really cool tree of souls, and the different magic...