downgraded from 4 to 3. Had really good worldbuilding and interesting heist plot. Magic was kinda handwavey but thats chill. Also characters were aight. Pretty solid 3/5 but the worldbuilding put it at a four for me.
But then i started thinking about the message of the book and how it took on freedom and slavery and shit and i was like its alright i suppose. It like got the job done but its just like inadequate in a sense :/ So back to 3
3.5
It was fun to read but it just felt like a lot of rising action and no climax. I kinda dug the narration style and the idea though. IDK i get the feeling I'll give the full series a pretty good rating but the first book alone was just aight
3.5 Stars
GREAT popcorn book. The first 25% was so cringey it was funny but the rest of the book was super enjoyable and a great page turner. Don't wanna read too much into it cuz it was a popcorn book and analysis for those is not worth the loss of enjoyment (TLDR stuff: flourish-y writing + mega edgelord + men writing women stuff + weird smut). I just love fantasy school settings and good worldbuilding clap
I initially went into this book not expecting too much. (Side note: I really hated the quote on the front because it was so blatantly oversimplified that it set my expectations for this book way off.) Gothic horror and necromancy always seemed cheesy to me and putting it in space? Eh.
But I enjoyed this book immensely. The main character was a ton of fun to read as she was the right mix of impulsive, intelligent, and entertaining to make it worth the binge. The book suffered from too big of a cast at first so it was super overwhelming to keep track of names. But over time the other characters became very distinctive and enjoyable as well. I could picture all the side characters really clearly after a bit and I surprisingly was able to tell them apart just by name for once.
A lot of that was due to how well Tamsyn Muir used her exposition and description. While there was a lot more than other books, the descriptions set the scene really well and made some of the gothic nature of the setting stick out to me. There was one scene around halfway through the book that kept me up at night because of how well it was set up and how spooky it was.
The general plot was gripping though it was never super clear about the overall purpose of the whole story. It was passed over in a few sentences and each character seemed to understand the goal implicitly but it wasn't satisfying to me as a reader. I assume the whole background story and the lore is expanded on in the next books so I was happy to just read knowing that this story was pretty insulated from the rest of the world.
Overall this book was another solid 4 stars (third this week!) and I am going to start binging the second book :)
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