Sorcery of Thorns

Note to self: stop picking up books because they've been compared with [b:Howl's Moving Castle 6294 Howl's Moving Castle (Howl's Moving Castle, #1) Diana Wynne Jones https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1407450489l/6294.SY75.jpg 2001], one of my favourite books of all time. I picked it up for this reason, but I think the comparison probably wouldn't do this book justice (HMC was just so much better in every aspect imo) so I'll try to leave it out of my review as much as possible.Honestly, I find it a bit difficult to review this book because I'm clearly not the target demographic nor is this a genre that I gravitate towards nowadays, so while I got annoyed at some parts of the book - should I have expected it going in anyway?Elisabeth Scrivener is a young apprentice at a Great Library, where they keep not only regular books but also grimoires, books that have some kind of soul and which are a cornerstone of magic in the world. One day, she is accidentally implicated in a disaster that strikes the Great Library and suspicion falls upon her as the perpetrator of the crime. A sorceror, Magister Nathaniel Thorn, along with his enigmatic butler Silas, is assigned to escort Elisabeth as a suspect to the Magisterium to stand trial. Shit happens, chaos ensue, a plot is discovered, and so on.Let me start on the weaker points of the book which just didn't work for me - whether it's a function of my preferences leaning elsewhere, or the genre as a whole just not being my thing, I'm not sure.Firstly, I was not enamoured by the protagonist Elisabeth Scrivener. I never rooted for her throughout the whole. She kinda seemed to me like your regular bookish clueless female protagonist who is almost wilfully blind to her own emotions and/or talents. The male lead and love interest, Nathaniel Thorn, is slightly better and that's mostly because his egoistic sense of humour was very clearly lifted off Howl from Howl's Moving Castle, whom I adored.Secondly, their romance was imo very clunky and unconvincing. In Chapter 3, we have a scene where Elisabeth pretends to stumble onto Thorn and they're suddenly very physically close - just so that she can touch his hair and find out for her friend whether he really had pointy ears and cloven hooves like the rumours said. Ummmm. Ok. Also, somewhere along the lines, amidst the urgency of stopping the main villain of the book, they somehow ““planned”” to go for a Royal Ball in order to confront said villain and we also have ye olde scene of Elisabeth revealing her ball gown and Nathaniel being all speechless heart-eyed stammering love interest. Why Nathaniel only sees her ball gown for the first time at the ball when they live in the same place and came together to the ball is a question I would rather not spend too much time thinking about.Thirdly, it was imo fairly obvious who the main villain was from almost the very beginning. At no point did I ever feel anything more than complete indifference to this person, because their motives were unconvincing and their behaviour and actions were just - eh. When the villain's actual master plan was revealed, I questioned, “Why?” When the book answered why, I was just like - eh. None of their motivations are ever set up properly in the book, so the villain always reads like a character going through the villanous motions because they have to be a villain so that the protagonists have a reason to get closer while planning to take him down and kissy kissy. Details under spoiler: So Ashcroft wanted to raise the Archon because he apparently wants to command him so that he can rid the world of poverty and hunger and whatever. Are you serious? That's the weakest shit I've ever heard. It's like when it became uncool for a villain to just be mindlessly power-hungry ("I want to take over the world and everyone will bow to me!"), the reaction is to make the villain mindlessly altruistic ("I'm going to kill everyone around me so that I can harness this power and make the world a better place!") Geez. Furthermore, it's also obvious that this reason for Ashcroft's mad plan was just shoehorned in for... lulz? Because at no point before he reveals this do we ever get the sense that he's concerned about the state of the world. Where is the set-up??Finally, that ending, and I'll try to detail my problems with it without spoiling. Chronologically, the final resolution could be divided into two parts. We spent way too much time on the first part which imo was far less interesting than the second part, which was almost a fade to black. I felt cheated!! Details under spoiler: I really didn't care about all that chasing after Ashcroft, I nearly skimmed through the whole bit. What really made me sit up was when Elisabeth freed Silas and he turned into some kind of post-demon monster, launched himself at Archon, and - what? They disappeared into the Otherworld and we never even get to see these two mighty demons battle? ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW? I don't give a shit about Thorn's green whip or Elisabeth's powers (does she even have any besides conversing with books?).BUT. I will say that this book has some redeeming factors. It's like everything that happened in the foreground - the protagonists, the main plot, etc. - was largely what annoyed me, but then everything that was going on in the background - the magic system, the world of grimoires and sorcery, and most especially the demons - was really what interested me. The most fascinating thing to me in this whole book is summarised in one word: Silas. His moral grayness was surprising to me, being surrounded by all the inanity around him. He was at once devoted and competent servant, hungry and selfishly immortal demon, and potential apocalypse all rolled into one. I couldn't pinpoint whether he was going to turn out to be a force for good or evil, and as such he was by far the most interesting character in the book, hands down.To wrap up: I would not recommend fans of HMC to go into this book thinking that it will live up to the comparison - the parallels are there but imo HMC is by far the stronger book in every respect. If you're going into this book simply for the plot and you're very much into YA, you'd probably have a good time, and would probably love the main couple. If you have no idea what HMC is and don't like YA at all, why are you even considering picking up this book??