April 2026 Reading Roundup (Part 1)
Apr. 15th, 2026 08:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
metallic_sweetBooks I Finished
I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Se-hee
This is a memoir told primarily through twelve recorded conversations with the author and her therapist, who she sought out for her depression. More than anything, this is a brave, frank book in which the author lays bare the parts of herself that make being successful in society and within herself difficult. Some of it is rooted in childhood trauma, and other parts stem from the author’s extremely low self-esteem and feelings of inferiority. Like most humans, she just wants to live well in society and sometimes feel like she’s loved and a little bit special for it.
The book ends with a collection of short reflections on different issues in life, similar to the short prose reflections at the end of each therapy session. In my opinion, these are the most moving parts of the book since the author’s reflections on her day to day life are rendered beautifully, relatable as her therapy sessions but without the cyclical nature of the dialogue. It’s distinctly melancholy in a way that I recognise, having struggled with chronic depression for the majority of my life. Baek Se-hee passed away in October 2025.
Rating: N/A
This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews
Maggie wakes up one evening naked and confused because she’s somehow inexplicably Kair Toren, the main town in the Kingdom of Rellas, the setting of her favourite, unfinished fantasy series. This is a delightful, isekai-esque start to a trilogy that reads like a love letter to high medieval and portal fantasies that mostly avoids getting bogged down in the oft extremely complicated worldbuilding of high fantasy because Maggie or other characters she quickly builds into a found family are able to explain what the reader needs to know. There’s a few points where explanations, often through dialogue, get to be somewhat unbelievable, but thankfully those instances are few.
There’s several interwoven plot lines, and, surprisingly, none of them centre upon Maggie attempting to return to the real world. I liked most of the plots aside from the one featuring a serial killer, but that’s because I am not particularly thrilled by that particular type of plot and felt like it was a fairly lazy way to build Maggie’s character and utilise her background in criminology. The impact of each plot line on the main story is all equally weighed and wrapped up within one book, which I appreciated, since I’m well-familiar with high fantasy and the tendency to have many plotlines of varying reader appeal spread over multiple books. It makes this first book feel sufficiently weighty and, with the very readable language, won’t alienate the majority of readers.
The romance aspect of this book is one gigantic spoiler, and I did like the twist that makes it so. I personally feel like this didn’t actually need to take place within this book, and I wouldn’t mind other potential love interests for Maggie in future books to test and strengthen the main couple. The ending of this first book definitely points in that direction, which I found to be a kind of Big Shrug set up for an otherwise well-paced if somewhat predictable book. I’ll look forward to the next novel with hopes that we delve more into the mystery of how Maggie ended up in Rellas and possibly see more of Rellas than Kair Toren.
Rating: ★★★★☆
A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon
This is a clever and surprisingly grounded novella told from the POV of an unnamed female narrator who, as she contemplates suicide after her life hits rock bottom in credit card debt, is approached by Roa, claiming that the narrator is the super important magical girl of Time. At first, the narrator is skeptical, but she realises that she both likes Roa’s enthusiasm, and it feels good to be told that she’s somehow special and needed. Overall, this is character-driven social commentary and a distinctly feminist take on the place of women in society and magical girl tropes.
I found the magical girl element to be both well and under used. The narrator doesn’t come into her own powers until the climax of the book, which works well rather than being boring, and I really enjoyed how other magical girl’s powers functioned in this. The magical girl union aspect was also satisfying as it’s not perfect but makes complete sense for a world where magical girls are of all ages, not just young girls. I found the mission to save Heathrow Airport to be rather farfetched because surely England’s magical girls would have called on their counterparts in other parts of the British Isles first, and, since this is the only mission the narrator gets to participate in before the novella’s plot moves forward, it felt somewhat out of place.
The social commentary is fairly simple, which is why it works in the novella format. I really like that it dealt with both the relatively young age of some magical girls and the prevalence of domestic violence against women and girls. The climate change aspect felt a little esoteric, and even the narrator acknowledges how it’s discussed seems like a far-fetched doom’s day scenario. I think that this novella sets up well for the sequel coming out in English late this year, and I’m interested to see how the narrator grows into her powers and learns to test their limits.
Rating: ★★★½☆
As the Villianness, I Reject These Happy-Bad Endings! by Iota Aiue, Kuroyuki, and Molly Lee
An unremarkable thirty-year-old woman awakens without explanation in her favourite otome game, and she’s specifically awakened as the villainness, Iris! It’s a winning and well-trodden combination for an isekai, and this one benefits from only being one volume. For a magic school-focused isekai, it has a surprisingly small cast of characters and only three love interest options—the second prince, Reseda, Iris’s brother, Nigel, and the “hidden/true route” magician, Cytisus. The impetus for Iris working to change the natural progression of the story is even the so-called good endings for both herself and the game’s protagonist, Camille, there’s darkness in the form of isolation and domestic abuse in their futures, something I myself find off-putting about a lot of otome games. This makes for a strong start to the story, which quickly becomes bogged down in surface-level plotlines and you can see it from a mile away plot twists.
This is definitely one of the better translated light novels I’ve read, and props to Molly Lee for making a lot of the exclamatory asides by Iris and the jumping POVs of other characters feel both cohesive and distinctive. Iris, who caught essentially the in-world version of smallpox as a young child, is visibly scarred and the bulk of the first third of the book is dedicated to a plot of hers to produce a magical vaccine. While I found this all to be very hamfisted, the characters, especially Iris and Reseda, get to grow a lot, and I appreciated Lee’s translation as it helped manage the rapid introduction of characters and plotlines. It gave Iris a chance to apply her real world knowledge to the benefit of the in game world, even though I found the fairies who help give Iris magic to be annoying.
The rest of the book focuses on the events of the game, which primarily take place at a magic academy and focus on Camille and Iris’s candidacies for the title of Holy Maiden. It’s very trope-driven and extremely predictable, but the light-hearted tone carries the otherwise fairly ridiculous antics in a way that would be easily translatable to a low to mid budget 13 episode anime. There isn’t much to write home about, but it’s an easy read between other things, and I did like Camille and Iris’s relationship. This will please fans of this particular sub-subgenre of isekai.
Rating: ★★½☆☆
The Beheading Game by Rebecca Lehnmann
Anne Boleyn, freshly executed, wakes up in her coffin and escapes, quickly stealing a new cap and sewing kit to sew her head back on. An excellent premise and opening, this book is a detailed take on “what if Anne Boleyn survived?” with a supernatural premise rooted in folktales and Arthurian legend. This book is at once historical fiction, supernatural urban fantasy, and an Arthurian-esque fairy tale. The success and enjoyment of this hinges upon whether you picked up the book thinking it was historically accurate (think supernatural Wolf Hall) or not.
From a historical perspective, this is an odd one. Anne spends substantial time in reflection on her life, especially her relationship with Henry, and her recollections draw heavily from the well-written, well-researched historical narrative of their lives. Sometimes this works well, offering insight into Anne’s feelings and her interpretation of events, and other times it comes off like an information dump. The strongest part of this book is when Anne meets Alice, a sometimes-sex worker, and they spend time trying to escape London. Unfortunately, I found Anne’s time in the fens with Alice and her family to be unbelievable and more reflective of the author’s modern opinions than anything Anne or someone from Tudor England would ever think or do. I know this is a book that asks “what if Anne sewed her head back on after waking up dead?” but the whole fens section severely challenged my suspension of disbelief.
Overall, I have extremely mixed feelings about how this was executed (hah). As a concept and a revenge tale, I really wanted to love this Anne, but the meandering narrative filled with contemporary social commentary and the usage of pretty much every character besides Anne leaves much to be desired. I did, however, really like Lehnmann’s writing style; it’s lyrical but easy to follow, and her imagery and settings capture the imagination. I don’t know who I would recommend this book to except for die-hard fans of headless ghosts and those who want men like Henry VIII to suffer for his crimes.
Rating: ★★½☆☆
Perspective(s) by Laurent Binet
It’s New Years Day 1557 in Florence, Italy, and the painter Pomtormo has been found stabbed through the chest at the base of his unfinished frescoes in the Basilica of Saint Lorenzo. During the initial investigation, a scandalous painting of Venus and Cupid is discovered, with Venus’s face clearly that of Maria de’ Medici. This book is a delight, especially for fans of epistolary storytelling, and the letters going back and forth between characters are funny and full of personality specific to each person. Binet’s detailed and well-researched foundation overall helps him to tell a unique and imaginative story, although he does take some creative liberties that can take a reader familiar with the period and players out of the moment.
I really loved the action-packed pace of this story with some characters trying to direct others, and other characters running amok trying to get a hold of the painting to destroy, preserve, or use as blackmail. Binet’s uses this madcap adventure to examine perspectives on art, morality, and human nature, which I felt mostly hit the mark, particularly the tongue in cheek treatment of religious zealotry and the obvious hypocrisy of the nobility. The real victim of this is Maria, who is young and just in the blossom of womanhood, and her fate is tragic as an unwitting pawn in the schemes of those who should have protected her.
Overall, I do agree with other reviewers that there are moments, particularly in the first half, where the sheer number of people involved can get confusing, even though Binet does provide a detailed character sheet at the beginning. As an author, he generally assumes that the audience is entering his stories with some frame of reference, and he himself provides a framing device, pretending here that he discovered all these letters himself and is just translating them. This would make for a good movie or stageplay, although both would probably have to cut or combine a few characters.
Rating: ★★★★☆
Dungeon-Crawler Carl and Carl's Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman
Oops! Carl and champion Persian cat Donut have unwittingly managed to survive the hostile alien-takeover of Earth! Forced to die or compete in a highly violent, universe-viewed television show where the remaining citizens of Earth have to dungeon crawl down through ever increasingly dangerous levels, this book is an extraordinarily fun and smart take on the apocalypse and survival horror show genre. Carl is a morally sound meathead whose saving grace is being able to think on his feet, which allows him to circumvent his very mediocre Intelligence stat. Donut, who quickly becomes sentient thanks to the roulette Legendary Pet Biscuit, is truly delightful: she's still very much a cat, prone to whims, and acts as both Carl’s main comic relief and, by the end of Doomsday Scenario, a fully-fledged secondary main character.
In all honesty, I was extremely pleased with how these books execute themselves. I had been mildly curious since seeing few folks I know mention the series positively, but my library only recently picked the first two. This first book starts off with a bang and doesn’t lose speed: it makes great use of Carl’s singular perspective, and it feels a lot like playing a dungeon crawler video game itself while taking care to give plot and emotional weight to the inevitable grinding; it does get repetitive, especially when they reach the second level of the dungeon, but luckily Dinniman manages to move things along. He slows things down with the second book, focusing more on character development and leveraging the most interesting of his recurring characters. Most of these are the various archetypes you’d expect in a fantasy video game but with enough personality and personal motivations to make them unique and fun.
The scene early on that sold this to me was the first boss that Carl and Donut encounter, the Hoarder. Carl’s reaction to this poor woman, whose pain and suffering has been grossly exploited by the alien overlords, made me both like him as a character and feel palpable resentment towards the Earth’s hostile takeover. Most boss battles aren't as emotionally driven, but all carry consequences for how Carl and Donut perceive the dungeons, the people they meet, and the alien corporations. The use of live audience participation and corporate competition is some of the best social commentary in the books on par with The Hunger Games and Squid Games. Carl’s intimate and growing awareness of how little control he has, his dedication to staying true to himself despite everything, and his adaptability make him and Donut, who easily could have become a morality pet or joke machine rather than a dynamic second, a duo to root for.
Dungeon-Crawler Carl rating: ★★★★½
Carl's Doomsday Scenario rating: ★★★★☆
Books I Didn’t Finish
Prodigal Tiger by Samantha Chong
A supernatural and action-packed young adult romp set in Malaysia and based on Malaysian magic and folktales, I really wanted to like this, but I ultimately struggled to feel much for the main characters and certainly less for the people around her. The ghosts and undead are very interesting, but the tone of the narrative is uneven and, aside from the strong opening chapter, nearly everything is over-explained. This is far too dialogue heavy with very little space for the reader to become immersed in the story and its characters. I got about a third in and had to admit that I wasn’t going to complete this.
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson
I am legitimately disappointed with this book because it started off so well, introducing a unique religious system and a high fantasy setting that immediately introduced interesting characters with juicy conflicts, and then it sent everyone offscreen to jump eight years later. Everything falls apart from there: a murder mystery is introduced and then shuttled aside for a violent, winner-takes-the-throne tournament, which is also shuttled aside for another plot that supposedly introduces more intrigue but all together has the effect of making everything feel very flimsy and of little weight. The characters all act like you would expect a cast of a YA fantasy novel to, but they're in their late 20s to 60 plus. This book does the dark academia magic academy but instead of academy, it's a kingdom, and it does it poorly. I haven't been this disappointed with a book in a while.
I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Se-hee
This is a memoir told primarily through twelve recorded conversations with the author and her therapist, who she sought out for her depression. More than anything, this is a brave, frank book in which the author lays bare the parts of herself that make being successful in society and within herself difficult. Some of it is rooted in childhood trauma, and other parts stem from the author’s extremely low self-esteem and feelings of inferiority. Like most humans, she just wants to live well in society and sometimes feel like she’s loved and a little bit special for it.
The book ends with a collection of short reflections on different issues in life, similar to the short prose reflections at the end of each therapy session. In my opinion, these are the most moving parts of the book since the author’s reflections on her day to day life are rendered beautifully, relatable as her therapy sessions but without the cyclical nature of the dialogue. It’s distinctly melancholy in a way that I recognise, having struggled with chronic depression for the majority of my life. Baek Se-hee passed away in October 2025.
Rating: N/A
This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews
First book in the Maggie the Undying trilogy
Maggie wakes up one evening naked and confused because she’s somehow inexplicably Kair Toren, the main town in the Kingdom of Rellas, the setting of her favourite, unfinished fantasy series. This is a delightful, isekai-esque start to a trilogy that reads like a love letter to high medieval and portal fantasies that mostly avoids getting bogged down in the oft extremely complicated worldbuilding of high fantasy because Maggie or other characters she quickly builds into a found family are able to explain what the reader needs to know. There’s a few points where explanations, often through dialogue, get to be somewhat unbelievable, but thankfully those instances are few.
There’s several interwoven plot lines, and, surprisingly, none of them centre upon Maggie attempting to return to the real world. I liked most of the plots aside from the one featuring a serial killer, but that’s because I am not particularly thrilled by that particular type of plot and felt like it was a fairly lazy way to build Maggie’s character and utilise her background in criminology. The impact of each plot line on the main story is all equally weighed and wrapped up within one book, which I appreciated, since I’m well-familiar with high fantasy and the tendency to have many plotlines of varying reader appeal spread over multiple books. It makes this first book feel sufficiently weighty and, with the very readable language, won’t alienate the majority of readers.
The romance aspect of this book is one gigantic spoiler, and I did like the twist that makes it so. I personally feel like this didn’t actually need to take place within this book, and I wouldn’t mind other potential love interests for Maggie in future books to test and strengthen the main couple. The ending of this first book definitely points in that direction, which I found to be a kind of Big Shrug set up for an otherwise well-paced if somewhat predictable book. I’ll look forward to the next novel with hopes that we delve more into the mystery of how Maggie ended up in Rellas and possibly see more of Rellas than Kair Toren.
Rating: ★★★★☆
A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon
First book in a series
This is a clever and surprisingly grounded novella told from the POV of an unnamed female narrator who, as she contemplates suicide after her life hits rock bottom in credit card debt, is approached by Roa, claiming that the narrator is the super important magical girl of Time. At first, the narrator is skeptical, but she realises that she both likes Roa’s enthusiasm, and it feels good to be told that she’s somehow special and needed. Overall, this is character-driven social commentary and a distinctly feminist take on the place of women in society and magical girl tropes.
I found the magical girl element to be both well and under used. The narrator doesn’t come into her own powers until the climax of the book, which works well rather than being boring, and I really enjoyed how other magical girl’s powers functioned in this. The magical girl union aspect was also satisfying as it’s not perfect but makes complete sense for a world where magical girls are of all ages, not just young girls. I found the mission to save Heathrow Airport to be rather farfetched because surely England’s magical girls would have called on their counterparts in other parts of the British Isles first, and, since this is the only mission the narrator gets to participate in before the novella’s plot moves forward, it felt somewhat out of place.
The social commentary is fairly simple, which is why it works in the novella format. I really like that it dealt with both the relatively young age of some magical girls and the prevalence of domestic violence against women and girls. The climate change aspect felt a little esoteric, and even the narrator acknowledges how it’s discussed seems like a far-fetched doom’s day scenario. I think that this novella sets up well for the sequel coming out in English late this year, and I’m interested to see how the narrator grows into her powers and learns to test their limits.
Rating: ★★★½☆
As the Villianness, I Reject These Happy-Bad Endings! by Iota Aiue, Kuroyuki, and Molly Lee
An unremarkable thirty-year-old woman awakens without explanation in her favourite otome game, and she’s specifically awakened as the villainness, Iris! It’s a winning and well-trodden combination for an isekai, and this one benefits from only being one volume. For a magic school-focused isekai, it has a surprisingly small cast of characters and only three love interest options—the second prince, Reseda, Iris’s brother, Nigel, and the “hidden/true route” magician, Cytisus. The impetus for Iris working to change the natural progression of the story is even the so-called good endings for both herself and the game’s protagonist, Camille, there’s darkness in the form of isolation and domestic abuse in their futures, something I myself find off-putting about a lot of otome games. This makes for a strong start to the story, which quickly becomes bogged down in surface-level plotlines and you can see it from a mile away plot twists.
This is definitely one of the better translated light novels I’ve read, and props to Molly Lee for making a lot of the exclamatory asides by Iris and the jumping POVs of other characters feel both cohesive and distinctive. Iris, who caught essentially the in-world version of smallpox as a young child, is visibly scarred and the bulk of the first third of the book is dedicated to a plot of hers to produce a magical vaccine. While I found this all to be very hamfisted, the characters, especially Iris and Reseda, get to grow a lot, and I appreciated Lee’s translation as it helped manage the rapid introduction of characters and plotlines. It gave Iris a chance to apply her real world knowledge to the benefit of the in game world, even though I found the fairies who help give Iris magic to be annoying.
The rest of the book focuses on the events of the game, which primarily take place at a magic academy and focus on Camille and Iris’s candidacies for the title of Holy Maiden. It’s very trope-driven and extremely predictable, but the light-hearted tone carries the otherwise fairly ridiculous antics in a way that would be easily translatable to a low to mid budget 13 episode anime. There isn’t much to write home about, but it’s an easy read between other things, and I did like Camille and Iris’s relationship. This will please fans of this particular sub-subgenre of isekai.
Rating: ★★½☆☆
The Beheading Game by Rebecca Lehnmann
Anne Boleyn, freshly executed, wakes up in her coffin and escapes, quickly stealing a new cap and sewing kit to sew her head back on. An excellent premise and opening, this book is a detailed take on “what if Anne Boleyn survived?” with a supernatural premise rooted in folktales and Arthurian legend. This book is at once historical fiction, supernatural urban fantasy, and an Arthurian-esque fairy tale. The success and enjoyment of this hinges upon whether you picked up the book thinking it was historically accurate (think supernatural Wolf Hall) or not.
From a historical perspective, this is an odd one. Anne spends substantial time in reflection on her life, especially her relationship with Henry, and her recollections draw heavily from the well-written, well-researched historical narrative of their lives. Sometimes this works well, offering insight into Anne’s feelings and her interpretation of events, and other times it comes off like an information dump. The strongest part of this book is when Anne meets Alice, a sometimes-sex worker, and they spend time trying to escape London. Unfortunately, I found Anne’s time in the fens with Alice and her family to be unbelievable and more reflective of the author’s modern opinions than anything Anne or someone from Tudor England would ever think or do. I know this is a book that asks “what if Anne sewed her head back on after waking up dead?” but the whole fens section severely challenged my suspension of disbelief.
Overall, I have extremely mixed feelings about how this was executed (hah). As a concept and a revenge tale, I really wanted to love this Anne, but the meandering narrative filled with contemporary social commentary and the usage of pretty much every character besides Anne leaves much to be desired. I did, however, really like Lehnmann’s writing style; it’s lyrical but easy to follow, and her imagery and settings capture the imagination. I don’t know who I would recommend this book to except for die-hard fans of headless ghosts and those who want men like Henry VIII to suffer for his crimes.
Rating: ★★½☆☆
Perspective(s) by Laurent Binet
It’s New Years Day 1557 in Florence, Italy, and the painter Pomtormo has been found stabbed through the chest at the base of his unfinished frescoes in the Basilica of Saint Lorenzo. During the initial investigation, a scandalous painting of Venus and Cupid is discovered, with Venus’s face clearly that of Maria de’ Medici. This book is a delight, especially for fans of epistolary storytelling, and the letters going back and forth between characters are funny and full of personality specific to each person. Binet’s detailed and well-researched foundation overall helps him to tell a unique and imaginative story, although he does take some creative liberties that can take a reader familiar with the period and players out of the moment.
I really loved the action-packed pace of this story with some characters trying to direct others, and other characters running amok trying to get a hold of the painting to destroy, preserve, or use as blackmail. Binet’s uses this madcap adventure to examine perspectives on art, morality, and human nature, which I felt mostly hit the mark, particularly the tongue in cheek treatment of religious zealotry and the obvious hypocrisy of the nobility. The real victim of this is Maria, who is young and just in the blossom of womanhood, and her fate is tragic as an unwitting pawn in the schemes of those who should have protected her.
Overall, I do agree with other reviewers that there are moments, particularly in the first half, where the sheer number of people involved can get confusing, even though Binet does provide a detailed character sheet at the beginning. As an author, he generally assumes that the audience is entering his stories with some frame of reference, and he himself provides a framing device, pretending here that he discovered all these letters himself and is just translating them. This would make for a good movie or stageplay, although both would probably have to cut or combine a few characters.
Rating: ★★★★☆
Dungeon-Crawler Carl and Carl's Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman
First two books in a ten-part series
Oops! Carl and champion Persian cat Donut have unwittingly managed to survive the hostile alien-takeover of Earth! Forced to die or compete in a highly violent, universe-viewed television show where the remaining citizens of Earth have to dungeon crawl down through ever increasingly dangerous levels, this book is an extraordinarily fun and smart take on the apocalypse and survival horror show genre. Carl is a morally sound meathead whose saving grace is being able to think on his feet, which allows him to circumvent his very mediocre Intelligence stat. Donut, who quickly becomes sentient thanks to the roulette Legendary Pet Biscuit, is truly delightful: she's still very much a cat, prone to whims, and acts as both Carl’s main comic relief and, by the end of Doomsday Scenario, a fully-fledged secondary main character.
In all honesty, I was extremely pleased with how these books execute themselves. I had been mildly curious since seeing few folks I know mention the series positively, but my library only recently picked the first two. This first book starts off with a bang and doesn’t lose speed: it makes great use of Carl’s singular perspective, and it feels a lot like playing a dungeon crawler video game itself while taking care to give plot and emotional weight to the inevitable grinding; it does get repetitive, especially when they reach the second level of the dungeon, but luckily Dinniman manages to move things along. He slows things down with the second book, focusing more on character development and leveraging the most interesting of his recurring characters. Most of these are the various archetypes you’d expect in a fantasy video game but with enough personality and personal motivations to make them unique and fun.
The scene early on that sold this to me was the first boss that Carl and Donut encounter, the Hoarder. Carl’s reaction to this poor woman, whose pain and suffering has been grossly exploited by the alien overlords, made me both like him as a character and feel palpable resentment towards the Earth’s hostile takeover. Most boss battles aren't as emotionally driven, but all carry consequences for how Carl and Donut perceive the dungeons, the people they meet, and the alien corporations. The use of live audience participation and corporate competition is some of the best social commentary in the books on par with The Hunger Games and Squid Games. Carl’s intimate and growing awareness of how little control he has, his dedication to staying true to himself despite everything, and his adaptability make him and Donut, who easily could have become a morality pet or joke machine rather than a dynamic second, a duo to root for.
Dungeon-Crawler Carl rating: ★★★★½
Carl's Doomsday Scenario rating: ★★★★☆
Books I Didn’t Finish
Prodigal Tiger by Samantha Chong
A supernatural and action-packed young adult romp set in Malaysia and based on Malaysian magic and folktales, I really wanted to like this, but I ultimately struggled to feel much for the main characters and certainly less for the people around her. The ghosts and undead are very interesting, but the tone of the narrative is uneven and, aside from the strong opening chapter, nearly everything is over-explained. This is far too dialogue heavy with very little space for the reader to become immersed in the story and its characters. I got about a third in and had to admit that I wasn’t going to complete this.
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson
First book in the Eternal Path trilogy
I am legitimately disappointed with this book because it started off so well, introducing a unique religious system and a high fantasy setting that immediately introduced interesting characters with juicy conflicts, and then it sent everyone offscreen to jump eight years later. Everything falls apart from there: a murder mystery is introduced and then shuttled aside for a violent, winner-takes-the-throne tournament, which is also shuttled aside for another plot that supposedly introduces more intrigue but all together has the effect of making everything feel very flimsy and of little weight. The characters all act like you would expect a cast of a YA fantasy novel to, but they're in their late 20s to 60 plus. This book does the dark academia magic academy but instead of academy, it's a kingdom, and it does it poorly. I haven't been this disappointed with a book in a while.
