• The Duology I Didn’t Know I Needed

    Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo Spoiler Free ★★★★★ This duology took me by surprise! I went in blind, without reading the Shadow and Bone trilogy (which technically kicks off the Grishaverse), but I’m here to tell you, Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom work perfectly fine as a standalone pair. Overall,

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  • Darling, fucking what?

    So, I finished The Poppy War. I’m devastated, and I have some thoughts. Let’s unpack if this series lived up to they hype. 📚 Spoiler-Free Reviews: The first book was tricky. It was good and it was a fun read but it started out very YA coded so I was a little confused about what

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  • 🗡️When your favorite trope stabs you in the back

    Serious spoilers for The Dragon Republic ahead. Ah, enemies to lovers.That wonderful slow burn. The bickering. The tension. The awkward but heavy eye contact. The- knife in the back? Sure, the trope has its flaws. (A little toxicity never hurt… until it does.) But what happens when the tension doesn’t spark love and instead, it

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  • God’s Will; With a Gun. The Hesperians and the Horror of Holy Colonization

    Light spoilers for The Dragon Republic ahead They came bearing gifts of medicine, technological progress, and God. In The Dragon Republic, the Hesperians arrive in Nikan with promises of enlightenment, science, and salvation. All Rin — and the fragile Republic — had to do, is fall in line. Sound familiar? Kuang draws unmistakable parallels between

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  • What Would Aurelius Say to the Reaper? Philosophy in Red Rising

    Spoilers up to Light Bringer ahead Christian Moodie on Pinterest One of the great things about Red Rising is that Brown incorporates a ton of nods to stoic philosophy into his character writing in a subtle but impactful way. I’d bet that he has his own annotated copy of Meditations sitting somewhere on his bookshelf

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