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Book 3 of this series is just filled to the brim with stuff like this. It's not subtle, and that's not a complaint. It's very much a product of today.

This is a book about books and knowledge and libraries - those kinds of meta stories can be really hard to pull off I've found, but he did a solid job.

It's also got time travel shenanigans which I love. He pulls that off well too I think.

Lots of good twists even in this book.

I cannot wait to read the rest!

I'm pretty sure Mark Lawrence just made this book up but I can never be entirely certain. Either way, great quote.

I really waffled between giving this 3 stars or 4. Consider it a 3.5.

There were parts of this book I really enjoyed, and there were parts that felt like misses. I will say the ending felt very solid and I was actually pretty happy with it. The world building was very good, and I wish there had been a bit more of it.

Some of the prose felt a little stilted. Other parts felt heartfelt and beautiful. It's hard to quantify any particular areas as being weaker than others, it was just a feeling that cropped up from time to time while reading.

I did quite enjoy the evolution of the relationships, and Zyll the goblin was an especially interesting character, but it was hard for me at times to like Fern. Being accused of being 'chronically dissatisfied' felt apt, and I don't entirely feel like that description was ever really fixed. The ending/epilogue tied off some of the emotional loose ends, but I feel like a bit more could have been done to show Fern slowly coming into what it is she truly wanted instead.

Not at a bad read at all; not something I'll probably re-read though.

What a fantastic book. I am biased in that I really love Robert Jackson Bennett's writing, but this was definitely a good story. Very weighty. I've criticized other books for bringing up philosophical questions and not answering them but that's because those books literally bring them up, using characters as a mouthpiece to just point blank ask questions which is unsatisfying. This book makes YOU ask the questions. It has a lot to say about religion and bureaucracy, about history and truth, and about generational pain and trauma.

Amusingly, if the Shadow of the Leviathan series is about trusting the system, then the Divine Cities series (or at least this book) is about bucking establishment and rules in an effort to do good instead of serving the status quo.

This wasn't anything to write home about. I get why it might have broad appeal but I've definitely read better romantacy books--and worse. I have some general criticisms on why I didn't enjoy this more. First, the protagonist started off very interesting and then got very un-interesting. I liked learning about her and her world and how she saw things, but as the story wore on, she became flatter and more of a trope than a unique person.

Secondly, the writing is just overly dramatic at several points. To the point where it grated (though sometimes it looped back around and just flat out became funny.) Some of the things Feyre says are so overwrought, which only further contributes to my previous point.

She also seems to suffer from holding the Idiot Ball several times. I couldn't tell if we were supposed to think she was clever or not. Sometimes she was, and sometimes she wasn't, and it always whatever was most convenient to the plot at the time.

Finally, I really didn't care for the set up of a love triangle. Having an anti-hero in the mix is fine--I tend to like those characters--but holding up a neon sign that says "Secondary Love Interest" just diminished what would have otherwise been an interesting character.