I wish I could say I enjoyed this more than I actually did. And it's not that I didn't enjoy it, either, but it just felt like it was missing something. What that something is, I also don't quite know. Maybe that's my main qualm with this book overall---it just feels like it has the potential to be something really epic and emotionally sweeping, but falls just a bit short. Maybe it's the character development, which felt to me like it had great momentum at the beginning and then fell a little flat. Or the fact that the voice actors for the audiobook I listened to were just kind of really bad (sorry, but I really need to hear more than one type of voice inflection to believe that you've ever read anything out loud before). It may also be the inevitable game of comparison I played concerning similarities to Throne of Glass. Thanks to the influence of TikTok and the ferocity with which I devoured Maas' series two years ago, a story about a main female character desiring freedom from her oppressive master, discovering she can control a strange, powerful kind of magic, and eventually becoming an assassin of sorts for a slightly corrupt order of magical warriors is going to make me think of Celaena and the literary world in which she exists. I thought there were some great unique side characters, and a lot of promise for the book's world to be expanded in the rest of the series I'm not planning on reading. I also thought Max's backstory and the incorporation of a weapon of mass destruction in the form of a parasite were fascinating parts of this story that set it apart from Throne of Glass. But I still felt like the little momentum going at the beginning dropped off and got convoluted with overlapping political subplots, the introduction of this parasitic monster, and the slow burn romance I wished was just a little less and slow and a little more burn. I may be the slow burn's biggest fan, too, so this is saying something. As I've already decided to not continue with this series, I'll end this review here, quite eager to move on to something that hopefully has the spark I'm looking for in a fantasy series with such an intriguing concept as this one.



Some of my favorite quotes from Daughter of No Worlds:

"Men want power because it makes them feel good. Women want power because it lets us do things."

​"I had spent the night cutting myself up into little pieces for consumption, forcing people to acknowledge me, thrusting my pain into their faces."

"We had carved out these small, intimate spaces for each other in our lives, and by some miracle of human denial, neither of us had thought about what that would inevitably mean. Now, for the first time, I realized the breadth of the gaping absence we would leave in each other."

Oooooohhhh, where to even begin with this long-awaited read. I read it slowly and steadily like I do with most books, though I'm thinking of potentially carving out a day to just sit and reread this in one sitting for a rollercoaster of an experience (if I can find the time and have the emotional bandwidth). I had to stay up pretty late to finish this one; putting it down just wasn't an option. But trying to wrap my head around the terrible series of events that make up the last 50 to 100 pages or so was even more gnarly to have to do in the wee hours of the morning. I truly don't know where to start in commending Suzanne Collins for the work she's done within the department of dystopian fiction and writing as a craft, but maybe I'll start with how well she consistently creates and portrays characters. This narrator at the story's beginning---this unsuspecting boy with a simple life and young love he never wishes to be parted from---is not the Haymitch Abernathy fans have only been able to know him to be in the original series. The beginning narrator is not the end narrator, because too much has been changed and lost in the middle, and I think that's masterful character development as well as authorial understanding of how to get from Point A to Point B in a logical fashion that's also entertaining to read. I really latched onto the concept of Haymitch playing the role of a rascal, of stepping into the skin of a character type he ends up playing too well. It starts with the need for an image that might win him sponsors and distract from foul play, and ends with substance abuse as a result of deep grief. I also latched onto the strange alliance Plutarch Heavensbee and Haymitch create, and loved seeing how this book sows the seeds that blossom into full blown rebellion during Katniss Everdeen's era. All of the subtle but important connections back to President Snow and Lucy Gray consistently blew my mind, too. There's so much more I could say about the uniqueness of the Games' arena itself, but I don't want to tiptoe into spoiler territory and also feel like I wouldn't really describe all my individual thoughts about the psychological aspects of the arena well enough. I need to do some more thinking on the significance of this book during our current apocalyptic-adjacent time. This is also a book I think deserves close reading and careful attention considering the width and depth of this series' fanbase and purpose in the literary canon. At the risk of sounding rather dramatic: How different would so many of our opinions on justice, sacrifice, and human capacity for love and hate be today if we didn't have The Hunger Games on our shelves? On a less dramatic note: I just really want to give Haymitch (among many other characters in this book) a big hug.



Some of my favorite quotes from Sunrise on the Reaping:

​"As much pain as my loved ones feel now, how long will it be until I am just a memory?"

"And while Lenore Dove will forever be my true love, Louella is my one and only sweetheart."

"In the same way you instinctively know the waxed pears on the table lack juice, this girl lacks Louella's essence."

"Sometimes she cries because things are so beautiful and we keep messing them up. Because the world doesn't have to be so terrifying. That's on people, not the world."

"But you can't keep Effie down."

"We hold each other so tight it's like we're one person."

I'm so glad I decided to listen to this as an audiobook because the fabulous Kelly Bishop herself narrates it in her unmistakable, iconic tone and flair! I absolutely adored getting to hear the life story of a woman who I can claim to "know" through her role as Emily Gilmore in Gilmore Girls. But the amount of life Kelly lived before and after this seven season stint really astounded me and made me think about how, regardless of her fabulous representation of a lovingly complex matriarchal character, Kelly is her own separate person with such an intriguing story to tell. And what a story it was! I had no idea she started her professional career on the stage, and still seems to consider her time dancing and acting in live performances peak parts of her career and fond memories. What do you mean the A Chorus Line song "At the Ballet" is about her and her life?? That's so insanely cool. I also appreciated how she decided to take us through her life story, which is no small feat. Beginning with the onset of her career really taking off with A Chorus Line and then working backwards to explain her passion for dancing, her relationship with her mother and father, and how she came to move to New York and have a few romantic flings, functioned as a storyline that I thought worked really well to eventually bring us up to speed with "the present" and the rest of her major life events, including Gilmore Girls, eventual marriages, and various health issues. I also appreciated how Kelly wrapped up the memoir with an attitude I aspire to wear as comfortably as she does if I'm blessed with as many years. It's an attitude that all but screams "this is the end of this book, but certainly not the end of my story." 

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Some of my favorite quotes from The Third Gilmore Girl:

"Don’t cry because you think your best days are gone. Smile because you had them in the first place."

"If it’s meant to work out, it will. If it isn’t, it will just make me available for what I’m supposed to be doing instead.” (Sometimes it was reassuring; sometimes it wasn’t.)"

"What on earth would we all do without one another?"

I have much more George Saunders reading to catch up on, but I'm not sure any of it will hold a candle to my opinion of Tenth of December. With that being said, Pastoralia was a weird time, but maybe not as weird as it could've been giving my expectations of what Saunders is capable of and leans into. His absurdism and ability to make even the most unlikeable of characters a little less pathetic and a little more human really impresses me. Every single one of this collection's stories felt like a penned fever dream. Each of them has a strange uniqueness, from the completely one-of-a-kind, often pathetic characters, to the landscapes I can only describe as liminally familiar (for "Pastorialia") or suburban wasteland chic (for the rest of them). "Sea Oak" has really stuck with me. I think it's my favorite of the collection, perhaps because it mixes grief with sexual exploitation, a surreal zombie aunt, the sour taste of regret, and the reality of being unable to escape financial struggles. Saunders' writing is just so poignant in an often uncomfortable way; I don't think anyone would describe his tales as cozy or feel good. I really have nothing good to say about "The Barber's Unhappiness" and stand by the fact that strongly disliking a narrator who's pretty terrible doesn't mean we have to find a way to redeem them. Anyways. Saunders is good at what he does, and for what these stories are within the genre of weird fiction, they're pretty great.

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My favorite quote from Pastoralia ("Sea Oak"):

"Maybe it happens all the time. Maybe there's angry dead all over..."