Markum always manages to craft a protagonist that feels real and relatable, so much so you want to pick them up and move them out of their own way. Full review to come.

Read my full review at Forever Young Adult: https://www.foreveryoungadult.com/book-report/the-floating-world-axie-oh

Y’all, I’m very disappointed for this one, because I loved The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea. To be clear, I didn’t hate this book, but I definitely didn’t love it. There are only so many “plots” out there, so yes, this book felt familiar (some have said it’s just like Final Fantasy, which…I’ve never actually played, but if it’s like FF then it’s also like every other general fantasy story I’ve ever inhaled) but it never grew beyond the basics enough to keep me invested in this world and this story. How does this mithril stuff make an entire landmass float? Who cares! Why would some of the nobles still live in the Under World, even in the nice areas, when it kinda seems like a cesspool in perpetual dark? No idea. In what way is the only other country in the north powerful enough to stand up to the Sareniya’s army? Don’t worry about it! What does this magical Light actually do for and to Ren? It only matters when the plot demands it!

Speaking of plot, the characters seemed to just…bumble through it. Ren and Sunho had these personal mysteries they need to uncover, but rarely did their agency spur on the reveals. The plot would’ve barreled right into them as long as they were simply standing in the right place at right time.

Oh’s writing was engaging enough that I sped through this book very quickly, but, looking back, I have more questions than fondness, and I don’t think I trust enough that the story will conclude in a satisfying way to continue through the next book.

Sept 17 - Stopped October 2025 about 40% through. I might try to pick this back up, but it was due back to the library and I still had 500 more pages left, and knowing that, I just wasn't feeling excited to keep going. It started off strong for me, but it started feeling bogged down in minutiae during the classroom scenes, and I am struggling to muster up the curiosity about where the story will go (and what plot points I THINK it could be, I'm not sure I'm interested in, currently). The characters outside of our main character also feel a bit flat and aren't grabbing me. My 2025 reading slump continues...

Read July 14-31, 2025. DNF'd 60% through.

I surprised myself because I didn't expect to DNF this, as I greatly enjoyed the author's writing in her fanfic. It was a couple of things that did it in. I read her Dramione fanfic (my first and only because I was told over and over the writing was so good, and it was!) before Rowling really popped off, and now it's hard to keep my mind off waves hands all of that while reading.

And yes, I know it's been said up and down this is a NEW work...but it's a new work like a knock-off handbag isn't an exact replica of a designer. We all know what we're doing when we fork over that $30 bucks and breathe in those fake leather chemicals. The marketing leaning heavily into promoting it AS basically knock-off, Dramione-coded work much like THE LOVE HYPOTHESIS was so clearly Reylo fanfic, so that didn't exact do much to persuade me otherwise. I don't think the authors who are being heavily courted to publish this new wave of adapted fanfics should be as vilified as they have been by some, especially when there's plenty of actual corporations giving money to Rowling and benefiting way more from HP than these authors, but it also won't leave my mind while I'm reading. I'd rather spend my energy and focus elsewhere.

But what worked in the fanfic wasn't working here, and a lot of it came down to: if these characters AREN'T Hermione and Draco, then WHO are they? There was something missing from the broad strokes of girl: uptight, smart do-gooder, man: insouciant and morally grey. (Which also...still sounds like Dramione. He's got white slicked back hair. Her biggest physical difference is she's now Black, which was also done when a Black woman played Hermione in the Broadway play and it was "news".) I knew who they were supposed to be within the scenes, but they came off as kind of one-note, and perhaps part of that was because of my next issue:

The plot. It consisted of these two living a bit of their own insulated lives with their orders, meeting up once a month to snipe at each other then fail at an experiment, rinse and repeat. The forward progress was minimal, and while the author clearly put a lot of time and thought into the world-building in the prep stage, it didn't feel like we got to SEE a lot of said world outside of the set dressing. 60% of the way through and this orphan child plague mystery has gotten nowhere, and I think I'm supposed to assume this will eventually be revealed as some engineered bio-weapon (because what targets ONLY orphan children) but...why? Who are the outside players who would do this? Why and how does this plot affect these characters, who, to my knowledge are not orphans nor care about any particular orphan children?

The final straw was my favorite part of the fanfic: the clever writing. There was just TOO MUCH of it! Shocking to hear from me, I know. There were some truly funny lines, and some clever turns of phrase, and plenty of words I was highlighting to see if it was a real word I didn't know or a made-up magical world word. But then every sentence decided it needed to be clever. Every. Dang. Sentence. The story was just drowning in its own cleverness and irreverence. It became cumbersome to read for that exact reason, and I found myself sitting down to read it like it was homework.

So, I wish the author well but this just wasn't for me.

FTC Disclosure: I received a free arc in exchange for my honest opinion.