HAPPY RELEASE DAY🥳🥳🥳

This book is AMAZING. I have read a lot of great books this year, and this is for sure in the Top 3. It is a stunning accomplishment for a debut author!

From a tropes perspective, VMC has everything a girl (or boy) could want: diverse, dark-humoured, trauma-packing queer characters remiscent of Six of Crows; a unique multiworld Fantasy setting, that not only seemlessly establishes 3 alternative races/species of people, magic, gods, societies and complex cultural worldbuilding details for tge bustling trading city of Topensi, situated in the canivourous plant ridden Astragath, but also dips its toes into 2 more worlds AND manages to make the small portions set on Earth equally magical; a heartponding thriller plot where everyone has lost their moral compass, is hiding something, has chemistry with 3+ characters and is beimg pursued by something from their past so you genuinly have NO clue what's going to happen - so refreshing in the bloated Fantasy genre.

From a quality perspective VMC is even more exciting. Each character is expertly layered with secrets which keep slowly being revealed up until the last chapter. The pacing, while carrying the plot, is steady and slow enough to facilitate slow burn friendship and romance and is more akin to the pacing of a 90s thriller book. The story is dark, disturbing and gritty enough that it is clearly for adult eyes only, but the wonder and friendship at the heart of the book give it the feel of a childhood adventure story. The SETTING. I could write essays on the setting. Essentially, the only world which can measure up are GoT & Grishaverse, at least in my experience. There's no infodumping, but the writing just teems with atmosphere, aesthetic and acute details - I want to know more about the potions, the sacraficial magic, the glowing plants and fungi, the gambling games, the street food!

My favourite character was Lux. His character design alone was incredible, but the person built on top of that even more so. How Jenn Neal created a guy that hides his pastry magazines under gun catalogues, accidently makes a best friend, gets carsick, struggles with rage and defensiveness, knits, hates himself when he's a bad person yet punishes himself when he's good, used to be a pit fighter, wants revenge, is a little scared of cats and does everything in his power to protect a random human - not to mention the secrets he keeps that I won't spoil here. And he is only one of 4 riveting main characters, not to mention the memorable side characters and villians...

Just read it. You will not regret it.

Thank you so much to the author for providing me with an ARC for this review! (All thoughts amd praise are my own - it just is this good!) Vicious Miscreations is out now!😊