Let's start with the positives, shall we?

I'm not one to complain about excessive descriptions. In fact, I find that I actually enjoy it. The way that Ann Radcliffe describes architecture, landscapes, and natural sceneries can be lavish and overindulgent, but to me it was vivid, even poetic. So that's one.

There are multiple scenes, mostly the dialogue-heavy ones, which I quite enjoyed, like Vivaldi's confrontation with his father, with Schedoni, and the one where he expressed concern for Ellena's mourning at a convent.

The antagonist was formidable; an unspeakably evil man. There was the subtle, yet effective, portrayal of the church's power and corruption, and the characters of Ellena and Olivia as conduits of the very real fears and anxieties of 18th century women in a heavily patriarchal period of time, that is to say, of confinement and restrictions.

Now, to the negatives. Honestly, it was everything else. This book is just tedious, and even that is too generous of a word. The pacing is so, so slow. I was reading pages upon pages where virtually nothing happens. The characters fell flat. And my biggest gripe of all.. was how predictable it all was.

This book's predictability was at a maximum, and that is where I felt very, very sad. I wanted to like this book, truly. But predictability dashes the core tenets of the Gothic upon the rocks, because uncertainty is the machination that the Gothic novel operates on. Its horror or terror relies for the most part on the fact that both the characters and the readers are pervaded with a heightened sense that something unfortunate will happen, yet not being able to pinpoint exactly what. It's the dreadful and inexplicable feeling of being watched, followed, observed, haunted.

Every single piece of Gothic literature that I have read succeeded in making me feel this way, in immersing me in an atmosphere of pure suspense, except for The Italian. This is my most disappointing read of the year (so far).

What a heartbreaking ending.

This was not just a murder mystery, it was a deep character study of how far someone would be willing to go in order to protect the person they love.

I've only had Bartholomew for a day and a half, but if anything happened to him, I will kill everyone in this room and then myself.

Richard Swan is so unfairly talented.

Set decades after the events of the Empire of the Wolf trilogy, this book (and its subsequent sequels, probably) is an amazing expansion into the lore of the established universe.

The Empire of the Wolf was still better (for now). Also, I don't like the ship. 👎🏻

A-fucking-mazing. One of the most original high fantasy stories I've read to date. The concept of the descendance of the gods being feared is quite unique. Although the plot twists may be foreseeable and the narrative a little simplistic, it was the characters that made this novel a great experience. I've always been a character > plot kind of reader, so I'll eat up even a boring plot as long as the characters are interesting and well-developed. Not to say that The Raven Scholar's plot was boring, but I truly believe that the cast was the crowning jewel of this book.

A snooze fest. 😴

A timely read during the decade's biggest corruption scandal in the Philippines. EAT THE MF'ING RICH.

My favorite Poe story yet.

This took a completely unexpected turn. I've read The Fall of the House of Usher prior, which is the source material, so I thought I would've at least been able to guess which direction this book would be going, but no. T. Kingfisher, as always, managed to do something new with this one. With that being said, I must say I loved this more than the original. It was the characters that brought out the charm of the story to the fullest.