Reading this book while living in our current timeline has been an experience, but there is something specific and sickening about the tether between American systemic racism and its genocide against Native and African Americans and the Third Reich and Nazi jurisprudence in dehumanizing Jews and other "subhumans."

Watching the realities of rising facism during a time in which so many take offence to comparisons to the Nazi regime citing overreaction, or worse, antisemitism (despite Holocaust historians sounding the alarm), it nearly feels too on the nose to raise the addage regarding those who forget history and their fate.

Would you rather...cozy up to read on a rainy day, or a snowy day?

Would you rather...read with tasty snacks, or a yummy beverage?

Would you rather...buddy read with a friend, or tackle a book solo?

Over halfway through and I think I've finally identified one of the main things that's been bugging me through this one. So much of this book can be summarized as "An attempt was made."

And attempts are admirable, sure. But to be thinking "an attempt was made" FOUR HUNDRED PAGES into BOOK TWO of a series feels a little crazy. Because as I'm spewing my thoughts at my patient, beautiful best friend who is my sole audience (and telling me "this sounds miserable" with every all-caps paragraph I send her), I'm quickly realizing how little imagery or meaningful description is actually in these books. I've brought it up with Tamlin's kitty claws, but so many of these scenes rely on reader imagination rather than immersing us in a scene from SJM's own mind.

The "erotic" (🤢) scene in the throne room reads so incredibly juvenile, but I think that's just the tone of the whole series. I find myself so jarred when sex comes into play because the whole tone and voice has me feeling like I'm reading a YA series. What could and should have been a sexual thriller ends up reading like a recreation of that Vine where the kid (me, in this instance) is pointing and yelling "IS THIS ALLOWED?" while a couple canoodles in a Panera Bread.

I was not expecting the faeries to have indoor plumbing?