Howl Moving Castle x The Beauty and the Beast retelling happening in the world of the Raybearer series 😮‍💨💖

I haven’t read a book so fast in a long time, I literally couldn’t put it down! Fair warning tho : don’t believe anyone telling you this is a cozy story 🤣 it’s not filled with action or adventures but it’s not cozy lol

I really loved the story and the characters and my only remark is : this book could’ve been 100 pages longer. 😂

Like this is “The Maid and the Crocodile” and the Maid part was perfect but the Crocodile part I felt was… rushed? Not as developed?

Sade is the narrator so it’s normal we had more of her than the Crocodile but, romance appart, I would’ve loved to have more of him along the way, so his part of the story could’ve been more nuanced and built more tension.

In any case, I really love this book to bits and I really need to read the Raybearer now!

A very long side quest.

It was somewhat enjoyable because Kinch can be funny and overall the world is “visually” appealing and well constructed but it is a shame that the quest we’re following is not his own.

He doesn’t know what it is for most of the book, decide for very superficial reasons that he’s down with it and talks in more details about every place they visit (or not) than the companions he’s with and for whom this was the main quest…

Essentially I felt like more work was put into the world building than the characters and it made the story somewhat dull. They were caricatural and lacked depth.

And the fact that everyone is a caricature makes it weird for me that ethnic traits and stereotypes were attributed to the Goblins (who were monsters through and through, it’s not even an allegory for anything).

Also, it’s my 2nd work from this author and while I loved the other one I read, I begin to see a tendency he has to display physical & sexual assaults on men with a frequency and a level of casualness I don’t appreciate. It mostly happens just for the sake of it and it’s never mentioned again or the protagonist takes it with good humor as if they were trivial anecdotes.

This was way better than the movies! 😂🔥

And by “this” I mean both the book having this old fairytale feeling rather than the Hollywood epic fantasy production AND the audiobook narrated by Andy Serkis, who gave more life to the story than any special effects ever could.

Really had a great time and wholly recommend to anyone wanting to discover or rediscover this story 🙌🏽🔥.