What if we were chess rivals playing against each other in a tournament in the faerie realm and we were both girls 😳😍😌

The way I DEVOURED this oh my god.... it's been a while since a book felt this easy to just keep reading (probably because I don't read much YA anymore), and keep reading I did. The pace flowed perfectly and the writing was engaging and attention-grabbing while still feeling refined. I don't have a lot to say other than I was invested in the whole thing from start to finish.

Was this the most deep, challenging book of all time? Well no! There was definitely some reader hand-holding going on in the writing, although I guess not to a level that's unusual for YA? I also can't really speak to how well the Irish folklore was handled, and it definitely felt like the worldbuilding and setting were more focused on ✨vibes✨ than details. But those vibes were so strong that I didn't personally care.

Solid characters, a fun (if sometimes predictable) storyline, a sweet sapphic romance, a gorgeously rendered setting, and lots of fun descriptions of chess? What more could I ask for!

Austen books in popular perception: you have bewitched me 🥰 body and soul 😳🥵✨ Austen books in reality: money money money. Money money money MONEYMONEYMONEYMONEYMONEYMONEYMONEYMONEYMONEYMONEYMONEYMONEY ‼️😤💷

I totally understand why this is one of Austen's less loved novels -- it's easily the least romantic of the ones I've read. The focus is really on the ways money shaped social standing in her time, and how that in turn shaped peoples' treatment of each other, the choices they made (and were even allowed to make), and the entire outcome of their lives. She uses interpersonal drama as the means of carrying out a pretty scathing critique of her own class, filled with sarcastic humor and characters that leap off the page.

And oh my god, the drama was crazy. Considering this book is one of her longest (if not her longest?) I was surprised to find the plot pacing pretty even, without any lulls that allowed me to get bored. There was something happening in every chapter to keep me hooked, and usually that something was juicy as hell!!

The writing here is definitely not as strong as I think I remember from some of Austen's later novels. There are so many scenes where she seems to drop the ball in the middle of a climactic moment, taking the reader out of it and summarizing what follows in a more passive description when I wanted to see it play out in real-time. It's possible that it's just her style and I forgot that she does it in later books too, but either way, it let some air out of the story for me.

Despite that and the lack of any swoony romance, this really worked for me. I enjoyed most of the characters, rooted hard for both of our heroines, and was deeply invested in every new dramatic development. Definitely recommend to anyone who can resist the urge to project modern standards onto a novel from 1811.

My favorite + least favorite Leigh Bardugo books being in the same trilogy feels like some kind of cosmic joke fr

Clearly I'm in the minority here, but everything about this finale just felt so messy. I don't know if this is because it's been a while since I finished the previous 2 books and the Hell Bent summary I read before picking this up did not contain enough information, but genuinely the plot of this book was almost nonsensical to me. Somehow we went from the tight, clever mystery of Ninth House to what felt like a sloppy season of Supernatural where the writers were just making shit up on the fly. Again, this was probably exacerbated by the fact that I don't remember a ton of specific details from the previous books. But good fantasy writing should remind readers about the more minute details of the worldbuilding, especially when they were last referenced in a previous book. We can't be expected to remember every little thing in order to make sense of the story.

Plot aside, I was really let down by the characters in this book too. Every character arc with maybe 1.5 exceptions (Dawes and kinda Tripp) felt extremely half-baked. Some characters had no development whatsoever (cough cough Turner), and another was just terribly executed to me (Mercy). I understand that not every supporting character can have a fully fleshed-out and satisfying arc when there is so much plot to get through (and this book was 99.9% constantly moving plot), but I at least expect meaningful development from the goddamn MAIN CHARACTER, and Alex was really giving nothing in this book. It felt like Bardugo had already completed what she had in mind for Alex's entire personal growth arc, and spent this book occasionally re-treading points that were already covered in the previous books. The one instance that could've been a catalyst for an interesting character arc was pretty quickly dealt with and dropped.

Considering I'm one of those people who was not happy with the new plot direction the series took in Hell Bent, there's really only one way this book could've gone for me. Bardugo, I'll still read whatever you do next, but god damn it I'll never stop being salty about the post-Ninth House progression of what could've been my favorite series of all time.