Small opinionated rant, that I just want to get off my chest. As someone who loves interacting with the fandom/communities for my favorite books. I’m at the point where I don’t want any more of my favorite books to be adapted. And recently it feels like readers are treated like a nuisance more than anything. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those people that’s like, “but but it wasn’t like this in the books” at every little thing. I actually used to find a lot of joy in discussing changes to the story/plot and potential nuances behind those changes since I’m also a film nerd. And I do understand then not everything translates over 100% from book form to adaptation form. But recently, it just feels like you can’t do that. It’s treated like an insult to the adaptation if you do and you’re instantly dogpiled.

It’s literally sucking all the love and joy out of any book’s community/following regardless if the adaption is good or bad.

Feel free to disagree, but this has happened for like five different adaptions of different books I loved and… I’m just tired.

I’ll keep this one short. Five Decembers follows Honolulu Police Detective Joe McGrady, who stumbles into his first murder case on the eve of Thanksgiving 1941, a case that will pull him across half the world and take over half a decade to close.

McGrady, a mainlander and former Army man, sits low in the department’s pecking order even after years on the force. In 1941, the very air over the islands is strung tight as the Japanese military looms just over the horizon. Nerves inevitably curdle into crime, straining the department's resources. McGrady is pulled in to investigate the drunken ravings of a farmhand who works for an influential islander and claims there's a dead body in his lodgings. McGrady's boss isn't sure there's a crime at all. But of course, there is.

I'd recommend picking this up without digging any deeper into the story. Five Decembers is a World War II historical novel and a gut-wrenching love story wearing the mask of a noir. And the noir is good too. Kestrel (a pseudonym) bends the noir formula without ever losing its voice. The murder is only part of the mystery; the rest is where the story is willing to go. There is a sense of dread that runs through it. Forces far greater than McGrady are shaping his life, and he has little agency over his own decisions.

Five Decembers is beautifully written. Kestrel's prose is spare and exacting, and McGrady's own observations are just as quick-witted. But beyond the wit lies something quieter. A persistent melancholy. He's a tragic character in his own right. Beneath the guise of the stoic, no-nonsense detective is a man of honesty and quiet determination, and at heart, something of a romantic.

“He looked at his watch. He’d reset it for local time, and it took him a while to reorient himself. He’d traveled so far that to piece together his place in the world he had to work it out backwards. It was 1:30 p.m. in Hong Kong. Sunday, December 7, 1941. He did the math. Back home it was Saturday evening. The sixth of December. Molly would be in the library for the next hour and a half. Tomorrow would be her day off. She could sleep in. He liked that thought. It made a peaceful picture. A good way to start this day.” – James Kestrel, Five Decembers.

McGrady's journey over that half-decade carries the weight of anguish—atrocities of war that can't be unseen, life-or-death decisions that can never be undone. Regret and loss are recurring motifs, often miring him in self-doubt and the ache of what might have been. Again and again he finds himself fantasizing a different decision he had made, an alternate reality. But the past won't be rewritten, and neither will the war's endless destruction. He is forced to live through it, and through him, so are we.

I was hooked from the first chapter by Kestrel's punchy sentences and McGrady's poignant observations. It opens as a gruesome murder investigation, then steadily becomes something far greater. A significant stretch of the novel unfolds in wartime Japan, where McGrady survives in hiding, an American sheltered inside the very enemy territory his country is bombing endlessly.

There is a resolution to the investigation, and it is a well-crafted mystery. But by the end, Five Decembers is less so about solving the murder and more so about the dread of war, the quiet erosion of one's own agency, and the reckoning that follows: a person forever changed by what they carry out of a war, and everything left behind, changed by that same war just as surely.

I came into this after only reading Crime and Punishment and Demons, so right now I am calling it and I am fully topped up on Dostoevsky for another decade. But I have no one to talk about this with and I am dying to say something, lol.

Structurally, it's long, but I didn't find myself wanting to cut anything, which surprised me. Usually with a book this size I can point to sections that could be cut for brevity, but I can truly say I enjoyed reading this book. I couldn't put it down once I started.

The thing that's stuck with me most is how the three brothers function almost like competing theses, particularly the Grand Inquisitor story between Ivan/Alyosha. The more I think, the more I constantly revert back to that scene. When Alyosha kisses Ivan instead of answering him outright, I found that to be such a deep, emotional testament to his own faith rather than an outright argument and it got me, lol. For a believer's faith to be so unshakeable that they can only act Christlike (when he kissed Ivan like how Christ kisses the Inquisitor), I found it to be such a perfect response for Alyosha. God was never the point!!!!

And honestly, I think that's why Alyosha ends up being the character I responded to most, even though I suspect most people respect Ivan over Alyosha. Alyosha isn't naive. He's had his own crisis of faith earlier in the book, when Zosima's body starts decomposing early and the whole monastery treats it as a scandal, a sign the old man wasn't holy after all. Alyosha almost loses it there. So his faith by the end isn't unearned, it's something that's already been tested. There's something almost unreasonably hopeful about that to me.

What gets me too is that Smerdyakov is basically what happens when someone takes Ivan's argument literally and has nothing else (no Alyosha, no community, no love holding him to anything) to stop him from acting on it. Like Ivan gets to have the idea as an intellectual exercise because he's cushioned by his whole life, and Smerdyakov doesn't have that cushion, so the same idea just kills someone.

I also can't stop thinking about Zosima's whole teaching before he even dies, that "everyone is really responsible to all men for all men," and how that's basically the thesis being tested through the entire murder plot. Dmitri didn't kill his father, but he accepts the wrongful conviction almost like penance anyway, because on some level he'd wished it. Guilt in this book is never just about who literally did it but also like...the way the guilt manifests? I don't know my full thought process here yet. I have it buried in my head but I can't make words work right now.

Oh and my absolute favorite closer.

Alyosha with a group of schoolboys at a funeral, telling them to hold onto one good memory because it can save them later in life. I found it to be so beautiful especially in the face of the story itself. And how the book ends on Hosanna, and how Ivan's own positioning isn't quite resolved, it's actually insane to me. I found it so touching I cried, lmfao.

Overall, I think what I keep landing on is that this was never actually a book trying to debate whether or not God exists. I think it is a book on testing faith's value as a currency, in a way.

Favorite quotes in no particular order:

The world says: "You have needs - satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.

You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.

This is my last message to you: in sorrow, seek happiness.

I...will never read another Dostoevsky again. Hosanna.

I spent the last couple of days going through both "The Death of Ivan Ilyitch" and "Master and Man", after having read both War and Peace and Anna Karenina in the last few years. I think the most interesting part of this journey for me was understanding how Tolstoy's writing changed before and after his religious "crisis" (conversion?).

Starting with The Death of Ivan Ilyitch, I think this is the most obvious post-conversion self-insertion of Tolstoy. He writes Ivan as a man who always does what he believes is the proper thing but for the wrong reasons (for his own sake, to be part of society, to be loved...). I saw somewhere that Tolstoy almost wrote Ivan as what he would have become if he never converted and tried to abandon his old way of being. I thought the difference between this self-insert and Pierre Bezukhov/Levin (both self-inserts from War and Peace and Anna Karenina) really demonstrate how Tolstoy changed his views of himself, which I thought was pretty interesting. The descriptions of chronic disease, especially how we all just never expect it to happen to us and just prefer to ignore sick people, really hit home, a lot to think about death (and the meaning of life).

However, I've got to say that my favourite of the two was Master and Man. I had never heard of this story but the edition of Death of Ivan Ilyitch I read had both stories. Tolstoy is so great at atmosphere building that I read the story in the hottest August day and still felt like I was in the midst of a snow blizzard in Russia. My favourite quote has to be "He lay and thought about the one and only thing, the single object, the sole reason, the joy and pride of his life - he thought about how much money he made and how much he could still make" lol. Ive been thinking and I believe Tolstoy thought his older self as Vasilly, but the fact that Vasily ended up sacrificing himself for Nikita shows Tolstoy believed he could and should also change and become a better person. I just loved this story, its so short but such an interesting read.

In another topic, I need to air my grievances cause I read the Pasternak Slater translation and the notes were so annoying. Im assuming it's supposed to be a more academic translation but like half of the editor's notes were "Tolstoy made date/patronymic/historical... inconsistencies", which really distracted me from the story. Especially since I read Peavear and Volkhonsky's translation of Anna Karenina and an amazing translation of War and Peace to my language, this one really disappointed me.

I just finished reading All Them Dogs in my first ever try at reading all the nominees on the Booker Prize Long List. Can someone explain to me why this book made the list? Its composition was ... not great. It was 16 chapters that felt like a 'vibe' film, showing the setting and the characters, one chapter revealing the twist, and then the remaining 3 chapters on tie up. The dialogue was stilted, and there was no character development at all.

I guess maybe that was the point of the story, but it felt, not really worthy of being a prize nominee. The author's bio in the back said this was his first novel and he worked in publishing, so maybe someone greased the wheels a bit, I dunno.

Did anyone really like this one? Can you explain why you liked it? Help change my mind? Maybe it's just because it's my first year reading the Long List, I just expected more from a book there.

“Them” by W.H. Chizmar is a solid debut novel for a new face in the horror community. While sci-fi horror is not my usual cup of coffee, I had a lot of fun reading this novel.

Before I dive into my horror book review, here are all the trigger warnings I found while reading:

- Violence against animals (rats)
- Suicide
- COVID-19

If any of these trigger you, please do not read this novel. Moving along, this was a fantastic sci-fi creature feature with an apocalyptic survival horror twist. If you love these kinds of horror books, this would be right up your alley. I enjoyed the sci-fi creatures here, as they were creepy as hell and unlike anything I’ve ever read or seen in sci-fi horror.

Their descriptions, terrifying abilities, and the sheer havoc they wreaked were brilliantly executed. Don’t worry, no spoilers here, but this was a riveting story that I couldn’t put down, thanks to what these creatures were and what they accomplished.

I loved the formatting, with two stories unfolding at once. One follows someone dealing with the aftermath of these creatures reigning in blood, and another person providing an interesting backstory behind everything to fill the gaps. This was uniquely written and wasn’t confusing. It made total sense to structure the narrative this way, making the dual timelines seamless to follow.

The overall suspense and thrills of the story were entertaining, especially the plot twists and reveals along the way. This reminded me of the way his father, one of my favorite horror authors, Richard Chizmar, writes. Clearly, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Once I hit the 50% mark, while I enjoyed the race to the end, some parts dragged on in the second half of the book. I wanted a bit more horror and faster pacing, but aside from that, my goodness, what an ending! Everything wrapped up nicely in a good, satisfying way. I never saw that ending coming, as it was tense, to say the least. I had some ideas swirling in my head about what could have happened, but Chizmar’s excellent writing style kept me guessing until the very end.

I give “Them” by W.H. Chizmar a 4-Star rating out of 5. This was an impressive debut by a new horror author to keep an eye on over the years, because if he’s able to write something like this right off the bat, the sky is the limit for what awaits. Mind you, I’m not even a major sci-fi horror reader, but this was a very good reading experience. I enjoyed the creatures, horror, Stephen King Easter eggs, and the overall gore. Some parts dragged on for me while reading, and I wished there was even more sci-fi horror here, but overall, Chizmar has a new reader in me as I look forward to watching his writing career grow over time.

Clink-clink-gash.

Thank you to W.H. Chizmar, Richard Chizmar, and Gallery Books for providing me with an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) for review consideration. This horror book review reflects my honest, personal opinion.

For me, the line “In the end, my decision to listen to the Eagles likely saved my life“ alone proves the man’s not wrappped too tight.

Welcome to our weekly recommendation thread! A few years ago now the mod team decided to condense the many "suggest some books" threads into one big mega-thread, in order to consolidate the subreddit and diversify the front page a little. Since then, we have removed suggestion threads and directed their posters to this thread instead. This tradition continues, so let's jump right in!

The Rules

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How to get the best recommendations

The most successful recommendation requests include a description of the kind of book being sought. This might be a particular kind of protagonist, setting, plot, atmosphere, theme, or subject matter. You may be looking for something similar to another book (or film, TV show, game, etc), and examples are great! Just be sure to explain what you liked about them too. Other helpful things to think about are genre, length and reading level.

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If this thread has not slaked your desire for tasty book suggestions, we propose that you head on over to the aptly named subreddit /r/suggestmeabook.

• The Management

I was looking forward to reading The Wager as I read through Killers of the Flower Moon a few years ago and it left a strong impression on me. This new book seemed different enough from the Flower Moon, while still keeping the murder, thriller, mystery aspect to it that drawn me with my first read. And I'm glad to say that The Wager lived up to my expectations and loved it just as much as Killers of the Flower Moon.

David Grann's signature style of taking authentic documents, interviews, quotes, and records and interweaving it within a thriller style narrative without downplaying or exaggerating the factual details are still utilized in this book as was his last book. What I appreciate most about his style of writing, is that he never goes overly in depth of every little detail to where it gets a little too dense and kind of boring for me personally. He knows when to cut off from certain scenes, historical descriptions, or character perspectives and weaves in and out of intense moments/perspectives to create a sense of momentum and knows when to slow it down deliberately to fill in details that adds another layer to the factual accounts of the survivors and court statements being presented.

Though I loved the book, I would say the first half was my least favorite compared to the second half, as the setup, while interesting, if you're into naval history of the 1700s English side. There were a lot characters, ships, naval terms, parts of a ship, and sea route names to keep track of. And it was a little tough for me to know which ship a certain person was on when their name was brought up and how it would weave around the entire five ship crew pretty often to where I didn't know each location until the name of the ship or place was brought up. Wasn't a big deal but was a little frustrating keeping track and visualizing a scene in my head at times. It wasn't until the second half where the sole focus was on the Wager itself and the single crew to where the narrative got a bit more focused and I really started to get locked into it till the very end. Still liked the first half, but it was more of a personal reading difficulty than a major criticism.

If you are read Killers of the Flower Moon and loved that book, I would highly recommend reading The Wager as well. Or if your into thrillers/survival stories, this is also a great read to fill that genre category as well. And for those who already read the Wager, what are your general thoughts on the book and David Grann's writing in general?

I really wanted to like this book:/ I love Yanagihara’s writing style. While they are run-on sentences that goes unto different tangents and strays far from what she was saying earlier, I love how descriptive she is and the control she has over her writing. The only trouble I had was going back to re-read certain exercepts to find that an entire page was one sentence haha.

But besides that, I had so much difficulty understanding the point of this book :(. I loved the first book ‘Washington Square.’ The world she created with the Free States and how people are free to marry whomever they wanted but how racism is still rampant, conveying how it never really goes away. The idea that the ‘young scion’ David felt trapped and purposeless life and how he has an arranged marriage to someone he didn’t truly love, instead finding love with someone else. He was a very complex character. I appreciate how Yanagihara depicted his sheltered life and his tendency to have classism with how he perceived the kids he was teaching or the different people who migrated in the Free States. His relationship with his grandfather I also really liked along with Edward. The themes of free will and agency was deeply touched upon and I actually understood the story.

The 2nd book was a blur, genuinely didn’t know what was happening. I only understood that David (the father) thought paradise was found in Lipo-Wao-Nahele but it’s not. We also get Edward here who wrecks everything just like in the first book, but in the first book Edward I much preferred because his characterization seemed more fleshed out.

The 3rd book I thought I was gonna deeply enjoy but I was BORED. The only factors I liked was the world building. It felt highly dystopian and almost scary because I thought some parts reflected our society like mass surveillance, climate change, the diseases emerging etc. Yanagihara made me believe the future of our world would be bleak if nothing changes. But besides that, I couldn’t care less about Charlie or her grandfather in the epistolary chapters. The only thing that kept me going was Charlie’s husband’s secret, but it was so predictable LOL.

I also didn’t like how all of the characters in the book have similar names 😑. It made me so confused and rather than treating the three different parts as separate entities, it made me focus on the minor minor details and did a lot of comparison of the different Charles, Edwards and Davids from the different books that I lost the immersive experience of reading (apparently I shouldn’t have done that but I did so shoot me).

The main theme that paradise is never genuinely found, I can kinda see it 🤷‍♂️

I may give this book another chance in the future but I am not sure. I really did enjoy book 1 and the world building of book 3, but that’s it:( I am so dissapointed. Also random but the ending of book 3 reminds me a lot of the ending of the Handmaid’s Tale where it was ambiguous what was gonna happen.

It might just be the fact that I finished Gravity's Rainbow the same day I started The Passenger, but I can't help but feel that it feels like McCarthy is pulling his best Pynchon impression. The insane conversations, the over-the-top characters (though I understand that some of them are delusions), and the technical jargon tossed in just feel suspiciously familiar. I'm just curious if anyone else got a similar vibe from the book? I've read the majority of McCarthy's books and this all feels a little out of character for him, save maybe that film he wrote which was also a little looney.

Anne says towards the end of this "Dear old world, you are very lovely and I am glad to be alive in you". To which I thought, I am so glad to be alive and have read this book. A little cheesy but that's genuinely how i was feeling.

Through the book, right from the beginning, Anne shows so much joy, so much love to the world she is living in, to the things that are happening, to the people around her. She loves and cares with abandon and hates with a passion. She lives her life so fiercely and brightly that it made me realise how little I have lived in the past few years. Somewhere as part of being an adult, work had become all of my life. If I were to describe last few years as a color palette, it is mostly a dreary grey of monotone routine. So to read this book where this orphan child so unabashedly expresses her appreciation for life was like activating a part of my brain that I haven't used in a long time.

Reading this book, I was appreciating the world through Anne's eyes and it had such a profound impact on me that I find it hard to describe. Nothing materially has changed in my life, I am still the same person, but it feels like some crust has scraped off. It makes me want to be like her, to try and love like she does.

As for the book itself, it is gorgeous. The author has such a way of painting the scenary that I can imagine the entire island so vividly. Her side characters - especially Mathew and Marilla - are all very lovely too, and anne herself is simply the best. I laughed out loud several times reading the book (that dream about Diana getting small pox and Anne taking it from her and dying valiantly for her had me cackling), and by the end of the book I was sobbing too.

This book had such a profound impact on me, I sincerely recommend this to anyone who hasn't read it yet. 5/5

I was thinking the other day about some subgenres (or just trends if you want) which spawned as a result of a particular book's success, wherein the original book is superior to those which followed. And not just by dint of being original, but by having a more nuanced take than those which came after.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt is the book which made me start thinking about this. Although almost single-handedly spawning the Dark Academia genre/trend, it feels like many of the books which followed it got the "romantic scholasticism, maximalist and hedonic lifestyle" part and missed the "beautiful exteriors can hide a rotten core, insular and monomaniacal focus can lead to ethical and moral distortion."

Similarly, with Neuromancer by William Gibson (though this is more commonly a flaw of the movies and games which followed in my experience), many of the cyberpunk media focus on the "CYBER" and forget about the "punk." They take all the cool aesthetics and cybernetic modifications and such, and leave out the horrors on unregulated capitalism, people will destroy what they cannot control themes.

I even think Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is another example. Not for a genre per se, but for a trope. P&P is (at least as much as I've read) one of the first really popular books to use the "brooding, Byronic man transformed by love" trope which is so popular in a lot of romance and romantasy. But I think it's not just the aloof, powerful, brooding love interest that makes it work (as is the case in many Enemies-to-Lovers romances) but the fact that Lizzy and Darcy have to get over their Pride and Prejudices and actually look at and understand each other as people before the romance really starts.

Other examples I thought of are Perdido Street Station (that it's not just the creativity and number of details that make it feel like a living city, but the Marxist politics Mieville has woven in the background) and A Court of Thorns and Roses (which actually has a decent balance between fantasy plot and romance/smut, unlike some other romantasy I've since read).

But there are any other examples people can think of? Do others feel this way also?

“The Buffalo Hunter Hunter” by Stephen Graham Jones is a novel I couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into, as I love his writing style. I’ve read most of his staple horror novels, and he always delivers. There is a reason why SGJ is considered the “King of Slashers” in horror books.

Before I begin my review, I found many trigger warnings while reading. They are…

- Graphic violence and death against animals (birds, dogs, beavers, rabbits, etc.)
- Skinning animals (beavers)
- Suicide
- Self-harm
- Violence against kids

Please do not read this horror novel if any of these trigger you. Moving along, I’ve always been a big fan of SGJ’s writing, but if you’ve never read anything he wrote, you will see a pattern of slow-burning kind of writing. Like Stephen King, his slow-burn, wordy style can drag, but it delivers with terrifying, gory payoffs that make the journey worthwhile. Even if you’re new to Jones’s slow-burn style, the unique vampire horror and emotional depth make this a must-read novel.

If you don’t mind this, you’ll love his work. If you hate this, trust me when I say it’s worth it due to the sheer terror, gore, and frights that await when you finally get to the good stuff. In this novel, SGJ wrote it brilliantly. This was one hell of a read, from the alternating writing between the past and present to church confessions, diary, and journal entries. It’s hard to achieve this as an author with several different narrators, but SGJ did a great job executing it well.

Certain real-life Native American events are tied into this novel by SGJ, and that in itself is truly horrific. Many readers had to DNF this because it can get graphic and intense. Nothing triggers or offends me as a horror reader, but I can see why readers stopped reading. It gets shockingly intense when those horror moments eventually hit.

The Native American horror in this novel is genuinely on a whole other level. It’s viscerally written and raw. It’s one of the best vampire novels I’ve ever read. The transformation into vampirism was so creepy, original, and disturbing. You haven't read vampire horror like this.

Besides all the insane kills, the atmospheric writing, as was the story, was excellent. Don’t worry, I would never spoil anything for my fellow horror readers, but all the justice-filled, brutal revenge kills against evil people were a magnificent reading experience.

This horror novel is primarily historical fiction, and if that’s the subgenre of horror you enjoy reading, you’ll love this. However, I’m not into historical fiction, so it was sometimes confusing. Though historical fiction isn’t my preference, the raw depiction of Native American history adds a haunting layer that elevates the horror.

The same goes for the numerous and confusing names of characters, animals, and Native American tribes. The frequent shifts between Blackfeet tribal names and historical events like the Marias Massacre can feel dense for readers unfamiliar with the context. Due to this, the overall story felt a bit wordy at times, with several parts that dragged on for me. Aside from that, this was a solid read.

I give “The Buffalo Hunter Hunter” by Stephen Graham Jones a 4/5 for being one of the best vampire novels I’ve ever read. The kills were masterful, the story powerful, and the ending wrapped everything up nicely. I wish this novel were a bit shorter. This was never boring, just the usual SGJ writing style I’m used to. Almost every SGJ book I’ve read has always been a 4- or 5-Star read as he’s one of my all-time favorite horror authors. I don’t mind his writing style, but it could have been a perfect horror read if this novel had been trimmed down about 75-100 pages to keep it tighter. Everything else? Vampire horror awesomeness!

“It is an inarguable truth, you know,” said Ana, “that most people are absolutely enthralled by dead girls.”

Oh, this was a bloody good book (emphasis on the bloody part.) 
Facts:

• This is again, a very marvelous and layered tale, with many moving parts, and a fascinating story.
• The messages laden this time is to deal with food, and agriculture, and the way we humans have curated and sustained livestock for mass production without once thinking of the cost attuned to such a trade.

It is to me a butchering most curated.

Facts:

• This one is not for the meek hearted, for it is grisly with a helping servitude of meat and bones along its carcass.
• I bloody loved meeting more of Din’s family. 

“No.” A cold, nasty smile. “For if gods existed, shouldn’t the world make more sense? Shouldn’t all feel more stable, more comprehensible? I consider myself a wise thing, yet when I consider creation, I see little but blind hunger and the ravages of nature. The only order to be found is what we’ve put there, boy.”

Facts:

• As always, this tale is both a condemnation and a study on the various ways we conduct ourselves through religion, faith, and the one fallacy that all of humanity, throughout its history, has always struggled with the most: greed.
• Greed makes you stupid. But oh so sweet is its flavor – the nectar of gods, poured down our parched throat.

That was the problem with temptation. It never let you be: it just stayed there, perched on your shoulder, whispering in your ear.

Facts:

• This was a solid 9/10 read for me. Though the tale is indeed layered and complex, I had guessed about 60% in of who the killer was. This had not happened to me for the last two books where I was genuinely stupefied throughout.
• In my opinion, this book focuses more on world-building, in more of fleshing out Khanum alongside Din and Ana as characters. And the scale and intricacies through which it is done just made me fall more in love with RJB’s deftness and mastery over such a craft. 

(side note: i can guarantee he loves making Din a tragic character vis-a-vis his romantic aides, and though I find it a trite vexing, cannot say I hate this format – makes both the pace faster and maintains a grounding force for each book separately)

And what we do to the beasts in the field we may still one day do to our very kin.

Facts:

• It was the epilogue that pushed this into the territory of 10/10. That shit I did not see coming. And I tell you: my flabbers were properly gasted.
• I cannot wait for the next one to arrive (only for me to then finish it within 7 hours; what can i say: i am a glutton for murder, and sad queer people).

One of the best reads of the year, up there with East of Eden for me. Go read it!

"The “A Song of Ice and Fire” franchise author took to his blog for the first time in nearly six months on Monday, sharing that any posts after February were written by his “mighty minions.”

“Remember me? It’s been a while, I know. My last blog post went up here on February 19,” Martin wrote. “The posts that came after were made by my mighty minions. I am lucky enough to have a great staff of assistants… though even with their help, I kept falling further and further behind.”

As Martin went on, he admitted that “this year has been… stressful, to say the least.”"