May Wrap Up | 10 Books

I love this series more than anything in the whole wide world. THE NAPOLEONIC WARS BUT WITH DRAGONS. Excellently written. There are so many dragons, and they’re all so awesome and have so much personality, and everywhere in the world has different kinds and different relationships with them, and there are battles on dragonback…just read it. Please read it. Or if you really love yourself, listen to it, because Simon Vance is my favourite narrator ever.

After the eminently impressive first novel in this series, titled an equally forgettable The Serpent and the Wings of Night, this sequel was a let down. The plot dragged for the first 50% of the book, and the central relationship (which I was so excited about at the conclusion of the first book) is totally stagnant for that period. It eventually picks up, and it was written well enough that I’m not going to say it wasn’t worth it, but this had none of the spark of the first one.

More than anything, this book fell victim to too much hype. If I’d never seen all the TikToks and Goodreads reviews, I’m sure I would have been pleasantly surprised by how fun and sexy this NA fantasy is. But it’s far from a five-star read for me: I found the FMC pick-me and annoying and the plot insanely predictable. That said, I LOVE the TDH (Tall Dark and Handsome, my thoughts detailed in my Sarah J. Maas post). He’s super hot, I believe the relationship, I would die for him, et cetera. Part of my disdain for the way the dragons are done is probably an unfortunate of result of me reading Temeraire—the best dragon book I’ve ever read, with so much personality and depth in each dragon’s character—at the same time. If you’re looking for some fun and that ineffable NA romantasy feeling, though, this is definitely for you. Just don’t listen to the audiobook, because I’ve heard bad things, and the bad Audible reviews abound.

Yellowface fell victim to too much hype built up by me, and not by anyone else. I loved The Poppy War and Babel, so my love for R.F. Kuang is a given. Yellowface is an easy-to-read contemporary thriller, and that’s just not my particular genre. That said, I really enjoyed reading it; it’s clever, cutting, and doesn’t pull any punches. The second half of the plot felt a bit circular—like the same thing happened two or three times to move it forward—but the ending was a chef’s kiss.