UPDATES 📝 AND READING WRAP UP 📚

But, regardless, as a result, it made me just really enjoy my reading of this duology. I think as far as fantasy duologies go, I think a lot of times some of us feel like, oh, it wasn't quite enough. I wish it'd been a trilogy.

I mentioned in the past, earlier this year, I picked up Grave Empire by Richard Swan. It's a new fantasy release, which is great.

I still really, really enjoyed my reading of this. Not necessarily an all-time favorite currently. And I wouldn't say there's anything about the writing that really spoke to me necessarily.

And it's going to sound odd, but it's just so refreshing to read a story where the characters are very flawed. They get irritated in ways that feel very realistic. They get in arguments.

However, I don't know if we had ironed out all the kinks when it came to pacing and storytelling, because even though I liked the atmosphere that she established with her writing, and even though I was invested in the story, the progression of the relationships between characters, some of the world-building was definitely on the weaker side. And I have such an appreciation for V.E. Schwab and a lot of her works, cuz I really do enjoy so many of them. But, I think this was just okay.

In that, I didn't have anything about it that was off-putting. I wasn't annoyed by the book or anything like that. It just wasn't really working for me, and so I ended up DNF'ing it, but I would be willing to give it a try.