"A storm's coming, Saf, and you're at its eye. I can be the right hand and you can be the left."
The left hand trusts the right, Mathew always said. The left hand never looks back until after the purse is grabbed.
Iseult had always been the left hand―she's always trusted Safi to distract until the end. Which meant it was Safi's turn to do the same.
Charged air burst through the forest. It lashed into Safi, around her . . . and then gathered itself behind her. She flung a glance back, eyes watering. Storm clouds, dark as pitch, swirled above the treetops.
"I don't like this," Said said, really having to yell now. "In fact, I hate this―the storm and the plan. Why does it have to be 'we'? Why not just me?"
"Because 'just me' isn't who we are," Iseult hollered back. "I'll always follow you, Safi, and you'll always follow me. Threadsisters to the end."
A fierce, burning need rose in Safi's lungs at those words. She wanted to tell Iseult everything she felt―her gratitude, her love, her terror, her faith, but she didn't. Instead, she smiled grimly. "Threadsisters to the end."
Waves.
That's the nagging feeling I have about this book.
It went in waves.
Within the first few pages I was nestling myself into that happy feeling of finding a new world and set of characters to get lost in.
There was action, there was snark, there was intrigue.
There was a female lead I couldn't help but fall for - because she's a cantankerous, antagonistic Sasquatch and I love her, there were villains and anti-villains, there was enough snappy dialogue to keep my banter-loving heart happy.
There was everything I could possibly ask for.
But somewhere along the way I got... distracted.
It wasn't that I didn't feel compelled to keep reading, just that I felt no urgency to do so.
The strange thing, though, is that as soon as I kicked my brain's slovenly ass into gear and picked the book back up, that lackadaisical feeling disappeared.
I was all in again, practically salivating for more time with the two leads - Safi and Iseult, internally begging Susan Dennard to give me the ship I was already rooting for after only one meeting - Safi and Merik better be endgame or I'm gonna lose it.
But then I'd put it down again, the lethargy would return, and the struggle-cycle would continue.
Which, to me, only means one thing:
I really liked this but I want more from it.
And seeing as it's only the first in an ongoing series which is already five books in, I'm not terribly worried about the depth of the storytelling and my enjoyment of it increasing with each venture into The Witchlands.
There's enough meat to the story, enough royal machinations and oracular prophecies, bloodshed and soft romance to expand an interesting story into a fantastic story.
...
I hope.
I wish.
Because I've fallen pretty hard for a certain Sasquatch-witch and I can't get up.
I don't want to get up.
"Do I look like the sort of girl to carry a weapon?"
"Then you won't mind if we search you."
To Safi's credit, none of the fear in her Threads showed on her face, and she only lifted her chin higher. "I most certainly do mind, and if you so much as touch my person, then I will have you fired immediately. All of you!" She thrust out her book, and the first guard flinched. "At this time tomorrow, you'll be on the streets and wishing you hadn't messed with a Guildmaster's apprentice―"
Safi didn't get to finish her threat, for at that moment, a gull screamed overhead . . . and a splattering of white goo landed on her shoulder.
Her Threads flashed to turquoise surprise. "No," she breathed, eyes bulging. "No."
The guards' eyes bulged too, their Threads now shimmering into a giddy pink.
They erupted with laughter. Then they started pointing and even Iseult had to clap a gloved hand to her mouth. Don't laugh, don't laugh―
She started laughing, and Safi's Threads blazed into red fury. "Why?" she squawked at Iseult. Then at the guards, "Why always me? There are a thousand shoulders for a gull to crap on, but they always pick me!"
The guards were doubled over now, and the second one lifted a limp hand. "Go. Just . . . go." Tears streamed from his eyes―which only served to make Safi snarl as she stomped past.
Maybe it's just me but a grumpy heroine being specifically targeted by the avian species and her understandable fury over the fact whilst trying to engage in a game of subterfuge makes me ridiculous inside.
Giddy and giggly and gross.
Which is something I greatly appreciate from this story.
High Fantasy can often be, not to be too crass, but... so far up its own arse it resembles an ouroboros.
And sometimes that's fine, I can take the lack of silly if it isn't appropriate for the story or it's just so good I'm not even thinking about what it lacks. Because it doesn't.
But I will probably always prefer my Fantasy with a side of the funnies.
There's a reason I snickered my way through the first two books of Jon Hollins', The Dragon Lordsseries and why I've been hoarding the third and final for when I'm prepared for more firedrake-based side-stitchery.
And I prefer intense subject matter to come with a dose of humour.
It feels more natural, more realistic.
But maybe that's because I'm Scottish and we thrive on gallows humour.
Poking fun at yourself whilst dying inside is par the course for us highland folk.
(I'm only just a highlander, more like a borderlander? Is that a thing? ... Ignore the fuck out me. Please)
And we appreciate it in others when we find it.
I found it in Safi.
There's isn't a situation where she isn't cracking an inappropriate joke - usually to antagonise someone into fighting her; mostly Merik, but that's just flirting - or using humour to keep her brain from tailspinning into chaos.
She uses her sharp, quick-witted tongue as a weapon and that's always been a total literary turn on for me.
The man quickly ladled out the chocolate and poured it over a bowl filled with fresh strawberries.
Safi's eyes bugged, yet as she grabbed for the bowl, Leopold deftly snatched it away, smiling, "Allow me to serve you, Safiya. We have spent too many years apart."
"And I have spent too many hours between meals." A glare. "Give it to me now, Polly, or I shall castrate you with a fork."
Now his eyes bugged. "By the Twelve, have you heard the things you say?" But he did relinquish the bowl of strawberries, and after biting into the first, Safi moaned her delight.
But it also provides that much needed break from the intensity of the story.
Which from the start throws you into the deep end.
A deep end with things that bite and squirrel you away to have as a snack for later.
Because one minute you're being introduced to two grifter witches making their way home after an unsuccessful con, the next they're scampering for their lives as if it's a day to day occurrence.
Which it is.
These two are trouble.
Safi more than Iseult, who has one of the calmest heads in Fantasy I've come across in a while, but all the same, trouble.
The situations these two get themselves in is ludicrous, from the start to finish.
But they do it together, even when separated.
They're a team, they're sisters.
If not by blood but by choice.
That dynamic is always going to appeal to me.
The chosen family.
Not because a family by blood is anything to sniff at, but the process of watching unwanted misfits make a home for themselves, defying their supposed undesirableness and accepting themselves and others like them is incredibly gratifying.
There's a fierceness in that kind of bond and you can feel it in the way Safi and Iseult behave with each other.
How they work as a team instinctively, how they protect each other at all costs, even the way they bicker.
They chose each other and fuck anyone who dares to separate them.
Or interrupt their near constant back and forth:
Safi glanced at Iseult. "Want to come?"
"I'll stay." If she joined Safi, then Safi might ply her with questions. Questions that could lead to the binding Threads . . .
Or worse―to the shadow voice in Iseult's nightmares.
"I want to be outside," Iseult added, "in the fresh air."
Safi wasn't buying it. She glanced at the nearest sailors, who scrambled up the masts. Then she dragged her skeptical gaze back to Iseult. "Are you sure?"
"I'll be fine, Safi. You forget that I taught you the art of evisceration."
Safi scoffed, but her Threads flared with amused pink. "Is that so, dear Threadsister? Have you already forgotten that it was me they called the The Great Eviscerator back in Vefiaza City?" Safi flung a dramatic hand high as she twirled toward Ryber.
Now Iseult didn't have to fake a frin. "Is that what you thought they said?" she called. "It was actually The Great Vociferator, Safi, because that mouth of yours is so big."
Safi paused at the companionway―just long enough to bite her thumb in Iseult's direction.
Iseult bit her thumb right back.
More often than not, this strong connection is attributed to the main romantic couple.
That savage possessiveness will be the driving force between a couple(+) already made or in the process of being formed.
It was refreshing to experience this with two characters entirely lacking in romance.
(I would've been completely game for it to have been otherwise, though)
Now, I'm not gonna knock romance, it's something I devour like Cupid gone rabid, and throughout this I was shipping Safi and Merik hard, but they were never my main focus.
Not even the mere glimpses of something between Iseult and Aeduan (the aforementioned anti-villain) could sway my attention.
It was all about the sister-witches.
The Threadsisters.
There isn't enough platonic love as the main couple in fiction, specifically YA Fantasy.
And that's coming from a diehard shipper.
Two characters can exchange a few glances (heated, hateful, hysterical, whatever), and my idiot brain will instantly perk up.
Like a sexual tension bloodhound.
And I was definitely sniffy whilst reading this but again, it was all about Iseult and Safi, and the boundless trouble they get themselves into.
Which is why, even though this wasn't the epic read I was hoping for, I'm so looking forward to what comes next.
How my Threadsisters will navigate their current dilemma.
What new fantastical landscape we'll find ourselves in next.
How the complexity of the magic the witches posses will be explored and explained.
Especially the magic.
I'm such a sucker for elemental magic.
If there's a Druid in sight, I'm gonna follow that primordial bitch to the ends of the earth, maybe further because, y'know, magic.
And the magical system used in The Witchlands series is just the kind to get me all riled up.
Aetherwitches, Ironwitches, Bloodwitches, Earthwitches, Firewitches, Threadwitches, Voidwitches, and more.
This type of magic stems directly from what we call the Classical Elements: water, earth, fire, air and aether (aka. void), but broadened to include the many cultures the elements are accounted for in and how they differ.
Dennard has given herself limitless options to build her magical system from, to the point of perhaps her witches not simply being humans with supernatural abilities but perhaps descended from gods?
In Babylonia, the four elements - sea, earth, sky, wind - were considered not solely physical phenomenons but described in the form of deities.
We see this all throughout Greek mythology as well: Zeus is literally the god of weather, Poseidon controls the seas and therefore all water, Gaia's known as the mother of the earth, and Hephaestus is the god of fire.
Elemental abilities have been spoken of since man knew how to philosophise and it's trickled its way into Fantasy since humans knew how to weave a tale.
Susan Dennard is no different and I'm excited to see how her form of elemental magic affects the direction her characters' lives take.
Very excited.
Very excited, indeed.
...
And for more Sasquatch time.
Iseult followed Safi―who followed Evrane who followed Ryber―through the dark hold to the ladder. Two sailors glared at Iseult as she mounted the first rung. They muttered to themselves, their Threads shivering with dislike.
Safi―in typical Safi fashion―sized a glare on the soldiers and dragged a slow thumb across her neck.
Their Threads flared with gray fear.
...
When it's love, it's love.
C. J. Merwild's as expected fucking wonderful fanart:
My sister can attest to this, seeing as she found me during the dénouement, a tear-stricken mess; I had to shoo her away so I could fall apart in private.
And I didn't stop until long after the credits had stopped rolling.
I don't know why this half allegory, half odyssey got to me so much.
It isn't the most visually beautiful show I've ever seen.
It isn't the most wonderfully acted or written.
It shouldn't have affected me so much.
But it did and I can't, can't, stop thinking about it.
About how it took narrative choices I couldn't predict, how Brit Marling somehow walked the edge between inherently human and something else, something other, or even how an uncomplicated violin composition could make me ache so fucking badly.
I don't know how all these things are possible but they are, it happened, and all I can think is... why couldn't the second season have been as good, and why, why, why did they cancel it with a cliffhanger like that?
This show won't be for everyone.
Too ethereal.
Too Magic Realistic.
Too slow.
Too, too, too.
For others, it'll be exactly the discordance they've been looking for.
Clowns scare the shit out of me; clowns with spiky teeth are even worse, but I'm still losing my goddamn mind over this!
...
WHAT THE FUCK?!
...
The weight of storytelling Worthington manages to pack into just over two minutes is insane.
And the music.
And the style.
And then finding this little nugget out:
someone on patreon was asking about the names of the clowns and I thought I'd share my answer here as well in case people are curious! pic.twitter.com/9gP3goIX36
It's fun and funny and just the right amount of caustic.
As a fair and sensitive representation of DID(Dissociative Identity Disorder)?
Not so much.
Actually, not at all.
Yet again, the neurodivergent are portrayed as out of control, dangerous caricatures of a very real and very complicated mental condition.
Which sucks.
I'm so tired of out of the ordinary being used a weapon for "humour" and belittlement.
It should be used to understand and spread the word about things that hardly anyone understands but many suffer from.
And that does happen occasionally; just last year I watched a brutally honest tv show about OCD (specifically, unwanted intrusive sexual thoughts) called Pure.
It was painful at times to watch, familiar and revealing but not without joy.
Since Godis' webcomic, Still Life has been on permanent hiatus, I've been itching for something new from her that would give me the same I am obsessed with this insane creepy shit feels.
Possum and Rabbit are doing the trick.
Plus, I love when an artist changes their style and it doesn't make me gag.
"You incredible creature," Gansey said. His delight was infectious and unconditional, broad as his grin. Adam tipped his head back to watch, something still and faraway around his eyes. Noah breathed whoa, his palm still lifted as if waiting for the plane to return to it. And Ronan stood there with his hands on the controller and his gaze on the sky, not smiling but not frowning, either. His eyes were frighteningly alive, the curve of his mouth savage and pleased. It suddenly didn't seem at all surprising that he should be able to pull things from his dreams.
In that moment, Blue was a little in love with all of them. Their magic. Their quest. Their awfulness and strangeness. Her raven boys.
I can't pinpoint exactly what I was expecting for the sequel to The Raven Boys, but it wasn't this.
Never this.
Yet somehow, it couldn't have possibly been anything else.
We start with a quest.
We always start with a quest.
Three boys and their Blue, or Blue and her boys, trudging their way through the grasping heat of high summer, forever in search of a lost king to grant them a favour.
It's where the story starts, and it's where the story will end.
But it's the getting there that truly matters.
It's the toil, the frustration, and the making and breaking of bonds that will determine whether this convocation of disparate treasure seekers will win their audience with a long dead monarch.
And as the reader, as the observer, we get to witness first hand how close and just out of reach they always are.
It's both a lofty and discomfiting place to be, because as the observer, there's nothing you can do.
Nothing you can do but watch.
You feel that stifling privilege acutely in the way Maggie Stiefvater writes.
The slumberous way she leads you through the mystically charged town of Henrietta, as if you're a god towering over a toy town of someone else's design but yours to safeguard.
With bound hands, eyes, lips, you watch as our foursome struggle, and struggle, and struggle some more.
There's no respite from the unease they find themselves in.
In their quest, in their relationships, in their role in the story.
This book is about breaking and doing it on purpose.
"Where are we looking?"
"Some place place very far away," Persephone said. She smiled at him. It was a tiny, secretive thing, like a bird peering from branches. "Inside you."
"Is it safe?"
"It is the opposite of safe," Persephone said. "In fact, you'd better have another bite of pie."
Adam took a bite of pie. "What will happen if I don't do it?"
"What you're feeling will only get worse. You can't really do the edge pieces first on this puzzle."
"But if I do it," Adam started – then stopped, because the truth bit and furrowed and fit inside him, "I'll be changed for ever?"
She tilted her head sympathetically. "You've already changed yourself. When you made the sacrifice. This is just the end of that."
Then there was no point not doing it.
"Tell me how to do it, then."
When we first meet the eponymous Raven Boys, and swiftly after, our beloved Blue, initially it seems that Gansey is the obvious leader of the group, a clear torchbearer.
He's the one who started the search for the legendary, slumbering king, Glendower. He's the one who researched, went all over the world, dedicated every waking minute to finding the answer to all of his questions.
He's the one who keeps things moving forwards, who believes and believes and believes.
He's the one.
He should be the one.
But maybe, just maybe, he's not.
The Dream Thieves robs our obvious pathfinder of his place at the head of the party. He's still Richard Gansey the Third, he's still the one everyone turns to when they need answers, to know what to do next.
He's still their leader.
The problem is, Gansey's running out time, out of bravado, out of knowledge.
The more we delve into the search, the less Gansey seems to know and the more his friends climb out from his comforting shadow.
At long last, Gansey's humanity is showing.
In a group consisting of a murdered ghost, a dream-wielder, a conduit for the supernatural, and an amplifier for the oracular, Gansey is glaringly human.
A genius boy in the midst of the supernatural.
It's painful to watch his world fall apart whilst his friends move away from him, willingly or by circumstance.
The one thing, aside from his need for Glendower, that he could rely on was his family and they're leaving him.
I'm losing him, Gansey thought. I'm losing him to Cabeswater. He had thought that by staying away from the forest, he'd kept the old Adam – put off the consequences of whatever had happened that night when everything started to go awry. But maybe it just didn't matter. Cabeswater would take him regardless.
Because even though they hold something occult inside of them, it's Gansey who's decidedly other.
The same could be said for Blue.
Dearest Blue.
In a family of psychics she's the odd one out, she's the other, the opposite; she can buoy them up, charge their powers to impossible heights but she can't predict, herself.
She could predict exactly what her mother was going to say next: Look at all the potential she holds inside her!
Blue cut her off. "When does the potential start being a real thing?"
"Ah, Blue."
"Don't 'ah, Blue,' me." Blue released her mother's hand. "I just want to know when it stops being potential and starts being something more."
Maura briskly shuffled the card back into her deck. "Do you want the answer you're going to like, or the real one?"
Blue harrumphed. There was only one answer she ever wanted.
"Maybe you're already something more. You make other psychics so powerful just by being there. Maybe the potential you bring out in other people is your something more."
Blue had known her entire life that she was a rarity. And it was nice to be useful. But it wasn't enough. It was not, her soul thought, something more.
Very coolly, she said, "I'm not going to be a sidekick."
And even though she's a part of the Raven Boys now, she's earned her place, the glimpse she was given of her future one night on a moonlit corpse road means she can't ever fully relax. Just let herself be.
It's too risky and the injustice of it weighs on her throughout this story and her time with the boys.
When you know what's coming, you know it's unavoidable, that it cannot be changed, how do you live with yourself?
How do you look your friends in the eye with the knowledge that one day soon you'll kill one of them?
That in order to even get to that place you'll have to hurt the one person who deserves it the least?
That's a lot weight for someone to carry, and in all fairness, Blue does it... quietly.
One of the truly appealing things about her is that even though she's a classic example of though she be but little, she is fierce, Blue doesn't use her spunk to vent her inner turmoil.
When she's mad, it's usually on someone else's behalf.
Blue burst up beside them. Dark hair plastered her cheeks. With one white-knuckled hand, she clutched the edge of the boat, pulling herself half out of the water.
"Good God," Gansey said.
Blue cheerfully spat a mouthful of brown water on his boat shoes. It pooled in the canvas over his toes.
"Good God," he said.
"Now they're really boat shoes," she replied. Swinging her free arm, she tossed her prize in; it landed on the boards with a dense thud. Chainsaw immediately leapt down from Ronan's shoulder to investigate. "There's something else down there. I'm going back for it."
Before Gansey had time to say anything to her, the murky water closed over her head. He was struck by what a glorious and fearless animal Blue Sargent was, and he made a mental note to tell her that very thing, if she didn't drown getting whatever the second thing was.
When she's defensive, it's to protect the people she cares about.
When she's fork-tongued, it's usually to deflect from what's going on inside, to protect herself.
For all Blue's outward ferocity, she rarely makes herself anyone else's problem.
She shelters her worries, protects them so she can protect others.
And you can tell from everything that happened in The Dream Thieves that this method of being isn't working anymore.
She did hurt someone she cares about.
She almost fulfilled the prophecy.
She's starting to crack open and like with everyone else in this book, it's agony to watch.
It's agony to watch Noah disappear with a greater frequency, never knowing if he'll return.
It hurts to witness Adam fitfully disassemble.
Adam might be the most the painful of all.
When you make a bargain with an ancient entity to be its eyes and ears, its right hand, where does the line between who you are what you've become start to blur?
Adam is no stranger to being other. The poor kid at an elite boarding school, shy and awkward when his friends are anything but, fiercely self-reliant, he welcomes no one's pity.
Fierce is the word for Adam Parrish.
Fierce and proud and alone.
There's a tenseness in the way he's written, you can feel it vibrating off the page, chasing words around, backing them into corners.
It's almost as if he's trying to crawl his way out of the pages just so he can feel some relief from being himself.
Relief isn't something Adam's familiar with, he fights for everything and at first, his part in this section of the story feels as if he's losing the fight, losing himself to whatever preternatural bargain he struck.
And he does lose, quite spectacularly, but somewhere along the way, when everything's turning to shit, his story becomes something else.
He was Cabeswater, and he was the dreaming tree, and he was every oak with roots digging through rocks, looking for energy and hope. He felt the suck and pulse of the ley line through him – what a crass, mundane term for it, ley line, now that he felt it. He could remember every other name for it now, and they all seemed more fitting. Fairy roads. Spirit paths. Song lines. The old tracks. Dragon lines. Dream paths.
The corpse roads.
The energy flickered and sputtered through him, less like electricity and more like remembering a secret. It was strong, all-encompassing, and then fading, waiting. Sometimes he was nothing but it, and sometimes, it was nearly forgotten.
And beneath it all, he felt the oldness of Cabeswater. The strangeness. There was something true and inhuman at its core. It had been there so many centuries before him, and it would exist for centuries after. He was such a small thing, just a whorl in the fingerprint of a massive being―
I didn't agree to give my thoughts away.
He would be Cabeswater's hands and Cabeswater's eyes, but he wouldn't be Cabeswater.
He would be Adam Parrish.
For the first time, he isn't Adam Parrish, friend to Gansey; no, now he's Adam Parrish, fixer of ley lines, solver of problems, magician?
There are two halves to The Dream Thieves: the breaking and becoming.
Adam is definitely the latter.
As is Ronan.
I realise each book in the series is set up to revolve around a particular character, the first being Adam, the second, Ronan, but I never feel as if it's written with that bias.
Yes, this book is about Ronan and his own becoming but Maggie Stiefvater is generous with her time, with her character development; we spend as much time with everyone else as we do with Ronan.
It was the same in the first book, and I'm glad it's the same in the sequel because even though they are all their own people, they can't wholly function without one another.
Ronan wouldn't be himself without Gansey to ground him, or Adam to soften him, Noah to be forever a kid with, or Blue to challenge him.
This is an inescapable truth of the Raven Boys, so even though this is Ronan's book, it wouldn't be his without everyone else.
In their breaking and becoming they, without meaning to, push him to realise who and what he really is.
The Greywaren.
The eponymous Dream Thief.
"Are you ready?" Ronan asked.
"What is it I'm preparing for?"
Behind the door, something scratched on the floorboard. Tck-tkc-tck. Like a mallet dragged across washboard. Something in Gansey's heart thrilled with fear.
Ronan said, "What's in my head."
Ronan may not be the only one who undergoes a metamorphosis in this story but he is the one we gain the most understanding from.
So much of his very existence is wrapped up in being Ronan Lynch, the foul-mouthed, anarchic delinquent of the group, but I always knew that underneath his untouchable tough guy act was someone more vulnerable than the whole group put together.
Banished from his home, a troubled but beloved father murdered, a mother in perpetual dreamstate, hunted in and out of his dreams, a thief of magic, a battler of dragons forged not born.
Nothing has or ever will be easy for Ronan Lynch but there will be clarity, we're given some by the end of this part of the story.
We finally know what he is, how he does it, and the consequences of his abilities.
What we're missing is the why.
Why is Ronan special, why is he so vital to the finding of Glendower, why does he feel like he could be the answer and the end to everything?
Why, why, why?
There's a lot of that going round in this book.
The why of it all.
Why is Gansey's death so significant? Is it a part of finding Glendower?
Why is Blue destined to kill her first love? Why is it Gansey? Why is this a part of anything at all?
Why is Noah here? We know how but why is he necessary to the group and what they're doing? Or is there simply no why but simply because.
Why is Adam, before any bargain struck, so jarringly other? Was there magic in him before this even started?
Why is any of this happening at all?
Why, why, why?
...
I don't know.
Yet.
But this story, their story, felt necessary to finding out the answer.
In order for the boys and Blue to become who they need to be, they first need to be deconstructed.
Stripped down to their most vulnerable layers, bereft of everything they thought they knew and previously clung to.
It's heartbreaking.
I didn't want to watch it happen but again, it felt necessary.
They needed to fall apart.
It couldn't just be Gansey's quest anymore.
Adam's sacrifice had to mean something.
Blue has to know she isn't disposable.
Ronan needed to know he could go home again.
They had to break to become.
I just hope Stiefvater hasn't broken them beyond repair.
I don't think I could bear it.
Because reading something like The Raven Cycle may be a voyeuristic experience, peering down as magic sinuously winds it way through the slumbering town of Henrietta, like ensorcelled smoke, searching for our Raven Boys and their Blue, as they in turn search for it.
But it's also a sensory thing, like fingertips on your skin.
You can feel the heat and magic rolling off it, pawing at you to find a way in.
That's why it hurts so much.
To watch them break.
And become.
It just hurts.
But in the best way possible.
The only way reading makes possible.
A little like Ronan, and his impossible dreams.
On the other side of the lake, Adam held up his hands, pointing at the sky. He was an alien version of himself. A dream version of himself. Lightning struck the stone beside him.
Like a heart, the ley line jerked and spasmed to life.
Cabeswater was alive.
"Now!" Adam shouted. "Ronan, now!"
The night horror hissed a scream.
"It's only you," whispered Orphan Girl. She was holding his hand, crouched down next to him. "Why do you hate you?"
Ronan thought about it.
The albino night horror swept in, talons opening.
Ronan stood up, stretching out his arm like would to Chainsaw.
I've been feeling pressure - from myself - to always have at minimum two book reviews in the Monthlies.
I read all the time. A ridiculous amount. But I don't always get enough from a story to write an interesting review.
Or sometimes I just don't feel like it.
But I'll do it anyway because of the above-mentioned self-pressure.
I'll even choose books I know I'll easily be able to review.
(Not because they're easy books but because I'm so full of the feels for them)
...
This isn't how I read.
I read for me.
My pleasure.
To keep my brain from exploding.
Because it's legitimately the only thing I ever want to be doing at any give time.
So, I've made a pact with myself.
If there are no book reviews for the Monthlies, or only one book review for the Monthlies, or simply a gif review for the Monthlies, then that's just fine.
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