This year she was round-faced and cross-eyed, with lank brown hair and sunburned skin. She'd bound her breasts and wore layers of sweltering wool to mask her shape.
Do not know me.
The prayer that was not a prayer pounded in her head, and she swallowed a whimper when he lifted her chin with one finger. Her gaze slid past his face to a dent on the pauldron protecting his shoulder.
"Look at me." His deep voice, so quiet, carried the resonant command of a general.
She refused to take her eyes off the dent.
"Look at me," he repeated in the same tone. His fingers curled around her jaw and pressed. She dragged her gaze to his, the drumming of her heartbeat making her chest hurt. He leaned closer, gripping her chin even harder to keep her still, eyes blazing in triumph.
"I know you," he whispered.
This is going to hurt me more than it's going to hurt you but...
That really does hurt to say because Grace Draven is way up there with my favourite Fantasy authors of all time.
She absolutely annihilated me with the Wraith Kings series (but I haven't read The Ippos King yet, so shhhhhhh) - it really wasn't pretty, squishy heart-eyes aplenty and world-building drool splattered everywhere.
The brain-gush was particularly gross.
But that's what happens when I love something: I go mildly, inconsolably insane; which I did for Radianceand Eidolon.
And I know it's probably unfair to make comparisons between one piece of an author's work and another, especially when they're written in different landscapes, but Phoenix Unbound just doesn't have that luminous something Draven's previous work has.
It's still beautifully written and the depth of detail in her world-building and magical lore demands your attention, to the point that, in this story, it became almost overwhelming.
From the off we're set up with the framework of a wicked Empire ruling over its subjects with fear and depravity in the form of gladiator pits and a seasonal burning of women from villages under their dominion as an offering to the gods for prosperity, good harvest, etc.
...
Sounds like a good time in my bloodthirsty opinion.
And then soon after comes the magic in the form of our heroine, Gilene of Beroe, a fire witch hidden in plain sight and used each season by her village to pay the Empire's tithe.
Marched in chains for days, raped by a pit fighter each year, then burned for an audience's entertainment; and that's where the suffering starts, not where it ends.
It's fascinatingly brutal and we really don't get to spend enough time there, in the thick of the Empire's depravity.
Instead, within the first three chapters, all but one of Gilene's yearly abuses happen and then we're running for our lives with her into even greater danger.
Kidnapped by our hero, Azarion (still not sure if that's a hard A or a soft one), almost crunched into eldritch spirit chow in a dead city, haunted by grave spirits and generally getting her shit fucked up by one unspeakable horror after the other; all the while trying not to notice how attractive her kidnapper is.
But again, that only lasts a short time (not the reluctant swooning, that's pretty consistent) and then we're hand-delivered into relative safety, which continues for eighty percent of the book.
Now, I love a good mundane love story.
Radiance is a mundane love story and it's damn near perfect.
I need excitement and suffering just as much as the next Fantasy reader but I also crave stories where the MC can simply learn each other in the most boring of ways - or as boring as fantasy can be - and it be fucking riveting.
Radiance and Eidolon are my top examples of that kind of story, and you do see flashes of the quotidian atmosphere Draven's so skilful at creating in Phoenix Unbound, but I think, for the most part, PU is an exercise in moving away from that style of storytelling and creating a grander, more intricate story of love in the time of warfare.
And it has all the right elements:
🔥 Elemental magic
🔥 Evil overlords
🔥 Impossible love
🔥 Complex history and world-building
🔥 Gods and monsters
🔥 A grand battle
It's all there, but too much and too little at the same time.
As interesting and rich as Draven's fictional landscape is, we spend far too much time riding horseback through wide open landscapes with little true interaction between the MC - halfway through the book, I still couldn't see how Draven could get them to like each other, let alone love each other - and even less action. Nothing happens. They bicker and steal exploratory glances at each other.
There are no real attacks, no creatures to combat, no getting to know each other, and it falls slightly... flat's too strong a word because it's definitely not boring but it lacked... oomph?
And the same can be said for the supernatural elements of the book.
Gilene's magic is almost an unknown entity throughout most of the book after a powerful surge of it is used during the Empire's tithe, and we don't ever really learn anything about it other than a) she has it, b) it's kinda odd that she does, and c) it's pretty badass when she's allowed to wield it even if it does leave her permanently scarred.
Other than that? We're in the dark and it gives it an air of incompleteness, and unless Gilene appears in the other stories in the series, I'm not sure what the point of leaving the source and potential of her magic unknown was exactly.
If we're done with her character, and agacins(fire witches) aren't heavily featured in future stories then please, please don't leave the readers hanging, it's bloody frustrating.
I want to know why one woman of Beroe is blessed with fire magic successively and other townships aren't; not some vague, "possible" explanation near the end.
I want to know why Gilene's ability with fire magic is so different from other agacins, again with a true answer, not a sorta kinda ish explanation.
I just want more.
I want more of everything in this story and that was my major problem.
I thought leaving the MC to hate on each other for so long would lead to a glorious explosion of feels when they finally came together but... nope. It was sweet, for sure, but I never truly connected with them as a couple and I put the blame solely on time - there not being enough of it.
I despise insta-love (except Shifters, fated mates are fine), I loathe it even more than a love triangle (the worst romance trope of all time; just be a thrupple and have done with it), but in this case I might of welcomed it because fuck, this was slow burn at its most glacial. So slow it didn't even truly kick in until three quarters of the way through the story.
I don't even know if you can call that slow burn.
Slowish-insta-burn?
Because it took so long and then so abruptly?
I don't know but I didn't experience my normal amount of joy when an MC I'm rooting for finally figures their shit out.
I wanted fireworks and I got birthday candles.
Still satisfying but much less fulfilling.
How does that happen with a fiery, cantankerous heroine and a cinnamon roll, warrior hero?
How?!
...
Speaking of the burly baked good.
I love him.
Azarion is the perfect alpha-mallow.
He's surly, he's handsome, inadvertently funny, tender and gruffly kind.
Sparse with his words but genuine with their meaning when he feels it necessary to use them.
Savagely in love with Gilene.
"Azarion?" Gilene reached out to touch his arm, her amusement replaced by faint concern.
He revised his question to be more direct. "Are you married?"
A bleakness chased away all humor in her features. "No. I will die young and disfigured, with no children to comfort me What man would bind himself to a woman doomed to such a fate as mine? One made barren by her magic?" She spoke the words without a shred of self-pity, only a flat acceptance of a desolate future.
I would.
But an absolute bloody gentleman about it, even when he's her kidnapper.
She was the wide grass plains of the Sky Below, the horse herds grazing under the sun, the Savatar women singing as they felted, the flap of the clan flags atop the atamans' tents. She was freedom made flesh, and in that moment, she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever beheld.
He cares for people, even after what he's gone through (abuse, multiple rapes, imprisonment, near fatal injuries, Gilene's temper), and he acts with purpose.
Seemingly a not so good guy in the beginning, but he'll always, always, put himself between an innocent and danger.
The abomination behind Midrigar's walls had ceased its screeching, and Azarion gave silent thanks to whatever deity listened that it was trapped there like the dead who had summoned it.
He limped toward the witch. With their race over and their safety assured, at least for now, the pain in his side nearly took his breath away.
The agacin opened her eyes when he crouched in front of her, dark pools reflecting moonlight and fever. She ran her tongue across her lower lip, and her graceful throat flexed when she swallowed. "What if I had fallen or couldn't keep up?"
He glided a fingertip along a valley made by the folds of her skirt. "I would have carried you."
He's so lovely.
I want ten more of him, ranging from pocket-size to behemoth.
Gilene, too.
Such a curmudgeonly wench, I adore her.
A hissing, spitting, clawing warrior of a woman with steel in her belly and a heart as soft as a baby bird's.
Endlessly dutiful to the innocent but undeserving, unrelenting in determination, unwittingly powerful, and complete mush for that big ol' cinnamon softie up there.
"I may curse your name for dragging me here," she whispered, "but I shall never forget this place. I shall never forget you."
She turned back to meet his gaze, admiring the way the rising sun gilded him in the colors of morning: bronze and gold, hints of fiery red, and the last fading lavender of night. His eyes glittered with a thousand untold secrets. "Then you will have made immortal, Agacin." The corners of his mouth lifted a fraction. "At least for a little while."
I love these two.
Because as much as the first part of this review has been a series of sad sack complaints, these two were what kept me coming back for more.
When they do finally get their shit together, it is done quietly, measuredly, but it isn't lessened because it's an understated union.
When he returned to the spot where he and Gilene had shared their food and conversation, he discovered their supplies packed away in the nearby satchel and Gilene stretched across both blankets, asleep in a pool of sunlight. He crouched down, making plenty of noise so as not to startle her when she opened her eyes and found him leaning over her.
She reached up with one hand to thread locks of his hair through her fingers. Azarion held his breath, stunned by her action and fearful he might ruin the moment with so much as a twitch.
"Did you pray?" she asked in a sleepy voice that set every nerve in his body to sparking. He nodded. Her touch was light as a moth's wings in his hair. "And did your gods listen?"
"I hope so." He bent lower, drawn helpless down to her pale mouth. Still, she didn't move away.
Her fingertips traced a path across his face from cheekbone to cheekbone and over the tip of his nose. He closed his eyes when she repeated the action, this time going to opposite direction to journey across his eyelids before settling at the sensitive pulse point near his temple. When Azarion opened his eyes one more, he found her watching him intently, he eyes fathomless. They were so close now, he could feel the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed.
"I once thought I would always hate you, gladiator. That isn't true now."
It's just really sweet and natural, and makes sense for the both of them, even with the obstacles blocking their path.
His cheek was warm under her hand, the unwelcome tears heavy in her throat. "I can't say it," she said. "No matter that I want to. If I do, I will falter, and I can't falter."
He captured her hand to plant a quick kiss on her palm and pressed his own hand to her chest. "It's all right, Gilene. You say it in here."
Which, for the most part, bar a few high drama moments, is what I would categorise Phoenix Unbound as: understated High Fantasy Romance.
Even in those high drama moments, it doesn't overwhelm the reader with a deluge of unnecessary details but shows the nakedness of true horror, how subtle it can be, how mundane the worst of atrocities sometimes are.
War isn't glorious, it's base and unrelenting. Monsters aren't fantastical, they're hungry and unholy. Love isn't grand gestures, it's moments of truth and quiet joy.
Grace Draven is wonderful at these things. Wonderful at laying you down in the middle of some imagined word, with imagined people, and sewing you into their fabric.
I felt, saw, smelled, tasted every morsel of this world she offered up, which is why it makes me so sad that the story itself didn't hold entirely together.
It was too short, in my opinion.
It should've been the first of many of Gilene and Azarion's adventures together.
There should have been more development of Gilene and Azarion's relationship.
There should have been a greater exploration into this brutally beautiful world Draven created.
There should have been more to the ending, more than the snapshot of happiness we were given.
Should, should, should.
But, but, but.
My buzzwords for this entire review.
Which I hate.
I hate every word of this because it doesn't convey how I truly feel about this story.
How I found myself nestled into a corner of a world I didn't necessarily love all of but would be loathe to leave.
How I was frustrated with so many things but revelled in so many others.
How I rooted almost immediately for Gilene and Azarion, from the first neck nuzzle, to the last tear kissed away.
"Wife of my soul," he said, and this time his voice didn't shake but held all the command of the Savatar ataman who had led an army against the Empire and won. "Look at me."
His words sent and arrow of euphoria straight through her chest. Still, she couldn't look up.
"Look at me," he repeated in the same tone. His fingers curled around her jaw to lift her chin.
She dragged her gaze to his, the drumming of her heartbeat making her ribs hurt. He leaned over the table, mouth however just above hers, eyes blazing with joy.
He shoved the table out of the way and pulled her into his arms. He raised his hand to drag a thumb gently across her lower lip before following its path with his mouth.
How the elemental magic and ancient monstrosities woven through each chapter gave me chills, creeped me out, thrilled me to no end.
How I loved this story.
How I wanted more from it.
And how maybe that want is all on me.
This is the fifth book in a row that I've enjoyed but felt underwhelmed by.
Maybe I'm broken. Maybe I've oversaturated myself with Fantasy and nothing surprises me anymore.
Maybe I just wasn't in the right mood.
So many factors for why a story can both thrill and disappoint.
I'm holding out hopes for the next in the series but for now, I'm going to faceplant directly into a series I'm already in the thick of and know won't let me down.
And if it does?
Then we bust out the booze and drown our sorrows.
...
But I don't drink because all alcohol tastes like acetone and undiluted evil, so... fuck.
My first thought when seeing this was those be Iron Giant faces!
And then I saw this a few minutes after:
I heard you guys...
I have an old idea to create AU (I am not sure I can name it like this???) with Hogarth a few years after the original story :3 But noooooow I am thinking grown up Hogarth could live in Gravity Falls. Am I crazy? pic.twitter.com/PTT0zEEKJ2
Like a hug from someone you love in someone else's body.
The same but not.
There's nothing fundamentally altered about this retelling, it's the same old tale of a fucked up, selfish human who pays too much attention to themselves and not enough to those around them.
Whilst churning out spectacular music in the background.
It's a great fucking story, and I really enjoyed seeing it from a woman's perspective, figuring out who matched who in the movie vs the show, and generally just watching a story I treasure over an extended period of time.
As I said.
Oddly comforting.
And disappointing because it got cancelled almost immediately.
It'd been so long since I'd seen this last, though, that this time around I had to look up, to catch my place, notice all those whimsical subtleties I'd maybe missed the first hundred times I'd watched it.
And there are oh so many whimsies in the perfect, funny, adorable, oddball masterpiece of a movie.
Adam did not live at the Barns, much to Opal's disappointment. He was always kind to her and sometimes would show her how things worked and also she would have liked to sit in the dark room and watch him sleep. But instead he came and went according to no schedule that she could discern. When he did sleep at the Barns, it was often during the day, when she felt certain she would be caught spying. She had to content herself with stolen glimpses through cracked doors, slender one-inch views of duvet and sheets piled like thunderheads, Adam and sometimes Ronan pillowed among them.
The end of things is always difficult.
Whether it's sad, joyful, or bittersweet, it's still an end, a farewell to something you can, in the case of fiction, revisit and discover new things about each time but will never possess that tremulous, unknown quality it did originally.
Will I like this? Will this hurt me? What's coming next? How will my feelings develop for these characters throughout?
All these will, whats, and hows are what make reading so fulfilling and exciting.
But there's always an end, even with a long-running series, and it's not often you get to return to those characters and worlds that've nestled their way into the essential fabric of you.
So, when it happens, when the author invites you back for a snapshot of what's happened since and potentially what could happen in the future, you want it to be worth it.
You want that comfort of being part of something again.
Part of the home those characters made inside your head and held you close for the duration of your stay.
That's what Opaldoes: holds you tight, reminds you why you went through all the hurts and triumphs with them, and sends you off again with a wave and smile, welcoming you back any time.
Honestly, it wasn't what I expected from the very last of The Raven Cycle.
I'd seen glimpses here and there, snippets from the story, fan art made in its honour, fan-made short films, etc.
I thought I had an idea of how things were going to go, and they did for the most part: I knew we'd only be revisiting Adam and Ronan, that it would take place at The Barns during the Summer before college, that it would be idyllic and slumberous in the way only Ronan's dream-made home could be.
I knew there'd be sweet and bitter, and an "end" of something once again.
What I didn't expect was for it to come from the eponymous Opal's perspective.
Silly really, what with her name being the title of the story, but for some reason it didn't click.
And I'm glad it didn't because if I'd known, that flutter of surprise I felt during the first sentence would've ceased to exist.
That burst of oh, of course, of course it's her would never have filled my lungs, expanded my chest and stuttered the breath on the way up, up, up.
That shock of happiness I'm lucky to feel because of reading, because of characters like Opal and Ronan and Adam.
I'll admit, I was a little disappointed at first.
I'd missed being with Ronan so much since finishing the series, and I selfishly hoped the time we spent in Opal would be with him.
But then I started reading and it hit me square in the chest that Opal is Ronan, a dreamthing birthed from his mind into being.
A creature made by him for him, to keep him safe, understood, never alone.
What he feels, she feels.
She's a being unto herself, to live and play and eat things she really shouldn't - mostly dirt, but she'll always be Ronan's.
Not possessed by but an integral piece of.
So, of course this last entry in the Cycle would be from her point of view, from that hopeful, feral, innocent part of Ronan he keeps locked so firmly down.
Because he is closed off, even when we're allowed inside his thoughts, it's still with a wall between us and him.
We need Opal to truly see him.
To see his feelings for his home, the future of the new Cabeswater, for Adam.
Opal, eavesdropping, had not quite followed the gist of the conversation ― she was still better in the old dream language that waking Ronan never spoke ― but she could tell Adam liked it when Ronan talked like this. Sometimes they would stop talking and instead begin kissing, and Opal would eavesdrop on this as well. Her capacity for voyeurism was boundless and incorrigible. They were always coming together in surprising moments, going from easygoing to urgent in the space of a few breaths. She watched them kiss messily in the car in the driveway and she watched them tangle around each other in the laundry room and she watched Adam unbuckle Ronan's belt and slide his hand against skin. With intellectual curiosity, she watched ribs and hips and arms and legs and spines. She had no lust, because Ronan hadn't dreamt any for her, but she also had no shame, because Ronan hadn't dreamt any of that for her, either.
The only thing that had ever made her blink away was when Adam had once encountered Ronan in the second-floor hallway. Ronan had been standing outside of his parents' old room, one hand holding a cassette tape and the other clenched into a fist, and he'd been there for quite a few minutes by the time Adam climbed the stairs. Adam had taken the cassette from Ronan's hand, working Ronan's fingers loose and putting his own fingers between them. For a moment Opal, hidden, had thought they were going to kiss. But instead, Ronan pressed his face against Adam's neck and Adam quietly put his head on top of Ronan's head and they did not move for a long time. Something about this made Opal burn so furiously that she could not stand to look a second longer. She left them there with a clatter so they would now she had been watching. Then she went to rummage in the woods.
Every moment of babbling excitement Opal shows at the mere sight of Adam is an unfiltered reflection of Ronan's excitement.
On one of her trips back from watching the cloud lady, Opal encountered Adam. Shockingly, brilliantly, he seemed to be arriving at the Barns on foot. People did not come to the Barns on foot. They came by cars that would smash flat and not feel bad about it so stay out of their way, according to Ronan. But here was Adam on just his legs, slowly coming into view through the mist rolling down the dark tunnel of trees out to the road. Opal was delighted to discover him traveling in the same way she did. She met him halfway down the long driveway and frolicked all around him as he put one foot in front of the other while the last of the late afternoon's light dappled over both of them. He said nothing as she grabbed his hand and then danced around to grab his other hand.
Her desperation for Adam not to leave for college after the Summer is all the desperation Ronan feels but can't show him, because he loves him and he'd never hold him back.
Her love is Ronan's love. Her worry, his worry. Her wildness, his.
They're a pair, often at odds, but always connected.
She's finally a true glimpse into Ronan, and I appreciate that so much.
So very much.
Especially in relation to Adam.
She loved him the best when he was very sad or very serious or very happy. Something about his voice breaking filled her with feeling, and something about the vacancy of his expression when he was thinking hard felt like she was looking at a dream with nothing bad in it, and something about when Ronan made him laugh so hard that he couldn't stop made her love him so hard that she felt sad because one day he would get old and die because that was what things with animalness did.
Because it made something incredibly clear to me, something I've known the entire time but needed absolute confirmation of because I'm a greedy monster:
Ronan could dream the most impossible, wonderful, life-altering thing into existence but it would never compare to Adam.
Because Adam is his dream-thing.
An impossible being he couldn't possibly dream up himself.
All awkward grace and wild magic.
He is magic to Ronan.
He's his dream-thing.
And without Opal, without this story, I would've known this but never truly known.
Without her cloven prances around Adam's ankles, her need to watch his every action, even in sleep, her incessant desire for his attention - admonishment, praise, silliness, I wouldn't have known the true depth of Ronan's craving, his love, his respect.
I wouldn't have known just how magical Ronan truly is, greywaren or not.
It'll probably only be used twice a year because I'm the definition of executive disfunction but y'know, it's there, it exists, in all its Barbie-pink glory.
Even twice-a-year waffles are nothing to be sniffed at.
House Andrews released a brand new text convo between Kate and Curran as both gift and celebration to us, the BDH (Book Devouring Horde), their ever loyal fans.
...
Whatever else happens in 2022, I at least I will always have this.
![Image - 831325] | Amy Poehler | Know Your Meme](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/831/325/064.gif)
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