Don’t buy if you are going to read the next one

This one is a great story, but the next one goes from a fantasy to a book about how to talk to people and their pronouns, and how to address someone going from a boy to a girl are a girl to a boy mentally

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ok

I had a good feeling about this a girl turning into a monster but the hole story is kinda a bit meh from start to finish not sure if getting the next one I'd have to be pretty bored kinda Interest to see what she is tuning into

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i fucking loved this story

I wasn't entirely sure what to expect when I bought this book and the reviews I read about it were quite a mixed bag.
but oh boy I'm glad I did.

At some point I realised I just couldn't put it down and finished the entire thing in like two days.

I love the way you really get to know Hannah through her entire thought process behind her actions and feelings. And that made me really care about: what happens next? how is she going to handle this?

so much so that I had to take it to royalroad where I more or less consumed the next 25 chapters in a two days binge reading.

It may not be a book everyone will enjoy but I sure did, so much that I would recommend it to anyone who is even mildly interested.

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Great book!

Can't describe how good it was. I did cry at points. And cheer, and laugh. Great book!

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Like the story, but not the MC

This is a tricky one for me, I love all of Maher's other books on audible with a passion.

But, I find it hard to stick with the story of this book, mostly due to the main character I think.

Like Maher's earlier work, the MC is a little different, has some complexity and is relatably flawed, but the MC here is not very likeable.

Part of that 'unlikeability' stems from the believable flaws the MC has: anxiety, self-doubt, the uncertainty of being a teenager. But the MC is also selfish, does not take any consequence into account and has very little resolve or 'self-agency' (arguably also part of being a teenager).
My point is that the MC does not have enough redeeming qualities, making this an interesting story about an interesting world, with someone in it I don't much care for.

But the story in this book is also a whole lot slower than Maher's previous books, a lot of time is spent in 'internal' monologue, this 'monologue' is also used to explain or to allow exposition for some very mundane things, such as school systems or how a fast food kitchen works. This detracts from what little agency the MC already shows. Stuff just happens to the MC, she does very little, except panic, complain, repeat.

An additional factor might be that the narrator (Pfeifer) has a lot less energy than the narrator from previous books (Almasy), which might fit more with the personality of MC in this book, but also compounds the slower pace of the narrative of this story.

It seriously seems to me that by channeling the 'inner teenager' too much, this story ended up being unpopular.

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It's not on the level of Rigor Mortis

Well, it's alright for like 57% of the novel? The MC is total prick though. Won't read part 2.

Give us more of the Rigor Mortis instead of this uhm mediocrity? I mean the idea is great and the world building is very high end, but 57% of the characters are total morons and the rest 43% are just "stand-in"s just to fill in some tropes. I get that the author wants to experiment, but it's alright to do as long as there are "characters", not just "one character" playing many roles. It's especially bad when that "only character" in the novel is brain dead first world kiddo, but even if they wasn't - having only one characters turns it into a low quality toilet book, which has more value as toilet paper (and if you had to use magazines as TP, you would now that it's value as toilet paper is pretty low, maybe even negative?) rather than as a book - and this one is even worse.
But very cool magic system and MC transformation made me enjoy until I read like 95% of the books. I only got the mind control spell on me shattered near the end of the novel which lead me to one realisation - the main character is a crybaby that will never experience any character growth, and, what's worse, all other characters might as well be fragments of her imagination since they just reflect her warped vision of the normal/fantasy worlds.
Honestly, it would've been an epic "one-shot" novel if it ended up in the epilogue with MC waking up in the tunnel while realising that everything that happened to it on "Earth" and "World tree" was just a dream, and it still is just endlessly digging, and will keep endlessly digging since they are in "HELL"... That would completely redeem this novel's choice of the character design for me xD but it is just my not so humble opinion xD Sorry for sharing it, but it had very left hard feelings in me...

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2 people found this helpful