"Premise: Party girl Noemi traveled to her cousin's remote household to check whether said cousin was (1) ill, or (2) poisoned by her newlywed husband.

My review for a book by the same author: The Seventh Veil of Salome

(1) Just for the record I really fucking hate mushrooms and fungi......

More to come."

"DNF @ 24%, 110 pages

Hooo boy I had so many issues with this.
(Edit April 2025: It's actually insane how often I have to reiterate how the internet works on my negative reviews, but here goes... *taps mic* ENGAGING WITH REVIEWS IS WHAT MOVES THEM UP THE LADDER. STOP COMMENTING ON REVIEWS YOU DON'T LIKE IF YOU DON'T WANT THEM TO BE AT THE TOP. If you liked this book, I'm so happy for you! That's great! This is simply a rundown of why I did not with a very clear indicator right at the top that I quit a quarter of the way in so people can make their own determination on whether it's of interest to them and on which I did not leave a rating and so did not affect the average. The review currently ranked right below mine is five stars and has only 18 comments to the 48 on this one. Go comment on that review! Push it up the rankings! This would not be the number one review for this book if y'all would just stop angrily engaging with it. Move on from the ones you don't like and engage with the ones you do, because believe me, I do not care if you - a total stranger - loved this book and think I'm wrong. Your comment literally does nothing but keep this review at #1 which I don't even want. anyway, back to the original review...)

- I was not a fan of the narrative tone. The very tongue-in-cheek first person but occasional *wink wink nudge nudge* direct regard to the reader didn’t play out well for me. I found a tone that was supposed to be humorous annoying instead.

- What in the name of all that is holy is going on with the setting of this book. Second world high fantasy, okay, sure. Hot dogs are mentioned on page one. Alright, strange but sure. Chapter two starts by telling the reader that walking away from explosions without looking back - a common television and movie trope - is “undeniably cool.�� POUTINE is mentioned - a dish which appears to have been first introduced in the late 1950s. But we have floating magical lights and no electricity. The ship we’re on runs on magic (not explained in the quarter of the book I read) but then why does the map of the ship include an engine room? WHAT THE HELL IS THE SETTING SUPPOSED TO BE HERE????

- The world building and magic is…not good. Notice I said magic and not magic system, because there is no system. Neither a hard nor soft system to be found. In 110 pages all I could tell you about the magic is that 12 specific people have one seemingly random magical power, only two or three of which I know at that point. One can breathe fire, one can turn invisible, one can “control the weather�� (unexplained). One’s magic is controlling the ship they’re on, whatever that means. And there are the magical floating lights. That’s the extent of what I learned in 110 pages. How prevalent is magic outside of those twelve specific people? No fucking clue.

- The aesthetics of this book. I hate it. Our twelve person main cast is differentiated by the province their from, recognizable by the pastel color of their hair 💀 green hair for the dragon province, lilac hair for the grasshopper province, “pastel pink�� hair for the bunnerfly province, blue hair for the tiger province, you get what I’m laying out here. Sometimes I am glad to have Aphantasia. Hand in hand with the setting, the aesthetics are also wildly difficult to get a handle on when there’s no apparent rhyme or reason to how the world operates.

- Selling this as an adult book does it a disservice because I think a lot of people who want adult fantasy expect a lot more of the systems that fantasy is built on, and the tone of the writing is pretty juvenile in my opinion. (This is no shade to YA, an age range which often has rich fantasy worlds and beautiful prose. This book just does not read as an adult novel to me.)

- I also found the way the author wrote the MCs realtionship with food to be borderline disordered eating and I legitimately cannnot tell if that was intentional. The very casual mentions of this plus sized character's use of food for spite, emotional regulation, and played for laughs was...uncomfortable. There is the deliberate inclusion of fatphobia as one of a number of ways this character is looked down on by their family and some peers, but it didn't feel like their relationship with food was written with intentionality in regards to that. Frankly, I'm still working through my thoughts on this and don't know if I can articulate it well.

So, that's that. Two DNFs in two days, WHO AM I?????"

"I read the beginning part of the story and it kind of reminds me of a family ritual suicide case that happened in India some years ago: /the Burari deaths.

I watched the video of that case and it is freaking nightmarish!

But I am not saying I think the family in the novel is surely gonna kill themselves, but the similarities are there.

more to come"