Trabia Garden

Here's a slightly scattered entry!


A couple of years ago, I wandered into a charity shop and picked up If We Were Villains by ML Rio. This book actually does have a little fandom, I discovered later, which is relatively unusual for novels! But I didn't know that at the time; I just bought it because it looked interesting.

I finally got around to reading If We Were Villains recently, and I was correct to suspect that this book was up my street. Like The Secret History, it's about a group of students with a weirdly intense relationship who end up murdering one of their own and then having to deal with the fallout. Is this a genre? This is the perfect genre.

The book definitely has its flaws. It feels unbearably pretentious at times, and so many of the bracketed parts would flow better without the brackets, and these stupid teenagers won't stop quoting Shakespeare in the middle of serious conversations! I'm sorry, but a character having a breakdown becomes hilarious if he insists on communicating his feelings exclusively through lines from King Lear.

But it delivered hard on my desire for a bunch of murderteens having worryingly intense feelings about each other. I sort of ship the lot of them, but particularly James and Oliver, about whom my feelings steadily progressed from 'huh, is there something going on here?' to 'surely there's something going on here? surely I'm not imagining this?? Oliver took off his shirt and James homoerotically smeared blood all over him???' to 'oh my God I need these two to kiss or I'll die'.

I've scribbled down a few snippets of fanfiction, but I don't know whether I'll actually get anywhere with them; I don't really have a solid direction in my head for a fic. I'd like to write something for this, though!


I've been playing Tales of Berseria lately! This is another canon it took me a while to get around to. I bought it back in 2020, in a sale of Japanese games. But, at the same time, I picked up a little game called Persona 5, and Tales of Berseria was promptly forgotten as I fell headlong into the Persona series.

Now that I'm actually playing Tales of Berseria, I have slightly conflicted feelings on it!

The 'a group of ruthless villains and the small child they're all intensely fond of' party dynamic is delightful. Excellent concept for a group of characters! They'd stab you through the heart without blinking, but any one of them would die for this kid who's never known compassion before.

But I think the poor animation really hurts the storytelling. The occasional anime-style cutscenes are great; the 2D skits with minimal animation are charming. The 3D cutscenes are unbearably stiff and awkward. Ultimately, it makes the game as a whole feel like a missed opportunity; I'm constantly conscious of how much stronger the story would feel with more care put into the animation.

If you're interested in videogame animation, incidentally, I strongly recommend the YouTube channel New Frame Plus, in which professional animator Dan Floyd analyses animation in videogames! In particular, I'm enjoying his ongoing series on the twelve principles of animation in games and the animation of Final Fantasy (I cannot wait for him to get up to Final Fantasy VIII).

I thought I wouldn't like Magilou at first. I really took against her outfit! But she's fun. Just there to be a shit to everyone and stir up chaos. She reminds me a little of Joshua Kiryu.


I keep some of my paintings propped up on my bookcase, and it recently occurred to me, looking at them, that I'd never actually shared one of those paintings here. Here it is! I painted this in early 2018, I think.




This was inspired by a piece of Assassin's Creed: Rogue concept art, which I'm going to link to rather than including in the actual post because my painting looks so bad next to it. (This, I suspect, is why I've never posted the painting before.) This is the problem with basing your painting on another painting; it's too easy to directly compare them!

I've been vaguely wondering whether to do a reflection on some of the media that most stuck with me in the 2010s, and then owlmoose made an entry along those lines, which finally nudged me into actually getting it done. In alphabetical order, here are ten canons from the decade that I think I'm going to remember.

Note: this is media that I first experienced in the 2010s, rather than necessarily being media that was originally released in the 2010s. Community, Uncharted, Higurashi and Umineko technically originated in the decade before.


1. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy. This one crept right under the wire for me. My mum received this book for Christmas this year. I'd never heard of it, but I opened it at a few random pages and genuinely started crying because it was so beautiful. It's sort of philosophical whimsy in the vein of Winnie-the-Pooh or The Little Prince, it's gorgeously illustrated, and I'd recommend it without hesitation if you enjoy those books. I was really surprised by how deeply it affected me. Friendship!




2. Community. Community didn't manage to keep up the same level of quality throughout its run, alas; it's definitely stronger at the beginning than it is by the end. But the beginning is so strong. I've said this before, but the first series of Community is the best series of television I've ever watched. Almost perfectly crafted. It's so funny, it's got so much heart, and the characters are delightful. (Well, apart from Pierce.)

3. Danganronpa series. The series that kicked off my collection of weird videogames about murder. An interesting twist on the murder mystery genre: rather than bringing the 'detective' in after the murder occurs, it lets you get to know all the killers and victims well before the murders actually start happening. And then you're emotionally invested in all of them, and it's terrible! But also it's great. Interesting mysteries; fun characters; weird, irreverent, comedic tone that keeps things from getting too dark, but still gives events enough emotional weight for them to feel like they matter. I crowed with laughter at the end of Danganronpa V3 because I was so delighted by the weird plot twists.

4. Final Fantasy XV. This game's a mess. The pacing's catastrophic. But it's heartfelt and gorgeous and fun to play, and it's got so many charming details, and at its core it's a story of intense friendship that I can't resist. I got so happily lost in this game. I've written so much fanfiction. I love these boys so much.

5. Higurashi: When They Cry (visual novels), instalment six: Tsumihoroboshi. I've played seven instalments of Higurashi and I enjoy the series a lot, but Tsumihoroboshi in particular is perfect. An incredible story about the power of friendship and the power of murder and the strange ways they intersect. Guilt! Paranoia! Being haunted by things you did in time loops you can't remember! Dramatic friendship speeches before hiding corpses together! Triumphant scenes of two friends fighting to the death and having a great time doing it! It's a bizarre, cathartic delight of a visual novel and I absolutely loved it.

6. The Last of Us. I remember my first encounter with this game: I watched th_esaurus play through the opening, and I was so tense it physically hurt. An absorbing, incredibly done story of learning to care again after loss. Wonderful performances, great writing, fascinating worldbuilding. Ellie is one of my favourite characters of all time, and I'm both excited and nervous to see her again in Part II.

7. Life Is Strange 2. I love sibling relationships, I love stories about two people against the world, I love people suddenly being ripped out of their normal lives and thrown into overwhelming situations. I loved every moment I spent playing as Sean Diaz, this wary, sarcastic, loving, vulnerable kid, watching him struggle and suffer and push through that for the sake of his brother. He has no idea what he's doing, but he's trying so hard to do right by Daniel. I sobbed my heart out when I finished the game; I hadn't cried so hard at a work of fiction in eight years. I was thinking solidly about it for a fortnight afterwards.

8. Umineko: When They Cry (the visual novel series, rather than the anime). Umineko is a murder mystery, and a story about how we create our own realities, and the strangest, most beautiful love story I've ever experienced. The pacing is wildly variable (I struggled to push through the slow opening on my first attempt and dropped it until I was persuaded to give it another go by, of all things, a Simpsons meme), but I really think Umineko is something special. I played it while I was recovering from a bit of a psychological collapse, and I was surprised and delighted to learn that fiction could still affect me so deeply. Its message about having hope in hopeless situations came to me at a time when I needed it, too.

9. Uncharted series. Even though the gameplay isn't necessarily my thing, I adore these games. The first one hadn't entirely found its feet, but then they established themselves as a gorgeous, fun series of shooty tourism simulators, where you run around and climb pretty buildings and listen to the characters bantering. As with Danganronpa or When They Cry, there's emotional weight, but the tone's also frequently a lot of fun. I love fictional suffering, but I can struggle when it's completely straight-faced all the time; it's good to be able to laugh as well.

10. Your Name. This is my favourite film in the entire world and crashes straight through my heart every time I watch it. I've never seen anything that impacts me quite like Your Name does. I'm always afraid to revisit it because I'm thinking 'what if I don't love it as much as I remember?'; I always end up loving it more. The most visually and emotionally beautiful film I've ever seen.


This is probably going to be my last entry before 2020, so a happy new year to you all! I'm glad we're all here.

THE BOOKENING TITLE #18: Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman.

A non-fiction book, for once!

This is about how our brains make decisions, the shortcuts they take, the pitfalls they're prone to, and it's probably the most interesting book I've ever read. I've always been interested in logical fallacies, heuristics and so on, but I think this is the best work I've encountered on the subject.

A few points I found particularly interesting:

- pp.117-118: on account of research showing that a disproportionate number of the best-performing schools are small, a lot of money and effort has gone into creating small schools or splitting up larger schools in the US. As it happens, a disproportionate number of the worst-performing schools are also small. Small schools aren't inherently better; their performance is just more likely to skew away from the average, because there are fewer data points involved. If you flip a coin four times, you're way more likely to get 100% or 75% heads than if you flip it fifty times.

- pp.43-44, on a study of eight parole judges in Israel: They spend entire days reviewing applications for parole. The cases are presented in random order, and the judges spend little time on each one, an average of 6 minutes. (The default decision is denial of parole; only 35% of requests are approved.) ... The authors of the study plotted the proportion of approved requests against the time since the last food break. The proportion spikes after each meal, when about 65% of requests are granted. During the two hours or so until the judges' next feeding, the approval rate drops steadily, to about zero just before the meal. As you might expect, this is an unwelcome result and the authors carefully checked many alternative explanations. The best possible account of the data provides bad news: tired and hungry judges tend to fall back on the easier default position of denying requests for parole.

- pp.125-126, on how we'll be influenced by any number that comes to mind when making estimates or other numerical decisions: The power of random anchors has been demonstrated in some unsettling ways. German judges with an average of more than fifteen years of experience on the bench first read a description of a woman who had been caught shoplifting, then rolled a pair of dice that were loaded so every roll resulted in either a 3 or a 9. As soon as the dice came to a stop, the judges were asked whether they would sentence the woman to a term in prison greater or lesser, in months, than the number showing on the dice. Finally, the judges were instructed to specify the exact prison sentence they would give to the shoplifter. On average, those who had rolled a 9 said they would sentence her to 8 months; those who rolled a 3 said they would sentence her to 5 months.

(This isn't terribly important, but I cannot get my head around how a pair of dice, assuming they're six-sided, can be loaded so every roll will result in either a three or a nine. Three or eight would be possible: you rig them so one always lands on two and the other can land on either one or six. Three or nine, though? I don't think it can be done. Maybe there were multiple pairs?)

- pp.175-176, on regression to the mean: the author once gave a talk to some air force flight instructors on how reward was more effective than punishment. One instructor objected, saying that cadets generally performed worse after he praised them and better after he screamed at them. But their performance would probably have changed regardless: Naturally, he praised only a cadet whose performance was far better than average. But the cadet was probably just lucky on that particular attempt and therefore likely to deteriorate regardless of whether or not he was praised. Similarly, the instructor would shout into a cadet's earphones only when the cadet's performance was unusually bad and therefore likely to improve regardless of what the instructor did.

- p.329, on the tendency to look at numbers alone and ignore what they're relative to: In one study, people who saw information about 'a disease that kills 1,286 people out of every 10,000' judged it as more dangerous than people who were told about 'a disease that kills 24.14% of the population.' The first disease appears more threatening than the second, although the former risk is only half as large as the latter! In an even more direct demonstration of denominator neglect, 'a disease that kills 1,286 people out of every 10,000' was judged more dangerous than a disease that 'kills 24.4 out of 100.'

I enjoyed this book a lot, and it's worth checking out if you're interested in the weirdness of the human brain.

THE BOOKENING TITLE #16: Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn.

I'm not a big fan of films, on the whole. I feel they're exactly the wrong length: too long to consume in one sitting, too short to develop their characters and relationships satisfyingly. But a handful of films have made an impact on me.

I watched Gone Girl back in 2014, and in many ways, on paper, it doesn't seem like something I would like: it's a film, it's a thriller, it's a little more cynical than my tastes usually run. (I don't like stories about awful people doing awful things! I like stories about good people doing awful things!) But it was clever and fascinating, it genuinely took me by surprise at a couple of points, and one of the awful people was nonetheless magnetic and compelling and very enjoyable to watch. I usually quickly forget films I've only seen once, but a lot of details stuck in my mind.

So I thought I'd read the book!

I love how present Amy feels as a character, even if she's not physically present. She's 'on-page' for about five paragraphs before she goes missing. But we learn so much about her, through her husband's thoughts on her and through her diary entries: this smart, strong-willed woman, romantic, resentful, in need of stimulation, refusing to abandon a project or to do anything by halves, frustrated by a world that isn't as willing to put in vast amounts of effort as she is.

The book does occasionally stray from the interesting plot and into cynical philosophical observations, which I found slightly annoying. Even when the cynical philosophical observations were interesting! Why, no, I hadn't thought about the fact that the first time you see something impressive nowadays is always on television or online; you never have your first experience of an incredible sight in person. Fascinating! Please shut up.

Which isn't to say that I didn't like the book! It was a worthwhile read. I think I just read it in a perpetual state of 'I'm enjoying this, but also it slightly annoys me.'

Below the cut I'm going into spoiler territory.


( Spoilers for the entirety of Gone Girl. )


I sort of wish I cared enough about the characters of Gone Girl to write fanfiction, because there's a lot it could be fun to dig into.

On Saturday, I attended a party at someone's house. There were some guests I knew, many I didn't; everyone was around the kitchen area. At one point I had to go up to the bathroom to change my sanitary towel, and then I realised there was no bin in the bathroom.

Who doesn't have a bin in their bathroom?

So I had to wrap up my used sanitary towel, put it in my bag and return to the party.

There was a bin in the kitchen. I eyed it longingly. But it was surrounded by PARTY GUESTS I DIDN'T KNOW, and I found myself reluctant to go up and throw a sanitary towel into the kitchen bin in front of a load of strangers. So I just stood there, paralysed by indecision, with this stupid thing still in my shoulder bag.

This may be the most Peep Show thing that has ever happened to me.

('What happened?' a friend of mine asked me, because it was apparently evident from my expression the moment I re-entered the party that all was not well. They were very amused by my hushed, desperate answer.)

In the end, I cunningly concealed it within a paper plate and threw that away. Nobody suspected a thing.


The Wind Singer, I discovered on my reread, is the origin of a scene that's haunted me since childhood. An infinite number of murderous teenagers are marching along, singing a cheerful song about killing. They want to murder people, but all of civilisation is on the other side of an enormous chasm. There is no bridge across the chasm. Their strategy for crossing is this: they march over the edge, and they fall, and they die, and eventually enough corpses will pile up at the bottom of the gorge for the next fallers to land safely on the corpse pile and walk across.

Did I read anything as a child that wasn't horrifying? I feel that this book and Animorphs probably had a big influence on my alarming taste in fiction.

The Wind Singer also gave me unhealthily codependent sibling protagonists long before I got into Supernatural. 'My brother's been brainwashed into being one of the murderous teenagers! I could run, but I think I'd prefer to just let him murder me.'


I played a little more Transistor at last! I've forgiven Red's sword for secretly being a person trapped in a sword and I'm 'shipping him with Red again. Her sword admires her so much! It's really charming!

There's a lot of really nice detail in this game. And the visuals are so stylish. And the music is great.

I think my favourite part is when the sword is in a bad way, and Red can't speak to reassure him, so instead she finds a computer terminal and types messages to him.

Hmm, I thought. As I love the music video for 'Heavy' so much, maybe I should check out some other Linkin Park videos and see whether they spark any writing inspiration.

(Did I forget for a moment that I'm supposed to be trying not to write Linkin Park fanfiction? Er, possibly. I maintain that music video fanfiction doesn't count.)

I'm now deeply conflicted over the video for 'Leave Out All the Rest', which depicts the band on a spaceship that ends up drifting into a star. On the one hand, hey, an interesting AU setting! On the other, it's an interesting AU setting that I never want to write about, because it sets off my fear of space very badly.

I'm also intrigued by the 'In the End' video, with its charmingly turn-of-the-millennium graphics and young Chester being an attractive little shit (his smirk in the bridge!), in which they sing a desiccated wasteland back to life and for some reason there are flying whales. It's a strangely hopeful video for a song with hopeless lyrics. You tried so hard and got so far, in the end it doesn't even matter, but the video is telling you that you can move past this. Your life still has the capacity for beauty and flying whales.


THE BOOKENING TITLE #14: The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins

A real book! An actual, proper book that non-fannish people have read!

This is not my usual reading fare, but I enjoyed it! I was interested, but not invested, if that makes sense. Most of the time, when I was actually reading it, I was gripped. When I wasn't reading it, though, I didn't think about it at all. So I'd tear through a hundred pages in a sitting, and then I wouldn't touch it for days; there was never any point where I thought 'wow, I can't wait to get back to that book' or found myself speculating on the solution to the central mystery. This was a book that only existed when it was in my hands.

The main character struggled with self-loathing, made terrible decisions and couldn't trust her own perception of reality, which are all qualities I enjoy in fictional characters (I repeat: the music video for 'Heavy' is so good). I also liked the way she made her own personal fandom out of the people she saw from the train, and then basically self-inserted. Everyone in this book is very difficult to like (poor Cathy is the only half-decent person in a sea of arseholes), but I did end up with a touch of fondness for Rachel, and I really liked the scenes between her and Anna towards the end.

Last night, I dreamt that Jaime and Brienne of A Song of Ice and Fire kissed and then immediately died. I am in favour of half of this dream.

Maybe I should start on A Feast for Crows, but I'm still grumpy with A Storm of Swords for splitting up all of my favourite character combinations. Whose chapters am I supposed to look forward to now?


THE BOOKENING TITLE #12: A Closed and Common Orbit, Becky Chambers.


I was disappointed when I first learnt that the follow-up to The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet would focus on a couple of minor characters from the first book, rather than on my beloved Wayfarer crew. It turns out that there was no need for disappointment! I'd still love another book about the crew of the Wayfarer (please, Becky Chambers, if you're listening), but I really enjoyed A Closed and Common Orbit.

(It's a sci-fi book all about women! Grumpy, flawed women! Of the five major characters, 3.5 are female and only 1.5 are male. I swear this makes sense when you read it.)

As I've said before, I love it when people are thrown into new, unfamiliar environments, and A Closed and Common Orbit is particularly great because it has two such storylines: Sidra learning to live as organic beings do, and Jane 23 learning that the factory she works in isn't the entire world.

There's always a risk, when a book has multiple storylines, that the reader will focus on one to the extent of resenting the others, and I'll admit that did slightly happen with me; I was fascinated by the Jane storyline, and there were points where I went 'okay, fine, I've just got to push through this Sidra chapter and then I can read more about Jane.' But the Sidra storyline was fine! I just happened to be more invested in the Jane one.

I got oddly emotional about the scene where Jane plays a videogame for the first time. The game characters are so patient and understanding! She's been deprived of that for so much of her life!

Oouoh is my favourite and I'm sad that he's only in one scene. I love him introducing Jane to spices, and their 'Are any of these poisonous?' 'To you? No idea. But I know where the med ward is, and you look easy to carry' exchange.

The ending was really satisfying. And I'm fascinated by all the questions about AI ethics this book raises.

Reading this finally pushed me to buy a physical copy of The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. I already have the ebook, but it feels wrong not to have a physical version of a book I love so much. Maybe I should reread it. Is it too soon to reread it? It's been less than a year since I read it for the first time, but it feels like it was too long ago. It's such a warm, hopeful book. I think everyone could do with some warmth and hope at the moment.

THE BOOKENING TITLE #10: A Storm of Swords, George RR Martin. (I know I said A Song of Ice and Fire wasn't part of THE BOOKENING, but I suppose it makes sense to keep all of my book reaction posts under one tag.)

As much as I'm enjoying this series (I am enjoying it enormously): George RR Martin, you don't have to keep coming up with character names. You can just tell us there were a lot of men trying to hold the fort. We don't have to know that Two-Leg Jerrit was there, and Rykk Crowbeak, and Devyd the Unkind, who kept ducks in his youth and had always found humans disappointing in comparison. You'll never mention these characters again. You don't have to name them. It's okay.

A Song of Ice and Fire is constantly throwing characters together in different ways and then dragging them apart. And in some respects that's great! We'd never have seen Arya and the Hound grumpily travelling together otherwise. And in others it's terrible, because it keeps creating character combinations that I love, or that I find fascinating, and then going 'AND NOW THEY'RE DIVIDED AND MAY NEVER SEE EACH OTHER AGAIN.'

My favourite character combinations so far:

- Arya and Gendry
- Sansa and the Hound
- Jaime and Brienne
- Sansa and Tyrion
- Arya and the Hound

Do you know how many of these combinations are still within speaking distance by the end of A Storm of Swords? Exactly none of them. I'm so annoyed.

But A Storm of Swords introduced three of them, so overall this book gets a thumbs-up from me. (Well, it introduced two, but Sansa and Tyrion's relationship abruptly became a lot more interesting to me in A Storm of Swords.)

I like Jaime a lot more than I was expecting to! When I first saw a chapter from his perspective, I rolled my eyes and thought, Oh, good, another character whose chapters I'm not going to care about. I was so wrong. How much I will care about his chapters when he's not in the company of Brienne, though, remains to be seen.

(I was so, so happy when he went back to rescue her.)

Finally: Lord Frey, that is not at all a proportionate response to someone snubbing your daughter.

THE BOOKENING TITLE #8: The Last Beginning, Lauren James.

Sequel to The Next Together! A more traditional time-travel story; a less traditional romance. What I'm saying is that this is a YA novel about time-travelling lesbians. (There are spoilers in this entry, so you might want to skip it if you're planning to pick the series up.)

Like its predecessor, this was great fun and I tore through it in two days. It addressed one of my issues with the preceding book (we got to see how the break-out happened at last!), but, again, there are things I wish it had done. I thought for a moment we were going to get to see two versions of Matthew from different times meet! Don't dangle that possibility in front of me and then snatch it away!

The romance in these books is cute, but there's always a slightly unsettling aspect to it, which fascinates me. In The Last Beginning, there's the constant sense that some sort of outside force is trying to get Katherine and Matthew together in every time. In The Next Together, Ella shows up to announce, 'Hi, I'm from the future and I already know I'm the love of your life, because that's established historical fact in my time!' That must be so strange on both sides.

Speaking of strange aspects to the romance, my favourite part of this book was 1745 Matthew and 2040 Kate being romantic while 2040 Matthew was still stuck in prison. It's possible that my disappointment in 1745 and 2040 Matthew never meeting stems largely from my curiosity about whether they were going to manage some sort of two-person threesome. My second-favourite part was probably Tom in the alternate timeline, trying to protect and help the daughter he doesn't remember.

I mentioned in my entry on The Next Together that I was convinced the author had written fanfiction. I have since uncovered two pieces of evidence to corroborate this. Firstly, an extract from an instant messaging conversation in The Last Beginning:

LuckyClover: please don't say it
Nuts_Meg: i'm sorry, clove. I have to. There is fanfiction about your dad.
LuckyClover: this isn't happening. i wish i was dead.
Nuts_Meg: I haven't even sent you any links yet. Wait until you hear about the werewolf soulbonding erotica I found about him and Kate.
LuckyClover: urghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Nuts_Meg: This is the best thing that has ever happened to me ever.
LuckyClover: i'm going to vomit all over you

Secondly, I, er, found some fanfiction by the author. Fairly solid, as evidence of fanfiction-writing goes. She wrote a crossover between her own novel and Harry Potter. I can respect that. If I ever published a novel, it'd be solely for the sake of writing Pokémon crossovers afterwards.

The original purpose of THE BOOKENING was to prepare me for a potential job interview, and as I didn't actually get an interview I'm no longer reading with such urgency. Still, I enjoyed reading a load of books and posting about them here, so THE BOOKENING will continue at a slightly more sensible pace!


THE BOOKENING TITLE #6: A Darker Shade of Magic, VE Schwab.

This is an odd one to read straight after Rivers of London. They're both technically 'magical London' books, but Rivers of London feels very grounded in the real London; I read it and I know it's set in my city. I found I enjoyed A Darker Shade of Magic more when I ignored the 'London' aspect, because I kept getting distracted by the fact that I didn't even feel like I was in England, let alone London, even in the parts set in our world. There was a general lack of detail rooting us in the city, and there was some American vocabulary that really stood out, particularly as the book seemed to be set in vaguely Victorian times. Stop running around in your pants, everyone; you'll cause a scandal!

That said, I enjoyed this. Schwab is very good at intricate, interesting worldbuilding, even if the world in question doesn't really feel connected to its real-life counterpart.

As with This Savage Song, this book introduces two protagonists separately, lets you get to know them, and only then has them meet for the first time. As far as I'm concerned, this is great. I love it when two established characters meet at last and we get to find out how they interact with each other. I also really like the 'they're not in a romantic relationship; they're just friends who occasionally kiss' vibe I get from Kell and Lila, although I don't know whether that'll change in later books in the series.

(Is it just me, or is everything part of a series? I'm sort of craving a good one-off fantasy book.)

Another thing I'm fond of: characters being thrown into another world (or another time) and having to manage in a completely unfamiliar setting. Unfortunately, neither 'seeing characters get to know each other' nor 'seeing a character come to terms with a new world' are qualities that can be sustained for very long, so I suppose they'll be less prominent in the sequel.

I'm very concerned about Holland. That was a slightly awful thing that happened to him at the end, and I'm sort of shocked that Kell did it without a second thought. I hope that's not the end of Holland's story. I'm also a bit disappointed that we never actually got to see Black London, but I feel there's a good chance it'll show up in later books.

The relationship between Kell and Rhy has a lot that intrigues me! I sort of wish we'd seen more of Rhy earlier on, so we could have a better impression of their dynamic by the point at which Rhy gets into real trouble. 'I would do literally anything for your sake' relationships are great, but they work best if we get to see how they relate to each other under normal circumstances before we see one character going to extreme lengths for the other.

I generally want more of Rhy, really. He seems like a character I could really love ('fierce love for his sibling' and 'habitually flirts with everyone' are both qualities that I have a terrible weakness for), but he got so little page time!

Finally, my favourite exchange from the book:

Rhy laughed silently. "I apologize for anything I might have done. I was not myself."
"I apologize for shooting you in the leg," said Lila. "I was myself entirely."