BOOK.

[kyrielle]

I have readIron Kissed through, and reread some parts. I won't say much about it because it's new out and I know several folks on my friends list read the series (and probably more than I realize) and spoilers are evil.

But...wow. I am stunned. Wow. So, so glad I grabbed this and gulped this. And just...wow.

Comments not guaranteed to be spoiler-free; if anyone else has read it and wants to discuss, feel free. I'd love to babble about my thoughts and reactions to folks I wouldn't be spoilering the book for. Even if only in vague terms. (ETA: I will not reply to non-spoiler comments with spoilers unless the commenter indicates that they've read the book and/or don't mind. No worries there. Just saying that if someone hands me a comment of such sort I will happily digress into spoilers, thus, not safe to read others' comments. If this post even gets any.)

Comments

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

oh good. I saw it today (although I didn't buy it, because I MUST get through the entire Sayers oevure by the week before Conflikt EEEK) and made a note to tell you it was out.

[kyrielle]

Thank you for the thought. :) Do you know how glad I am that I spotted it first, though? If I had gotten home from Borders with one new book and then you told me that there was another out (after already doing that routine with my trip to Powell's earlier in the week), I think I might have screamed. ;)

And then turned around and gone to the bookstore. Heh.

BOOK.

[kfrye.livejournal.com]

I just finished it today. I liked it except for the end. I really don't like violence against women as a plot device, and I felt the resolution to it a bit preachy. But I thought it rather clever how she resolved the Sam/Adam storyline without having Mercy be the bad guy. Loved the fae stuff!

[kyrielle]

Yes. I loved the Sam/Adam resolution, and the fae stuff. I didn't care for the particular events, not so much the violence as the type of violence. What bugged me most was her seeming ease in the last scene given what had come before, tho'. Not that I don't approve of her winding up there, but, uh...wow, fast recovery.

I'll be interested to see what Stefan makes of this when he finds out. Not that he was really in contention, but I'm not sure if he'd realized that prior, whereas now if he misses it, he's a complete moron. ;)

[kfrye.livejournal.com]

I didn't care for the particular events, not so much the violence as the type of violence.

Yes, exactly. Rape as a plot device is both offensive and way overdone. Violence against a woman that doesn't involve rape seems to be actually unusual in SF, as screwed up as that is. And then a week later, she's gone through her intense trauma and is all fine again. I guess the next book will be more of an indicator as to exactly how that plays out.

I love Stefan and missed him in this book. Everyone loves Mercy!

[kyrielle]

Yep. (Might have been an interesting twist if he'd ordered Mercy to love and want him, then rejected her by way of turning the tables on her for rejecting him, then beat the living crap out of her for all of it.)

[kfrye.livejournal.com]

Wow.. that would have been a totally more interesting story, especially considering how she kinda let Sam and Adam dangle for so long.

[kfrye.livejournal.com]

Plus it would have made the villian more interesting. He took a left turn at the end there and turned Super Evil, raping Mercy and gratuitously killing off his best friend. Briggs took the easy way out there.. he could have been more interesting than he was.

[kyrielle]

Yep. To be fair, even if it wasn't the story I would've liked to see, exactly, it at least was consistent with the world and everything that came before. Nasty, but consistent. The story I would've told would've made him slightly (slightly!) less psychotic. It made sense as it was, it just didn't have to be that way to make sense.

(I draw that distinction in contrast to Lackey, who occasionally utterly fails to be consistent within her own world while telling the story. Aerie, despite my utter love of the Alta world, being a good example of 'the world just took a right turn and fell off the turtle here'.)

Regardless of how it went down, it should (I hope) be quite interesting to see how the fae who know about that little episode react to her after, since obviously her partial immunity to magic extends to theirs. (Not a real surprise to the reader, at least not to me, but probably not something all of them were expecting.)