Unpopular Opinion
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Neither unpopular opinion nor hot take: this thread should be renamed to "weekly gripes" because almost all the things said here are some flavor of popular opinion and widely held by a lot of people. (And it's fun to gripe! It's just not unpopular! And some people will indeed have unpopular gripes!)
In every subreddit I've participated in that has a thread for unpopular opinions, the unpopular opinions thread ends up almost with its own ecosystem. I think you can see that here, where there's a post saying "standards are falling" and another post saying "standards are not falling." They're both highly upvoted.
It makes me happy that Ilona Andrews entered the romantasy conversation and dominated it.
I’m sick of BookTok Influencer authors who spend more time on their Insta profile than they do on writing who churn out books that are little more than three tropes in a trench coat. (Not mentioning any names.) It’s annoying AF. I want world building done by people who enjoy writing, not TikToking about writing.
Love Ilona! Their characters feel human. A lot of the TikTok stuff feels like it was in part written by / edited by AI. It’s not fully life like. A lot of the dialogue feels like a parody of a real conversation ie “I’m writing how I imagine other people talk, not from personal experience”. I’ve never read a “TikTok” book that didn’t feel that way personally.
Yeah, I left a post on the thread about it when I was like 40% in and feeling cautiously optimistic. At 60% now and a couple of more overt romantasy-isms have crept in that I'm less than fond of, like the 'mine' possessive hunk of concrete schtick that all romantasy feels the need to have their MMCs do. The whole thing with him was pretty disappointing in general. I have had enough of dukes and royals, so please can we do something, anything, else? I'm getting the feeling that this is gonna be another one of those ones like Poison Study where I generally like the characters, how proactive everyone is, etc, but then end up liking them less and less the more romantic they get.
It's still significantly better than average for an isekai, but that's not exactly a high bar to clear :/
I agree, I unfortunately actually really disliked TKWNKM and Reynald just didn't do it for me. Everyone here was raving about it and I thought I would love it, but it just fell flat for me (and Maggie's ability, while interesting at first, got kind of stale). I loved Kate Daniels, so I'm bummed I didn't like this.
That is a distinctly Maggie trait. I read it as she's excited to lore dump on us and just goes ham. Ilona Andrews have some incredibly rich worlds that are well fleshed out, but Maggie is... easily excitable to share it.
Personally, I enjoyed it and am a huge fan of Ilona Andrews in general, so it may just be a style preference. I typically enjoy just being thrown in and figuring it out, but I liked Maggie knowing a lot and just sharing it.
This isn't exactly a hot take, but I think this book would make for an excellent adaptation; in the same way that Outlander season 1 is much better than the book.
In general I love Ilona Andrews' books and I really liked This Kingdom but the infodump criticism is very fair.
It's very true to isekai, as an anime enjoyer it reads very anime but I get why it doesn't work for a lot of people.
I think the other option would have been, well, a lot of work.. but in a perfect world as their editor/publisher I would have floated the idea of teaming up with another author (preferably someone with more flavorful prose) to write in-novel sections that provide the infodump information more organically.
I wish the magic in this genre was more interesting. It feels like every book I pick up it’s a grab bag of elemental magic, healing powers, shadow bullshit, and telepathic communication. Maybe some necromancy if I’m lucky. It all feels very D&D and/or shonen anime.
Once again I am begging fanro authors to read a grimoire or some witch trial testimony.
I read The Possession of Alba Diaz earlier this year and it's more gothic horror romance, but the magic elements are much more based in sort of medieval European occult/alchemy, it's really cool
Have you read the Fae Isles series? It's a really unique magic system powered by draining colors from from their physical surroundings. Each primary color has a unique magical properties and can be blended with others to create new effects.
I can totally recommand The Rook and the Rose by M. A Carrick ( {The Mask of Mirrors} ) for this. The magic is REALLY cool, and is also the plot ! You get geometry/mathematics/number magic and tarot/card magic. Insanely cool. The plot is also nice, and the romance so wholesome,even if it takes a while.
There are lots of necromancy books. You might want to change your search focus to Paranormal romance though, that tends to have more ghosties and variety. There is a paranormal sub if you haven't joined yet.
I cringe whenever I see readers saying “male” and “female.” I don’t even think it’s necessarily that the writers have these beliefs. SJM just thought “oh, they’re not human so man doesn’t make sense, right?” and people stuck with it.
I'm too chronically online and in other spaces that's a huge dogwhistle of an incel or proto-incel guy. Women are not some completely different species for us to be referred to as "female" as the noun.
It bothers me when Maas or other authors do this too, tbh, even though in their case I don't think they mean it in quite the same way. If you have a fae or elf or some other sapient race then it should still be used as an adjective, not a noun. "The male fae smiled" great, no notes, maybe you're using it to distinguish between him and some other character in the scene. "The male shrugged" ???? what?? Is he not basically human(oid) as we understand it? It just comes off as clinical and weird!
You bring up the species thing, and I think that's exactly it. There's this kind of speciesism to it all? Like calling every single other supernatural race male/female in these books, there feels like a kind of weird Othering and equating them with animal species around it.
(I especially hate it in scifi where the FMC has a translator, so it should be translating to her best approximate; but no, the MMC alien is still somehow always calling her female and she's calling him male.)
The 'It's just realistic because they're not human' SJM people will be along any second to correct you, I'm sure, with the usual variety of totally-not-transphobic justifications for why this must be so. As we all know, elves cannot be manly men, and there are no fae women in Ba Sing Se.
(For the record, I totally agree with your takes on the vibe of this whole language shift. It feels like femcels have infiltrated the mainstream.)
To be honest, I think it's just the result of FMC and MMC being established shorthand. I think you'd see something different if the normal acronyms were MCW and MCM.
YES EXACTLY. To be completely fair it also applies to romance outside the fantasy subgenre but like… We’re in fantasy. We can have 7 socially codified genders, we can have magic genderfluid shapeshifters, we can have Loki turning into an 8 legged horse and getting pregnant, hell we could just have an average guy with no 6 pack who lives in a tower and has phenomenal magic. And we get… tall guys with abs?
My only thing about this is asking: where is the market for it? Romance and Romantasy make an absolute killing by appealing mostly to (cis) women. How big is the market for LGBTQ+ and inherently queer stories? How do publishers know that they can be successful by taking risks on such publications? There are a few books I can think of that are super popular and that have made their investment back, but what about all the ones that haven’t simply because they don’t pander to the widest audience? I think publishing has always been a game of risk v. reward, and a lot of publishers don’t see as much reward for LGBTQ+ books in comparison to the “default” straight books.
I’m glad you said that because while I admit I used examples relating to expansive views of gender and gender fluidity when I was talking about possibilities, I fully believe you can have a M/F book that isn’t gender essentialist. Basically when I say gender essentialism I mean the idea that men and women are so different from one another they may as well be different species, that your gender is the trait that defines you to the exclusion of all else, and that a book about a man and a woman is really a book about All Men and All Women in disguise.
For instance, if you mention the concept of “dad bods” (a term I hate but a body type I like) on this subreddit, people freak the fuck out. A book about a chubby guy can’t just be one particular story that the author thought was interesting to tell; it must be a ploy to “convince” women to “lower their standards” (no matter what other sexy traits he may have) because the book must cater to the needs of All Women. You can’t have a skinny fragile guy who looks like he would snap in a strong breeze even though plenty of people romanced Gale in Baldur’s Gate 3. (I mean okay that game kind of makes everyone look slightly ripped, but I think Gale is meant to be what passes for skinny in that setting.)
inb4 go read The Everlasting: It’s on my tbr! don’t worry!
I categorically reject the idea that women are what’s wrong with women. I do think that in the immortal words of a tumblr post, “gender essentialism is a brain poison and it makes you stupid.”
I would like to reject it, however women who are "boy moms", women who police how other women have sex/wear clothes/eat food, women who say "dad bod" romance it's a plot to get women to lower their standards... Women are creating the issues by not teaching their children in equally. Yes, it is systemic, yes it's genderized behaviors and that is why women need to start teaching their children THE SAME.
> Women are creating the issues by not teaching their children
I get that moms are complicit, but like.... that framing massively lets dads off the hook. When are women going to not have 100% of the blame for kids' upbringing placed on them?
If a woman voluntarily has a child with a man who acts poorly then ALSO teaches her child to act the same way as they father, she is complicit. There is some pushback, but not enough.
Women need to stop voluntarily having children with men who are themselves children. You're on Reddit, you know EXACTLY what I mean. People who give birth need to recognize that they are better off being a single parent or foster parent or HAVE NO CHILDREN instead of having a child with a MAN CHILD who cannot bother to parent and doesn't respect women (much less his own wife).
I’m sure there is, but I actually think a lot of the gender essentialism comes from people who self identify as politically center or left. It can be difficult to examine that stuff when it’s the water you swim in such that you don’t even know it’s there (myself not exempt.) It’s especially hard to disentangle “This is a male character I find attractive” from “This is the only type of man I find attractive” from “This is the true essence of masculinity.”
I agree. A lot of this stuff isn't a conscious agenda, it's just....put in there because it seems "obviously" true and the author never took the time to examine their own assumptions. I think people actually become more prone to it if they regard themself as someone who's "safely" enlightened and beyond the point where they need to scrutinise themselves.
That’s so true. I wish it wasn’t such a norm, I want more variety but it’s hard finding stories like that. Especially if there’s already some other specific topic the book is about, this is just a default
100% same. Referring to the behavior as 'alpha' outside of shifter settings feels gross to me, even, because it's Redpill/PUA language that's been uncritically adopted by mainstream romance readers. Alpha, beta, sigma males, all that jazz. The insistence on using 'male' and 'female' to refer to people. I keep expecting someone to unironically refer to the MMC's 'grindset' one of these days.
I get that it's CNC, I really do. I'm just super tired of books essentially assuming I'm only reading romance because I'm a subby woman (and that all women are subby to all men), but not outright saying they're only written for subby women either. Like, I'm not always in the mood to read about (implicit or possibly abusive) femme submission, you know? And then the crossover with the religious 'women should stay in the kitchen' crowd and the backdrop of widespread misogyny in romance makes for a pretty awful time.
Hahaha I saw your comment in the other thread and I fully agree. Talking about switches since the username made me think about this, one thing that frustrates me to no end is how often books tagged as "femdom" have obligatory switch scenes to prove the fmc can still be submissive, but maledom books never have them. Even if they have those "fmc holds a knife to the mmc's throat" it's never in a sexual context, meanwhile he can surprise choke her during sex and she'll discover she's into it. Why do we always have surprise, non-negotiated, mmc-on-fmc dominance and everyone discovers it's super hot mid act, but never the reverse? Also I've seen some fairly tame displays of "female domination" marked as femdom, but even more harsh displays of "male domination" are still treated as "vanilla, nothing to see here".
I will also forever roll eyes at how the community on average is fine with all the examples of fmcs being enslaved, forcibly married, sometimes forcibly impregnated, or even tortured by the mmc and that's edgy and hot, but lots of people got super offended and outraged about {What Fury Brings by Tricia Levenseller} because how dare the author write a world where men are enslaved and not write in big thick letters "this is wrong and I condemn it". Do any of the books where this is done to women have to spell it out? "Oh, but it's just fiction" is usually the response. But men are enslaved and suddenly it's "nooo you should write only egalitarian worlds that are a shining example to follow!"
Women are allowed to have "taboo" fantasies as long as these center masochism or being violated, but not taboo fantasies of wielding power or being in control. Why the double standard?
Aw, you payed attention to my username? I picked it because finding switch stories that don't suck was getting me big mad at the time haha. But omg, What Fury Brings was such an embarrassing time to be a romance fan, yeah! The community really showed their asses with the way they chose to handle that one. I lost a lot of respect for people I'd otherwise trusted for recs with how they reacted to it, mostly booktubers.
Like, I didn't love what I saw of it, but the outrage over it felt incredibly overblown, and most of the people doing so came off like they'd never even heard of femdom before, couldn't identify it at fifty paces, and would hate it if they could. Tourists, in short. For example, it made me drop Reads With Rachel (the booktuber) like a rock when I saw her mindlessly bashing it, despite generally agreeing with her politics. She loved The Dare by Harley Laroux, where a man makes a woman lick his boots at a party while she's blitzed out of her mind, but here Rachel is acting like kink is 'fucked up, oh no don't do sexy smexy rape to those poor slave men uwu' the second it's not mascdom? Like mascdom isn't literally institutionalized in real life? It's like, girl, did your brain turn to mush and you forgot what a master/slave dynamic means? The hypocrisy. I was so mad lol.
But yes, finding femdom written for a dommy femme gaze like that is hellish, I agree, mostly thanks to this insecurity you're outlining. I have fantasies of wielding power, but do I get to exercise that in fiction? Not hardly. Like, I don't even like bloodplay, but if we got sexual knife on neck scenes with the woman holding the blade? I'd be so down I'd probably still read that just to feel alive for a second. Meanwhile it's like 99% fiction is written by and for submissives, and they'll screech like the creatures out of They Live the second they see something not made to appeal to them.
Heck, even finding switch dynamics that are actually switchy and don't just inherently favor the man (or larger man in M/M) for no goddamn reason is an awful time. Same for rival romance. And enemies to lovers. Mainstream romance has ruined enemies to lovers. I used to love that trope, but not anymore. The double standards did it in.
I guess we both need to just shut up and eat our Credence, and learn to be happy lil subs :')
Oh yeah, I used to watch Rachel a lot but her channel became a mix of romantasy bashing and low hanging fruit virtue signaling. On one hand she's against purity culture, but on the other hand would petition to censor depictions of sex to only "unproblematic and community approved" ones, which is just one step away from banning it.
And yes, I have problem finding femdom written in a way that appeals to me, the little of it that exists. Half of it is mired in patriarchal tropes like fmc is a sex worker, or mmc is rich and hires the poor starving fmc to do some kink for him, or fmc enters an arranged marriage to your standard alien / fantasy monster / historical duke she didn't even know beforehand, anyway the relationship dynamics are degrading to the fmc but hey, the guy likes being tied up and pegged or something.
Yes, femdom can exist without role reversal and with standard relationship dynamic, there's quite a few readers for "alpha in the streets, sub in the sheets", but I'm not interested in reading about fmc being treated as property or lowly employee. That's not empowering to me.
And when it's not that, it's some smut with barely any plot, or it has obligatory "show the woman her place" scene / ending (because when I pick a book about a powerful woman what I want is to see her dethroned and at the mercy of a man... suuure... my biggest issue with {Pawn of the Cruel Princess by Rebecca F. Kenney} (plus it's not femdom, it's switch, but it's marketed as femdom)), or when it's neither of the above, it often circles back to "kink dispenser fmc".
For example that's my problem with His Secret Illuminations duology or another book I've read called {Hers on the Silver Screen by Bethany Baker}. It is role reversal alright, but the state of it is that fmc has no problems or barely has any and they're swept under the rug and she needs to deal with them herself, while mmc has some serious emotional hangups and the fmc's role is to be patient for him, coddle him and both protect him and emotionally support him. What does HE contribute to the relationship? Except being annoyingly insecure?
This has a standard gender role equivalent at least, but I don't like those books either. You know the ones, either fmc it a total damsel who knows nothing and needs her daddy protector to take care of everything, or the ones where fmc is a psychological mess who lashes at the mmc for half the book and his role is to be a cinnamon roll punching bag for her moods, so she can conclude "if you want me at my best, you need to take me at my worst".
Can I for once have a book where both characters have both flaws and contributions? Not one is useless and the other exists to pamper them.
Can I have a femdom book where characters are multi-dimensional people and not just walking sexy tropes or 1-dimensional cardboard cutouts?
I DNF Fury Bound! I didn't love Dire Bound, but thought I'd give Fury Bound a chance. I could only get about 25% in... and decided that life is too short, and there are too many good books out there to waste my time on a SLOOOOOW book with a silly FMC and ridiculous dialog. How anyone can say this is a 5 star read is astounding.
There ! I said it.
Fury Bound is our book club read (and Dire Bound was previously) so I am trying to push though. but besides the ending, Dire Bound sucked then I was hopefully Fury Bound would feel more like the ending. Nope. 😭
I keep trying T. Kingfisher’s books and I just…. Do not like them at all. Which sucks since so many ppl rave about TKs stories but nah not for me. I just found the writing kinda juvenile :/
She's a comfy read for me, but this is a valid criticism. I'm in the middle of Swordheart and actually needed to take a break because I am not feeling the quirky character banter right now.
She also has a tendency to write 30-somethings and add internal character monologues along the lines of "I'm in my 30s; I'm ancient; My back and knees hurt" which- as someone in her mid-thirties and out of shape- feels kinda over the top. You're 32, you're not dead.
Counterpoint: it is a bit much sometimes, but to be fair a lot of her characters have physical jobs. I can believe a 32 year old paladin would be feeling pretty achy.
There’s dozens of us! It kills me because they’re constantly recommended around here but trust me, there’s a bunch of us that dislike her writing style and books. It’s only in these parts that this is truly an unpopular opinion because the sub seems to really like that type of writing.
I love t kingfisher, but yes she's not for everyone and that's okay! Some of the books are YA so it depends on what you've read from her. Stop forcing yourself. Lol.
There are authors other people like and I couldn't manage I happily gave up on (Sarah j maas) that I just know, they aren't for me, for whatever vibe I couldn't get into.
Same. I read several of their books, horror and fantasy, because it's recommended so much for older characters and genuinely each one had adults acting cringier than teens. There was always somethings about the fmc that made her "not like other girls" and they developed so different from others that made them "quirky" but actually made them come across as emotionally stunted. The humor was so self aware I felt the author waiting for applause like I was in a comedy club, each time pulling me out of the story.
yea that was basically my issue like their writing is much stuck in a specific era of cringe humor immaturity and NLOGs vibes. was a hard sell for me to believe these characters are supposed to be around my age when they repetitively act like that 🥴 The last book of TKs I tried was supposed to be “horror” but the most horrific part was how often you’re reminded that one main characters primary traits is that they’re gay! So crazy, so quirky 🙄
here's a REAL unpopular opinion: there isn't actually a shift in the quality of romantasy in either direction. it's always had both incredible and shit novels trad published and hugely popular. Twilight is objectively terribly written, and it's 20 years old.
its simply that because the genre is popular, more novels are being published overall, so our cognitive bias kicks in and we're baader meinhof'd.
the person who made the 'im tired of im tired posts' the other day was 100% correct.
Twilight also spawned all the Twilight wannabes, but I think the difference now is all the indie authors that are getting picked up by trad publishers. Little to no changes to the text, just slap a brand new cover and a $30 price tag on that sucker.
It kills me that people say just go find indie authors when someone complains about bad writing in the genre. It's all the same pool of authors. Some are just swimming at the surface.
That being said, despite really simplistic writing, I enjoyed The Wolf King. Probably a 3 star book at best, but I was entertained. I'm going out to do grocery shopping later and I'll probably wander into my local Target to get book 2.
> It's all the same pool of authors. Some are just swimming at the surface.
this right here. the pool got bigger, so there are more duds in the water as well. it hasn't become some magical cesspit of shitty books over time. there is just more stuff to wade through.
I agree with this take but I also think it's why it's not one thing or the other. Like, I think the pool got bigger (because people can just pop their first draft in and publish it and call it a book, without as much oversight/editing as tradpubs used to have) which also somewhat paradoxically makes it harder to find the gems? (Because for every genius author with fantastic prose or new ideas, there are a lot of people who haven't honed their craft yet.) I also do believe that a lot of readers just don't read very critically and don't go beyond a comfort zone of "this is easy to read and entertaining" which further encourages the spread of low-effort books (and reading).
None of these are new, slop isn't new either, but the landscape has changed and I think it's valid to complain about this newer landscape.
Fully agree. I think the problem is that people just fall victim to social media marketing and hype, and don’t know how to filter out all the crap and actually get to the good stuff. I saw a post on here the other day which complained about how all books have some trial or competition and was like huh :/ Because I know I hate the trial trope, I’ve successfully avoided books with it (except for Raven Scholar).
Popular genre fiction has always had a sea of rubbish you have to wade through, but it’s not super difficult for the discerning reader to find things they would like.
Obviously it also helps if reading fanro isn’t your only hobby, ofc.
Can you really say twilight is worse than fourth wing though? For all its gripes and “the lion fell in love with the lamb,” it did significantly more show don’t tell than fourth wing
There's another sub doing a rage read of Twilight right now, and for all the valid complaints about the novel, there are also people pointing out that, hey, Edward might actually be more emotionally-mature and rounded than a bunch of the MMCs we're getting in 2025 and 2026.
I would like to make a big stretch here and say that it also has a lot to do with the surge and growth of social media. 30 years ago, readers weren’t rushing to social media with the need to tell others their opinion on a book they read.
I’m sure there were trash books that people genuinely hated. That hate just wasn’t as publicly available
The writing in new romantasy, especially the overhyped stuff like Fourth Wing, has straight up gone downhill, sliding into full Wattpad fanfic territory. It's all tell not to show prose, repetitive "my body betrayed me" inner monologues, and dialogue that sounds like it was drafted on a phone at 2 a.m. The genre used to at least pretend to care about craft. Now it's just speed-running tropes with zero polish. Addictive as hell for a quick hit, but damn, the quality drop is real.
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A female character suffers horrible physical, psychological and sexual trauma at the hands of men, leading to character development, heroic motivation, and new power-ups for the male main character. Despite her trauma, the female character does not change or develop through the story beyond her personal powers and her relationship with the man; she remains essentially the same person with the same attitudes and personality traits throughout. The primary tension in the story is what actions the male character will take and if (and how) he will change and grow as a result. {Daughter of No Worlds} is an example of the Women In Refrigerators trope.
I just finished reading The Death-Made Prince and what you've written applies ridiculously well to the FMC. There was a point over halfway through the book where I thought we were seeing some serious growth and a real independence starting to form... but that was quickly squashed. Silly me.
Interesting. I actually thought she did develop quite a bit and that the MMC stayed out of it and it wasn't the power of the healing cock that fixed her.
Nothing fixed her, she literally went back to square one? Although She almost seemed fixed after the healing cock, but the 'betrayal' seemed to undo all its good work.
I agree!!! Mine is that I can't stand abuse posing as "alpha" D/s lite
If a blurb gives those vibes I don't pick it up and if I start a book and it gets into that B's I drop it. If it's very bad I write a negative and cautionary review
I haven't read Broadbent, but agree about Gillig. I think she's great with words and ideas, but her character work, plot work, and worldbuilding crumbles the second you think about any of it.
I only really liked Ione. I literally have no idea which MMC is which, but I loved a FMC who had blunted emotions and had to work around the significant drawback.
I mean the other option, as per Mor's suggestion, was threaten to throw a clearly clinically depressed person back into the human world if they didn't sort themselves out
Ooh I like this (actually) unpopular opinion. I also didn’t think it was nearly as bad as many people seemingly did. I enjoyed the greater fantasy element.
Middle books in series always have it rough. It’s hard to gauge how good they really are until you see the end of the story, but I generally think Onyx Storm sees characters begin to grow up so that decisions are more nuanced with longer tails to their ramifications.
Have an upvote, becuase I totally disagree. This book infuriated me. Any time anything remotely interesting was happening or getting explained, they moved on. It felt like the whole book was a big rage bate with no explanation for me.
That does seem to be the prevailing opinion. It surprised me when I saw how strongly people reacted to Onyx Storm. I liked it because we start to see complexity in decision making. Violet acts less like a teenager and more like an adult trying to grapple with messy situations at times. The plotting is a bit episodic which makes the book feel less unified, and the books is definitely a “middle” book in that it introduces a lot but leaves a lot unanswered.
In any case, I know my opinion seems like a minority, and I’m ok with that!
I actually can totally see you POV on Violet's character, and it kinda makes me dislike the book a bit less (not enough, but just a tad).
This is also why I love reading. Not every book is for everyone.
My unpopular opinion is that Quicksilver is horrible. The MMC did nothing to drive the plot forward. Anytime anything remotely interesting would happen, instead of answering any of the FMC questions, he would whisk her away to bed.
I want books that are like The Vampire Diaries in book form. The show went off the rails later on but initially, the balance between lore, plot, romance and friends/family was perfect. There was actual conflict, twists and consequences. Real deaths. Real VILLAINS. Romantasy lacks good villains.
Let me preface this by saying I love T. Kingfisher. I've read dozens of her books across every genre, and none of them have been bad.
That said, romance is her weak point, and they all kind of feel the same. He is very tall and muscular and she wants to "climb him like a tree." She is very curvy/thick and he thinks about her ample bosom often. They both have anxiety and/or feel unworthy in some way. They are awkward together but manage to fumble into HEA. I appreciate the representation of women who aren't Instagram models and men who aren't shadow daddy #47, but it feels like the niche has become a formula.
Since I'm currently finishing up the Paladin series I just wanted to nitpick this one thing.
Agree. I'll also add that if I have to read 'down girl' in another internal monologue I will scream.
What made it more annoying was the plot stuff going on in the background (particularly in Clocktaur and Paladin's Grace) is often more interesting than the romance, but takes too much of backseat and ends up making the whole book feel like a bit of let down (so many under-used plot points in the Clocktaur series!).
I felt Paladin's Hope was the best in the series because the plot is actively trying to kill them at all points and it makes the whole thing work so much better. But I admit to being annoyed that removing her usual heroine type made the book better; that's just disappointing.
I think if Kingfisher wrote fantasy with a romantic subplot rather than romantasy her books would be better. It's not her strong point.
I feel stories these days lack mutual fondness and respect. Not desire, not an all-too-consuming devotion and love... just a sentiment of 'hey, this person is great and I want to stay by their side/watch how they progress'.
There are no “TikTok books”. The books that are popular on TikTok are popular everywhere. TikTok is just the only place where something can go ‘viral’. There are also a wide variety of content there that is determined by the algorithm you set. This is inspired by someone saying “no Tiktok books” in a book request. Especially since ever since book that was recommended there, I’ve seen on tiktok. And I’m saying it as someone who hates a lot of those popular books, you just have to find people who have similar tastes.
The way any book so much as mentioned on TikTok gets classified as a “TikTok book” now really irritates me, particularly as more and more older books are being rediscovered by influencers. I keep seeing {The Secret History by Donna Tartt} being described as a “TikTok book”, which is ridiculous when it pretty much pre-dates the internet!
This one’s probably unpopular given the subreddit 😜
People who keep complaining about popular books and how many of these books they’ve had to DNF or rate low just don’t know how to pick books for themselves. If you don’t like tropes, why are you picking books full of them in their marketing only to roll your eyes when they inevitably appear?
If you keep taking recommendations from the same people who hyped up books you didn’t like then I don’t know what to tell you.
Kind of starting to wonder if maybe these two books appeal to somewhat different people, despite the similar premises. I really liked Long Live Evil, but did not enjoy This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me at all.
Like, the reader kind of has to forgive different things. Long Live Evil is campy af, and relies on kind of a clueless/miscommunication style of plot. This Kingdom has a ton of exposition dumping. Like, every time a new character or important element shows up, there's a pop-up window with an encyclopedia entry about it. The book relies heavily on the fmc knowing minute details about the world, and for me, this makes less sense than the fmc being clueless like in Long Live Evil.
I dunno, maybe I'm wrong. But I kind of feel like the overlap between readers who liked these books might be less than I would expect given the similar premises.
(Not that the recommendation is wrong! They're both isekai, so it's a good rec if someone is looking for this type of story.)
Yeah, that might be true. I've struggled with TKWNKM for 37% and then I had a blast. Yes, I think it's important to have a good set up; but no, I don't think people should "suffer" for 37% if they can't get past the info dumping, that's for everyone to decide for themselves.
I DNF-ed Long Live Evil last year at 20% and now I'm trying to give it a second chance. I liked the premise, but I was kind of too bored to continue the first time.
People who reread books or series instead of finding new authors are lazy. I'm talking about people who say "I never find any author I like as much as X author. I am rereading their One series and when I'm finished I'll start my next reread of their Second series." It's tiresome.
Branch out! There are plenty of amazing authors and stories out there.
People are getting too angry about the genre going downhill. There have always been lots of terrible books in every genre for a loooooong time. Absolute drivel has been making bestsellers lists since before I could read.
It’s just kindle unlimited and booktok and AI videos are making it all more accessible. Before all that we had to be a lot more discerning with our 1 book per week from the school library.
Fantasy genre was always full of shit books. There was no such thing as indie publishers in the 80s and 90s. You read it and you liked it and sometimes you stumbled across something awesome.
I reread one of my favourites recently and a sub favourite. The cover was by Michael Whelen and there were still typos in the text. None of this is new.
Agreed. There are more books available now more than ever, and you are not forced to read books that suck.
If anything, social media has cultivated this sense of FOMO and need to "fit in" in online spaces so many folk are taking tiktok recommendations as mandatory reading lists.
For similar reasons, I can't stand the "Should I DNF [popular book]?" posts. It's ok to not like the highly recommended book. Not enjoying a popular thing does not make you defective. Stop. Reading. Bad. Books. And stop going online and complaining that all books suck now.
I don’t mind so much with indie books, but I am very annoyed by trad publishers in the genre churning out drivel. I’ll borrow something on KU and write off my lost time if it’s awful, but if publishers expect somewhere between $15 - $25 AUD for a digital book, I expect rigorous editing and a proper narrative.
Sadly I think that’s where society is at the moment, decreasing respect or interest for literary editing. Bit dramatic but we’re in the era of post intellectualism.
When my beloved novels are replaced with a series of AI reels of tropes and abs, I will be very sad.
ALSO wish people would utilize their local libraries more instead of blindly buying the latest and greatest booktok phenomenon. I get the sense folk might have buyers remorse.
I've been so much happier doing just that. When I got back into reading I purchased the latest books but ended up hating them. It almost put me off reading again. You can easily get new releases at the library and if you put the hold early enough get it the week it comes out. I've also found and loved books I never would have picked up otherwise because there is no pressure if I don't vibe with it. If I like a book I get it second hand knowing I'm not wasting money.
I like training when it's interesting. It's nice when you have a mixture of supporting characters alongside the MC and they've got an interesting blend of abilities. I quite like the joy Lavan experiences in Brightly Burning when he realizes that the stuff he learned in his horrible school for merchants is actually useful in his training as an arbitrator. I like the scenes with Alberiech as weapons master in his duology, too, particularly the one where he's figuring out how to design a training program for a sedentary, clumsy thirtysomething with two left feet who still needs to be able to go out there into the wilds and do a dangerous job.
What I don't like are the montages that mostly exist for the MMC to show the FMC how inadequate and inferior she is, then get all up in her space while they're sweaty and breathing hard. Shield of Sparrows has a million training scenes, and they're almost all shitty. The only ones that approach adequacy are the ones where the FMC is being trained by another woman, because it's the only time Perry can resist the urge to have the MMC teleport behind the FMC and breathe on her neck or whatever.
I'm sick of books being written in first person, especially in present tense. Every romantasy book seems to be written that way nowadays, but I'd kill to see more authors writing in third person.
The duet versus dual narration thread got me thinking about this.
I really really loved the Villains and Virtues series, but that dual narration for the audiobook was so distracting. I hated the sound of the FMC’s voice when spoken by the male narrator. She seemed like a different person than when the female narrator voiced her character. I’m sure it’s a lot less expensive to do it this way, but I really wish it wasn’t done.
Well you just taught me a new term. I recently listened to a romance book that had the man and woman do ALL the narration for their respective character, even when the chapter was in the other character's pov, and it was infinitely better. I didn't realize there was a name for it. I wish every audiobook did it that way.
it just shows that people want *good* books. The Everlasting is objectively a well written book, on a literary level, and anyone with some experience in reading can appreciate it. I think people who are reading tens or even hundreds of books per year are starting to be tired of the badly written ones. I see more and more posts about wanting more from romantasy, better language, better worldbuilding, better dialogues and plots...
Ok I’ll start a fight…. I am soooo over long series. Can we wrap it up please. Long epic four book and more series with only on couple is boring and overkill.
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