I went into this book knowing very little, the basics basically. The biggest pieces I knew were that the main character was a woman named Bryce, there were a lot of mythical creatures and hybrids, and that the author was inspired to write it after watching Zootopia with her kids. I honestly wish I had never heard that last part because I kept thinking about Zootopia and the similarities between the film and this book as I was reading. Knowing that bit of background information didn’t diminish how much I enjoyed the story overall, it just distracted me a lot.
As for the story itself, I didn’t like it immediately, and not just because it was kind of hard to follow in the beginning. Something about it just wasn’t drawing me in at first, but having finished it I can say that I would read it again, and I will read it again. People were not joking when they said that no one has any idea what is going on for the first fifty pages, and if they say they did then they were lying. I myself took about three standard notebook sized pages of notes while I was reading, two of them I filled up during those first fifty pages. I think that the overwhelming pile of information you get at the very beginning may cause some people to want to give up reading it altogether. But be strong! Once you get past all that and the story begins to unfurl, you will not want to stop reading. I think I may have hit a personal record when I finished this 799 page book in less than 48 hours. Essentially, I only stopped to eat, sleep, shower, take care of my cat, and assure a few people that I was alive and ok. It is rare that I find a book that makes me want to put everything else in my life on hold because I need to finish the story. I think my favorite thing overall was that even though the story had merpeople, fae, angels, and a bunch of other creatures, they existed in a world that also had modern technology. I have been longing for a story like this for a long time.
I was coming up with predictions as I went, but a lot of them ended up being wrong. I placed a lot of post its to mark things I thought were important to go back to. There was one specific phrase that is uttered many times in the ACOTAR series that was said a few times in this book. And even though I went into this book almost blind, I do go on the internet, and though I tried extremely hard to avoid spoilers, I wasn’t able to dodge all of them. I think the characters of Prythian might end up meeting some of the characters of Valbara. I think this phrase was giving us readers a hint. I am not joking when I say that as soon as I finish writing this review I am opening up the next book. My plan was to give myself a week to read each of the two preceding books in the hope that I would be ready to go once I got my copy of HOFAS. I really underestimated myself. I think I am going to end up going to a midnight party to try and get a copy of the book the very second it goes on sale, because I know I am going to finish the next book just as quickly as the first one.
Nonfiction and Nonsense 