#*review

Gustave's death in this game felt like it was there for shock value. I think he should have been alive throughout the whole game but I think the reason for his death is to add to the theme's story about grief and moving on. I wish there was some reunion between him and Maelle in Act 3. If he had to die in this game, I kinda wish it was later on because he died way too soon.

Act 3 was kinda rushed? I felt like they rushed a few things to at the end of the story. I do appreciate the game giving me a choice to play as Verso or Maelle at the end. I can understand both character's perspective.  I understand the game's theme around grief and how living in the past is not living.

The romance options were so unecessary? I don't mean this as a shipper. I didn't want to ship Verso with Sciel and Lune because they should have gotten together instead. 

after Spiderverse, i have loved almost every single animation to use that style. this is absolutely not an exception!!! the art style is BEAUTIFUL, it uses it perfectly. it creates this gritty atmosphere, almost sketch-like, but i feel like sometimes that can be it's downfall. some scenes were hard to follow, or i guess i just didnt understand what i was looking at?? more specifically in the fight scenes.

speaking of the fight scenes, they were fucking INCREDIBLE. i have a specific scene in mind but i'm keeping this spoiler free. i think this style needs to be used more in action animation!!!!!

i cannot get over how FUNNY this was. it had NO reason to be this charming and endearing. every character felt natural, every interaction thought out with care and love. the turtles and their relationships with each other and Splinter is probably my favorite rendition of their dynamics !!! Superfly as a villain was fucking HILARIOUS. every line made me laugh. my theater also really loved the comedy in this.

my theater was filled with a CLASSROOM -- i am NOT JOKING -- of young boys. their reactions made this movie that much more special, especially the black kids that saw themselves in the turtles. there was a scene where they were using AAVE (which they use throughout the movie, but im thinking of a specific scene) and i could hear them gasp with excitement. although this representation was not targeted for me, i felt it in the audience. it was very sweet

the soundtrack was incredible, such perfect songs with perfect scenes to go along with them!!!

I don’t quite know where to start with this review. It took me nearly a month to finish this book, in part due to its length (532 pages!) and due to my own personal commitments (university). I struggled through its twists and its turns, and I feel truly blessed to be able to have Muse of Nightmares as an ARC so I don’t have to wait until its publication in October 2018. 

This dual PoV novel of the connection between two very different people -- one brown, one blue--  is summed up quite well by a word of Taylor’s own creation: shrestha, meaning ‘when a dream comes true -- but not for the dreamer’.

Characters:

Where do I even begin. Lazlo, Sarai, Eril-Fane, all the characters are beautiful complex and each have their own struggles and response to the events of the novel. The most striking are, of course, Lazlo, the dreamer, and Sarai, the godspawn. There would be no novel without these two together. The don’t have any major, clear, character development which I found I liked. Both progressed in small ways-- Lazlo became more confident, less the orphaned librarian and more the dedicated scholar. Sarai went from one of four blindly following the guidance of the one who saved her, to the only godspawn willing to to step up and disobey Minya. 

World:

The way that Taylor builds Zosma and Weep is unreal. She winds a tale that, like the characters, seems so unbelievable that when its true you feel just as shocked as they do. The 0.1 point I docked was for the amounts of purple prose that made it difficult to sit through sometimes. I loved learning the history and about the world, but sometimes it was just a little too much and i would put down the book in a boring portion or skim in an interesting section so I didn’t have to read all of it.

Plot:

Y’all. The plot of this book is insane. There are so many twists and turns and just. little sidehand bits of dialouge or sentences that make you scream LAINI GOD DAMNIT when she doesn’t revisit it until three chapters later. Like, you can’t just drop that and then Not Say Anything for thirty pages. The way she structured it with the information given in the preface makes you wonder and fear in equal measure throughout the remaining 530 pages because you know how it ends but you don’t know how it started.

Final Thoughts:

Thank god i have a Muse of Nightmares ARC because i would rather die than have to wait until its publication and then however long it takes for me to get to the bookstore or for it to be in circulation at my local library. Also, yes, this does feature seraphim. No, they are not the same seraphim as in Daughter of Smoke and Bone. Yes, Laini Taylor does have a thing for seraphim. I know this for a fact because someone asked her at the San Diego Comic Con panel I went to and she was unashamed to admit it.