#i'm devastated

Save your tears for something sad, because there’s nothing sad here. I have lived a privileged and an interesting life, and now it’s time to go. 

I want to bite something.

I think it might have been the best written book I've ever read (or maybe its just a combination of great writing and the type of book I just personally like.)

But the exposition is absolutely stellar. There's a knife's edge of explaining too little and leaving your reader confused, and explaining so much the book feels like an educational textbook, and the author doesn't balance on it, she fucking tap dances on it.

The story just plows along, never lagging while sneaking in concepts that will become plot important later. A concept will be briefly introduced in it's simplest form, then reintroduced with greater import, and then finally in it's subverted form in a plot point.

I found Gideon so charming and so much fun to spend time with as a character. And at the same time, every other character felt like the main character in their own story. When Gideon was walking around, briefly passing by, it really felt like i was getting a glimpse into half a dozen other novels. Each set of characters felt like they were really helming their own stories, not like they were supplementing Gideon. Everyone really felt like they had their own internal life in a way that is typically reserved for the main character.

I at no point could guess what was going to happen next. And it wasn't like the premise was all that unique in it's base ideas, there's a lot of tried and true tropes being employed. But the way they were combined and re-contextualized just made them so interesting.

You have the underdog pretending to be (essentially) a member of nobility, and the whole story is a closed circle mystery. But the suspects are all magical space necromancers and swordsmen trying to uncover a 1000+ year old mystery in a rotting castle on a abandoned planet. It's just all so cool and fun.

The dialog and humor are irreverent and fun, the aesthetics are cool as fuck, the characters are interesting and memorable, the world feels bleak and fascinating.

I was also a huge fan of the descriptions, the author really leans into non-literal descriptions that focus on how things feel, rather than the straight forward clinical sketch.

It was such a gorgeously written, gory, action-filled, fun read. I was sculpting a cottage replica when i hit the climatic part of the audio book and i straight up stopped blinking. Had to take a minute and address my watering eyes before i could continue.