[JPK]

 Abyss, on 22 April 2026 - 04:06 PM, said:

 worry, on 22 April 2026 - 03:08 PM, said:

SE should go spicy. I think we deserve to know how many joints there are in a Forkrul Assail penis.

No.



No we do not.

But maybe we actually do?

This post has been edited by JPK: Today, 05:06 PM

[Abyss]

JPK, on 22 April 2026 - 05:06 PM, said:

Abyss, on 22 April 2026 - 04:06 PM, said:

worry, on 22 April 2026 - 03:08 PM, said:

SE should go spicy. I think we deserve to know how many joints there are in a Forkrul Assail penis.

No.



No we do not.

But maybe we actually do?

Maybe YOU do.

[polishgenius]

QuickTidal, on 22 April 2026 - 01:26 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 20 April 2026 - 11:15 AM, said:

FOURTH WING by Rebecca Yarros. Yeah yeah, I know. But I wanted to expand my reading habits with some romantasy, and this one tops a lot of people's lists.

It's good. The prose is nothing at all special (like you could port these characters and how they talk into any setting and it would still be fine), but I'm enjoying it for the Dragons and the concept (which lets face facts is very close to a modern Pern without the sci-fi element)

I have not reached the purported sexytimesTM part yet.

Finished.

It's fine-ish. It's DEFINITELY amateurish, the prose is stunted most of the time. Nothing about the world or the characters is embellished or overly interesting, or compelling. The School could be any stone castle...there's barely any descriptions about anything really. Like she walks into a purportedly ornate room and the description is about 2 sentences. An almost obscene amount of effort is spent on internal monologues and dialogue, with so much less on the setting or anything around the characters. Even the opening is a test where they walk across a long thin stone bridge from the main keep to the barracks and the description is so just not there...it may as well have been a stone bridge across a beige chasm with beige all around...when I say NOTHING is described, I mean it.

Also, I dun no if it's that I'm an old fantasy nerd, but every single "twist" that shows up near the end of the book was telecast to me in moments in the first few chapters, including the biggest reveal...and it's not like subtly hidden, if you're paying even mild attention she's shouting them at you....like "what a weird little passage about a specific book to bring up in a paragraph and then forget about, right?"...oof. It makes me realize that a lot of the reason this book is so popular is that it's ported regular romance readers into fantasy and since they've not read much fantasy before, a lot of this feels new to them? I dunno.

The spicy scenes (there are mainly two) are probably the best thing about the book? Decently written and would be titilating for any gender to read, and as I don't come across many of those in my fiction travels it was nice to read someone do them decently well.

Will I read the rest of the series? No. There is simply not enough fresh in this story to keep me interested when other authors have done these tropes so much better. Even the Dragons (which initially kept my interest) are not done justice.

I will, however, keep trying out romantasy authors to see if any of them land better.

I'm not hugely interested in spicy, though I won't actively avoid it, but I'm gonna read this book at some stage to see how the author handles the heroine's Ehler-Danlos syndrome, since I'm dealing with that and it sucks.

[QuickTidal]

polishgenius, on 22 April 2026 - 05:43 PM, said:

I'm not hugely interested in spicy, though I won't actively avoid it, but I'm gonna read this book at some stage to see how the author handles the heroine's Ehler-Danlos syndrome, since I'm dealing with that and it sucks.

I don't know the syndrome myself, but I feel like she approaches it well (since she suffers from it as well) in the lead character and I have no complaints, it fits nicely into the narrative without feeling like she's using it as a crutch, it's just a fact of Violet's life and something she has to continuously deal with.

Sorry you're dealing with it man.

[JPK]

After a string of heavier novels with a dark tone, I've started listening to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer narrated by Nick Offerman. While I don't think Offerman is someone I'd generally want as a narrator as he's usually pretty monotoned, for this he's pretty well matched.