Jurjen's Books by Status
41 Books
See all
Jurjen's Reading Goals
Jurjen's Most Popular Reviews
Original review: Man. What a fucking book. A fantastic and vivid setting, strong character work and dynamics, the plot, themes, and character arcs go hand in hand together very well.
But that ending. That ending has left me speechless. What the fuck was going on. So many questions. I need a sequel STAT
reread: yeah this book still absolutely fucking rocks, especially that ending. Those last 10 pages are batshit. So much depth and meaning to the dialogue, and it's got a really strong list of secondary characters (callidus and veridius probs being the strongest).
Still need a sequel stat
Blood Over Bright Haven is my favourite new pickup that I have read in the past year and a half, and it deserves all the hype it gets.
I tried writing a list of all the elements that made the book work so well, but that would undermine *why* the book is so good. Every element that makes this book great relies on another. The character work is enabled by the themes of the story, and the way the plot progresses naturally. Sciona's personality and character development was able to succeed because Wang put in the work of harmonising Sciona's personal struggle with a wider array of struggles present in Tiran. Without that, her arc would collapse. The philosophical underpinnings between the peoples in the story weren't just hollow, and existed to justify a few directions the plot had to go towards–as it so often does–but was consistently fundamental to character interactions through the entire book.
It is rare to say that a book in which you predicted almost all major plot developments accurately could still surprise and flounder you, and that it was enthralling from the first page to the last. But that is exactly what Blood Over Bright Haven did to me. It took me in its grasp, and never let go.
I ended up enjoying this one a fair amount! It started a bit rough, as the world Wight built felt a bit too thin to me (the society he describes shouldn't really be able to subsist lol), meaning that the plot felt somewhat vacuous. But I realised Harrison Ford's wise words: “Kid, it ain't that kinda movie.”
What surprised me was the meta-narrarive going on behind the scenes, which ended up being my favourite part of the book. I didn't really know what Cradle was about before starting, so that caught me off-guard, but yeah, Wight was able to incorporate it in the world in a pretty intriguing way.
I don't think the character work was particularly inspiring, and the story draws on some of the fantasy clichés of the 2000s/2010s (every story needs special classes/identity groups harry potter/hunger games/percy jackson/divergence style), but they're not particularly important. Overall, it's pretty satisfying watching the protagonist grow in power, which I suppose is what this series is all about. The middle 50% is better than the first and last 25%, but with everyone saying the series gets much better past b1, i'm pretty excited for the second book!
4 stars feels a bit on the generous side, i'd say it's about a 7/10 3.5 stars, but I round up.
