Reviews and Comments

Und so schön viel linke Kultur darin. Was ich weniger appreciate ist dass allen ernstes irgendsoeine Universal-KI die Rettung sein soll die mal eben alles löst. Come on...

Pluspunkt allerdings für »sier« bei einem der Hauptcharaktere. Ansonsten liest es sich wie ein früher Entwurf zu einem Buch, das noch ein paarmal durch Lektorat und Revisionen gehen muss.

Okay, maybe not obviously. In fact, this is the first Albertalli book that I actually like. But it is amazing, and I've read it in just two days.

Oh, btw, from the beginning it looks like this is a cheap girl-stumbles-into-the-wrong-conversation-and-jumps-to-conclusions-and-throws-away-everything plot - don't worry, it's not. It's really not :3

I also loved all the references to other sapphic authors. Casey McQuiston is named explicitely many times, and Imogen has three copies of One Last Stop in her bookshelf. The teacher is called Ms Dugan. And the book is dedicated to Sophie Gonzales. I love stuff like this, it's so cute. It's what I usually read the Acknowledgements chapters for (which I love).

I'm bored. I have high opinions of Dahlia Adler and I loved many of her other books, so I really wasn't ready to be so bored :(

did not finish, it's just not my genre :(

Ich shippe heimlich schon Rafael und Jonas, die wären schon cute zusammen... Und das ganze Ruhrpott-Setting fühlt sich einfach gut an, genau wie Lydias humoristischer Schreibstil. Auch du verdienst alles unter dieser Sonne.

... and found family. It's not really deep though, and the witch categorization is pretty similar to the one in Isabel Sterling's novels (no surprise, given that the authors are friends).

Cute bisexual lovestory. However, this is one of those books where the main arc passes pretty fast, but then there's still sooo many more chapters. So many more chapters that you begin to suspect a "person walks into wrong situation and jumps to conclusions" plot twist (which are the worst). Well that's not what happens, but still, at ~60% the plot is basically over.

This book is so full of cute absurdities, it's amazing. Hell's selection mechanism is AI driven? Homoerotic flirting between a human and a zombie? HELL YES! And even if the main romance arc is wlm, the entire book is so fucking gay.

What's frustrating to me, is that all of the time, different poems are mentioned, are their meanings referenced, but they're not printed. Also, the main character says some shitty racist stuff at some point (and gets punished for it), but doesn't really make up for it later.

To be clear: This book is quite often called a "retelling of Alice in Wonderland", but I don't really agree with that description. The book is full of references - for instance, you'll find an Alice (Icca's middle name), a Rabbit (Caro's last name), a Red Queen who asks for chopped-off heads, a Hattie (the Red Queen's first name), a Cheshire (the apothecary's last name), jabberwockies, and, of course, a Wonderland. And regular nonsense. But apart from that, Off With Their Heads has nothing to do with Lewis Carroll's classic.

It is quite fucked-up though, and confusing (probably on purpose). Fucked-up girls in a fucked-up world, lovers-to-mortal-enemies, siding with the Queen or against her. Slaying saints.

Oh right, that is a consistent Mikuta feature: Every one of her books is about killing religious entities. In Gearbreakers and sequel, the girls slay gods. In Off With Their Heads, they decapitate saints. I love that, can't wait for her next book. Whatever it is about, I'm sure some divinities are going to eat shit.

And is this a fucking throuple at the beginning?? A gay throuple as main characters?

Contra: Lots of violence against birds. Probably to demonstrate that the protagonists are horrible people, but I'm sure that message already comes across without torturing crows all the time.