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a guy who is half angel half demon has to go rescue his husband and long-lost son from celestial shenanigans. kinda reads like if the DaVinci Code and The Old Guard had a baby. that sounds entertaining in theory, but you need to work a little to convincingly write an 800 year old character, and for me this didn't hit the mark.

the epilogue where a surviving character is thrilled that after so many years of surviving the pure horror of WWI, they get to move to berlin and work with magnus hirschfeld to legalize homosexuality is. well.

this may be the bleakest book i have ever read.

world war i was very bad.

any theme established in the first book is so very neatly and meticulously deconstructed by this book that i'm confused as to why this was written. neither the world, nor any single character grows or changes, which is weird because they do in the first book, and then all that change is carefully undone in this one.

like YA game of thrones if you played the curb your enthusiasm theme song over it, but not nearly as good as that sounds

i kinda want to describe this as "succession" meets netflix adaptation of the grisha trilogy, except greek, but that makes it sound way cooler and sleeker than it is. a bunch of powerful but completely inept immortal teenagers squabble over family dynamics. i don't mean that as a complaint- the complete inability of these characters to ever successfully do one single thing was actually what charmed me. i feel like usually in these deadly court dramas, everyone is a master manipulator pulling at strings. here, everyone is 200 years old and no one has managed to cultivate any strategic thinking skills in that amount of time whatsoever. it's refreshing and comedic. stars knocked off because it does drag on in between the failures.

navigates complexity in a propulsive and heartwrenching manner. the first half asks important questions that don't have answers, and then the second decides there are in fact earnest and hopeful answers after all. felt a little twee, but i adored these characters and felt so strongly for them, and i read this whole thing in one explosive rush. i may not completely vibe with the resolutions given, but i'm engaged and pensive and grateful over the questions being asked. edit: ok its been 24 hours and i bumped it from 4 stars to 5 stars because i'm still chewing this book over and i think i will be for months

<3 incredible.

this was stunning. i felt so full of every single emotion. reminiscent of portrait of a lady on fire for both the classical music tie-in and the interiority of women, tracing the paths of liberation and constraint and the day-to-day life thrumming throughout all of it.

this is a book about tragedy and joy and unforgivableness and triumph and sensuality and wet fleshy bodies and unappetizing foods and familial tenderness and betrayal and above all else, a book about falling in love.

amazing stunning gorgeous, gonna go read all of rachel pollack's fiction now

picked this up with no expectations and was blown away. a wonderful surrealist very lesbian mythology. half the story of a pair of lovers, and half the story of their daughter and her lover, and their relationships with death.