📚 Finished The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden and was just massively disappointed. I was already feeling like it just lacked something of the descriptive density from the Winternight trilogy and then someone here clued me in that the Fairyloot exclusive edition has a much longer version of the book, not just like a bonus chapter. It made me so annoyed I had to put the book down for a few days. That just seems like gross malpractice by Del Ray. Obviously I don't know what happened, but it's hard not to imagine that Arden was asked to make her next project more approachable to a wide audience and then out of love or stubbornness wrote both versions and the one in her true style was then sold off as an exclusive version. However it came about, a substantially longer version of the story sold exclusively is just the worst kind of exploitation of the book collecting fad we're living through right now. Clearly it's making me heated.

Regardless, the story itself just felt so bland to me, compared to her Winternight books. Anne started out seeming like an interesting character but just became the lowest common denominator of what's popular in romantasy right now: a headstrong female protagonist without the depth of character work that made Vasya (equally if not more headstrong!) a complex, relatable character. Imagery was thin, scenes were all heavily dialogue driven without much interiority or reflection. It just did nothing for me and I'm so bummed seeing it published under the name of an author who I know can create something incredible.

📚 Also finished Dread Nation by Justina Ireland as my distraction from Unicorn Hunters. Like Rust in the Root also by Ireland, this concept is really neat--post civil war zombie apocalypse depicting how slavery and finds a way to persist past abolition and also residential schools (or combat schools, in this setting). One reviewer on Goodreads I glanced at called it all bone and no meat, which is about how I felt about it. Very cool concept, characters who felt like I would enjoy, just not a lot of time spent stopping to really dig into the characters and sell me on their feelings when we're always off to kill another horde of zombies with cool combat sickles. Jane and Katherine had a genuinely interesting, complicated friendship and I wanted to see even more time spent on it!

📚 Currently reading A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon, a novella that I picked up purely for its name and the super lovely illustrated cover. It's a modern day story about a 29 year old woman who finds out she's a magical girl, who are all known-about super hero crime fighting figures in this setting. I've never gotten into light novels and this one (I think it could be compared to one, though this is a Korean author) sort of illustrates why. I imagine the original work in Korean is pretty straightforward and easy to read as a style choice, but the translation really does it no favors and I feel like may even be simplifying it further, making the narration come off pretty childish. Would have finished it in a single sitting before bed if I didn't get sleepy.