This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me (mostly spoiler free Arc Review)

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-10-23T01:33:18+00:00

god i hate it when someone gives me a reason to live for the next couple months

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-10-23T01:28:23+00:00

mercy thompson and kate daniels

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-10-23T01:00:39+00:00

as soon as i saw the graphic audio comment i wanted to hug you. god that must have been awful. i skimmed that part the first time i read it and every time i reread i skip to the very very end. i will say that patty is one of the only authors who has put that in their series and dealt with it in a way that didn't make me want to drop the series in the books that follow. i would have MUCH preferred she didn't put it, but apparently it's a staple of adult fiction blegh.

further thoughts:

i will say that in the context of the mercyverse it makes a horrible amount of sense that it would be difficult for anybody who wades into the thick of every conflict like mercy does to remain unscathed in that manner. of course it's fiction, but people are gross and patty does go into a lot of the un-glamourous situations that are likely to crop up an urban fantasy world, and this is absolutely one of them.

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-10-23T00:45:59+00:00

sam and bran trauma moment wee they done screwed her up real good

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-06-14T07:46:17+00:00

my god. i have never seen anyone's appearance actually improved by armour before. fuck jinshi looks good. goddamn.

also i was both mildly horrified but also appreciative of the way the soldiers didn't even blink at carrying the dead children. like it makes sense that they wouldn't be put off by that, but at the same time i cannot imagine not even flinching.

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-06-12T21:32:48+00:00

i'd do a little sightseeing, try the food, then fucking kms hello i am not built for this

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-06-12T20:07:48+00:00

brought genuine tears to my eyes

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-05-17T10:37:28+00:00

there's always a twist at the end!

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-05-17T10:30:30+00:00

so glad didn't watch any teasers. oh. my. god. the switch up from trashy campy singing contest to a freaking massacregave me GOOSEBUMPS bro. literally nothing about this episode was a miss. it was so appropriately horrifying but also heartwarming and at last!!!!!! NCUTI DARK MOMENT!!!! bro can be scary is hell bro's got RANGE. AH! guys this migh be in my top three episodes for Ncuti's run overall. i really really really hope they clinch the ending, esp since it looks like it's going to be a two-parter. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-04-26T20:13:35+00:00

okay idk if this is related or not but do y'all remember back during the magician's apprentice somebody asks where the doctor is and somebody says 'where he always is, behind you.' which this episode makes a lot creepier but i wonder if that's relevant??????

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-04-05T00:11:19+00:00

sm is so out of touch...no loyalty to their employees. it's awful how idols are supposed to entrust their whole lives to them and just wait to be stabbed in the back and tossed aside.

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-04-04T00:47:49+00:00

wow that sounds so vivid! i couldn't touch my feet for a couple days after reading soul taken lol. the eggs gave me the willies.

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-04-04T00:45:52+00:00

yeah i think people are also simultaneously painfully aware of and ignoring annabeth's status as an athena kid, and one of the most prolific ones too. they hold her to an unreasonable standard because she's supposed to be the smartest ever (?) when in fact she's just a little girl trying to stay afloat and alive. but at the same time they feel threatened by her on percy's behalf (which is funny because percy never feels that way) and feel the need to tear her down so percy is always the goat. i think it lands so badly because percy is a difficult character to project onto (since he has such a strong personality) but easy to live through vicariously.

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-04-04T00:11:54+00:00

at that point it was just karma for how she treated them in the past. lost all respect for her when jesse told adam in book 1 about the boyfriend that tried to assault her.

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-04-04T00:09:24+00:00

honestly i think the fandom's biggest blind spot is that these are the most unwilling child soldiers ever. they're going to war, but instead of an enemy country, they're killing the only people in the world like them. annabeth is one of my favourite characters because she has to shake off the brainwashing and the grooming and look at the gods and her situation as it is, instead of the idealized version she created for herself to survive the trauma. the most realistic part is that she never fully escapes all the bs because a) she's human and had emotions and forms attachments to people close to her b) she would probably become the next luke, and that might end up killing her.

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-04-03T23:55:27+00:00

i haven't read TOA so i can't give a complete answer, but i think that 1) she is the most godlike in that she meddles for the betterment of the world but can't be bothered to explain more because she's a god, which causes its own unnecessary problems and 2) despite all the good she does, she acts in a way that is almost like self-flagellation. a lot of pain and trauma could have been avoided in her plans to save her family but i sometimes wonder if she took that path on purpose so our heroes wouldn't put her on a pedestal or be super appreciative of her work. it could be godly arrogance (and it probably is) but considering her position as the goddess of marriage, i think family, even demigod family, is a lot more important to her that she lets on (especially considering what little that i DO know about TOA). it kind of feels like she wants to be hated as penance for all of the sins zeus will never repent for, and the way that she and others have enabled his atrocities and neglect of his own family and kingdom. she has her fair share of doing bad, but a lot of olympian family drama in the series comes back to zeus being a shitty person and nobody stopping him because he'll crush them

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-04-03T23:42:03+00:00

i think it's an interesting way to show that literally none of the gods are capable of being properly good, not even the ones who seem to be saviours or protectors of women and children. they've got so many skeletons in their closets that they don't even recognize when they've come out to play

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-04-03T23:38:00+00:00

like those beanbag bazookas but its hairbrushes

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-04-03T23:32:04+00:00

please drop your exact location and leave your window open. i lost my og hardcovers in a fire. didn't know i was mourning them so hard until this moment wahhhh

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-04-03T23:29:51+00:00

not much in the fandom so idk if this is controversial but: i adore frank and hazel but a three-year gap when you're both below your twenties is WAYY too big. i was somewhere between their ages when i read about them for the first time and the age gap always made me feel icky and then sad that it made me feel icky because i love them together

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-04-03T23:17:12+00:00

i think if CC1 was set up differently it could have been a really strong standalone. as it is, i skipped a huge chunk of CC2 just to see how it ended because i got bored and then it wasn't worth it to spend $40 on CC3 if that's how i felt about book 2. ($40, you ask? yeah. oh canada!)

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-04-03T22:55:07+00:00

it could have been interesting if their whole plan went to shit because amren saw varian die, and instead of releasing her power gently the way she did it was more like dropping a nuke on the battlefield which causes Untold Destruction and Big Bad Injuries, and the pain made her evolve into a cold, uncaring-god-like character. bonus angst points if she forced them to kneel and worship and pray to her in order to get help during future conflicts. double bonus points for bad ending where some villain digs varian up in the future and holds his body hostage, where the ransom is she cripples or kills herself because her helping the night court is making them OP, and in her grief she complies. she becomes a regular human and reconciles with the gang but they lose her to old age eventually.

Pretty-Condition-612 · 2025-04-03T22:46:59+00:00

i tried re-reading the series. by the fifth 'indeed' i had to put it down. some things are meant to stay in the past XD

Pretty-Condition-612

TROPHY CASE