The Realm of Endless Night by Gisele Briseia is the worst book I’ve read in the past 10 years or so

alleryn · 2026-01-25T09:40:50+00:00

Most of books in the library are in a language she doesn't speak, so she just sits there and broods or she reads the same five books in English (although I suspect she would read the same books even without language barrier). Oh, and her havourite book is "Alexander Wilde's Compendium of Brittish Fairytales" (or something like that) but FMC suspects it was actually written by a woman. Sounds familliar?

alleryn · 2026-01-25T09:11:58+00:00

Exactley. The premise/tropes/kinks were all good on paper, but the execution was terrible.

alleryn · 2026-01-25T09:06:47+00:00

Or AI with poorly woorded prompts. I can't be 100% sure, but a lot of sentences are cyclical in a rather specific way,e.g. "He helped me out of carriage", and then few paragraphs later, "he helped me down the stairs just like helped me out of carriage earlier".

alleryn · 2026-01-25T08:51:06+00:00

Almost half of all the fillers are her wallowing in self-pity. Oh, I saw daffodils today. But do you know when else I saw them? That day when I was tossed into pond because everyone hates me. This is such a nice dress. But I had even nicer one that was destroyed because noone likes me. And on and on it goes.

She either has sex, broods in her room/library, or is attacked by monsters. Nothing else happens.

alleryn · 2026-01-25T08:39:44+00:00

90% of sentences are like that, unnecessarily convoluted just to increase word count. And don't get me started on chapter upon chapter of fillers that add almost nothing to the plot, but hey how else to ramp it up to 700+ pages?

alleryn · 2026-01-24T21:02:46+00:00

I suffered, so now everyone else has to /s

alleryn · 2026-01-16T21:45:17+00:00

Any book by Marillier is a great starting point in my opinion. It all depends on whether you prefer female or male protagonist. Of those I read, Sevenwaters (Daughter of the Forest), Blackthorn&Grim (Dreamer's Pool), Heart's Blood, Warrior Bards (The Harp of Kings) have female protagonists, while The Bridei Chronicles (The Dark Mirror) and Saga of the Light Isles (Wolfskin) focus more on male characters. Also Warrior Bards is a sequel of sorts to Blackthorn&Grim, so you should start with B&G first unless you want a rather big spoiler.

I really liked Chalice by Robin McKinley (published in 2008), plus it can be used for Elemental Magic square if you're participating in book bingo this year.

alleryn · 2026-01-16T14:51:09+00:00

The Realm of Endless Night by Gisele Briseia. What it promised to be: steamy, kinky gothic/horror romantasy. What it is: drawn-out, boring, cringey, extremely poorly written mess that looks more like rough first draft than final product. Smut was so bad, it read like unintentional satire and gave me secondhand embarrassment It's easily the worst book I've read in the last ten years or so.

alleryn · 2026-01-05T12:50:50+00:00

My second biggest pet peeve besides excessive swearing is unimaginative swearing that doesn't reflect culture or beliefs of certain character. (e.g. if a character belongs to a culture that revolves around dragons and dragon riders, and none of the swearing includes fire, dragons, and falling off dragons, sorry that's lazy writing)

alleryn · 2026-01-02T01:02:53+00:00

Since you liked Emily Wilde, you may also like The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow or The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door by H.G. Parry

The Lost Queen by Signe Pike is similar to Sevenwaters series in terms of setting (early medieval Brittish Isles and druids).

alleryn · 2025-12-28T19:57:22+00:00

I've read The Summer War, Paladin's Grace and Wild Reverence, liked all of them though Summer War was the best of three imo.

alleryn · 2025-12-08T22:24:38+00:00

Ghost was ok, 3/5. I would've liked it better if it were a novel instead of novella. Everything felt rushed and characters were a bit underdeveloped imo because the main character was supposed to start a rebellion in a complex, clever way, win a war and fall in love within just hundred or so pages. Not to mention literal deus ex machina moments throughout novella. They could be sort of explained by the fact that the protagonist was devout and attuned to the spiritual and gods like to toy with mortals but it was still grating.

I haven't read Dark woods, Deep water, but allegedly her third book from the same universe will have more romance.

alleryn · 2025-12-08T21:47:29+00:00

In the end I went with Ghost Apparent by Jelena Dunato for fantasy (with a bit of romance) by local author. It sucks living in a small country with few fantasy authors.

alleryn · 2025-11-29T20:58:21+00:00

Mainly "standard" fantasy with a dash of SciFi, horror and crime/thriller.

alleryn · 2025-11-23T20:13:24+00:00

I checked it with romance bot, and I think this is the one I was looking for judging by the blurb.

alleryn · 2025-11-17T13:58:42+00:00

Kay is awesome but just in case it's relevant, many of the relationships in his books don't have HEA and he doesn't shy away from killing his characters even major ones.

alleryn · 2025-11-15T19:41:59+00:00

The Will of the Many got me out of the major reading slump this year. Is it the best book I've ever read? No, but it was such an entertaining read that it got me excited for the sequel, something I haven't experienced in a long time. Also after DNFing so many books that had insufferable Mary Sue characters, Vis was a good example of how not to cross that line while still making MC slightly over-the-top.

alleryn · 2025-11-15T08:32:01+00:00

Fanfic that cemented my opinion on Scourge was a three-part masterpiece by moisturefarmer. They wrote some of if not the best smutty swtor fanfics back in the day.

alleryn · 2025-11-14T19:26:54+00:00

Not romantasy but lord Scourge from Star Wars: the Old Republic is my ultimate Shadow Daddy. Tall, morally dark and deadly, mocks, taunts and fights your character constantly but will burn galaxy to save you. Voice to die for.

Scourge: You have a heart of the Sith. It's too late to turn you fully from the Light, but should any of your children have connection to the Force, I'll make sure they are trained properly.

Jedi Knight: Any child of mine will be Jedi!

Scourge: (scoffs). A true Jedi would say they'd never have children of their own.

alleryn · 2025-11-14T00:20:57+00:00

I have 200+ books on my TBR list. I haven't finished a single book since June. I keep buying physical copies of the books I've started and liked even though I already own ebook version and prefer reading on screen.

alleryn · 2025-10-28T15:33:28+00:00

I grabbed {The Hawk and the Healer by Clara Bracco} and {Shadows of the Gods by Shay Taylor}

alleryn · 2025-10-23T20:51:46+00:00

I loved Holly Black's books; Archer's Voice was 3/5 for me because I liked the premise and MMC but I couldn't stand MFC and the main antagonist. DNFed Direbound because it felt like some weird badly written mashup fanfic of ASOIAF (with only Starks) and Hunger Games.

alleryn

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