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Pacific Fire & Dragon Coast (Daniel Blackland #2-3)
The rest of the trilogy came in at the library - and I have already read them!
Outside-the-cut reactions: I really loved the trilogy a lot. It's more upbeat and optimistic than the somewhat bleak first book suggested, the worldbuilding continues to be absolutely fascinating and original, and I enjoyed the characters a lot! (Especially certain ones.)
Bullet-point All The Spoilers reactions with no particular context follow. If you like reading unspoiled, I recommend not reading the spoilers because there are some really nice twists. However, feel free to ask if you have any questions, because there is some pretty heavy content in this series - cannibalism, police brutality, slavery, graphic violence to name just a few. Also, obviously, if spoilers don't matter, read on!
Pacific Fire
• This book definitely needed more Gabriel and Max, and more Cassandra.
• Although I'm glad Cassandra got to take (most of) a book off, and I loved her adorable pink canal house.
• And I found the two different outside descriptions of Max that we got in this book made a hilarious contrast with each other. Gabriel: he's very aerodynamic-looking and kind of pointy. Sam/Em: this guy is hot as blazes and should definitely be modeling underwear or something.
• Sam and Em were really sweet teens and very charming, but I kept wanting more of the book to be about the characters from the previous book.
• But I did really like them, which is important since the next book is all about Saving Sam, and this book did get me invested in him enough that I wanted him to not die!
• Low-key side note about Moth having a boyfriend with no big deal made of it was nice. <3
• I loved the pilot lady and was sad when she died. ;___;
• Okay, the nightmare abomination bat hounds are AWFUL and, like everything to do with hounds, becomes doubly sad if you start thinking about Max.
• But also it was really interesting to see the wide range of variety in how hounds or people with hound-like powers exist in society, from slaves to the lady running the osteomantic "glue factory."
• Which was really horrible, by the way.
• #Gabriel stop manipulating everyone around you 2k2045. Even if you're basically right.
• For whatever reason, one of the things I really loved about this book was all the descriptions of cozy interiors! The Emmas' safehouse, Cassandra's cozy little canal house, the Bautistas' farmhouse ... and also that Sam's reaction to every comfortable place he ends up is "this is so nice, I want to stay here forever." SAAAAAM.
Dragon Coast
• CASSANDRAAAAAAAAAAAA
• Max is such a BAMF.
• I also cannot fail to mention how much I loved the Daniel and Moth Show. I didn't really have feelings on Moth in the first book, but he is BRINGING IT in books 2 and 3, and I really felt how close he and Daniel are in this book. Also, hilarious snark right, left, and sideways.
• I really enjoyed the Northern Kingdom! It was gorgeous and fascinating, rotten in its own way but in a completely different way from the South. And the whole trope of someone having to pretend to be an insider while having total amnesia about what is actually going on (Daniel pretending to be Paul) is 100% my jam.
• GABRIEL-MAX-CASSANDRA ROAD TRIP IS ALL I EVER WANTED, I WILL TAKE 20 BOOKS OF IT. Gabriel tripping over tree roots and being generally useless in the woods! Cassandra being 100% done with both of them and wanting Gabriel to tell her just one likable fact about him in case she has to save his life later! The little shared moment of fellow-feeling with Cassandra and Max that Gabriel is sort of low-key jealous of!
• "He's not a dog. He's a man. And he's my friend." *crying forever*
• Gabriel completely losing it when Max is badly hurt! THE HAND-HOLDING! Please staple this chapter to my id.
• Gabriel made ALL the bad decisions in this book and was also the best jackass woobie. I love him.
• Everyone deserves someone who loves them enough to shoot them in the head if they're about to do something monstrous. ;______;
• I really appreciated that they actually used the word "love" for Gabriel and Max. More than once, even! *bawls*
• And I love that it's now solidly canon that Gabriel cannot become a tyrant like the Hierarch, at least unless something happens to Max first, because if he ever appears to be headed in that direction, Max will stop him no matter how much it tears him up to have to do so. And in all honesty this was really obviously a case of "power corrupts" and a sort of slippery slope due to trying to make decisions based on the Greater Good, because Gabriel isn't evil, he's not a bad guy, he's very genuinely trying to do what's best for everyone, he's just having an increasingly hard time seeing the people in the Greater Good math. Which is why he needs a Max.
• However, based on the tag scene, for the next 20 years Gabriel's trump card in every argument with Max is going to be "And also, remember that time you shot me in the head."
• And it won't work.
• I was honestly expecting way more angsty fallout from this, especially on Max's end, but NOPE, Max is just like "You know I was right, I don't even know why you're mad about this" and Gabriel spends about 24 hours being epically pissed at him before admitting that yeah, no, Max is actually right and they're fine.
• I really love the feeling at the end that, while everything is still an awful dystopia, it's getting a little better, piece by piece, because they're working hard to make it that way, and everyone is safe-for-now and happy and together. I also really love that the emphasis is on friends/found family more than romance at the end - Cassandra and Daniel don't get back together, nobody else really has a love interest; I think Sam/Em is the only romance that actually works out, and they're all of 17, so who knows. But it still feels like everyone got what they wanted, needed, and deserved. I really did not expect everything to work out this happily, and I'm very pleased with it.
Nitpicking
• There's a very definite continuity error between the first time we hear about Gabriel's mom's death (he saw her catch on fire) and the second a couple of books later (she submitted to the police and went quietly away and was never seen again). I get how this kind of thing happens, but there's just no real way to handwave this because it's fairly explicitly stated in both cases!
• I feel like Paul is a very obvious retcon of the golem plot in the first book - it doesn't even make SENSE for it all to have gone down the way that Daniel saw it with his mom leaving and the execution in the field and everything, and yet somehow end in her coming back and Paul being taken off and fixed somehow! However, it gave us the Daniel-as-Paul plot in the third book, which I loved, so OKAY WHATEVER. (I did, however, really love the change from his mom being just The Loving Mom in the first book, when all we knew was what kid Daniel remembered about her, to finding out that she's basically an awful person and one of Team Bad Guy. See, that one *doesn't* feel like a retcon to me; I love that sort of narrative switch-flip on the way that kid characters think of the adults in their lives.)
Outside-the-cut reactions: I really loved the trilogy a lot. It's more upbeat and optimistic than the somewhat bleak first book suggested, the worldbuilding continues to be absolutely fascinating and original, and I enjoyed the characters a lot! (Especially certain ones.)
Bullet-point All The Spoilers reactions with no particular context follow. If you like reading unspoiled, I recommend not reading the spoilers because there are some really nice twists. However, feel free to ask if you have any questions, because there is some pretty heavy content in this series - cannibalism, police brutality, slavery, graphic violence to name just a few. Also, obviously, if spoilers don't matter, read on!
Pacific Fire
• This book definitely needed more Gabriel and Max, and more Cassandra.
• Although I'm glad Cassandra got to take (most of) a book off, and I loved her adorable pink canal house.
• And I found the two different outside descriptions of Max that we got in this book made a hilarious contrast with each other. Gabriel: he's very aerodynamic-looking and kind of pointy. Sam/Em: this guy is hot as blazes and should definitely be modeling underwear or something.
• Sam and Em were really sweet teens and very charming, but I kept wanting more of the book to be about the characters from the previous book.
• But I did really like them, which is important since the next book is all about Saving Sam, and this book did get me invested in him enough that I wanted him to not die!
• Low-key side note about Moth having a boyfriend with no big deal made of it was nice. <3
• I loved the pilot lady and was sad when she died. ;___;
• Okay, the nightmare abomination bat hounds are AWFUL and, like everything to do with hounds, becomes doubly sad if you start thinking about Max.
• But also it was really interesting to see the wide range of variety in how hounds or people with hound-like powers exist in society, from slaves to the lady running the osteomantic "glue factory."
• Which was really horrible, by the way.
• #Gabriel stop manipulating everyone around you 2k2045. Even if you're basically right.
• For whatever reason, one of the things I really loved about this book was all the descriptions of cozy interiors! The Emmas' safehouse, Cassandra's cozy little canal house, the Bautistas' farmhouse ... and also that Sam's reaction to every comfortable place he ends up is "this is so nice, I want to stay here forever." SAAAAAM.
Dragon Coast
• CASSANDRAAAAAAAAAAAA
• Max is such a BAMF.
• I also cannot fail to mention how much I loved the Daniel and Moth Show. I didn't really have feelings on Moth in the first book, but he is BRINGING IT in books 2 and 3, and I really felt how close he and Daniel are in this book. Also, hilarious snark right, left, and sideways.
• I really enjoyed the Northern Kingdom! It was gorgeous and fascinating, rotten in its own way but in a completely different way from the South. And the whole trope of someone having to pretend to be an insider while having total amnesia about what is actually going on (Daniel pretending to be Paul) is 100% my jam.
• GABRIEL-MAX-CASSANDRA ROAD TRIP IS ALL I EVER WANTED, I WILL TAKE 20 BOOKS OF IT. Gabriel tripping over tree roots and being generally useless in the woods! Cassandra being 100% done with both of them and wanting Gabriel to tell her just one likable fact about him in case she has to save his life later! The little shared moment of fellow-feeling with Cassandra and Max that Gabriel is sort of low-key jealous of!
• "He's not a dog. He's a man. And he's my friend." *crying forever*
• Gabriel completely losing it when Max is badly hurt! THE HAND-HOLDING! Please staple this chapter to my id.
• Gabriel made ALL the bad decisions in this book and was also the best jackass woobie. I love him.
• Everyone deserves someone who loves them enough to shoot them in the head if they're about to do something monstrous. ;______;
• I really appreciated that they actually used the word "love" for Gabriel and Max. More than once, even! *bawls*
• And I love that it's now solidly canon that Gabriel cannot become a tyrant like the Hierarch, at least unless something happens to Max first, because if he ever appears to be headed in that direction, Max will stop him no matter how much it tears him up to have to do so. And in all honesty this was really obviously a case of "power corrupts" and a sort of slippery slope due to trying to make decisions based on the Greater Good, because Gabriel isn't evil, he's not a bad guy, he's very genuinely trying to do what's best for everyone, he's just having an increasingly hard time seeing the people in the Greater Good math. Which is why he needs a Max.
• However, based on the tag scene, for the next 20 years Gabriel's trump card in every argument with Max is going to be "And also, remember that time you shot me in the head."
• And it won't work.
• I was honestly expecting way more angsty fallout from this, especially on Max's end, but NOPE, Max is just like "You know I was right, I don't even know why you're mad about this" and Gabriel spends about 24 hours being epically pissed at him before admitting that yeah, no, Max is actually right and they're fine.
• I really love the feeling at the end that, while everything is still an awful dystopia, it's getting a little better, piece by piece, because they're working hard to make it that way, and everyone is safe-for-now and happy and together. I also really love that the emphasis is on friends/found family more than romance at the end - Cassandra and Daniel don't get back together, nobody else really has a love interest; I think Sam/Em is the only romance that actually works out, and they're all of 17, so who knows. But it still feels like everyone got what they wanted, needed, and deserved. I really did not expect everything to work out this happily, and I'm very pleased with it.
Nitpicking
• There's a very definite continuity error between the first time we hear about Gabriel's mom's death (he saw her catch on fire) and the second a couple of books later (she submitted to the police and went quietly away and was never seen again). I get how this kind of thing happens, but there's just no real way to handwave this because it's fairly explicitly stated in both cases!
• I feel like Paul is a very obvious retcon of the golem plot in the first book - it doesn't even make SENSE for it all to have gone down the way that Daniel saw it with his mom leaving and the execution in the field and everything, and yet somehow end in her coming back and Paul being taken off and fixed somehow! However, it gave us the Daniel-as-Paul plot in the third book, which I loved, so OKAY WHATEVER. (I did, however, really love the change from his mom being just The Loving Mom in the first book, when all we knew was what kid Daniel remembered about her, to finding out that she's basically an awful person and one of Team Bad Guy. See, that one *doesn't* feel like a retcon to me; I love that sort of narrative switch-flip on the way that kid characters think of the adults in their lives.)