The Procrastinators Book Club discussion

Welcome to The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic Buddy Read Discussion thread! This thread officially opens on July 6th and anyone can join at any time. Please keep in mind that spoilers are allowed in this thread but only up to the group's current reading place. Do not spoil the book if you've read further than the group. Any extra days can be used to catch up!

Each week we will be reading by chapters. The suggested Buddy Read discussion schedule is as follows:

Week of 7/6
July 6: Ayama and the Thorn Wood & The Too-Clever Fox & The Witch of Duva
July 7: Little Knife & The Soldier Prince & First Half of When Water Sang Fire
July 8: Second Half of When Water Sang Fire

PARTICIPANTS
~ Jules
~ Katie

I can adjust this if you want.

Looks good, Aless! Thank you :)

So I read the first three stories this morning (I know, a day late, but they go by fast) and I really like how they all have a "twist" ending, sort of a subversion of traditional western fairytales like Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, etc. I don't know if it's more common in eastern European countries like Russia to have fairytales with more realistic endings, so maybe Leigh Bardugo based it off of real life trends? Or maybe it's sort of a commentary on the Grishaverse in general, saying that it's a world where you can always expect the worst out of people.

So far, I think I like the first story the best, but I hope one in the later half will top it!

I'm also a bit behind on the stories due to busy schedules xD

But so far I'm really enjoying these stories. The messages and the twists that Bardugo adds are wonderful.

I think the Grishaverse is a very original, complex and intricate world. I'm glad she is able to expand it a bit more with these stories.

Yes, I love little Easter eggs that give you a look into what kinds of stories the main characters of the regular series heard growing up.

I love that the theme introduced in the first story--subverting your expectations in fairy tales--continued throughout the book. I finished it this morning and I think it's so impressive that Leigh Bardugo was able to carry that theme through each story, especially since there were elements of each that were familiar to me as fairy tales from our real human world lol.

ugh she's so talented

I'll be writing my full review on this book today, but overall, I think I'll be rating it 3 stars. I feel like it's not the best Bardugo book. The author has a lot of potential, and it was a clever way to expand the Grishaverse. The illustrations are incredible and the twists that the stories give are unpredictable. However, I was expecting something else. Perhaps not another version of the common fairytales: Hansel and Gretel, Little Mermaid, the Nutcracker. These are stories we already know and although the twist Bardugo gave were clever enough, she could have done something more original. I don't know...maybe it's because I was expecting too much from this book? It's certainly not one of my favorites. At first, I was really going for it. The minotaur is one of my all-time favorite tales so having that addition in the first story...wow, I really fangirled over there. But then I realized as I keep reading a new story that all of them were the same in the end. So I ended up disliking the overall idea a little bit. I suddenly remembered Marissa Meyer's book Stars Above and I felt like they both had the same idea. Meyer's books are based on fairytales so I kind of respected that and I already had that in my mind. But having Bardugo making retellings as well... I feel like it didn't match.

Done!! Full review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...