Title: Of Rust and Gold

Author: Poindexter

Genre: Fantasy

Quick Summary: Keeping Up With the Harvers, coming soon to a TV station near you.

Thoughts:

This quickly became one of my favorite books on this orange hellsite, and that's quite the feat to accomplish.

I don't say this to stroke June's ego, or because he's my friend. Truth be told, this book is really fucking great. And it's obvious he has put a lot of thought into what he's writing and who he's writing about, and that he cares about this project very much.

The worldbuilding makes this world one of my favorite ones I've read about. True, it at times was hard to pick apart country names, but for the most part all the names slung about make sense and are easy to follow. And not just the names, the associations that go along with them. I love these countries. I love their cultures. I can see all of them in my head. I want to visit the Rhine.

Well. Something tells me I don't want to actually do that. But you get the point.

The biggest sore mark this book has is it's very hard to have positive feelings about anyone in this book. But it's supposed to be that way. All these characters are terrible people. Even Argus. Especially Argus. Fuck him, actually. I hate him. I want to shove him into a mailing crate and throw him into the ocean. But you know what? It's fun to hate him. So much bad shit happens to and because of him that I started to feel quite vindicated by my name-choice for him [Whore-gus, if you're wondering]. And aside from that, it's just fun to read about him digging himself further and further into his own grave. And I noticed a lot of people had problems with the fact this cast is so unlikeable... but again, it works. This is the sort of story that really cannot be told from the perspective of non-morally bankrupt people. And it's so much fun reading them all roasting each other.

In all seriousness, the biggest black mark this book has to its name is the fact that it really needs a round of editing. Especially with punctuation. Please read some guides on how to use commas. I'm begging you.  Also it took me an unbearably long amount of time to figure out what the "thing" from Prince Aayden's ship was, and this is one of the key conflicts. But also this could just be my fault.

But even this... didn't really impede my enjoyment of the book, honestly. It just would be leagues better if the punctuation was fixed. Please.

Another [really big] thing I liked is how personal struggles got dealt with. Argus cheating on Enyo? Big moral quandry about it. Not that he deserves to wax poetic about it, but whatever. Argus nearly dying? I wish he actually had, but I'll take his ever-present fear after the fact, too. Leo's alcoholism. Ever-present, a problem he constantly has to grapple with. Many of the characters have trauma and issues that help round them out and make them seem more human and I love it.

I still would kick Argus down a hill, though.