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He Who Drowned the World
Feb. 11th, 2025 02:43 pmExam over, so I finally have time to finish my book review!
I read "She Who Became the Sun" by Shelley Parker-Chan 3.5 years ago and liked it a lot (review), but when the sequel finally came out and was available at the library it landed somewhere in the big pile of "books I want to read but don't have the time for right now and/or it doesn't seem like the right moment mood-wise from what I anticipate the book to be like" – near the top of that list but it's a long list.
Then on my first date with L she mentioned that she liked listening to audiobooks because she also never has enough time to read all the books but she has slightly more time to listen to audiobooks, and that made sense to me so I checked which audiobooks were available at the library, and He Who Drowned the World was, so I decided to try it out. And only then did I find out that it's one of her favorite books, bonus. (She's reading the Steerswoman books now on my recommendation and enjoying them a lot, and I enjoy getting excited live updates.)
It was the first audiobook I'd listened to in ages: usually I listen to podcasts half in the background, and with audiobooks it's more of a bother if I get distracted and miss something. That was still occasionally annoying, it's much easier to go back in a book if I miss something (easiest in a physical book.) But overall I enjoyed it: I thought the narrator, Natalie Naudus, did a good job with the voices, and getting the accurate pronounciation of the names was nice. I also read very quickly, faster than I listen, but this is a book I wouldn't have wanted to speed through anyway.
I enjoyed it a lot. It took me a bit to get into it, and I wonder if it would have been easier if I had read the first book more recently. I was initially somewhat surprised to remember to what extent this is a fairly dark series where all the main characters are terrible people in different ways; but also so fascinating that it is hard to put down.
( Spoilers )
Overall a rather dark book, not a lot of gore but still very brutal in different ways, but it's very good and I thought the endings were satisfying.
I read "She Who Became the Sun" by Shelley Parker-Chan 3.5 years ago and liked it a lot (review), but when the sequel finally came out and was available at the library it landed somewhere in the big pile of "books I want to read but don't have the time for right now and/or it doesn't seem like the right moment mood-wise from what I anticipate the book to be like" – near the top of that list but it's a long list.
Then on my first date with L she mentioned that she liked listening to audiobooks because she also never has enough time to read all the books but she has slightly more time to listen to audiobooks, and that made sense to me so I checked which audiobooks were available at the library, and He Who Drowned the World was, so I decided to try it out. And only then did I find out that it's one of her favorite books, bonus. (She's reading the Steerswoman books now on my recommendation and enjoying them a lot, and I enjoy getting excited live updates.)
It was the first audiobook I'd listened to in ages: usually I listen to podcasts half in the background, and with audiobooks it's more of a bother if I get distracted and miss something. That was still occasionally annoying, it's much easier to go back in a book if I miss something (easiest in a physical book.) But overall I enjoyed it: I thought the narrator, Natalie Naudus, did a good job with the voices, and getting the accurate pronounciation of the names was nice. I also read very quickly, faster than I listen, but this is a book I wouldn't have wanted to speed through anyway.
I enjoyed it a lot. It took me a bit to get into it, and I wonder if it would have been easier if I had read the first book more recently. I was initially somewhat surprised to remember to what extent this is a fairly dark series where all the main characters are terrible people in different ways; but also so fascinating that it is hard to put down.
( Spoilers )
Overall a rather dark book, not a lot of gore but still very brutal in different ways, but it's very good and I thought the endings were satisfying.
