Yağmur yagmur

** to be updated **

This book is a candidate to become the first book I DNFed this year and believe it or not it's not because of the grand and lofty (!!) ideas of the protagonist. I am capable of tolerating ideas I disagree in a character, but there is no basis to their expression and existence in the book and the author uses his protagonist as a mouthpiece for his own ideas. And when you don't have to tolerate unnecessary monologues, there are detailed expressions of the sea and different types of fish, and turns out that's not my thing either.

** contains spoilers **

This is the 3rd Peter Pan and Captain Hook related book I've read this year, and judging by my tbr list I believe it won't be the last.

I really loved reading this book and read the last 200 pages in a day, so obviously I think the storyline was brilliant and the writing style was very elegant, and original. I am not sure if the ending was better with that unexpected (at least for me) addition/twist or would have been better with the good ol' fairytale ending but it is probably the former. There's always some undecipherable allure of the idea of soul-mates. But I think what makes this book great is its redemption arc and how believable it feels. A former villain with a more likable past wouldn't have had the same power over the readers.

⭐ 4,5 stars

In the best way possible typical Douglas Adams humor and genius!
The idea how everything is interconnected was carried out very well, and the bits about Coleridge were just amazing!

You see, some people are born with a piece of night inside, and that hollow place can never be filled—not with all the good food or sunshine in the world. That emptiness cannot be banished, and so some days we wake with the feeling of the wind blowing through, and we must simply endure it as the boy did.

I could try but probably miserably fail to express how much I love everything about this book! Being a huge fan of Bardugo anyway, I had high expectations but this book lived up and beyond my expectations. I loved every single one of them but my favorites were Ayama and the Thorn Wood, The Witch of Duva and When Water Sang Fire I've read the Witch of Duva earlier, and was absolutely mesmerized by the story and the twist it took. The other stories in this book are no different.

Without giving spoilers, I can say that the writing style is definitely magical, the themes dealt in each story carefully matches with the impression nations and cultures they hail from made in Bardugo's other books. They don't feel like modern retellings at all, it is as if they are told from one generation to another for centuries. Every single one of the stories reconstruct the prevalent notions of traditional fairytales and the societies that came up with such fairytales.

You know these: the boy and the girl lived happily ever after, all you can wish for should be a rich and handsome prince if you are a girl, if someone has a "physical deformity", they are wicked, villains are not made, they're born and it's the hero's duty to defeat them and so on. It's not news to anyone in 21st century that how brutal or cruel fairytales can get. Reading these brilliant short stories made me wonder why the fairytales everybody knows and learns growing up aren't like that and why can't children grow up learning, to quote one of my favorite characters in this book, "that there are better things than princes."