It finally came off the hold list and… I waited sixteen weeks for this? It was perfectly okay, but oh so tropey: a combination of country bumpkin magic user goes to school (cue the usual leveling-up montage of exposition-filled classes, professor stereotypes – I think one of them is even Kung Fu Man!, fish-out-of-water insecurity, and petty student feuding), Sailormoon heroine (with great power comes great naivete), and inevitable teen drama love triangle (I continue to be uncomfortable with books that posit that jealousy and possessiveness are hallmarks of epic romance, instead of being creepy and borderline abusive). Oh and the obsession with beauty = power comes across as super shallow and unfortunate. There is some legitimately cool worldbuilding potential (a literal void filled with monsters, blocking trade and travel? Think of the possibilities!) and a plot twist midway through the book that honestly took me by surprise… but mostly, meh. I have heard though that the duology is better, so maybe once Bardugo worked all of the tropes out of her system, she did a better job with this honestly cool world concept? I put Six of Crows on hold, we’ll see what I think of it in [checks library prediction] four months.