[Jin] learned long ago that you couldn’t change the world, or even understand how it worked. All you could do was survive and make sure the people you cared about survived, too.
I totally fucked up.
Like, royally shit the bed, and I’d like future readers of this book to learn from my mistake by warning them not to:
Rewatch Mad Max: Fury Road right before reading Road to Ruin because while they may share similar world-building, that’s where the similarities end, and it will bum you the hell out to discover that after hyping your brains out over it for more than a year.
Genuinely, I’m pretty devastated because when I say I’m a massive Fury Road fan, I don’t mean I think it’s a great movie with a fun story, wild practical effects, and a soundtrack I’d have Doof Warrior blasting on his mega speakered Tonka truck as we rode into battle (or anywhere, really). While all that’s true, what I mean is I fucking love this movie, went to see it at the cinema multiple times, have rewatched it into the double figures, count it as one of my Top Ten comfort movies, think it’s the most interesting and audacious take on a post-apocalypse dystopia ever put to screen (or thought up in general), and would argue for it as a prime example of a movie score anthropomorphising itself into becoming a character in its own right.
Also Charlize rocked my entire world, and that is note-fucking-worthy.
So, when the publishers promote a book as Mad Max-ian with a flare for the magical and prehistoric, you sit your ass down, chrome your gnashers, and read the fucking book. You don't pause to wonder if you're being sold a falsity, you don't hesitate to click the insta-buy button, and you immediately make a goblin camp below the letterbox until it plops through and bonks you on the head. You don't spend time worrying if maybe the author endorsements on the back of the book promising a polyamorous thrill ride through an arid wasteland dotted with dinosaurs of all things is perhaps overselling the actual contents of Road to Ruin. But you should, you really very much should, and you absolutely should not watch Fury Road right before diving headfirst into the magical sandpit because you will end up with sand in your mouth and an aftertaste of disappointment. And not just because the Max of it all was severely missing.
The thing is, I could forgive being misled, I could easily get over not being chased across dunes by bogan, gearhead gremlins with a thirst for fertile young things (sorry), I really could; what really guts me is that Road to Ruin is one of those stories that's just, y'know, okay. And by that I mean there's nothing technically wrong with it: the world-building is pretty cool and the way Hana Lee writes it makes for a clear, textured visual; the characters are nice to be around, even if they don't inspire great affection; the story moves a mile a minute, throwing you into the action straight away and barely letting up; and the magic system is maybe not unique but still fun to get involved with. The problem is, there isn't really a problem. My heart didn't pound as Jin raced through the dusty highway delivering love letters between the two royals she's in love with, chased by rival magebike riders and primeval critters, not a thud or a bump. And what's worse, I didn't root for this love because it refused to feel palpable and long-developed as the story went on, even with the epistolary pre-chapters thrown in to establish the relationship been Princess Yi-Nereen and Prince Kadrin, and how Jin fits into the whole mess of it. I fucking love epistolary fiction, specifically romance, it's one of the best ways to lure my nosy ass into reading a book because it adds an extra layer of voyeurism to a story you're already watching from the gods without express permission. And for it to fail on me, for it to not inspire feral shipping?
And, again, I could actually let this slide because it can take a few books for my shipping instincts to kick in and get on board with whoever's going to pair off together. That's fine, no worries, but in Road to Ruin's case, it's like the whole premise of the book! And, yes, fine, there's some familial issues, toxic ex-girlfriends and forced fiancés, turf war problems, uncovering ancient highwaymen's secrets, and the decline of the magical population and their potential cleansing to deal with as well, but really, it's all about these three idiots racing from one disaster to the next whilst making heart eyes at each other. And I just didn't care enough.
I mean, I care enough to read the second book, especially now I know it's a duology, so it's not going to cost me much energy to see how Lee finishes this story up, but still, I wanted to be unhinged over this book. I wanted to be a total mess over badass Jin, calculating Nereen, and cinnamon roll Kadrin (I do actually love this sweater boy, he's the most precious, and I loved the reversal of gender stereotypes); I wanted to cheer and cry, and hold the book close even when it warranted a good hurl across the room, but, alas, that feeling never came. I didn't feel nothing, just not enough of something, and as a reader, that's basically the death knell for a story. However! I'm always up for being proven stupid.
So, come on, Hana Lee, make an idiot out of me with Flight of the Fallen; I'll look rad as fuck in a dunce cap as I eat primordial crow, or pteropter, if you will.
Ps. Big fan of Sou-Zell, the big tree, more of him, please.
🪄✨ #WitchHatAtelier pic.twitter.com/WlIts3wpX5
— ⭐️ Alina ⭐️ (@alinalal_) July 9, 2026
I don’t know how to explain how reading this graphic novelisation of one of my favourite books of all time made me feel, other than wonderful.
Plain and simply wonderful because it beckoned me back to reading The Raven Boys for the first time, filling me with that same sense of occult, Podunk wonder that came from being dropped into the landscape of Henrietta with the eponymous Raven Boys and their Blue as they search for their long-slumbering Welsh king. Only now I can see it more than just inside my head; the imagined world Maggie Stiefvater created with such sultry, verdant vibrancy is now in full and detailed colour on the page, and it feels as though it was plucked directly from that beloved place I keep Gansey, Adam, Ronan, Noah, and Blue inside of me at all times. I didn’t think it was possible for that to happen, for an artist like Sas Milledge to come along and see so clearly the same vision as I, and I imagine many others, did for this story and commit it paper, fulfilling some sort of hive mind prophecy. That, in itself, is an echo of the kind of magic to be found within Stiefvater’s tales of ley lines, sleepy monarchs, and dream sprung forests. It’s not ordinary, it doesn’t happen with every book-turned-graphic novel, and it’s worth taking a second to acknowledge that, to look around with a little wonder and awe.
What happened here is special, magical, even, and “That’s all there is”, ”Excelsior!”, and "Onward and upward!", to The Dream Thieves where Cabeswater waits and Glendower calls.
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