Hey, guys! We're back, and with another generally engaging and rewarding reading experience, once again provided by Malinda Lo. 
 A lot of what I got excited about in Ash has carried over to Huntress, which makes sense, given that Huntress is a companion novel/prequel, with the same world, same writer, etc. So once again I almost feel like I'm being spoiled with the abundance and variety of women, and the distinct lack of lady-hate and needless Alpha Bitches. Our lead characters, Taisin and Kaede, exemplify this rather brilliantly. They are very different characters from different backgrounds, with different personalities, skill sets, and perspectives, who could very easily be set into an adversarial rivalry, and they might be, in a lesser book. Instead, they fall in love. It's a fucking beautiful reprieve, let me tell you. 
 Similarly, I enjoyed the expansion of the world we initially came to know in Ash. It felt more fleshed out this time, albeit differently. We got a further in to the mechanics in Huntress - what exists, how magic works, how the fae and humans interact, what their history is, and even a small taste of politics, all of which I'll admit I sank my teeth in to a little deeper than I did with the Ash's fairytales. 
 I mentioned in that previous review that I had a few questions along these lines, and while they did get answered - vaguely - I'm still mostly in the dark as to why the gender-power dynamics are so weirdly selective. Council of exclusive female magical elders/advisers to the king? Check. Female guards? Check. Options for women's education? Check. Lady-lady relationships? Still pretty cool with that. Women still pressured into political marriages that only rarely provide opportunities for same-sex unions? Yeah, still doing that too. I dun get it. 
 Huntress's exploration of the world several centuries before Ash also allowed Lo to shift the setting to one more Asian-inspired, and it's an element that I enjoyed quite a bit. Admittedly, I'm not very familiar with Chinese culture, which is, I believe, what Lo drew from, but I thought the sort of European/Chinese mash up here was particularly well-handled. Nothing felt exotified or Othered, and there was a blessed lack of fetishistic weeby over-compensation. Lo included enough pointed detail to to prevent the reader from falling in to the white-as-default assumption, but for the most part, she just allowed things to be. 
 Granted, I dunno about this world transforming into the generically European-medieval one we found in Ash in only a few centuries, which doesn't seem long enough to change everything so completely, culturally, and yet very little in terms of technology, but eh. It's not super important. 
 Finally, I found Huntress to be a huuuuuge improvement over Ash in terms of plot development. Again, I'm not super familiar with classic fantasy or fantasy-related tropes, but Huntress struck me as having a fairly typical plot structure, just from what I do know of the genre. It's a quest novel: the characters are given an objective at the start, they go on a long journey fraught with setbacks, revelations, and loss, and then, you know, they fight. I enjoyed the set-up and most of the execution - it was simple, but the stakes were high, the challenge...uh, challenging, and the interpersonal conflict appropriately ~dramatic~. The pacing was miles better as well - Lo kept the story moving forward, and there was always a sense of progression, like we weren't just wasting time walking in circles with these characters so that we could pad out the page count. At the same time, the road towards the climax provided ample opportunity for the characters and world to be developed. It's a goddamn efficient plotline if nothing else, and for a fantasy newbie like myself, it was compelling and engaging. 
 Plus, sidebar: the fairy stuff was great. Lo's fae society has remained fairly mysterious over the course of these two books, but it's been enough to make me super-intrigued by them, and how they work inter-personally. It seems like all of the ones we've gotten to know as individuals have been similarly cool and aloof and very SRS FACE, and I can't really see that working for everyone. Like, where's the fae comedy relief? I wanna meet that person. 
 But. BUT BUT BUT. There were problems okay. Mostly the writing. Oh my goddddd the writing. 
 I think it might have actually gotten worse since Ash? Or at least, the style is completely different, so any of issues that showed up there - like the constant declaration of emotional states - can't be chalked up to the expositional style anymore... 
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