CrossCulture's Reviews > Crimson Bound

I loved cruel beauty , really loved it.

This is how I tell stories to my daughter when it’s late and she’s begging for a story and I got exactly 30 seconds to make up something incoherent. Something like this: once there was a girl, she lived in the woods, she got tricked by an evil guy who wants her all for himself because he loves her for no reason. She goes to a random place where he also shows up, and she also falls in love with this other dude, while she hates him, they take strolls in the house a lot, in the same rooms again and again, to find a sword for his boss. She likes them both, one commits suicide because the boss left the place and he likes his boss more , the other one is just so boring but she has no one left so she stays. The end. Now go to sleep.

I forget to tell her that the boss is a vague boring thing too, and the guy who commits suicide an idiot that lets the girl lie and scheme , and he pretends he likes that because that’s what makes her cool? She’s not even good at lying or smart enough to get away with it, but that makes her worthy? The other dude she hates , but 2 pages next and she’s tongue wrestling him and confessing her undying love for him while they are standing next to a sleeping monster. No reason at all for this, like whatsoever.

The whole search for an answer is boring too, the people around her too. The reasons they say things too, the way they say things, the timing of it.

This was bad. I could go on and on, but I don’t feel like wasting more time than I already did on this.


Ugh.