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Frieren Vol 4+5 and Skipshock
Jun. 5th, 2026 08:10 pmVolume 4 of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End was fine.
Some cute moments.
Some deep moments.
Some heartwarming moments.
Some stupid moments.
Volume 5 was really great, with Frieren and Fern entering a competition-style exam to gain the highest magical qualification available. There were a lot of new characters to keep track of but also lots of really interesting character development, magic use and intrigue about where it was going next - which left me wanting more!
Skipshock by Caroline O'Donoghue follows Margo, a teenage girl, who slips into another dimension and finds herself in a strictly regimented set of worlds, where the days can be anything from 2 to 36 hours long. She meets Moon, a salesman who travels between the worlds, and they get mixed up with a rebellion against the regime that's restricting everyone's freedoms.
The switching between viewpoints was initially very annoying because Margo's POV was third person past tense and Moon's was first person present tense, even though they were almost always in the same place and the different chapters followed directly on from one another. But then I realised it was the author's way of getting the reader to experience the 'skipshock' of the title, which is a disorienting sickness people suffer when they move between worlds too much. After that, it was still annoying, but I could see it was also clever and deliberate.
The setup of how the different 'time zones' worked was absolute nonsense - the more I thought about it, the less sense it made, but once I acknowledged that and just went with it, things were a lot smoother. I also wasn't a fan of the romance, which felt quite 'instalove' and a bit too obsessive for my tastes.
All that said, though - I really enjoyed this book and was extremely irritated that it ended on a cliffhanger, with no release date yet for the sequel! I thought it was standalone, but I seem to have inadvertently launched myself into a YA dystopian romance - but it was really good!
Some cute moments.
Some deep moments.
Some heartwarming moments.
Some stupid moments.
Volume 5 was really great, with Frieren and Fern entering a competition-style exam to gain the highest magical qualification available. There were a lot of new characters to keep track of but also lots of really interesting character development, magic use and intrigue about where it was going next - which left me wanting more!
Skipshock by Caroline O'Donoghue follows Margo, a teenage girl, who slips into another dimension and finds herself in a strictly regimented set of worlds, where the days can be anything from 2 to 36 hours long. She meets Moon, a salesman who travels between the worlds, and they get mixed up with a rebellion against the regime that's restricting everyone's freedoms.
The switching between viewpoints was initially very annoying because Margo's POV was third person past tense and Moon's was first person present tense, even though they were almost always in the same place and the different chapters followed directly on from one another. But then I realised it was the author's way of getting the reader to experience the 'skipshock' of the title, which is a disorienting sickness people suffer when they move between worlds too much. After that, it was still annoying, but I could see it was also clever and deliberate.
The setup of how the different 'time zones' worked was absolute nonsense - the more I thought about it, the less sense it made, but once I acknowledged that and just went with it, things were a lot smoother. I also wasn't a fan of the romance, which felt quite 'instalove' and a bit too obsessive for my tastes.
All that said, though - I really enjoyed this book and was extremely irritated that it ended on a cliffhanger, with no release date yet for the sequel! I thought it was standalone, but I seem to have inadvertently launched myself into a YA dystopian romance - but it was really good!
