I thought the premise was SO neat haha Oh, yeah, absolutely! I love "trapped in a video game" narratives (I was also a huge fan of .hack//SIGN), and they were much thinner on the ground back then. On top of that, I also love time loops (which isn't exactly what was happening, but the resets functioned similarly), and of course, I'll never turn down a fantasy setting... in short, Vivian Vande Velde did a lot to appeal to my id with that one.
Oh god, now you've got me craving f/f fae romance... do want...
it wasn't directly connected to Graceling or something Yes, you remember correctly! It actually takes place earlier in the timeline than Graceling, and in a different country. There is some mild overlap in the stories, in that Fire reveals the backstory of the main villain from Graceling, but in an imo pretty interesting way, in that (iirc), it's not the main point of the story. The main character, Fire, has her own plot & character things going on, and the villain is just an odd side-note in her life—but those who read Graceling know the impact. I was actually surprised by how much I loved that book, because (unpopular opinion) Graceling wasn't my favorite book, but then Fire really grabbed me. (Goodreads tells me that I also rated Bitterblue fairly highly, so I must have had a good time with that one too, but I don't really remember anything about it asdfghjkl;... though iirc Fire shows up briefly as a side character! At least, I remember being so excited about that... <3 I haven't read the newest books in the series, though.)
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Oh god, now you've got me craving f/f fae romance... do want...
it wasn't directly connected to Graceling or something Yes, you remember correctly! It actually takes place earlier in the timeline than Graceling, and in a different country. There is some mild overlap in the stories, in that Fire reveals the backstory of the main villain from Graceling, but in an imo pretty interesting way, in that (iirc), it's not the main point of the story. The main character, Fire, has her own plot & character things going on, and the villain is just an odd side-note in her life—but those who read Graceling know the impact. I was actually surprised by how much I loved that book, because (unpopular opinion) Graceling wasn't my favorite book, but then Fire really grabbed me. (Goodreads tells me that I also rated Bitterblue fairly highly, so I must have had a good time with that one too, but I don't really remember anything about it asdfghjkl;... though iirc Fire shows up briefly as a side character! At least, I remember being so excited about that... <3 I haven't read the newest books in the series, though.)