User blog comment:JESSIEJJD13/2019: Year In Review/@comment-36744766-20191231081806

My thoughts:

1. This year was sort of OK, at the very most. As far as I know, I rated most of the books I played this year as exciting/recommended, including D&D, ATV, NB, BP and PT. Elementalists was rated electrifying/gold award, ACoR would be lukewarm/meh. But there are some weak books as well, such as PTR (Rating: Boring/lacklusture) and SK (Rating: Read at your own risk/zzzzzz, as in sleep inducing). Sure, they try to lure us with collectibles and score systems (mainly collectibles), but the result was, that didn't do much to garner readers' favour. So yeah, I don't really like this year's slate, even though I ended up liking some of this year's releases.

2. Yes. Maybe they have a theme for every year, and romance just happens to be this year's theme. Next year's would probably be adventure and mystery.

3. Definitely. After all, they've announced 2 adventure and 1 mystery series, and most of the upcoming releases have gender options, so I guess the Dark Age will be over by then, maybe by my next birthday/Choiceversary.

4. Maybe non romance/locked books are indeed expensive, and they're indeed on a money crunch. If this is really so, maybe fans will understand and rejoin the community next year. If not... then I don't know how much longer PB can survive.