BulbasaurusThe7th

This book is not particularly my normal pick, but it was just so much fun!
Basically I find the whole idea of spies interesting, but I have issues with reading books that are heavily based on historical things, while assuming you are up to date with all those things. You need to understand the context, to know all the different events, people, important concepts and all. My knowledge usually isn't accurate and detailed enough to truly enjoy the thing.
I got recommended this one by my best friend who knows me more than almost anyone, though, so I knew it wasn't going to be something that I couldn't relate to at all.

The reason for that is that the story is really focused on the protagonists and not the society-wide implications of his deeds, while they also fit into a very specific time period and situation. Basically Mr. Wormold is a British man selling vacuum cleaners in Cuba, living with his manipulator of a teen daughter, being exceptionally mundane. Of course he worries about money to provide for the girl, so when a stranger shows up to turn him into an informant, he decides to go with it.
Now he is not a born spy, right? So he starts creating fake reports, sending in drawings of vacuum cleaners as some secret weapon. He eventually even gets an assistant, a charming lady.
Things get messed up as much as they can, making Wormold's life even more complicated.

The whole thing was just so entertaining in its messed up way. A little person, one who has absolutely no grand aspirations to be more than what he is gets turned into an extremely trusted agent, whose bosses put way too much faith into all the random lies he comes up with. That is something I enjoy; the reluctant person you can feel for, who makes you laugh in an emphatic way.

Again, not really sure what else to say about the book, it's just hard to review something that is so far from my usual picks, so I can't really even compare it to anything else. It was fun, though, which was what I needed right now. Dark comedy is something I love, so I guess this was a great book for me to connect something foreign to me with something I actually know and enjoy.

Have a nice day and keep your head down!

I've been trying to read this for weeks and I can't do it. The series is fantastic, I recommend it, but this last one is just a disjointed mess of scenes where characters act unrecognisable.
I'm not torturing myself any longer when this series would have deserved a much better conclusion, that makes sense and doesn't just pull apart everything that got built so far. I'm really not going to put more effort into this. Sorry.

Let me preface this by saying this book is 3 stars because of the things it lacks, not the things it has being not quite good enough. Some elements I actually quite liked, but one key feature was barely even there. Isabella was interested in dragons since childhood, something their Victorian-like world has an abundance of without the humans knowing much about them. Isabella is also wild and headstrong, always up to something, which is not exactly desirable according to her peers, she still manages to find a lovely, sweet husband called Jacob who is also into dragons. When she befriends a nobleman famous for going on expeditions, Isabella of course makes things happen so not only is Jacob allowed to go, but herself too. Writing Victorian female characters today is not something I am super into, to be honest. It feels like people can't imagine human beings like us living in a different type of society without doing cartoonish things, like a Victorian lady talking in 2017 gender studies language, being an absolutely loathsome bitch to everyone around her because she is fighting society or being a total boring ragdoll suffering everywhere she goes to make us feel pity for the poor, brainwashed slaves. I can tell you, young Isabella is neither of those; she is a person. A person who is imperfect and human, who is very much part of her surroundings and still has her own character. As she is telling her own story, now as an old lady, she even points things out about how she was at fault when some of her interactions turned mean. Sometimes she fucked up. She is not the moral centre of everything, as some authors like to do female characters now. Ms. Brennan even surprised me with some of these things. At one point the characters find some ancient inscription on the walls of a temple ruin where one of them talks about how a country offered money for any man who could solve and translate it, but he is sure she could convince them to give the reward to her. I was like “oh, right, here is the moment when she just magically has amazing skills that not even even professors and geniuses around her had”. But she didn't. She just said she doesn't know shit about stuff like this, thanks. So in my book she is fine. Not quite like Lizanne Lethridge from [b:The Waking Fire 25972177 The Waking Fire (The Draconis Memoria, #1) Anthony Ryan https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1456221270s/25972177.jpg 45880091], but she is fiiiiine. The whole memoir format is risky, though. You need to have a great protagonist (check), an interesting life story (check) and it really needs to have the pacing that makes the books interesting. Here is the issue with this. The dragons are barely there. Writing about dragons like it's the story of a naturalist, like this is science meeting myth and fantasy is AWESOME. It's the kind of stuff I eat up. But I feel here much of the otherwise short little book was spent on Isabella doing random stuff. Even while the main conflict involved dragons, they were just a vehicle for some fuckery. I really hope the rest of the series will bring more of the actual things on the book covers. Oh, those covers. They are so lovely. The book even had little illustrations, which were all A+, I really loved them. Again, a great feature of the thing, so I just hope that the story itself will be better and that the lack of dragons happened mostly because we needed to see the context of Isabella's life, her childhood, how she started her journey. Crossing my fingers for that. All in all, it was very readable. The style fit the contents, I found it very easy to read, which is not a bad thing at all. Some people constantly want big challenges on every page, but I personally can appreciate some smooth prose that makes your eyes glide through the pages. This was exactly that; a fun read you could easily fit in even between harder reads or stressful times without being overwhelmed.Also, a bit of a spoiler that anyone paying attention figures out just by reading the title and then the story. Her name is Lady TRENT. She married a guy called Camherst. We all know what that meant. It's sad, Jacob is such a lovely, lovely man. I will be interested in knowing how things develop after this to Lady Trent's old lady self. While I wasn't 100% sold on this, I would say it's a worthy read. I'm not going to push it on everyone I see at this point, but when the specific requirements are met I won't regret mentioning this. I'm definitely going on with the series as well, because I genuinely believe there is potential for the series becoming something extremely cool. Have a nice day and don't be such a lady, pick this up and start the adventure!

I barely ever read books of a series right after each other. Somehow I feel my motivation to read stays alive more when I switch things up. Doubly so when it's about thick volumes. In this case the individual books being so short did help me go. So there is that.

Angel keeps going on with her un-life as normal. As normal as being a zombie working for a coroner, who recently almost got murdered with her also zombie boyfriend by his zombie hunter best friend could be, really. Up until a guy with a gun steals a corpse from her at work. Of course she gets accused of being complicit or some such, but then things get weirder and it seems like there are more people being into the zombie business and taking it much, much more seriously than anyone would have guessed.

I assumed zombies were simply smarter and working by a different mechanic here, but never really guessed how much of a pseudo-mafia thing could possibly go on behind it all. It makes a ridiculous amount of sense though, eating brains works like an actual life and death addiction situation and there is no way to just get handed human brains legally for whatever purposes you need without some serious questions being asked. It really made me think about how organised life is. How (while yes, negligence and accidents happen, but) everything we do is documented and it all goes though a certain amounts of regulated hands to make even the death business work. Which is especially funny as a cousin of mine only recently quit being a prosector after something like two decades.
It all just hit that sweet spot of zombies being interesting and viable. I mean really, it's so much like human nature to form groups, get some hierarchy running and trying to make on a way to have a more comfortable and hassle-free way of dealing with the uncomfortable things you have to do. If you think about it, this is why we invented cars, plumbing, electricity, everything. So of course zombies able to think would do the same.

Here there is also some more personal drama, again, the right amount. Angel has things she needs to deal with and being a zombie didn't make them not important anymore. Just because she is something different from a normal human being doesn't make the difficult human relationships go away and I think that's part of this books's good parts. She isn't a victim, though. The book actually acknowledges that while things were and are stacked against her, she is not a helpless person who is not responsible with ruining many things for herself and in a way that also tell you that she also has the power to fix things. They don't happen overnight, but what's going on still has a chance for us to influence it for the better or worse.
From my experience this is something what a lot of modern “strong female characters” lack; a clear connection between what happened to them, their own responsibility of doing things, their issues and the solutions. Somehow the personal responsibility is always cut out and it's always someone else's horribleness or mistakes that ruins them, which they just have to fix without even acknowledging that they themselves could do something wrong. THIS difference is why Angel is a great character. (She also has meaningful relationships with men without trying to one up them. Which is increasingly rare and I love it. My worth as a woman doesn't come from the number of men I can humiliate and be a bitch to in a petty way, my own achievements are the reward.)

What I really appreciate about this is how it manages to deliver some positive thoughts without being in your face preachy and trying to be too deep and dramatic. It's still fun and full of action. Still has humour and good moments. It doesn't take itself too seriously to just fall flat and become a comical piece of... something unidentifiable with way too much pathos. This is something we should treasure; when a story delivers something worthwhile for different people looking for different depth. I doesn't need to be mindless and it doesn't need to be forced faux intellectual. Let the story speak for itself.

Oh, also it's fun that the story has some elements with investigation techniques explained. There is a part when they go and take fingerprints from an object found at a crime scene and maybe I'm just a noob, but I had no idea how that was done. As a fan of random information bits and pieces, this was awesome. Guess why I am so good at trivia games which I watch on TV avidly. I get so pissed when people claim reading fiction is useless because it gives you no factual knowledge. Eat your heart out, I learn new stuff every day from books with white trash zombies.

I'm obviously going to read the next book. At this point there is no way for me to not do it, so there is that. It's genuinely much better than it has the right to be.

Have a nice day and use your brains, one way or another!

When I originally read this book I immediately wrote a review, which for some reason failed to save. I wasn't happy. The details are probably not nearly as crisp in my mind as they used to be, but I feel I should definitely attempt to write some things done. Not necessarily because I feel they are useful for anyone, but because I would like to remember the reason for my rating and at least some things.

Some books are stars because they just lack something that would elevate them into something higher. Sometimes the book itself is fine enough, but they have some mistakes that are just impossible to ignore to me.
Here I think it's a bit of both.
Some years back the country's youngest prince was lost in a pirate attack as a child. Of course everyone mourned him but life goes on and things seemed to be going fine. They still do, except... someone managed to poison the king, the queen and the remaining prince, so the country is heading for a bloody war to decide who will be the next ruler. Unless the lost prince, presumed dead, get found somehow.
Some people are trying to solve the situation with a fake prince, someone approximately right for the role, but one crafty nobleman feels he could really, really train one of the young boys e had taken from the orphanages. Sage, our protagonist is one of them and the boy has some serious issues with his attitude, but maybe that's what's needed to sell himself as the true prince.

Well, here is the thing, for all the dark implications of the book, it's still one for children. Very possible I'm the one who has issues here, but somehow it just felt like the pressure wasn't all that much. The atmosphere wasn't build up to be truly oppressive or for me to feel the true weight of things. Then again, Darren Shan can do it. He wrote his vampire books for children and somehow you felt it being heavy. So I don't know. Was it too short? Not willing to really go hard? I don't know.
Of course the same thing made it a very fast and easy read. Maybe for children it's a bit less traumatising than The Saga of Darren Shan, which I have to admit was much. This one, though, felt fine as a palate cleanser and something to read when you don't have to concentrate too much. It wasn't taxing.

Now the thing that I consider a mistake. It's the big plot twist. The big reveal, which is so incredibly nonsensical I couldn't help being surprised. Really, it wasn't unexpected because it's such a brilliant idea, but because it's so convoluted and just stupid you hardly believe anyone would actually do such a thing.

Don't get me wrong, I think I will read the rest of the series when I don't want another super heavy,, gazillion page monster. But I don't think this is an essential read as far as fantasy OR middle grade goes.

Have a nice day and don't rule this out completely!

Did not finish.
The book is so weirdly written that I had a hard time concentrating on anything. Verbose, like it swallowed a thesaurus, it just really killed the momentum. I mean many of you would probably like it, but I didn't feel like I was having fun when I had no idea where we were and where we were going. It also all sounded the same. Different characters' inner monologue sounded like the author, not like separate people.
Absolutely not for me.

Some people on here seem to give their 5 stars exclusively to books that supposedly change their lives and amounts awesome when mentioned in a serious conversation. There is nothing wrong with that, but I can't help just handing them out to books that were a fuckton of pure FUN in my opinion. This book is like that. Yes, you can say it's not the most original thing ever written by anyone, but I like to think of it as just... comfortably familiar, not boring and lamely cliché. What it does, it does well.
I have to point out that I've not seen Serenity (not really a sci-fi show fan, sorry), so Retribution Falls reminded me of anime instead, mostly Cowboy Bebop, Baccano!, with a tiny bit of FMA. The violence was stylized in a way that it really wasn't shocking or hard to read, and the same goes for all the angsty backstories of the characters. If you want something with plenty of action, without it being too too dark, this is a pretty safe bet in my opinion.
The characters are morally ambiguous enough to be kind of fun and honestly, I find them pretty much impossible to not like. My personal favourites were Crake (rich boy turned pirate because of a professional mistake) and Harkins (war veteran with a ton of issues).
Honestly, even though I have approximately 0 experience with steampunk, if it's like this, I think we will be good friends. Will definitely continue with the series, will recommend to my friends (aka throw it at their faces, sorry).
10/10, pure AWESOME

So here is the thing. I expected this to be much more my taste than it ended up being, which doesn't mean it's necessarily bad, just not my absolute favourite at this moment.

So why is that? Mostly because I don't love the short story format. Hell, I don't read short stories, not even when they are connected to series I love. I just much prefer stories playing out as a consistent thing in hundreds of pages. Something about them just feels like it's breaking up my personal momentum of reading through a book. So there is that.

The only character at this moment whom I love is Dandilion and his interactions with Geralt elevate even him when it comes to my enjoyment of the character.

I will definitely read more of this.

This book would be the perfect argument to prove that elite education is useless. Just listen to me. We have a lady, who comes to her senses in a ring of dead bodies, with no memories and letters in her pocket from her pre-amnesia self. They explain to her that she was part of some super secret paranormal spy agency that handles all the spooky stuff in the UK. But someone attacked her, someone with a conspiracy in the organization that's called Checquy, by the way. Our heroine, Myfanwy (pronounced like Tiffany) simply goes to work the on Monday and... handles shit perfectly. Can we be honest for a second? This is BULLSHIT. The original Myfanwy got educated in a super secret, extremely thorough luxury Xavier Institute for Higher Learning, then became a person in a pretty damn high position. There is no way some random amnesiac could handle that. NONE. I mean why do they get kids from their parents as babies and educate the shit out of them if you can just drop them in as adults and everything is even better than before? Another book with AWESOME ideas and super fun side characters, but with an author who feels like he just had these cool little bits that he mashed together into a story that has some fundamental bullshit holes. We have quintuplets with the same mind, super cool vampires, evil Belgian alchemists. And we're stuck with a ridiculous hero. Ehh... Reading the background of the others through the secret letters left by pre-amnesia Myfanwy was sweet, though, we learnt some about many of them and it broke up the main story in a way that I found nice and pushing me to read more. The action sequences were good, I enjoyed them a lot. Hey, I found even the flashback letters explaining everything, which could have gone dead boring really easily. The thoughts and dialogue of Myfanwy, though... So much annoying sass thrown around. I'm sure Mr. O'Malley is a nice guy who is interesting to talk to, with wits galore, but I could like characters without them saying something snappy all the time, I promise! I had really high hopes for this, kind of like a less annoyingly verbose version of Kate Griffin's [b:A Madness of Angels 6186355 A Madness of Angels (Matthew Swift, #1) Kate Griffin https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1305861910s/6186355.jpg 6366640]. Sure, it was less verbose, but in exchange, we got some other issues that stop me from giving it a better rating. Supposedly the second book will come out this year, which I will read. If not for anything else, then just for the side characters. The book ends with a last bit that gives potential to produce a pretty interesting sequel, so that looks nice.

Rating this book is not easy as it's actually two novels in one.
The first one is about Hadrian and Royce being framed for a crime they didn't commit, while having to protect the new king. The other is basically the search for a great hero through a competition of kill-the-monster. I preferred the first one, though the second set up many interesting possible future plot lines that I want to see.

I've actually read this one a couple of years ago, even started the second one, but it was annoying, so I put the whole thing down. Now I couldn't just pick it up again without reading the first one all over again, as I... didn't remember that much. Whoops?

You know, I love bromance. A good story of friends going on an adventure, having to put up with each other, that is my jam. On the other hand, I dislike romance and annoying princesses. I guess we all get my problem with book 2.
Hey, I even really like Hadrian and Royce, because they shouldn't like each other, one is almost completely emotionless and more than willing to do some bad shit, while the other is super nice and just an all around friendly dude you can depend on. That's cool, though, I love their little dynamic and the parts that are about them, doing shit are A+. Do all the hero things, do some... stealing and shit. Have fun, have a good time.

Now the problem, which happens more in the second story is that Arista, the princess is a bitch. Don't get me wrong, her brother, the new king Alric is an annoying, spoilt little shithead, but we see that and everyone agree. Arista, though... she has the whining right for being a woman and we are supposed to just say “yeeeeees, you are a poor victim”. Her issue isn't that she has too little, but that there is someone who has a bit more and we can't accept THAT.
This is so ridiculously pronounced when one of the protagonists in the second story is this extremely poor girl, Thrace, who has nothing. The girl has a super sad life and she doesn't bitch 1% as much as Arista does. Even when Princess MeMeMe gets an important position... she bitches about how she has to DO THINGS NOW.

Now let me return to the fact that so much is being set up in this. I am not sure how much is going to come into fruition, as I've read a good 150 pages of book previously and it was the Arista Being Annoying Show.
There are elves, though. I don't love them in general, they are one of the races that have the biggest chance of becoming cheesy as shit. I don't want beautiful people staring into nothing, being super deep and wise. So I hope we won't have that. Still, it's obvious there is plenty of possible depth for them. Don't disappoint me, please.
We are also before a war of different groups trying to get the power and that can be cool as well. We've seen some of that, some workings and one piece of extremely obvious foreshadowing (we are looking for someone with a necklace, while someone is casually mentioned to have one, how weird). I'm not sure how all that will turn out.

We also have characters I hope are not going to get tossed side for bullshit love interests who are boring as fuck. I want Thrace, Myron, Esrahaddon.

There is a story going on here that I would love, but the series seems to consistently miss it. Some parts are really fun. Genuinely. But I also have issues with the series that stop me from being a fan of it.

Again, we have two books in one, about the imperialists and nationalists having fights for the power and our characters being tangled in all of this.
This is where my issue starts; we spend too much time on boring or annoying characters. Royce and Hadrian are still fun, they truly work well together. We also have Esrahaddon, Myron (who isn't even in this book at all), but we get ridiculous doses of Arista, the special snowflake princess and Modina, who used to be nice before, but is boring as shit now. Hell, we get brand new people who either die or don't even shop up despite being someone extremely important.
My bigger problem is Arista. Nothing is ever good enough for her, she is literally a princess revolutionary who is the strongest witch ever and she is still never happy about anything and we have to feel for her. I bet she will become Empress or some shit at one point, where we”ll be told she is still saaaaaad. I can't stand her. She makes bad decisions all the time, still manages to fall upwards every time and never understands her luck. It's impossible to please her.

Another thing I don't like is sailing in fantasy books. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing with the whole sea aesthetic, but I don't know shit about sailing. I don't know what the words mean, I don't know anything about the technicalities. When the only enjoyable point of view turns into a ship extravaganza.... I'm not having a good time.

I genuinely think I will like the prequel series more. No Princess Snowflake at least.
Yes, I will finish this series, even though this one was too long, but I don't believe it will be too satisfying to me. It's just fine.

This was... an interesting one. I'm still not quite sure how I feel about it, but I couldn't give it less than three stars. I mean the action was good, I enjoyed it, the setting was something different (I know absolutely nothing about Russia, so don't kill me if the whole thing was off, I don't know better), but it still had the YA marks that will probably never make it my favourite genre.

The atmosphere was really what I like. It had just enough darkness in it without trying to emotionally bully you into feeling sorry for the characters more than necessary. It wasn't trying to be too poetic, just enough to make me enjoy reading and the beginning felt amazing.

I personally am not a fan of books written in first person, mostly because it has the huge risk of failing, simply because I can't stand the main character. In this case this didn't ruin the whole thing completely, but I would have preferred it from a third person view, because honestly, Alina was probably ma least favourite from the characters. She was too much of an emotional roller coaster without me feeling such a huge development in her as a person. One moment she's sickly and boring, the next super strong and tough, one moment she is oh so independent, the next she cries all the time. To me that doesn't make her likeable, just a moody child. (Also, the whole thing with the lame-ish girl who is chased around by a bunch of hilariously charming men is the biggest cliché in the world.)

The worst thing that actually made it lose a star from my original idea of four was the writing of the romance scenes. Somehow those parts made me shudder. It was probably partly the fact that it was written in first person, but they felt cheesy.

Then we have her on again, off again lads... They made it so obvious that you're supposed to root for Mal that I can't help assuming that there will be a twist to redeem the Darkling. He was definitely my favourite, even with his ridiculously suspicious behaviour before him turning out to be evil, but I honestly hope his redemption won't come through his honest love for Alina, but through himself and nothing else. I just want him to be more than really evil, but suddenly sympathetic, because of true love.

I probably sound a bit hard on the book, but all in all, it was pleasant, I'm already reading the second in the series, so it still managed to keep me interested. For some reason I really came to care about the smaller characters, like Baghra, Ivan, Zoya, etc.

All in all, the Darkling and the action scenes carry this whole thing. It's worth a read, especially if you're into YA and you're not bothered by some romance. 6/10