BulbasaurusThe7th

So here is the thing about Rachel Aaron. I feel like something is missing of most of her books. They are not bad or anything, but they are mostly not amazing quality and really put together. This was another example of that.

Opal basically does the storage auction version of flats in this futuristic and magical, lawless version of Detroit. She gets the place on an auction, cleans it out and the stuff in it is hers to sell. She used to be a rich girl of some sort, but in exchange for freedom she has a huge debt to pay too her dad, which means her recent horrible luck with finding juicy stuff is really bad news.
Then one day she finds a place with a dead body and she figures out the person was doing something dangerous. She needs to find out, as something that dangerous can potentially mean big money.

One thing I have to warn you about. The story of the book ends at around 85% of the book and the rest is basically just sample chapters of other stuff from the author. I mean I can't blame her for the hustle, really, but at the same time this is already a very short little book. Depending on the price you pay for it, it is something you should consider and also the reading experience can be different depending on if you know the book is going to end soon or not.
I personally don't like sample chapters neither from the next book in the series nor something completely different. Just in general I hate reading parts of a book I don't have access to right now in full form, because either I'm wasting time or I will like it and want to read it, in which case I'm shit out of luck. I'm probably not the only person with limited access to whatever I need right away. So there is that. So from my point of view this feature of the book sucked.

The thing is, Opal never becomes too interesting. She is fine, nothing offensively wrong with her, but like with the book, she is kind of just there. A tiny bit of “she believes she is ugly, but guys just love her because she is pretty after all” is present which is the overused trope of almost any kind of YA type book. She was made to believe she is ugly for a reason, but still.
Of course she needs a love interest, who is a walking trope again, namely the rough guy who seems like a total dick but deep down is such a nice, down on his luck heart of gold man with some sort of a dark past. Nik, you so original.

The story itself is fine, it's fast paced and kind of fun. Is it polished or ingenious? No. Did I get very excited about it? Nah. I'm not sure how much more it will become. Of course we will hear more about Nik's past and also the overarching story with Opal and her family for sure, but at the same time I'm nowhere near invested enough to care all that much.
It plays out in the same world as a previous series about dragons but that one seemed to be much richer and there were many more characters, so while the protagonists had their limitations we had many others with their motivations and scheming to make things a bit more interesting and push even the goody-two-shoes mains to do something interesting. This book would benefit from Amelia or Bob from those books fucking shit up for everyone. Just saying.

Overall just not a horribly exciting book. Serviceable, something quick you can read while you don't have much time or you are distracted by other things (hello, vacation time reading), but not something that got me too too excited.

Have a nice day and do more than the bare minimum!

Jack is going to die. As the book goes on, in more than one possible way, but alas, he has this illness that is definitely got good for him. He has a fatal insomnia condition, so it seems logical to do the kind of job where he needs to stay overnight; non-stop gas station attendant. It must be boring, yeah?
Except his workplace is outside a small town in the middle of nowhere, and things are not how they should normally be. Mutated raccoons steal cigarettes if you don't pay attention. Plants looking and moving exactly like human hands are growing outside that you have to burn sometimes or else they rip apart animals (and they scream while they burn). A death cult regularly comes in and buys up all the snacks.
At one point he just decided that hey, writing a blog about his experiences could work. What could go wrong?

Normally I am not super much into horror. I love the mystery parts, where you have the ominous feeling and you don't know what the hell is wrong. But the actual, being chased by the psycho with an axe? Nah. Not for me. Luckily, this was heavily based on the fact this person is telling you his story in first person. To him a bunch of the odd things are perfectly normal to him. He tells you like you would tell someone about a weird guy at work or the leaky coffee machine in the break room.
There is something cool about the almost bored tone. You know. It is what it is, the naked cowboy is in the bathroom again.

The issue with writing a review is, though, that I have no idea what to say that would sell you on this, but wouldn't say too much that is a spoiler OR that just makes me sound deranged.

Quit about halfway in.

I have read Dark Matter and I remember finding it fine, but not at all memorable, as I don't remember shit about it. Not the characters (there was a man... and a woman?), not the plot, not even the big concept behind it. Nothing.
This one is pretty much the same in that the characters don't really do much to me. I guess they are there and that's all I could be expecting from them, but this is supposed to be big and emotional. I should genuinely feel for them and go with them through some very challenging and personal events, but I'm just sitting here, going MEH.
The present tense doesn't help with it. I guess that ties into the mumbo jumbo about the past, the present and the future just not being a thing and stuff, but even spelled out that whole idea made me roll my eyes more than feel like it's very deep and such. The whole science part of the book made me feel like that, to be honest. Why? Because this book is fundamentally about time travel, explained through a bunch of nonsensical things.

The story happens to two people, in two times, an investigator and a scientist. Neither have that much of a unique voice, neither provokes too much empathy in me and with the investigator guy it's also pretty baffling as his story is that his daughter dies as a teenager, but he gets sent back and changes things. I get it, life is weird, it's emotionally taxing, but the way him and his wife who eventually figures stuff out just act almost... sad... PFFFT. I don't get it.

All in all, I didn't like this. It wasn't as exciting as I hoped, the science made no sense, the characters were extremely flat. The emotional load was nowhere to be found, the prose was meh. I just... I don't like this one much. Everyone else does, though, so there is that.

I really couldn't love this book all that much. Somehow the story itself felt like some half-baked urban legend you could read on Facebook, shared by people who don't think stuff through before deciding it's absolutely true. To explain why I think that, I will hide a lot of this review behind a spoiler tag. I am sure that makes my review a lot less valuable to people who have not read this yet, but I think that's absolutely necessary to really explain why I gave it such a low rating.
Before that, some non-spoiler things, though.

One of the big, defining characteristics of the protagonist, Jules is the fact she is alone. She has nobody and she kind has to rely on only herself. That's a fact, she is used to it and still, somehow relationships with his new neighbours and even some characters outside the building just come to her. She has very personal conversations with people about traumatic events and their big life problems without knowing each other.
I find it unrealistic. Sure, some people in some situations can overshare. Happens. But to have that happen so many times with so many different people just feels like kind of lazy storytelling. The story plays out in a few days and I guess that was the author's self-imposed hardship, because to me it made a lot of conversations so damn unrealistic.

But now, for the mystery and why it just doesn't work for me .
Rich people have this big apartment building where they go when sick. Unsuspecting poor people are employed to occupy empty units, but in reality their organs are stolen to give to the sick, rich people. This is a big, posh operation, right? Well, why would they only have a handful of "donors" at a time? Why would they only use a few organs? If I was running such a thing, I would find a fuckton of rich people and use up every single organ of every single "donor". Dylan's heart was given away... but not the rest? Why? They are willing to do this, but they also throw away two kidneys, a liver, corneas, pancreas, lungs, a whole lot of things that can earn good money for the operators. Why would it matter if Jules cut her throat? They have a whole hospital to keep her organs until they can quickly plop them into the people already lined up. Why do the rich people have to live in the building? It's not like they can't just go to some private luxury property to discretely heal. How do they know if someone will be a good donor? Poor people are generally not super up on their regular health checkups (hell, even non-poor people aren't, because humans) and I'm pretty sure organ donors need a bit more than your yearly "how are we feeling?" type stuff. What if I move in and it turns out I have a hidden health condition or I don't match any of the people there?

All in all, I feel the story wasn't nearly as smart and well-thought-out as it tried to be and that kind of killed it for me. Especially because not even the pressure was that much. It just wasn't scary and I don't feel the mood was as built up as it should have been. Really, I just didn't like this one very much. Easy read, though, so there is that, but I would not bring this up as a recommendation.

The thing with Grady Hendrix is that he always tells you the situation in the title. What it says is 100% what is happening. There is no actual doubt about supernatural events really happening or creatures really existing.
But his genius is in the fact that through the characters you still start doubting it. The events play out through a long time and so much of it is entangled with perfectly normal, everyday events that you will doubt yourself like the characters do.

Abby and Gretchen are best friends. Sure, Abby is poor and Gretchen is rich, but they still end up at the same fancy school (Abby through a scholarship) and they bond. For a time they are at the top of the food chain with their other two friends, Margaret and Glee, being cool and pretty and just doing all the things the right way.
Then one night, while they are trying supposed LSD at Margaret's weekend house... something happens to Abby. Something they assume is a horrible and ordinarily non-supernatural thing. But then things just get too weird to be a simple case of trauma.

The thing about Grady Hendrix is that so far, all of the books I have read by him were based around nostalgia and retro, but he approaches those things so great. Many times I feel those books try too hard and they also over-explain; they point out the references and why those things matter. Here we just get told about those things like they are natural. If you know, you know. I think that's the right way to do it, so it's not boring for the people who know, but the rest can still google those things, right? It just flows better.

His friendships are interesting as well. He never seems to pretend that friendships are always going great and they are perfect. In that way, he is much more realistic about human relationships, even if all his books seem to be about supernatural things. People aren't always kind.

Now, I will say, I don't think this is his best book, mostly because I prefer adult characters, but as far as teen ones go, they are pretty solid.

Did not finish it because not even the historical setting could save it from being very young adult.
I wanted to enjoy this more than I did, the cover is still amazingly lovely, but somehow it was too much of angsty romance and the protagonist being a bit of a special little unique angel. This is not me getting an asshole at the real life people in the book, hopefully I don't have to tell anyone why harming children is bad even if you hide behind lies about how it's totally for equality and the benefit of the people (I don't want to go too much into politics, but yeah, look at how that big equality and sharing turned out for millions of people... ), but this book really wasn't for me at all.

RTC

This book just didn't make me happy at all. The protagonist guy, Gabe really just sounds like those weak, whiny guys from sitcoms. At one point he says something to a woman and points at her boobs, then right away goes to “OMG, she must be so objectified, I am a horrible person”. Then he sees another woman and his inner monologue is all about how women have it so haaaard, so they totally must be so much better than men. We are talking about a conman, by the way. A criminal, who feels guilty about referring to boobs.
Honestly, I am not interested in some self-flagellating whiner with “snappy” dialogues that jump around to sound supposedly witty.

3,5 stars, I suppose. Breed is a mix of some gigantic lizard monster and a human, a bit of a dickbag, really. Raised by an evil gang boss mother does that. One thing leads to another and he ends up as the slave of a monk type of guys, with a crazy hobo and a little girl who looks like a rat as their companions. Shit happens. To be honest, part of it was actually fun and had a few giggles, but I don't really understand where this is going or what the author is trying to do here. Aaaaand the pacing of it wasn't great. More on that later. Before I start talking more I will have to point out the gimmick of the book. It's written in first person and because of reasons we technically never find out if Breed is a man or a woman. Now some people are already going on Tumblr-style yass kween sessions to express how this is representation for the pan-fluid demigenders who are so oppressed by society. Now to me, that's bullshit. (No, I don't need anecdotes from teen girls about how they are totally specialgenders in the comments, thanks, bye.) In my opinion it's really just a gimmick. I have no idea what purpose it serves to go out of your way to do this. Lets be real here, it's not like fantasy literature doesn't have female characters doing crazy ass shit (the authors who pretend just want to get attention and to earn a pretty penny with the “nobody before me wrote them strawng female character”). Whatever, I generally actually prefer old men characters, so there is that. Breed will be referred to as a he. Because it is a first person narrative we literally read the story as told by Breed, with his own words. Why does it matter? Because this thing is written in such a weirdly thesaurus kind of way that sometimes it is downright jarring with what we learn about Breed. Yes, it is mentioned that he got tutored and such, but many of the things he does are just so bloody practical that I doubt he would wax on poetically about some random shit. He breaks the blade off of a priceless historic sword because the pommel has jewels and he doesn't want to carry the whole thing to sell. Don't tell me someone like that would blabber on about nothing with ridiculously pompous words. Most of the time it's okay, it's fine, but sometimes it was a tiny bit irritating. I'm not even sure if it's intentional or the author went a bit over the top. The “use unnecessary purple prose because serious books for smart people have that” snobbery is finding its way into fantasy, so there is that. My other problem that kept me from giving it a better rating is that for such a short book there were relatively long parts of slower stuff, but in some places there is just a lot and quite a few story lines are already introduced. It's a trilogy, how will the rest be? I'm not feeling the whole story's flow at this point, it's more like going on a nice walk, just to burst into random sprints through crazy. Because of that I feel the weight of the situation is harder to buy as well. There are serious situations that didn't have too much impact because it was just not as well-paced as it should have been. I'm convinced this can be solved later, though, with a bit more experience. It happens. What I liked though was how the tone wasn't happy, but it didn't try to just press down on you. Breed can joke. Hard living situations doesn't have to turn characters into completely serious people and books can benefit from tonal shifts like that. It stops them from becoming what disliked about [b:Mortal Engines 287861 Mortal Engines (The Hungry City Chronicles, #1) Philip Reeve https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1352173057s/287861.jpg 3981652] recently; just one heavy mass of misery. All in all this was a fine book. I will definitely be reading more of the series to see how it all gets resolved, though I will probably pick up other things before. It definitely has potential, I just don't feel all the things about it are perfectly executed. There is nothing wrong with that, though. It's not a bad choice of a read if you want to pick something relatively quick. Have a nice day and know the dangers of this one!

Everyone heard about this case; Elizabeth Holmes started this insanely innovative health start up, to bring us a technology that would make healthcare faster, more effective, more convenient and cheaper.
She had investors throwing money at her left and right.
Then it turned out she lied. Her revolutionary blood testing system never even worked and SHE KNEW IT ALL ALONG.
As of now, she got a sentence of 11 years in prison.

The amount of fucked up things this company called Theranos did is off the charts. They lied to investors and users (doctors and patients) of the product alike. Holmes and her boyfriend, Sunny Balwani abused workers so much one man, Ian Gibbons actually killed himself. Other people, like Tyler Schultz had their families fall apart. They terrorised their critics with threatening to sue them, having them follower, possibly for years, by private investigators.
Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani are both insane, dangerous criminals who did things that are inexcusable.
Once shit hit the fan, they tried everything to stop it, from falsifying tests that ensure the quality of lab work, to terrorising people, to then Elizabeth Holmes claiming she only did her crazy shit because she was raped in college. Because that excuses faking medical tests that are crucial for people to not die of preventable illnesses. That excuses having a previous employee followed and threatened with “we know where you live” messages until she wanted to move to China.
They diagnosed people with illnesses they didn't have (surprise! you are not dying after all, sorry for you being in total panic) and most probably said people were clear when they weren't. By the way, they claimed they could run hundreds of tests, from testicular cancer to AIDS.

Now about this as a book.
It took me a long time to get into it, because especially at the beginning, it has a lot of names. Now of course it's a thing because of the insane turnover rates of this hellhole of a company. But really, it wasn't always super easy to follow who did what.
In the later part, it became much better, I felt like it all got more focused.

I'm not sure how good of an idea it was to publish this book when the court case wasn't done yet. That's another part of the story I would have liked to hear more about.

This one... oh, this one. You know, this is one of those books that are extremely readable, they are fluid and you just go on and on. But the moment I closed it, I was like “huh, did any of that mean anything at all??”. Sasha is 17, on vacation with her mother. A weird dude approaches her and basically tells her to go skinny dipping every night for a few consecutive days or else bad things will happen. She is scared, but does it, then vomits gold coins. You did not really think that after that, he would leave her alone, right? She gets sent to a depressing magical school and the fun just begins. Not FUN fun, you know, but.... the story, I suppose. If there is one. For the majority of the book, we don't really know how magic works in this book. I mean, even at the end, I wasn't particularly knowledgeable about it. Weird shit just happens, the protagonist does things and has things done to her that just make no sense and one of the main things is that nobody explains anything to her, because naming a thing both changes it and prevents it from changing. They all have to come to certain conclusions by themselves or it all doesn't work. Now, I think it was absolutely worth reading this book, but it doesn't give you the satisfying feeling of a story with a proper arch or structure or anything. Nothing is really explained. The relationships are not resolved. Wo don't know what happens to people who fail out of school or to ones who graduate. It feels like nothing mattered at all. I got that feeling during the story as well. Many times Sasha is told she can't do a thing or she does something that is dangerous or not okay. We are being told that the weird dude who approached her is super dangerous, we are made to believe he can kill your loved ones for defying him. He even does to someone else. But it all just doesn't matter, because Sasha gets away with everything. I liked the writing, though. It has that Russian feel to it, that kind of gloomy and detailed style that makes something so dull like the dorms feel... vivid, I guess. Now this won't work for everyone, but if you know what I mean, you know. So again, the technique was there. It really was, I just don't feel the story was properly utilised as such. It said many words that are supposed to be profound, I think, maybe, but to me it just felt questionable if it is. I will be honest, I read this based on Helena Paris' review and I thank her for bringing this to my attention. According to her, it has something in common with [b:The Magicians 6101718 The Magicians (The Magicians, #1) Lev Grossman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1313772941l/6101718.SY75.jpg 6278977] (I love it) and [b:A Deadly Education 50548197 A Deadly Education (The Scholomance, #1) Naomi Novik https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1596909044l/50548197.SY75.jpg 75543174] (I really dislike it). If you love A Deadly Education, I wouldn't automatically go for this. That book is a simple YA book with some emo makeup in a school. This one... this is weird and conceptually much more out there, so be prepared for a bit more than “UWU, main character is so cool and she doesn't know she is cool, but like... YAAAS”. It's also much weirder than The Magicians, that had its odd moments already. Just dial it waaaay up. All in all, I don't regret it, but it's also not my favourite ever either. It was a good idea to read it while on break from work.

Quit this shit about third of the way in.

Everyone nowadays is obsessed with the notion of a “strong female character”. I personally find it ridiculous, as a female character who is not necessarily a strong person can still be an interesting and strongly written one. Also, by now we all know it means one specific type of a female character and I don't like that type.
Emika is THAT type. She is 18, orphaned, super street smart. She has rainbow hair, tattoos, she is a master hacker and bounty hunter. Has no personality other than being super ‘cool', she also never really seems to actually do any of the work in connection with her hacking. She just looks at the code and magically knows what's wrong and what to do to fix it. Everything that goes wrong around her is the fault of someone else, because Emika herself is infallible and effortlessly so. Life just hates her, which should be a crime, as Emika is perfect. Casual lines dropped about a modelling agent discovering her as a child and being able to solve a whole programming introduction book as a teen without even reading it or going to class, because her dad had taught her to look at shit and SEE. I'm not making it up.

When your world is so heavily reliant on some sci-fi tech... you should genuinely think about it first. To me saying “the protagonist is just special and she knooooows everything because meh” doesn't cut it. It's a copout to write a book about a magical perfect teenage girl who becomes the most important, world-saving creature ever, while super scientists are also available. YA heroines are always the highest form of intellectual people and for some reason adults just deteriorate after 20. None of them are good for anything.

The totally obvious love interest is a cardboard cutout as well, mysterious dark guy genius youth and all. Who will fall for Emika for sure, because she is just so cool and so smart and so pretty. Blegh.

There is no way I'm reading more of this. It's so trope-filled and lame. It gives nothing special to you and it's cheesy.

Good night, I'm too cross with this to go on.

rtc

I don't like action and fantasy type deals that turn into annoying insta-love, “OMG, so complicated” romance bullshit. Sorry not sorry. I'm over the “she is not special but all the cool men are so into her because she is speshül”.
Life is too short for things like this, thanks, bye.

I'm sorry, but this is just dreadful. I read some of it, but... I can't do this. As much as I liked Nikolai in the original trilogy, he couldn't save this. Leigh Bardugo found success among the trendy YA of today, but lost me as a reader. Yes, I know, I am also sure she is crying into her pile of money about that, it must be difficult to hear I won't be reading any more of her books. So let me also tell you why. The thing I loved about the first trilogy was the worldbuilding. I like the pseudo-Russia and the powers and the Little Palace and the monsters and shit. That was what got me into this. I also really hated a lot of the characters and just wished for the author to do better at that. What she did was... go for the exact opposite with the Six of Crows duology. Yes, every person who isn't me absolutely freaking adored that one. I found the setting boring and the characters the perfect example of juvenile “UWU, a bunch of quirky weirdos together”. They were caricatures and totally unbelievable as a band of for realsies badass gansters. Like do fuck off, actual criminals won't fear a bunch of teenie bopper cartoon characters. So... I quit in the middle of the first book, which is supposedly not a great idea, as like one of the POV characters is from there. Whoops, my bad? Now lets just talk about this one. I do not expect every single character to be a nice person, and that's perfectly fine. I love a good asshole (don't quote me on that, I don't want to be known as the person who said that), but I want them to be known and accepted as assholes. Authors, please. STOP making bitchy, rude, horrid female characters seem like they are not only right to be so, but adored and treated like they are perfect little cupcakes for being abusive to everyone around them. First [b:A Deadly Education 50548197 A Deadly Education (The Scholomance, #1) Naomi Novik https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1596909044l/50548197.SY75.jpg 75543174], now this? Now some of you will be like “but ma'am, why are you saying that about female characters???”. Because male characters are regularly called out for this shit and we STILL pretend a cunty female character is yaaaas kweeeeen. Somehow people are stupid. Will I have to read through one more scene of Zoya being absolutely shitty and yet everyone falling over themselves for her? We all know she will end up with Nikolai and not change, so like. Just stop. Nina is annoying. Look. I know. Nina is fat. Which is... representation? Okay, but do we really have to mention it a million times that she does indeed like eating sweets? We all know what fat means and what you generally do to be so. I do eat a lot of stuff, candy included and I'm not skinny. Do you have to go there and do the whole “and Nina would never say no to a second slice of cake”? That sounds almost mean. Another piece of representation that went tits up is Nina being bisexual. Her boyfriend dies in a previous book, which is obviously a sad thing. At the beginning of this one she is absolutely wrecked by it still, perfectly understandable. So much so she drags his dead body through countries and hears his voice in her head. But like look, there is a girl riding a horse in men's clothes. Boom, bitch, a love interest. So what was that big fuss about the dead dude? Liking a woman is so different from liking a man that it's like romantic trauma doesn't matter if you just go play the other team. Again, so woke it's turning kind of horrible and hurtful. Besides, it's totally wasted writing, like what was such a big drama about Dude dying if she can just hop over like it's nothing? Another similarly tonedeaf moment. At one point Nina and her totally uninteresting companions (cheerful black girl and emo white boy with one arm) run into Girl in Dude Clothes and her similarly attired friends. To which Nina, traumatised by death, thinks ‘“oh, these oppressed girls, at least in my country women can be soldiers, that's so good”. Excuse me? They are FORCED. Grisha children are snatched from their families. Sure, supposedly not anymore, but I distinctly remember in the original trilogy extensively talking about this. How Grisha kids could never see their families again. They got abused into using their powers better. They were forced to hunt for special magical animals to have amplified powers. Then they became birds in gilded cages, who were just tools at the disposal of the rulers. One of the big plot points was the protagonist making herself sick with suppressing her powers to be allowed to stay with her friend! Hey, even the normal army had women. Surprise, they were all miserable and then they died. HOW EQUAL. HOW FREE. Why do people pretend that being forced into the exact same kind of slavery, pain and death as men is so much more free for women? What I've read of this was not great. I didn't have fun and I wasn't inspired to go on. It was just so... what sells now. In an uninspired way.

I quit 10% in and I will tell you all why.

First of all, I did not start to read this because of Robin Hobb. She seems nice and all, her books are just incredibly depressing and when a series makes my life quality worse there is no way for me to justify reading it. Again, it's not about her as a person. I really wanted to like her stuff, for a time I even kept telling my then-flatmate that my book was “going great” and “it was interesting” and “I'm sure it's just about to pick up”. It was so bland and depressing.
So yeah, my decision to pick this up was based on the little blurb and NOT because of expectations caused by loving Hobb. With that out of the way... I'm going to rant now. (Do I have to point out that I have no issues with the author? I don't know ANYTHING about her. Nothing.)

I can't stand a lot of the new fantasy being published nowadays. I'm not saying they have no place and they shouldn't exist, but I want to avoid them all like the plague. So what is my issue? The goal. The goal of the author totally misses the goal of me reading these books. What I'm looking for is some kind of an adventure, something fun that draws me in. What the author is trying to do is turning fantasy into something that takes itself too seriously, it tries to be too poetic and yes, even pretentious. The fun and enjoyment is lost by trying to be too deep, the movement and exploration is lost when it's all an exercise in writing something they believe will be “taken seriously”. The balance of well-written stories and characters and the spark of it being an enjoyable read is completely lost.
Exactly that happened here. Before anyone says “but people died here”, I don't mean constant fun times, just... I guess if I could exactly explain I would be writing it, eh? Some sense of wonder.

What we got instead was just a lot of fantasy language. It's too much, with too little context to really get a picture of it all. The frame of reference is pretty much “see? The world is rich and you will probably, maybe get it later or something”. To me that's pretty much just a shortcut to world building and I don't like it. It needs to be portioned out a bit, I won't just buy it because of sombre prose.
The characters were the same as well. Two siblings who sound exactly the same as POV characters. What the frick is the use of having them if there is nothing specific about either? They both sound boring and serious. When the book is in first person I need to buy the emotions of the character and none of that happens here, they both clinically describe being sad.

And one more thing. When a book takes its time to deliver one more preachy monologue of “but the women are all so oppressed, but here we are so open minded and in tune with 2018” instead of actually pulling me in... it's stupid. It's also such a cliche now, it's a miracle if we don't get one in every single bloody book. Fuck subtlety, just tell me I should be congratulated for living with a vagina.

So yeah, I don't like it, I will read something else instead.

Have a good evening and pick your poison!

I did not finish this. The characters didn't charm me and I felt there story was slow and kind of... not very interesting.
Possible that I will try this again, so for now I give no rating.

Gave up about a quarter of the way. Not really my thing. It's not bad, I will probably give it another go later, but I don't feel it at all.

Did not finish. I just feel this book is not for me, at least not right now. Something about it feels slower than the first one and I will be honest, I don't give a shit about Elaina being hyped up as queen of the motherfucking universe because the Rose (who, again, did what? We just get told she is the bestest and are expected to just buy it) acts like a stupid stronk womyn character stereotype and decides that any woman who goes her way is her best friend and obviously the person who is the most important ally. Without know her. Duh. We women bond like that. Vagina? Vagina. Now I trust you with my life.
Something just feels boring here. Keelin, I hoped for him being cool, but he is just meh. Drake FEELS cool but nothing really happens, I want him to pull of something crazy and he is just there.

Do I feel I will never ever read this? Nah. Maybe I will later. But right now I want something much better.

I tried, but something about this book just doesn't work for me. Things just happened and it felt weightless. So yes, I'm disappointed.

DNF.
The book introduced about 5 different points of views in the first 50 pages or so. The moment I thought I was kind of understanding things, we got a whole new group. Just too many things happened too fast.
Another issue is, I am just not super interested in the teenage girl protagonist. She is kind of... I don't know? Typical teenage girl protagonist? Not confident, quirky, has a super special life, but also everyone adores her.
At last, there was something that made me uncomfortable. At one point we get introduced to a kind of retirement home for mentally ill people who are also poor. It's a charity of sorts. The way the staff there is portrayed was... odd. They discussed the patients constantly, often right in front of said patients, calling them names and such. It was all light-hearted, but that's just not cool. Plus, one of the people working there is this big, burly gay man. We get told he is super huge and strong, he threatens people who are homophobic with physical violence (nice thing to do among legitimately mentally ill people, I am sure they never do or say weird shit because their brain is literally shutting down...), then he goes and REPEATEDLY sexually harasses an (as far as we know) straight dude half his size by badgering him constantly about having sex with him.
He also discusses the penis of an old male patient who literally can't even communicate and seems only semi-conscious. Not in a medical way either.... He is also super best friends with teenage protagonist girl, so we are supposed to like him.

Steam punk is cool. It looks awesome, it opens the gate for cool ideas and stylistic choices. For some reason, though, it seems a bunch of steam punk books are kind of meh. Which... yeah, it happens here.

Zaira is the only daughter of a legendary baron/airship captain and just basically a freaking awesome guy everyone loved. He went MIA 2 years ago, after Zaira's mother also died, so she is alone running the family farm the way she can. The neighbour family is there for her though, with their handsome son. It's all going kind of crappy up until people show up and tell Zaira that now his father is officially considered dead, so she inherited his airship.

You know, I am personally not huuuuge about teenage girl protagonists. To be fair I also didn't really love being a teenage girl too much when I was one, so yeah. Zaira wasn't that bad, I have seen much worse. Still, the characters were the big weakness of this thing. Somehow they all seemed to just do things and say things without it being... real? They claim to all love Zaira after 2 days of her not doing too impressive things. They also point out their feelings without me buying any of it, because the depth just wasn't there.
The whole “my dad is a legend, but I only know him as weird dad” thing is awesome. I love that, I love relationships like that. I also prefer friendships or family relationships compared to romantic love. Sue me.
Still, the characterisation of this thing wasn't good. The people just weren't relatable and the emotions didn't cut it.
Which comes from another reason as well; the story happens so fast. Sure, people can bond over harh conditions and shocking experiences, but here I didn't buy the thing with being so so close after spending together like 3 days in total.

The action itself was fun, though. As I said, the idea of this girl not really knowing how her father was seen was also fun. I just wanted it to build up more. To spend some time on it all being connected, not just events and concepts that we have to believe progress in a certain way because the characters tell us so. Honestly, the style needs a bit of work.

It was fun, though, it has a lot of potential with some technical development and work. So there is that. I will give the author more time, I am not against reading more from him. Al in all a fine book. Not brilliant, not the worst. Oh, well.

Good night and let out some steam!

RTC

UPDATE for my reread:
My opinion is still the same. Some ideas were fantastic in this. Some of the character work, impeccable.
But some of it is just... oh no. I have a feeling Chris Wooding is a bit uneasy about writing women here? Or more like, he dares to do much more interesting things with male characters. The women are mostly virtue signalling, “they are the best and smartest, but are oppressed, because women”. Except Vika. Vika is cool.
(Grub is the absolute best. He is so dumb, energetic and just gives zero shits.)

3,5 stars

I did not love this book nearly as much as I expected it and that's kind of sad, as I love Ketty Jay and I was very excited about this book. So why is that?

Ossia is a country taken over by the Krodan empire. If you cooperate you can do quite well, though still being considered second class, but rebellion is not tolerated and everything is heavily regulated. Aren is the son of an Ossian minor lord who fits in so they live a pretty great life, having fun with his best friend, the commoner boy Cade. Up until he starts dating a Krodan girl and so he gets his father in trouble as well, which ends with his whole life going to hell, with both him and Cade ending up in a prison work camp.
From there they get involved with rebels who try to get the artefact symbolic of the Ossian royalty (currently in the hands of the Krodans), the Ember Blade.

If you are writing a long book you have to make it worth being so long. Justify me going through all of that. Here some parts were extremely dynamic and fun, but some others felt like overlong and that was especially annoying when you KNEW this wasn't the end. The characters are in prison for some time at the beginning. Do you believe this is how they die if there are 650 pages left? No. No, you don't. So basically the immense length in a way took away a lot of the initial pressure, because PFFT, you can't kill them off so early. At this point it's inevitable, I guess, but still, personally I would have thought it better to make this book shorter, partly by cutting some things, partly by dividing the story into volumes differently, though we don't have book 2 yet, so I can't speak about that.

Some element returning from the Ketty Jay is the fact we have a ragtag team of individuals with different agendas working for the same end goal, which is a thing I like, though I preferred the kind of more comical people from KJ. Here the comic relief was provided by Cade and Grub, the bragging barbarian they pick up on the way. Sorely needed, really, as many dark things happen and the story itself is very serious. Similar feeling as with the author Sebastien De Castell, whose humour I loved in his first series, but it completely missed from the second. A waste, I feel as for both De Castell and Wooding I feel they do truly have a skill for snappy fun many authors try and fail at realising. Oh well.
Tonally still dark, but another character I need to specifically mention is Vika. Wandering druidess, trying to reconnect with her gods. She is taking part in the main conflict of the story, while also she knows there is an even bigger, supernatural danger coming, which will need the attention of the other people eventually. (Her dog is cute too.)
The other end of the spectrum; Mara. Oh, Mara. She is so much smarter than everyone, wonderful oppressed rich woman. She is doing what she is doing because she wants more glory for herself. Her character is just such an annoyance to me. Cade, the son of a carpenter was sent to a freaking prison camp among abysmal conditions because he dared to speak up and she still believes men have it so much better because women are wives and she herself couldn't become famous. I... okay? I find she embodies the typical rich woman living in way more comfort than she understands. End of my rant.

My big issue is how I felt the ideas and the chapters of the book had some pretty big differences in quality. Some were very interesting and entertaining, some others just the same old and nowhere near as clever as they were sold to me. (Fen, Keel's background story, the whole Mara thing... Just give me more Vika instead.)

There was a big theme I liked as well. Basically just because you like what someone does in the grand scheme of things you won't necessarily get on well with them as people. There is the conflict of what you are willing to take and accept for the bigger pictures vs. what is unacceptable and intolerable to you no matter what the end is. Do you really know people based on personal experiences with them? Does the context of them as people matter? Their past deeds, controversial and maybe even considered as mistakes?
Same went for the Kordans. You have to admit that they are doing certain things right; they can work together. You are supposed to root for the Ossian side and still, they are the type of people who have an issue with organising and working as a unit without infighting. In that sense it's understandable why they fell, because we are shown the issues in their society. They did weaknesses, they weren't overtaken through some magical intervention or “cheating” like that, it's comprehensible.

I'm going to read book 2. I'm not super mega excited about it, I probably won't throw myself at it at light speed, but I guess the interesting things are good enough for me, though I hope it will be a bit shorter, maybe around the 600 pages mark? I think it would benefit from that. I'm not going to super enthusiastically recommend it to anyone willing to listen to my blabbering, though I will probably mention it when relevant. So far I feel it's kind of meh, middle of the flock stuff. Not the single greatest way to start my year as far as reading goes. Oh well.

This one is typical for the type of books that have good ideas, start out great, then the problems kick in and you become a lot less enthusiastic about them. It's also... a first book. I wouldn't say the author used up her awesome ideas when she should have waited, but this would have been better if it was refined. In Corma religion and science got united, so the commonly held belief is that God is a scientist who looks upon the world as an experiment and people are just the rats running around in the labyrinth. The Nine refers to the nine most important people God is interested in observing, the nine who have to justify the necessity of the whole existence of the world. The catch? Nobody knows who they are. They could be the hobo down the street or the mayor. They also don't know what kind of an outcome is expected by God, what he wants to see or find out. Scientist priests decided they could approach God the most through hard work in scientific fields, but nobody knows anything for sure. The city of Corma is kind of shitty, though, full of crime and such. Rowena is one of the many, many street urchins who managed to find work as a delivery girl for a semi-legal businessman. Through her work she gets involved with some big things that endanger her. She has to team up with they mysterious Alchemist and a man dealing in some criminal matters to see the end of it. I remember reading [b:A Madness of Angels 6186355 A Madness of Angels (Matthew Swift, #1) Kate Griffin https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1305861910l/6186355.SY75.jpg 6366640] a few years back and thinking Kate Griffin was the most annoyingly verbose author ever. She killed her vibrant world's energy with overwriting EVERYTHING so goddamn much I felt like I wasn't even making any progress with reading. All the sentences had way too many adjectives that made it uncomfortable to read any of it and I quit three books in (which I should have done earlier, but I used to be an idiot with too much time) This one wasn't quite so bad at that. Really, some scenes flowed quite nicely. Still, it wasn't tight enough, some sentences made me think of teenagers trying to just... lengthen their works with these cryptic, emo sentences that they think are clever and poetic foreshadowing, but in fact for the reader they are just unnecessary fluff. My favourite example: “I could write about that scent pressing into my cheek a thousand times over and still not find the words to say how much it mattered.” Tone it down. Stop with the flowery crap, don't thesaurus us to death. Just do your fun ideas and different characters and such. This is not needed. Rowena was my other problem. She isn't too bad, she wasn't an annoying little snowflake who is too special and perfect for this world, which is how many teenage girl characters are written nowadays. But... she wasn't that great. It's especially weird because she is supposedly someone important. The side characters were much more fun, though. The Alchemist and Anselm were both kind of fun and interesting. I also really liked the scientist Chalmers. Luckily this book works with all of them, not just Rowena, so that works. I wouldn't say any of the lot twists were that big. You can see them coming, I think the most clever part about this book was the world building and the basic idea. On the other hand we didn't get into the big, overarching story too much, so I have no idea how long this series is meant to be. If it's a trilogy then I have no idea how we'll have any story that opens up the world, but if it's longer everything should be fine. Of course maybe I will be surprised. We'll see. I'm definitely going to read the next book, not because this was that much of a favourite of mine, but because I think with some guidance and learning the author can do much, much better. A side note; I love the colours and the artwork of the cover, I just wish the human forms would have been bigger, because they look good, just small. I am iffy about human faces being on the cover, because it can be a kind of... uncomfortable to stare right at someone when you look at your book. This one is pretty good, though. I like smaller authors putting effort into their covers, because that stuff does work. Have a nice day and pray hard this experiment works!