BulbasaurusThe7th

Gave up on this one at 24%.
Right now I am just kind of busy, I am still on the last days of things before my Christmas break, things are just a mess and I'm tired, which means my attention wanders. I have to be here and there, buy this, make that, remember, study, do everything.
This book did not work with that. It's just so slow and (to me) boring that I couldn't concentrate on it. I felt no willingness to pick it up again when I could be preparing for my last test of the year or after 8 hours of grunt lab work. Something about the whole mood of it just made me feel like I could not justify spending any more time with it. I feel this year of reading was pretty good in my case and I am not going to kill my momentum with ending up in a rut during the last couple of months. I want to finish the year on a high note.

There isn't much to say. In a post-apocalyptic place a young girl is raised by a mysterious guy in a forest. He ends up turning out to be a serial killer, so our girl runs away to find her real parents. At the point where I gave up she was making her way through long stretches of not much, really. Hunting and all.

I expect this to be thrilling, to have crazy adventures, a fast pace, just a lot of well-crafted suspense and that sense of nervousness that I enjoy. A bit of pressure. Instead of that I got a story about this girl who is not very educated and her way of speaking makes the extremely slow and boring proceeding feel even less fluid. The whole thing was like a march through this rough, dry terrain where I feel like I am losing hope every single minute.

I did not like it and I did not want to know more. Boring.

Good night and I'm hitting the road now. Not the wolf one.

This was genuinely one of the most grotesquely horrid things I could have picked up to read.
I really love the original series. It's innovative, it's weird. It has a ton of soul. It takes a group of incredibly flawed, unpleasant people and then it manages to break them and build them up and by the end I couldn't help caring about them. It was good. It had this defined mood. Something that worked for me.

This one, though. It feels like the writer only read some sort of a short summary without understanding what the hell the original was doing. One thing about the novels was that magic is hard work. You can't just wing it. It's boring and painful and it kill your soul a little. You grind, you make an effort. You have to be precise. You have to be a genius. Yes, even hedge witches.
Here we have a group of hedges just being allowed in to Brakebills. Why? Dunno. They don't have to take the exam, which was a crucial point in the novels. They don't have to take endless classes, they don't have to study patiently. They don't get sent to some Arctic hellhole to make them even more miserable.
Nah. They “just learnt Latin at a homeless shelter”. They just FEEL magic.
It looks like a spit in the face for the whole idea of how they gain true power in the books.

The magical protection on Brakebills just isn't a thing. Nothing exists. They literally teach battle magic to kids who don't even have the basics, because why not? Especially smart throwing in some kid who supposedly hates that they are even there. “Oh, you hate each other? FIGHT.” Brilliant.

The relationships between people are laughable. The whole thing starts with people kissing each other's ass and telling each other how lovely they are. Fuck off. The Magicians, the REAL ones had complex ways people related to each other. This one has “yassss, you are so GOOD, YAAAAS”.
Also insta love left and right. Two seconds of conflicts about it. Which gets resolved like nothing with 2 lines of dialogue.

What is pacing? We don't need no pacing.

Nor do we need art that looks good in any way. This was unpleasant to look at. The covers made me think this was going to at least be visually okay. Nah, mate. HORRID.

So basically shitty characters, done ugly, doing random illogical things, not following the in universe rules, the conflicts get left at nothing, nothing matters, the mood is ass...

I wouldn't recommend this to any living being.

DNF at about 70%.

This book feels absolutely pointless. The characters we should feel for are annoying, the rest are plain dicks. A bunch of things happen, but nothing feels like it has a meaning. It's quirky for the sake of quirky, nothing leads anywhere, we just have stupid side story after stupid side story. Don't get me wrong, I like stories that have layers, but not when it all just gets tossed in. Spies and Russians and mob and robbing the mob and seeing the future, but also like kids being fucking weird, but internet dating and like saving the wife of a criminal's son who is fucking over his dad but nobody knows shit , TV shows, super powers, but also cons aaand MLM crap.
Everyone is an annoying fuck. Now I know why nobody really talked about the ACTUAL plot, just used big words that mean nothing to describe it. Do not recommend.

DNF at 43%. Yes, I know it's frowned upon, but I absolutely did not feel this book. At all and I just didn't feel patient enough to drag myself through it. Now you can call me lazy or horrible or “OMG, you can't have an opinion on a book without reading the whole freaking thing”, at this point I don't particularly care. Reading is my fun and this book... wasn't too fun to me.

The story is played out in some post-apocalyptic wasteland kind of world, where crazy jumbles of rails spread out between city states. People hunt for salvageable things or the crazy, gigantic animals, like moles from their trains. The protagonist, Sham SomethingSomething (names in this book are really random, more about that later) is training to be a moler train doctor, so he travels with a bunch of people. Then he finds photos from the dead couple on a crashed train and he feels obliged to find their kids and bring them the news of their parents' death.

My issue with this book is that it lacks any form of explanation or freaking foreplay to make you understand what is going on, there was no easing us in gently. Right away you get a ton of weird words, names, creatures and basically everything that I personally couldn't freaking remember, so I was skimming more than reading to actually get anywhere and hope for an explanation. Don't get me wrong, I didn't expect Mr. Miéville to play nanny and nicely lay out everything, especially not in a one off book with only about 400 pages, but shit. Sometimes it felt like he was messing with me when he introduced some new crew member with a name that sounded like a Polish person sneezing, who I wasn't going to remember. Sure, there are some interesting snippets of ideas, but to me they were way too deep under bullcrap I didn't get.

Another thing was the prose. To me it felt directionless, kind of like he was just drifting with whatever was coming. I didn't find it enjoyable and combined with my previous issue, it just didn't let me get really caught up in the story itself. What's with the & placed instead of writing ‘and' every single time? Later on it gets explained, but while it was intended as a quirky little thing about the world, it annoyed me to no end. I'm generally a pretty fast reader and this damn book didn't work with that, it distracted and confused me.
I think of this as that rule about clothes. If you show a lot of cleavage, then showing a lot of leg as well can be a bit much. It's probably better to just do one or the other. So yeah, either do kind of floaty prose OR drop us right into the middle of some crazy world without an explanation.

I don't want to give it one star, though. It wasn't really horrid, I don't think. More like something that you either really enjoy or feel completely unaffected by, the latter was the case for me. I knew Mr. Miéville was weird, that is his thing, but apparently we're weird in a completely different way, so this love affair ended really fast. I'm not saying I won't read anything else by him, it can happen I will, but right now I am not convinced by him being for me.
So long & have fun, Mr. Miéville.

This review is about the whole series, not just this one book. They all had the same strengths and the same weaknesses and I prefer looking at this one as more of a single unit. Also, some of my thoughts are about the whole narrative arch of it, so there is that.

When I give 3 star-ish ratings, it can mean two things. Either the book is fine, but has some relatively big flaw I can't ignore, or (like here) something is just missing.
Even from the get go, this series takes a huge risk with starting from the end of many typical fantasy stories. Often we have some sort of a ruler. A powerful figure who is corrupt and negative. So what do the heroes do? They fight the power and get rid of the ruler, fixing the problems of the world. Here... the first book starts with a group of politically motivated people of different walks of life (religious figure, criminal boss, patriotic war hero, academic, etc.) having the king executed. At the very beginning.
Honestly, that was a super interesting idea. That we get to see what happens AFTER the big conspiracy and plotting and such are done. Because power vacuums are an interesting concept. Sure, even real people in the real world love to talk about changing The System and getting rid of The Man. But how exactly do you do it? What kind of allies do you have? What if you need them, but you don't like them?
This was so cool. And honestly, Field Marshal Tamas was a good central character. I especially loved the fact that we see him through different lenses. For the country, he is a hero. A father figure who does what needs to be done. Always dutiful, always doing his absolute best, without hesitation. Yet, he is the actual father of Taniel. A father who can't help missing out on so much of his duties towards his own son because he needs to be bigger than a human, bigger than anyone else.

And while I say that... this is where the book misses a lot.
We never get much dept when it comes to the characters interacting with each other. Separately a bunch of them are really interesting and cool. Like look at Bo, the last Privileged left after the eradication of the Royal Cabal. Yet we have him have extremely mediocre conversations with Nila.
The possibility of something very nuanced and difficult between Taniel and Vlora, people who thought they were meant for each other, mostly because they were special in the same way, yet they realise it's not true. Pans out to nothing. Maybe a couple pages of dialogue and it's all done and fine and whatever.
Tamas and Gavril? Tamas and Vlora? Nila and Olem? It all just ends with hints of something complex and yet nothing ever really happens.

It doesn't even just end with character interactions.
There are so many questions left. Ideas never properly developed. So many elements I would love to learn about, like the Predeii, the conflicts between the gods, how they came to be, the relationships between Privileged, Ka-Poel's magic...
Half the storylines lead to nowhere. We get mentions of Taniel being something more now, something potentially one of a kind, yet we forget about that whole thing at the end.
Same with Jakob. Nila's storyline is started by her hiding Jakob, a child of a noble family. After the executing of royalty, he is legally the next king, as the closest relative left alive. She refuses to save herself to make sure he is okay. Yet by the end he is only a passing thought. She doesn't even care anymore.
Same with Adamat. His family went through absolute hell. Yet we never see any of the fallout. Hell, his children don't even have any lines in the book! I think one daughter said like a handful of words, but it's nothing.

Adamat was another genius addition to the book, by the way. His investigations meant that the series had an element of detective fiction. Amazing to break up long military scenes. The solutions were sometimes a bit abrupt and not everything made as much sense as I wished, but I generally really liked Adamat and SouSmith.

I think one of the main things, from my point of view, was the fact I misunderstood what this book series was meant to be.
You know those romantic, often YA fantasy books, like Cassandra Clare's stuff, Sarah J Mass, that circle. Where fantasy is more a setting, a backdrop for romance. This series is the polar opposite, but similar in a way. How?
It's fundamentally military fiction. Most of it is about battles, wars, troops, battlefield moves. Some fantasy is included, gods and powers, but that is a lot less than I expected.
If you enjoy that, I would recommend this series. The human element is not incredibly nuanced, sure, but the war games part of it prominent.

All in all, it wasn't a bad choice, just not my No. 1.

This is just incredibly boring to me. Sure, I am in a slump and all, so maybe I will try it again later, but right now everything about this is a slog.
The Fhrey chapters especially; just so much boring ass political exposition. Talking and talking, about this law and that ruler and I want to claw my eyes out.

There was also a scene where they invent the wheel. Some more developed races are present and they start going super into it, axles, metals, greasing, etc. and the whole scene made me kind of annoyed. Let me guess, the girl who “invented the wheel” is going to race through the technological advances on her own because she is just so special.

You know, I have serious issues with the way many authors handle teenage characters and their relationships with the adults surrounding them. I find it especially bad with teen girl protagonists, so when I saw this had a teen girl as a protagonist, then I found out it was first person narrative... lets just say I wasn't too excited.
It seems I had a good reason for it.

Maia's family lives out in the mountains in their little village, being the local dragon breeder clan, providing animals for the country's dragon division in the army. Right now some other country is trying to attack them, stealing their dragons and turning them into strange, sinister Horrors, just all around wrong, demonic dragons with equally horrible riders.
When Maia and her brother see the Summer Dragon, one of the figures of the local religion, she feels it is the sign she needs to claim her own dragon, but of course things go wrong and some religious messing around ensues, with Maia as the centre of it all.

I will be honest, the reason why this got 2 stars was that I absolutely loved the beginning that showed people dealing with dragons. Cleaning up after them, feeding them, just generally making you feel like we're talking about real animals. They didn't feel distant, magical things, but perfectly plausible animals like horses or dogs. Just... bigger. And with the ability of flight. And can speak a tiny bit. Okay, whatever, I get it, but as close to normal animals as we can get.
Something about the routine-like way of the people working with them was pretty nice and for some time I thought this was going to be awesome, no problem with it at all.

But we had Maia. Teen girl. Extra magical. Better than everyone. Gets in trouble all the time, but it's good, she is right, she is morally superior. More competent than anyone. Oh, she endangers people with her ridiculous wilfulness? It's all okay, Maia is the chosen one and being rational and ready to compromise is not how she should be, because things will all sort themselves out to make Maia right at the end.
Then of course her perfection doesn't stop in the face of any adult; adults are there to be either useless or evil, so Maia can shine and school everyone. The only exception is Jhem, her sister-in-law, who also fucks up a lot and at the same time she is so much better and such a little victim of everyone being angry when her weakness causes her dragon to harm people. Also, she has a fetish of squeezing Maia's hand every 2 minutes. Whatever happens, squeeze the hand and it's fine.
A conspiring government priest man called Bellua is the antagonist, who is such a shitstirrer and Maia is convinced he'll totally rape her because he looked at her boobs. I mean it's inappropriate, but we went from him glancing at her to “100% rape at any minute tho, #truth” at the speed of light.
The rest of the characters are so forgettable, it hurts.

Which is extra horrible, as there are parts of the book when everyone is at the same place, talking and doing things at the same time, with all the names in the span of a couple of sentences. If you have any issues with remembering fantasy names... I don't envy you. When dragon names AND official titles also mix in, I just wanted to headbutt someone.

We got some really sweet illustrations, though. Mr. Lockwood is a fantasy artist, so of course he put in some of his work and man, I appreciated it. They fit to what I imagined, which tells me the descriptions were successful.
Honestly, other than the name overload in places the prose was fine. I was okay with it and without other issues, I could have been fine with reading a whole series in this style. Even the first person would have been okay if it wasn't Miss Magical Perfection, but someone else. Even Total Actual Rapist I Swear Guy, I would have loved to see if his religious crazy was honest or just him trying to get power and influence.

The pacing, though... not to my liking. According to my estimation about a fifth of the story or so was spent on this one long sequence of events leading to something you KNEW was happening. The characters struggling in caves, enemies, running, OMG, dragon is coming, etc. It was a repetition of the same issues, drawn out, especially frustrating when it was just the road connecting between the beginning and an obviously inevitable thing.
(Can we talk about Maia being annoyed about her brother suffering life-threatening injuries and serious bloodloss not being as competent as she is towards getting the thing she wanted? Dude is bleeding out and he DARES to drink a lot of water, the jerk.)

I will be honest, this book is not for me. It's just way too YA and inhabited by characters I dislike for one reason or another. I loved the dragons, not so much the riders. A shame, as I was pretty excited about the story.

Good evening and for now I am content with just having a dog, thanks.

Okay, this is a difficult one. I would say, I enjoyed about 2/3 of the book a lot. But then, around the middle, there was this chunk that just bore me so much it's not even funny.

Fhrey are basically like elves. They live a long life, they have a very developed society, their skills are superhuman and some of them can even do magic that makes them a league of their own.
Humans obviously see them gods, unbeatable creatures they need to fear. Until one day, some accidental things lead to Raithe, a normal human tribesman killing one of them and starting people out on realising that while Fhrey are tough, they are perfectly killable.
As so much fantasy now, this one also has multiple viewpoints; Raithe, of course, but also Penelope, the widow of a human tribe leader trying to keep her people alive, Suri, a wild little girl who is a mystic and also Arion, an esteemed Fhrey magic user and teacher.

What I liked about this is how it dealt with the differences between humans and supernatural creatures. How the simple fact of a different lifespan made their understanding of the world so different. The misconceptions that came from that. It makes sense; a human can't understand a race with millenia-old members.
It was also fun to see how random occurrences that turned out fortunate can transform into legends either through deliberate exaggerations or... well, just because things like that happen. Or intentionally?

One of my big issues that ruined Riyria to me was the princess character. She was such an annoying piece of shit, I couldn't handle one more chapter of her whining for something, getting it, then whining more because it wasn't as easy and fun as she thought. Many people told me she was “just depressed”, like half of us aren't right now and like that excused annoyingly written characters.
In this one, the exact opposite happened. I found a character I disliked immensely, namely Arion, but it was because she was so... I don't know? Clinical? Detail-oriented? Basically the woman was walking exposition. Her chapters were so dang boring until she meets up with the rest. And don't get me wrong, there were interesting ideas with the Fhrey, but if I have to read one more line about bullshit about architecture and such, I will cry.
It added nothing to the story that we know how much Fhrey obsess about architecture. Adding all the details about them could have been done much more gradually, without overloading us on about 5 different mysteries and political conflicts and the magical school and the freaking class conflicts, the mysterious door hiding something, etc. Too much, too dry.
It didn't help that these chapters ran parallel to ones where Penelope and the other villagers are sitting around, basically kissing each other's ass. Yes, yes, Moya is soooo beautiful and braaaave.

There are a bunch of interesting storylines in this. Malcolm. The mole people. Suri being Suri. I just really hope we are going to work on those more, instead of the already forming awkward love story or Arion being a bore.
I don't regret reading this, it's already a huge improvement compared to Riyria to me, but also... I'm not the biggest fan of the things the author picks for his focus.

I will say, this book was a slight improvement in some way compared to the first book. In some other ways? Not really.

Toby's liege, Sylvester has a niece who has her own tiny little dominion independent from any other lands where she runs her fae tech company. For some reason she can't be reached for weeks, which makes his uncle worry, so Toby is sent there, where she finds mysterious murders, of course.

I will be honest, Toby is still a bloody idiot. She is the queen of angst, of “but my life is so bad, honestly, I am the unloved stepchild of this whole magical world” where she is basically chased around by people who inexplicably adore her and would do anything for her sorry ass to have it great. She is the type to fuck up her own life, though. To just always make the stupid decision and push people away for whatever teenage emo reason she can invent in that stupid head of hers.
Because man, Toby is duuuuumb. Now of course she is really out of touch with a lot of modern things, as she was a freaking fish in a pond for 14 years. That is cool. But. Imagine the boss of a company. Maybe you are an awesome person who actually has a company, god knows I am not. So this person owns a company. Is it suspicious to you if said person can operate the generators of the building? Because MY boss knows all the machines he has. Toby thinks that's suspicious, though. She also doesn't think phones not working at a tech company should be considered suspicious and a sign of someone messing with them.
The worst is, though... how she is not CHARMING dumb. Some characters just act kind of dumb and you still like them, because they are sweet in some way. (Yes, Harry Dresden. He is an adorable idiot who doesn't take himself too seriously and you feel for the guy.)
At one point there is a potential love interest for Toby in EVERY FUCKING ROOM. Like she is here with Tybalt, but then goes over to Connor, but then Alex pisses her off, so she runs back to Tybalt. Like honestly, she has no respect for others or for herself. Will the next book happen at Camp I-Love-Toby-Daye?

I liked the idea of a magical tech company, but it wasn't really used as much as it could have been.

I will be honest, I am quitting this series. It's cheesy, it's stupid, it's badly written. It has idiotic characters. I even looked at the Wikipedia to figure out if this hot mess of a Mary Sue harem fantasy of a trainwreck was ever going to get better. No. It seems like this will go on being about everyone loving Queen Emo McCheesestein's ass.
So bye, stupid series.

Gave up at 50%.

I had a feeling I wasn't going to love this. Teen girls is the group I like LEAST as my protagonists and even if you call me names and judge my character based on that... meh. Such is life. I was a teenage girl once, I didn't like it, so I'm not really interested.

Now a huge part of me attempting to read this was actually Blood Song by Anthony Ryan, as that book and this sound the same, with the exception of this being about a religious warrior school for GIRLS, that one the same for BOYS. Hey, great time for comparing our stuff.
And I didn't like this. I'm not saying it's a bad book, if I didn't have an exam in mid-May I would probably finish it, but it gives me no joy and takes too much time, so I'm dropping it. My reasons? I don't like Nona, I find the prose to be over the top and not fluid enough to read, the nun's names are objects and I can't keep it all straight, I don't remember who is who and who does what.
Everyone seems to love it, but I just need to get something else or I'm going mad.
(Though I can't help feeling like their education is stupid in this book. Kids go from one step in their education to the next at their own pace. How can you teach anything to your class when kids constantly come and go? Do they repeat the same things over and over? HOW?)

Good night and find me a sister by another mister!

Okay, this book was ridiculously fun. My ratings are really just that, marking how much I enjoyed stuff, so yeah. No, this book was not absolutely brilliantly written, I just picked it up at the right time, I guess. Also, funny enough, I seem to really like funny books in connection with Biblical stuff. I'm a filthy unbeliever, but shit, I do appreciate when people have lighthearted humour in connection with stuff like religion. I don't think it means disrespect, but the world has humour. That is just how I feel about it, so yeah, if you are sensitive about religious themes, this is probably not a book for you. You've been warned. Qapsiel, an angel with a ridiculous name got sent to Earth to take this little box that can nuke humanity to shit. Ya know, we probably deserved it. This angel is a bit of a moron, though, which celestial beings have the right to be, so he manages to lose the box that can eradicate human life. Not the best move. Fast forward to now, the protagonist, Coop, a magic resistant robber needs to steal this box. Then shit hits the fan even worse. We have some Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels type action with undead people, supernatural FBI, TWO separate satanic cults and basically everyone trying to get this box. The thing that sold the book to me was the humour, really. Everyone is an idiot, cults sabotage each other's bake sale, everyone has funny little lines about stuff. It's really easy to read and fun like that. Popcorn stuff. The story itself if... not particularly special or inventive or anything, but I could enjoy the book equivalent of comfort food. Not sure if it's just me being used to absurdly long fantasy series, but at this point I have a hard time getting attached to characters in stand alone novels. This wasn't even a very long one. So yeah, I wasn't too worried about the characters, the tone doesn't really sell you on there being any actual big danger, so there is that. It just felt pleasant to relax with some fun stuff after the suspenseful disgusting monster journey of [b:The Monstrumologist 7171771 The Monstrumologist (The Monstrumologist, #1) Rick Yancey https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320124102s/7171771.jpg 6647553]. (I wrote a review on that one, cross promo.) Not really sure what I should say about this. I would definitely recommend it for reading in your bath or on vacation on the beach. Good giggles there, not too hard to follow the story, not even if you get distracted by bikinis and beach balls every five minutes. Richard Kadrey has surprising amounts of books on my to-read list. I don't know why his stuff intrigues me that much, but hey. This one was a pleasant enough experience to prompt me to pick up his other stuff. I guess that is a win for him. Or me. I mean I am having fun. See you at the cult bake sale, bring brownies with double hate!

DNF at about 40% , RTC

Quit about a quarter in.
Here is the thing, I found this book incredibly boring. The beginning sold me on Paks becoming someone absolutely amazing. How did I think that happens? The fantasy novel way, of course, with her gong through amazing adventures, excitement, fantastic feats, becoming love and respected by the people around her for showing values worth it.
We have nothing like that. The events are not very monumental or even interesting, but boy, do we get to learn about new recruits doing basic, repetitive things. Sure, learning something IS like that. My life s like. Do I want to spend hours upon hours reading about the same sort of boring ass crap? No. The prose doesn't make it interesting either, because it's just some sort of clinical description of meaningless and boring things happening. There is just... so much nothing, talking about “and this person went there and then I handed him this object and then he ate his dinner”, just blabbering about NOTHING.
This is made even worse by the characters. Their names all sound the same and their personalities aren't much different either. We are supposed to feel time is passing and still no development happen on that front. They don't feel like comrades or friends, just people who arrived 2 days ago and are friendly to each other, but no even a little attached. Paks is the same. She has no personality, she is absolutely blank and we know nothing about her motivations or anything.

Maybe this is a classic and maybe I will try again later, but right now I'm way too bored.

4,5 stars. Took me long enough to finally write my opinion on this one and that's not because I had really any issues with the work itself. I'm just busy. And lazy. Hi.

The Heartstrikers are under an outside threat, namely Estella of The Three Sisters clan and her plans of tricking the ever ambitious Bethesda into messing things up for herself. Julius is still not particularly respected in his own clan, but he is getting more attention from people who are, which can be either a blessing or a curse, as all the other dragons play power games and he would have preferred to avoid those at any cost. Marci is still his companion, which only complicated things as he is supposed to have human servants, not companions.

This is what I'm talking about when I want to see the worlds of books opening up. Here it wasn't too too much, it wasn't at all overwhelming, but we got to see a bunch of other dragons from the Heartstriker clan. And here comes one of the ideas from the previous books that at first seemed cool, but not too too significant; all the offspring of Bethesda who hatch together get the same initial, in alphabetical order. When there are more and more characters introduced it's just so easy to know who is here on the ladder when it's obvious that Chelsea is below Bob, but above Ian. I'm learning to appreciate this little piece more and more, as this had the potential to be a confusing mess of names. Bethesda really does know how to breed, man.
And how amazing the family dynamics were, ooooooh. At first you assume the kiddos are all perfectly loyal to mother dearest and perfectly inclined to stab each other in the back for her attention. Think again. These are the best of the best. People who would do anything, who think of themselves as the apex everything. Would someone like that be 100% loyal to someone obviously above them who has no intention of letting them on her level or above? No. You know the answer is nope.
That's exactly the most interesting thing about this book. Old issues surfacing and people realising that deep down they are all thinking the same and they only need that tiny little spark to finally open their mouths and in a way... get closer to each other than ever before.
This whole family aspect is something I love about this series so far.

Bob is of course being Bob-y, so the story has room to progress further. Nice.

In a way I feel where this one really shines is people relating to each other. I like them separately, which is always nice, but they have very interesting dynamics and changes in said dynamics. Shoot here, but that reminds me of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files; it has a lot of action and still the appropriate amount of people interacting with each other in interesting ways that make this a worthwhile read.
The pacing and the whole structure of this series works so much better than in the Eli Monpress series, also by this author. She managed to step up her game a lot and that's the type of developing skill set I like to see in relatively new authors.

I definitely really liked this, will go on with the series. I would ever recommend it for people who want something that's a fun adventure and is planned out well, with lovely characters.

Good night and let me list the cool thing about this, from A to Z!

So basically one day I had no idea what to pick from my to-read list, so I decided to ask a friend of mine to point at something based on the cover alone. This was before lunch, so those chicken nuggets looked really good and she went with this one. (At least it's no some million page series, I told myself. I have a hard time picking them up when I know it will take a lifetime to actually read them.)

You know, I do love food. Eating it, making it, reading about it, looking at shows and photos. I have a bit of a love affair with those shows where they show little video clips of stuff being made and the food ones are my favourites. It's all fascinating and I am convinced that if we need to eat multiple times a day for survival, we should make it nice, not just another chore.
I also really like urban fantasy. The idea of supernatural elements being part of modern life and taking place in situations that are so familiar is just fun to me. They ways you can integrate them to a completely non-fantasy setting can go in so many absolutely fascinating ways.

Well, in this case it's... meh.
In the artsy-fartsy New York gastronomy scene there is a place where they serve supernaturals with ingredients a bit more exotic than the normal grocery store selection and I don't mean artisan crap. Two people get invited for a job to this restaurant and things aren't exactly culinary school lever.

The idea, I love it. It sounded like a nice blend of things that could have been so refreshingly fun. Instead, the author went with this upper class idle hipster way of looking at everything. It all really felt like the fantasy of some guy who only ever went to restaurants as a customer and saw maybe 10 minutes or Gordon Ramsay action.
The characters were nothing interesting, just paper thin caricatures of human beings (like Lena, who is super good at EVERYTHING and is the moral superiority of it all, or the chef guy who we know is a dick from the get go because he has the wrong kind of facial hair). It all felt so superficial and simplistic.

I didn't expect depth. This thing is really short, you can read it lightning fast, but this... no. I'm sorry, I can't vouch for a book that's so underdeveloped. Sure, be light, be funny, I love me some reads like that. Seriously, I am the last person to demand seriousness and heavy things at all times, but this just didn't measure up to what I call truly worth my while.
It is possible that with more stories coming out this universe and idea will be properly formed and it will all make sense, but right now I feel like it is more like a cool little idea you write down in a little notebook that you could totally work with later.
It just wasn't good. It really wasn't.

Shoo now, I'm hangry.

This took me incredibly long for such a short little book and not for the good reasons...

Out in a Russian forest the local leader's daughter is a bit different. She just seems to be magical, always a bit wild. When she gets a mad stepmother who shuns the honouring of the local supernatural, things just go wrong and the girl, Vasya needs to persevere as the only person who keeps them safe through keeping the traditions.

Russia is a setting that just attracts me. Never been to the country, don't speak the language, I've never had a mysterious, passionate lover from Russia, but the whole aesthetic is just my thing. I love it. Not gonna lie, that was the reason why I really wanted to read this book and nothing could stop me, not even the doubt of it not being so brilliant at the end.
Spoiler alert (in case you are not seeing my rating), it actually wasn't brilliant to me.
Part of it is not using the creatures too much. Seriously, when someone dips into lore so rich, so interesting and great, then they SHOULD actually use it all properly, instead of bringing it a bit in, then kind of... not developing on any of it at all.
We get no explanation about anything. Why is Vasya (and her dead mother) so magical? What's the point?? There was a conflict with the creatures and it is still all so vague. Something so underdeveloped makes me feel like the author didn't really know what to do with all the cool things, they just sounded nice and she threw them together.

My another big bunch of issues with it is the whole fairytale aspect. Not the fact it is there, I love stories like that, I adore the whimsical feel and the wonder, but the style has its drawbacks.
One I find here is that while you can suspend your disbelief and just roll with certain thing in a streamlined little story, those things kick you in the teeth in hundreds of pages of stuff. Characters acting ridiculous, tropes, all those things get more annoying if the story is longer, because there is no reason to just leave them like that. There is room to work with stuff!!!
Another here was the writing. I am going to be nitpicky when the style is supposed to be something like this. If you are so careful, then be that properly. Stop using ‘milling' and ‘vaulting' a million times, please!!!!!!! This is becoming something that annoys me so much, the uncaring writing. It's not that hard to avoid it. Even in just a text editor you can search for a certain word.

This connects to the fairytale aspects as well; characters. Those characters are simply written for a reason, they are limited by the genre and it makes sense. If you want to send a clear message to kids listening to you, then it makes sense to simplify. But here we got a way too “amazing” and infallibly perfect protagonist and nothing at all in case of the others. Not even the supernaturals, even thought they could have been something interesting.
I also dislike the obvious disdain for normal people. The main character's older sister is normal. She marries and after that nobody gives a shit about her even existing. Same goes to one of the older brothers. It's such a juvenile way of thinking; you are nothing if you are not irresponsible and wild. Being normal means you are nothing and you might as well just disappear. I have no issue with the protagonist thinking this, but here she is being sold as the perfect mindset, as someone who is always right.

Disappointment, honestly. I really need something that I can enjoy a lot now, because I seem to be in a mood of picking up books I end up not liking at all. I don't know what's happening.

Good night and pass me the vodka.

No. This book does the utter most when it comes to trying to sell the world to you through throwing in made up fantasy words. I dislike books that overdo it so much that you basically need a dictionary to understand what the fuck the characters are talking about. One of my big pet peeves. Do this gradually, ease me in, pull me in. Don't drag me by the hair.
Another thing is how desperately the book is trying to sell us on the protagonist being a saintly little angel.

Sorry, but this isn't my thing. Too YA. Next.

DNF at 60%. This was my second try, I still can't stand this book for multiple reasons.

Lets start out with saying I absolutely adored the first book. It was fantastic, witty, charming, with characters that made me attached. Then shit went down at the end and yeah.

Here we have Locke and Jean, moving to a new city. Old habits die hard, they can't live an honest life, so they get tangled up in crime again.

Lets just start out with pointing out that this book is long. Don't get me wrong, long books are fine, I have nothing against them, if they are written in a tight way. Here? None of that. the first HALF of the book is just a bunch of oh so (in)convenient way of Locke and Jean being noticed by basically everyone in the city, everyone wanting to recruiting them, just the two of them playing on all sides and none on any of them. It didn't feel smart, just... try hard.
Especially annoying for a book with a BURNING SHIP on the cover that has close to no ships until about half way in. I'm sorry, but it all felt like dragging as hell as we STILL had no pirates, STILL had no pirates, then when they arrived, they were ridiculous.

Mr. Lynch seems to have a sailing fetish. One we have ships, every sentence has 56 random seafaring related words that meant literally nothing to me. They could have been in ancient Chinese ballet slang, written in hieroglyphs. The funny thing is, not even the protagonists understood it, nobody did, it was just chucked around to make me feel like I had a stroke. Niiiice.

The characters are ridiculous as well. “We follow this pirate captain because she is our best chance. Oh, so she recruits random other pirates she takes on after she takes over their ships? While her very small children are running around? What could go wroooong?” It really feels like Mr. Lynch believes that criminals are all super reasonable people, none of the are prone to revenge or just going “I don't fucking care”. You can tell them they will be killed if they hurt the free roaming kids of someone they do have a reason to dislike.
It just... feels like he never met any human beings.

I love Jean. Always did. My beef is, though, that the only time something happened from his point of view was when he talked to his insta-love girl. Thanks for nothing.

There were barely any actual tricks in this. I loved the first book for that, not for random, boring chains of events. Not even the occasional good joke could change that. I'm sorry, but this book pissed me off. I really hated it. It made no sense, I couldn't justify finishing it.

Often I feel the sequels are higher in rating just because everyone who didn't like the first dropped out, but in this case I think this book definitely deserves a tiny bit better rating than the first, absolutely lovely one.

Our characters, Senlin, Edith, Adam, Iren and Voleta are pirates now. Their search for Marya is going on and at this point it is really starting to feel like a quest, with hem going to a person for information, which leads them somewhere else, where they learn some new information, etc.
We see new parts of the Tower, completely new groups of people and even the mysterious and powerful Sphinx, who has eyes almost everywhere.

I feel this is where the book is starting to pick up. Maybe I am not part of the higher part of the readership for saying this, but I love my books with a lot of action. Not saying it needs to be super fast, my preference just tends to go towards at least relatively fast things.
Here I got that. The different, previously disconnected little things seem to have some connections, forming a bigger picture, which made it feel like we were actually making considerable progress. We are far from a resolution (which, at this point I have no idea how we'll get, the last few pages turn everything upside down), sure, we will apparently have two more books, but some sort of an overarching structure is showing. LOVE IT.

Characters, ones I get attached to are really making a book shine in my opinion. Here it's finally happening, the magic is coming. The characters around are not all just to send a message and die or something, but they are around to get developed and interact. That is good, seeing them in relation to each other, it was enjoyable.
I have no idea what to expect, if they will be around to see the end of the story or not, but it's a great thing. Not going to speculate about the outcomes and end games. In this wild ride I can't really guess.

There is another thing worth mentioning. Things happening with people here are complex. They aren't black and white, which is a great thing. So many people seem to write in a way that keeps it safe, with all the Right and Wrong things decided by whatever conventional idea. When they touch a slavery situation, it's always in the framework of real world history, with a very rigid touch of it.
Here finally we are seeing something different and it's great.
People are misguided, prone to being tempted, full of flaws and that is good. That is refreshing and makes the reading experience a bit more unpredictable, which makes me want to read more.

Aaaand we arrived to something that normally I don't like and I think it is perfectly justified that it gets a lot of criticism from other people as well. A love triangle. But lets be honest, Mr. Bancroft nails even that, it's understandable, mature, not some arbitrary bullcrap that is meant to express that a certain character is just so special that everyone needs to fall for them in some teenage mania. For once I actually understand both pairs, Senlin and Marya, also Senlin and Edith. Both make sense, but at this point it's impossible to guess how "real" any of them will be. The former was this small town oddball combo that is so sweet, the latter more coming from people suffering together and understanding each other because of the same trials. I would be content with both happening at the end. Or neither. All three going their own way. At this point I am not sure how much of Senlin and Marya will be left and if it will be enough for them to pick up and relate to each other still. Then again, so many things can go wrong with Senlin and Edith as well.

I still recommend this series. Absolutely. It's just something different, while still not being too far out of what I feel comfortable for more adventurous fantasy readers.

Good night and don't let the rum run out!

Year 3 arrived and things are even more complicated than before.

I realised something. Did any of you grow up watching anime (or reading manga) that is long, usually shounen and has a million arcs? Some of them typical for all. They usually have a tournament arc, some kind of epic, midfuck-y fight, usually a couple fun episodes with things like characters going to the beach or having to wear costumes/uniforms for a bit. Parents show up and turn out to be more important than you thought. Someone presumed to be dead, but still alive.
Yep. This series is basically that, in a novel format.
If you like it, you will love this. It's not the best written stuff, some things are cringe and sometimes sentences are awkward as hell. I'm pretty sure the author forgot about some things and characters halfway through. Sometimes the characterization is not super consistent.
But you will have fun with it.

Now this specific volume had some things that made me roll my eyes that didn't even pay off (EHMspoiler: ElizaEHM), but I am still into it.

I would also like more time spent on certain characters, like Dean Blaine or Sean Pendleton. Then again, I'm probably just getting old when I relate to the teachers more than to the protagonist kids. That's life, I suppose.

All in all, still a good read, even if the books are getting damn long. For my very first web serial, this was a super solid choice.

I quit a third of the way in when they didn't even start their way to the small, angry planet. Yes. They are doing shopping at a market planet and a third of the book is already gone. If that tells you anything about the speed here then I'm happy I could help.

Here we have a space ship where a bunch of different creatures (though mostly humans) live together and do abso-fucking-lutely nothing interesting whatsoever. They get a new clerk and that's cool. I suppose?
So why did I hate this book so much?

This story is Tumblr and The Double Standards, The Novel. I doubt anyone has ever created something so kitchy and overly sweet while also being such a piece of shit deep down. This book manages to hit you in the head with the most forced positive sensitive snowflake shit while also being so incredibly two-faced it made me retch. I can explain it all through examples.

- This crew is a big family. They love everyone, they take in everyone, from feathered lizard creatures to humans with physical issues to one of the last members of a dying race that looks like (and I quote) ‘pudding with legs'. How quaint. They also have a single white man on the ship they hate and every single time he shows up everyone gets visibly disgusted by him. Is he nice? Nah. Would I be nice if my OWN CAPTAIN had self-professed issues with getting used to the sight of white people? Fuck no.
- Humans are constantly said to be the lowest of low idiotic pieces of inconsequential shit. Cool. They can do their shit in the galaxy but like... YUCK humans. At the same time Rosemary, the clerk has to think about her privilege because her family is rich. She literally thinks she is ashamed of having privileged ancestors because she had never eaten a certain type of “commoner” food.
- The feather-lizard types are constantly having orgies left and right while also don't give a shit about their offspring, which is considered to be a beautiful, colourful, diverse culture that everyone has to accept and love, Rosemary even repeatedly scolds HERSELF for not being automatically super into it, but humans are treated like total idiots for being monogamous or even just not wanting their long time sexual partners to die a violent death.
- It's horrible to call a space-feather-lizard a lizard even though it is a very mild insult, but repeatedly stealing others' personal hygiene tools they have paid for with their own money because they wanted to take care of their own specific needs is UWU cutesy quirky.
- Doing your job high out of your fucking mind while the life of people depends on you is cool, but not wanting to partake in said drug use makes you an asshole.

Honestly, I absolutely can't stand the fact that this book lacks any form of self-aware thinking when it comes to its own biases that are hiding behind this bullshit Care Bear glitter world. Anything human is automatically hated, anything alien, even when it's not at all nice or kind is magical and lovely. But hey, tolerance, UWU.
The issue of this is not helped by the god awful dialogue, absolutely brought to the highest level of the character Kizzy, who is this hyperactive, annoying ass mechanic. She sounds like a 12-year-old girl on Tumblr.

I have no idea where this book ends up, but if I have to suffer through one more page of Rosemary self-censoring her own thoughts that weren't even bad, just kind of surprised or confused because every fucking alien species of psychos is magically superior and wonderful just because Becky Chambers wanted us to feel like living a life that is considered normal by real world society is bad I am going to scream.
This thing is preachy, treats its reader like an idiot and does things just because being quirky without reasons is so in this season. Also, social constructs. I have heard that's a good buzzword, not like the stupid habits of aliens aren't as much of social constructs as actually not letting your fucking kids die is, but hey. Humanz R doodooheads, lulz.

I do not recommend this to anyone.

I've recently seen some of the Youtube videos of the author and then I realised hey, she had a book (and for a couple of days now, another one :D), a short little non-fiction thing with a pleasantly simple cover. I'm not really a non-fiction reader, she seems cool, the topic is interesting, so might as well give it a go.

One of the topics the book deals with through anecdotes is our relationship with death. According to Ms. Doughty the problem is our own unwillingness to even just... acknowledge it and how he just can't face our own mortality. How back in the day the dead were laying around at home, how in different cultures they used to do this, that or the other. How it was all more dignified, I guess. Healthier for sure.
But this is where my issue comes from this; I don't necessarily agree. I can't really blame people for not just... being okay with it. Like this is one of those topics when I understand what she is trying to say and I can see her point, but at times it felt like she couldn't really relate to the average person.

I really enjoyed the first part of the book, her being new to the whole death-business, something that is not as clear to the normal person as, lets say, being a teacher or a cook. It was all kind of funny and not too solemn.
Then by the end... she felt like she kind of drifted towards a certain kind of pathos that I really, really wanted to avoid with this. Philosophical musings and all. Not really my thing.

Sometimes it also felt like for someone who was so much about breaking the groupthink, she... kind of also fell into the same mistakes with other topics.
Close to the very end she talks, in a kind of annoyed and disgusted way about how it's almost always white men, super privileged and all who want to prolong their lives and how it's unfair to the poor. Also, when talking about traditions and such, she mostly seems to have an issue with Western people, while all the others are someone elevated though their rituals being so... different. In my younger years I've spend quite a bit of time among more traditional gypsies (calm down, they call THEMSELVES that), some of them being in my own family. If you see people easily spooked by the dead, fearful of death to the extreme and super serious about superstitions with death/your soul being taken/dead bodies, etc. it is them. Somehow she kind of seems to... come with certain prejudices of her own regarding modern Western ways being horrible and cowardly, while everyone else from anywhere or anytime different being good.

Overall, it was a fun, short read, but in some ways I couldn't emotionally connect when I really didn't even want big emotions and such. I just wanted objective things, to know more. I don't really know what else to say about a non-fiction thing. Sorry.

Well... yeah. This was a thing. Not nearly as great as Greatcoats, but it's a thing, I guess. Kellen is part of a desert-dwelling civilisation of magical people. You basically have to pass exams as a teenager, kind of as a coming of age ritual, unlocking the different kinds of magic one can use. The results decide if you will become a proper citizen or a slave. Kellen is fucked big, big time, as he can't really do magic. So what does he do? Wing the shit out of it, of course, just trick everyone and make it sound like he totally does magic (reminds me of a few of my exams, lol). Gets caught, of course. So to survive without ending up being a slave, he needs the help of this mysterious woman who just showed up, without any magic, equipped with... cards. I have no idea what happened, but as likeable and warm everyone was in Greatcoats, this one just had thing happening after thing and thing, with douche-y characters fucking things up for each other. Not even the ones who were supposed to be good people were in any way likeable. This is coming from someone who enjoys reading about Littlefinger in ASOIAF. That tells a lot. I can enjoy things about evil people. Really. Sand Dan Glokta in Abercrombie's [b:The Blade Itself 944073 The Blade Itself (The First Law #1) Joe Abercrombie https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1284167912s/944073.jpg 929009] (which I have recently finished, need to get back on that series) was fun to read, even though the dude is a torturer, with a wretched, ruined life. But these people, oh god, they were colossal cunts, the whole lot of them. One thing that added a lot to the characters in Greatcoats was the humour, which did not exist in this world. Everyone is such a stuck up moron, they don't know how jokes work or I don't know. I really missed that, Sebastien De Castell CAN make me laugh until I cry. Don't hide that, man. It's a treasure. An interesting thing though; I'm in the middle of [b:The Codex Alera 26065518 The Codex Alera (6 Books) Jim Butcher https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1439088402s/26065518.jpg 46000711] by Jim Butcher, another series with a young man lacking magic in a world where it is needed for power and status. At this point I prefer Tavi, though. So yeah. The first half of the book gave me flashbacks of [b:Assassin's Apprentice 77197 Assassin's Apprentice (Farseer Trilogy, #1) Robin Hobb https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1464570795s/77197.jpg 171715], which is NOT a good thing. That book to me was one chain of passionless melancholy and bad things happening to a dull character. Here it wasn't so bad that it made me legitimately depressed (yes, Robin Hobb made me so, it was baaad), but it wasn't good. The second part picks up. The action gets better, a new talking animal character with a sassy attitude and a foul mouth made things much more fun. I see the potential there. It can become something interesting, something fun to read. The length probably didn't allow that, but the author is fast as hell, so if everything goes right we'll read more of it THIS YEAR. Which connects to another thing. The scope of this is small. Just one desert town that seemingly doesn't have much contact without anyone else, they are very isolated, even when it comes to their own nation. There are things out there, they get mentioned, but without us seeing anything further than just the empty territory outside the town limits. The story ends with Kellen leaving, so it's obviously going to have much more travelling now, which I don't mind, it will give things more action and something I enjoy, exploration. Right now I'm not too invested. It wasn't a horrible book, but I know the author can do much, much better, so basically we'll have to wait and see if that happens here or we'll get stuck with one more series that doesn't live up to its potential. (Looking at you, [b:Shadow and Bone 10194157 Shadow and Bone (The Grisha, #1) Leigh Bardugo https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1339533695s/10194157.jpg 15093325]) Have a nice day and change the whole entirety of society, one exam cheating at a time!

I am disappointed. So far this is my fourth book by this author and the first one I didn't love. Lets get into my reasons.

Even when I just read the first book I pointed out how Fetching is my least favourite character other than the villains. While many, from Oats to Polecat to Beryl have interesting backstories and just something special about them Fetching was always just angsty and grumpy and nothing interesting. So when I heard this book has her as the protagonist I got this bad feeling and man, I was so right about it. Somehow even after hundreds of pages of following her she doesn't feel any more complex an layered than she was in book one.
Call me an asshole, but an angry woman doing angry woman things just doesn't cut it. No, I don't think that makes her strong or special. Especially not when she is really showing the signs of just being “sooo badaaaaaass” and also everyone loving her or being evil. Honestly, people can not love you without trying to murder everyone you care about, duh.

The plot twists are also very soap opera and not really that punchy. In book one certain revelations completely changed how you saw the world and the powers at work in it. Here it's more like things you should care about if you care about Fetching and I do not. They feel very very cliché.

Another thing I feel this book lacks is answers. Somehow the characters manage to blunder from one place to the other, with things happening without a proper explanation and nothing much gets solved and it's kind of... ignored? It feels like these people have no curiosity and they don't even bother wanting to know more about their own circumstances and that makes the long, drawn out parts of everything being bad and gloomy and filled with suffering feel even more boring. The fun was just lost.
Which ties into one more thing. Who, oh why do we have to have people with relevant skills die stupidly because of injuries not nearly as bad as many others survive? You would think for added drama. No, Fetch magically gains the necessary skill like a day later when it is very very needed because... magic.

Mr. French obviously tries very hard to convince me I like Fetching and it's not working.

So far the two books had two different protagonists. If the next one has Jackal again or Oats (still my fave boi) then I am on board and willing to kinda forget about this one ever happening. If not... mehhh. I don't want to read more Fetching. No more ridiculous plot twists that make me roll my eyes more than anything.

I also personally prefer the original book 1 cover. These new ones just don't offer anything that interesting, no cool dynamic art or anything.

I give up. This series is deteriorating very fast and I can't be arsed to go on. This is a year when I just don't have the energy and time to go on with things like this, so I have quite a few DNF books and I think it's fine.

My issue with the series is the protagonist. As much as she was fine in the first book, she is becoming more and more of a person I can't stand.
Isabella is spoilt. Of course now people will say nope, she isn't, she goes out to the jungles and oceans and mountains to study dragons, without any luxuries. But what I am talking about is responsibilities. She keeps talking about how hard life is for a woman. How she is limited in everything, how it's such a sad life, but we see nothing of that. What, as a kid she was told to not do certain things? She still did them and nothing happened. As an adult she is even worse, she just has no regard for anyone other than herself and what is the most convenient for her obsession.
Which is fine. But Isabella is portrayed as this wonderful woman who is such a heroine and all. Nope. She is a womanchild who cries about things not being how she wants them when they are.

The son character... I have no idea why he is there, other than for Isabella to be spiteful about someone she produced not being like her and annoying her with being a boy who supposedly could do whaaaatever he wanted, so he does that, does whatever he likes and not what his mother does. Jacob is more of a mildly annoying roommate than her child.

I don't care about fantasy place names and tribe names being repeated over and over again while we get nowhere. It's ridiculous. I want to hear more about dragons, to elaborate more on the damn creatures on the cover of the books, not tribal issues and every man being interested in Isabella, while she is just doing whatever.

I'm quitting this series. Bye.