BulbasaurusThe7th

Here we go, my friends. I had this on my to-read list for years and I still avoided going for it because of multiple reason. One, it's long. It takes a considerable amount of time to just go through it. Two... damn, this thing is hyped. The best thing since sliced bread, it will make you cry and name your first child Kvothe regardless of gender. It will give you an identity crisis. Hurr durr. Three, Rothfuss did many things that just rub me the wrong way. If we met I would be polite, as I always am, but I doubt we would click. This shouldn't matter all that much, but it does, I guess. Dunno.
One reason I don't care about is it not being finished. I will say this, I don't think the series will ever be finished at this point and I don't care. I care about him not just being honest about it, but yeah.

Kvothe is perfect, so much so I started mentally calling him Inspirational Kvothe. Right now he is hiding as an innkeeper in some small village. Cozy, right? It is, he does innkeeper-y things and hangs out with his student and sole employee, a goat-legged dude, Bast, who is kind of dumb, but hey, he is supernatural.
Then one day... a Chronicler shows up, having heard the legends of Kvothe. So he decides to tell his true and unabridged or whatever story. Here we go.
He grew up in a travelling troupe, things happened, he went to magic university, met a chick. That's about this book. Thanks, bye.

So. I feel that for a first book this was fine. Yes, just fine. I won't call it brilliant or groundbreaking or even all that special, because it just isn't. The prose is often going into purple territory, the story itself is nowhere near as clever as it is intended to be. The characters.... oooooh, man. No, the characters are probably the weakest part of this thing.
All in all, I have zero clue how it managed to make people believe it's some sort of a marvel of fantasy literature. I guess some of the very end of the book explains it; if you fake it long enough eventually it will become truth or whatever. I don't know. I do know that it isn't brilliant, though. I don't want to say it disappointed me, because I had a feeling it wasn't going to become my absolute favourite, but still. I am not head over heals in love with this thing.
Damn, was it long. Everything that happened could have been written 30-50% shorter and we wouldn't have missed much.

Lets go back to Inspirational Kvothe. I personally don't find an inherent issue with power fantasies if they are somewhat balanced and if they don't try to seem more than what they are. In this case... it's rough. Kvothe is the type of character that somehow manages to fall upwards every single time, but also he is an idiot in the sense that he just can't freaking concentrate on any of the miraculous things he gets. He gets into magic school. Yay? Well, lets just waste time on chasing a girl who just can't be bothered to do anything, really. He has a special skill he can use to earn money (music), but he refuses to just work diligently and instead gets distracted every five minutes by some shit. Every single time I felt we were taking a step forward Kvothe's pigeon brain just went some other way, because lulz.
Talking about special skills. Inspiration Kvothe is good at everything and is so without much of an effort. He can miss YEARS of practising on his lute and with just a bit of the equivalent of sullenly playing Wonderwall he is back in shape and perfect. Because he feels it in his feeling place and you are not a musician, so you won't get it. No riding horses in years? Pfft, 60 miles in a day and he is only a bit stiff. Spent a couple months with some woodsman when he was like 8? In a dream all the info about surviving in the wild is back.
We also have the thing where everyone who is not nice to him on day 1 turns out to be an evil person who will keep trying to ruin his life. Because you can detect assholes by seeing how they react to Kvothe.

Now we reached the point where we will talk about his love interest, Denna. Ohhhh, Denna.
I find it incredibly funny when people who claim to be such woman respecting feminists and so acutely aware of all the recent opinion about that write the Dennas of the world.
She is awful. Of course Denna is the single most perfect woman ever, she is so gorgeous and talented and smart and just everything. So everything. So much so men talk about her between themselves and STILL feel the need to white knight and M'lady her. Other women all hate her because she is just flawless and because of that she can literally do nothing in life, no job, no interests, nothing. Because she is perfect and that means she will have be basically a prostitute. I... not gonna lie, I physically facepalmed at this. Of course Kvothe has to point out that she is a bigger victim than him.
It gets even worse. She pushes him around, disappears when she feels like, just generally acts like a bitch. Of course to his face she is all “Ohhhh, you are wonderful and special”, but her deeds say the exact opposite. Then this idiot, when he sees her with other men just thinks “okay, you bang her, but I make her laugh, okay, I am better”. A bruh moment.

Something about this book makes me feel like every single character deserves what comes for them, because they are either pretty one note background people, or the self-sabotaging duo of Kvothe and Denna.
Some of the smaller ones are fun, though. Kvothe has this absolutely mental teacher, Elodin. He makes no sense and just wanders around being visibly crazy in a fun way. I like him. Or his other teacher, Kilvin, who is basically the Hagrid of this book. They are not particularly deep so far, but they are nice.

The thing about writing exceptional characters is that you need to be at least as smart as they are to sell it. You have to be at least as charming or sell it. There is nothing wrong with them lacking something, but if you go overpowered, then sell it to me.
Here it just didn't happen. Many of the conversations between Denna and Kvothe were useless, as their relationship didn't develop and it wasn't nearly as clever or entertaining as it was intended to be. The handful of good jokes in this giant book didn't make it worth the endless amounts of eye-rolling “witty” content.

Sometimes fantasy authors get this urge to include poems and songs in books. I blame Tolkien. I respect him and understand his cultural significance, but damn, do we have so many authors who are convinced they will also write poetry. And again, in this case as well as in others, the poems weren't great. To me they just break up the pace, they are kind of uncomfortable and jarring after me going through hundreds of pages of prose.
Not gonna lie, I am not a huge fan of poetry and especially not of poetry from not-poets. There is a reason why some people pick different forms to express themselves. To me it's like if an author suddenly decided to paint their own book covers. Maybe some could. But mostly it will just feel amateurish, especially in contrast with the “main attraction”. Of course less effort will go into it and less expertise.

Maybe I will get angry comments about this, but I don't really care. Ones that call me names or claim I am stupid for not liking this or that I shouldn't have an opinion (because it's not nice or because I'm not an author myself, etc.) will be deleted, I don't have time for that.

Eyyy, this year just started out in a pretty impressive way. Took me long enough to pick this one up and also to do the actual reading, but I needed to enjoy this thing in the proper mood, as long as possible, because who knows when the next one comes. Jim Butcher pretty much just did it again. You can call him all kinds of trash if you are inclined to do so, but to me he is the one who can always make me have a great time. Just something about his characters and action and pure fun is basically the embodiment of everything that makes me happy. I'm not a complicated creature. This pleases me. In this steampunk adventure madness humanity is living in spires, because something managed to screw the surface of the planet enough that you should just avoid it. So... spires. When Spire Albion is being attacked by Spire Aurora somehow a bunch of teenagers and a bunch of disgraced aeronauts need to work together to uncover things and basically save their country (spire). Things much bigger than they have expected are happening. Fighting, monsters, superpowers, warrior cats, all the good stuff. I love the whole steampunk thing. I don't know shit about it, but it's just such a cool thing, with very pleasing aesthetics and something really exciting about it. I am honestly open to anything similar. Not sure how good it worked on that level, but I feel the specific type of technology and “magic” used in the story was well-integrated and didn't feel stupid, so I am pleased. I'm sure some steampunk purists (there are people like that in EVERYTHING) will say it's fake and poser and OMG, fuck off, but I liked it. At the beginning we had an aerial battle scene with technical language that confused me greatly, but then the action just happened and it was so vivid that I forgot about all my worries and went with the flow. It stayed that way. The length did not bother me one bit, because the action was so good. I was never bored, but it never felt convoluted to me. I feel it was good like that. Sometimes with long things like this I feel like an editor on crack should have gone nuts on the thing, but here I pretty much just want 5 more books of the same length with the same amount of material right now. What I also love is the promise of big, big things coming. With [b:The Bone Season 17199504 The Bone Season (The Bone Season, #1) Samantha Shannon https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1421412990s/17199504.jpg 19248070] I could not imagine what the series was supposed to contain for like 6 more books, but with this I just feel like a completely new universe is just opening up slowly, with the promise of all kinds of insane things. (Butcher really did it with his Dresden Files series and I trust him more than most people I know in real life. Don't disappoint me, Mr. Butcher, I love you.) Other than the language, I worried about the teenage protagonists. I don't like teenagers. I even hated being one myself. The bane of my existence is the teen girl protagonist being a little Mary Sue of wold saving special-ness, schooling adults at every step. Here they were actually likeable. They had flaws, they were insecure and bratty and awkward and kind of... charmingly lifelike. THIS is what I love. Sure, there is a bit instalove with the kids, but they are not hateful little shits and at this point I just give my blessings, because the girl is not some “super average wonderful princess of world saving perfection” and the boy is not “myserious angst guy with a dick attitude”. I also appreciate adults being there, being competent and meshing with the kids to form a good group. I hate when adults need to be put out of the way, because the author is too lazy to create relationships between people of different ages. It's not good writing, I tell you. No, teen cool friendships and luuuuuvs aren't the only human relationships. Here the adults were brilliant as well. Captain Grimm still had his secrets, but he is not too much on a hopeless angst machine. The “king” of the spire is a weirdo, just like the magic old man they have around. I loved the hilarious crew (I always do, ragtag teams are my thing). Jim Butcher just does what I need him to do. I haven't read his Codex Alera yet and this one made me want to pick it up immediately. He managed to meet my expectations beautifully and I'm definitely going to recommend this to my friends. The next book can't come fast enough, so I really hope he is working his little hands to the bone, because there is so much work ahead of him. Good night after another great Jim Butcher book, Captain Obvious!

2,5 stars

Okay, to be honest, I had a feeling this book wasn't going to be the love of my life from the beginning, but the cover looked kind of cool. I'm not a huge WW2 junkie. Also, not really into YA, especially not the kind with female protagonists. So yeah, while I wasn't so crazy about the premise, I decided to rol with it and do this.

Hitler took over the world, along with Emperor Hirohito (or Showa, if you prefer) and as everyone else, even the Nazis wanted to have some fun, so they decided to hold a motorbike race through the world from Berlin to Tokyo for the young guys. Last year a girl, Adele Wolfe pretending to be her own twin, Felix, won it and Hitler himself seemed to take a liking to her. This year... shit was going to be even wilder. Yael, a concentration camp escapee, who got shapeshifting abilities through Nazi experiments was going to pretend to be her, win again, kill Hitler and launch the rebellion of the resistance.
Sounds kinda cool, full of action, right?

Aaaand it was. I have to tell you, it was easy to just get into it and read like the wind. The topic, especially in the flashback scenes was pretty damn heavy, but the way it was written and the fact that it was based on some well known historical context made it fast to get into. I could appreciate it. A couple of times there were some weird figures of speech I found slightly awkward and artsy-fartsy, but the overall impression was good enough, with vivid pictures and real emotion, still not too superfluous to weaken the action. If not for some pretty tough training I went to, I could have read it in two nights.

There were some annoying issues, though. So... a little PSA for authors; if you write characters who speak a language other than the one you use, please, please do not just insert a word or two in the middle of sentences in theirs. PLEASE. Yeah, I know the people in the book mostly speak German, I don't need them to say Sheisse every chapter. It's okay, I'll still remember.
Another thing is, if you write a very competitive, cutthroat situation with a fight to death and there are multiple teen girls... don't just make them instant best friends, with love and respect, just because they're girls. I want to see some real, passionate fight between girls, like in real life when they are rivals. Thank you.

The protagonist was fine, I was okay with her, not totally enamoured, but I found her acceptable. The love interest, Luka Löve was... again, okay. Devilishly handsome, arrogant, the cool guy on the block. Yay. Adele's bother (this year also joining the Nazi Paris-Dakar Rally) was lovely, though. I am a sucker for sibling stories and this Felix kid is a good brother. Part of me wanted him to be the love interest, but of course Yael is wearing his sister's face, so that would be a whole different genre...

It ended on a note that was a bit of a twist and also the master plan reaching another chapter, so I will be reading the sequel, even though I'm not insanely invested. It was an adequate novel, a fine enough way of spending my time, I am just not convinced I was the target audience of it.

Scheisse and keep rolling.

25% in and I can't stand this.
Joyeaux Charmand is the main character and even her name sounds like the author is desperately trying to convince you she is cool and you will love her. I didn't. Basically she is some sort of a warrior type, raised on a mountain (or Mountain, as they call it, wow) in some monastery. In this place everyone is welcome, except Christians, because religious differences that are part of history and even today are nothing, just Everyone Good VS Christians Bad. The creativity! The originality! The daring! I'm not even religious at all, but even to me this was laughable.
So at Monastery Diverse they are raising people to hunt scary scary magical creatures who started showing up because of some magical catastrophe, I think very creatively caused by Christians.
But now Joy needs to go to the capitol, which is very Hunger Games, because her influential uncle called her there. Apparently hunters are celebrities there? Dunno.

This book is very teenage girl in the worst sense of it. It's immature and lacks a feeling of depth, like nothing going on is serving a real purpose in a plausible society. Of course teenage characters are super mega competent and trusted with things. Like who the fuck would assign a teen bodyguard to do something important? Would you trust a kid with your life like that?
Joy's personality makes just as little sense. She constantly has to narrate her own feelings, saying how a real hunter should be. She is ... I will be real, she is a whiny child. Why is she simultaneously presented as this hyper competent hero and also completely useless and annoying? Even her inner monologue made me cringe. She called two characters she just met “yummy strangers”. Now some of you will probably say hey, she is just layered. But no, her personality is not built up, it's just cliche and lame, whining and being a baby, but I am told she is very badass. I have Throne of Glass flashbacks.

On a certain forum I spend quite a bit of time and a fellow member offered to buy me some books as a present. This was one, by beloved baby [b:The Aeronaut's Windlass 24876258 The Aeronaut's Windlass (The Cinder Spires, #1) Jim Butcher https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1425415066s/24876258.jpg 24239884] the other. So all in all, it was a really nice experience and quite touching. Seriously. Now to me actually talking about the book and not just blabbering about my life. Vaelin is the son of the Battle Lord of the king, which usually means he is that annoying little jerk who thinks he can do whatever. Which doesn't happen, as at age 10 he gets handed over to this religious order, the warrior-making part of it. His role in life will be being a badass. At this point we turn this into a coming of age story of young boys growing up to become brothers in arms, tough as nails through regular lessons and daily beatings if you mess up. Plus some chllenges where you can die. I want more friendship stories. Or ones about siblings, comrades, masters and apprentices, parents and children, cousins, whatever that is not just one more stupid romance novel. I am tired of every meaningful relationship being more or less ignored, but everyone going nuts when it comes to romance. I mean normal human beings have all kinds of meaningful relationships. (Sure, there is some romance in this, but it's not stupid, not too much and not the only defining relationship in here.) From that angle this book was already a win to me. Not everyone is going to love it, I know, some people dislike little kids doing random stuff to grow up to fulfil whatever role the author wants them to have, but this was genuinely cool. The different children are distinct voices, they are not boring and you will care about them. You will learn to love even the one who looks like a little dick at first. Prepare for heartbreak, though. Beloved children with greaaaaat prospects are not sent to be beaten silly every day if they don't run fast enough or fight good enough. They all have their issues, which makes their friendship feel even nicer, especially knowing they are not going to have a safe life even after finishing training. This is a fantasy book, though. You know that much, but it's one of those ones where magic in any kind is rare. It's not beloved by the people, normal life is spent without “pfft, I just magic it better”. Later on magic gets more of a role in the story as Vaelin sees more of the word and realises there are underlying secrets out there, but the characters are not just equipped with some magic stuff and no other real skills. Fantasy is my thing for sure, but it's so easy to make the mistake of all of the plot being centred around it and have not much when it comes to just good old people-doing-people-stuff. It can have its charm, sure, I just like my fantasy to not be solely held up by magic. In some way this makes things feel more serious; you know the characters can't just miracle themselves out of everything. Reading this I realised something, though. Authors, please give up on trying to make the princesses sound like the biggest victims, especially in darker stories. Like once again, we are expected to feel the princess is a victim for having to marry (which she isn't forced to do to someone random, more like “hey, pick from the inner circle”), while the protagonist and his friends are given away to a monastery at age 10, get beaten daily, are expected to sacrifice themselves even if they survive the potentially deathly “exams”, like being left in a forest in a snowstorm for like a week all alone at age 12. The ones who freeze to death, crying after their mother, not even really understanding the ideas behind this provoke a bit more sympathy. All in all, I loved this book. Then again, Mr. Ryan's Draconis Memoria series is a favourite of mine, so I am content. Apparently the rest of the series is less satisfying, so I'll keep that in mind, but I'll most likely give it a go and I'm definitely reading the next Draconis Memoria, coming out this summer. Good night and let me sing you the song of my people!

Yeah, I didn't like the first book in the series, but I decided to give this a chance, mostly just to see if it was a dud of a first book or I should never ever read any more of Mr. Ritter's works. Aaaand at this point I feel I will never ever read any more of his works. Yay?

In this one they found some fossils in the countryside, but the lady whose family owns the land also dies. Of course it all sounds super creepy and Abigail Rook also loves them dino bones, so they just need to go there. That is... pretty much it.

I had three huuuge issues with this that made me be unable to enjoy the ride.

1, The characters. Jesus Christ, everyone is so ridiculous, but Abigail, who tells us all in first person is the absolute winner in the category of Why Are You Alive? and it's not even funny. She is supposedly the super smart, super useful assistant of Mr. Jackaby, the one and only magic Sherlock Holmes! (Of course the Bendidick Cucumberpatch one, because he's hawwwt.) At the same time she can't be trusted with any fragile object because she is so clumsy it's a miracle she is even alive. For some reason everyone is amazed by her astonishing intellect and she is still just being carried around during the whole thing and she acts like a child.
Jackaby is quirky and that's all, Abilgail's dude is super dreamy and cute, one of the dino diggers is comically mean to the women, etc. Every character is extremely two dimensional. No depth. Never. Not even a bit.

2, We still get the little mentions of how women are not supposed to be this or that, how at this era women just need to be housewives and how Abigail is extremely special for not being a lady.
But... nothing happens to her. Nothing. She routinely spends the night with unmarried young men as an unmarried young woman without anyone around and nobody cares. Hell, she LIVES alone with Jackaby full time. She travelled to America alone. She does whatever she wants. Then where is the big deal???

3, The pacing was bad. This is a book you can read in an afternoon, 300 pages of easy stuff. New characters are still being introduced at about 60%, we are going nowhere with the story. Setting things up can take long, but not in books this damn short, that have such a simple plot and that are the second in a series, when we already know about the world. Sorry, but this is not how any of this works.

(Probably won't) see you, Mr. Ritter!

At this point in Tristia everyone has it badly. We managed to reach the point that someone started murdering saints and of course Falcio, Kest and Brasti need to be the ones saving the world yet again. Seems like they are the local experts. Sure, Aline is still not proper queen, but they keep trying to make it happen. As soon as they can avoid the most recent “OMG, we are all going to die, someone do something, please” type of an issue. So... they have to figure out who is killing saints, why and how. A lot of questions.

Aaaaand this book is awesome yet again. We managed to reach the point where Sebastien De Castell could write phone books and yogurt labels and I would probably read them as well.
His Goodreads bio is the most hilarious thing ever, but I still don't know how much of his brilliance is the result of being cultivated with all kinds of fancy Yale courses about artsy writing or he just emerged from his mother's womb as a brilliant guy.
I will pretend it is nature's miracle and you can't stop me. Part of it is his humour. This dude makes me giggle and that is exactly what I like, the kind of jokes buddies on an adventure could realistically crack when they have seen it all.

Another thing you can feel is him having fun with this. Not trying to squeeze his brain dry to be some sort of a snobbish piece of pretentious stuff. Nah. He is having fun while you are having fun. I think a lot of people would profit from learning to appreciate that kind of a stuff. Books with actual heart in them.

Previously I complained about Ethalia and Falcio being magically in love and it just feeling a bit unbelievable. It... actually got acknowledged. The man is hilarious, talented and self-aware. YISS. This happens at the very end, though, so not much development on that front yet, but hey, next year the last book in the series is coming (I'm emotionally not prepared for that, we should all hold each other) and I have really high hopes for it.

I think I also complained about wanting to see more Greatcoats. Or I just thought that, dunno. Now here. Here we have some and I am incredibly happy about it. Some old, some new, all delightful in their quirky, misfit ways. Again, these are people I could totally imagine functioning as their little group of oddball peacekeepers and magistrates, doing their thing. At some point they take their oaths, which are of course never the same, all encompassing the story and motivations of the specific Greatcoat. My ooooonly little complaint is not all of them being written down. Why did we leave out Allister??

In this book there was considerably less Aline and Valiana and much more Ethalia, which was interesting and honestly, I wasn't too annoyed by her. I don't like love stories, I don't like fantasy books with the love interests being around too much and when a lot of the story actively involves both members of the couple. I just don't.
This time it wasn't too much, though, so again, a win. Falcio didn't act like a completely different, moronic lovey-dovey teenager because Ethalia was around. Sure, he cared about her, but it wasn't sickly or overwhelming.

So basically this was awesome. I fangirled about it, I loved it so much. Embarrassing, probably, but I can't help it when Sebastien De Castell writes what I want to read. I'm sure there are people who dislike this series and this specific book, but to me it feels like something specifically made to please me, even if it sound egoistic.

I'm reading the last book when it comes and anything else yet to come by the author. Aaaand now I am going to mark him as one of my favourites, because this series is my favourite new discovery so far this year. After three whole books I am confident when I say that.

Good night and don't bother praying to the saints. The saint is dead. O.o

I tried reading this. About 20 pages in, it's ridiculous. A million names and places and just... imaginary words, really, they mean nothing, it's info-dumpy and impossible to remember who is who and which nation does what. Very bad writing, I can't read this. I absolutely hate it when authors think creating a world with depth is just making up a gazillion names the reader won't remember anyway because it makes no sense and means nothing.

3,5 stars

For some reason I read more and more Middle Grade books this year, not like that is an issue. This one was a bit of a weird one, though, so I guess that makes a bit of a difference. Not gonna lie, at some point I wasn't really sure who were the target audience and to me that wasn't one of the absolutely positive things about it. Lets just take it little by little. Serafina is a weird little girl who lives in the basement of a grand estate with her dad, who is responsible for keeping the machines working. For some reason he is hiding her as she does her things like catching rats and sneaking around, up until kids start to disappear and Serafina has to find a friend in the loner nephew of the estate's owner to find out what is happening to all the children around them. First thing first, I kinda liked the prose. It was pretty sweet at some point, which is something I really appreciate when an author is writing for children. Some, it can be a bit of a challenge for the young ones, but it's something I would encourage if I had any kids; it can be pretty rewarding. At some places I felt the sentences structures were a bit repetitive and some synonyms could have been used in places, but all in all it had good vocabulary and it was a pleasant reading experience. With the plots and the characters things go a bit less than stellar. I understand that this is a short book, really. Still, I felt that the characters weren't particularly deep. Serafina felt plain quirky sometimes with her extraordinary skills and all. When we get an explanation... it's not really that surprising, you could see the parallels between her and some other.... creatures. Could have been done in a slightly more mysterious way. The same goes for the plot. We see that the world of the novel has some interesting things, hidden ideas and creatures, magic all around. We don't see much of it. It's a series, so it can be opened up, but by the end the lack of exploring the world leads to a certain solution of the issue that felt really abrupt. Serafina comes up with a plan that was absolutely bonkers from the beginning with almost no way of working, but of course you just knew that nothing really bad is going to happen to her. It made no sense, because it wasn't properly built up. The villain is the same; you find out ridiculously soon who is behind all and it took a lot of fun out of it for me. For a light read this was fine, I had no negative feelings about it, but it also wasn't absolutely brilliant. Somehow it got pretty bizarre in places and it wasn't really too deep. Was this for kids with rotting, disintegrating humans? Was it for teens with its lack of complex characters and proper story? I don't even know. It was fine. I didn't give it 3 stars because it was bad in any way, more like it lacked in certain ways. With an additional 100 pages or so it could have been coloured in a bit more, it could have been given something more special and more formed. I am not saying I am not reading any more of the series, I just think I would recommend [b:Greenglass House 18222716 Greenglass House (Greenglass House, #1) Kate Milford https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1379952488s/18222716.jpg 25656381] before this one, even [b:The Blackthorn Key 23270216 The Blackthorn Key (The Blackthorn Key, #1) Kevin Sands https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1433428562s/23270216.jpg 42810383]. Good night and keep your eyes on the overdressed people!

This book is something I don't get. I don't have any idea how good it is objectively, but I personally can't really give more than two stars to it.

So basically here we have some mystical, ancient person (creature?) called Father. He can bring back the dead, live forever and ever, speak all languages, so basically a major overpowered freakshow. He has this amazing library with all his knowledge, where he raised apprentices, every single one responsible for learning one subject, ranging from healing, to war, to time travelling. But now Father is gone, the apprentices are kept away from the library by some weird force and they need to do something.

Mr. Hawkins throws you in right away, with the absolutely weird, freaky apprentices and it took me some time to adjust. Sure, it does add to the mysterious atmosphere, but I personally don't really like it when I don't know shit about what's going on. This thing stayed during the whole book is some sense, which meant that certain events get absolutely no explanation and they feel kind of disjointed, like they don't serve any purpose, just there to freak you out because you don't get it. (I'm referring for example to the sun child part in the library.) Same goes for the mentioned characters. We hear a ton about gods and Barry O'Shea, zombie townspeople, rabid guard dog entities and whatever. But we don't see much about them, it's like most of the world is hidden from us. Don't do this.

The characters we see are... not particularly likeable. The librarians are all fucked up to an extent that I couldn't really connect to them. The two humans in a more prominent role, Steve and Erwin are... well, they're fine. Honestly, none of them were completely badly written, that's not the issues, but I didn't connect with any of them enough to really care if they live or die. The protagonist, Carolyn was a bit frustrating with her disconnect from the normal world sometimes, especially at the end with her and Steve at the library.

The thing is, I don't really know what to say about it, because I don't understand the aim of the story. The prose was pleasant enough to read, in some places a bit too flowery and artsy to me, which I would have been fine with, if I understood the story itself. But the way it was just made me feel like when you're watching some weird comedy from a different country, when things happen and you are sure that the writer was doing something, but there was a huge disconnect between their intention and your perception. (So basically what happened when I showed the show The League of Gentlemen to my friends. I love it. They got nightmares. HA.)

So yeah, I wish good luck to Mr. Hawkins for the future. If he releases another novel, I will most likely read it, just to see if it was his style that didn't suit me or simply this one story. Then we see what comes after that, I guess.

The thing is, I like this. Fantasy books that don't take themselves too seriously, that feel like something happening to actual people, instead of a story told by a stuffy history teacher. They have a lot of heart, something that makes the stories really approachable instead of some way too complicated nightmare of stiff characters.
This one is a really great example.

Remember how most stories end with the heroes separating and going home their own way? Something like 20 years passed since then. The heroes are out of shape, cool became extremely eccentric and weird. Joints pop and creak. The new generation is doing their stuff now, one of them, our band's old frontman's daughter, who got caught in a city under siege.
The old guys group up again to save her, just this one time.

Old guys are usually characters I love and I can't explain it. Somehow I feel for them, I enjoy reading their things, so in that regard this book was a win in my head. I especially like the dynamic with the new bands being cocky, ridiculous and not always respectful to the old ones, without actually being right about it. (Way too many of today's YA spreads this ridiculous idea that adults are idiots and young people are magical fairies that solve everything because they are perfection.)
The old glory days are gone. Now the new heroes are more in for the fame and honestly, a lot of it is just posturing. It's amazing, very entertaining and something different enough from all the other books. (It kind of reminds me of this brilliant anime called Tiger & Bunny, but that is with superheroes. I recommend it.)

Books with characters that have a long previous history can have the issue of you simply not knowing. They mention the things, they are obviously a big deal, but that's ridiculous, you don't know, you “weren't there”. You have no emotional connection, so it's just meaningless page filling.
Here it's pure fun. It's all hilarious stuff about the stories of the band, like one night stands with mermaids, being drunk during battles, all kinds of cool. You don't have to understand why it was a big deal, it all just makes you have a good chuckle.
(Not gonna lie, I would kiss the footsteps of Mr. Eames if he wrote all that, so I hope he is young and in reasonably good health, because it sounds like a crazy amount of stuff. DO IT!)

Some moments were incredibly touching, though. It's probably connected to how light-hearted and friendly the whole thing is, but you get attached. You do get attached, I warned you. You can't even emotionally separate yourself through the writing style, because it is all done it a way that pulls you in with its approachable ways.
That is a thing I enjoy; writing that feels close, that is not a march through boring and so overwrought that it makes things detrimental for the story. It just fits. It's fast, fun, lively.

A team of weirdos is always nice, if they are developed enough to feel truly like a group of very different people who somehow still work together. The dynamic needs to be there, which was actually happening here. They all had their strength and weaknesses, nobody was dead weight or totally invincible. Some characters had more humour about them, but they were not just comic relief. It all worked out so well. SO WELL.
Apparently the author built the whole thing with inspiration from rock bands. I like that. I like that, because it really made sense and it wasn't used in a way that made the book gimmicky. You don't have to be into rock bands to enjoy it or to be able to get it.

Yes, I loved it. Yes, I recommend it. Yes, I want more. Yes, I will get more once more is published. Go ahead, get it, it's freaking hilarious, exciting, fun, just... good. It is good. Okay? Okay.

Good night and rock on!

I am so conflicted about this book, so very conflicted. I am trying to read some more horror books, but apparently I'm way too picky and always find something I dislike. Almost always. This time it just lacked something. More of that later.

Malorie lives in a big house with her two children, Boy and Girl. They are 4, but never seen the outside world, but not because Malorie is some psycho. People who go outside with their eyes open will see things. We don't know what they are, but they make people go crazy, enough to make them murder and then kill themselves.
The story itself plays out in two different times; around the development of this problem, when Malorie finds a group of survivors to join and the present, with just her and her kids trying to find a new place, somewhere safer, with other humans around.

Don't get me wrong, I don't need a book to tell me everything, to explain all like I am a kid, but at the same time screw this for not explaining ANYTHING. Because newsflash, you will learn absolutely nothing about what the creatures are, what they want, how they ended up in our world, how they operate and WHY. Nothing.
Which makes the book end up being “Malorie is suffering, her life sucks, people die, so sad” and basically nothing else. Even the resolution is like a few pages long, doesn't solve the big problem and leaves you with a big “okay, but why??”.
I genuinely didn't expect big solutions. This is a short thing. I saw that. But frick, we spent pages discussing how the survivors went out to the well to get their water. Things like that, stuff not very interesting.
My issue is that I'm not sure even Mr. Malerman bothered to come up with any explanation or if he just went with something that sounded cool. Which is kinda sad, seriously. I am annoyed by authors not even bothering to build their worlds, because then I feel like I am expected to care more than they did about their own creation.

The characters are nothing special some people were kind of interesting and marginally likeable, but we are left with Malorie, who is nothing. I understand that the stress of surviving in such a very hostile environment is a pain, but it could have been embodied in some better what, I'm sure. I didn't like her, I didn't care about her too much.

Aaaaaand we reached a point where I do what I do best; find the issues in books. In the past timeline there is a dog called Victor. Malorie first mentions him in connection with how the kids frightened the dog with their loud playing, which is impossible. The dog wasn't around when the kids were old enough to play loudly, or to play in any way, actually. Why do I always notice these things?

Don't get me wrong, some parts of the book were pretty good, I liked the whole idea with not looking at the things or shit goes down, but it lacked any actual substance and I feel disappointed by that. I wanted to read something that goes over the practical survival and plays with some ideas in connection with the issue causing the whole dystopia. I got none of that.
(Actually, one of the many issues with The Hunger Games was this same thing; we are shown a situation that never gets a proper explanation and it makes the world unbelievable, because we know nothing about the process of its formation. Oh, well.)

Would I recommend it? Meh. Possibly. It wasn't offensively bad. Will I enthusiastically push it on everyone, even risking being super annoying? NOPE.

Goodbye and live with your eyes shut this time!

DNF at about one third of the way.

The idea of this is great. Once you get extremely obsessed with something, anything at all, you can basically bend the rules of the universe and do magic in connection with your topic. But it comes with a price; something bad will come to you to smooth out your karma.

The rest of it? Annoyingly quirky characters written in a prose that tries hard to be witty and ends up being kind of forced and nonsensical to me. It made me skim, jump through stuff, somehow it just didn't allow me to properly concentrate on the story. When characters talk about magic it's all just cool-sounding, vague sentences that don't work to me.

I'm not trying to be mean about it, nothing against the author or anything, but I don't feel this is for me.

4,5 stars, I guess.

I swear I need to push my best friend into reading this to be able to decide if I'm seriously broken and that's why I love this. It's weird, because I usually don't like too depressing books, but something about this was right up my alley.

So our little depressing quest continues with the kids (minus Josh) go back to Fillory to become kings and queens. But of course it's not that easy, someone actually fucked up big time and now gods are about to take magic away from humans. You can't let that happen, can you? Quentin needs to save the world this time, or at least the world he loves.

I have to be honest, not sure why I liked the characters more; because I developed some kind of a fondness for them, as you get used to your mean, old, horrible cat and start to love him? Or maybe they were a bit less dickish, because they actually needed to do things, instead of just sitting around, being witty and getting drunk. Not having Janet around all that much helped as well, as I think she's the least likeable of all the Brakebills. The others have redeeming qualities (Eliot dishes out the best lines), but she's just too spoilt and too... like someone I used to know. My bad?

We also go back and get some explanations about Julia, alternating with the chapters of Quentin being on adventure. I generally really like this kind of a thing, it just makes me more likely to keep reading, which doesn't help with sleeping, but at this point I'm okay with that. Julia is not my favourite, though, I don't really care about her, but this was neat, still.
Now I just want them to do the same with Penny. I love him so much and he's still alive!!!! Surprise, motherfucker. I love it. Yes, Quentin hates his guts, but suck it up man, Penny is awesome.

The end was a bit frustrating, not gonna lie. I understand why Quentin did what he did, he is actually developing into a person much more empathic and a real king worth the name, but at the same time it feels like we keep taking steps backs. But hey, we still have one more book and I'm sure Mr. Grossman filled it with something.

All in all, I was definitely impressed with this one and I'm picking up the last one soon enough. I still need something to read in between, especially because I'm going on a little mini holiday and this just doesn't feel like a holiday read. I want to savour it or something. I don'‘t have much else to say about it, honestly, so lets just leave it at that for now.

So long and long live the Kings. And the Queens. (Shit, so much royalty.)

DNF at 70%.

I have to be honest in connection with Brom, I am just not all that impressed by his stories. Sure, they have some interesting ideas, but so far the two I have read (or attempted to read) were... not really anything I care about all that much. Krampus was fun for Christmas, as it was very different from what we usually get around then, but this... No. It just wasn't really interesting to me.

The man's art is lovely. I find it interesting enough, with its dark elements and all. The books, though, they just seem to be too long to keep me interested. Brom seems to be good at somehow creating a moment of absolute dread, of messed up shit, but to me it's all just too much in a way that bores me and makes me feel slightly ridiculous. Not the type of a thing that I enjoy all that much.

In this one a troubled young man gets his girlfriend pregnant and they run away to his mysterious grandma. Which... ends up with the guy being murdered and having to go through purgatory for a mission to have a chance to save his girlfriend and their unborn baby.
Even just that premise sounds a bit like it was just intended to shock me as much as possible and I really hate when an author does that. It usually uses cheap tricks (like pregnant women) to make us all feel the dread, which to me always ends up being lame enough to make me roll my eyes. A bit of that is happening here, even though it is far from the worst example.

Does anyone else notice that the dude in Krampus was also a down on his luck, petty criminal in the South who tried to win back his family or something? At first that was nice enough, a bit different, but now I just couldn't help comparing the two book and wondering if this was all Brom could do. Probably not, I hope not, really.

At this point I don't feel like finishing it, though. It's far from absolutely horrible, but it is taking so long to get ANYWHERE that I feel like I have no time for this. I was expecting something more, something that was a bit less slow. I simply couldn't really get excited about it and right now, when I need my fun times to relax. In a less busy time I would have probably finished it, but right now I simply feel like I have too little time to waste it on books that don't excite me.
I wasn't really making any progress and already started reading the second Monstrumologist book by Yancey, so it's safe to say this already lost me. I prefer leaving before it becomes too much of a chore and I get into a real slump.

Good night and oh my gods, I need some fun now!

There is one thing that can really make me indifferent towards fantasy books; a lack of humour and vibrancy. Some authors seem to believe that if you place your characters in a hard living situation, maybe in a middle ages type one, maybe not, then characters will just act as stiff, humourless, dead serious people. Which... yeah, it is bullshit. It really kills those stories to me, because it just makes the novel feel like an empty imitation of how people actually work in real life.
This one, though, god, it had so much life! Don't get me wrong, rough things happened and it wasn't a rainbow coloured cotton candy dreamland, but there was just so much bickering and friends making fun of each other. The protagonist also had a tendency of making fun of his own situation, which... yeah, it is something I do, so I'm biased as hell.

After the murder of King Paelis his super awesome justice squad, the Greatcloaks disbanded. They were the kind of travelling judges, wearing these amazing coats with protection and a bit of Inspector Gadget vibes going on. Our hero, Falcio was actually the boss of them all and even now, two of his friends from the group, Kest and Brasti are with him, trying to survive somehow. It works well enough, up until they get framed for the murder of an influential man they were supposed to protect, by a naked lady in a mask. They need to get away and do it fast, so they join a caravan of people going to Rijou, the most inhuman city of the whole kingdom, delivering a mysterious young woman. Shit is going to get even worse once they get there.

I was ridiculously excited about this book, as I keep hearing people going insane about it, which doesn't always mean I will also like it, but you can't blame me for the hype getting to me. This time, though, it actually worked. I love the damn thing. Somehow it manages to perfectly balance funny moments, action and dark stuff. I have no idea how educated the author is when it comes to writing, especially writing enjoyable books that fire up your passion for reading, but THIS is how you do it.

I actually read Sebastien De Castell's (cool name btw) little bio here on the website, but even without that, you just know the man has actual knowledge about fighting. His fight scenes are really crisp like that, he can actually sell you on Falcio being good at this, because he himself is good at it. Now... I don't know shit about swords and all, so yeah. Got schooled there. I also appreciate that even though it's really obvious he enjoys this, he is not stuffing the book full to show off his expertise. Something I really appreciate, as a bunch of authors get carried away when it comes to their passion.

So lets just talk about the characters for now. Our three guys, Falcio, Brasti and Kest, the Powerpuff Boys as I like to call them are a balanced little group of awesome. We have angst, passion, wit, womanizing, honour aaaand amazing skills with weaponry. This is personal preference, but I would take friendship or sibling stories above romance in every book, 100%. Here we had that stuff. There is just something lovely about a group of people balancing each other so perfectly.

Personally I do not require huge twists to enjoy a book. Some people do, but if other things are given (characters I am invested in, a cool world, pleasant prose), then I can live without it. In this book I definitely didn't expect any big twist, but there were a couple. One was not particularly imaginative (sorry) in connection with King Paelis, the other with multiple people... yeah, that was good. Not going to spoil, but seriously, I enjoyed one twist much more than the other.

Another tiny tiny little “issue” I had was how conveniently people from Falcio's past just all happened to show up. This is a huge kingdom, at one point Falcio even thinks about the fact that somehow he managed to not run into other old Greatcoats from him past, but at the same time all the people who influenced him one way or another when he was younger just happened to be in Rijou during the time shit was going down. Maybe it is some kind of a magic we don't know about yet, I don't know. It was just way too convenient.

There were some ridiculously fun moments that made me genuinely giddy and excited. Like at one point Falcio makes a speech in front of the oppressed, afraid people of Rijou, effectively starting a rebellion against their rulers. It was such a cool, vivid moment I couldn't help wishing for a movie or show adaptation, because you could just see it in front of your eyes. That was pretty sweet.

Somehow the book managed to avoid overwhelming me with all the information and characters and concepts, which again, a really good thing for a fantasy novel. It is new to me, as it is the first book in the series, but it still feels extremely approachable and human. The language of it works, the characters actually feel like people instead of plot devices or idealised human beings from a world that is based on real history. You just genuinely feel them close to you.

All in all, this was absolutely fabulous. I am definitely reading the rest of the series (already lined up on my Kindle before even starting the first one, because pffft, go big or go home) sooner than later. If Sebastien De Castell manages to keep this up, I am pretty sure he just managed to gain a new fan who will be eagerly waiting for any new book he releases.

Have a nice day and don't go out without a jacket!

DNF very freaking fast, after 15%.

Miss Schwab, you writing a female character who can go around murdering and even getting praised and rewarded for it doesn't make her a “strong female character”, it makes her a sociopath. Constantly almost being raped and murdering the guy in return is still a cheap thing and bad writing, but when SHE is stealing from someone, he runs after her, she murders him and she gets taken up on a ship as the new perfect little best friendo of the captain who was the employer of the guy, I just can't help calling this a piece of shit, dumb book. You can write imperfect heroes. Hell, even bad ones. But you can't make them evil, then expect everyone to think they are awesome total little babes who you should love.
We should let Lila run around, stab random guys in the kidney, we will find some excuse why she did a great thing, because special snowflakes can do no bad ever.

Screw this idiotic book.

Quit at 56%. I am just not getting on well with this series. On paper I should like it, but it's tedious, lifeless and just can't hold my attention.
Also, the model on the cover is a completely different person from the book 1 guy. I prefer book 1 Eric and that's it.

UPDATE:
I read this, finally. Still bothered by the fact the covers all have a different guy.

Eric realises that someone can murder people and steal their appearances when he gets attacked by the person doing it. But why would someone do that and what can be done about it? Meanwhile, someone assumed dead starts talking to him again. Even for a necromancer, it's slightly weird.

The big issue with this series is that we have big reveals that are supposed to be emotional, but they have zero emotional punch, because we don't know these characters that much. The payoff doesn't really do anything when the characters barely even did anything and half of that was freaking annoying anyway.
The mysteries are competent, the action is pretty good. Hell, Eric is fine as a character, I am okay with him. But something is missing. Sure, the books are pretty short and we are two books in, but what will be left for book 10 to do that has emotion if we blow everything on the first few, when it all doesn't matter that much either? That is my biggest question. At this point people are all just dead around Eric. So we will have new, throwaway, random people forever, because nobody is allowed any development. Plus, we are back to square one with the new ones not liking or trusting Eric.

I would love to see more of the big power players behind the story. So far it all just leads back to the same people, so I don't know if that will stay the same. This is less of a problem, we have more than enough time for developing the world.

4,5 stars I didn't expect this book to be so much fun, party because the other thing I read by the author (some of the Eli Monpress books) wasn't brilliant, it was inconsistent and lacked being in any way coherent and refined. Partly because... honestly, so many similar books written in the last few years were just plain crappy. I will explain what I mean by that later. What we have here is some kind of a future scenario where magic returned to the world, with the technological advancements still going on, so basically it's a future with supernatural added to it without one or the other being completely inferior to the other. Julius is one of the big dragon clans, who all come with the ability of living in a human form and man, they are brilliant at it. Extremely competitive, greedy, calculating and just generally ones to get to the top whatever it costs, meek and laid back Julius is not really considered a good dragon at all, which results in his mother throwing him out, cutting him off when it comes to money and locks his powers completely, so he is basically just a super awesome human now. To get back his powers Julius needs to find the runaway daughter of another dragon clan and take her back home. For any of his plans to work he needs someone with magical abilities, so he recruits human sorceress Marci, who has her own problems, namely being pursued by a gang. We all love a good underdog story, am I right? Julius is kind of an awkward guy, not particularly outstanding at anything among his super talented siblings and honestly, he doesn't even want to compete for real. He could have easily become a total disaster. I mean many authors do the thing with the kind characters being ugly and being defined by what they lack, just to become beautiful once they get ahead. What I particularly loved here was how Julius wasn't a freak of nature. Among the humans he is actually considered handsome and quite agile, he's not at all repulsive or portrayed as kind because he is freakish. It's the opposite; among his people he is considered freakish BECAUSE he is kinda nice. Marci is our other protagonist. Nowadays, when female characters are so often portrayed as needing no maaaaan or being the only moral compass in the whole story, Marci was fine. She does her thing, she is good at it, but without having to undermine Julius to show how she is a “strong female character”. They both need each other to solve their respective issues and I loved that bond. I don't even mind how it's inevitably leading to a love story, which I generally don't like, because they do some kind of a chemistry and they complete each other without it being a stupid gotcha competition or annoyingly trying to play hard to get. The side characters have so much potential as well. We see some of Julius' siblings, all of them brilliant in their own way, but having all kinds of different characteristics. They are a group with cohesion in some ways, while having their own voices. I especially like Justin, the brother who is completely different from Julius (mainly great with physical combat, extremely hot headed, big on pride, etc.), but is closest to him. Is he could survive the series... I would love that, really. Another thing I loved was how it was a light, easy to read story and the situation of the protagonist was still a metaphor. Not an exceedingly deep one (basically how you should make your own way of life and expectations don't have to define you), but STILL. Why am I saying this? Because I feel more and more authors don't know how to use a metaphor in the theme of the book. Sure, they use it for smaller components of the story here or there, but then the protagonist turns to the camera and tells you verbatim. Some example would be [b:Sufficiently Advanced Magic 34403860 Sufficiently Advanced Magic (Arcane Ascension, #1) Andrew Rowe https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1488182235s/34403860.jpg 55506810] , where the author seems to believe we are too stupid to understand anything without him making the character do all the things his father will not like. (Then again, I think some readers are to blame as well. Namely the ones who bitch up a storm if their favourite social themes are not spelled out in the books for them to feel enough virtues were thoroughly signalled.) This was a first book, though. The very first little case in something that we are told is much bigger, so I refuse to give it 5 stars. There must be more of it out there, something that needs to tie it all together and I'm reserving the perfect rating for that thing. If it happens. Not sure. But so far I really had a blast with this. I feel the author working on her craft, having a better paced and planned story that makes sense and doesn't lack any element that is needed for a truly well-made book. I am definitely going to read the sequel. Have a nice day and don't leave this to last!

Weird books for younger readers are cool. Today I've head some radio show at work, it had people call in to complain about kids nowadays for some reason, I don't even know why. One was this very disgruntled lady who for some reason complained about kids caring about creepy spooky, weird stories and she sounded like that was the worst thing ever.
Me, though... I think it's something we definitely need. What a lot of people don't seem to understand is that kids aren't idiots and that they just think in a different way. Now everyone seems to be just so sensitive and so many people can't deal with things, but children normally don't look round and see the world as this endless sea of offensive and horrible things they should panic about and while I am no expert, I would assume them hearing about the morbid is important.
This is why I love for example Darren Shan; he does weird, scary and genuinely dark things in a way that is accessible for younger readers. Now many of you will probably say his writing is not good and all, but I love how he has the guts to tell children about dark stuff in a way that is not condescending, because they can handle it.

In that sense this reminds me of his writing; one of the protagonists, Stephanie is 12. To enter the world of magic she needs to accept that it means she will have to live in a world much darker and scarier, but she is not surprised in this naive way, where we are supposed to believe 12-year-olds don't know violence and death exist.
The other protagonist is... a walking, talking, magic using human skeleton. With style. Seriously, Skulduggery is hilarious and sarcastic, so much fun. He doesn't baby Stephanie, which is exactly how normal, real children want adults to be around them.

The story itself isn't anything too special so far, old enemies showing up and Stephanie happens to get caught up in a war that started long ago. A bunch of characters and concepts introduced to us, but that's fine when the series is a collection of so many shorter, easy to read novels. Perfect to get the attention of the reader, to get us into it. It's obvious things will get more complex later on and I can't wait for it.

I would definitely recommend this one, it's an easy and extremely fun read. I'm already halfway in the second book, which is a big deal when I normally don't read books of a series right after each other.

Good night and look in the closet for the skeleton!

The premise was enough to make me interested in this one. Magic, supernatural, kooky detective and his assistant, in a historical setting. Murders. Monsters. Aaaand... disappointment.This book was pretty damn dreadful in my opinion. Not trying to be too hard on it, it's really just the first book of a new author, but somehow it managed to be everything I dislike. It was obviously specifically written for young girls, to be marketable and sell with the whole Sherlock-Doctor Who thing, the barely there romance (you can “ship”!!!), the cutely clumsy, but super smart, but oh so rebellious, still mild main character... One thing I have to give it; the prose was perfectly fine, it didn't feel too simple or too trendy, it was okay. The book didn't slip on that, which gives room for the author to not worry about that and start working on one of the big, big things he missed, which is the character development and the lack of consistent behaviour. They all felt like they had no logic behind their deeds, to the degree that sometimes it felt like a bunch of Gollums. The (horribly picked) protagonist, who also tells the story from a first person perspective (noooo), named Abigail Rook, is supposedly all in for adventures that are absolutely not fit for a woman. It gets mentioned about 9000 times and it's just bullshit. She runs away from school, steals her tuition money, joins some expedition, travels to America, becomes a detective's assistant, and moves in with the man, all of this ALONE. What happens? NOTHING. She gets comments from two people, one a gossipy hag, the other a policeman who says looking at dead bodies are not for women. (Seeing them does freak her out a bit, so... she proved him right.) She's also completely unable to take care of herself and sounds like an airhead, but manages to notice useless details, which are suddenly considered necessary, while Jackaby was fine before her. At the end she gets pats on the head, even though she was pretty useless. Yay.Jackaby was... nothing? We got to know nothing about the man, nothing about his background, his story. Oh, he can see supernatural stuff! Other than that, he's either adorably fascinated by people and really kind, or basically like a total alien who pisses off everyone. It changes randomly, with no rhyme or reason. He had some cute moments, but they all felt like some Tumblr gif set, rather than a fleshed out character that I care about. It wasn't just the whole character issue that I had. In a previous review of [b:The Blackthorn Key 23270216 The Blackthorn Key Kevin Sands https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1433428562s/23270216.jpg 42810383] I talked about how that book had no actual magic, but still had some magical quality about it because of the atmosphere Kevin Sands created (also a first time author), but this one fell short. It had supernatural creatures, trolls, banshees, all kinds of stuff and it felt like nothing. It al held no real danger or excitement, just some fun little facts sprinkled in. The story itself was really boring. While these creatures ran around, I never felt like anyone important was going to get hurt for real. Too watered down and PG. It was a really quick read, party because its length, partly because you didn't have to pay attention all that much. I'm not sure I would have read it if it was longer, but I powered through it with its 300 pages simply because it didn't need too much energy. Right now I'm thinking about picking up the sequel, mostly to see if this was just a clumsy first book or the author's style doesn't work with me at all. Wish me luck. PS. The cover is still extremely nice.

Dropped at 17%, because it was just so goddamn annoying. Seriously, every character in this fucking book is just so unpleasant, everything drags, it's just... not a pleasant read to me. People seem to adore it, which is nice, but there is no way I'm wasting time on a book that makes me not want to read. City of Stairs is not worth me going into yet another slump.

I took the stairs to fuck right off from this city.

Here is the thing, I will go out and say it. I am not particularly interested in books set during WW2, because I find they are often just very similar and... I find it boring. Yes, I can understand the importance of knowing about those things, the war, Holocaust, etc. But at the same time when you're talking about a topic again and again, it often turns into a competition to be the most emotional and... yes, even cheesy. Things turn into cliches.
This time period is also more limiting, as it's a sensitive topic at this point in time, so you can only approach it in certain ways and absolutely not in others.
Because of this, I wasn't entirely sure if this book was going to be good or another one on the pile of things that you have to respect because of your respect for the topic, but you don't like at all.

So we have Lev, a Russian Jewish boy during the siege of Stalingrad. He is awkward, inexperienced in life's things, taking part in some sort of a fire patrol. One night a dead Nazi paratrooper falls right by his house and with his friends they just need to look at him, then... well, take some things from the body. Hard times and all. Of course he gets caught by the police.
Once in prison for the night, he s joined by the deserter Kolya, this amazingly charismatic guy who could talk anyone into anything.
Instead of being executed, though, a colonel tells them that if they mange to get a dozen eggs in a week for his daughter's wedding cake, then they are free and they even get ration cards and all.

What I really liked is that this book had many moments that weren't dignified and beautiful. Kolya loves talking about his bowel movements. People drink, they throw insults at each other (they apparently all fucked each other's mothers), it's all just people. Because even in war, people don't just transform into these wise saying spewing poets. Nah. Life goes on, which includes all this stuff, Yay.
To me it really helped to feel for the people. They are realistic, not fake, beautiful, dignified fakes. It really adds to it all in my opinion. At one part Lev even thinks about how being in danger doesn't just automatically make you a hero.

Bad things happen, obviously. Be prepared for that. Horrible things have to happen in a book in this setting, it's pretty obvious to me, but somehow it wasn't the type of endless suffering with nothing else that bothers me with a lot of books set in this time period. I can understand it, but to me that is definitely not a pleasurable reading experience. There.

I feel like Mr. Benioff really used the limited number of pages well. It didn't feel like he was just writing an overblown short story, it had a whole story and it was obvious he knew where he wasn't going with it.
Often shorter books feel like they are not properly thought out, like they didn't have time to truly work with the story and it's so frustrating. (Hello, Bird Box.)

This is a book I am going to recommend to people, it's really something that combines the material with being actually enjoyable and a good read, something people will truly enjoy.

Good night and pick up this egg-squisite one! (Oh, dear.)

You can call me an angsty, pretentious fuck and I won't even argue with you, but I did love this series. It surprised even me that I did, but something about certain situations in life, certain ways the characters related to the world really worked with me. It was probably partly the fact that I managed to read it at the right time, I don't know. It's just what I needed and I am not ashamed to say that.

In this last book the characters need to save Fillory yet again, while their group comes together once more at the end to do whatever it takes. I wouldn't want to say too much, as you need to read the previous book to make it make sense and that would be spoiling. Basically everyone finds their footing, in one way or another and they manage to reach their best self they could be at this point.

In my review of the second book I mentioned two things in connection with liking the characters. First of all, I said I liked the characters better, either because they developed or because having something to do made them less angsty. By now I realized it's both; the things to do and their trials and tribulations simply made them develop.
Another thing was not having Janet around too much, and how I liked that because she was such a horrible person without any real redeeming qualities. In this one... even Janet grows on you with her new passion for being a real queen who actually defends Fillory. In one chapter she tells the story of the 1,5 years she spent alone as the leader of the place when Quentin and Julia disappeared, so Eliot went to look for them. That chapter was absolutely magical. The writing did something exquisite there and I actually started to like her. Truly amazing.

Now there was this thing I wasn't 100% sold on. Alice. I mean her return from her niffin form was definitely interesting, but I had let her go. I was over her, so the whole thing with Quentin and Plum spending chapters on bringing her back home and all wasn't particularly interesting to me. I preferred her back in book one, probably because back then almost all the others were just absolute dicks and she felt like one of the few okay people.

As for the series as a whole, it's really hit or miss. I can't blame anyone for not liking it, but I couldn't help loving it. So far this is my favourite new (never tried before, don't know anything about it) read of the year. I'm not sure how it will hold up, though. I guess I have to make a note for myself to read it again in a couple of years and see how I can relate to it then. What was comforting and familiar melancholy now could very well feel like horrible, annoying artsy-fartsy shit in 5 years. That's funny, though, that even though I just finished it, I'm already looking forward to reading it again and I can only praise Mr. Grossman for doing that to me.

About him... Well. I do not want to go and read his earlier books. I want more of this, the author who managed to find his voice and his unique way. So I am waiting, Mr. Grossman. Write! Do something, I will be super excited about picking it up, even if just seeing if our love affair lasted only this one series or it is just the beginning of something crazy.

(I'm watching the show with my best friend now. I'm... not quite sure how I feel about it. Sure, it's interesting and some acting is amazing. Screw you, Hale Appleman, you are my Eliot and you can't act flamboyantly gay enough for me to not find you creepily attractive, duh. Such a good actor. Even Quentin is charming! But the changes they did to Penny are... Yeah, not really into it, I liked him not being self-conscious and having that innocent charm. All in all, I get they needed to make the show more action-filled and “cool”, but it kills some of the very thing I love about the books.)

So farewell, you wonderful, imperfect bastards.