Jasper

I liked this book. I liked the story it was trying to tell.

Trying. To tell. This book had some really good themes and ideas and explored the effects of the Royal family really well, but I just think it could have been so much better in a different way.

So this book was a lot more pro royal than I was expecting. That's not exactly a bad thing, although supporting the Royal family does have a lot of pretty messed up implications, such as the acceptance that a random person is better than you simply for being born in a particular position. But that's fine, I guess. Even the epilogue, where James is about to get coronated and is happy about it is fine. But what I found pretty gross was the depiction of the people who were anti-royal only being so because they were racist and threatening their lives. I am most certainly anti-royal but this has nothing to do with their race or gender but simply because it is an utterly messed up position that we still uphold and I think its wrong to not mention those people who are against the monarchy but are not racist, violent bigots. I wish no harm on the Royal family, I just don't think they should hold any of the power that they do.

So, that aside, I did like a lot of the characters. Grigor was sweet, Gayle was interesting, and James' mum was a really appealing, intruiging character. Although I do think there may have been a few too many characters, which meant a lot of them didn't get much development, I still think the majority of the characters were very well done.

Except maybe for Eddie. To be honest, with all the potential this book had, it going with the obvious ‘Eddie hates James because he's second in line' was really disappointing. While his reasoning behind it was actually quite interesting, his sudden character change was jarring and ruined some of the meaning for me. this story went from being an interesting look at how James' priority by his parents affected his brother, to his brother being evil and kidnapping someone and completely in the wrong and James' parents didn't do anything wrong. I think this book would have benefitted a lot more from some moral ambiguity.

Also, the romance was done kind of weirdly, with Jonathan barely being in it, so the reader doesn't have much frame of reference for why James chooses Jonathan over Grigor, but it was alright.

Overall I enjoyed it, but The King is Dead had some major flaws that, if written differently, could have made this a much better book.

Cute kids book - the characters were all really well written, especially Charlie, and this large scale adventure story has been so exciting so far! Really excited to continue the story in the next book!

I liked this book. I think. It was great for the first and last few chapters. It was kind of depressing and boring for the rest.

This is definitely not what I was expecting. To be honest, I found it kind of disappointing. Nothing much happened, and Peter and Cooper were miserable the whole time, and the villain reveal at the end just felt like a copy of the first book, which was, to be honest, a whole lot better. I just feel like the atmosphere of this book was kind of wrong. It doesn't really match the first book, and just left me feeling a bit bored.

I wish the story had been about Peter and Cooper's adventures across the land, though, finding Returnees and sending them back to Wranglestone, but that was not what happened. The cover also mislead me in this direction.
The ending was good though. It was quite sad, but also hopeful and heartwarming.
I just wish it had been different though. :(

This book was going in exactly the direction I was expecting it to for about 200 pages...until it wasn't.

I expected this to be a chill, coming-of-age bisexual realisation story where she gets the girl and has a brilliant prom. That is not what happened.
Ophelia is a great character. Her personality is very clear from the beginning and she's a very enjoyable character. Her relationships with her friends, Agatha, Sammie, and Wesley were all very entertaining and sweet, and her crush on Talia and relationship with her was also very cute. I was really not expecting anything more than a simple bisexual love story, but this book completely overted my expectations.

Ophelia does NOT get the girl!! I was kind of gutted when I read that, but to be honest, it was a lot more realistic than a lot of books I've read.
Ophelia's subsequent hanging outs with Wesley were so, so good and her going to the LGBTQ+ centre was a wonderful scene.
I really appreciated the LGBTQ+ representation in this book, as well as the very realistic depictions of friendship in a big group, with Ophelia realising she was never really friends with Lindsay, but being able to enjoy her company regardless.
Ophelia being taken to prom by Sammie and Agatha was so wholesome and adorable and this book did such a great job of demonstrating the value of friendship, and the end of the book was so utterly heartwarming. (Also, it was great to see two bisexual characters in opposite gender relationships - I feel like there's never any rep for that!)

Wow, alright.

This book was unlike any book I've ever read, though that may only be because I'm 16 and mostly read feel-good YA novels.
But this was...incredible! There was so much going on, so many characters, so many things that I just couldn't keep track of but I still made my way through knowing enough to understand most of what was happening.
What really struck me was how so much happened, and Maali seemed like this hugely important character in many ways, while simultaneously feeling very unimportant as well. But there were characters that knew of him, and cared about him, whether kindly or maliciously. But then, by the very end, you find that life has moved on beyond him, and his photographs, his best friend, and his lover have all moved on from him, and everything that was Maali Almeida is over. It felt in some ways rather depressing, but there is beauty and hope in how he was able to start again, be reborn, with all knowledge of who he was and all his work and pain and love forgotten.

I've waited over two years to read this book and believe me it was worth it.

[2.5 stars]
Incredibly simply written, surprising for a book with this kind of story. Had a huge amount of potential but none of the characters felt real or enjoyable enough for me to care about. :/

This was...odd, I guess I could say. To be honest, this book feels like The Aristotle and Dante story, the first book, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, being simply the prequel.

Where I did not enjoy the first book, in terms of plot, I loved this one. The first book felt like a lot of Aristotle just moping around and being grumpy and miserable, which made me feel grumpy and miserable reading it. However, in this book, Aristotle manages to come to terms with his brother's prison sentence, and his new found sexuality with the support of his parents, Dante, and his parents.

I do love how much Dante and Aristotle love their parents and how much they come to appreciate them, which makes the death of Aristotle's father that much more tragic. Although, I do find it a bit strange that the blurb of the book advertises this dramatic and unexpected death as the main plot of the book, when it actually happens about 3/4 the way through the book? I found this a bit odd.

But I love how this book is about Aristotle and Dante just being in love. It's heartwarming to see them together after the difficulty of the first book, despite the theme of the threat of AIDS.

However, there were a few things that keep this from being 4 or even 5 stars. First of all, is the fact that this book does feel like The Story. It makes the first book feel even worse, as I know that the story can be so much better and more enjoyable, but it isn't and that bothers me.
Second, is the odd debate Aristotle has with Cassandra about sexism and how it's presented. Cassandra seems to be presented as the annoying stereotype of the extreme feminist. I get that it's the 80's and views on women were more sexist, but I don't like how Cassandra's ideas about the patriarchy and the way society takes advantage of women are presented as being over the top and extreme. Cassandra's perspective as a woman who experiences sexism and is frustrated by it should not be seen as annoying or anything negative. The points that Cassandra brings up are all valid! And what really, really annoys me, is that it's turned into a debate, with a winner. And Aristotle wins...because he's gay? Does Benjamin Alire Sáenz not know that being gay and being sexist are not mutually exclusive? It's really annoying to see Aristotle shut down Cassandra's arguments by playing the gay card, which isn't even relevant to what she's saying, but is still presented like homophobia is equal to sexism. Both are just as bad as each other, but, again, are not mutually exclusive and not the same, therefore one cannot be used as an argument against the other.

Finally, there's the issue around Bernardo and the woman he killed. I am happy to say that this book handled her transness quite well. Apart from a few lines such as Aristotle calling her ‘he' when saying ‘he' fooled you when talking to Bernardo, although I understand that this instance, the misgendering is used ironically, and not meant harmfully (even though it always is). The second instant that makes me a bit uncomfortable is where Aristotle asks his mother if she knew the trans woman's name and her mother replies with ‘yes' but then says her birthname. Sure, some people do love and keep their birthname as their own, but the majority do not, and as the woman was dead, they couldn't ask her so it would be logical to assume she would've changed her name, especially from a clearly male name like Solitario. Also, if you know a person's birthname, then say ‘I know her birthname' which shows that you know that her birthname likely did not match with her actual name. Sorry to have such a big rant about, like, two lines, but as a trans person, those particular lines made me feel uncomfortable.
I do like how, as he did not know her name, Aristotle gave the trans woman a name, Camila, in a lovely letter that he gave to her grave. That made me smile.

I did like this book, despite its problems and I would recommend that if you enjoyed the first book, then you should read this one! And, even if you didn't enjoy the first one, I would still recommend it, as the tone of the book is a lot different and more positive than the first.

Really good, really chilling, I could see a lot of our current political situation reflected in the Protectorate. I love that there was a trans character as well. I feel like we're often overlooked even in stories like this. I did find Eric a bit uninteresting, and the past chapters made this sort of stop-and-start motion to the pacing but other than that I thought it was great.

[2.5 stars]

SO MANY EMOTIONS!!! So well written, beautifully illustrated, it was great!!!!

[3.5 stars]
A delightful short story!

Luis is a terrible protagonist who never learns anything. He is selfish and overly dramatic and never changes. He thinks his school's gendered prom is the worst thing to have ever happened and that it's all the headteacher, Mrs Somboon-Fox's fault, despite her explaining to him why she can't change it. Luis gets angry with his boyfriend over...nothing???

And then he goes to 1985 where he thinks he needs to get a closeted gay boy who's already being harassed, in an extremely religious school to be out and proud. He knows he dies, but doesn't take this into consideration, simply believing that the only way to be a good queer is to be out, even when this could have literally killed him. Which it almost did. Luis makes every terrible decision while being immensely cringy, and the story bends to fit his narrative; Chaz becomes confident in his gayness (but gets kicked out and has to face his extremely homophobic family) and when Luis returns to the future, his school is a perfect queer space. But what does this really mean? Nix is voted prom royal, but seeing as we're supposed to be being progressive here, shouldn't we be scrapping the whole concept of voting for the ‘best' person in your year? All this book does is have Luis do wildly dangerous thing for a distorted belief of ‘progression' and then he returns to a future that makes no effort to actually be progressive in any way that hasn't already been done, or better, elsewhere.

(Also, Cheng needed wayyyy more page time than what he got for the importance of his character)

Really good book about history that has been completely neglected in the past.

One of the worst books I've ever read.

Utterly incredible. An endless tragedy that the characters themselves can't even comprehend, but which leaves the reader devastated. I will admit, the ending fell a little bit flat for me but I think it would've been difficult to have concluded this book in a way that matched the intensity of the rest of the novel, and still managed not to be a tragedy. So, I can't really fault it.
What an incredible book. I'm not amazing at reviewing books but I have to get across just how incredible this was. I'm so glad to have read it.

This book was a bit disappointing. The main character, Teo, is irritating and childish, and his romance with Aurelio is predictable and uninteresting. The only character I really liked was Xio, but I'm guessing he's not going to be featured very prominently, or in the same way as in this book. I found almost all of the characters to have very surface level personalities, with little depth to keep me interested. There were also way too many characters. Along with Teo, Niya, Xio, and Aurelio, there were six other prominent characters which meant it was difficult to find time to get to know their characters, meaning any interactions they had with Teo were pretty much interchangeable (apart from with Auristela and Ocelo, but they both felt like over exaggerated bully characters).
Speaking of interactions, I feel like I read the phrase ‘a laugh bucked in Teo's chest' or ‘Xio hid his laugh' about fifty times - these characters were constantly laughing about very unfunny conversations, which just made it seem like the author was trying to convince you they were funny when they really weren't.
A lot of the plot was also very predicable - Teo becomes Sunbearer and refuses to sacrifice the loser, although that whole scene went a lot faster than I was expecting. I was at about page 370 when I realised this wasn't actually a stand alone novel, so make of that what you will.

Okay, I did just complain a whole bunch there, but this book wasn't all bad. It does have brilliant worldbuilding. While I wasn't expecting this story to be set in the modern world, I grew used to it quickly, and liked how a lot of the Gods' powers became used in a modern setting. It was cool to see the differences between Golds and Jades, and each semidiose between each other. It was also great to see a lot of non-binary representation. (Although I did notice two instances where a non-binary character was misgendered. Once for Ocelo, and once for Sol, both being misgendered with he/him pronouns. I don't know if this was an accident by the author or by an editor but it's very strange for something like this to make it to final print, and it's really disappointing to see these characters being misgendered.)

I did find Teo's transness to be quite difficult to read about, as my trans experience as someone only slightly younger than him has been very different and difficult, so it is possible that my personal struggle with seeing other trans people with exactly what I want (which I know I ought to overcome) may have diminished my enjoyment of this book somewhat.

Despite its flaws, I am looking forward to reading the second book in this series. (And also very excited to see the cover of the next book, as this one is utterly gorgeous!)

Soooo good!! This is much better than the first book, now that the story has been set up and we know about Seth, everything really felt like it was getting properly started. I really like Extraordinaries and it's really cool to see more, like Miss Conduct. Of course, being an extraordinary is an obvious allegory for being queer; the whole ‘Save Our Children' initiative as well as stuff people were saying about Seth after he came out as extraordinary reminded me very much of the current situation regarding trans people. (Would be really cool to see a trans Extraordinary!!) It's so cool that there's someone putting queerness into the superhero genre, as it really needs it!

(Oooh also how is Jenny Bell alive!??! wpah and Owen escaped?!?!? I am so excited for the next book!)

This is probably someone's favourite book. It wasn't mine. [2.5 stars]

Ahhwhwhwwwww THIS BOOK!!!!

this book is a beautiful love letter to queer people, New York, and the queer people of New York.
I loved every single character. Wes was a silly little gay mess, Nico and Myla were absolutely adorable, Winfield and Lucie were surprisingly sweet and wholesome, and August and Jane of course were completely phenomenal.

August was such a complex character, and it was so clear how she'd been shaped by the life she'd lived, always searching for her uncle, and Jane was a delight - a fierce but loving character and the two of them just worked so well.

I found the story to be very well paced, allowing for Jane and August's relationship to develop not too slow but not too fast so that when Jane ends up gone it is utterly heart wrenching. But, of course, the author has it both ways, and Jane comes back (curse you Casey McQuiston for almost making me cry for no reason!) so you get both the crushing sorrow of Jane leaving and the overwhelming joy of her coming back.

I liked how the end of the book was just little anecdotes not properly part of the story. It anchored all of the other extra little snipets at the beginning of every chapter to the whole story and made the world feel even more full, because it felt like a conclusion, but August and Jane get to keep going.

This book was a fantastic read and I'm definitely looking forward to reading more books by Casey McQuiston!

This was a really good book! It was by no means incredible or life-changing, but a lovely little look into Sky's story that I'm happy to have on my bookshelf! (I also really liked the ties to the colour blue, specifically Sky Blue!)

Damn this book was so boring. I got no character from any of these characters, possibly because of the fact that four protagonists in one book is way too many, but frankly, having read As Far As You'll Take Me by Phil Stamper, I just don't like the way he writes his characters. They have no personality. I was never invested in anyone's stories. My version of the cover features all four characters drawn on it, and by the end of the book I was still unable to tell who was who. (I'm thinking left to right: Heath, Reese, Gabe, Sal) I wasn't interested in Sal's breakdown or Gabe's anxiety or Heath's love confession or Reese's frustration about his criticism. (That was, like, his whole story. Just being sad about his designs being criticised. Followed by all the stuff with Heath.)
This book was bland and boring and I'm not going to read any more Phil Stamper books coz I've already read two and I didn't like either of them!

(Was that a reference to Marty from AFAYTM on Reese's London holiday?)

[3.5 stars]

This book is everything that a Warrior Cats novella should be. It explains things that deserved more attention that they received in the main series books, this time it's about Blackfoot/star's past, which before now we haven't known much about, and how he came to realise his mistakes and grow and be a better leader because of it.

I also like the flashbacks that he gets inbetween receiving his nine lives, so we get to see interesting snipets of his life and we get to know why he did the awful things that he did. This books is very good and well worth the read.

Okay, actually, Bristlefrost dying kinda made me like her more. By the end of this series she'd become annoying and predictable. All of her thoughts were about Rootspring and it was just tiring. So, I'm kind of glad she died. It showed a strength of her character and made sure that I ended with her on a good note. And Rootspring's grief was actually written really well, it felt so genuine and my heart ached for the little guy.

Shadowsight now not being able to communicate with StarClan because he never actually was is quite poignant, and the other medicine cats being so accepting of him was so sweet. He was definitely my favourite character - constantly trying to make everything better and just making it worse, but nonetheless being able to redeem himself to the Clans and pick himself back up again and keep going.

The little nod Shadowsight and Rootspring shared at the end of the book was very sweet. A wordless acknowledgement between two friends of everything they'd been through.

I'd say this book was good, but the last book in a series usually is. (also if I rate this any lower I'll have to actually confront the fact that I don't want to read warrior cats anymore despite having been reading it for 9 years now).

So yeah, while there were some huuuge flaws with this series, I felt that it managed to end it all quite well.