Liz Rapp

I liked it, but I feel like I would have gotten more out of it if I had read the Dark Materials series more recently. As is, it felt like it referenced a lot of exposition in the series without really building up the universe in the same way. In fact there were even times when I was wondering “Where is Malcolm's daemon?” In some sections is almost felt like Asta was forgotten.

Malcolm and Alice are great characters, I would love to see more of their story. I loved infant Lyra and seeing what baby daemons are like.

However, the second half of the novel is a long canoe ride through a dreamy flooded British landscape, all while being chased by a lunatic and his increasingly maimed and tortured daemon. They find a witch, a faerie and some sort of weird purgatory party. It felt like it dragged on, and then the ending when they are finally rescued felt incredibly rushed. We never see Malcolm reunited with his family or Dr. Relf for example, instead we just have Lord Asriel telling them to go back to the Trout, as he drops Lyra off at the University.

I did really enjoy this, but just like the first book I felt like the ending was rushed and a bit confusing.

Morozko actually has a brief paragraph explaining the ending of book 1 - where he says he gave Vasya's father the choice to fight the Bear and die, and that's how he randomly appears in the woods just in time to save Vasya. It was a kind of out of place explanation, and if the author had included it in the first book it would have been a better ending. I remember really liking the first book until the father basically teleported to the fight in the woods and deus ex machina-d the ending.

Anyway, there's a lot to like about the second book. Vasya is such an interesting character, and Solovey was wonderful! The depictions of medieval Russia, the folk tales, the wintery setting, were all beautifully rendered. The terem and depictions of the stifling lives of women were terrifying, especially in contrast to Vasya, a woman so unsuited to such a life. But it seemed like Vasya very quickly went from wanting to be a traveler, to telling Olga she will stay in Moscow to help her manage Marya's magical tendencies. It seemed like a very quick switch.

This was fun! I would highly recommend it, especially to anyone interested in programming, robots, and especially baking / bread / food in general. It will make you hungry. So many great quotes and engaging characters. “Here's a thing I believe about people my age: we are the children of Hogwarts, and more than anything, we just want to be sorted.” Ha!

One small thing that bugged me - there are a couple of points where they make fun of radiation - as in the location of their market is located in an old military facility that previously housed nuclear weapons, and at one point Lois is offered honey supposedly from “Chernobyl,” and eats it without batting an eye. The characters reactions to this are along the lines of “Eh, mutation is good for you...” Which was so weird, considering that unless this book was in a superhero universe, radiation would actually poison and kill you. Super minor, especially considering this book is basically about magical bacteria cultures.

This was witty and fun.

Highly recommend listening to the audiobook while walking alone in the woods.

I enjoyed it. It's an intriguing, and often violent backstory of Peter Pan and Captain Hook where Pan is described as a psychopath. I wish it was longer, there's a long bloody path to Jamie breaking away from Pan, but you're left without a satisfying resolution. I would be interested to know how exactly Jamie and his other rescued Lost Boys actually manage to become leaders of the Pirates. And of course, a truly satisfying ending would result in Jamie finally taking revenge on Pan.

I was not terribly impressed by this story. It was well written with wonderful character development of the narrator, Cassandra, however the overall plot was dull. I think what really threw me was the very beginning of the novel, when Cassandra and her family describe their overwhelming poverty, and then they all come to the conclusion that not a single person in the house can go out and work to make money. Why not? What are they doing with their time? Cassandra day dreams and writes in her journal, I have no idea what Rose is up to, Thomas goes to school, Topaz keeps house, the father does crosswords and mopes all day about not being able to write, and the only person who does go out to make money is the orphan serving boy who shouldn't even be giving the family money in the first place.

Instead of self sufficient pluck to get the family out of poverty, the plot revolves around her sister Rose snaring a rich man, which in turn leads to the family's fortunes turning around (and a lot of other stuff happens).

It reminded me a lot of “A tree Grows in Brooklyn,” but what made that such a wonderful read was the tenacity of the family, never giving up to pull themselves out of poverty through hard work and determination and not waiting around for things to be handed to them.

Interesting, and surprisingly easy to read for such a dense topic. Chapters take a meandering path through the Spanish flu epidemic, and while many fascinating topics are covered it felt kind of rambling towards the end. Later chapters on modern genetic research, and the pandemic's effects on art and literature felt kind of tacked on as opposed to part of the larger story.

Art is beautiful, but plot is convoluted, horrifying and hard to follow. Not for me.

Though I might read the next volume just for the cats.

This was pretty fun. Picked it up at a used book store because I loves the retro cover, worth a read for the 80s nostalgia and horror vibes. Wish it had pushed further into the darker elements, there were a couple of plotlines that seemed like they were really going dark only to veer away at the last moment, which was not really what I was expecting in a horror novel.

Interesting read. What starts as a travel log detailing the efforts to explore ancient cultures buried in the jungles of Honduras, takes a harrowing turn when half of the expedition party is stricken with a rare parasite that can cause disfigurement and death. Both subjects are fascinating, but it was not exactly what I was expecting. The descriptions of LIDAR technology were incredibly fascinating, something I'm vaguely familiar with in it's use to quickly build 3d models of real world objects. In the book they use it scan and map vast areas of dense jungle, uncovering sites that have been lost to the trees for centuries. The author also covers Honduran culture and history, helping to explain why traveling and exploring the country can be so dangerous and difficult - from officials seeking bribes, to venomous snakes, to drug traffickers hijacking trucks of jet fuel.

While I thought it was a good read, it got kind of slow in the middle, and the ending kind of meandered away from the heart of the story. The author comes to the conclusion that the civilization of the city of the Jaguar was wiped out by Europeans bringing disease, while at the same time acknowledging that the city has been so newly re-discovered that there has been hardly any research yet. While it is not a bad hypothesis, as many thousands of people died horribly of disease after contact with encroaching Europeans, there is no evidence as to why the culture of this ancient city may have collapsed.

Also, this book has one of the most depressing, fatalistic endings I have ever seen- with a discussion of how global warming is causing the spread of disease and parasites, and ending with a statement that all cultures collapse eventually. “Sometimes, a society can see its end approaching from afar and still not be able to adapt, like the Maya; at other times, the curtain drops without warning and the show is over. No civilization has survived forever. All move toward dissolution, one after the other, like waves of the sea falling upon the shore. None, including ours, is exempt from the universal fate.” It was a wild turn from the adventurous love of travel and discovery in the earlier parts of the book.

This was a bookclub pick, and not something I would have picked myself. I sort of know Rush, as in I could identify that they are a band. I actually asked a few friends if they knew them and they had a similar response.

Well, the book itself is kind of charming and easily readable, I just didn't really have much of an attachment or nostalgia for the author. Tragically, Neil loses his wife and daughter in the same year, and the book covers his recovery through motorcycling through Canada, the US and Mexico. It can be very sad, but it will also make you want to travel, eat good food, and get moving.

However, halfway through the book he completes four months of traveling, and spends a snowy winter at his lake house in Toronto snowshoeing and skiing. And THEN, the second half of the book is him basically doing the same trip again. I skimmed the second half. I can see some people loving this book, those who are motorcyclists, and Rush fans, especially, but it was just not for me.

What a fun book.

This is such a great comic.

It was ok, it reads like a better than average Lifetime movie. This is not my favorite genre, and I cannot for the life of me remember where I got a recommendation to read this. The best part is probably the the author's end note, which was very personal and helped explain why she wrote the book.

I did love Lily's teenage journals. She writes them in a letter format to Ellen Degeneres, which sounds kind of bananas but was very touching. The revelations of the level of abuse in her household was hard to read, the part where sees her dad trying to rape her mom, and then she loses it and goes for a kitchen knife, was so chilling.

However the book had some problems. The character's names were eye roll inducing, and they all had conveniently dreamy jobs - Ryle Kincade (the neurosurgeon), Atlas Corrigan (the Marine turned successful chef/restaurateur.) Lily Bloom owns a successful flower shop.

However, Lily's concept for her flower shop sounds so terrible. This is how she describes it-

“Brave and bold. We put out displays of darker flowers wrapped in things like leather or silver chains. And rather than put them in crystal vases, we'll stick them in black onyx or . . . I don't know . . . purple velvet vases lined with silver studs. The ideas are endless...There are floral shops on every corner for people who love flowers. But what floral shop caters to all the people who hate flowers?” Allysa shakes her head. “None of them,” she whispers.”

That's right, because that is a stupid idea. Later there's a scene where she's making a ‘steampunk' bouquet and using an old boot as a vase. Just...that is awful.

Ryle was immediately threatening and scary, I don't know if him being abusive was supposed to be a twist, but from the moment Lily meets him on the roof I just wanted her to get out of there. If you say no, a guy should not progressively try to manipulate you into having sex. Showing up at your house after knocking on every door in the building is grounds for calling the police, not inviting someone in to sleep in your bed. That's not cute, that's crazy behavior. A lot was excused because he had nice arms and Lily thought scrubs were hot.

Alyssa's response when she finds out that Ryle had hurt Lily was weird, instead of being angry at him she begs him to tell Lily some dark secret in his past - which turns out to be the accidental death of his older brother by an unsecured firearm, that Ryle has felt guilt over his entire life. That's horrible, but also has absolutely zero to do with him being an abusive asshole, I could not believe how Lily heard this story, felt terrible for him, and then that was somehow grounds for ignoring being pushed down the stairs.

It also bothered me that it is mentioned that Atlas had joined the Marines and done two tours - I'm assuming meaning a deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan, which would be hugely life changing, but when Lily meets up with him again it's like he's the exactly same, gentle person she knew as a 15 year old.

At one point he tells her he came back, after four years in the Marines, to come find her, but then decided that he wasn't good enough to be with her and signed up for another tour. If nothing else, the Marine Corp should have instilled some self confidence, should have given him some savings and connections - I could not understand his self sabotage here. It's like the author is using the Marines as a convenient way to get a character out of the story for 8 years without giving any thought to what that actually means.

There's also a random plug for Rodan and Fields that came out of nowhere?

I did love this line “For better, for worse? Fuck. That. Shit. —Lily”

I enjoyed the author's writing style for the most part, though occasionally she would try to create metaphors while picking a word that didn't make sense, like someone who's first language isn't English. Like using broody here “Creeping along the hallway like a specter in shortie pajamas, their polyester slickness stuck in the broody stretch between princess costumes and lingerie,” or bellow here “like when I smelled the bellow of iron in the bathroom and knew she had her period. “ She's basically saying that Evie smelled a sound - it doesn't really work.

I found Evie, the main character, to be profoundly unlikable. I couldn't connect with her on any level. The author writes about women and girls in the light of the apparent sexism of the era, but without any sort of redemption for either the men or women of the story. She writes Evie thinking things like “I knew just being a girl in the world handicapped your ability to believe yourself. Feelings seemed completely unreliable, like faulty gibberish scraped from a Ouija board,” as if they were universal truths and not just Evie and her cult girlfriends messed up perspectives. The book is entirely from Evie's point of view, and the view is incredibly narrow and self centered.

When I got to Part Four, the brief coda of Evie arriving at boarding school, I thought back on all the preceding chapters and wished that the book had started at where the author chose to wrap things up. There was no suspense leading up to the murders, the reader already knows what happens before the first page, since the story of Charles Manson is very well known. So the slow integration of a bored and narcissistic 14 year old into their cult is kind of sad and dull. The aftermath is where I really started to get interested, but the book ends shortly after.

Also, we're supposed to be left wondering if Evie was indeed capable of murder. But I didn't have any doubts, she would have done anything Suzanne wanted her to do.

Haven't read since high school but I remember it being wonderful.

5 stars for creepiness, and Lois was a complex, well written character.

However, from the first few pages it felt pretentious and insular, at times feeling as if the author was name dropping and referencing obscure directors, films and artists for the sake of showing off, not for any larger character development or plot.

It shines more when discussing ancient folk stories such as Lady Midday. It felt like the author shoe horned in a truly creepy myth into her own passion for filmmaking, and the mix didn't quite work for me. For example, she created a blind character, Sidlo, who has an X-Gene level mutation that allows him to telepathically translate another person's memories onto film. This was so weird-like how does that work, mechanicaly? He touches a person, and also a reel of film, and then what?

Also, Lois' husband -just, there is no way a person so accepting, loving and self sacrificing exists. With all of the stuff Lois puts him through I expected him to reach his limit any second, but instead he decides to help her basically ghost hunt (while their son is in the hospital...).


Definitely worth a read if you're looking for a good horror novel, despite my grievances.

It was alright. The beginning was excellent but then it lost steam around the start of the trial. No real interesting revelations, resolutions or twists.

This was ok, though I don't think I'm going to continue with the series. I thought the premise was great, a school for children who have been recovered from various magic worlds, but the book was too short to really delve into any of their stories. Also, it's a fantasy novel that turns into a murder mystery halfway through, which is kind of where it lost me. Day two of Nancy's stay at this boarding school and her roommate is murdered, and the successive murders are addressed by the headmistress with lines like “Stay together and try to survive the night.” There is a legitimate serial killer in your school, you need to do better than that. And since there is a relatively small pool of characters I was left assuming they were either going to get murdered, or were the murderer, and since they had all just been introduced I really didn't care either way.

Also, Nancy's fantasy world sounded incredibly boring, I honestly could not understand why she wanted to go back. It was a land of the dead, and her duty was to stand statue still and let them pour pomegranate juice against her closed mouth? Gee, where do I sign up.

I am struggling to get through this. People are dying left and right, there is no shock value to it anymore. When the Commandant ‘dramatically' kills a whole bunch of people right in front of Helene, when Elias is forced to witness the prison warden torture some random kid, it's not shocking, it's only a couple of examples in a long line of brutality from the Empire's forces. In the first book of this trilogy Lila's grandparents are casually murdered in front of her, and the violence continues unabated, to the point that I am increasing the speed of my audiobook to just get through it, and hopefully get back to the narrative. It's like Game of Thrones levels of violence.

This one is not for me.

The narration is excellent, though the accents chosen for different characters was perplexing.

Overall I really liked the conclusion of this duology. It was an engaging read with great characters and a really intriguing world. The ending was satisfying, where all of the characters basically go off to have more grand adventures.

The book suffers a bit from being too short and cramming in too many points of view. I loved the world building, but there is so much left unexplored, especially considering the introduction of infinite other dimensions. They also briefly mention that the portals eventually led to some sort of dark world, that almost destroyed the universe? So they should maybe worry about that at some point? On the bright side I loved most of the characters, so the many POV shifts weren't always a negative, but I was often left feeling kind of short changed, I would just get to know and love a character only to switch to someone else.

Minya is consistently annoying through the first half of the book (not helped by how the narrator acts out her yelling)- but I liked how her story arc was resolved.

There were also some missed opportunities. A lot of mysteries (such as how did baby Lazlo escape Weep? What happened to all of the missing children? Where did the citadel and Mesarthim come from?) are revealed in quick info dumps, almost as an aside to the reader, to the point where I'm not even sure if the main characters actually know the answers to these questions. Also, Sparrow discovers she can heal and revive corpses, undoubtedly a highly useful skill. She brings back Eril-Fane and Azareen. It seemed like the natural progression of the story would be for her to then use that gift to ‘fix' Sarai. Imagine a scene where they go back to the Citadel, lay Sarai's body in the garden, and anxiously wait and see if Sparrow's gift is powerful enough to perform this miracle. Imagine Lazlo and Sarai's joy as her body is reawakened. But instead they cremate her body early in the book?

I felt like Lazlo and Sarai's saccharine love scenes were my least favorite parts of the book. I loved Lazlo in the beginning of Strange the Dreamer, he is such an interesting character. But I feel like his personality is subsumed by the romance plot as soon as he meets Sarai.

Also, I thought the reveal that Skathis was interdimensionally selling the children was nonsensical. He has an immensely powerful gift - if he wanted to play god and amass treasures and torture and rape he could do that without a weird nursery and human auction. And in what way were the buyers supposed to control and direct the extremely powerful children they were purchasing?

Disappointing. I love the earlier, Matt Fraction Hawkeyes. And I enjoyed this one until the end. Am I wrong, or did Hawkeye just give the rescued mutant children back to Hydra? It seemed wildly out of character. And then it cuts to decades later-eh, I'm not interested in seeing where the series is going.

Some parts I really liked. But overall I thought it was weird and hard to follow. About half way through I almost quit and gave up on it. I understand it's supposed to be sort of fairy tale -esque but it did not work for me. Some of the author's choices were just too nonsensical.

Why does Pearl disappear? Stasha and Pearl are literally standing next to each other but then Pearl is just gone, it was such a weird choice when there are any number of ways the girls could be separated if that is what the author wants.

Why does Stasha follow bloody tracks into a salt mine to the hands of the Nazis- this was so idiotic as to be bizarre. She wakes up to her stolen horse missing, the horse is apparently bleeding for some unexplained reason so she follows the blood. But instead of the author having her stumble upon a camp, she has the characters descend into a mine where they clearly have the opportunity to see the Nazis and run away at any time, instead they just stand there and get stripped and shot at.

And then near the end Stasha, a twelve year old traumatized girl, gives an impromptu cesarean section to a woman she finds in an abandoned house. What. Why. And well the woman dies but miraculously the baby survives. I know this is supposed to reference Mengele's insane surgeries and tortures, maybe even have Stasha learn something good from what she witnessed, but having her be able to perform a successful cesarean after glimpsing her torturer perform the same operation is just insane.

And how does Pearl get back to Poland, and why does she come? One minute she is being carted off to Palestine and then her cart driver is shot and the scene fades to black.

I feel like I'm in the minority here, but overall I did not love this. I loved the concept of these mysterious huge statues appearing in countries around the world. I also loved the viral Dreamscape and the puzzles everyone joins together to solve. I would have loved it if a lot more of the book was focused on that.

My main problem was that I found the main character, April May, to be so profoundly unlikable. She discovers that getting attention on Twitter and other social media platforms feel good! Welcome to the 21st century April! A great deal of the book is about her philosophies about how people interact online, building her brand, making money, and turning herself into an internet personality, all the while torpedoing all of her personal relationships (breaking up with her girlfriend, hiding in the bathroom during her brother's wedding reception in order to check Twitter).

You think you're picking up a book about mysterious alien robots, but the book is a whole lot of this - “I maybe had $2 million in the bank at that point, and we burned through a full $300,000 of that in the first month of development. The money was officially going out faster than it was coming in, but everyone seemed confident that that would change as soon as the book came out, so that's most of what I was focusing on. The good news was there was a solution to the money problems just on the horizon. April 24 @AprilMaybeNot: When did “makin' love” become “makin' love” because they talk about makin' love in lots of old songs and I don't think they're talking about fuckin'.”

I guess since the book is told from her perspective, and she presents a tone that's very self aware of her own failings, it's supposed to garner sympathy from the reader? It didn't work for me. You don't get a pass for being a jerk just by saying “Oh yeah, I know I was a total jerk here but...” I really, really wished that the book had been told from Maya's perspective. While April is out there building April May™, Maya is in the dream solving tons of the puzzles! I really felt like we missed out on so much interesting story there. And her cat comic the Purrletariat sounds amazing. Andy also would have been a great protagonist. I want to know more about his podcast, and his barely mentioned roommate Jason. One of my favorite parts of the book was the very last chapter, which is told through Andy's perspective. It was the first time since the start of the book that I found myself liking April, when filtered through his perspective.