Ribbon
Why gender roles are reversed from our world is unclear, but maybe the mentions of Boudicca are the hints and I don't know English history well enough to get it. Regardless, women are the political leaders and heads of household in this world. Men are magic users. A woman cannot be a politician unless she is married to a magic user. Now let's subvert the gender roles.
This is a nice taste of repressed Regency romance at a fancy ball in a magic underwater ballroom. It's included with the audiobook for Snowspelled.
In a dystopian near-future full of acronyms and thought police, Adrienne is a bright, studious girl with zero survival instinct. In Dungeons and Dragons terms, wisdom is her dump stat. Everyone tells her to keep her mouth shut and don't overachieve, so of course the thought police arrest her for asking a bunch of questions publicly. Her punishment? Living in the United States midwest in 1959.
I'm 90% sure this is a satire of YA dystopia novels, but it's painfully plausible. Generic White Girl, as she is now known, gets really into intro level philosophy, stalks a professor, and turns up her nose at everything the 50s natives enjoy - TV, movies, art, poetry, etc.
Then the third act really goes off the rails.
I get why this has such mixed reviews. It's solid YA tripe but the satire will probably make YA fans feel betrayed when they catch on. It's decent satire but you've got to slog through the YA melodramatic tone. A lot of research went into the philosophy and history but I kinda tuned out during some of the looooong philosophy tangents.
More violent than I usually like and a lot of F-bombs, but all the characters are interesting and the “game world” is different from other LitRPGs I've read. It's a real world with a point buy XP system that every intelligent creature is fully aware of and using. Ed is bodily transported to this world so there's no going back. Also permadeath. So higher stakes than most LitRPGs.
Baba Yaga is a messy myth, so turning it into a youth novel seems like a stretch. All the messy has been removed and the result is kind of look at what life is like in a mobile chicken house, with the gift/curse of prophecy. The real problem is that Seraphina has a very passive role in everything that's happening. She hears everything second- or third-hand and doesn't pay enough attention to names that keep coming up, so the reader's likely to figure things out and be waiting on Seraphina to catch up.
Severance switches between present and various times in Candice's past, so you get one part “immigrant family aclimates to life in United States”, one part “twenty-something out on her own in New York City”, and one part “not-quite zombie apocolypse”. I'm not a big fan of the “screw linearity” thing but fine, it's trendy.
But it draaaaags. I thought I was near the end and checked how much was left. I was only halfway through! The ending is really inconclusive and unsatisfying and the not-quite zombies never get explained.
Second Hand Curses takes a cynical look at fairy tales without going dark and gritty. Each chapter takes on a different story, semi-episodic, with our trio of main characters carrying an overarching story with them.
The audiobook has different people voice the narrator and characters, and it's actually good! Not sure I've witnessed that before.
I kind of assume all “# Females by Theme” books are going to be kid friendly girl power reads. This one... maybe wait a few extra years. Mythology is full of unpleasant things and even boiled down to a couple paragraphs per goddess, there's still some rape and castration scattered through the book.
The art is gorgeous and this book is a good starting point for an interest in mythology, but without enough on anyone to really be satisfying.
This is the most sci-fi book I've ever picked up. The technobabble and politics are pretty dense and it was hard to keep straight which myth-named thing corresponded to what. Thankfully full understanding isn't really vital to follow the plot.
There's a discontinuity between this and the previous book. Suddenly Ezylryb is Soren's “favorite teacher” rather than the gruff bird he got stuck with. Every time it's brought up it takes me right out of the story. And it's brought up a lot. Also at some point the band told the adults about the barred owl instead of keeping it secret.
Most of the story feels like a poorly written video game. There's no reason for Soren to pursue the leads he does except to trigger the next plot point. Everything is very convenient and the climax goes above and beyond convenient, with bonus Deus ex Machina!
Very disappointed. This series had such promise.
Unwritten Rules takes place mostly in a new virtual reality game, with a sprinkling of real world chapters. Kevin, badly crippled from a car accident, begins playing to suppliment his physical therapy sessions and gain a creative and social outlet. A bully player who managed to keep levels from the beta forms a guild to control the game world and Kevin ends up heading up the resistence.
Leveling isn't emphasized as much as many other LitRPGs. Improving skills and discovering new crafting recipes is highlighted, especially after Kevin descovers the Alchemist class.
I really liked the friend group that develops. Kevin is logged in far more than the real world friend who got him the game, so he spends time with various other players.
Content warnings: Player killing and bullying, giant spiders
Not as bad as the first book. The focus shifts slightly from dresses and boys to politics and history. There are actually scenes that make you want to keep going until the conflict is resolved, which never happened in the first book. The cast has shrunk considerably so the other girls actually get some characterization beyond “sweet” or “Asian” or “slutty.” It's still not great but it's improved enough that I'll stick it out to the end.
With tighter writing and editing, this trilogy could easily have been one good book but everything has to be at least a trilogy to get published these days.
This is one of those books that switches perspectives between different characters periodically. The audiobook uses two different readers, which helps narrow down whose section you're in. The main two perspectives are the Girl and the Boy.
We start with the Girl and miles of flashbacks. I found Girl tedious. She's not accomplishing anything, just surviving and emoting about how much her situation sucks. About twenty percent through the book, it abruptly switches to Boy, which feels weird by then. But Boy actually does stuff and learns stuff about the situation. He interacts with people! I don't usually read male perspective YA books but this time it's way better. There are a couple other perspectives in small doses.
The story is okay but there's zero conclusion at the end of the first book (typical YA trilogy style).
It ain't Beauty and the Beast. Or The Selection. Or a harem anime. But there are certainly moments that made me think of each. I would have rated this higher if the tone were more consistent. Most of the time it fits the setting and characters perfectly but the occasionally “modern teen” lines rip me right out of the story. Based on the final chapters, I worry the next book will have a lot more of those lines.
Skipping over Boring Twin, Hello Stranger instead focuses on Lady Doctor and Illigitimate Ravenel Detective/Spy/whatever. Garrett is a feminist and highly educated, so there's period appropriate birth control methods, plus we get to skip the usual “so that's what a penis looks like” moment. This book does feel like a totally different genre from the previous ones. Devil in Spring touched on it but Hello Stranger dives right into the political/criminal pool.
Warning: Contains icky medical stuff. No worse than an episode of House or ER but still icky.
Young women are sold into reproductive slavery and, for some reason, shown off like purebred dogs while they incubate. They wear pretty dresses and show off their talents as commanded by their owners, who are varying degrees of abusive. It's a screwed up system and Violet is motivated by “get out” and, eventually, “break the system”, which worked well for Hunger Games. She would also like to help her childhood friend escape. Except she meets a hot guy she can't have and suddenly can't do anything but moon over him and screws everything up because he's so nice and attractive.
This is one of the “Pretty Dresses Dystopia” subgenre books, like The Selection. I think it's better written than The Selection but the forced romantic plot is a lot less forgivable.
First off, the worldbuilding is excellent. Cool magic systems, cool world.
It is the nature of a time loop that “nothing happens” but this story truly drags. During many iterations of the loop, Tal just writes about the events leading up to the loop. Anything that happens already happened some time ago. He states they want to find someone named “Bearskin” but Bearskin isn't introduced in the recaps until much later in the book so it's hard to care. Every loop begins with a raging hangover, which gets annoying well before Tal finds a solution. Late in the book Tal starts finding “today” problems and figuring out solutions, so likely the second book will be better.
Audiobook complaint: Two of the characters have the same voice. They're rarely talking in the same scene, but when they are it gets confusing.
Richter is either a typical fantasy hero or an obnoxious gamer stereotype and rarely anywhere in between. Female characters are either maternal figures and quest givers or romantic interests. Richter's relationship with the sprite is the only really enjoyable character development of the book.
The game messages are very repeatitive and boring. Might not be so bad with a physical book, since you can skim past those, but the audiobook is painful.
Some of the major plot twists are really goofy and undermine the tension that should be building. Citra and Rowan continue to have no romantic leanings, but it's stated they exchanged “I love yous” between books. I strongly believe Neal Shusterman's agent or publisher said he had to include a romantic pairing or it wouldn't sell. So he added a few sentences and called it a day.
Instead of Scythe journal entries, the Thunderhead itself waxes philosophical between every chapter. I enjoyed the AI perspective for the most part. A few new characters are introduced, one of which is totally dedicated to the Thunderhead, so we get a new perspective on the all powerful system that the characters couldn't interact with in the first book.
Greek mythology, Celtic mythology, and a fairytale mashed together into a predictable YA story. I correctly guessed the third act plot twist in the first couple chapters and the only surprise was that it really was that predictable. The audiobook reader is pleasant enough that the flowery prose isn't painful. The writing does improve a bit over the course of the book so maybe the author's future efforts will be better.
Despite being labeled a “book 1” the story is self contained and comes to a solid conclusion.
The drugged up murderer gets a redemption arc. Poor girl gets a new contrived way to be shoehorned into rich people society. Hacker boy is trying to get into his dream college but that storyline doesn't really go anywhere. Really, the five main characters thing is now Leda, Avery, and other people watching Leda and Avery exist.
Avery and Atlus aren't blood related but they both apparently exude a pheromone that makes everyone they meet helplessly attracted to them. Maybe there's something in the water way up on the top floor. Anime must not exist in this world, because A and A keep obsessing over how “forbidden” their not-incestuous relationship is.
The new con-artist girl is fun, until she gets too close to the 1k floor pheromones and gets boring.
Pink and her brother want to see the fairies that bring spring and build a fairy house for them, then go camping in the back yard in further attempt to see them. The fairy house construction is beautifully illustrated and creative and may inspire a whole line of craft projects. The story avoids directly addressing whether fairies are real or not, which I find more palatable than the Pinkalicious stories featuring Goldilicious, the ridiculous flying unicorn. This story is also a lot less fixated on the color pink than most in the series, which is a welcome break.
Starting out, Ninako is a girl who will believe whatever she's told unless evidence tells her otherwise. Her friends tell her she's obviously in love with her male childhood friend? Okay, so this is what love feels like. Then she encounters another boy who actually makes her heart beat faster.
Ninako is really naive and overly inclined toward blushing. By the end of the first volume there are three possible love interests floating around, with love triangle potential as well. I don't have high hopes for this series but the first volume is nice enough.
Stereotypical D&D group falls afoul a stereotypical Dungeon Master, have profanity and bodily fluid filled adventure. If your gaming group enjoys lots of beer and “your mom” jokes, and you have a preteen boy's love for poop and snot, this is the book for you!
Audiobook reader does a really good job with a wide variety of character voices.
“Rich Single Moms”, about Astrid and Kitty as roommates after their divorces, would have been a lot more fun. “Dying Rich Grandma” is packed with flashbacks for a far more interesting story than the one we're being told.
This book is about death, mortality, killing, suicide, different methods of dying, and the dreariness of not dying. Make sure you're in the right headspace before picking this up.
Two sixteen year olds are chosen as apprentice Scythes (distributors of death) but there's only one job opening so there's a bit of competition. The pacing of this story is really good. We get to know the central characters pre-apprenticeship, then get to know what life as a Scythe is like for a good while before things go off the rails.
The bad guys are really unsubtle, even for a YA story. It makes one wonder how they rose to power in the first place. The other Scythes are a bit more nuanced, thankfully. The two apprentices have hormones but no romance in this book.