RiffMonkey
This short story made me feel so joyous with all its creepy shit. I fucking loved the way the house is described in the beginning and the feeling the main character gets from it is projected through the pages very well. Although I feel it went through the different narratives very fast when Miles is talking to her those last few lines really make up for it. Excellent ending.
Starting this book I was so utterly confused and now having finished it, it felt more like reading the second book in an anthology up until the very end. The almost 400 pages where confusing and took way to long to come to the conclusion. And even though I could guess what was happening I still found it to be confusing and fully not enjoyable for the first 75%, especially because I liked Harrow much less than I did Gideon, especially their ‘writing style'.
The book was good though, and although it took very long for things to get off the ground there were definitely some good bit in between that were funny or a nice scene. By the end when I finally started figuring out what was going on it did start all coming together and I did end up enjoying it.
However reading the epilogue makes me scared I am in for exactly the same bullshit in the third book so I am not sure if I will find it worth my time to start and read that, especially since I read fairly slowly.
Again enjoyed and liked the characters but didn't really love the book itself. My gripe with the 6th book was somewhat fixed in this because some big stuff definitely happened. But I also noticed something in the audiobook. I have no clue if graphic audio changed some of the text or not but it has really felt very emotionless from the beginning. That makes it super hard to emphasise because instead of making me feel their emotions they are only very calmly described. It takes all the tension you are supposed to feel away. Even in the end where some shit goes down, it was almost boring because of this calm description of everything.
This is definitely a different book than most of Sanderson's stories. I liked the setting and the fact we had to figure out the character along with him. It reminded me of Lightsongs search for his former self in Warbreaker, which I also really enjoyed. I didn't fully love John as a character though I am not really sure why. The beginning came off the ground a little slow and before I knew vaguely what was going on it was a little boring. After that, I quite enjoyed it, especially the inserts of the handbook.
The stories were fun and I was glad a new character was added to the story. I loved Al in general she was great from the start but under utilised in general. I enjoyed reading this but it is started to turn into fluff sequels instead of having actual character development and things happening. Maybe I just enjoy it more if there is some dark shit or hurt happening but it all felt very inconsequential and a little boring to me.
This graphic novel made me feel really seen. I don't experience all of the same things as the author but we share lots of the same feelings regarding gender. It also made me emotional mostly because I recognise in eirs journey something that I will also need to face my entire life. Coming out to everyone and having to teach people all the things of gender and pronouns just to exist as yourself. Recognising that in the comic made me feel really sad. If it was less sexually explicit I would show this to my mom.
This is possibly my favourite ever Sanderson book. I loved the whole thing with the spores and how Tress wasn't scared and so was able to learn so much more than anyone else about them. But mainly I just really loved the characters. I wasn't really an immense fan of Hoid before but his narrating made the story really lovely and funny. And his references to the rest of the Cosmere delighted me.
But also just Tress and Charlie were both great as well as all the other crew members on the ship. I usually love all the characters in Sanderson books but this one especially has a collection of such amazing ones. It is like the ultimate feel-good book to me, especially the ending.
This book started off really fast, explaining lots of worldbuilding and using lots of new words. I didn't love that and I think it turns people off especially because it's only such a short novel where I don't usually encounter these problems. I have never felt like a short novel like this was going too fast but for this one, I did feel that.
However, after a couple more chapters I did get into the story and I think Helen's love for Edith is very well written. It is very clear from the beginning that this is a very deep love that has developed over a long time and it didn't feel fake or forced at all. In the last few chapters I thought I wasn't going to cry but then it crept up on me anyways. Loved the ending very much.
I like that Fred finally gets to learn some shit in this book because he has been such a great person but a bad vampire. It's a big part of who he is that he had to learn everything on his own, but that does mean he doesn't often use his actual vampire powers and I would love to see more him actually starting to become more powerful.
I am a bit sad that we didn't get a tiny bit from Krystal's perspective because she had a giant, amazing adventure and then we didn't get to see how she was doing until the very end. I wanted Krystal to summarise her whole as quest so much.
I am currently on a binge of these books and so will probably be going through most of them really fast. Now that I am beginning to really love all of these characters I will probably enjoy these books regardless of the stories in them however I did find this one slightly underwhelming. Usually, some of the stories feel kinda like side stories and some feel like main stories but here they kinda all felt like side ones. And really all just sort of deal with the consequences of making the House of Fred.
Although I do like the last stories and the ending it felts very unimportant to me. Although that might be because we really haven't seen much of Arch in the past so anything to do with him falls a little flat to me. I did like the ending though. I hope the later books deal with some more events. But I will love them regardless since I have officially fallen in love with these characters.
The first chapter immediately shot me into the story. It was a great start and I loved the character introduction of Meave and Imogen immensely. Initially, the dialogue was a bit clunky and Meave and Imogen very quickly started their investigation together. I thought that went a bit fast and I was a little scared that it would be lots of interviews with various people and not much actual story but that was not the case at all. Although I had a little bit of a hard time getting through it in the beginning, later when more things happened it made it very exciting and fast to read.
I enjoyed the various relationships between the characters and the institutions greatly as well. Meave and Imogen, Meave and Shivani, Orion with basically everyone. I love Orion the most but really all the characters were very fun and all had their own great aspects that made me love them. The way the different institutions interacted with each other was very well done and I loved how it was emphasised how little both knew of each other's theories and practises. Although I had wished for more explanation on how it all works I think it fits well in the story with how much everyone knows the world.
The conflicts between characters and in general in the story were also really good. I wanted to throw away my tablet sometimes and other times I cried through the chapter. I always love books that make you feel something and this was no exception. Especially Meave's speech near the end made me weep. I am very glad I got to read this book and although it is a stand-alone I would read many more stories with these characters and this world.
For the first time in this series I actually really liked this book. I am glad I stuck with it, although I love most of what I have read from Drew Hayes this series started quite horribly in my tastes. But I know that that author can be great and my brother loves this series so I stuck with it and I am glad.
Especially the new edition of Lillian was great and I loved her character from the very beginning. Though just this universe and basically all the characters in it are amazing and I am really starting to fall in love with them. As I did not have with the earlier novels I cannot wait to read the next one. Luckily there is plenty to consume in this series as I wait for the next Villains' Code novel.
I was supposed to read this book years ago, it was to be my first introduction to Sanderson. I am glad that it wasn't because I might not have fallen in love with his writing otherwise. Mistborn and especially Vin was perfect for me to start. I have a rough start reading this but of course I trust Sanderson and his genius storytelling.
Mostly I just really hated Vivenna through the entire first half. I loved Siri and Lightsong but every time Vivenna came I was so bored and annoyed by her character. I hindsight that might have been the point because of what she became. Siri and Vivenna really changed place and swapped in many other ways, which was really beautiful to read. Lightsong and Vasher both had amazing character development and endings.
I learned of this book before it was out and waited for it with excitement. I always love novels with fewer pages and this was no exception. From the very start, I was sucked into the story and loved the characters. The relationship between the plague doctor and the narrator was so soft and intimate especially contrasted with the story around them. Their enormous care for each other was my favourite part.
The writing was somewhat hard to understand in the beginning and I had the urge to look up a great many words but after a while it became easier and I wasn't bothered by it nonetheless. The prose was amazing and I could have saved about a million quotes from this book with how beautiful everything was described. I hope Khaw has more novels like this because I will consume them with fervor.
I had picked this book to read for our book club and I am betrayed by my own choices. I disliked it immensely and don't think I would have kept on reading if I read it on my own. I noticed quite quickly that I didn't like the writing style, I left the prose was very flowery and cliche in a way. I didn't connect with any of the characters as they were literally all the same fucking person.
Besides that fact, the story was not enjoyable. I had heard this described as a story of female empowerment, and I have no idea who the fuck thought that. The entire novel is about women in every generation being raped and abused and saying nothing, telling no one and just all around being the most docile little pushovers. They had absolutely no dimension and were defined often by either one thing or simply their relationship to a man.
During the reading of this book, I have read multiple books featuring abusive relationships all of which are better and more believably portrayed than this. All of the men in this book were fucking assholes and the lesson of the story also seems to be ‘all men are trash'. You could make a drinking game of all the abuse triggery shit these men do and you would be black-out drunk by the end.
The ending was also in no way satisfying. I was waiting very long for the magical realism this book is supposed to contain and had seen nothing of until literally the last 40 pages. When it finally showed up it was underwhelming and honestly boring. There were certain parts in the ending and epilogue where it was clear this was supposed to be an emotional bit and it all just fell flat.
The adventures of Johannes Cabal were great to read yet again. The beginning of the book was a bit slow and when he was travelling with the Fear Institute in the beginning I had some trouble distinguishing the characters. They seemed very similar at the start but soon it became very clear who was who.
We got a lot more insight into the Cabal in this one, the last book already showed a more empathic side but some interesting things about his past and character were relieved that I really enjoyed. And although I didn't gasp at the reveal near the end I loved it either way. The ending also would probably have been less predictable if I didn't know the title of the second book. Just as funny as the last although a little less fast.
I heard such great things about this book, although I do not remember now where I heard that. I had high hopes and was sadly disappointed.
I had just read The Wrack which was a similar concept of interconnected stories, all with different characters about the same event or happening. That story was also about a pandemic and at first, they were very similar. However, where those stories had lots of emotion and depth I felt these were very superficial. Especially in the beginning, all the stories were very sad but they didn't actually make me feel anything. They were just tragic in the most basic ways.
Some of the stories also felt very out of context and not at all relevant to the whole story. Like the talking pig. It was trying to be too much and the quality between stories varied wildly. A Gallery a Century, a Cry a Millennium, for instance, was great although again with too little depth in my opinion. The timelines were also very different as well. And the last chapter felt like a tack-on to connect all the stories because they weren't connected enough by themselves.
This jumbled collection of disconnected stories is too ambitious for its own good and didn't do the hype justice.
This is probably the only book resembling a biography I will ever read. Evelyn is such a great and complex character for all that happened in her life and how she dealt with it, until the ever end. I loved her for it all and felt myself enamoured even by her mistakes.
I finished this book listening to the last fifth in an empty train car just crying my eyes out for an hour and a half. It all felt very dramatic and cinematic which I feel is very appropriate. Although I would not say that I loved this book, this experience was exceptional and I loved that.
This book was different than I had expected. I felt myself unable to keep up with the characters, them being seemingly unconnected and so many different names and people. However, I realised I didn't need to. This is a sort of collection of stories or anthologies about one event, with all different perspectives and experiences which delighted me.
As usual, the religious aspects hit me the hardest. The Radhan and their need to see the land, the carving and recording of the names who had died of The Wrack is what made me cry. Magnificent writing and a hopeful end.
I should have read this book so much earlier. It's been on my list for ages and I could have been obsessing over Dell and Cara all that time. I loved the characters and all the different versions of it we have seen. I loved Nyame and how they made traversing a sort of spiritual experience. The whole dynamic between Wiley and Ash was amazing and showed through to every single character dynamic. Absolute magnificent world-building. I fear I will have to read this book over and over and over for the rest of my fucking life.
I genuinely didn't enjoy this one, it had such a different vibe than his other books. I was quite bored all the way through. I did really like HAP and Victor's relationship, that was all very cute. I was just not that into the story and the robots were all quite annoying.
This is however the first of his novels that I have listened to on an audiobook and not physically read, which might have been a bad idea since I disliked the voices and cadence of the voice actor so I might have liked it better if I had read it on paper.
Reading more of Isabella and her growing family and adventures was once again an absolute delight. The second book in the series did focus much more on the surrounding events and politics and somewhat less on the actual natural history of dragons.
I don't know how to feel about this since I really did miss it quite a bit. However, the story is great the way it is and for any of the events to be left out would have changed the meaning of the journey and the ending for the characters I think. Regardless I am very excited to read the next iteration.
Definitely an enjoyable story. The audiobook makes it go very fast which helps because I would not have finished it this quick if it wasn't. I did like it but I definitely wouldn't tell people to read this book. Like, it was fine and I will probably read the third one as well. I like the characters, especially Amy, and the bit with the house was really fun but somehow when it comes together it was just sort of fine.
I thoroughly enjoyed these stories set yet again in the Unwind universe. Reading this was much different from reading other short story collections because no world has to be established. It just expanded upon something we already knew with more insight and background into the characters. Although I didn't remember enough of the books that every single small reference landed, I still enjoyed it very much. I had hoped to see more of Hayden since he is my favourite character, but alas.