Charlie
Contains spoilers
Non-spoiler review:
This was a fine book but it did a few things that bugged me.
FULL SPOILERS:
I feel strange with how I ended up feeling about this one. It’s definitely not a bad book by any means and I could see this being a favorite for some. Not for me.
I think generally books with an emphasis on anything academic kind of lose me right away, but I don’t really think that was what bugged me with this. I even thought it was pretty cool how the magic was kind of controlled by writing lines of code. As a software engineer I thought that was a pretty fun touch! And most of the academics were done before we really got into the meat of the story anyway so I don’t think this was too big of a deal.
I also think the romance was unnecessary, but to be completely fair, generally speaking, I’m not really into romance in my books. It’s pretty much always hit or miss for me. Knowing that, I don’t usually find that it bothers me all that much beyond not really holding my interest and I generally don’t let it factor too heavily into my rating unless I think the romance was truly handled poorly. I think it seemed fine to me here for the most part but I didn’t care about it and I’m not 100% sure the story would have e suffered from taking it out. But by the end I didn’t hold the romance against the book either.
I think that my main issue with this book, above all else’s, was that I just didn’t find it to be believable. Of course I don’t mean that I need the fantasy elements to be believable. I don’t care if magic is realistic. And honestly in that regard this isn’t the least believable magic system. I mean more that the human elements weren’t believable. I can’t get past the fact that only one person ever has taken issue with the fact that they’re killing people (or other things) every time the want to boil some water. Surely SOMEONE else must have thought that was wrong, right? Apparently not. Or at least there was no one who acted on it. No one who felt strongly enough to do something or at the very least say something about it to someone. And you’re kind of almost made to believe that they were all okay with it because they were men too?
I’m not at ALL saying that sexism is not a very real and serious issue, but I also don’t think that men are just always okay with genocide.
The themes were heavy handed but again the author is trying to start conversations on very real topics and much of it I think landed, but this part was asking a little much of the reader in my opinion.
I do think I’ll still recommend this book to some, but only if I really know the person and feel that it will be something they like. It definitely doesn’t get a sweeping recommendation from me. I am an outlier here for sure.
I need more time to sit with this before I can land on a rating I think. I really loved the opening to the book and the setting was terrific. I really liked the characters too and appreciated how they each had their own motivations, unique to themselves, that had steered them all in similar directions. I think some phrasings of some things maybe lost me somewhere or maybe I lost focus on a few pages and didn’t realize it until the end but I don’t know that I fully get the end of the story. It’s left a little up to you to fill in some of what was going to happen after the last page which is sometimes fun, but I don’t think I really know what I think will happen.
This was a really fun easy fast read. I had a great time with it, but I don’t know really who this is for or who I would recommend it to. Pretty cool characters on a strange ingesting planet with a novel magic system which all together left me with a lot of questions that I’m looking forward to getting answered in future books.
I don’t have a lot of feelings in any direction for this book. I thought it was a good fun read, there are better, there are worse. Some things were predictable, some were surprising. Some things felt immature and some felt harrowing and dark. It’s a good book and I could see how some people will love this, but I’d just as soon understand someone not liking it. It is perfectly snug in 3-star territory for me.
This was a great quick read. I read this story twice now and it was even better on a reread. There were a lot of hints at what was to come hidden all along the way that I totally missed the first time around. The end surprised me and cracked my heart just a little bit but in a good way? Thank you?
This is a great introduction to the world Andrew Watson has created and I am very excited to get to Harbinger of Justice. I enjoyed getting to know these characters and I don’t know if anyone is going to carry over from this story into the next but I’m curious to find out! Looking forward to more from this author!
This was so fun right from the beginning. It felt very much like I was watching a fast-paced off-broadway show, especially the parts where almost the entire cast of characters was running from room to room as a group looking at this and that while the main character was making revelation after revelation.
The cast of characters was interesting and diverse and silly and weird. The world is intriguing and mysterious and you're given only little bites of everything it entails, but I love that sort of thing (especially when I know the book is part of a series and I can assume that I'll continue to learn more and more about it all). I want to know more but don't mind the slow burn. Every few pages you're given one new piece to the puzzle of the world and each one is more interesting than the last. There is a ton of interesting stuff going on here and I love all of it.
I didn't figure out the big mysteries but I generally am not the sort of person to try to do that as I read, I'm just along for the ride. I do believe that if a reader wanted to, they could have pieced it all together along with the main character - all the big clues are there on the page if you're looking hard enough.
I had some minor gripes with the ending but really my complaints were so minute and did not take away anything from my overall experience with this funny, creepy little story. Cannot wait to get into the next entry in the series.
I could easily see this being a 4star read or higher if I had read this as a physical or e-book instead of audio book. That is NOT because the narration was bad, it wasn’t, but the prose style was such that it begs you to take your time reading and maybe even rereading some passages, and I found myself getting lost in the lyrical nature of it all on audio.
This was a really interesting story with characters not quite like others I’ve read (a mermaid and a plague doctor) that left me with a lot of questions. A lot of which I wish I had answers to.
Also the love story aspect was very nice and I was enjoying it but ultimately I didn’t feel like I understood why the characters were so in love.
I think I have to reread this to get all I want out of it, at least I hope that is the case.
I've heard several times now that this is the weakest book in the series and if that's true I'm so excited to keep reading. I had so much fun with this one. The cast of characters and the world around them continue to grow and change and we keep getting all these little chunks of info that really just add more depth than I had expected when starting the first book. Can not wait for book three!
Probably between 3.5 and 4 - very fun and had some cool characters. I lost focus during all the fighting by the end but that's more my fault than the books fault I think. Liked it more than I had expected. Fun entry point into Jim Butcher. Looking forward to picking up the next book in the series at some point.
Impressed
This was so impressive - it is not often that I find a story that can do so much in so few pages. This little novelette had a lot to say and it managed to say it all. As much as I want to learn more about the world in these pages, I don't think we needed a single sentence more than we were given. Really terrific.
DNF - I was LOVING the first part of this book from the initial characters POV and I just wish the whole book was focused on that character and their story. There was too much time spent focused on too many characters (really just one POV) that I did not find interesting. I just stopped finding myself reaching for this book. Also I made it over 300 pages in and I would have expected to see more fantasy elements here by that point. Disappointed.
Maybe a 2.5 - I kind of hated this? But also couldn't stop reading it? The characters you're following at any given time are mostly terrible people who do and say things that I hate. The actual story is pretty compelling though and fairly unique. I never got a full sense of everything that the fungal infections were capable of but what we saw was pretty gruesome and interesting. The biggest takeaway from reading this is that I think fungi are cool as hell and I want to read more about them.
Oh this was good. This was very good. The characters were so vibrant and complex yet thoroughly explored. The author tells you enough about the world and the magic to get you hooked, but leaves you with so many unanswered questions. Not in a frustrating way, but more in a way that keeps you wanting more.
The case is complicated to the point where I didn’t figure it all out but we’re given enough clues that by the end I was left feeling a little clever for picking up on some things, while also being shocked by the big reveals. This was the first murder mystery I’ve read but in my unqualified opinion it was very well done.
I will absolutely pick up the next book in the series as soon as it’s released.
