Earwen

The bulk of the book was really good, the scares were fun and I liked the meta-horror discussions. However the the actual plot and the ending twist especially I didn't enjoy much. I'm not the kind of person who thinks a bad ending ruins a whole story and I don't think it here either exactly, but it does reframe the story in a way I wasn't a fan of. Still a fun enough read.

I was almost done with this (it's short anyway) but I just. do not care. love the idea, question the execution. My biggest problem was probably I found red and blue interchangeable in personality despite coming from wildly different timelines and almost being different species of humans.

my amoral rival lesbians who try to kill and/or kiss eachother across time and space of choice are still lambdabern

this is a fantasy version of the monday nights falls set in slightly more contemporary times and with fantasy versions of the wwf and wcw with a very smarky bent. If none of that made sense to you this book probably isnt for you. The book makes a decent effort to explain terms and concepts and I cant tell how much itd help a complete stranger to wrestling but even if - it is so stock full of allusions to real world wrestling stuff and things you just wont get if you werent at some point at least a little bit invested in the world of pro wrestling. If you are – read on

this was very readable and hard to put down. I constantly was wondering what happened next. I think this book captured what makes pro wrestling so exciting to follow both in kayfabe and out perfectly. The onstage performances to the backstage politics to the fans. Sadly it also captures the worst of wrestling and not in a good way. Yeah sure it portrays the shit female wrestlers had/have to face and I have no problems with it its accurate after all. However at times it seems the book falls into the same pitfalls.
There is a lengthy tirade near the end of a book about the omther of some minor character who is apparently an evil activist feminist who decides his son will grow up to be evil because he has a penis (not an exact quote but very close to it). This isnt relavant to anythign the character in question is very minor and the backstory doesnt come up again. It sticks out like a sore thumb and just made me weary of the book.
Another example is a minor character who is a writer and she is seemingly just be there to be humiliated about how bad her writing ideas are in her own pov scenes. In other scenes she barely shows up except at some point when the main character notes that she probably sucks at writing based on the fact that she has great legs. This felt so out of place considering he at that point is dating an internation sex symbol who he admits is also a great wrestler.
Those two are ultimately small examples in a big novel but the undercurrent of it is always there and leaves a bad taste in the mouth. It didn't keep me from my enjoyment overall. Funnily enough it reminded me of actually watching wrestling. Wrestling fans especially those of us that arent male or straight or whatever are experts at compertimentalizing shit after all. And this wasn't nearly as bad as the sort of stuff I generally have to put up with in wrestling.

My other big criticism is the amount of simply uneccessary scenes. One character, lucifer it seemed at first was being set up as important. We got his backstory (including his aforementioned mother) how he got into the business etc.... And then nothing until the very end. Did I miss a few scenes? If this was a series id understand maybe it's setting up for something in the next book but I dont get the impression this was ever meant to be one.

I focused more on the negative because as a wrestling fan thats what comes easier to me (just kidding..or am I). but this was extremely enjoyable despite anything else. I think wrestling in fiction has a lot of untapped potential and I hope I see more of it in the future.

This book was...fine. I have no criticism at all honestly. The writing was beautiful, I liked the characters, the concept is great. By all accounts this should be 5/5 but it never goes the extra mile to be great. Just a solid good book.

Really wanted to love this book. A lot of the concepts here are good but it shoots itself in the foot with the framing device and constant jokes that ruins all tension. You know from the start things will turn out fine. And while the main character is actually hilarious which makes it even harder to focus on the creepy things that are happening when she's cracking jokes. I don't think it's unrealistic to react to stress and fear that way but because she is writing this book after the fact when we know she is fine it just seemed like she was making fun of the whole situation. I think just the jokes without this framing device I would have welcomed.

On the other hand I do appreciate we know that the dog is going to be fine the whole time I suppose.

The panacea society was a real religious group (a cult essentially, what's the technical difference here?) of mostly women. I had no idea of this groups/cults existence before opening this book but I strongly recommend looking into them a bit before or after reading this book (Depending on how much you mind “spoilers” you might want to leave it to the after). Most of the characters within are directly or indirectly based on real people and records left. Most noteably the main character Dilys and the prophetess octavia. Though the book takes many liberties with Dilys in particular. Like giving her a lesbian lover. Maybe lover. Hey, they're in a religious celibate cult. It's complicated. Also, extremely dramatic – in a good way. Dilys is an extremely confused character. She wants to believe as strongly as the others but struggles to do so or else to reject it entirely often expressing jealousy of her brother who left the faith behind while at the same time believing him to be damned. The same with her totally not girlfriend where they have to talk in so many riddles and half truth by the end of the book im still not sure whether the eating-pussy-through-sheets scene was real or not and neither is Dilys. In the background of Dilys struggle is also the whole society slowly imploding upon itself while people in the middle of it deny it's happening. I thought Octavia- the prophetess was also a fascinating character and would have loved a bit more on her. The politics of the group people trying to gain power and slowly realizing what's really going on with Octavia takes a backseat to Dilys' many issues for better or worse.

My only real gripe is at the very end and impossible to talk about without spoiling.
I do not care for the books I read to have happy endings necessarily. But this didn't feel right. Even the ending that happened to the real Dilys – eventually coming back to the society would have made a better ending. As it is – her brother saves her from the group with Grace's help, even gives her a message from Grace and seems to talk about her positively. And in the next scene he seems to imply he is trying to get Dilys away from Grace specifically and shipping her off to the madhouse for it. And if he wanted her away from Grace wouldn't taking her to india be just as good a solution? Even if I accept the disrepancy even then he doesn't seem to intend to keep her there for good so it doesn't feel like any sort of ending. On the other hand if the intent wasn't to keep her away from Grace why is she absent in the finale.

God stop shilling your other book it's obnoxious.

Other than that readable decent thriller. I think it dipped it's hand into topics it didn't know how to handle and what it did handle it did with the grace with nuance of a sledgehammer but it was entertaining enough. Though I think there could be done much more with this premise. The audiobook was pretty well put together. 2.5

~3.5

I wouldn't consider myself picky about it but the writing was just basic and flavorless to the point of distraction, and characters acted much younger than they are supposed to be. But I love a good haunted house story and this was a fun and easy read.

For some reason no one in the reviews deigns this worth mentioning but this book contains brother/sister incest.

It was good otherwise but why did that have to be a thing. I really don't care that they aren't blood related either, in fact the implication that it's fine because of this pisses me off more. Non-blood related family are just as real as blood related. Their relationship would be terrible even if they weren't siblings honestly the male love interest is just an ass.

Moving on...I enjoyed the book, I really like how this author includes malayan beliefs in her work. I didn't think this was nearly as good as the ghost bride though. There just seemed to be a lot of ideas thrown in that didn't really connect and the end of the book weirdly shifted focus to the “romance”. And honestly? Even the romance wasn't really resolved.

The writing was beautiful and I look forward to reading her future works even though I really hope she got the incest stuff out of her system with this.

Solid but not much more.

The world is interesting, but unfortunately I don't feel the author is confident enough in their own writing to pull off a fantasy story. Whenever there is a conflict that is bigger than interpersonal, it happens off screen, or is cut short. Which results in a. a rushed feeling climax and b. the paladin character coming across as kind of a huge loser (which i guess was kind of charming but nto sure if it was intentional).

The character interactions (Which, if you take this as a romance more than a fantasy should be more important anyway) are mostly good, but I found the development also a bit sudden towards the end.

Though the leads really needed to have sex at some point. It can be offscreen or not, I don't really care, it's not that I wanted to read a sex scene as much as I feel that the several scenes that seem to have almost-ended-in-sex in the end have no resolution.

So this basically results in a climax that is the leads agreeing: they are in love, then a lackluster plot resolution, and then nothing. There was no real climax emotionally or plot wise. So , I don't know, it wasn't bad or anything, but it kind of was lackluster.

All that said, this is still a head above most lesbian romances. It's solidly written for the most part, and the characters are likeable.

I have never read a book so mediocre in every conceivable way. The end devolved into a not even laughably bad horror movie. The characters were ridiculously cartoonish it was impossible to care what happened to them. Halfway thru the book the main character declared that she thought of all the others as friends and trusts them. I can't see why considering all they do is bicker. The only ones she had real conversations with were the Designated Love Interest (because we needed one of these) and the rich spoiled teen, and even those barely. The closest time the book got to being scary is the very beginning when the houses history was explained. After that everything was so cartoonish and hard to take seriously. I'm half wondering if this was supposed to be a parody but it wasn't self aware enough for me to really believe that. It wasn't scary, it wasn't thrilling, it wasn't suspenseful. Failing all that you'd think it'd be funny at least but it wasn't even that.
I only wish it was as bad as it was at the end from the get go so I hadn't stuck with it in hopes it might get better.

for the whole series: it starts of strong with its ups and downs, the best part is shortly after the first timeskip. After the 2nd timeskip it kind of goes to shit.
Great art throughout though.
Also there is a scene where a character is asked if he gained weight and he replies my suit is packed with explosives which i need to remember as a reply

Unfortunately this was just extremely shallow. The worldbuilding was interesting, as was the concept but it never lived up to it's potential. I don't want to be too harsh on it as I am not the target audience and I don't read YA too often, but I am sad to see all that potential squandered regardless.

(okay I said I don't want to be too harsh but I will complain a bit anyway. This book was probably the perfect example of why “show don't tell” is such a common writing tip. This is something I never even cared about before and I rolled my eyes at this criticism. I get it now! Everyone is making such grandiose statements about their relationships. Not just the romantic relationships either. Amani goes on and on about how Maram and she are like sisters and how Maram would be a great queen but I never felt like either was the case. All Maram does is shift responsibility onto Amani, honestly I thought everyone would be better off if she just stepped off as a Queen. As for being like sisters, there were the seeds of it in the last book but in this they barely interact in this book. Amani just read as having the biggest case of Stockholm syndrome. Maram on her end had a romantic relationship with a woman in this book, which was barely touched upon. I can't believe I am saying this but I almost wish it just wasn't there at all. I was excited for Maram's pov but it is all in flashback, not relevant to the current plot thread. Her love interest shows little personality and has barely any pagetime. I wish she was scrapped and we got Maram's actual thoughts on the real plot more, or else that her love story was actually more relevant somehow. This series originally fell on my radar because someone sold me it as “there is an evil lesbian princess in this one”. If you are also interested for this reason just keep in mind it's an extremely minor and imo not well executed plot)

If I had to describe this book with one word it'd be “unconvincing”. I'm not convinced about Glass' machinations, I'm not convinced about Nona's feelings for her friends and especially not for looks up name Regol (I didn't actually care enough to look his name and I don't care if it's not right), I wasn't convinced of the large scale battle or how it was resolved, I'm not convinced about any of the spoilery developments, and I wasn't even convinced of the person Nona ends up with even though I was rooting for it.

I also wasn't convinced the flashback section of the story had any business being in this book and not the previous one, booth books would have been stronger for it. The last book felt incomplete and this one felt divided.

Could have used those pages to give Ara and Clara much needed focus. They're supposed to be important but barely get more mention than the rest of Nona's friend group. Clara is understandable though when she does appear her conclusion still seems rushed but Ara really neded more (See the ending being unconvincing).

Nothing in it is terrible but nothing is particularly good either? Okay conclusion to a okay continuation of a great start. I'm not even really disappointed it delivered the bare minimum to be good and that's fair enough.

Fascinating book. My one complaint is that I find it baffling that the book implies if not outright states multiple times that Holmes got away with it for so long because she is a woman, and people wanted a “female steve jobs” which seems hard to buy (source: I've been a woman for 23 years and counting). Also I kept waiting for the book to say more about corporate culture but there was maybe one line about “startup culture”. I don't think Holmes is much different from her idols, or rather I think the main difference is that she was a scammer that put peoples lives in line, of course - But her treatment of employees (which arguably resulted in the death of one), her obsession with success I find it hard to believe that is unique to her.

Stand out ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ stories:
Through The Flash (this is the story I picked the book up for and it did not disappoint)
The Finkelstein 5 (made me physically SICK)

The spooky bits were good, everything else put me to sleep, at one point literally. This book reads like a reddit nosleep post if they had those in [whenever this book is set, I don't care, I have forgotten]. Non-descript mandude who constantly insist he's a rational intelligent man is spooked by spooky shit yet insist on seeking out the spooky shit and then proceeds to shitting his pants. I didn't care about what happened to him. I wouldn't have cared about him even if the book wasn't written by an older version of him and therefore we know he survives More disappointing I didn't care about the spooky stuffs backstory either - it was pretty predictable and not terribly interesting. And then - the book ends. It literally ends with him going “enough”. Enough! The end. I at least expected something to happen in his present or I don't know what the point of the framing device was. Why'd I spend the first chapter remembering his family's names when they never show up again! Whatever. Came for the creepy bits, stayed for the creepy bits, so, a rather weak 3 stars for the creepy bits.

Wow the writing in this is atrocious. I've read light novels before and I even read fan translated light novels before and I rarely saw something so sloppily written. You can only blame the translation to a point I think they really did the best they could given material.

Also the art in this is obliviously not done by the main team or whatever from the games. It's not outright bad but the artist obviously has a thing for legs as they're not only front and center in every illustration but also take up half the picture. It's especially egregious because the legs in other canon material are little more than sticks.

That said it was fun enough, most of the new characters got on my nerves and the plot is sort of all over the place but I'm hoping the second volume will kill off the annoying people and give some sense to the plot. Two stars for now, I might change it after the second volume.

This was fine. I enjoyed the revenge stuff. I wish it wasn't so heavy on the sex. I'd argue even the story itself could rely less on sexuality and be stronger for it - but at least stuff from jane's personal life might be spared. I loved her as a character, didn't enjoy her budding relationship (I hesitate to call it romance). I thought it was out of place.

This book is as strange as the other reviews say..for the first half. I thought the first half was brilliant I loved the way it entwined the research with the story and the characters own issues. In the second half in comparison it felt aimless and almost generic. I still enjoyed it and I somewhat see the merit in the second half but I don't think it needed to be as long as it is even then.

3.5? I roll it up for now but depending how much it stays with me I might lower it down instead. First half was an easy 4.

dropped because this is based on real and relatively recent events. Not sure what possesses people to think they have to right to write cheap entertainment about real life horrific events when people affected by them are still alive but rethink your life choices.

Well. At least the covers' gorgeous!

I think this had some really cool worldbuilding ideas but due to it's length couldn't really get those ideas across without hurting characterization and plot. Overall it was hard to care what was going on. Even at the ending when it ended what is the most obvious sequel hook ever my only reaction was, well “I'm glad that was over with”. I might check out to sequel when and if it comes out, but only if it's longer than 150 pages.

Just read Baru instead.

thank you goodreads for removing my rating and read dates from this because i dared add a missing tag to it today

Do lgbt kids really read these books or is it just for us lgbt adults to coo over I wonder.

This book is very frustrating at times but overall the message is great and made me think and that's all I can ask for I suppose.

My main complaints are..

I almost dropped it in the first half because of the constant baffling preconceived (and racist) notions he keeps mentioning european/american people particularly his students have. For a while it seemed very aimed at a western audience in that regard but I'm glad a stuck with it. Though it really opened my eyes on how ignorant the average western person is about “non-western” countries. Ironically the chapters that were meant to make the (western) reader think “oh things aren't so bad in the world over!” made me despair for the western world lol anyway...

Second thing is a lot of the “things are better than you think!” talk is..semantics. For example he says most of the word is middle class and a small part of the population is actually extremely poor! Sounds great until you read his definition of middle class which sounds like hell lol. Or the talk about how certain things like vaccination rates or percentage of girls getting an education for example are getting higher. Well duh, they weren't about to go lower?

This all makes it sound very negative and yet I give it 4 stars. I agreed with the bulk of what he said and the core message of fact checking and not falling into what he calls a dramatic word view. We're getting an overload of skewed info everyday and it's important to actually sit down and cross check before falling into hopelessness. And then fall into it anyway probably because the world really is kinda fucked. Just a bit less so thank you might think.