Misha

I saw the negative reviews, I knew what reviewers said about Infinity Son, and I refused to believe them.

This book alone should bump all of the books I have reviewed up by a single star because of how much of a mess it was. I hated it. I hated every second of reading this.

The worldbuilding is a mess. Setting a fantasy novel in the present day is a tough cookie to crack which is why a lot of stories (like Silvera's beloved Harry Potter) resort to hidden worlds/communities. Silvera did not and it crumbled on page freaking three.

The characters are boring, uninteresting, and lame with the exception of Ness and Emil but them being somewhat interesting is offset by how much of a douchebag Brighton (yes, there is a character whose name is Brighton in a book about phoenixes...I sighed every time his name came up).

Then we have the worst part of the book, the dumbest, the most awful part of any fantasy book and it's so perfectly summed up in the following quote:

“Maybe this war can be removed from the streets and won online.”

Why is this [expletive] in a fantasy book ? Why is Buzzfeed, YouTube, and Instagram mentioned in a fantasy book? Why a main character, in this fantasy book, obsesses over social media?

Nope.

I finish all book series that I start reading (eventually) but the chances of me picking up Infinity Reaper are pretty much zero.

I am writing this review after finish [b:The Toll 43822024 The Toll (Arc of a Scythe, #3) Neal Shusterman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1558117336l/43822024.SY75.jpg 59222476] as I have pretty much read them as one book though I will limit this review only to my thoughts regarding Thunderhead and ignore the conclusion of the final book.To me Thunderhead was better that Scythe. There were a few underutilized elements, mainly Rowan as Scythe Lucifer who even in the first book was in Citra's shadow, here he's relegated to even lesser importance which saddened me. Also he gets captured way too easily.Citra is great and her method of gleaning is unique and very appropriate for her. I enjoyed her chapters, but not as much as those of...Grayson Tolliver who was fun and I loved him so much. He easily became my favorite character!The one “character” I have trouble summarizing my thoughts on is the titular Thunderhead. I just didn't care much for its musings.Then there was the ending which, to my surprise, many found unexpected. I found it quite predictable and immensely contrived. For the sake of not spoiling the book I am refraining from mentioning the details but it was... silly.The other part of the ending though was great!

This is a book of privilege. A clearly high class teenager is struggling with high school to get accepted into one of the most privileged universities in the world. Yikes! Am I supposed to feel sympathy for him?
Everything is an utter disaster. There romance is weird and I did not feel the two of them as a couple at all. The high school where everyone is so stupidly smart that they take multiple AP classes (yet another stupidity of the American educational system) is just bizarre.
Sook, Ariel's best friend, is even worse. Her privilege manifests in not wanting to go to an Ivy League college because her parents did and she wants to be a musician.

I know... I know...

This is all real. 100% There are privileged brats that are like this but something being true to reality doesn't mean I am going to root for them. This book made me actively hate the protagonist and most of the cast except for Malka. Even Ariel's parents are just stupid.

Nope.
0% sympathy.

Also the CONSTANT references to Harry Potter in an LGBT book is just disgusting. I had to check when this was published and nope this was well in time for it to be clear that Harry Potter being mentioned would be yikes.

The extra star is for relatability. Struggling with school is rough. Most people experience it. Most people aren't secure, applying to guaranteed-wealth colleges, and they aren't absolutely a-holes to everybody around them...

I have never ever had such a visceral “what the hell was this?” reaction. Never. This wasn't bad. It was nothing. The chapters are short, descriptions are just not enough, dialogue is... it's there, I guess.
I don't get the praise for this. It's just bland. The idea, on paper, is fantastic but this is not what I'd call a good execution.

First book of 2022 and with Dark Rise, this is a damn good start to this year's book journey.
I've been eyeing All Systems Red for a while but it's always been a little too expensive and I do hate not buying entire series of books especially when it's a novella.
My gut feeling that I'll like Murderbot were damn right! The book has heart and just the kind of humor I enjoy. The ending was fantastic too which I was a bit worried about.
I do think the novella format hurts the book just a tiny bit. It could be at least some 40 pages longer as the conclusion of the main story is pretty short.

I can't wait to read more of Murderbot:D

Trying to look objectively upon my time reading this book, I'd give it 3 stars. Considering just the sheer enjoyment of it then 4 stars.

There is little to be said about The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. It's a fine book that is entertaining, that doesn't take itself too seriously, and is just fun. It's a beach read in its purest form and exactly the kind of a book I needed to get out of my reading slump. The writing is simple but it has some really good, quotable lines.

“And what does it meant that we have not spoken in a decade but I still hear your voice in my head every day.”

“I love you too much to let you live only for me.”

Oh, If We Were Villains, thou hadst such boundless promise, yet alas, hast faltered, and now I cannot deem thee more than a tome bound in the chains of mediocrity's curse.

While I've always been quite critical of The Secret History regardless of how much I adore it, the genre it spawned is very much something I enjoy. I've known about If We Were Villains for a long time but held off until now. The reason being a class on Shakespeare that I've decided to undertake this semester. I thought it'd be fun to read this while weekly dissecting Shakespeare's plays. I was wrong.

If We Were Villains lacks character beyond the utter preposterousness of the principal characters. Shakespeare indeed is very cool but you don't need to quote him on every page during normal conversation.

The issue that I fear absolutely ruined the book for me was the lack of character for the Dellecher Shakespeare conservatory. It never felt like a real place with real people. The Secret History pushed my suspension of disbelief far with a class of students who study Greek and nothing else but to dedicate an entire course to Shakespeare and by the fourth year you're still on Julius Caesar is hilarious. Where are the lesser known plays? Do they really never do anything but study their lines and act? Why are all the plays portrayed as the most boring productions possible with nothing original? Less than a week ago I went to see a beautiful production of The Merchant of Venice that portrayed Antonio and many of the Christian characters as members of the Italian mob. That's what I'd expect them to be doing in their fourth year.

As many others pointed out the twist is predictable and taken right out of The Secret History but stripped of any semblance of making sense. The ending was poor.

This review could be a very long drawn-out sigh. Why? Because I don't really know what to say. In Aurora Rising I've counted at least five instances of wanting to groan, roll my eyes, throw the book against a wall, and never touch it again.

But I didn't. In its second half I came to quite enjoy it.

Ironically the worst and the best thing about Aurora Rising are the characters. The squad, consisting of 6 members + “the mystery girl” Aurora, is all you're going to get in terms of, well, actual characters. The rest, including the villain/antagonist, have the depth of a puddle.

The leader, also known as Alpha (a title which makes my skin crawl) is pretty much a Gary Stu (that the name?). Tyler has blond hair, blue eyes, broad shoulders, he doesn't drink or curse, and he is very white and very straight. Yippie.

Tyler's got his squad. First is Scarlett, his sister. Scar's roommate Cat is there too. Genuinely, I had trouble telling these two apart at times! The book jumps from POV to POV every chapter and it's beyond unnecessary and annoying. There's 7 characters each with a few chapters of their own but written in such a way it's hard to tell whose perspective you're reading.

Then there's Legolas... I mean Kal. An elf... sorry, a Syldrathi (Sindarin called. It's not upset; it's laughing at how stupid this is.) Kal imprints on Aurora because he's a true alien of a warrior race blah blah. It's creepy.

Can't forget Zila! She is that character in stories that is a walking computer. She's got a gajillion IQ points in her big brain and can make Einstein-level calculation on the fly. Also she gets the shortest “chapters” (literally like 40 words... yeah, I've got no clue).

Then there's Aurora/Auri. She's great and fun. Got nothing snarky or bad to say about her.

And, drumroll please, the best for last is Finian. He carries the whole book being the character with depth but also a unique personality (compared to the rest of them). I love him and his snarky attitude. Also, there are some hints that he could be bisexual which, as a bi guy myself, I'd appreciate if it were given just a bit more than “haha, this guy hot:3 anyway...”.

There really needed to be only 3+1 characters. Scarlett and Cat blend into one so make them one character and add Zila because she gets so little character development... well I'd call it character stagnation. Kal is needed because of the plot. Tyler is as boring as a typical videogame white cishet lead, and so on.

So characters are a huge mixed bag but the plot was quite interesting. Not something I couldn't let go but it was fine, cool, fun and all.

Worldbuilding was a thing, I guess. There are pages after each chapter from a what's meant to be a encyclopedia articles but it's boring when read out of context. Besides that the worldbuilding has a lot of sci-fi babble that could be omitted (and the time given to character development).

And the final insult to injury is that in this group of SEVEN PEOPLE there are not one, not two, but THREE completely heterosexual pairings. Not only Aurora salivates at Tyler from the start, she also likes big muscle Kal. Finian, who could be a nice bi rep, likes Scarlett. Cat and Tyler are a thing too.

I don't like to be one of the “this MUST have XYZ rep” but with such a huge cast of characters it's glaringly obvious the authors chose not to include LGBT rep just because.

There's a second book. It's coming in January. I'll read it but I don't have much hope.

PS.: Authors, please stop referencing Lord of the Rings. Auri calls Kal Legolas and it's just... ugh.

I've listened to this on Audible. This was my very first audiobook and Scarlett Johansson's narration was amazing!

What to say about this timeless story? It's fantastic albeit there is something lost not knowing the time when it was written. Still a classic to be remembered for centuries to come.

I liked it! After starting 2021 with books that I've not enjoyed that much, Scythe was a welcome surprise.It's imperative to not however that the premise with the first quarter of the book is exceptionally good. (And yes, I know the worldbuilding isn't exactly logical but neither is the world we live in so let's not be pedantic.) Sadly after that it does devolve into a very typical YA story which is still a lot of fun!The characters range from meh to good. Though, I never took liking to Citra who just seemed like the chosen “best one”. Scythe Faraday was OK but I stand behind thinking him an utter idiot for what he did. Then there's the bad guy Scythe Goddard who is a true layered complex villain! I'm kidding... the layers are all pitch black. He's a typical Evil McEvilton of Death with no nuance to his convictions at all. Still a lot of fun though.I liked the ending too even though it was a bit... (read: very) obvious what'll happen. No matter, it was fun to read.If I had to pick the one thing I vehemently didn't like it'd be the r o m a n c e. Does every book need the girl and the boy to fall in love? Rowan and Citra had the worst chemistry imaginable! It's not necessary at all. They could just be friends (yes, that's a thing between men and women too).Going to start [b:Thunderhead 33555224 Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe, #2) Neal Shusterman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1505658534l/33555224.SY75.jpg 54332060] pretty much right away!

The conclusion to this strange-strange trilogy actually surprised me! It improved on everything lacking in the first two books. Jude isn't acting like a cringy anime protagonist anymore, Cardan's tail is mentioned several times, and the ending isn't totally predictable in some details? Amazing.

This was definitely an improvement. Unlike [b:The Cruel Prince 26032825 The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air, #1) Holly Black https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1574535986l/26032825.SY75.jpg 45959123] it does not spend 120 pages on meaningless nonsense. The writing is improved, Jude is... alright, I guess, and Cardan became the ‘I was abusive because I was abused' trope but, same as with the first book, I can forgive that. It's a fun trope.The plot here is actually important. Jude can be as wince-worthy self-poisoning anime protagonist as she likes and it won't stop the plot from being fun. Mithridatism might be a real thing that can work but it really doesn't need to be mentioned so often.Honestly, I have so much less to say about The Wicked King. It was fine. The definition of fine. It improved a lot, it got original, the political schemes were not totally stupid even if the whole premise for it is extremely non-sensical because Jude is very stupid but I was able to suspend my disbelief enough.Indeed Cardan never got any comeuppance for his abuse of Jude in the first book. Instead she comes to love him for whatever reason and he continues to be enamored by her even though he hates her and she did make him her magical slave. It's a very toxic relationship and I wish the book acknowledged that and had them work through it (hopes for The Queen of Nothing).I do wish the cast got a little more character development. The ‘Court of Shadows' is a bunch of names that attempted to have character and then failed. I really wouldn't be able to tell The Roach and The Ghost apart without the text specifically saying who's who. Maybe that's just me...Very optimistic for the next book. If it improves upon The Wicked King the same that improved upon The Cruel Prince it just might be a genuinely good book!

This series has been on my shelf for years, and only now have I gotten around to it. A friend of mine, a bookish little devil themselves, chose to cosplay Cardan, and I just could not resist a book with a cute elven prince.

I expected a very different book.

What I found amidst these 300 or so pages was not something I disliked; on the contrary, I had a lot of fun with the latter third of the book. I even enjoyed some of the beginning. It's that middle section that feels wasted and could have been utilized better.

The Folk of the Air isn't fantasy in the sense that we understand today. Its first paragraph mentions a taxi and a car. This is that kind of book. You know the kind. The ‘hidden world' with super special people who live unseen by the stupid worthless humans. I will forever damn her books for making this trope so much more prominent.

Sadly, this setting plays no significant role at all. There is no reason whatsoever for the human world to be ours, to be modern. It could have been about a kingdom of humans and the land of faeries, but for some reason, we need mentions of Target and the United States.

Jude, as the protagonist, is weak. She's also extremely wince-worthy.

And before you say anything else, I was good at it.

I've learned from Madoc and...

fairies cannot lie

This is the type of a book I love coming into with exactly no expectations what so ever and Spellslinger delivered! I've loved the story from start to almost-finish. The cast of characters is great and fun. Kellen as a protagonist is perfect and his journey is also just fun to read.

The one thing I've not enjoyed was the final few pages before the epilogue. While the epilogue was fantastic, the prior chapter was a bit meh. Besides that however, I'm in love with this series.

What's five stars minus one Sun? Four stars, yep!

I'll give you the sun was an amazing, funny, entertaining book that really has no right to be as good as it is! There are so many things here that would make me truly dislike almost any other book but somehow I can ignore them no problem.

The sole problem I have with I'll Give You the Sun, and the reason for that one missing star, is how focused it is on Jude and the ending to the LGBT romance of Noah and Brian. At first it seems as a 50/50 type deal with one half being told from Jude's perspective 3 years ahead of Noah who would be given the other half of the book. Except that's not the case. The book is all about Jude and sidelines Noah a lot, like to a point that Noah felt as a side character rather than a valid POV.

I did like the two POVs being 3 years apart, that was interesting at worst and awesome at best. Why that meant we're not allowed to have typical, industry standard chapters is beyond me. It made me stop reading after “chapter” one and pick it up later to finish within two days as there's maybe 5 “chapters” in total with some over 100 pages long. Not enough to substract a star but it annoyed me as I like to end at a chapterbreak rather than in the middle.

Admittedly it has been a while since I binge-read the Shadow and Bone trilogy but I still remember, vividly, how adamant everyone was that Six of Crows is just the better, more mature version that improves upon almost every aspect of Shadow and Bone. I was excited to read it and so I bought it all at once alongside the first trilogy and at the first book of the next duology King of Scars. Back then, I didn't get around to reading this book but I did enjoy the first three. I found the Darkling to be a terrible name for a villain and every magic-user being called Greg was weird but funny.

Six of Crows disappointed me, greatly. For the first few hundred pages I've kept wondering just why but come the end of the second third it hit me - Six of Crows is an anime! There's Kaz Brekker, the criminal prodigy whom all fear, and Inej the Wraith who will stab and murder with supreme skill, and Jesper the Sharpshooter, and Nina a powerful Grisha, and Wylan the Demolitionist, and Matthias the SS Soldier Witch-Hunter.
Who would have thought that these seasoned veterans are all no older than 19. Kaz, the feared demon of the criminal world, is seventeen years old. There was no reason to make their ages so explicit. It did nothing for the plot besides breaking any sort of suspension of disbelief one might have. Kaz, from the first few paragraphs of his story, was at least in his late twenties by the way his point of view was presented. I could understand twenty-three but seventeen is too low. It does not work. The murderous Wraith is sixteen because she's just so special.
Besides being literal children they are all quite horrible people and no amount of sad backstory will make that okay.

I've come across people praising the worldbuilding and same as with the characters, I am not sure what kind of mass hallucination has most of the readership experienced but this ain't it. It's anime, again. The north is full of very gruff and evil people who love ice and everything with cold because obviously they do. It's so generic in so many ways and with the focus being much less on the powers of the Grisha that somewhat interesting aspect is completely gone.

The plot itself is predictable and not that engaging. Again, the anime-esque nature of the book shows with scenes upon scenes that come seemingly randomly recounting the POV character's backstory. I'm sure good 15% of the book are these sections, perhaps even more. Couldn't we have Kaz tell his sad backstory to Inej instead of being subjugated to the plot coming to a stop just to throw it on us? Anime, pure and simple.

I will not be reading The Crooked Kingdom.

Truth be told I don't think me giving this book a rating is fair because I just don't know what to say about it. The second half of it was so full of pain that I'd rather not talk about.

When did it happen? Or has it always happened? Like your victory, love spreads back through time. It claims our earliest association, our battles and losses. Assassinations become assignations. There was, I am sure, a time I did not know you. Or did I dream that me, as I've often dreamed of you?

Yet further proof that time travel is a curse that does not serve anything at all. This is How You Lose the Time War is a great book that promises much and delivers nothing at all. I can only echo other reviewers by saying that I have no idea what was the point of good 90% of the book.

Two time travelers who exchange letters in the most non-sensical way while on opposing sides of a war. It's a premise that should be fantastic and with unlimited potential but it is not utilized well at all.

Time travel is stupid and here it's even Jupiter because it go so much stupider. They travel not just through time but also into alternate realities. That's the worst part of time travel. The only way to actually do time travel is like ‘Doctor Who' and just say that time fixes itself when something is altered or changed.

The plot itself makes no sense and what the two agents do is of little consequence. I wanted to just skip whole sections of the book because of this.

Still it delivered a nice love story of Red & Blue. Next time, I'd appreciate characters having names, not colors.

I didn't like it. Not because it was bad or anything. It's the complete disregard for how cool the “Who is Blue?” reveal could have been that ruins the book. The person it turns out to be is just so boring. They're cute and all but it could have been this cool twist but nah. The two just meet up and the books end after some completely pointless sweet nonsense.

I love teenage LGBT romances. This is by far the worst one I've read so far.

Bonus: Renaming a book to the film's title just left me speechless.

I feel like I've dreamed the beauty that was [b:Divine Rivals 62796217 Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1) Rebecca Ross https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1703064662l/62796217.SY75.jpg 94100483]. So much magic of that first book is lost. The first was truly a work of the divine, a beautiful love story that touched my own heart, and the second really is ruthless in how it falls flat.Not only engages in the most egregious trope of all, it does it for nothing. There is no reason for Roman's amnesia. It is needless padding that feels like the author screaming at us, “DO YOU GUYS REMEMBER DIVINE RIVALS?” A terrible decision that made me want to put the book aside and never pick it up again.In the first book, I thought Enva & Dacre were being set up as a very clear ‘there is evil on both sides' lesson. In Ruthless Vows I expected Roman to see Dacre as the more sympathetic side while Iris has faith in Enva. This would be a wedge driven between them until the monstrous nature of both gods would be revealed at which point Roman & Iris would use their experience with writing to publish and spread the truth of the two deities.Nope. Dacre is less than one-dimensional. He's not even threatening! Enva let thousands die in her name even though should have ended his life! For some reason the book never really condemns her for her inaction. One might think this review spends too much time discussing Dacre & Enva but, well, so does the book. So much of it are chapters in which Roman & Iris barely exist as characters. They are separated and the story is needlessly continuing that separation. There were numerous instances for them to reunite yet they stupidly do not take it.Still, the prose was as good as in the first book, and I do enjoy the characters even if they are there so very little. I feel bad that Forest never got a proper arc of his own and the book discards him as a nameless tertiary character. I still love Roman & Iris.And I still feel sad that I'll never feel a love like theirs.

Read in one sitting! That's how freaking good this conclusion was.In my view, the ending is paramount. So many stories sour due to a bad ending. It is the worst thing that can happen to a good story besides it having no ending at all (looking at you George Martin). I was afraid to go into Ruin and Rising. The first book of the trilogy - [b:Shadow and Bone 10194157 Shadow and Bone (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #1) Leigh Bardugo https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1339533695l/10194157.SX50.jpg 15093325] - was a very safe 3/5 for me, the very definition of a fine/alright YA fantasy. [b:Siege and Storm 14061955 Siege and Storm (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #2) Leigh Bardugo https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1362166252l/14061955.SX50.jpg 19699752] was an optimistic 3.5/5 rounded up to 4/5 because of Nikolai being amazing. Both had some serious issues that were seemingly predicting a weak ending.I was so pleasantly surprised that the ending surpassed all of my expectations. While I was able to predict some of the twists, it had so many surprises in store that left me sad to leave the story of Alina Starkov behind.Altogether this trilogy is fantastic and a must-read for all fantasy fans. Goodbye, Aleksander.

When I was in High School, during the worst years of my life, I began to form a terrible distaste for reading. My teacher was awful as an educator and as a person. I refused to read the books we were discussing in class because I knew I would resent them and dislike them regardless of their quality.

Flowers of Algernon was one of the books that was in our list of recommended books to read in our final year. I read the blurb and knew just how much I would love it. Even when all of my love for reading was almost entirely extinguished, I knew this would be a book that I will enjoy. So I didn't read it.

I read it today on the 12th of April, 2021. Since the day I first refused to read Flowers for Algernon, I grew and changed; I am not the same person anymore. Yet, past me was correct in every way. I loved every second of this book. I only wish I had the chance to read it those many years ago.

It's always the ones you least expect, huh?

I picked it up because the title sounded interesting and I heard it's LGBT...

If I'll read a better book this year, well, then it will be a damn good year because to me reading Ari & Dante was like cuddling up to the person you love under the softest blanket with a cup of hot tea.

It was also quite personal. Dante is in so many ways the boy I once used to be with parents who are eerily similar. He cries a lot and so do I...

I cried a lot, not going to lie.

I'm sorry, I just can't put it to words...

This is a definite 5/5 yet I just didn't have fun in many parts of this one. It's hard to say why too! Ugh... The start drags on a bit. Once it gets to the romance part and then the spectacular ending it gets ten times better.

Felt sad afterwards but didn't cry. Mainly because I know the Illiad so the ending wasn't really a surprise.

Also Patroclus is precious and it's worth reading just for him.

It's hard to judge and rate the classics but rating them anything below 3 stars only shows how many people truly, genuinely need to read more. High school did not ruin your love for reading, your unwillingness to be challenged did.

Is The Scarlet Letter written in an obtuse way? Yes. Which is why it must be read with consideration for the intent of the author and the time in which it was written.

‘The Scarlet Letter' is hugely critical of the Puritans and could easily be rewritten to be a ‘girlboss' YA novel of half the length with none of the depth. If that is what you seek then maybe you should consider why and do something to challenge yourself.

All the men were bastards. There was no good male character in this book but perhaps the narrator.