Nathalie

I liked the ending and I especially liked the potential of it, but overall I spent quite a lot of time being annoyed by this book.

There are two female characters in this. One is barely in it, and whenever the other one is there the main character just can't stop thinking about how hot she is. That's fine, it really is, but every damn time? Really? It made me dislike his character as well as her character because that was nearly all there was to her. Until the end of course, which kind of made me curious and I haven't decided if it was worth getting through all that yet or not.

I didn't really get attached to any of the other characters either though. Except Cody. I loved that guy.

But as I said, I liked how it ended and I liked the revelations there were, so I am pretty curious about the follow-ups, so I might as well check those out eventually.

I wanted to DNF this like five times throughout, but I kept on giving it the benefit of the doubt because on paper, the story is actually pretty interesting. And it's Raymond Feist! I have heard that name many times in the fantasy genre and this was the first time I ever read one of his.

Unfortunately I should have gone with my gut because the conflicts set up in this book don't even pay off here. The Hatu/Hava stuff, which wasn't even that exciting since Hatu kind of already knew anyway, is apparently saved for somewhere in the next books, so here the story just ends with some kind of other character-related cliffhanger that just made me roll my eyes. The character work in general just was very cookie cutter (also wtf at the sex thoughts every two seconds, I mean please calm down). The story itself wasn't much to write home about either. It is very much a ton of setup but nothing really so interesting that it's worth sticking out.

What I noticed with this book is that it didn't take me too long to like the characters. Characters are an “end all be all” for me, and I need to like them for a book to be even remotely enjoyable. Sometimes I just never even warm up to any characters, so this was excellent.

I had trouble caring for the main storyline though. The action sequences were very long, half the time I was just confused, and other times I just wanted things to be over with. It also took me an embarassingly long time to learn the characters' full names. Why is this important exactly? In one character's POV people would be referred to by a different name (their first name, or family name) than in the other character's POV. I had to reread the summary just to double check sometimes.

My main points are just silly personal things I have trouble explaining, so it kind of comes across as if I didn't like it. But I did! And I especially liked Winter and Bobby! But I wouldn't say I liked it or them enough to be interested in checking out the sequels.

Absolutely fantastic. More plot-based than character-based this time around (which I don't mind but I do prefer otherwise), yet still great fun.

I have a bit of a hard time writing down how I felt about this book. On the one hand, I often had the thought of “I don't really care about this”, switching really quickly to “Oh, that's pretty cool”, but it never really went beyond that (except for the first few chapters, which I really liked).

The world itself was pretty interesting, even if the magic system was a bit unnecessarily complicated (so many rules!), especially in its explaining of it. It was much all at once and I feel like I only got a grasp on it in the latter half.

Most of my issues though were with the characterization, I feel like Gavin was definitely one that was more fleshed out, while the others I couldn't really get a grip on and would find them hard to describe when asked. Kip probably had the weirdest “development” of them all, as in you never knew whether you'd get the self-pitying boy or the sarcastic badass. Corvin barely cares about his daughter's decision at the end even if we're told he really cares about her. On that note, I didn't really go along with or believe Liv's motivation for it either. Karris was alright, though it felt like more time was spent having other characters complement her on her beauty than on her character or her part of the story.

The story itself was pretty cool, as well as the powers, but for me it lacked a bit of a human aspect. It focused a lot on being action-packed, and sometimes went by so fast that you didn't know where the characters were at times (they could fly to other locations within a sentence). That could be exciting, but it also got old pretty fast and took me out of the story.

I don't usually read stories like this, and I think I found out why: I do not believe anything that happened in this book. I liked it, I loved how it was written, how it made me feel nostalgic for experiences I never even had, but I distanced myself from really getting into the story by not believing it.

All I kept thinking the entire time was that this entire story took place inside a boy's imagination, or at least everything that went inside supernatural territory. I feel like a lot of traumatic things happened to this kid in a relatively short time (Seeing a dead body, catching his father cheating, his father becoming abusive for a while after, his one friend either leaving or dying, and basically blaming himself for all of it) and that this was his way to cope with all of it. Maybe that was the point, and we are supposed to look for the meanings behind all of it, but it kept me from being really immersed in all of it.

The first half of the book I really loved. It had most of the nostalgia and it felt very atmospheric. Ideal for reading on a rainy day. The second half of the book really ramped up the “strange occurrences” and that's where it lost me a little bit.

A very unique read! This was the first time I had to change the book I read before bedtime because this one gave me some very strange dreams. Especially the first half feels very unnerving and so it didn't quite work as a relaxing read.
I think this type of magical realism is not my particular genre, but I still took enjoyment out of figuring out what had actually happened to this kid.

These are the kinds of books and stories that you wish could just keep going forever and ever.

I've been procrastinating reading this series just because I don't want it to be quite over yet (while yes, I know there's more coming), but I'd hate to arrive at a point where I have no new Royce and Hadrian stories to look forward to.

As for this particular entry - Hell yeah! For some reason I always assumed the Chronicles series would interest me less than Revelations, as there's a lot of interesting development between these two (and other characters) in the latter that changes the dynamic completely, but I am also totally into this. Gwen also gets some much needed development, and I just want everyone to succeed at everything.

I don't know exactly when it happened, but maybe nearly halfway through this, I started caring about these kids.

The story starts off slow, and I didn't really have much that made me want to keep reading it, other than that I had bought it and it's not very lengthy, but then at a certain point, maybe as soon as Blue starts interacting more with the Raven Boys and more of it gets explained, I had trouble putting it down.

I like the story, I like the potential of the story, and I quite like the characters, which are all things I honestly didn't quite expect when I first started reading it. I'm pleasantly surprised. And am now very interested in the rest of the series.

I postponed reading this one because I was pretty sure that I would like it and wanted to save it for a time where I'd need a damn good book. Unfortunately I was just bored most of the time.

I can't even explain what it was, because some of the ideas and characters were cool, but none of it ever really grabbed me. I also never got super into the writing style, but I can't really put into words exactly what I was missing.

A bit of a useless review, but it was just alright for me. Nothing bad, but nothing overly great either.

Either this was not the ideal book to read at 6 am on the train each morning, or perhaps my expectations were just a bit too high. Which is weird, because I normally appreciate humor like this, and I found characters like Carrot and Vimes very endearing, and I also found it clever at times. Yet for some reason I just didn't connect that much with it, or at least not as much as I would have liked. Which is pretty frustrating for me as I can't exactly pinpoint why that is.

I'm... not entirely sure of what I just read? What was the story here exactly? There was a bunch of travelling, with a bit of intrigue happening, some assumed tension going on between Laurence and Temeraire (which then turns out to be a non-issue). There's a confrontation, and then the book is done.
This is almost like a story that could fit in an actual sequel, but it's recounted as something that happens inbetween the books or something. The story doesn't exactly warrant its own novel.
Characters are still great, but otherwise.... eh.

I'm starting to think Brandon Sanderson's writing might just not be for me. I always like the story ideas in theory, but I always feel like I'm reading a adult novel with the writing of a young adult novel. Everything I've read so far has been prioritising plot over character (my personal preference is usually the other way around), which makes the characters feel a bit too shallow to me, and so in the end I just don't care about anything going on.
I don't hate it of course, but feeling neutral at the end of the book isn't a very good sign either.

I may very well be missing something, but I feel like most of the story just went over my head.

The style in the book is more descriptive than dialogue-heavy, but even then things moved very fast and were not given time to settle (so. much. travelling.). At times I didn't even know where we were or who certain characters were. Ged also seemed to be very accepting of everything that happened to him and I had trouble relating to him as a character.

I did like the story, in theory, and the last few pages were beautiful, but also abrupt, and I was surprised to see it was over already. I find the prose also very good, but maybe not for me personally.

On a sidenote, I have no idea where the Harry Potter comparisons are coming from? The wizard school is featured in maybe 2-3 chapters and not even very similar? The world and characters are also totally different? But alas.

This was fun! And it was great to finally see who characters like Thrawn and Mara Jade actually were (or are, in the case of Thrawn).
As fun and enjoyable as it was though, I'm not sad most of this was wiped away. Leia being interested in using a lightsaber is always going to sound weird to me. As well as Jedi clones.
Am now really looking forward to Rebels season 3 though. As well as Timothy Zahn's new Thrawn novel!

Ultimately a very good conclusion to the story. Not my favorite compared to the other trilogies in this world, but satisfying nonetheless.
This might have been the first one in which I really didn't look forward to certain POV chapters, but it still turned out pretty okay by the end. I would still recommend reading it, even if it wasn't a necessity for the following trilogy.

After all these years of reading fantasy, I have finally given Brandon Sanderson a proper try. I had checked out a few of his standalone stories and his YA entry, none of which left a super good impression, so I figured his more popular entries like Mistborn wouldn't be that much different. Everything I read afterwards from naysayers about this book only confirmed that belief, but I thought now was a good time to finally give it a try for myself.

And well, I liked it! Do I recognize the complaints? Sure. Sometimes you got beaten over the head with character traits that are fairly obvious (yes, yes, Vin has trust issues. I GET IT) and it's not like I would be particularly heartbroken if any of them died (except for Sazed probably), but none of that got in the way of the cool plotting and story structure, the world and its villains, the way the action came together, and just general entertainment value. All of it is just pretty cool and exciting! But not in a way that it's just mindless entertainment.

Overall, super glad to finally be able to cross this off my list and not having “mist” out on this! Gives me hope to one day be able to tackle The Stormlight Archive when I ever get around to it!

It was weird, a little fucked up at times, but also pretty cool. It also made me want to stop every now and then and look up where some of the Gods mythology came from. So, overall I liked it and I'm looking forward to the adaptation.
I think I liked the interludes more than most of the main story though. They were great! (And I'm glad at least a few of those will also be part of the Starz series!)

This installment was very clearly one giant setup for what's to come next (pretty much building on stuff without payoff... yet), but pretty interesting nonetheless. Especially because we finally got back to some perspectives of characters we haven't seen in a while and see what they've been up to.
I'm starting to really dislike the keepers' storyline at this point though, since aside from the dragons, a lot of it has been taken over by the romance (and I use romance lightly because it's more like lusting after one another) and I don't much care for it nor really see the point.
Very excited about certain confrontations that'll hopefully come to pass though, as well as sincerely worried about some! Bring it on.

I honestly don't know how to review this! Did I enjoy it? Yes! Would I recommend it? Uh...

As always I adore Robin Hobb's writing, as well as characters such as Spink and Epiny. I also wanted to know where the story would go, because I was invested in that.

The story in itself is super miserable (which is fitting considering the setting in the latter half of the book) and could get pretty “really?” at times. Nevare himself, well, if he was frustrating in the first book, it gets even worse here. It was tough to root for him at times. He makes the miserable story even more miserable so it's all just misery upon misery upon misery and that's not something everyone necessarily wants to read about.

Now, as for me, I definitely don't mind it as long as everything else makes up for it. The side characters are great as always, and just because I jive so hard with Hobb's writing I find it very easy to get into it, but obviously that's not going to be the case for everyone.

I'm honestly just glad I managed to finish a book this year :D

This book had a bit of a rough start (the Emperor was in love with our protagonist after one conversation by chapter three), but it turned out alright in the end. The side characters were the best part, even if the whole “attempted assassination” plot was only occasionally interesting.

There's a lot of action going on and it is relatively fun, but don't expect there to be much depth to it, or at least not emotionally.