Tyler
I'm at an utter loss for words. This series was incredible! I'm very glad a waited to read this series as it's been sitting on my shelf for awhile, as I think I wouldn't have enjoyed it as much if I read it earlier into my reading journey. This trilogy was very heavy, intense, dark and at times hard to follow and explain to those around me that asked about the book. However, I appreciate that Kuang didn't dilute or dumb down this important story to appeal to the masses. At its core this is a story of war, colonisation, political agendas and ultimately revenge. I absolutely loved the concluding novel God of War because Rin our main character was betrayed almost constantly by powerful men around her that took advantage of her age and naivety, and she got revenge and became arguably a problematic character. But guess what I DONT CARE!! I was 100% supporting women's wrongs in this book, Rin's enemies got what they deserved and I very much enjoyed their suffering. 5 ⭐️, great book, #RinIsAGirlboss
Okay, I'm sorry Miss Rebecca that I ever doubted you! The fact that you have made me hate, tolerate, like, love and then absolutely despise a a primary character in this series shows how incredibly well written these books are. Unfortunately, from pages 200-400 I felt a real lull in the pacing and not a whole lot of things were happening; however, now finishing the book I understand why these scenes were important for the conclusion of this book. I have taken off a star though because I do feel like the middle of the book could have been more condensed to reduce the overall length of the book or even if more storyline peaks were included to juxtapose the troughs of important information. Overall, that ending had me gagged and I'm jumping straight into the third and final book.
‘The Poppy War' has been sitting on my shelves for a couple of years now and I'm so annoyed I didn't pick it up earlier. I have read Kuang's other works and absolutely loved them and her debut fantasy novel did not disappoint! The novel retells the events of WW2 specifically the Second Sino-Japanese War between China and Japan with a fantasy spin including a war college and powerful God's whose power can be harnessed in battle. The political storyline was so engrossing and easy to follow, and I love that Kuang didn't shy away from how when we experience extreme trauma we don't always come out the other end better from it. Our protagonist Rin witnesses some truely horrendous actions and it's makes total sense for her to then make decisions out of anger and revenge as a result of her trauma rather than taking the high road which so many characters fall prey to in fantasy stories. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and can't wait to continue this trilogy!
When a book starts with the following historical note “In 1560, fifteen-year-old Lucrezia left Florence to begin married life with Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara. Less than a year later she would be dead, rumoured that she had been murdered by her husband.” You know that you are in for a wild ride! I had really high expectations going into this book after just finishing ‘Hamnet' and falling in love with Maggie O'Farrell's writing. Her immaculate descriptions were again present, however, I found the pacing of this book to be much slower than her other work. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and loved the jumping timeline from past to present between chapters. Unfortunately, some of the chapter were over 100 pages and I personally felt were dragged out too much and not adding all that much to the story.
Sometimes I think, “I could write a book.” Then I read a book like Hamnet and it humbles me as I think “I could never tell a story this well.” This book was perfection, the writing - incredible, the story - incredible, the emotions - I felt all of them. The way Maggie O'Farrell captured the grief of losing a child had me SOBBING! During part 2 I had to put the book down because I couldn't read through my tears. Everybody has to read this book once in their lifetime! I'm now on my historical fiction journey.
Honestly, the police in this town are USELESS and couldn't solve a puzzle let alone a crime.
Ultimately, I felt like Connor was too close to the incident to be an impartial detective, resulting in his presence just annoying me. He was consistently interfering with Pip's investigation and expected everyone to go above and beyond just because it was his brother that was missing. I also didn't find this case nearly as interesting as it was a missing person case rather than a murder case. The twist at the end though really got me and resulted in the book going from a 3 ⭐️ to a 4 ⭐️ read. I feel like the follow up book needed to be a longer period after the previous case (maybe when Pip was finished with university and this turns into her career). I did enjoy the aspect of her posting updates to her followers whilst she was solving the case and viewers could input their ideas and suggestions that Pip then followed up on. Overall, it was a pretty enjoyable read with a good twist at the end regardless of how left of field the twist was (honestly it felt like I was reading another book when everything unfolded) and I would recommend this to anyone that enjoyed the first novel.
I was so invested in this story and main characters that I managed to read this book in mostly one sitting. Pip was such an enjoyable protagonist and I loved her type A personality and it made me reflect on my time as a student and made me miss academia. The reason I couldn't give this book 5 stars was partially because I guessed part of the twist pretty early on, so instead of an ‘OMG' twist it was more of ‘I knew it!' moment. I think aging up the characters would have lended to a more high stakes outcome as it felt at time pretty unbelievable the risks a 17 year old was willing to take. Also the amount of time it took characters to literally reveal all their deepest darkest secrets after very little probing from Pip, further added to the unbelievability of the story. Overall, this is a highly recommended read and I will be continuing the trilogy.
Things were looking up! Not a single cringy scene in over 250 pages! I found myself thinking “here's a cute Ali Hazelwood romance book I would actually recommend to people”. But then, we get to chapter 19. Our first spice scene enters the chat! Cringe Factor 1: the scene lasts for over 20 pages. Cringe Factor 2: the film Twilight is playing in the background of said spice scene. Cringe Factor 3: they bring up the fact that he was jealous she was fake dating his brother, maybe don't discuss siblings in a spice scene. I will now and forever think of this book as a 4 ⭐️ before chapter 19 and a 1 ⭐️ after chapter 19. The cringe factor continued throughout the remainder of the book. Also after sleeping together one time the characters are already discussing moving in together, like slow down you're only in your late 20's. To me a good romance book has hundreds of pages of yearning and banter, then in the last 10 pages they get together and that's the end. Once the couple is happy and stable I lose interest, to be honest this book could have ended 100 pages earlier. Overall, I think this was my most disappointing read from Hazelwood as I was tricked into thinking this book deviated from her usual writing style and book reviewers rate this as their favourite of the three STEM focused novels. The reason I decided to pick up Love on the Brain and Love, Theoretically this month is because I was so intrigued by her new novel Bride, but I think I'll have to give it a miss for now as I can conclusively say Ali Hazelwood's writing style isn't for me.
