BulbasaurusThe7th

This really isn't my usual thing, but I was like hey, let's mix things up.

Rachel is a college professor of economy in New York, with her also-a-professor boyfriend, Nick. Stuff is good. Nick is a lovely guy. Except, he is also the heir of a billionaire big deal family in Singapore. Well, technically they have connections in China, Hong Kong and all over that corner of the word. He has a million cousins and Aunties and everyone who matters there is connected to him, in one way or another.
And they are NOT happy some no name woman from America is dating the most eligible guy from their circles.
So when Nick decides to take Rachel home for his best friend's wedding, shit hits the fan big time.

This book is satire. I've seen many people take it too seriously, talking about Asian representation and how this is offensive, “problematic” and stuff. If you have half a brain, you will notice that the whole thing is just so over the top, the author surely did not mean to say this is realistic and how real life people act, totally unironically. Now, I get it, some rich people can get over the top. But also, this is comedy. People need to RELAX.
Saying that, there are also unrealistic things I enjoyed much less than the hilarious banter and freakout sessions over ridiculous stuff. While Rachel and Nick are sweet... sometimes the way certain characters interacted felt super weird. Rachel gets bullied, which she takes with no issue at all, until she freaks the fuck out. No build up. Just pleasant to ballistic. Why? In a book so thick, you HAD the space to develop her beyond the most superficial expressions. Same with the nice people in the book, like Astrid or Sophie. The moment they meet Rachel, it's like BBF central. Why?
They also go from serious topics to “UWU, let's grab a drink” at the very end. Weird. Just tonally... what the hell?

What I really enjoyed was the fact we were expected to think these people are nuts. It's not Sex and The City, where people act like pampered assholes, but you are meant to wish the best for them. No no, this one is juicy and drama-filled in the fun way. You know that even the nicer characters (like Araminta or Astrid) act ridiculous.
Now Astrid, one of the more prominent characters is painted in a sympathetic way, but then she also realises her mistakes. You are not meant to feel she is normal and infallible.

I will be brutally honest. Half the time I had no idea about the EXACT nature of the things they talk about in this one. Sure, I knew some of the designers and fancy stuff. But as a person who never experienced being rich... I just filled in the rest. Still a fun experience.
Another thing with extensive mentions is the food. Is Kevin Kwan a foodie? Because man, he made me hungry multiple times, even though I am not even familiar with a lot of the foods he described. I had to stop 30 pages from the end to grab a plate of creamy shrimp and mushroom pasta, because this was the book equivalent of a Ghibli movie with piles of amazing food everywhere.

All in all, this is fun for people who like some juicy drama for fun. I think I will be reading the rest of the series eventually

DNF at about 20%-ish.

God, is this book bad. I've read something else by this same author previous and found that book stupid as well, but I was willing to give him another chance.

I have zero issue with a man writing a woman character (or vice versa). I have an issue with authors who feel like they have to go with the lowest hanging fruit to make you feel like they totally get what they are doing and they care so much. No, a male author who just has two women meet 2 minutes ago in a situation where one of them almost died and has them talk about “UGH, objectification” is not doing a good job. Nobody cares he knows jargon like that.
I read the end of the book to know what really happened. He does at least one more round of trying to tell us that he knows women, because he makes his female character say that we all live in constant fear. Men who think that is empowering, us being told we must be nothing but fearful wrecks... they are not helpful, they are fucking annoying. Stop performatively pitying women. It's not productive, it's not a good look and I'm tired of it.

Other than that, in the roughly 20% of this novel that I've read, I had to realise that some authors are not clever enough to write suspense and whodunnit mysteries. What do I mean?
At one point, the protagonist is surprised that another character is going swimming in a very deep natural lake, not wearing her wedding ring. She finds it suspicious and we are supposed to take it as a big thing. Ignoring the fact that if you drop your jewellery in one of those lakes, they are gone forever. Maybe she just didn't want that? I would be careful as well, because I don't want to be Kim Kardashian screeching about losing a diamond earring in the sea. Totally understandable sentiment.
Another moment is when the protagonist is observing this same character talking on the phone. She is leaving a message, which you can determine by how she is just talking without stopping for an answer. Which... again, what sort of a shitty Sherlock Holmes is this? Sometimes one person can just talk for an extended time, explaining something. Especially funny as the author says that the woman is covering her mouth with her hand. How do you know she is still speaking? Some of us can speak without our whole entire head moving???????

All in all, I will never understand why people like these books. The author does bogus stuff with the “investigation” that don't even make sense. He is condescending and very 2022 Tiktok feminist about his characters. It all has this half-baked feel.
So yeah, I don't think I will keep trying with him. Just pick something else.

Let me say something before I review the book itself. I have heard about this book because I absolutely love Jim Butcher. The author of this one is his son. But the fact they are related (and that I am a huge fan of Jim) has nothing to do with the fact I actually picked this one up and the rating and opinion I have on it. Why am I getting into ongoing series, though? Why? Now, in this specific case, I will use the excuse of wanting a good, solid, fun urban fantasy. You can say there are many urban fantasy series going on and that's factual. But at the same time... so many of them are what I call “porntasy”. Usually female protagonist, she has men buzzing around her, sex scenes galore, ehhh. I dislike those. But this. THIS. It's just what I wanted; an action mystery with supernatural elements. Yes. Hell, it even hits another thing I love, namely having prominent characters who are older. Yes, make them older, make them kinda ragged and messed up and unhappy. Sure, an enthusiastic young puppy-in-a-human-body is fine, some of them can be even pretty adorable (like here), but we all need the old master who is not there just to die 150 pages in, so the young one can take over. They can both bring something to the table and be equally valuable. LIKE HERE. Now, we are way too early in the series to say the old character won't just drop dead. Maybe he will. But so far it's promising. So we have the grumptastic old guy, Mayflower. Cute name for someone whose blood is more alcohol than... you know, blood. And who drives a beat up tank of a Jeep. And shoots stuff. But he is cool, I promise. Used to be the partner of a witch from the magical law enforcement, but recently she got brutally murdered and as she was dying, she wrote a message; “Kill Grimsby.” The fuck is a Grimsby? It's a hapless, weak, mouthy young guy with mediocre magical abilities, working at fast food restaurant, entertaining kids. So they need to team up to solve the case and find out what happened and why. Everything got set up perfectly for one of those buddy cop comedies. Two people who deal with their issues in different ways, forced on a mission together. Some room for political intrigue. A little world building on that front, though fairly typical at this point. Now, I am not going to moan much about that, we have seen how far a fairly typical start can lead (that time the author's ACTUAL DAD made a wizard detective ride a reanimated T-rex to battle, ehehehe). And honestly, at this point, I am happy with what we have. So far the enemy creatures are dangerous, but not world-ending-dangerous, again, fine for the first book. The powercreep needs to set in little by little, my man. Some of the humour is NOT PG. It's not excessive. Some... sexually themed gags at one point. Again, we are adults here, I wouldn't say it's such a big deal. Plus, it deals with murder and such, so I would say, be mindful of that if you are a child or very sensitive of it. Some of the violent scenes involve descriptions of the main character actually living through being harm done to him. You can feel the story being influenced by Jim Butcher. That's a fact. Then again, he does this kind of a story super well. I am not going to blame a man for being influenced by his dad when he is pretty much a force in a certain subgenre. Plus, I would be a gigantic hypocrite if I did, while not moaning about the same at [a:Benedict Jacka 849723 Benedict Jacka https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1325965585p2/849723.jpg] or [a:Stephen Blackmoore 4449940 Stephen Blackmoore https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1556239891p2/4449940.jpg]. Now I want to read more, both by James J. Butcher and in the urban fantasy/detective topic. Which I take as a win. This one is a funny, action-packed, exciting, well-done first book and the moment book 2 comes, I am reading it. I would say, it's a pretty good pick both for people who are just getting into it and also people who are already familiar with the subgenre. Solid ass book all around.

I had no idea this was going to be the last in the series. For some reason, I assumed it was still going, so imagine my surprise when I realised we were going into the big bad boss fight.
But that also comes with the question, does this book give us a conclusion that is satisfying?
To that I would say.... yes and no? Anyone who read any of this series would know that's probably the most you can expect from the story. It's weird. Not all of the pieces make sense and a lot of it is based on the fact that you can't trust Jack's perception of reality. Then we have Jerry, who also can't be trusted, albeit for completely different reasons.

Even still, I wasn't 100% happy. I feel like the fact this was based on some kind of a web serial plays a role in it. A bunch of it was probably random ideas that didn't always end up working in the grand scheme of the narrative, but by then it was too late to retcon everything. I get that. I understand. Yet I still feel like the very end was just a little anticlimactic.
It shouldn't be a surprise. It works with how this story works. Besides, I usually feel the same way about most horror stories. The atmosphere and mystery is what I like. The solution is usually kind of... meh?

At the end we have some chapters with the backstories of characters. God, that was so annoying. They were all so serious and supposedly emotional, but they felt tonally whacky, mismatched and absolutely forced. Like the author suddenly felt like he needed to make you understand these people who kept doing absolutely stupid shit all this time were actually tragic victims of their circumstances.
This plays into another thing I didn't understand about the series.
The interesting this about this book series is that the baseline of weird for the characters is crazy. They can see mutant raccoons and not be bothered. Handplants? Cool cool. Cosmic horror and body snatchers still make them say “wait what”, but even that is way below how you and I would react. This is just that kind of a place. Murder and death abound.
Then they lose their shit because a character offers tequila because Rosa is a Latina. It really felt like the author just needed to virtue signal just a little. My issue was the same with Calvin Ambrose. We had to make a polo-shit-khakhi-shorts huwite man character who is suddenly racist and that is FREAKY, but the fact this whole town is mega fucked is... fine? It's so inconsistent when the characters are supposedly unflappable because everything about this is bonkers.

The very end has some clever misdirection and the author obviously knows half the books made no sense, which is good. I like to see that.
I just can't say I am really happy with this whole thing.
The series at a whole is a 14/20 stars, which sounds realistic. Yeah. I am good with that.

I tried to read this. About 15 pages in, this is fucking god awful.
The way it's written all in this rambling inner monologue makes it sound like the author is incredibly unsure about the world. Do you usually mentally go through everything you do? “So I take my keys out, then I pick out the one with the round head next to the keychain. It's the one to open my front door. Inserting it is not hard, though I have to jiggle it just a little because the door is a bit old. Otherwise it's not incredibly hard to turn it, though, so I can open the door relatively easily.”
Reading it makes me tired, it's like someone is just having word vomit all over me, while I try not to tune it all out.

I've never really LIKED this series. It was always exposition central to explain away how incredibly dumb and illogical the whole premise was.
The characters were always trash, except Orion, who was verbally abused by ELLLLLLLL every fucking line of dialogue she had with him.
Also, I fucking HATE ELLLLLLL's mother. She did literally nothing to take care of her child, except the hippy bullshit she did for literally any asshole who walked in. She could have protected her better. Could have given her a chance at proper survival. But instead she ignored her child's safety and mental well-being (and being an awful, mean-spirited CUNT) and just picked some flowers and dicked around in a field.
Easy to blame both her and ELLLLLLL's shitty personalities on “le trauma, le depression”, but they don't learn from it. We are supposed to love them the way they are and they are both bad people.

End of rant. This series is bad.

FINALLY some things about this series get explained and resolved. Finally we circle back to a bunch of stuff, certain things get explained!!!!
Now... I will say something about this series. It's so weird and has so many elements, you have to read them relatively close to each other, otherwise you will forget a bunch of the fever dream type shit that goes down. Great for a binge, if you are so inclined.

So far, this is the most seriously horror of the books. The other two had fucked up, gory stuff, but this seems to have longer stretches of just dark stuff and everything going wrong for our characters. Jack reaches his deepest point yet.
It also really leans into the whole idea of Jack being unreliable in so many different ways that by the end you don't even know in what way you should accept that this is not happening. Or is it? All in all, things go super trippy.

One thing you need to know; it's unlikely you will be able to solve any of the mysteries yourself. The story is just too unpredictable and seemingly random for anyone to really be able to reason it. Maybe you can write things on a board and throw a dart into it, whatever it hits is your theory. That would probably be the most accurate way to do this.

I'm still not entirely in love with the typical “small town America is like the most awful thing, we are too special for such a place”. It's still a bit yuppie, a bit too “I'm smarter than the pleb”, but otherwise it's fine.

How do you numerically rate a memoir? How do you review it with your actual words? Especially one with as much buzz as this one has right now? I keep hearing about it from everywhere, from random podcast segments recommended on Youtube, to Reddit going absolutely nuts.
Don't get me wrong, it was a good read, in the sense that it was written VERY well (I would love to see Jennette McCurdy write more, maybe try fiction or something, I think she would kill it). It was easy to get into, it had a great flow. I binged it.

Without ever having Nickelodeon in my house as a kid, all I know about iCarly is that the girls who used to bully me in grade 4, the “cool”, rich, popular ones liked it. I discovered my love for fantasy at that-ish age, so it's unlikely I would have been into it anyway. But yeah, I went in without the fear of it tainting some amazing, formative childhood memory I ever had. She seems nice is all.

I just don't think I am used to this kind of a non-fiction, one where a person just goes through their personal experiences without a definitive point or end or goal for you to understand. Like, of course she obviously wanted us all to see the specific, not positive experiences she had with something a lot of people assume is glamorous. But it wasn't trying to be educational on a topic.
So because of that, I didn't feel a sense of big intellectual catharsis. Which might sound awful and insensitive, which is not at all my goal. I am not trying to assign a value to this person or her experiences or how she is dealing with them. So there is that.

In a sense, I think the great writing made me just a little emotionally distant from it. Again, weird, but it almost made it feel like a novel at some point. It's not because I am doubtful about any part of her story, I have no reason to be. It's just from the technical standpoint, I guess.
Funny enough, seeing her speak on Youtube, I can totally buy her having written this. There is nothing wrong with using professional help when writing a book as someone who is new to writing and not primarily an author. But in her case, it still has her. Her speech patterns, the ways she uses to express herself. That's absolutely huge in my opinion.

There were some moments where her thoughts really resonated with me, not because our experiences are the same or even similar, but our conclusions were. Which was interesting.
I also wonder how she is doing now. If she gained some more perspective on things. In a way, I also want her to be allowed to do her thing in peace, though. She deserves that, finally having the privacy to concentrate on herself.

On space ships going to new planets to colonise, there are certain jobs that are really dangerous. Things like... experimenting to see if the new vaccine for local hazards is working or not, fixing a thing that will expose you to lethal radiation, exploring new places with unknown hazards, etc. Now, you want to send the best and the brightest to colonise, right? Essential people. Plus, you don't have unlimited space, so it's not like there is room for unlimited amounts of disposable red shit cannon fodder. The solution is having this one guy. He isn't special or the brightest, nor is he an expert at anything. He doesn't need to be. His biological data will be copied, his brain regularly downloaded and saved. When shit needs to be done, he does it. He dies. Then we just print a new copy, upload his brain and be done with that shit. We still have him for the next time. Mickey is this guy, but then... what happens when they accidentally make a new one without the old one being dead first? This idea is so cool from so many angles. How do you deal with yourself? Will people see you as still the same person or someone else? How much difference does it make to have a couple days extra experiences compared to an identical copy without those? Yet.... we get a bunch of boring stuff in a short book about the technicalities of eating. Yes. How these two people divide the rations of one person amongst them. And sharing a girlfriend. I mean sure, rationally you know those things would matter, but at the same time, do we really need to hear about Mickey whining about the same thing continuously, meanwhile many actually potentially super interesting aspects get ignored. The tone doesn't help either, it often goes into that UWU funneh Whedon-speech pattern. I read they are making a movie and that makes sense. It will be whacky and current and probably kind of entertaining. (With Robert Pattinson, what?) If you like [a:Andy Weir 6540057 Andy Weir https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1382592903p2/6540057.jpg], you will absolutely love this. I am so-so on him (liked [b:The Martian 18007564 The Martian Andy Weir https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1413706054l/18007564.SY75.jpg 21825181], disliked [b:Project Hail Mary 54493401 Project Hail Mary Andy Weir https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1597695864l/54493401.SY75.jpg 79106958]), which puts me in a place where I don't LOVE this, but I was fine with it. I'm definitely reading the next book. Why? Because I want to see more of the world and them possibly exploring the ideas properly. It wasn't a bad book either, just not at its full potential yet. I would recommend it as a quick, fun little thing.

This is a DNF for me at 30% for now. I'm not saying I will never try again, I might, but this is just not very fun.

I want to start out by saying this. I do not know about Chinese history. Some other reviews talk. either positively or negatively, about this basically being a retelling of Chinese history in a kind of fantastical way. They are probably right. But as that is not something I know about, I can't really offer an input on it, other than the fact that...
So far the fantasy elements don't seem to be worth it that much. Some gods show up, trying to subtly manipulate history through pushing their champions. They are messy, there are too many of them. It's just not that interesting in my opinion. It's just one more layer on top of my biggest issue with this.

My big issue, you ask? So much exposition!
I accept that the history of this world is rich. Hell yeah, it's obvious. But. Do we need to be told about all of that before we connect to anything at all? We don't know much about the main characters (more on that later), we don't know what the tone will be, what sort of a story we are reading. But we already got the names of the states, their capitals, their principal gods, a bunch of generals, heroes, people who even change their names once they become emperor. A bunch of conflicts, more new characters just mentioned.
Did we need that? Sure, add them when they become truly relevant, but we just bounce between literally everything, from the kind of funny, typical fold hero chapters of Kuni Garu, the revenge story flashbacks of Mata Zyndu's.... uncle, some minister, an accountant, some bandits, an old soldier, the gods, more and more and more. Every freaking chapter is a new tangent.
Again, all these could have been introduced, sure, go ahead. But be a bit more subtle than “OH, and this random side character tells you his story for no apparent reason” and much later, when we already get a feel for what is going on.

Now you might say, sure, history is an amalgamation of everyone's personal stories. Yes. But this is a novel. It needs to be at least somewhat of a consistent narrative that has a focus, or else it will be a jumble of parts that don't work together.
This one tries to do too many things and therefore it doesn't succeed at none of them.
Maybe Chinese historical storytelling works differently and tastes differ, but even considering that, this is a fantasy story with fantasy names and places, so you have to freaking learn them
regardless, which makes it cumbersome still.

Now... Kuni Garu is charming. If the book focused on him, it would be fun. But it doesn't and that kills it for me. Hearing about the 99th freaking person for one chapter doesn't add much context, more like it bogs it all down.
After some time I skimmed. I skimmed over names and the random useless information about whichever state has a mountain and whatever lake and then it all became even more boring.
Many minor characters seem to be added just to be added. Oh, they just show up, they have one scene where they do something, then they die/are gone. Why? Nothing seems to have that much of an emotional impact because, again, we are not allowed the time to get attached to anyone.
So it makes the story read more like a distant history than immediate events. Possibly the point, not very engaging as a book.

All in all, the book has a definitive character that really turned me off. All the choices made were ones that made it a harder, less pleasant read for me.

How is it that books 1 was amazing, book 2 not so much, but then we are back to great again in this one? Maybe not as high as book 1, because that whole thing was one big surprise, but man, was this good.

When I realised Fetch was the protagonist of the second, I really hoped we were going to get a book with Oats, the absolute best boy in this series. AND WE DID!
In the first two, we were shows he is this huge guy, more orc than human and yet he is the most gentle. He notices when people need him and what's more, he gives them what they need without making a huge fanfare about it. He helps without the other person feel weak.
But what happens when a person like that needs to just go crazy and unleash all the fucked up depths he has?

Now, I have to point out something. This series has more elements than you can count. A bunch of different sides forming temporary alliances, but it's always crystal clear that they have their own goals and will fuck over anyone if needed.
That's the reason why this is not a full story. Hell, the author even wrote somewhere on here about how he plans to write another book. I support that idea, there are still so many things to deal with here. Ruin, Starling, N'Keesos, the centaurs, Zirko. What the hell is going on with Hood? Tyrkania? We still have a whole continent of orcs!!!! Even some new characters make me question the plan for them.
Because of that... the end of this felt almost incomplete. But at the same time, it was good. It was heartwarming. It was comforting. Just don't expect it to be completely done.

Another thing I appreciate about this one is that the author did not give up the tone of the books after he got traditionally published. The characters still say “offensive” things. Messed up stuff still happens. It's unapologetic, just like the mongrels are unapologetic about what and who they are. And that adds to today's book market more than anyone is willing to admit.
In a market where everyone is worried about being cancelled, this one leaned into what made it special. The characters are rude and not PC and... they are incredibly loyal, are willing to do whatever for each other.
Some people will get their panties in a bunch over it, I have no illusions about it. None. But if you are willing to read it and not just fake outrage because OMG, bad word, will see how wonderfully the relationships bloom in it.

I love this. I will forever love it and I'm more than willing to wait for the possible next book, though at this point I have no idea what to expect. Which element will it use? I don't know. I have no idea. And I am looking forward to it, because this was a series that surprised me with both its style and the creativity. You will absolutely not mistake it for anything else, these people and events could not belong to any other book you can find and for that, it deserves HUGE kudos.

(As a side note, the trad pub covers are still awful. The original cover of book 1 was fantastic, it's a crime they changed the artist and style of it. I don't like these photoshopped human models, sorry.)

With mysteries, I always feel like the conclusion is never as good as I build up in my mind. At first it's kind of fascinating, to see what's going on and building up the pressure. But then we learn the solution to it all and... eh?
Same here, especially because the story is in this weird inbetween situation where I think it's supposed to be rooted in reality, but for no apparent reason we are given these random hints at things maybe being supernatural. Which... they aren't? I think. It's never properly developed, It's never handled well, so it feels very tacked on.

Aaron's wife, Allison, gets killed in a shooting at a mall. She was a journalist, but don't imagine some hot shot person, she did these feel good local stories and such. But after her death, Aaron discovers her having a secret life where she was doing something that seemed to be way over the normal things for her.

One thing about the book that will be a hit or miss is the fact Aaron describes things about Allison is second person. Now, personally I don't like that much, especially because both him and her came off as... well, a couple of kinda insufferable quirky ass hipsters.
Allison give off this mysterious sad tough girl vibe, while Aaron is basically a whimp who thinks of her as way above him. Neither is likeable. I understand I am supposed to feel for these people, which is hard when they come off so unlikeable.
The writing itself is like that as well. Sometimes it's over the top.

The mystery... You can't really solve it yourself. No matter how much you think, you won't be able to piece it together, because there isn't enough information ahead of the reveal. In that sense, it failed.
It's not very special either. Not the victims, the method, the reasoning. It's so mundane, if you can say that about a serial killer, hah. I just expected something more grandiose.

It's a quick and easy read, but I wouldn't specifically seek this one out.

Review to come

This book is the perfect example of why you greatly benefit from an amazing cover as an author looking to find an audience and trying to attract attention. 100%. It's colourful and whimsical and I just love it.
Sadly, the story itself did not deliver.

Ning live in a country where tea is magic. You can use it to do a wide variety of things, if you have the talent. Her mother used to do that, but then she died of poisoning, while Shu, Ning's sister is also dying. So our protagonist goes to the capital, to take part in a tea competition organised by the royal court to be able to save her sister.

There are so many elements to this. The royal court, political unrest, the tea magic, all the different competitors with their own agenda, the shady history of Ning's parents. A princess. A handsome boy as a love interest, but also with his own issues.
And it all just doesn't blend well. We are being told there are those things and they all matter, but somehow the writing doesn't do much with them and it all just comes off as unnecessarily complicated and also barebones at the same time. I have no idea how that is possible, but it is. It wasn't serious enough, nor whimsical enough. Stuck somewhere in between that greatly limits it.
It almost felt like we wasted a bunch of time on details. Describing hair styles, foods (which I like, I'm a foodie, both eating and cooking, but still), rooms. It wouldn't have been THAT much of an issue in a beefier book, but this isn't one. It's also a duology, which is weird when you are trying to have so many things going. Something will be ignored, I am sure about it and that's a shame.

There are also many names of people and places introduces at the same time. Ning leaves her home that has a very limited setting and cast of characters early in the story. Of course the royal court will have more people, but again, this is a short book and yet we get thrown a million people at us and I don't even think many of them matter all that much. It's just... “suspicious backstabber No.3” and that's it, they don't interact with the protagonist much, they just form a crowd. But in that case, will I remember which has what hair style? Not really, no.
It's a bit better with the nice characters, thought I didn't connect with them much either. There was one, Lian, who had some potential, but even that got sidelined real quick.
Now the love, interest, Kang... Eh. Typical handsome boy with a dark and difficult past who develops an instant connecting with the main character. As much as we are kiiiinda made to believe he can be shady, it's never realised properly. You just know he is a nice boy. It's so obvious.

The prose is first person, present tense, which I personally dislike. Some of you probably enjoy it, but I don't, so there is that.
All in all, the writing adds to my feelings about this book; I don't think it's the worse written thing ever, but it's lacking something that would actually make it great. It's a first novel, so probably the experience is missing, which is fine, it can be solved in time, but in its current form, I don't think this is really that good.

Now... I am not to claim a hard magic system is needed. Some people do it well, some don't, I can be perfectly content with something working just because magic is unknowable. But here it felt almost like the magic was just a convenient tool to push the plot forward, without us having an understanding of it.
The challenges in the magic tea competition were all underwhelming. We didn't see any form of amazing feat using it. One of them, the one involving a bird, could have been interesting, but they felt like afterthoughts in a story about political intrigue and lovers. From how this ended, the second book will be more about that, so I hope for the communication between Ning and Kang will be better, because... sheesh, it is one of those where we are supposed to see clever plots, but the characters just forget to freaking talk to each other properly.

I didn't love it. I didn't HATE it, I just felt like almost every element was lackluster. Not enough well-developed magic, not a substantial enough love story, not clever enough political things. Maybe I got spoilt by many different books my more experiences authors with skillsets that COULD handle all the things. Dunno.

But I will read book 2, I think. It's coming soon too.

Yeah, well. I did not like this based on 20%.

Now, let me start out by saying that I like Darren Shan's demon and vampire books. Why is that relevant here? Because those books are for kids, but they are absolutely brutal and can be really dark and just... Yeah. You can do that. Books for younger people can do that.
So I don't understand why this one is just so not scary. It lacks any of that and somehow not even the fact we just had a pandemic can make the whole “mysterious illness, quarantine, curfew” thing feel more like... something.

I'm also not a huge fan of first person narratives. Which is odd, because I love the Dresden Files books, where we have thousands of pages of first person. But that's because the main character has a personality. You won't necessarily love it (I do, he is a goof), but there is something. His voice is specific to him.
Here it's so unbelievable. If the author wanted to be so wordy and use every single adjective that ever existed in English (which is still just bad form), then why do it in first person? A 16-year-old girl scared by zombies is not going to freaking think about the rolling hills she is running into. That is not what sticks out to someone scared out of her mind! It killed the momentum.
Then again, the protagonist is an idiot. She jumps in front of guns because of reasons. She makes her ex boyfriend run with her into the night to find her parents, even though they know they will be fucked. She forgets to put on shoes when she goes out to the fields to work.

I especially “loved” yet another example of every woman who is practical, shoots a gun and is tough is a lesbian. Nice job.

This one was not good. It felt really amateurish in trying to connect a form (pseudo-poetic waffling) with a story that's supposedly about danger and running and fast action, while not being successful at either. Having teen characters could have been okay if they weren't just idiots.
Aaaaand I know it's going to end with the whole “we were doing such wrong things and this is our punishment by some natural thing”, which is... meh.

All in all, I didn't like it and I don't recommend it.

I lasted 5%. This book is absolutely AWFUL. No, honestly, it's just so bad I'm almost impressed by the lack of skill or good taste. And the thing is, it probably already has about 99.9999% of its flaws ahead of me and I'm already over my breaking point with this absolute TRASH. Give me books about books. I want to find some novel where the characters work at a library or deal with book and knowledge. Why are they all so bad, though? This was pretty much a possibly even worse version of [b:Ink and Bone 20643052 Ink and Bone (The Great Library, #1) Rachel Caine https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1418350512l/20643052.SX50.jpg 39934787]. The first thing that hit me was the prose. Using random, big words to create the clunkiest sentences ever doesn't make you witty. It makes the book annoying to read and it becomes a chore to find what the actual point is under all the ‘coalesces' and ‘intractables'. There is nothing wrong with a wide vocabulary. There is a lot that's wrong with breaking out your pretentious thesaurus for every. Single. Sentence. A bunch of times it doesn't even make sense! How do you “ravenously avoid each other”? RAVENOUSLY? What? That's the wrong word. It doesn't add anything to the sentence, just a sense of fauxtellectual bullshit. Then again, that plays into this fad of “UWU, soooo dark academia, yaaaas”. It feels like the fans of it think smart people are like those studious cartoon characters. This plays into that idea perfectly; sassy back and forths between overachieving sadcases, everyone's inner monologue sounding the same level of analytical and “witty”. Everyone is Le Depression. I bet my ass they will all fuck each other as well, because UHHHH, nothing matters, “I just want to feel something”. Another funny thing. One of the main characters, exceptionally smart and educated Libby... thinks the Midas touch is a positive thing. I'm not sure what to think anymore. How am I supposed to buy this is a smart book for smart people about smart people by a smart person when we get THIS? HOW???? A book about books, where a part of one of history's most read books is totally misunderstood the way only semi-literate people would do. I think I'm too old for this. Apparently, this is a Tiktok sensation, which explains a lot to me. It is the “lip sync to crappy music” of novels all right. And this is coming from someone who loved [b:The Magicians 6101718 The Magicians (The Magicians, #1) Lev Grossman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1313772941l/6101718.SY75.jpg 6278977].

DNF at about 40% , RTC

This is just incredibly boring to me. Sure, I am in a slump and all, so maybe I will try it again later, but right now everything about this is a slog.
The Fhrey chapters especially; just so much boring ass political exposition. Talking and talking, about this law and that ruler and I want to claw my eyes out.

There was also a scene where they invent the wheel. Some more developed races are present and they start going super into it, axles, metals, greasing, etc. and the whole scene made me kind of annoyed. Let me guess, the girl who “invented the wheel” is going to race through the technological advances on her own because she is just so special.

RTC

This one took me so long, it's not even funny. Not because it was bad, it wasn't, but there were certain elements that made it a bit... more difficult to read.

By now we know for sure Corban is the good guy and Nathair is the bad. It's obviously.
So his group needs to escape, to find a safe place while war is going on.

Here is the thing, this book did really feel like a kind of middle one in a series. Why do I say that? So much of it is about setup. Forming the big factions, the characters travelling around, trying to get in position.
Also, a lot of new characters are introduced, which is one of the things bogging it down; book 1 already had a LOT of story lines and characters and things going on. Individually, they are all great. I don't think there are any characters I dislike (other than them being bad people, but even then, they are well-written). But because there is so much going on, I don't think every single one can shine.
The format also doesn't help. The chapters are short. So short that often I felt like I wasn't as invested as I should have been, because I only got a few pages of a character and then we skipped to someone freaking walking on some mountains and I KNEW it was going to take a long time to circle around and get back to this person.
The parts with action and stuff going on were fine, great. But it wasn't easy going. I still liked it a lot, I jsut hope the next ones will be a bit more fluid. Even with the deaths, we still have too many people around.

This is a review of the complete series of Chainsaw Man Part 1.

Fuck.
This series is so interesting. At first you look at it and you think it's probably this absolutely batshit insane, over the top action fun gore madness. And that it is.
But it also breaks your heart with the most simple sentiments and thoughts and gestures by the characters. Denji, the main character is so pure, which normally you wouldn't call a guy who can turn into a chainsaw-headed monster and wants to touch boobs more than anything, enough to have that as his big reason why needs to survive. It's such an honest look at this person, who never had anything in his life.
Many times simple characters are played as resistant to outside influences and they are good because they are simple. But here you know Denji can be pushed around just as much as anyone else and I wanted to hug him so much, because fuck it. The dude is dumb, so very dumb and he deserves more than this bullshit. He doesn't use big words and he isn't out there to change the world.
By the end he is stuck with responsibilities that are much bigger than his intellectual capabilities. Part 2 will be interesting. But I have hope for him, because I don't want to believe he can't be great.

I glanced at the author's other bigger work, Fire Punch. Haven't read it yet, so no comment on the story and such, but looking at the two different series, he is capable of very loose and sketchy art (like here) and neat and precise (like there). That's range and I think it's good he does that. A lot of this one's energy would have been lost with too much precision.
It also has a bunch of great character design, ranging from the normal and subtle for the humans (I love Kishibe's face so much) to the absolute trippy and weird. The author made a great choice with Pochita, though, a weird cutesy mascot is always good for marketing.

There are a bunch of concepts and things left to deal with in Part 2. Denji needs to work on himself more, probably a bunch of the old characters will return in different forms. We still have Kishibe, who is badass and interesting. Kobeni is still anxiety incarnate, girl also needs some help. Those two should team up, the person who gives no fucks and the person who is made entirely of fucks being given. Maybe more exploration of foreign places and people dealing with the supernatural elements of the story? Dunno.

No. I'm quitting this at 16%. I read the very end to see what the hell is going on and it's not good enough to make it worth my time. It's such a slog, with flowery prose that is there to pretend this is some good writing. It isn't.
Multiple POV characters, why? Especially in first person! The author is just so in love with her own voice that there is literally no meaning in it. Sure, it's probably for mystery reasons or whatever, but I expect a bit more than blabbering about what the floor feels like or what flower's smell they can feel from yet another useless clone character.
There was no pressure, no urgency, just boring ass pages of descriptions of mundane things.

Okay, this is a difficult one. I would say, I enjoyed about 2/3 of the book a lot. But then, around the middle, there was this chunk that just bore me so much it's not even funny.

Fhrey are basically like elves. They live a long life, they have a very developed society, their skills are superhuman and some of them can even do magic that makes them a league of their own.
Humans obviously see them gods, unbeatable creatures they need to fear. Until one day, some accidental things lead to Raithe, a normal human tribesman killing one of them and starting people out on realising that while Fhrey are tough, they are perfectly killable.
As so much fantasy now, this one also has multiple viewpoints; Raithe, of course, but also Penelope, the widow of a human tribe leader trying to keep her people alive, Suri, a wild little girl who is a mystic and also Arion, an esteemed Fhrey magic user and teacher.

What I liked about this is how it dealt with the differences between humans and supernatural creatures. How the simple fact of a different lifespan made their understanding of the world so different. The misconceptions that came from that. It makes sense; a human can't understand a race with millenia-old members.
It was also fun to see how random occurrences that turned out fortunate can transform into legends either through deliberate exaggerations or... well, just because things like that happen. Or intentionally?

One of my big issues that ruined Riyria to me was the princess character. She was such an annoying piece of shit, I couldn't handle one more chapter of her whining for something, getting it, then whining more because it wasn't as easy and fun as she thought. Many people told me she was “just depressed”, like half of us aren't right now and like that excused annoyingly written characters.
In this one, the exact opposite happened. I found a character I disliked immensely, namely Arion, but it was because she was so... I don't know? Clinical? Detail-oriented? Basically the woman was walking exposition. Her chapters were so dang boring until she meets up with the rest. And don't get me wrong, there were interesting ideas with the Fhrey, but if I have to read one more line about bullshit about architecture and such, I will cry.
It added nothing to the story that we know how much Fhrey obsess about architecture. Adding all the details about them could have been done much more gradually, without overloading us on about 5 different mysteries and political conflicts and the magical school and the freaking class conflicts, the mysterious door hiding something, etc. Too much, too dry.
It didn't help that these chapters ran parallel to ones where Penelope and the other villagers are sitting around, basically kissing each other's ass. Yes, yes, Moya is soooo beautiful and braaaave.

There are a bunch of interesting storylines in this. Malcolm. The mole people. Suri being Suri. I just really hope we are going to work on those more, instead of the already forming awkward love story or Arion being a bore.
I don't regret reading this, it's already a huge improvement compared to Riyria to me, but also... I'm not the biggest fan of the things the author picks for his focus.

Seven Japanese kids all suffer from issues, so they all decide they just can't bear going to school. It's a different one for all of them, but they don't seem to fit in.
Until one day, they can enter a magical castle through their mirrors. This sounds all too convenient, until they learn the rules. They have to leave by 5 pm or the ruler of the place the Wolf Queen eats them. They have a year to find a magical key, with with one of them can have a wish come true. The catch is, if they do that they get their memories of the castle and each other erased and the place disappears. If they last the year without a wish, the castle still disappears, but they keep their memories.

Man, I enjoyed this one so much. We see the events through Kokoro, a girl who got bullied by a gang of popular girls so much she gets panic attacks if she has to go to the convenience store.
Now, your milage may vary, but I found so many moments and feelings Kokoro had to be so very accurate. So many things that the author put to words that are so familiar. The way she described the feeling when bullies can feel they are perfectly justified and are not doing such a bad thing was profound, like the two parties are supposed to make up, but the offending party can't seem to understand that they were wrong.
All in all, I think the way the author portrayed certain things was just very honest. The resolution also didn't involve a miraculous “everyone was misunderstood, the mean kids realised they are wrong or even we discover they were hurting themselves”. The solution is much different. The characters change through themselves and each other.
At one point someone even says something that many YA-aimed books seem to ignore; there will always be people who have an issue with you. Mean people. Conflicts. But you can get through it all with your own resilience and that's just it.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think this is a depressing book. It's hopeful in a way that achievable, even if the story is magical realism, with fantastical elements. The message still stands.

Now I feel magical realism has one thing that isn't a hit with everyone; somehow the dialogues seem just a bit... odd. Dreamlike, I guess. Probably the fact that it's translated from Japanese also plays a part in that. If you don't like that, you won't like this. I personally don't have an issue with it.

The magical elements are present from the get go. The reason why the characters meet is magic, but it's more prominent in the second half. There is one big plot twist, which I could guess accurately. It's pretty clever, I liked it a lot, but I could piece it together.
It also means some bittersweet things for the characters. So if you expect a 100% happy ending, you won't get it. It won't be a flawless, Disney type of win. But it will be lovely and leave all the characters changed for the better.

I would definitely recommend this one.

I'm sorry, but this book is not it. I was so excited about finally reading it, but it just doesn't work. 15% in and I'm both bored and annoyed.

Look. Nowadays every fantasy writer and reader seems to be obsessed with worldbuilding and making it as over the top as possible. Of course some worldbuilding is necessary. But adding ridiculous words every two sentences is not good worldbuilding. It is especially useless and stupid if you are inventing new words to name something normal just to fake that your world is so rich.
Example. In this thing every single fucking position people can have on a ship is given a new stupid name. A damn doctor is called a hangshand! WHY? What does it add? Nothing. A hat is called a hat, but a doctor needs some uwu fancy new name for no reason. We are less than a hundred pages in, we don't know much about the characters or what's going on or why. But we get told the fancy fantasy names of the days of the week, which again, adds nothing.
Coming up with a new name for a palm tree is not good fantasy writing. Work on the things that are necessary for the story to glide, to capture people, instead of reinventing the wheel to seem deep.

Everyone loves this, so my rant is nothing, but hey. Another thing.
Why is everyone going along with this shit? There is a ship, full of criminals who got condemned to serving here. The protagonist is the captain (called some other ridiculous bullshit, not captain, we are DEEP FANTASY NOW). Everyone hates him and they have exactly zero respect for him. But they just go with it because? Then some woman shows up and is like “YARR, I am the new captain here”. Why don't they fucking beat the shit out of her and leave it at that? Everyone is like super dangerous badass evil, but some chick can order them around because she... is confident?
Let me see ya try that with your local biker gang. See how it goes.

Another thing that is ridiculous that one more book tries to make us believe that it's totes mcgoats natural and indeed logical to pretend that women can be like 50% of some fighting force and biological and physical gender differences ain't shit.
Yes, some women can keep up with men. Very few. They are the exception. 99% of us can't. There is no shame in it and it's not helping anyone to pretend that I could ABSOLUTELY outlift and outfight and out... physical-labour men.

Something about the prose is also really odd. Often times the sentences are just written in this odd style where I don't even understand what they are trying to get to. Combined with the needless mumbo-jumbo lingo and me rolling my eyes at the ‘roided up Wonderwomen, I just felt like I was probably having a stroke.

All in all, this did not work. Most of you will probably love it. That's nice. I refuse to waste my life on it.

Mr. Hendrix, why? May I just ask why this piece of smug piece of shit had to be written? Repeating the same, half-baked, idiotic opinion is not making you profound, it's just ridiculous.
Let me elaborate, my friends.

A bunch of women are in a therapy group, old women, mind you, because at one point in their youth they were all the single survivors of massacres where they killed the perpetrator is self-defence.
One of them gets murdered, though. They automatically think they will be next.

I have liked the author's previous books, but this... Dude.
There is this repeating sentiment in this book, the idea that somehow women are just constantly killed for the lulz. That we are just victims. Always. And that senseless death is specific to women and that it just happens because we are women.
May I remind you how these women ended up there? Their respective groups got murdered. Like camp counsellors. Who aren't even all women. But somehow it's a problem of VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN. It gives me intense “women are the REAL victims of war” energies and those can go fuck themselves.
I'm not saying all this because it was written by a man. Some reviews did that and I find it kind of telling they all went to “IT WAS SAID BY AN UGLY WHITE MAN”, like they wouldn't eat up this ridiculous idea if it was said by some “empowered” New York journo daughter of the elite.

It's just stupid. We can go the other direction; when men die brutally... nobody even cares. It's just background noise and unimportant. Is that any better? Well, maybe that idea isn't popular with the people the author was trying to court here, but hey.

It's a flat and annoying piece.