BulbasaurusThe7th

I tried reading this. About 20 pages in, it's ridiculous. A million names and places and just... imaginary words, really, they mean nothing, it's info-dumpy and impossible to remember who is who and which nation does what. Very bad writing, I can't read this. I absolutely hate it when authors think creating a world with depth is just making up a gazillion names the reader won't remember anyway because it makes no sense and means nothing.

So here is the thing. I expected this to be much more my taste than it ended up being, which doesn't mean it's necessarily bad, just not my absolute favourite at this moment.

So why is that? Mostly because I don't love the short story format. Hell, I don't read short stories, not even when they are connected to series I love. I just much prefer stories playing out as a consistent thing in hundreds of pages. Something about them just feels like it's breaking up my personal momentum of reading through a book. So there is that.

The only character at this moment whom I love is Dandilion and his interactions with Geralt elevate even him when it comes to my enjoyment of the character.

I will definitely read more of this.

UPDATE for my reread:
My opinion is still the same. Some ideas were fantastic in this. Some of the character work, impeccable.
But some of it is just... oh no. I have a feeling Chris Wooding is a bit uneasy about writing women here? Or more like, he dares to do much more interesting things with male characters. The women are mostly virtue signalling, “they are the best and smartest, but are oppressed, because women”. Except Vika. Vika is cool.
(Grub is the absolute best. He is so dumb, energetic and just gives zero shits.)

3,5 stars

I did not love this book nearly as much as I expected it and that's kind of sad, as I love Ketty Jay and I was very excited about this book. So why is that?

Ossia is a country taken over by the Krodan empire. If you cooperate you can do quite well, though still being considered second class, but rebellion is not tolerated and everything is heavily regulated. Aren is the son of an Ossian minor lord who fits in so they live a pretty great life, having fun with his best friend, the commoner boy Cade. Up until he starts dating a Krodan girl and so he gets his father in trouble as well, which ends with his whole life going to hell, with both him and Cade ending up in a prison work camp.
From there they get involved with rebels who try to get the artefact symbolic of the Ossian royalty (currently in the hands of the Krodans), the Ember Blade.

If you are writing a long book you have to make it worth being so long. Justify me going through all of that. Here some parts were extremely dynamic and fun, but some others felt like overlong and that was especially annoying when you KNEW this wasn't the end. The characters are in prison for some time at the beginning. Do you believe this is how they die if there are 650 pages left? No. No, you don't. So basically the immense length in a way took away a lot of the initial pressure, because PFFT, you can't kill them off so early. At this point it's inevitable, I guess, but still, personally I would have thought it better to make this book shorter, partly by cutting some things, partly by dividing the story into volumes differently, though we don't have book 2 yet, so I can't speak about that.

Some element returning from the Ketty Jay is the fact we have a ragtag team of individuals with different agendas working for the same end goal, which is a thing I like, though I preferred the kind of more comical people from KJ. Here the comic relief was provided by Cade and Grub, the bragging barbarian they pick up on the way. Sorely needed, really, as many dark things happen and the story itself is very serious. Similar feeling as with the author Sebastien De Castell, whose humour I loved in his first series, but it completely missed from the second. A waste, I feel as for both De Castell and Wooding I feel they do truly have a skill for snappy fun many authors try and fail at realising. Oh well.
Tonally still dark, but another character I need to specifically mention is Vika. Wandering druidess, trying to reconnect with her gods. She is taking part in the main conflict of the story, while also she knows there is an even bigger, supernatural danger coming, which will need the attention of the other people eventually. (Her dog is cute too.)
The other end of the spectrum; Mara. Oh, Mara. She is so much smarter than everyone, wonderful oppressed rich woman. She is doing what she is doing because she wants more glory for herself. Her character is just such an annoyance to me. Cade, the son of a carpenter was sent to a freaking prison camp among abysmal conditions because he dared to speak up and she still believes men have it so much better because women are wives and she herself couldn't become famous. I... okay? I find she embodies the typical rich woman living in way more comfort than she understands. End of my rant.

My big issue is how I felt the ideas and the chapters of the book had some pretty big differences in quality. Some were very interesting and entertaining, some others just the same old and nowhere near as clever as they were sold to me. (Fen, Keel's background story, the whole Mara thing... Just give me more Vika instead.)

There was a big theme I liked as well. Basically just because you like what someone does in the grand scheme of things you won't necessarily get on well with them as people. There is the conflict of what you are willing to take and accept for the bigger pictures vs. what is unacceptable and intolerable to you no matter what the end is. Do you really know people based on personal experiences with them? Does the context of them as people matter? Their past deeds, controversial and maybe even considered as mistakes?
Same went for the Kordans. You have to admit that they are doing certain things right; they can work together. You are supposed to root for the Ossian side and still, they are the type of people who have an issue with organising and working as a unit without infighting. In that sense it's understandable why they fell, because we are shown the issues in their society. They did weaknesses, they weren't overtaken through some magical intervention or “cheating” like that, it's comprehensible.

I'm going to read book 2. I'm not super mega excited about it, I probably won't throw myself at it at light speed, but I guess the interesting things are good enough for me, though I hope it will be a bit shorter, maybe around the 600 pages mark? I think it would benefit from that. I'm not going to super enthusiastically recommend it to anyone willing to listen to my blabbering, though I will probably mention it when relevant. So far I feel it's kind of meh, middle of the flock stuff. Not the single greatest way to start my year as far as reading goes. Oh well.

I didn't finish this one. Something was just off about the combination of the slightly weird prose (translation, probably trying to mimic the style of the original) and the way I couldn't get a sense of how the interactions were meant to go between characters. The way the protagonist talked to others just gave me absolutely zero sense of where he was standing.
I will probably try it again later.

My big issues with this series are that Reichis is the only one with humour (de Castell is a HILARIOUS author, it's a shame it's hidden here) and that as much as there is supposedly an overarching story, we just have episodic stuff with whole new nondescript characters in every single book.
Right now I'm just really bored of it. Maybe I will try again? I don't know. But really, they books are nowhere near as connected to each other as I would like, which is good if you have 15 books to go. But this is just boring at this point.

Quit about halfway in.

I have read Dark Matter and I remember finding it fine, but not at all memorable, as I don't remember shit about it. Not the characters (there was a man... and a woman?), not the plot, not even the big concept behind it. Nothing.
This one is pretty much the same in that the characters don't really do much to me. I guess they are there and that's all I could be expecting from them, but this is supposed to be big and emotional. I should genuinely feel for them and go with them through some very challenging and personal events, but I'm just sitting here, going MEH.
The present tense doesn't help with it. I guess that ties into the mumbo jumbo about the past, the present and the future just not being a thing and stuff, but even spelled out that whole idea made me roll my eyes more than feel like it's very deep and such. The whole science part of the book made me feel like that, to be honest. Why? Because this book is fundamentally about time travel, explained through a bunch of nonsensical things.

The story happens to two people, in two times, an investigator and a scientist. Neither have that much of a unique voice, neither provokes too much empathy in me and with the investigator guy it's also pretty baffling as his story is that his daughter dies as a teenager, but he gets sent back and changes things. I get it, life is weird, it's emotionally taxing, but the way him and his wife who eventually figures stuff out just act almost... sad... PFFFT. I don't get it.

All in all, I didn't like this. It wasn't as exciting as I hoped, the science made no sense, the characters were extremely flat. The emotional load was nowhere to be found, the prose was meh. I just... I don't like this one much. Everyone else does, though, so there is that.

Chel is bored and miserable in a city where he was sent to be a sworn man to his step-uncle, up until he unintentionally becomes the protector of a young prince running from war. Up until the two of them get kidnapped by mercenaries, which only makes things much more complicated. Misfortunes start after that for real. The title of the book really gives you a clue about what is the best about the story; it really shines when Chel, prince Tarfel and the Black Hawks mercenary group interact and go through all sorts of insane things together. So really, my recommendation is that you should just push through the first part with the kind of... not particularly interesting stuff and then everything will be awesome. This little wait is the reason why I took one star from it, because I feel there is a lot more ahead of us and the second book won't need the setup. (Hopefully book 2 also won't disappoint like [b:The True Bastards 34299732 The True Bastards (The Lot Lands, #2) Jonathan French https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1560049511l/34299732.SY75.jpg 55353538] did to me, sadly.) The characters are all fine by themselves, though it all makes sense with them as a group. Their interactions are fun and range from bickering to grudging respect. Then again, there are still a lot of things to discover about them so hopefully that will happen. The story was unpredictable, not necessarily in a huge way, I simply had no idea where they were going with the plot. The big, final plot twist wasn't bad, though it felt kind of abrupt and to me not all that jawdropping. Not like that's a bad thing, I don't mind. Definitely a book I recommend and I'm excited about the sequel.

3,5 stars, I suppose. At this point I still don't exactly know how I feel about this series. What do I mean about this?

Lugor, Shiva and Sandal are sent out into the world for some time to actually practice their Adventurer skills in real life, in their case they have to travel to a new island with the group trying to start a colony there. Meanwhile Lugor's village, including his mom are still kidnapped and nobody knows about them.
Which is part of my issue. I understand that the plot has to progress, but the way everyone is being all sorts of happy and contented with making horseshoes and grinding for exp all blissfully, meanwhile Lugor's mom is kidnapped by a crazy necromancer is just weird. Nothing bad happening feels like it has a true weight when 5 minutes later we just go back to fun times with taming giant birds. Someone loses an arm and not even 2 minutes later people (including the one who just lost the arm) are all “lol, loot”. Now I am not trying to say I want every book to be super serious, this just takes a lot of steam out of the big, emotional scenes.

The three main characters are still nice. Some of their interactions are a bit... lol sassy pop culture speak, which I personally don't like (it can and will date the book so so much), but otherwise they are fine. None of them are portrayed as way above the others and not really needing them, the trio is all needed for everything they do. Of course Lugor is unique in certain ways and is the strongest considering them.... it's not like he can do it alone.
The minor characters are still not very fleshed out and we also just went from one place to another, leaving behind the ones who received some attention in book 1. I really hope we will see some of them be allowed some development, other than just “Hmmm, Lugor, I think you are cool after all”.

Things have developed in this as far as the world building goes. I'm not sure how long this series is going to be and how far we are going, but I am sure there is more than a trilogy's worth of things to tell, partly because the books are short and also because there are so many things to discuss and questions to answer in it. I'm definitely going on with it for now, even with its flaws, because overall it's kind of fun and an easy read to get in between heavier and longer ones. Worth of a try for sure.

I am disappointed. So far this is my fourth book by this author and the first one I didn't love. Lets get into my reasons.

Even when I just read the first book I pointed out how Fetching is my least favourite character other than the villains. While many, from Oats to Polecat to Beryl have interesting backstories and just something special about them Fetching was always just angsty and grumpy and nothing interesting. So when I heard this book has her as the protagonist I got this bad feeling and man, I was so right about it. Somehow even after hundreds of pages of following her she doesn't feel any more complex an layered than she was in book one.
Call me an asshole, but an angry woman doing angry woman things just doesn't cut it. No, I don't think that makes her strong or special. Especially not when she is really showing the signs of just being “sooo badaaaaaass” and also everyone loving her or being evil. Honestly, people can not love you without trying to murder everyone you care about, duh.

The plot twists are also very soap opera and not really that punchy. In book one certain revelations completely changed how you saw the world and the powers at work in it. Here it's more like things you should care about if you care about Fetching and I do not. They feel very very cliché.

Another thing I feel this book lacks is answers. Somehow the characters manage to blunder from one place to the other, with things happening without a proper explanation and nothing much gets solved and it's kind of... ignored? It feels like these people have no curiosity and they don't even bother wanting to know more about their own circumstances and that makes the long, drawn out parts of everything being bad and gloomy and filled with suffering feel even more boring. The fun was just lost.
Which ties into one more thing. Who, oh why do we have to have people with relevant skills die stupidly because of injuries not nearly as bad as many others survive? You would think for added drama. No, Fetch magically gains the necessary skill like a day later when it is very very needed because... magic.

Mr. French obviously tries very hard to convince me I like Fetching and it's not working.

So far the two books had two different protagonists. If the next one has Jackal again or Oats (still my fave boi) then I am on board and willing to kinda forget about this one ever happening. If not... mehhh. I don't want to read more Fetching. No more ridiculous plot twists that make me roll my eyes more than anything.

I also personally prefer the original book 1 cover. These new ones just don't offer anything that interesting, no cool dynamic art or anything.

This is one of those MHI books that are from the point of view of a character other than Owen, this time Julie. Owen is fun, I like him, but this technique is great for making the books feel fresh and to add something extra. Big thumbs up from me. (Now, Mr. Correia, if you could write one for Mosh... I would love you forever. Or more than I do now.

The son of Julie and Owen, Ray is here and he is very cute. An adorable giant baby who comes from two people who are important in the fight between humanity and the evil paranormal powers, so we can't expect him to have a normie childhood, right? Heh. He gets kidnapped and of course almost everyone is still at Severny Island so the remaining few, especially Julie need to solve this. Channel Liam Neeson in Taken, girl.

I love this. Thanks, goodbye.

No, seriously, MHI is one of those things that just make me unreasonably happy. The creatures they fight are full of creativity and they are all unique and interesting challenges. The characters are badass and they certainly make the fights exciting (I tried listening to Nemesis at work once, but I got so excited my hands started trembling so I had to stop).
This time most of the people are gone, so it was in a way easier to read, but at the same time I missed Holly, Earl, Owen, Trip, MOSH OMG. We had Albert around though for a bit, which is nice, he is super underrated. And a bit more of Grimm Berlin, though again, most of them are also gone.

I will always recommend MHI, I will love it forever and my body is ready for the next one even though this just came out. Two thumbs up, only because I don't have more to give.

Quit about a quarter in.
Here is the thing, I found this book incredibly boring. The beginning sold me on Paks becoming someone absolutely amazing. How did I think that happens? The fantasy novel way, of course, with her gong through amazing adventures, excitement, fantastic feats, becoming love and respected by the people around her for showing values worth it.
We have nothing like that. The events are not very monumental or even interesting, but boy, do we get to learn about new recruits doing basic, repetitive things. Sure, learning something IS like that. My life s like. Do I want to spend hours upon hours reading about the same sort of boring ass crap? No. The prose doesn't make it interesting either, because it's just some sort of clinical description of meaningless and boring things happening. There is just... so much nothing, talking about “and this person went there and then I handed him this object and then he ate his dinner”, just blabbering about NOTHING.
This is made even worse by the characters. Their names all sound the same and their personalities aren't much different either. We are supposed to feel time is passing and still no development happen on that front. They don't feel like comrades or friends, just people who arrived 2 days ago and are friendly to each other, but no even a little attached. Paks is the same. She has no personality, she is absolutely blank and we know nothing about her motivations or anything.

Maybe this is a classic and maybe I will try again later, but right now I'm way too bored.

Quit 20% in. I am not making any progress with this book and it kills me. Something is lost, the events just move so slowly and the ridiculous, blabber-y prose makes it feel even worse. There are brilliant ideas about the wold building and NONE of that is going anywhere here.

On the other hand we get new, fucking frustratingly UWU SPESHÜL characters, like Jane Arai, who is super magical amazing healing genius and just acts like a Tumblr girl. And of course we have to pretend that women who never met each other instantly love each other because that's how women work. Jane's instant appreciation for Bess and her supposed amazing skills is such typical YA bullshit it make me roll my eyes.
20% in and no Chalmers. Okay then.

Quit this one. When? Interesting question, as I stopped reading at about 25% of the book, but the last 25% isn't even the story, but previews of other novels of the author. You buy this and only get 75% of an actual new story and the rest is something else, which I find not good. I feel it's a bit of a cheat, really, like when your bag of crisps is not even full.

I stopped reading because I keep disliking Opal more and more, the drama with Nik is really juvenile even though I am fine with him, the whole jealousy issue is lame. The story doesn't seem to develop, we are back at square one with Opal's dad and all. She also acts like she is not responsible for anything in her life ever and lacks agency, which is funny, as she constantly goes on an on an freaking on about how she wants to be her own person, but she acts stupid at the end and never gets ahead.

Review to come

Did not finish it because not even the historical setting could save it from being very young adult.
I wanted to enjoy this more than I did, the cover is still amazingly lovely, but somehow it was too much of angsty romance and the protagonist being a bit of a special little unique angel. This is not me getting an asshole at the real life people in the book, hopefully I don't have to tell anyone why harming children is bad even if you hide behind lies about how it's totally for equality and the benefit of the people (I don't want to go too much into politics, but yeah, look at how that big equality and sharing turned out for millions of people... ), but this book really wasn't for me at all.

So here is the thing about Rachel Aaron. I feel like something is missing of most of her books. They are not bad or anything, but they are mostly not amazing quality and really put together. This was another example of that.

Opal basically does the storage auction version of flats in this futuristic and magical, lawless version of Detroit. She gets the place on an auction, cleans it out and the stuff in it is hers to sell. She used to be a rich girl of some sort, but in exchange for freedom she has a huge debt to pay too her dad, which means her recent horrible luck with finding juicy stuff is really bad news.
Then one day she finds a place with a dead body and she figures out the person was doing something dangerous. She needs to find out, as something that dangerous can potentially mean big money.

One thing I have to warn you about. The story of the book ends at around 85% of the book and the rest is basically just sample chapters of other stuff from the author. I mean I can't blame her for the hustle, really, but at the same time this is already a very short little book. Depending on the price you pay for it, it is something you should consider and also the reading experience can be different depending on if you know the book is going to end soon or not.
I personally don't like sample chapters neither from the next book in the series nor something completely different. Just in general I hate reading parts of a book I don't have access to right now in full form, because either I'm wasting time or I will like it and want to read it, in which case I'm shit out of luck. I'm probably not the only person with limited access to whatever I need right away. So there is that. So from my point of view this feature of the book sucked.

The thing is, Opal never becomes too interesting. She is fine, nothing offensively wrong with her, but like with the book, she is kind of just there. A tiny bit of “she believes she is ugly, but guys just love her because she is pretty after all” is present which is the overused trope of almost any kind of YA type book. She was made to believe she is ugly for a reason, but still.
Of course she needs a love interest, who is a walking trope again, namely the rough guy who seems like a total dick but deep down is such a nice, down on his luck heart of gold man with some sort of a dark past. Nik, you so original.

The story itself is fine, it's fast paced and kind of fun. Is it polished or ingenious? No. Did I get very excited about it? Nah. I'm not sure how much more it will become. Of course we will hear more about Nik's past and also the overarching story with Opal and her family for sure, but at the same time I'm nowhere near invested enough to care all that much.
It plays out in the same world as a previous series about dragons but that one seemed to be much richer and there were many more characters, so while the protagonists had their limitations we had many others with their motivations and scheming to make things a bit more interesting and push even the goody-two-shoes mains to do something interesting. This book would benefit from Amelia or Bob from those books fucking shit up for everyone. Just saying.

Overall just not a horribly exciting book. Serviceable, something quick you can read while you don't have much time or you are distracted by other things (hello, vacation time reading), but not something that got me too too excited.

Have a nice day and do more than the bare minimum!

3,5 stars

I lived with my best friend for a couple of years. He has a copy of this, a present from his sister and I remember having read about 15 pages of it years back, but now I sat down on my ass and actually did it. It was time.

With a lot of zombie survival stories it is a question who survives and who doesn't and that's basically the source of the story and your interests. Here we know these people have survived, they are remembering the stories of how and all the different challenges of the process. It was definitely a different and interesting way of looking at things.
So why isn't it more stars for me?
- There are many, many technical military elements about it, with descriptions of equipment, technical stuff way above my head. I don't know shit about that. Sure, it was realistic to go into the technicalities, but at the same time to me personally it wasn't as interesting as some other chapters.
- Many of the people sounded the same. Sure, there were very well-written parts and interesting ideas, but the voices weren't as different from each other as they could have been. There were so many different people, I am not going to say it would have been easy. But still.
- Because we spent so little time with individual people I feel sometimes I didn't understand the references to each other. I didn't bother remembering names, so there is that.

Some stuff was really great about it, I especially loved the K-9 unit chapter and the two Japanese men who ended up meeting a teaming up.
There were so many practical things I didn't think of in connection with a zombie invasion, which is a great thing.

All in all, it was a worthwhile read.

No. This book does the utter most when it comes to trying to sell the world to you through throwing in made up fantasy words. I dislike books that overdo it so much that you basically need a dictionary to understand what the fuck the characters are talking about. One of my big pet peeves. Do this gradually, ease me in, pull me in. Don't drag me by the hair.
Another thing is how desperately the book is trying to sell us on the protagonist being a saintly little angel.

Sorry, but this isn't my thing. Too YA. Next.

The craziest thing about this is while the book itself is satire... the quotes “Titania” uses to justify her brand of crazy are real. It's entertaining and I am also amazed by how fucking insane Laurie Penny, Sally Miller Gearhart and the like are. And they are celebrated for it! Something to think about.

I did not finish this. The characters didn't charm me and I felt there story was slow and kind of... not very interesting.
Possible that I will try this again, so for now I give no rating.

In this we have an order of people who enforce the Law. Yes, with capital L. They are super trained people who go around keeping the population in line and also killing demons coming from the oceans. Among them the most hardcore one is Ashok, whose whole life is about his work, while he has no other hobbies, interests or connections.
But even when he thinks he knows everything.... can he really? The slaves are rebelling, the important people are scheming and things aren't as easy as he thought.

This book is something else. So many fantasy stories are relatively simple by structure without any that big surprises and twists. I'm not saying those are necessarily bad, I do love some of them a lot, but here the world building, the concepts and the rules are just different enough to make it unpredictable. I had no idea where the things were leading. Honestly, still no idea what is going to happen later on and I'm sure as hell going to read the sequel. (At this point in time only this and the second part of the series is released, which is something to note for many people who only read finished series. Larry Correia is pretty damn trustworthy among authors so I have no doubt about him going on and finishing it, just saying.)
First of all, the story is set in a huge kingdom (not that original) that is mostly similar to India (that kind of is). There are references to elephant-headed gods of a long forgotten culture, the society is built on castes and even the different landscapes are sounding similar to what you find in India in surrounding places. While the big themes of heroics and rebellions and such are pretty universal across cultures this story has some sort of a special flair that I actually really enjoyed. It also doesn't do the annoying thing that happen in many fantasy novels outside the European historic and cultural foundation; it doesn't make it so every other culture is magical and mystical and perfect. So many still can't get over the fact that every continent, culture and group is equally likely to have flaws.
Then we have the characters. Ashok is as black and white as you can get. Wait a minute, what? I don't like that! I don't like those kinds of people. But hey, the whole story is about him having to face that his beliefs and things he thought he knew were far more complicated than he assumed. He is not a nice person, not at all a fluffy kind of guy. Honestly, he is mostly just scary and unfeeling (for a reason, though), but then you see some things coming to the surface and him having to get used to... caring, I suppose. At one point he tries to smile, which horrifies the people with him. That was hilarious.
Lastly, the powers that are at work pull people in so many different directions and they all have their fully realised plans and goals. I sincerely believe things will turn out fine, though not necessarily without tragedies and losses, but at the same time the equations are complicated here. The culture and social structures are well-realised, which is an absolute must in a story that's about things being way too rigid and change coming. Which is appreciated.

It's still so badass. Must be hard to balance badassery and structure like this and I still appreciate when we get some action scenes of Ashok going all sorts of apeshit with his magical sword and superior military training against crazy odds. So there is that as well, gore is not over the top, but there is some nasty things. Closer to the end there is one specific scene where he has a crazy fight against someone monstrous. It made me go “oooooh, shit” audibly. Otherwise it's a fairly okay fantasy book, I wouldn't worry about it too much.
Among standard fare fantasy this isn't even extremely long, which is a nice change of pace with all the doorstoppers around.

I would absolutely recommend this to anyone who likes fantasy. It's fun, action-packed, interesting and just generally a good read.

Have a nice day and don't take a gun to this knife fight! It's not going to be enough.

Review yo come.

I stopped reading at 35%, because I don't find it that interesting. I really liked the previous books in the series, but the thing here is that one third is from Senlin's perspective (I like him, I like this, obviously), then we skip to one third for Voleta, who to me is the epitome of annoying quirky hyper girlie (hello Kizzy, my old friend) and then supposedly Edith is the last, whom... I don't really have that much of a problem with, but I also don't love. I would have probably kept reading longeri f Edith came before Voleta, but as things are I'm kind of bored.
I will most likely try reading this later again, so I'm not going to rate this now, but I need something I enjoy more.

I quit a third of the way in when they didn't even start their way to the small, angry planet. Yes. They are doing shopping at a market planet and a third of the book is already gone. If that tells you anything about the speed here then I'm happy I could help.

Here we have a space ship where a bunch of different creatures (though mostly humans) live together and do abso-fucking-lutely nothing interesting whatsoever. They get a new clerk and that's cool. I suppose?
So why did I hate this book so much?

This story is Tumblr and The Double Standards, The Novel. I doubt anyone has ever created something so kitchy and overly sweet while also being such a piece of shit deep down. This book manages to hit you in the head with the most forced positive sensitive snowflake shit while also being so incredibly two-faced it made me retch. I can explain it all through examples.

- This crew is a big family. They love everyone, they take in everyone, from feathered lizard creatures to humans with physical issues to one of the last members of a dying race that looks like (and I quote) ‘pudding with legs'. How quaint. They also have a single white man on the ship they hate and every single time he shows up everyone gets visibly disgusted by him. Is he nice? Nah. Would I be nice if my OWN CAPTAIN had self-professed issues with getting used to the sight of white people? Fuck no.
- Humans are constantly said to be the lowest of low idiotic pieces of inconsequential shit. Cool. They can do their shit in the galaxy but like... YUCK humans. At the same time Rosemary, the clerk has to think about her privilege because her family is rich. She literally thinks she is ashamed of having privileged ancestors because she had never eaten a certain type of “commoner” food.
- The feather-lizard types are constantly having orgies left and right while also don't give a shit about their offspring, which is considered to be a beautiful, colourful, diverse culture that everyone has to accept and love, Rosemary even repeatedly scolds HERSELF for not being automatically super into it, but humans are treated like total idiots for being monogamous or even just not wanting their long time sexual partners to die a violent death.
- It's horrible to call a space-feather-lizard a lizard even though it is a very mild insult, but repeatedly stealing others' personal hygiene tools they have paid for with their own money because they wanted to take care of their own specific needs is UWU cutesy quirky.
- Doing your job high out of your fucking mind while the life of people depends on you is cool, but not wanting to partake in said drug use makes you an asshole.

Honestly, I absolutely can't stand the fact that this book lacks any form of self-aware thinking when it comes to its own biases that are hiding behind this bullshit Care Bear glitter world. Anything human is automatically hated, anything alien, even when it's not at all nice or kind is magical and lovely. But hey, tolerance, UWU.
The issue of this is not helped by the god awful dialogue, absolutely brought to the highest level of the character Kizzy, who is this hyperactive, annoying ass mechanic. She sounds like a 12-year-old girl on Tumblr.

I have no idea where this book ends up, but if I have to suffer through one more page of Rosemary self-censoring her own thoughts that weren't even bad, just kind of surprised or confused because every fucking alien species of psychos is magically superior and wonderful just because Becky Chambers wanted us to feel like living a life that is considered normal by real world society is bad I am going to scream.
This thing is preachy, treats its reader like an idiot and does things just because being quirky without reasons is so in this season. Also, social constructs. I have heard that's a good buzzword, not like the stupid habits of aliens aren't as much of social constructs as actually not letting your fucking kids die is, but hey. Humanz R doodooheads, lulz.

I do not recommend this to anyone.

So I reached the end of this. I have some thoughts of it as a whole and also the last couple of books, because there is a difference between how this started out and how it ended.

When you read a series of books it's inevitable to have some differences in the lengths of the individual volumes, it's not that weird. Some series have quite big ones, actually. I remember getting Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire as a kid and being amazed by how thick it was compared to the previous books in the series.
Here, though... the last one is incredibly short and absolutely unnecessary as a separate volume. Now let me point out the thing; the biggest mistake of this series was always just blabbering about stuff without moving the plot ahead effectively. One of the protagonists (Julius) is all about diplomacy, but I would assume diplomacy means it has to be of use. The characters certainly brainstorm a lot. Needlessly. With some clever editing the last couple of books could have been just one and we would have gotten the same ending.

Overall I loved some things about this and at the same time felt like some others could have been handled a bit better. Certain characters were unnecessary and still hyped up (like Emily) and others were hella fun and could have been around much more instead of just so much blabbering (like Bob).
I have learnt that the author has some sort of a method or tutorial stuff about writing a lot every day. I guess that's good in some way, it lets you get a lot of your story out of your system, but it also shows. Verbose. So verbose. You can't just word vomit like crazy and not cut it down drastically.

All in all, I did like the series. I would even recommend it. But it's far, far from perfect and while monumental things happen later in the series it's not nearly as concise and tight as far as the plot goes as it could have been (and should have been, lets be real).