BulbasaurusThe7th
Agent Franks is a dick. You know it, I know it. Everyone does. But Agent Franks would never do bullshit, backstabbing, cowardly things out of selfishness. So when he gets set up to look like he went to destroy the MHB, he needs to do anything he could (and the dude can do many insane things) to prove he is innocent and find out who and why is trying to make him look like he basically betrayed everyone and everything.
It was time to humanise the MHB and Mr. Correia did one hell of a job. Owen and MHI in general doesn't trust the government and at heart, they want to be left alone to do their thing instead of waiting to some asshole to look up in the government issued handbook how to do it according to politicians. Then again, that's pretty much a returning theme in all of this author's books and I can respect that. The government isn't infallible. The procedure isn't always perfect and I'm really against the idea that any one of us can become the loss that's calculated as acceptable when the rules are made.
When dealing with a huge volume of human beings, you can not just completely ignore that, the human factor. How we are awkward, clumsy creatures who don't always make the best decision. Who will act batshit insane or just criminally stupid sometimes. Who will be unpredictable.
Here comes Agent Franks, though. He isn't human. He can't understand things like getting emotional over a case, having biases or acting in a surprising way. He comes, he fights, he closes the case and he leaves.
But then what will happen when the enemy is not working according to any moral code and even uses creatures that are very familiar to Franks?
When the series started, we were told the MHB is one block of government funded assholes. Sure, we have seen some of them being human, some hints here and there as time went on, but at the same time it was rare to see them interact with each other without it being filtered though the eyes of Owen and Co. Here a bunch of them do exactly that. They apparently have Christmas parties with Secret Santa, they bitch about their assignments. Many of them are actually unhappy about many of the things they have to do to the survivors. Archer and Grant are downright funny.
It was interesting to see how Franks was basically forced to compromise; he realised that to fulfill his big goal of protecting humanity, he needed to do things he found distasteful and deal with people he finds weak. Then again, everyone is weak to him.
I will go there; sometimes Franks was downright charming with how he is totally inhuman and just does his best. Yes, yes, he is not a good person, but he is kind of... not even a person. His past was interesting too.
This one fleshed out a lot of things about the world. If you think the Non-Owen-Centric books are not essential, think again. They are an absolute joy every time.
This book just didn't make me happy at all. The protagonist guy, Gabe really just sounds like those weak, whiny guys from sitcoms. At one point he says something to a woman and points at her boobs, then right away goes to “OMG, she must be so objectified, I am a horrible person”. Then he sees another woman and his inner monologue is all about how women have it so haaaard, so they totally must be so much better than men. We are talking about a conman, by the way. A criminal, who feels guilty about referring to boobs.
Honestly, I am not interested in some self-flagellating whiner with “snappy” dialogues that jump around to sound supposedly witty.
Newsflash, I still freaking adore this series and nobody can tell me I am wrong to do that. This book in specific, is possibly my favourite. Then again, I love all of them. But there is just something ridiculously hilarious about this one. I also love dragons.
In Las Vegas they organise the first international convention for monster hunters, so MHI needs to take part, right? Hunters work hard, party hard, earn big money they enjoy spending as well, the fight each other, because hey, they are all alpha as hell, which you need to go against unearthly powers. (Doesn't help that right next door someone has a huge gun trade show thing. Go figure.)
Then... monsters start popping up. Ones that have absolutely no place in Las Vegas. Why? How? What do we do now???
At this point we have so many cool characters and a convention is exactly the kind of place where they all can hang out and interact with each other.
Bonus points for more Mosh. He is a disaster and I love him.
Not much else to say about this, it's more like a monster-of-the-week thing with introducing a bigger context and setting things up. You could almost call it filler. BUT. It's the best kind, where you just fall in love with the characters even more than you did before. I needed it. The story needed it.
You would think we can't do much else interesting after the whole cosmic horror of book 2, but this is just different. After that stuff you hardly feel like characters can't handle this, it's still a lot of excitement and fun.
All in all, to me this is hall of fame, best stuff, highest shelf.
Did not finish. I just feel this book is not for me, at least not right now. Something about it feels slower than the first one and I will be honest, I don't give a shit about Elaina being hyped up as queen of the motherfucking universe because the Rose (who, again, did what? We just get told she is the bestest and are expected to just buy it) acts like a stupid stronk womyn character stereotype and decides that any woman who goes her way is her best friend and obviously the person who is the most important ally. Without know her. Duh. We women bond like that. Vagina? Vagina. Now I trust you with my life.
Something just feels boring here. Keelin, I hoped for him being cool, but he is just meh. Drake FEELS cool but nothing really happens, I want him to pull of something crazy and he is just there.
Do I feel I will never ever read this? Nah. Maybe I will later. But right now I want something much better.
Correia does something incredibly cool and interesting with this series that makes it even easier to binge. Now normally I don't read multiple volumes in a series right after each other, because mixing things up makes me get stay more interested and motivated to read.
Here, starting with this one, every odd number book is from the point of view of a character other than the OG protagonist. That's freaking fantastic! We get some of them more fleshed out, but also it mixes up things.
Here we have Eral Harbinger, monster hunter and werewolf. He goes to a small town where, under the cover of a huge snowstorm, someone starts killing and turning people. Earl was tricked to go there, along with an old enemy and neither of them know why.
YES YES YES. Earl is one of the coolest people and he really deserved his own book. What's more interesting is there are STILL things to say about him.
Some ideas are so stupid they might actually just work. That's the case with this one. The protagonist is a gigantic rooster person. We have met them in the previous book, Bantam Flyn and many others, but this goes into more detail about the gigantic anthropomorphic chicken. Aaaand I freaking loved it.
The world needs saving and a legendary monster needs slaying yet again, so Bantam Flyn, a weirdo chronicler, a giantess and Deglan team up this time to do what needs to be done. This time living dead dwarfs are involved as well, which, again, should not work. It does.
Jonathan French can sell absolutely anything to you. The creatures he uses are mostly pretty much standard fantasy and mythological ones. Seriously, you can't go more basic than giants and fairies and such, they are standard since forever. Then he does something I still can't figure out and creates the lore specific to his world around them that brings new life to borderline boring ideas. (Yes, the coburn are freaking hilariously different and at first I wasn't sure what to make of them, but the rest is really nothing that groundbreakingly original.) He has such a special touch with creating a well-populated, interesting world with all the connections and history and it really works.
Jim Butcher had an anecdote where he wrote his Codex Alera series because a dude dared him to combine Roman legions and Pokemon into an actually enjoyable and fun story that works. Mr. French could freaking do the same with anything and part of the fucked up bran I have wants him to do more and more weird stuff. Go ahead. Do it. I am curious to see what sorts of twists and turns he can create around stuff.
Because I want more. I want him to wrote more Autumn's Fall, more Grey Bastards, new stories, a million books a year because I'm already missing his creativity until his new book comes out.
He is really an author to follow. Someone you should keep your eyes on as I have no doubt he will do ridiculously interesting stuff. He has it in him.
The story here is just kind of complicated and I refuse to discuss it. You need to discover it for yourself, because I can't talk about it without making it sound a lot less amazing than it is. That's the thing about it, everything I would say sounds convoluted and stupid. Trust me, I tried explaining this book to people at work and they all just looked at me like I'm mental. But this is GOOOOOOOD.
So yeah, I'm done fangirling.
Good night and don't be a chicken, pick this up!
When I originally read this book I immediately wrote a review, which for some reason failed to save. I wasn't happy. The details are probably not nearly as crisp in my mind as they used to be, but I feel I should definitely attempt to write some things done. Not necessarily because I feel they are useful for anyone, but because I would like to remember the reason for my rating and at least some things.
Some books are stars because they just lack something that would elevate them into something higher. Sometimes the book itself is fine enough, but they have some mistakes that are just impossible to ignore to me.
Here I think it's a bit of both.
Some years back the country's youngest prince was lost in a pirate attack as a child. Of course everyone mourned him but life goes on and things seemed to be going fine. They still do, except... someone managed to poison the king, the queen and the remaining prince, so the country is heading for a bloody war to decide who will be the next ruler. Unless the lost prince, presumed dead, get found somehow.
Some people are trying to solve the situation with a fake prince, someone approximately right for the role, but one crafty nobleman feels he could really, really train one of the young boys e had taken from the orphanages. Sage, our protagonist is one of them and the boy has some serious issues with his attitude, but maybe that's what's needed to sell himself as the true prince.
Well, here is the thing, for all the dark implications of the book, it's still one for children. Very possible I'm the one who has issues here, but somehow it just felt like the pressure wasn't all that much. The atmosphere wasn't build up to be truly oppressive or for me to feel the true weight of things. Then again, Darren Shan can do it. He wrote his vampire books for children and somehow you felt it being heavy. So I don't know. Was it too short? Not willing to really go hard? I don't know.
Of course the same thing made it a very fast and easy read. Maybe for children it's a bit less traumatising than The Saga of Darren Shan, which I have to admit was much. This one, though, felt fine as a palate cleanser and something to read when you don't have to concentrate too much. It wasn't taxing.
Now the thing that I consider a mistake. It's the big plot twist. The big reveal, which is so incredibly nonsensical I couldn't help being surprised. Really, it wasn't unexpected because it's such a brilliant idea, but because it's so convoluted and just stupid you hardly believe anyone would actually do such a thing.
Don't get me wrong, I think I will read the rest of the series when I don't want another super heavy,, gazillion page monster. But I don't think this is an essential read as far as fantasy OR middle grade goes.
Have a nice day and don't rule this out completely!
Owen pissed off an interdimensional horror, and now all its minions, a murder cult included, want him dead. Their hobbies included bringing utopia through Lovecraftian monsters and creating monsters from pieces of human an animal cadavers.
Not sure why, but I remembered these books having much more gun talk. I have never been around those circles, so I don't understand that kind of lingo (though I support your right to have guns, so I'm not sitting here and saying they should be taken away because I don't understand them, that's just a stupid thing to do), but on my second time reading through, it seems a lot less, oddly. Maybe I just wasn't used to it back then and it was a bit jarring? Since then this became one of my all time favourite series, so I guess that helps.
This one adds a lot to a bunch of character; we get to meet Owen's family, we learn about the history of Agen Myers with MHI and how Agent Franks works. An absolutely hilarious version of gnomes get added to the list of modernised fantasy creatures.
In that sense it was a very successful sequel; same tone, but a very much expanded and deepened world. On my first try, I was a bit worried, though. How could you go on after this? What bigger danger, bigger things can come after THIS? The fact I am excited about book 8 coming tells you that Correia pulls it off. So no worries, he still has a ton of ideas and things to do. We good.
Something about the no nonsense attitude made me get very attached to the characters so fast. Every time someone gets hurt, I feel it. They are crass and loud and rowdy bunch of people and I still love them so much it's almost funny. They have big guns and big heart.
I know some will hate this on principle and sure, that's their right, but it makes me so ridiculously happy to read this again.
Damn, this is such a fun book, I just feel like I have to review it now, after my second time reading it.
Owen is a bit of a weird dude. He is an accountant, but he used to be an illegal cage fighter. His dad is a war hero and raised both him and his brother to be super tough because of his paranoia about some huge, apocalyptic fuckup in the future. Typical. Crazy dad.
Then one day, while working at his office, Owen gets attacked by his werewolf-ified boss. What does he do? Well, he protects himself and through that scores a new job being a monster hunter. Then the fun begins.
From Lovecraftian horrors to trailer park elves, Correia does a brilliant job fitting supernatural abominations into a fun, action packed universe. I mean we have seen so much of this. Urban fantasy. Vampires. Werewolves. Blagh. But I can tell you, he adds the exact kinds of twists that made me laugh out loud and bounce with joy. Orcs who do magic healing with roadkill and think of metal bands as deities? Come oooon.
If you are willing to embrace the silly, you are going to have a great time with it.
Said silly is absolutely necessary, though, because some moments just kick your heart in the butt. Some things about it are just so dark, which actually adds a lot of the characterisation of the people. Why? Because I can buy that wild, mindless fun is something these people would try to have when they are on the brink of death or worse every day. The one-liners and bizarre situations are believable because they there to oppose all the horrible things.
And man, the characters are great. Not saying they are all fleshed out 100%, firstly because there are just so many, secondly because this is the first book. But they are so memorable. An incredibly cheerful Mormon weapons expert? A stripper-turned monster hunter with some serious anger issues and a foul mouth? The fact all the characters had a “normal” life before becoming monster hunters just adds so much to this mishmash of a group and Mr. Correia really utilises it. If you like stories with an assorted group of weirdos working together to save the world... this ones goes to you, my friend.
(I have read other books from the author, this is a consistent thing with him. He does a bunch of different characters and they are all fascinating and entertaining.)
Most authors seem to have some specific thing they love that they can't help putting into their books. With Tolkien, it was plants and linguistics. With Correia... it's GUNS. He knows his stuff as he is apparently a competitive shooter, gun store owner and he also used to teach gun proficiency classes.
Now I know some people just go into fits at the thought of that. Those people should not read this book. I did not grow up in the US and never been near guns, but my personal opinion is that more accurate knowledge about guns is not going to make you less safe, but more so. From what I have heard from people who do know firearms, Correia knows what he is talking about, so I can respect that.
Because I have already read all the currently available books, I know for a fact that I love this whole series. I am going on for sure and preparing for this summer when book eight is supposedly coming, which I have no reason to doubt, as another great point for Mr. Correia, he is a very consistent and extremely productive author. You can trust him to release things.
3,5 stars, I suppose. Breed is a mix of some gigantic lizard monster and a human, a bit of a dickbag, really. Raised by an evil gang boss mother does that. One thing leads to another and he ends up as the slave of a monk type of guys, with a crazy hobo and a little girl who looks like a rat as their companions. Shit happens. To be honest, part of it was actually fun and had a few giggles, but I don't really understand where this is going or what the author is trying to do here. Aaaaand the pacing of it wasn't great. More on that later. Before I start talking more I will have to point out the gimmick of the book. It's written in first person and because of reasons we technically never find out if Breed is a man or a woman. Now some people are already going on Tumblr-style yass kween sessions to express how this is representation for the pan-fluid demigenders who are so oppressed by society. Now to me, that's bullshit. (No, I don't need anecdotes from teen girls about how they are totally specialgenders in the comments, thanks, bye.) In my opinion it's really just a gimmick. I have no idea what purpose it serves to go out of your way to do this. Lets be real here, it's not like fantasy literature doesn't have female characters doing crazy ass shit (the authors who pretend just want to get attention and to earn a pretty penny with the “nobody before me wrote them strawng female character”). Whatever, I generally actually prefer old men characters, so there is that. Breed will be referred to as a he. Because it is a first person narrative we literally read the story as told by Breed, with his own words. Why does it matter? Because this thing is written in such a weirdly thesaurus kind of way that sometimes it is downright jarring with what we learn about Breed. Yes, it is mentioned that he got tutored and such, but many of the things he does are just so bloody practical that I doubt he would wax on poetically about some random shit. He breaks the blade off of a priceless historic sword because the pommel has jewels and he doesn't want to carry the whole thing to sell. Don't tell me someone like that would blabber on about nothing with ridiculously pompous words. Most of the time it's okay, it's fine, but sometimes it was a tiny bit irritating. I'm not even sure if it's intentional or the author went a bit over the top. The “use unnecessary purple prose because serious books for smart people have that” snobbery is finding its way into fantasy, so there is that. My other problem that kept me from giving it a better rating is that for such a short book there were relatively long parts of slower stuff, but in some places there is just a lot and quite a few story lines are already introduced. It's a trilogy, how will the rest be? I'm not feeling the whole story's flow at this point, it's more like going on a nice walk, just to burst into random sprints through crazy. Because of that I feel the weight of the situation is harder to buy as well. There are serious situations that didn't have too much impact because it was just not as well-paced as it should have been. I'm convinced this can be solved later, though, with a bit more experience. It happens. What I liked though was how the tone wasn't happy, but it didn't try to just press down on you. Breed can joke. Hard living situations doesn't have to turn characters into completely serious people and books can benefit from tonal shifts like that. It stops them from becoming what disliked about [b:Mortal Engines 287861 Mortal Engines (The Hungry City Chronicles, #1) Philip Reeve https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1352173057s/287861.jpg 3981652] recently; just one heavy mass of misery. All in all this was a fine book. I will definitely be reading more of the series to see how it all gets resolved, though I will probably pick up other things before. It definitely has potential, I just don't feel all the things about it are perfectly executed. There is nothing wrong with that, though. It's not a bad choice of a read if you want to pick something relatively quick. Have a nice day and know the dangers of this one!
Here we are. I really liked the first couple of books in this series and then stuff started to go down extremely fast. So what's wrong with this series now?
Angel and Phillip are starting to have rot that doesn't go away with extra brains, just as Dr. Nikas and Pietro are kidnapped by the enemy faction of the Saberton Corporation. So it's up to Angel and Co. to get them back.
The thing about Angel was how she had glaring issues. She wasn't educated, wasn't some kind of super genius or a gigantic soldier to kick all asses. Angel was Angel, the type of person who did what she could and winged the rest. Wasn't always enough, it never is, but hey. You could feel for her in a way. Many people disliked her based on many factors and that was fine, nobody is universally loved by everyone. Men also weren't constantly all over her, because again, that's just a stupid book cliche that I hate.
What changed? Everyone fucking LOVES Angel and she constantly gets chances to do things she is in now way qualified to do. When she fucks up they just explain it away, because meh, Angel is just so amaaaaaazingly cool we can't stay mad at her. The cool characters worth caring about all automatically love her and will yaaaas kweeeen her to hell and back (like Naomi, Jane, Dr. Nikas, Dr. Leblanc). At this point even all the eligible men are all over her ass, from Randy, to Marcus, to Nick, to Phillip.
They also do this very premature and stupid thing. When a character in media is consistently very typical in a way people are like “that's so X”. You know. Like freaking... Naruto (I'm sorry, this is a stupid example) behaves in a certain way and says certain things consistently for 15 years or so, so people can remark on certain things being typical Naruto. But here the character who have known Angel for like a year all act like she has her big things and something is like SOOOOO ANGEL. Excuse me? Other than being rude she never does anything that special.
The whole thing lost its touch. Other than the “Angel is wonderful effect” we have the problem of this book being some sort of a weird spy thing and doing extremely badly at it. Why are we wasting pages upon pages on the characters shopping for supplies at Walmart for the roadtrip? Who the shit cares about them eating pizza at the hotel? Also, the typical super girly makeover which is a must for some reason, though it is boring.
The pacing of the thing is bad.
At this point I'm done with the series. It's not a fun thing anymore, but devolved into a typical, boring thing that tries to sell a heroine to us who is simultaneously super normal, boring and relatable, but also super popular, good at everything and at the top of every single thing.
Good night and hope I find something to read that's not trash!
DNF at 45%
Not sure if I'm being more cynical and just becoming old or whatever or... authors are really selling their souls for being marketable, but this book is not what I felt like the sequel of Vicious was going to be.
I will be brutally honest, the two new characters, Marcella and June did nothing to me, other than make me roll my eyes at how abysmal Miss Schwab is at writing female characters that don't make me pissed off. She really showed that in A Darker Shade of Magic, with Lila basically being your typical special snowflake, perfect little thing who is brilliant and just can do whatever, because it will be justified at the end and no negative consequence will come to her.
The two here are basically just horrible assholes who are supposedly empowered. Honestly, I am over that, female characters being cardboard muh empowerment violence fantasies. Now some people will say “b-but women are not allowed to be angry in society so ridiculous tantrums are so new and subversive”, which is bullshit. Intellectually dishonest bullshit to justify bad behaviour.
Other than being badly written characters, they just didn't feel like they had a place in this story. The core characters from book one had so much extra to give that adding these two for marketability to big spender demographics (young women and girls) was basically just... a good financial decision, but a bad artistic one. Especially because that group already LOVED Victor, Eli, Sydney, Mitch, Dol and just yeah. Them. The ones I actually cared about. The ones whose chapters are broken up by stuck up bitchy mafia wives and crazy doctors and needless, over the top bullcrap.
I think that was one of my main issues here; we didn't need all these things. Random shit thrown in. I actually liked Vicious for being a pretty straight-forward story that didn't need a gazillion and one story lines and elements to make it enjoyable. The message was simple too; Eli wanted to do the right thing and was so wrong, while Victor didn't aim to be good but ended up doing good things.
Here? I don't even know. Honestly, it's a mess. We jump around so much with so many different things I don't care about that the actual interesting parts take forever to go anywhere and by then I'm too frustrated with meaningless crap and characters sitting around, thinking about stuff. And things. It wasn't a coherent story, but random ideas thrown into a blender without consideration.
All in all, I have no idea why this was needed, other than the author becoming a big name and now having a big market to make more money on it. Again, I have probably changed as a person and a reader since Vicious, but this really missed me with everything. I'm starting to feel Miss Schwab is one of the authors I liked that one time and now I should give up trying to recreate that feeling with any of her subsequent books. It's gone.
Have a nice day and know when to end a story!
Quit this shit about third of the way in.
Everyone nowadays is obsessed with the notion of a “strong female character”. I personally find it ridiculous, as a female character who is not necessarily a strong person can still be an interesting and strongly written one. Also, by now we all know it means one specific type of a female character and I don't like that type.
Emika is THAT type. She is 18, orphaned, super street smart. She has rainbow hair, tattoos, she is a master hacker and bounty hunter. Has no personality other than being super ‘cool', she also never really seems to actually do any of the work in connection with her hacking. She just looks at the code and magically knows what's wrong and what to do to fix it. Everything that goes wrong around her is the fault of someone else, because Emika herself is infallible and effortlessly so. Life just hates her, which should be a crime, as Emika is perfect. Casual lines dropped about a modelling agent discovering her as a child and being able to solve a whole programming introduction book as a teen without even reading it or going to class, because her dad had taught her to look at shit and SEE. I'm not making it up.
When your world is so heavily reliant on some sci-fi tech... you should genuinely think about it first. To me saying “the protagonist is just special and she knooooows everything because meh” doesn't cut it. It's a copout to write a book about a magical perfect teenage girl who becomes the most important, world-saving creature ever, while super scientists are also available. YA heroines are always the highest form of intellectual people and for some reason adults just deteriorate after 20. None of them are good for anything.
The totally obvious love interest is a cardboard cutout as well, mysterious dark guy genius youth and all. Who will fall for Emika for sure, because she is just so cool and so smart and so pretty. Blegh.
There is no way I'm reading more of this. It's so trope-filled and lame. It gives nothing special to you and it's cheesy.
Good night, I'm too cross with this to go on.
The movie of this is coming out, so I felt like it was my duty to read it. We have a tradition with my sister when every December we just have to go to the cinema to watch some fun, fantasy-type movie, so I have to research the contenders. This was one of them and honestly, I am not sure we will be watching it. Not because it was horrible and the movie will be horrible as well, it just has this peculiar feeling when I have no idea what the meaning is.
Cities are unlike you and I know here. They all move, some like gigantic tanks, some float, some fly, it just happens after some sort of a huge catastrophe. Every place living a sedentary life is considered barbaric and just wrong. But how can such places get supplies? New things, mechanical parts, everything like that. Well, they hunt each other down, break the prey to pieces and use it all up.
Tom works in (on?) London as some lowly museum apprentice. Orphan, like so many YA protagonists, idolising the biggest adventurer an scavenger, Thaddeus Valentine, who is basically like super mega Indiana Jones.
Up until he meets the man, but a mysterious girl with a horribly scarred face attacks him and as Valentine protects himself by throwing the girl, Hester, off London he also does the same to Tom for some reason. So our hero will learn many things about the man he used to adore for his exploits.
I like the concepts here. They are weird enough, surprising and out there. With YA now it is kind of hard to find anything that's in any way out there and I freaking hate that. I don't want one more mega super teen girl saving the world while claiming to be soooo average as hot guys fight for her attention and everyone just thinks she shits gold.
The problem I have with it lies elsewhere.
It is so bloody miserable. I have no idea what the point is when everything is just bleak, grey, sad, dramatic, miserable, painful and fucking horrid for everyone. Nothing good ever happens. Nothing fun or cool or funny does. It's just this negativity everywhere and it makes all of the things feel endlessly angsty.
When I say this I don't mean to talk about the author or prose or anything. But this book just felt ugly. Like it was interesting I guess, but it was really an exercise in pure misery. I don't really like that. Not saying books need to be super sunshine happy land, but I'm not the type to read whole novels to somehow spectate and bask in the suffering of the characters. Pity for them doesn't make me feel entertained or good or virtuous, it just makes me freaking sad. After a point it feels embarrassing, like I am looking at it all like some sort of a sick spectacle.
Maybe it all sounds dramatic; this book is dark, but not darker than ASOIAF. You could find many, many darker books than this. Or more like books with darker elements. My issue wasn't the darkness of the worst moments; It was that other than those negative feelings it offered nothing. ASOIAF has many wonderful moments, jokes, people discovering things and doing amazing, heroic things. Here... nah.
I'm not sure if I want to read more of this. Not because it was a bad book, but because it only brings depressing thoughts and feelings, nothing else. That's something I don't necessarily need in my life. Reading to me is a fun hobby, something to love. This didn't give me feelings of wonder, more like dread.
Have a nice day and let me engineer myself some more fun moments!
This book was very different from the previous ones in a way. What do I mean by that? So far we have heard about the Heartstriker clan, the many, many siblings and how they all have their functions for the clan and how it's a very intricate hierarchy based on everyone trying like crazy to climb to the top (with the exception of Julius). There are enforcers, politicians, medics, soldiers, ones responsible for raising the new kids, etc. It all connects to support the brood mother, Bethesda, who rules over them by basically making them fight and fear each other.
By now things are changing, though. They all had the epiphany of almost every single one feeling like shit is not good. Like they all had some issues when life wasn't fair and it's seeming like.... they are wasting energy, potential and just generally every single resource because they are unable to work together.
So far we have mostly seen the characters as the kind of mysterious backdrop for Justin being the way he is, but they are starting to get fleshed out. Honestly, they are much more independent from Bethesda than I have expected; I shouldn't be surprised by how they are a lot less than perfect underlings. And at the same time a lot, lot more.
The origins and history of dragons are still not worked with too much, but I am happy with what I can get. Warning, though, I feel this book is not about the action mostly. Which is not an issue, I just feel like I had to mention it.
The war with Algonquin is approaching fast and even the humans are aware it's happening. Marci is getting the attention of some influential humans and... others.
I feel this book will pay off big time with all the huge things being set up. Definitely looking forward to it.
We have a a small town with zombies... where they are filming a zombie movie. Right. It also involves dead people (who don't move anymore) and everyone is doing secret shit.
You know, so far this was my least favourite book of this series. It's still fun to have a zombie book with actually intelligent zombies who aren't the enemy or a hostile element in the world, but the protagonists who do their things. Here they even have almost like a zombie mafia! How is that not cool?
Though I feel there isn't much of a world opening up so far. This is the third book and the overarching story is... not all that monumental. Not saying all series need to have one, but here I feel it would deserve some sort of a big thing. Maybe this will be another one of those gazillion volume ones, which could work, but I don't feel there is too much going on right now. It's still fun, sure, just not really that much.
Another thing I loved about the first two books was how Angel wasn't this super amazingly perfect little thing who is just undeniably superior to everyone else. That's boring. Angel is Angel, she isn't super smart, she isn't super perfect. She has problems and weaknesses. Not morally superior to everyone else. Some people love her, some don't.
But now it's basically an Angel lovefest. There are a few categories. Young men who are hot are in love with her. Or if they are taken or too old or too ugly or women they simply think she is the best person ever. Or they are evil. There is nothing else, at this point she is offered to work in part time at a hyper laboratory when she has zero qualifications or even just self-taught knowledge. Why? Because she is just naturally so cool and everyone absolutely adores her. People would jump into freaking Mount Doom for Angel.
It's still easy to read and entertaining, I just wish the series would go a step further and tone down this “the protagonist is the most wonderful and adored person ever born”. This shouldn't be one of those things. There are enough series where it's like that and I already dislike them enough without that stupid cliche fucking up an otherwise perfectly fine series with a female protagonist who isn't an annoying twat.
I'm going to read the next in the series, I just hope for it changing direction.
Have a nice day and get a room, kids!
4,5 stars. Took me long enough to finally write my opinion on this one and that's not because I had really any issues with the work itself. I'm just busy. And lazy. Hi.
The Heartstrikers are under an outside threat, namely Estella of The Three Sisters clan and her plans of tricking the ever ambitious Bethesda into messing things up for herself. Julius is still not particularly respected in his own clan, but he is getting more attention from people who are, which can be either a blessing or a curse, as all the other dragons play power games and he would have preferred to avoid those at any cost. Marci is still his companion, which only complicated things as he is supposed to have human servants, not companions.
This is what I'm talking about when I want to see the worlds of books opening up. Here it wasn't too too much, it wasn't at all overwhelming, but we got to see a bunch of other dragons from the Heartstriker clan. And here comes one of the ideas from the previous books that at first seemed cool, but not too too significant; all the offspring of Bethesda who hatch together get the same initial, in alphabetical order. When there are more and more characters introduced it's just so easy to know who is here on the ladder when it's obvious that Chelsea is below Bob, but above Ian. I'm learning to appreciate this little piece more and more, as this had the potential to be a confusing mess of names. Bethesda really does know how to breed, man.
And how amazing the family dynamics were, ooooooh. At first you assume the kiddos are all perfectly loyal to mother dearest and perfectly inclined to stab each other in the back for her attention. Think again. These are the best of the best. People who would do anything, who think of themselves as the apex everything. Would someone like that be 100% loyal to someone obviously above them who has no intention of letting them on her level or above? No. You know the answer is nope.
That's exactly the most interesting thing about this book. Old issues surfacing and people realising that deep down they are all thinking the same and they only need that tiny little spark to finally open their mouths and in a way... get closer to each other than ever before.
This whole family aspect is something I love about this series so far.
Bob is of course being Bob-y, so the story has room to progress further. Nice.
In a way I feel where this one really shines is people relating to each other. I like them separately, which is always nice, but they have very interesting dynamics and changes in said dynamics. Shoot here, but that reminds me of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files; it has a lot of action and still the appropriate amount of people interacting with each other in interesting ways that make this a worthwhile read.
The pacing and the whole structure of this series works so much better than in the Eli Monpress series, also by this author. She managed to step up her game a lot and that's the type of developing skill set I like to see in relatively new authors.
I definitely really liked this, will go on with the series. I would ever recommend it for people who want something that's a fun adventure and is planned out well, with lovely characters.
Good night and let me list the cool thing about this, from A to Z!
I barely ever read books of a series right after each other. Somehow I feel my motivation to read stays alive more when I switch things up. Doubly so when it's about thick volumes. In this case the individual books being so short did help me go. So there is that.
Angel keeps going on with her un-life as normal. As normal as being a zombie working for a coroner, who recently almost got murdered with her also zombie boyfriend by his zombie hunter best friend could be, really. Up until a guy with a gun steals a corpse from her at work. Of course she gets accused of being complicit or some such, but then things get weirder and it seems like there are more people being into the zombie business and taking it much, much more seriously than anyone would have guessed.
I assumed zombies were simply smarter and working by a different mechanic here, but never really guessed how much of a pseudo-mafia thing could possibly go on behind it all. It makes a ridiculous amount of sense though, eating brains works like an actual life and death addiction situation and there is no way to just get handed human brains legally for whatever purposes you need without some serious questions being asked. It really made me think about how organised life is. How (while yes, negligence and accidents happen, but) everything we do is documented and it all goes though a certain amounts of regulated hands to make even the death business work. Which is especially funny as a cousin of mine only recently quit being a prosector after something like two decades.
It all just hit that sweet spot of zombies being interesting and viable. I mean really, it's so much like human nature to form groups, get some hierarchy running and trying to make on a way to have a more comfortable and hassle-free way of dealing with the uncomfortable things you have to do. If you think about it, this is why we invented cars, plumbing, electricity, everything. So of course zombies able to think would do the same.
Here there is also some more personal drama, again, the right amount. Angel has things she needs to deal with and being a zombie didn't make them not important anymore. Just because she is something different from a normal human being doesn't make the difficult human relationships go away and I think that's part of this books's good parts. She isn't a victim, though. The book actually acknowledges that while things were and are stacked against her, she is not a helpless person who is not responsible with ruining many things for herself and in a way that also tell you that she also has the power to fix things. They don't happen overnight, but what's going on still has a chance for us to influence it for the better or worse.
From my experience this is something what a lot of modern “strong female characters” lack; a clear connection between what happened to them, their own responsibility of doing things, their issues and the solutions. Somehow the personal responsibility is always cut out and it's always someone else's horribleness or mistakes that ruins them, which they just have to fix without even acknowledging that they themselves could do something wrong. THIS difference is why Angel is a great character. (She also has meaningful relationships with men without trying to one up them. Which is increasingly rare and I love it. My worth as a woman doesn't come from the number of men I can humiliate and be a bitch to in a petty way, my own achievements are the reward.)
What I really appreciate about this is how it manages to deliver some positive thoughts without being in your face preachy and trying to be too deep and dramatic. It's still fun and full of action. Still has humour and good moments. It doesn't take itself too seriously to just fall flat and become a comical piece of... something unidentifiable with way too much pathos. This is something we should treasure; when a story delivers something worthwhile for different people looking for different depth. I doesn't need to be mindless and it doesn't need to be forced faux intellectual. Let the story speak for itself.
Oh, also it's fun that the story has some elements with investigation techniques explained. There is a part when they go and take fingerprints from an object found at a crime scene and maybe I'm just a noob, but I had no idea how that was done. As a fan of random information bits and pieces, this was awesome. Guess why I am so good at trivia games which I watch on TV avidly. I get so pissed when people claim reading fiction is useless because it gives you no factual knowledge. Eat your heart out, I learn new stuff every day from books with white trash zombies.
I'm obviously going to read the next book. At this point there is no way for me to not do it, so there is that. It's genuinely much better than it has the right to be.
Have a nice day and use your brains, one way or another!
Shit, sometimes I have these horrible phases when I can't finish a single book and I hate all of them, but now this is my second surprising find in a row (well, not really, but lets forget about the dud in between). HOW? Not complaining, just... ya know. Cool. I will be honest, I picked it up based on the cover, because it looked awesome. Generally I don't like books with human faces on them, if there is another variant that's not hella ugly I prefer that, but in this case I just really liked the artwork. (Shoot me now or I'll talk about art until I run out of characters, I guess loving books AND visual arts does that.)
Angel sucks at life. She is... white trash, as it says on the tin, but pretty much that's her life. She never finished school, does drugs and drinks, her dad is no good and her boyfriend doesn't give a fuck about anything in life. Neither did she, until recently. She was found unconscious and naked by a road, otherwise pretty much fine. Overdose? Sure. Then she starts getting mysterious letter about how she is expected to go to the coroner's office to start a job or else she will be sent to prison and die there very fast, so she does it. During her new job she notices some.... interesting new ravings, though. Meanwhile decapitated corpses start showing up.
I've noticed something. Everyone tries to be incredibly socially sensitive nowadays, things get banned, people get harassed online and in real life for using the not acceptable word (that changes every two weeks), media gets picked apart viciously for someone wearing the wrong thing. But lower class white people, the “white trash” somehow always get treated with zero sympathy and zero humanity. That's why this was interesting from the get go; Angel's flaws are obvious from the get go. She is not perfect by any means. But she is also a person who is not there because she and her people are basically just one of the few types who you can joke about and hate on without being considered some kind of a bigot. She had her perfectly justifiable feelings and hurts. She's also funny and an enjoyable character, which is not a bad thing for a book that is in first person.
The zombie concept was good too. They are not shambling, brainless (hurr hurr) creatures who pursue you slowly and moan. Basically they can be fine and function normally... if they get the appropriate fuel with the appropriate frequency. Now that was the bare minimum to make them acceptable and readable as characters, I suppose. To make them something other than an enemy or a context for the human heroes to handle we just have to make them somewhat intelligent.
Having them congregate around places that have a lot of dead bodies is funny and logical, though. I also really like the irony of people who handle dead bodies interacting with zombies, it's just really funny. Even in dark scenes, when they discuss the deaths it's interesting, because one part of the conversation is technically also a dead person. (Never had this much fun with that since the living dead attacked the pathologist Waldo Butters in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. I would love that bugger meeting Angel, they would bounce off of each other perfectly.)
The mystery in the book wasn't spectacular. I guess we didn't know enough of the characters to make it a truly interesting and hard to solve case? I don't know. I honestly mostly just enjoyed Angel doing her thing. Not like the crime aspect wasn't fun and enjoyable, but as I said, we don't know who does what and why. Well.
I'm pretty sure based on the blurbs that some bigger story will develop eventually, so there is that. Hopefully Angel won't be turned into a Mary Sue who is the centre of a lovefest by everyone around her with a gigantic horde of adoring men a'la October Daye (eugh), so if we can avoid that I think this can become a surprisingly solid urban fantasy type of a deal.
I don't know shit about the author. I don't read those kind of romantic or erotic paranormal romances and her other series seems to be like that, so not my thing, but I will definitely read more of this series. The bright pink cover could be a bit off-putting or maybe the title, I don't know, but it's genuinely pretty damn fun.
Good night and don't forget your lunch!
I quit 10% in and I will tell you all why.
First of all, I did not start to read this because of Robin Hobb. She seems nice and all, her books are just incredibly depressing and when a series makes my life quality worse there is no way for me to justify reading it. Again, it's not about her as a person. I really wanted to like her stuff, for a time I even kept telling my then-flatmate that my book was “going great” and “it was interesting” and “I'm sure it's just about to pick up”. It was so bland and depressing.
So yeah, my decision to pick this up was based on the little blurb and NOT because of expectations caused by loving Hobb. With that out of the way... I'm going to rant now. (Do I have to point out that I have no issues with the author? I don't know ANYTHING about her. Nothing.)
I can't stand a lot of the new fantasy being published nowadays. I'm not saying they have no place and they shouldn't exist, but I want to avoid them all like the plague. So what is my issue? The goal. The goal of the author totally misses the goal of me reading these books. What I'm looking for is some kind of an adventure, something fun that draws me in. What the author is trying to do is turning fantasy into something that takes itself too seriously, it tries to be too poetic and yes, even pretentious. The fun and enjoyment is lost by trying to be too deep, the movement and exploration is lost when it's all an exercise in writing something they believe will be “taken seriously”. The balance of well-written stories and characters and the spark of it being an enjoyable read is completely lost.
Exactly that happened here. Before anyone says “but people died here”, I don't mean constant fun times, just... I guess if I could exactly explain I would be writing it, eh? Some sense of wonder.
What we got instead was just a lot of fantasy language. It's too much, with too little context to really get a picture of it all. The frame of reference is pretty much “see? The world is rich and you will probably, maybe get it later or something”. To me that's pretty much just a shortcut to world building and I don't like it. It needs to be portioned out a bit, I won't just buy it because of sombre prose.
The characters were the same as well. Two siblings who sound exactly the same as POV characters. What the frick is the use of having them if there is nothing specific about either? They both sound boring and serious. When the book is in first person I need to buy the emotions of the character and none of that happens here, they both clinically describe being sad.
And one more thing. When a book takes its time to deliver one more preachy monologue of “but the women are all so oppressed, but here we are so open minded and in tune with 2018” instead of actually pulling me in... it's stupid. It's also such a cliche now, it's a miracle if we don't get one in every single bloody book. Fuck subtlety, just tell me I should be congratulated for living with a vagina.
So yeah, I don't like it, I will read something else instead.
Have a good evening and pick your poison!
4,5 stars I didn't expect this book to be so much fun, party because the other thing I read by the author (some of the Eli Monpress books) wasn't brilliant, it was inconsistent and lacked being in any way coherent and refined. Partly because... honestly, so many similar books written in the last few years were just plain crappy. I will explain what I mean by that later. What we have here is some kind of a future scenario where magic returned to the world, with the technological advancements still going on, so basically it's a future with supernatural added to it without one or the other being completely inferior to the other. Julius is one of the big dragon clans, who all come with the ability of living in a human form and man, they are brilliant at it. Extremely competitive, greedy, calculating and just generally ones to get to the top whatever it costs, meek and laid back Julius is not really considered a good dragon at all, which results in his mother throwing him out, cutting him off when it comes to money and locks his powers completely, so he is basically just a super awesome human now. To get back his powers Julius needs to find the runaway daughter of another dragon clan and take her back home. For any of his plans to work he needs someone with magical abilities, so he recruits human sorceress Marci, who has her own problems, namely being pursued by a gang. We all love a good underdog story, am I right? Julius is kind of an awkward guy, not particularly outstanding at anything among his super talented siblings and honestly, he doesn't even want to compete for real. He could have easily become a total disaster. I mean many authors do the thing with the kind characters being ugly and being defined by what they lack, just to become beautiful once they get ahead. What I particularly loved here was how Julius wasn't a freak of nature. Among the humans he is actually considered handsome and quite agile, he's not at all repulsive or portrayed as kind because he is freakish. It's the opposite; among his people he is considered freakish BECAUSE he is kinda nice. Marci is our other protagonist. Nowadays, when female characters are so often portrayed as needing no maaaaan or being the only moral compass in the whole story, Marci was fine. She does her thing, she is good at it, but without having to undermine Julius to show how she is a “strong female character”. They both need each other to solve their respective issues and I loved that bond. I don't even mind how it's inevitably leading to a love story, which I generally don't like, because they do some kind of a chemistry and they complete each other without it being a stupid gotcha competition or annoyingly trying to play hard to get. The side characters have so much potential as well. We see some of Julius' siblings, all of them brilliant in their own way, but having all kinds of different characteristics. They are a group with cohesion in some ways, while having their own voices. I especially like Justin, the brother who is completely different from Julius (mainly great with physical combat, extremely hot headed, big on pride, etc.), but is closest to him. Is he could survive the series... I would love that, really. Another thing I loved was how it was a light, easy to read story and the situation of the protagonist was still a metaphor. Not an exceedingly deep one (basically how you should make your own way of life and expectations don't have to define you), but STILL. Why am I saying this? Because I feel more and more authors don't know how to use a metaphor in the theme of the book. Sure, they use it for smaller components of the story here or there, but then the protagonist turns to the camera and tells you verbatim. Some example would be [b:Sufficiently Advanced Magic 34403860 Sufficiently Advanced Magic (Arcane Ascension, #1) Andrew Rowe https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1488182235s/34403860.jpg 55506810] , where the author seems to believe we are too stupid to understand anything without him making the character do all the things his father will not like. (Then again, I think some readers are to blame as well. Namely the ones who bitch up a storm if their favourite social themes are not spelled out in the books for them to feel enough virtues were thoroughly signalled.) This was a first book, though. The very first little case in something that we are told is much bigger, so I refuse to give it 5 stars. There must be more of it out there, something that needs to tie it all together and I'm reserving the perfect rating for that thing. If it happens. Not sure. But so far I really had a blast with this. I feel the author working on her craft, having a better paced and planned story that makes sense and doesn't lack any element that is needed for a truly well-made book. I am definitely going to read the sequel. Have a nice day and don't leave this to last!
Steam punk is cool. It looks awesome, it opens the gate for cool ideas and stylistic choices. For some reason, though, it seems a bunch of steam punk books are kind of meh. Which... yeah, it happens here.
Zaira is the only daughter of a legendary baron/airship captain and just basically a freaking awesome guy everyone loved. He went MIA 2 years ago, after Zaira's mother also died, so she is alone running the family farm the way she can. The neighbour family is there for her though, with their handsome son. It's all going kind of crappy up until people show up and tell Zaira that now his father is officially considered dead, so she inherited his airship.
You know, I am personally not huuuuge about teenage girl protagonists. To be fair I also didn't really love being a teenage girl too much when I was one, so yeah. Zaira wasn't that bad, I have seen much worse. Still, the characters were the big weakness of this thing. Somehow they all seemed to just do things and say things without it being... real? They claim to all love Zaira after 2 days of her not doing too impressive things. They also point out their feelings without me buying any of it, because the depth just wasn't there.
The whole “my dad is a legend, but I only know him as weird dad” thing is awesome. I love that, I love relationships like that. I also prefer friendships or family relationships compared to romantic love. Sue me.
Still, the characterisation of this thing wasn't good. The people just weren't relatable and the emotions didn't cut it.
Which comes from another reason as well; the story happens so fast. Sure, people can bond over harh conditions and shocking experiences, but here I didn't buy the thing with being so so close after spending together like 3 days in total.
The action itself was fun, though. As I said, the idea of this girl not really knowing how her father was seen was also fun. I just wanted it to build up more. To spend some time on it all being connected, not just events and concepts that we have to believe progress in a certain way because the characters tell us so. Honestly, the style needs a bit of work.
It was fun, though, it has a lot of potential with some technical development and work. So there is that. I will give the author more time, I am not against reading more from him. Al in all a fine book. Not brilliant, not the worst. Oh, well.
Good night and let out some steam!