BulbasaurusThe7th

Quit at 60%. Sorry I'm not sorry. I'm in a rut or something?

No. 328429781 on my list of literary world crimes (word crimes? höhöhö): I do not like Stephen King. I just can't like him, something about his kind of horror just feels over the top nasty to me. Like disgusting and it makes me retch instead of being scared most of the time. Also, what did kids do to the guy? WHAT? We should ask Joe Hill about that, because he is King's kid. As we all know.

I had my doubts about this one, exactly because Mr. Hill is Mr. King's spawn. Not saying they are the same in any way, but I would assume that if you do what your parents did super successfully, then you must be at least a tiny bit influenced by them. Or something. Then again, it's not that hard to write horror and be influenced by him. Big names and all.
Funny enough, I actually didn't feel as repulsed in the not impressive way than I usually do in connection with Mr. King. I didn't even really hate this with passion. I was okay with it, I guess, I just... didn't really care that much, you know.

Here we have Ig, this small town son of rich people. He's awkward, not exactly star material like his great older brother, Terry, but not a bad person either. Ig is fine. But he had this girlfriend, the amazingly wonderful Merrin, who got raped and murdered about a year ago, causing Ig to be the obvious suspect, while he had nothing to do with her death. Never even got convicted, but in small towns people will file you in neat little piles. In his case, as a psycho.
One morning he wakes up with horns on his head and supernatural abilities that cause people to tell him their dirty, horrible secrets and maybe now he can find out what happened to his girlfriend.

The moment realised I didn't care was when Ig gets some of his teeth knocked out. I'm a trainee dental technician and hearing about knocked out teeth I went strait to how to solve that, the Latin names of teeth, I got the image of said teeth in my head, how much of a pain they are to form of wax, but how much I love doing that, it's all fun, I need to practice, I will have to ask one of my “mentors” to borrow the appropriate tool... and shit, I am not reading. I'm thinking about the shape of premolars.
When you care about work stuff more than what is happening in your book... well. I have bad news for you.

Another thing that bothered me was how horrible news lose their edge when almost every character is horrible. Oh, you want to kill someone, also you want to fuck little girls, while you blow up the country with a nuke to the soundtrack of cancer kids. I am just kind of emotionally separating myself when things are so bad it's almost comical.

The characters who fill more purpose than being there to say bad things are boring to me either. Ig is nothing, Merrin in the flawless angel everyone loves, but she is just... so douchy without anyone ever realising she is, the person actually killing her being just... really bad. It never felt like any characters were actual people to me.

I didn't exactly hate this book, really. More like I didn't find the thing that would draw me in enough to invest any more time in it. Nowadays I'm busy enough to not care about something that I don't find satisfying. The whole King family seems to be not my kind of people, which is fine.
This wasn't offensive. I can imagine the people who would love it and give it the attention I couldn't. I even feel a bit sorry about not finishing it. Huh.

Good night and I feel like strangling people on a daily basis and not afraid to say it.

I give up. Not going to rate this book, because technically I didn't finish, but I also didn't hate it. This series is just really not that interesting. The characters are fun, the magic system is interesting, it's just... not an interesting story and as books get longer and longer, I can't handle spending so much time when nothing really worthy of mention ever happens.

With a bit of a less... uninspired story I would have loved this. Being in a bit of a rut is not helping any of it either. I was just trying to read this and not getting anywhere, while thinking about what I'm doing with my life. Not ideal.

I've gotten an ARC from [a:Benedict Patrick 15139422 Benedict Patrick http://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1487193678p2/15139422.jpg] back in around November or so. In one of my emails to him I remember mentioning how the amazing covers of his books really did help to get me interested, which is always a good thing for an indie author trying to gain popularity. This book is another great example for that; don't judge a book by its cover, but shit, good art always inspires me to pick it up. Interesting art comes with an interesting story in this case. It's... not easy to talk about this one without giving things away and taking away from the weirdness that I think you should experience for yourself. Thomas Senlin is not a great person. He's the headmaster of a school in a little fishing village, which also makes him the only teacher there. His manners are stiff, he doesn't care about anything grandiose and boring things fit him perfectly. We can call him anxious and a coward. Still, the lovely Marya marries him and even with their differences, they are happy. Their honeymoon takes them to the amazing Tower of Babel, this gigantic complex of everything fun you can just imagine. It would have been cool if they didn't get separated in the market around the tower, which leaves Senlin having to be brave, resourceful and smart to find her again. When I think of this book, I have to say that it is not for people who are not in for something different. It has a style that makes the whole thing feel like a bit of a dream, it's whimsical and horrible and just... something else. Personally I found it interesting, but I know it wouldn't be for everyone. Which is all fine, of course, I think it's great that a new author (and already a poet) is willing to take this risk. Not necessarily the easiest to read in places, but I find it worth the effort. Flawed characters are also my thing. I'm so tired of perfect people, especially ones who are somehow always morally perfect and just need to be better than everyone, because it makes their deeds weightless; you know that even if they do things wrong, it will turn out that they were actually right from the very beginning, you just didn't see it. Senlin is lovely, because he avoids this. Not a bad man, not really. Not hero material either. By the end you will see him becoming much bolder, ready for adventure and more and more equipped to fulfil his mission. Again, I have no idea how to describe it. Just give it a go, it really does deserve more attention, as it's something different and it could be a pretty great choice for people who are looking something out there and refreshingly different in the fantasy genre. Definitely going on to read the second book in the series and if it keeps this up I'm going to be excited about the book to come in the rest of the series, as I think there will be some interesting conclusions and great ideas about the whole tower system, which just started to happen at the end of this one. Good night and learn to enjoy your home sweet home instead!

This took me incredibly long for such a short little book and not for the good reasons...

Out in a Russian forest the local leader's daughter is a bit different. She just seems to be magical, always a bit wild. When she gets a mad stepmother who shuns the honouring of the local supernatural, things just go wrong and the girl, Vasya needs to persevere as the only person who keeps them safe through keeping the traditions.

Russia is a setting that just attracts me. Never been to the country, don't speak the language, I've never had a mysterious, passionate lover from Russia, but the whole aesthetic is just my thing. I love it. Not gonna lie, that was the reason why I really wanted to read this book and nothing could stop me, not even the doubt of it not being so brilliant at the end.
Spoiler alert (in case you are not seeing my rating), it actually wasn't brilliant to me.
Part of it is not using the creatures too much. Seriously, when someone dips into lore so rich, so interesting and great, then they SHOULD actually use it all properly, instead of bringing it a bit in, then kind of... not developing on any of it at all.
We get no explanation about anything. Why is Vasya (and her dead mother) so magical? What's the point?? There was a conflict with the creatures and it is still all so vague. Something so underdeveloped makes me feel like the author didn't really know what to do with all the cool things, they just sounded nice and she threw them together.

My another big bunch of issues with it is the whole fairytale aspect. Not the fact it is there, I love stories like that, I adore the whimsical feel and the wonder, but the style has its drawbacks.
One I find here is that while you can suspend your disbelief and just roll with certain thing in a streamlined little story, those things kick you in the teeth in hundreds of pages of stuff. Characters acting ridiculous, tropes, all those things get more annoying if the story is longer, because there is no reason to just leave them like that. There is room to work with stuff!!!
Another here was the writing. I am going to be nitpicky when the style is supposed to be something like this. If you are so careful, then be that properly. Stop using ‘milling' and ‘vaulting' a million times, please!!!!!!! This is becoming something that annoys me so much, the uncaring writing. It's not that hard to avoid it. Even in just a text editor you can search for a certain word.

This connects to the fairytale aspects as well; characters. Those characters are simply written for a reason, they are limited by the genre and it makes sense. If you want to send a clear message to kids listening to you, then it makes sense to simplify. But here we got a way too “amazing” and infallibly perfect protagonist and nothing at all in case of the others. Not even the supernaturals, even thought they could have been something interesting.
I also dislike the obvious disdain for normal people. The main character's older sister is normal. She marries and after that nobody gives a shit about her even existing. Same goes to one of the older brothers. It's such a juvenile way of thinking; you are nothing if you are not irresponsible and wild. Being normal means you are nothing and you might as well just disappear. I have no issue with the protagonist thinking this, but here she is being sold as the perfect mindset, as someone who is always right.

Disappointment, honestly. I really need something that I can enjoy a lot now, because I seem to be in a mood of picking up books I end up not liking at all. I don't know what's happening.

Good night and pass me the vodka.

You know, I have serious issues with the way many authors handle teenage characters and their relationships with the adults surrounding them. I find it especially bad with teen girl protagonists, so when I saw this had a teen girl as a protagonist, then I found out it was first person narrative... lets just say I wasn't too excited.
It seems I had a good reason for it.

Maia's family lives out in the mountains in their little village, being the local dragon breeder clan, providing animals for the country's dragon division in the army. Right now some other country is trying to attack them, stealing their dragons and turning them into strange, sinister Horrors, just all around wrong, demonic dragons with equally horrible riders.
When Maia and her brother see the Summer Dragon, one of the figures of the local religion, she feels it is the sign she needs to claim her own dragon, but of course things go wrong and some religious messing around ensues, with Maia as the centre of it all.

I will be honest, the reason why this got 2 stars was that I absolutely loved the beginning that showed people dealing with dragons. Cleaning up after them, feeding them, just generally making you feel like we're talking about real animals. They didn't feel distant, magical things, but perfectly plausible animals like horses or dogs. Just... bigger. And with the ability of flight. And can speak a tiny bit. Okay, whatever, I get it, but as close to normal animals as we can get.
Something about the routine-like way of the people working with them was pretty nice and for some time I thought this was going to be awesome, no problem with it at all.

But we had Maia. Teen girl. Extra magical. Better than everyone. Gets in trouble all the time, but it's good, she is right, she is morally superior. More competent than anyone. Oh, she endangers people with her ridiculous wilfulness? It's all okay, Maia is the chosen one and being rational and ready to compromise is not how she should be, because things will all sort themselves out to make Maia right at the end.
Then of course her perfection doesn't stop in the face of any adult; adults are there to be either useless or evil, so Maia can shine and school everyone. The only exception is Jhem, her sister-in-law, who also fucks up a lot and at the same time she is so much better and such a little victim of everyone being angry when her weakness causes her dragon to harm people. Also, she has a fetish of squeezing Maia's hand every 2 minutes. Whatever happens, squeeze the hand and it's fine.
A conspiring government priest man called Bellua is the antagonist, who is such a shitstirrer and Maia is convinced he'll totally rape her because he looked at her boobs. I mean it's inappropriate, but we went from him glancing at her to “100% rape at any minute tho, #truth” at the speed of light.
The rest of the characters are so forgettable, it hurts.

Which is extra horrible, as there are parts of the book when everyone is at the same place, talking and doing things at the same time, with all the names in the span of a couple of sentences. If you have any issues with remembering fantasy names... I don't envy you. When dragon names AND official titles also mix in, I just wanted to headbutt someone.

We got some really sweet illustrations, though. Mr. Lockwood is a fantasy artist, so of course he put in some of his work and man, I appreciated it. They fit to what I imagined, which tells me the descriptions were successful.
Honestly, other than the name overload in places the prose was fine. I was okay with it and without other issues, I could have been fine with reading a whole series in this style. Even the first person would have been okay if it wasn't Miss Magical Perfection, but someone else. Even Total Actual Rapist I Swear Guy, I would have loved to see if his religious crazy was honest or just him trying to get power and influence.

The pacing, though... not to my liking. According to my estimation about a fifth of the story or so was spent on this one long sequence of events leading to something you KNEW was happening. The characters struggling in caves, enemies, running, OMG, dragon is coming, etc. It was a repetition of the same issues, drawn out, especially frustrating when it was just the road connecting between the beginning and an obviously inevitable thing.
(Can we talk about Maia being annoyed about her brother suffering life-threatening injuries and serious bloodloss not being as competent as she is towards getting the thing she wanted? Dude is bleeding out and he DARES to drink a lot of water, the jerk.)

I will be honest, this book is not for me. It's just way too YA and inhabited by characters I dislike for one reason or another. I loved the dragons, not so much the riders. A shame, as I was pretty excited about the story.

Good evening and for now I am content with just having a dog, thanks.

Eyyy, this year just started out in a pretty impressive way. Took me long enough to pick this one up and also to do the actual reading, but I needed to enjoy this thing in the proper mood, as long as possible, because who knows when the next one comes. Jim Butcher pretty much just did it again. You can call him all kinds of trash if you are inclined to do so, but to me he is the one who can always make me have a great time. Just something about his characters and action and pure fun is basically the embodiment of everything that makes me happy. I'm not a complicated creature. This pleases me. In this steampunk adventure madness humanity is living in spires, because something managed to screw the surface of the planet enough that you should just avoid it. So... spires. When Spire Albion is being attacked by Spire Aurora somehow a bunch of teenagers and a bunch of disgraced aeronauts need to work together to uncover things and basically save their country (spire). Things much bigger than they have expected are happening. Fighting, monsters, superpowers, warrior cats, all the good stuff. I love the whole steampunk thing. I don't know shit about it, but it's just such a cool thing, with very pleasing aesthetics and something really exciting about it. I am honestly open to anything similar. Not sure how good it worked on that level, but I feel the specific type of technology and “magic” used in the story was well-integrated and didn't feel stupid, so I am pleased. I'm sure some steampunk purists (there are people like that in EVERYTHING) will say it's fake and poser and OMG, fuck off, but I liked it. At the beginning we had an aerial battle scene with technical language that confused me greatly, but then the action just happened and it was so vivid that I forgot about all my worries and went with the flow. It stayed that way. The length did not bother me one bit, because the action was so good. I was never bored, but it never felt convoluted to me. I feel it was good like that. Sometimes with long things like this I feel like an editor on crack should have gone nuts on the thing, but here I pretty much just want 5 more books of the same length with the same amount of material right now. What I also love is the promise of big, big things coming. With [b:The Bone Season 17199504 The Bone Season (The Bone Season, #1) Samantha Shannon https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1421412990s/17199504.jpg 19248070] I could not imagine what the series was supposed to contain for like 6 more books, but with this I just feel like a completely new universe is just opening up slowly, with the promise of all kinds of insane things. (Butcher really did it with his Dresden Files series and I trust him more than most people I know in real life. Don't disappoint me, Mr. Butcher, I love you.) Other than the language, I worried about the teenage protagonists. I don't like teenagers. I even hated being one myself. The bane of my existence is the teen girl protagonist being a little Mary Sue of wold saving special-ness, schooling adults at every step. Here they were actually likeable. They had flaws, they were insecure and bratty and awkward and kind of... charmingly lifelike. THIS is what I love. Sure, there is a bit instalove with the kids, but they are not hateful little shits and at this point I just give my blessings, because the girl is not some “super average wonderful princess of world saving perfection” and the boy is not “myserious angst guy with a dick attitude”. I also appreciate adults being there, being competent and meshing with the kids to form a good group. I hate when adults need to be put out of the way, because the author is too lazy to create relationships between people of different ages. It's not good writing, I tell you. No, teen cool friendships and luuuuuvs aren't the only human relationships. Here the adults were brilliant as well. Captain Grimm still had his secrets, but he is not too much on a hopeless angst machine. The “king” of the spire is a weirdo, just like the magic old man they have around. I loved the hilarious crew (I always do, ragtag teams are my thing). Jim Butcher just does what I need him to do. I haven't read his Codex Alera yet and this one made me want to pick it up immediately. He managed to meet my expectations beautifully and I'm definitely going to recommend this to my friends. The next book can't come fast enough, so I really hope he is working his little hands to the bone, because there is so much work ahead of him. Good night after another great Jim Butcher book, Captain Obvious!

3,5 stars

The cover of this is still horrid. Like look at that, it's supposedly a picture of Nico, but what's with the raccoon liner? That wonkyass eyebrow? It just looks like Nico was supposed to be a high school goth girl with questionable fashion sense. Also, it's kind of cheesy romance novel. Absolutely hilarious.

In this one Eli and his team of misfits gets caught up in stuff while they are looking for Slorn, the bear-headed Shaper man. Demon creatures come and start to devour everything to grow, we also get closer to the origin of demonseeds and see more of the creatures of this world. Josef has to fight to death yet again and Nico really needs to think about what she is and what she can do about her situation. Miranda is useless as always, I see no function for her, I'll talk more about that part later.

You know, I think this book was just way too long. Miss Aaron at this point in her career was definitely not ready for introducing so many different storylines and powers at the same time and yeah, you can notice that in this book. The whole thing feels just a bit bloated, things get messy because we have to keep an eye on all the different powers at play and it is not graceful.
I personally like complicated worlds with a lot of elements, with a lot of different characters and conflicting powers, but if you do that it means you have to be exceptionally good at finding the balance between busy and still somehow neat and possible to follow without feel like you are being ripped apart.
Here... yeah. Things just happened. Especially during the climax I felt like the fluidity between the elements just wasn't there. For a book this length, the end was pretty damn rushed and I would have worked more to somehow untangle that before publishing. My opinion, so yeah.

Another issue is how the writing can be wonky. Back in middle school my teacher kept telling us we are only allowed to use a word twice on an A5 page and you lost points if you did more. Sure, that is a really rigid rule and I can understand that certain writing styles and things just make you unable to follow that, but at the same time Miss Aaron seems to be extremely prone to repeating the same word over and over again. There was a part where I swear every second sentence had the word ‘fissure'. At one point she described someone with calling everything about him long, multiple times in the same sentence.
These things are easy to notice! You don't need some special skill or education to realise that saying horrible multiple times in a sentence looks crappy.
It feels like certain passages didn't get enough attention. I'm sorry, I am not trying to be a jerk, but it is true.
(She also makes Eli think about using the fire demon that... is Miranda's, mixing up the names. It's killing me.)

I like the characters, though. I was right in my old review of the first novel, you need time to get attached to them, but they are pretty sweet and I'm warming up to them. The new characters, like the ridiculously flamboyant Sparrow or the now a bit more utilised Slorn were great. I just want all of them to be around more. (Gimme more Master Banage, though.)
This is my problem, though; Miranda is useless. She is this flawless brat who is so magical and I just don't connect to her at all. She can do no wrong and even if she basically deserts and in any normal society that is frowned upon, here she just goes “my master would have told me it's okay”. With her constant blabber about responsibility and all, she is just doing whatever she feels like and getting away with it. I have no idea what Miss Aaron is doing with her.

Again, I see potential. I see interesting things forming, good ideas. I love the magic system, I love the Shaper magic, I LOOOVE Eli's ability of being able to sweet talk the spirits, I love Dead Mountain with the cult and monsters coming.
Just... get better at technical things, please. That's all I ask. A bit more grace and a bit more attention to these little mistakes.

I'm definitely going on with the series, I want to know what's going on and I'm probably reading the author's newer, kind of dragon-y series. I'll want to give it a try and I'm hoping for a more polished final product.

Have a nice day and keep your spirits high!

Gave up on this one at 24%.
Right now I am just kind of busy, I am still on the last days of things before my Christmas break, things are just a mess and I'm tired, which means my attention wanders. I have to be here and there, buy this, make that, remember, study, do everything.
This book did not work with that. It's just so slow and (to me) boring that I couldn't concentrate on it. I felt no willingness to pick it up again when I could be preparing for my last test of the year or after 8 hours of grunt lab work. Something about the whole mood of it just made me feel like I could not justify spending any more time with it. I feel this year of reading was pretty good in my case and I am not going to kill my momentum with ending up in a rut during the last couple of months. I want to finish the year on a high note.

There isn't much to say. In a post-apocalyptic place a young girl is raised by a mysterious guy in a forest. He ends up turning out to be a serial killer, so our girl runs away to find her real parents. At the point where I gave up she was making her way through long stretches of not much, really. Hunting and all.

I expect this to be thrilling, to have crazy adventures, a fast pace, just a lot of well-crafted suspense and that sense of nervousness that I enjoy. A bit of pressure. Instead of that I got a story about this girl who is not very educated and her way of speaking makes the extremely slow and boring proceeding feel even less fluid. The whole thing was like a march through this rough, dry terrain where I feel like I am losing hope every single minute.

I did not like it and I did not want to know more. Boring.

Good night and I'm hitting the road now. Not the wolf one.

3,5 stars As a rule, I will most likely hate any popular YA book. Sure, there are some exceptions, especially ones that became famous and well-loved a long time ago, but things published in the last few years generating mass hysteria usually just piss me off with how crappy they are. So this... well, I guess it's not nearly fitting enough for the teen fangirls, so I kind of enjoyed it. It was fine. An orphaned teenage petty criminal gets caught up in a break-in that ends with someone being stabbed, so of course he needs some punishment, right? Oh, well, he is lucky, as a new government program just got started, involving young offenders being sent to the countryside to somehow learn to behave and get a second chance at leading a healthy life. Sounds fine. Up until our hero, Matt, realises that the old lady having him is probably... part of a crazy black magic cult, trying to do something insane as shit to the world. Also, they have plans for him. Everyone who tries to help him get mislead or even worse, dies. So what now? I can't say I was 100% sold on this just yet. I had a bit of a hard time getting really into it, even though it was not very difficult and not even long. Something about the writing was just... not really brilliant. It was simple, I would even say fitting for a middle grade reader if ready for some murder and scary stuff. No issue with that, I have read about a million Darren Shan books, recently gushed here about Kevin Sands' [b:Mark of the Plague 28954112 Mark of the Plague (The Blackthorn Key, #2) Kevin Sands https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1462176791s/28954112.jpg 49179172], am a huge fan of Kate Milford's [b:Greenglass House 18222716 Greenglass House (Greenglass House, #1) Kate Milford https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1379952488s/18222716.jpg 25656381]... Still, somehow the language and the sentence strutures could have been a bit more challenging. Authors, please, don't be afraid of pushing the kids a bit! It's okay, that is how hey develop their language skills and intellect. They need it! This one... didn't really push that much. It's okay, I can live with that. Another thing was the length. I'm trying to read some shorter books, as it's a bit harder for me. Somehow I think I'm more used to long ones, even when it's fantasy. This one was... well, I think a bit hindered by the fact that you couldn't really develop on the characters too much in a story this short. That is important to me, seeing the characters come to life and developing an emotional connection to care more about them. Here it started to happen at the very end to me. I mean I have multiple books ahead of me, so it should be fine (I actually started to enjoy the Eli Monpress series by Rachel Aaron much more reading the second book, [b:The Spirit Rebellion 8098146 The Spirit Rebellion (The Legend of Eli Monpress, #2) Rachel Aaron https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388474230s/8098146.jpg 12863050] for this very reason). It was fun, though. Because of the length, I didn't feel like there were any boring moments when nothing was happening, so I guess it could totally work as a nice read for younger readers, especially ones who are maybe less patient with reading. The fun comes fast, things happen, there are no real slow parts where someone is just laying on the floor, thinking about super deep (but usually extremely cheesy and preachy, thank you very much) angsty teenage feelsies. So if anyone has kids in the around-13 age range who needs the instant gratification in entertainment, this could be a really good choice. Can't say much about the rest of the series, maybe shit goes insane, but so far so good. Another thing I love is how the villains combine modern technology (nuclear power) with black magic to do their thing. It did not work with Middle Ages chanting and weird animal parts and all? Keep trying, include atoms and all the new stuff and maybe you will be successful this time. This is something I love in urban fantasy; how some authors really understand that if forests and springs can have spirits and you can put salamander eyeballs in a potion to make it work, then maybe we can just get the new “ingredients” and make magic with the emotional charges of malls and smart phones and all the new tech. Magic can be change with the changes of human life and our conditions, it doesn't need o be some static, cobwebby thing. MORE! One minor thing with the whole atomic reactor thing. A scientist working in the field would never ever ever say Chernobyl happened in Russia. The correct place is Ukraine, formerly part of the USSR. NOT Russia. All in all, this was a good read, worth my time and absolutely relaxing. I am hoping for the next ones connecting to me a bit more and if that happens, I will be extremely happy. Would recommend it it people and I am looking forward to continuing with the sequels. Have a nice day and see you at the next murderous cult meeting!

4,5 stars Holy shit, Rick Yancey is one messed up individual and I can't help loving him for that. (Especially funny that I am not interested in his 5th Wave series at all.) This book was absolute nasty stuff, with things that are so dark that you will probably not feel like having a light snack afterwards if you are in any way sensitive. I personally don't care like that, I am always open to a snack, less so to horror novels. I find they often cross the line of what's truly exciting and spooky and go into ridiculously cheesy and over the top laughable territories. This seemed to have a surprising amount of actual value. It was written well, it had enough action, events seemed to happen in a logical way that I could follow and not feel like the author is just trolling me to laugh at me being weirded out. The other guy from an old love triangle from Dr. Warthrop's life disappeared on a trip to look for some monster and the lady showed up begging the help of our doctor (and Will Henry by proxy) to find him in a remote Canadian place. Just to prove everyone wrong, they go on a hunt for a creature Warthrop refuses to believe even exists. Things go weird as always, the yearly monstrumologist convention happens (no cosplays, I'm sorry, just stuffy weirdos getting drunk as shit, beating each other up and solving nasty murders). One thing I really loved was the fact that we met more monstrumologists now. Apparently it's an international community of science bros who are borderline suicidal in their obsessions with ll creatures that can kill you. They are all different, all insane. I love them. Also, nobody parties like monster hunters, apparently. Nobody also has angsty stories where everyone gets emotionally damaged like that either, which... usually isn't really my cup of tea, but here it worked. The whole atmosphere and the writing managed to support the angst in a way that actually made it pretty... nice? I don't mean nice nice, but very readable. Which this was. Readable, I mean. The language is old-fashioned and ornate, very fitting for the settings, but it doesn't seem to suffocate the flow of the book. Kate Griffin (yeah, the [b:A Madness of Angels 6186355 A Madness of Angels (Matthew Swift, #1) Kate Griffin https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1305861910s/6186355.jpg 6366640] lady) should take some lessons from Mr. Yancey. While she kills the action, he manages to just support it even more and make me want to read more more more. I also like how the characters are not really fluffy. Sure, Warthrop does some not entirely horrible things once in a while, but we didn't have any big moments of the cold scientist turning out to be a real sweetheart with a heart of gold. No. He is truly obsessed with what he is doing and it takes away a lot of his possibilities and willingness to be cuddly. Will is an enjoyable child character. He is not a little idiot without any idea of the world, but he isn't some super hero who schools grownass scientists with his amazing kiddo wit. He is flawed, he is not some magical prodigy and I can't help feeling for him. So much is happening to this poor baby, he needs some hugs. The only character who irritated me was Lilly, this annoying little brat who endangers everyone because she is just so infuriatingly smartass. If I had a child like her, I would slap here so hard. I was probably supposed to find her endearing, but I wanted the monsters to take her. About the monster. It was absolutely horrifyingly nasty ass. It was something between a person and a creature, vile as they can be. I kind of liked that. It was disgusting and somehow managed to still keep things from being caricatures. Fantastic balance. Still, I find the first book better. Maybe it was the surprise of finding something so brilliant, I don't know. Both are brilliant, the first book a tiny bit better in my opinion. I am definitely picking up the next book, nothing can stop me. Good night and don't let the cannibalistic crazy monster people bite!

DNF at 70%.

I have to be honest in connection with Brom, I am just not all that impressed by his stories. Sure, they have some interesting ideas, but so far the two I have read (or attempted to read) were... not really anything I care about all that much. Krampus was fun for Christmas, as it was very different from what we usually get around then, but this... No. It just wasn't really interesting to me.

The man's art is lovely. I find it interesting enough, with its dark elements and all. The books, though, they just seem to be too long to keep me interested. Brom seems to be good at somehow creating a moment of absolute dread, of messed up shit, but to me it's all just too much in a way that bores me and makes me feel slightly ridiculous. Not the type of a thing that I enjoy all that much.

In this one a troubled young man gets his girlfriend pregnant and they run away to his mysterious grandma. Which... ends up with the guy being murdered and having to go through purgatory for a mission to have a chance to save his girlfriend and their unborn baby.
Even just that premise sounds a bit like it was just intended to shock me as much as possible and I really hate when an author does that. It usually uses cheap tricks (like pregnant women) to make us all feel the dread, which to me always ends up being lame enough to make me roll my eyes. A bit of that is happening here, even though it is far from the worst example.

Does anyone else notice that the dude in Krampus was also a down on his luck, petty criminal in the South who tried to win back his family or something? At first that was nice enough, a bit different, but now I just couldn't help comparing the two book and wondering if this was all Brom could do. Probably not, I hope not, really.

At this point I don't feel like finishing it, though. It's far from absolutely horrible, but it is taking so long to get ANYWHERE that I feel like I have no time for this. I was expecting something more, something that was a bit less slow. I simply couldn't really get excited about it and right now, when I need my fun times to relax. In a less busy time I would have probably finished it, but right now I simply feel like I have too little time to waste it on books that don't excite me.
I wasn't really making any progress and already started reading the second Monstrumologist book by Yancey, so it's safe to say this already lost me. I prefer leaving before it becomes too much of a chore and I get into a real slump.

Good night and oh my gods, I need some fun now!

I have a soft spot for middle grade fantasy. The good ones seem to have this sense of wonder that we all need sometimes and they can be genuinely fun. It's especially brilliant when they are written so even an adult can see the merit in them.
It's especially important to get kids to understand how fun books can be, it will influence them for the rest of their lives. I remember when I realised that learning to read wasn't just something we did at school to do something, but it actually opened up a lot of new possibilities to me.
(I kept telling EVERYONE about the stuff I was reading, even totally uninterested people. I guess that was the first sign of danger for the developments of my adult life and here we are now.)

The plague arrives to London in the year 1665. People keep dying, panic is rising and as always, prophets and healers show up to either help or prey on the desperate people. Christopher still doesn't have a new master and the apothecary could have a lot of business, but as an apprentice, he is not supposed to sell anything. So when he hears about a mysterious man who heals people perfectly for free, of course he becomes interested. But what can be the magical cure? Things get complicated.

This book was amazing, all the good stuff a middle grade read could be; full of action, lovable characters, friendships, mystery, code breaking, even a bit of historical stuff, so I guess the kids will even learn something, which is nice. I'm not a parent and I'm not going to be one in the foreseeable future, but I'm pretty convinced that this would be a book I would be happy to give to my kids.
It just has so much heart, like you can feel the passion and love of the author for his creation. A labour of love, obviously.

I have to warn you, though, some elements are a bit dark. For kids who can handle that, this is a brilliant book, it can get them interested in many different things, while being really entertaining. It's not aggressively trying to teach you things, you just get intrigued and feel like reading up on something, which is exactly what I like. Still, you get the story without being a history lover or an expert code breaker. The perfect balance.

The author is not nearly famous enough, though. Please, people, buy his stuff. He really deserves it. Push these books, make them popular, I want to see them being turned into movies, okay? They would probably mess them up, but still.
During times like this I really regret not being ultra sociable to have people who ask for recommendations, because I would throw this at them in a heartbeat.

Sure, I am gushing and it's embarrassing, but I am being honest; this was absolutely AMAZING. Not sure how it managed to get everything I was looking for, but I am so happy about it. I should have read it the moment it came out, but hey, I am glad I finally did it.

Good night and take your vitamins!

So basically one day I had no idea what to pick from my to-read list, so I decided to ask a friend of mine to point at something based on the cover alone. This was before lunch, so those chicken nuggets looked really good and she went with this one. (At least it's no some million page series, I told myself. I have a hard time picking them up when I know it will take a lifetime to actually read them.)

You know, I do love food. Eating it, making it, reading about it, looking at shows and photos. I have a bit of a love affair with those shows where they show little video clips of stuff being made and the food ones are my favourites. It's all fascinating and I am convinced that if we need to eat multiple times a day for survival, we should make it nice, not just another chore.
I also really like urban fantasy. The idea of supernatural elements being part of modern life and taking place in situations that are so familiar is just fun to me. They ways you can integrate them to a completely non-fantasy setting can go in so many absolutely fascinating ways.

Well, in this case it's... meh.
In the artsy-fartsy New York gastronomy scene there is a place where they serve supernaturals with ingredients a bit more exotic than the normal grocery store selection and I don't mean artisan crap. Two people get invited for a job to this restaurant and things aren't exactly culinary school lever.

The idea, I love it. It sounded like a nice blend of things that could have been so refreshingly fun. Instead, the author went with this upper class idle hipster way of looking at everything. It all really felt like the fantasy of some guy who only ever went to restaurants as a customer and saw maybe 10 minutes or Gordon Ramsay action.
The characters were nothing interesting, just paper thin caricatures of human beings (like Lena, who is super good at EVERYTHING and is the moral superiority of it all, or the chef guy who we know is a dick from the get go because he has the wrong kind of facial hair). It all felt so superficial and simplistic.

I didn't expect depth. This thing is really short, you can read it lightning fast, but this... no. I'm sorry, I can't vouch for a book that's so underdeveloped. Sure, be light, be funny, I love me some reads like that. Seriously, I am the last person to demand seriousness and heavy things at all times, but this just didn't measure up to what I call truly worth my while.
It is possible that with more stories coming out this universe and idea will be properly formed and it will all make sense, but right now I feel like it is more like a cool little idea you write down in a little notebook that you could totally work with later.
It just wasn't good. It really wasn't.

Shoo now, I'm hangry.

Did not finish at 40%. After reading the Grisha books by the same author, I had high hopes for her keeping the good sense of interesting world building, but stopping with the overdone YA bullcrap of forced romance, special snowflakes and general cheesy shit. Aaaand it did not happen. If anything, she got even worse. In this book we have a gang of teenage super gangsters, led by the super cool and mysterious Kaz, who sometimes cuts out eyeballs, but like... he is so rad. All of our teenage heroes have some token skill when you know they are just put together to all have “cool” banter and to pair them up in lame love stories. The mission is to free a guy developing a superdrug from an impenetrable witchunting stronghold. As I said, I loved the Russian-inspired world of Grisha. It had that extra, that interesting stuff that made it different, even if it was just a nice veneer to cover love triangles and the heroine being so average that she ought to have a world saving superpower. Also, I kind of like the Russian aesthetic, it's lovely. In this one... well, it's not so fun. We have evil fantasy Finland, though. With evil tall blonds in uniform. Otherwise it just didn't interest me all that much. Ketterdam was like fantasy Amsterdam, which, while different from the average, didn't really interest me. It didn't even matter, we should care more about the gang, somehow showing off the culture wasn't a thing. Disappointment. If I have to save the world, I will definitely not send teenagers, though. I mean I disliked The Hunger Games (shoot here), but at least in that one the games themselves were specific to teenagers. Only they qualified. Here the world is being saved by teens because the author couldn't be arsed to actually somehow try to fit adults and teens together. Why is this so common? YES, you can make your teens feel super strong and all without removing all the adults without a reason or with a bogus one. Here it all just felt like appealing to the teenage sense of “moooom, you don't get me, I am actually changing the world! Can I borrow the car?”. Other than some quirks, I didn't really care about the characters and their sob stories. There was nothing about them, nothing that made them different from all the other angsty teen characters in all the teen books. If characters don't grab me, then I am starting things badly. When the story already feels dumb, the setting is unimpressive and the characters are meh, then we are having an issue. So I basically grabbed a book with a super lovely cover and high hopes and got stuck with an annoying mediocre YA book that had all the things I dislike about the whole genre. About that; YA shouldn't be about quality. When I say YA, I shouldn't feel like I need to have lower expectations for the thing. I mean there ARE good ones, like [b:Sabriel 518848 Sabriel (Abhorsen, #1) Garth Nix https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1293655399s/518848.jpg 3312237] or [b:The Monstrumologist 6457229 The Monstrumologist (The Monstrumologist, #1) Rick Yancey https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1307409930s/6457229.jpg 6647553], but this one... wasn't one of them. Somehow it really feels like that nowadays many authors say “okay, YA it is” and that means that they are creating some Fantasy Light stuff, sugar free, but it's okay, because people KNOW it is YA and they will adjust (read : tone down) their expectations. Good night and let the adults do the things!

Maybe it is a bit sick in a sense, but I absolutely love mysteries, be it a serial killer, a disappearance, a John Doe corpse or anything unexplained. I love when I get the facts, also I really can't stand Hollydoow-ified, soap opera type approaches. This one actually wasn't like that all.
I understand that it must be hard making a story readable, actually engaging and somehow beating it into a book form and presenting it, without going overboard with describing the soft spring breeze playing on the unblemished skin of some beautiful girl who is going to fall victim of some horrible, satanic killer.
Well, in this one people just get majorly fucked by nature. So yeah.

In the 50's in Russia a bunch of university students decide to get a hiking certificate through completing an extremely hard, winter trip to the Urals. One of them has to turn back because of health issues, while the others never return. Later their frozen (and in some cases, seriously injured) bodies are found in various stages of undress out in the snow, with their tent slashed open from the inside. The government is all hush-hush about it.

Man, I love this case, which is probably extremely rude to say when people died. What I mean is that I find it extremely interesting and just crazy; think about how these people really faced the shit side of nature, basically. With roads everywhere and civilisation only ever a few miles from us, it's really hard to imagine these people being stranded out there, absolutely powerless to do anything. I find that fascinating and pretty hard to imagine.
There were also roughly my age, mostly. It's so obviously that they weren't even thinking about the possibility of things going SO badly. During the book we hear some anecdotes about them (like one guy chasing away a bear with a hammer on a previous trip), but this was way too big for them.

The book is also full of photos, just little snapshots of the group having dinner, messing around, acting silly. If they had colour, I could totally imagine them being youngsters now, on a skiing trip somewhere. It was eerily familiar. In one photo a guy makes a face that reminds me of an ex-bf. A bit of a surreal feeling.

What I really liked about the book was how it was actually informative. The author didn't actually try to sell some crappy idea about the yeti eating the people (have seen a “documentary” about that, it was ridiculous) or aliens messing with them. No mountain ghosts either.
I didn't really expect a conclusion, though, I was emotionally fine with the author just saying “we don't know, so yeeeah”, but he actually didn't do it. It's especially interesting as his methods of just going to Russia for whatever reason to look into the case and walk around was not exactly professional level.
The conclusion was satisfying. Scientifically sound, not over the top dramatic bullshit conjured out of nothing.

All in all, I really enjoyed this and I would love to read similar books. Non-fiction is generally not my thing, but this type, with interesting event and not a focus on what I call “suffering porn” is really up my alley.

Good night and stay inside while winter is coming!

For some reason I read more and more Middle Grade books this year, not like that is an issue. This one was a bit of a weird one, though, so I guess that makes a bit of a difference. Not gonna lie, at some point I wasn't really sure who were the target audience and to me that wasn't one of the absolutely positive things about it. Lets just take it little by little. Serafina is a weird little girl who lives in the basement of a grand estate with her dad, who is responsible for keeping the machines working. For some reason he is hiding her as she does her things like catching rats and sneaking around, up until kids start to disappear and Serafina has to find a friend in the loner nephew of the estate's owner to find out what is happening to all the children around them. First thing first, I kinda liked the prose. It was pretty sweet at some point, which is something I really appreciate when an author is writing for children. Some, it can be a bit of a challenge for the young ones, but it's something I would encourage if I had any kids; it can be pretty rewarding. At some places I felt the sentences structures were a bit repetitive and some synonyms could have been used in places, but all in all it had good vocabulary and it was a pleasant reading experience. With the plots and the characters things go a bit less than stellar. I understand that this is a short book, really. Still, I felt that the characters weren't particularly deep. Serafina felt plain quirky sometimes with her extraordinary skills and all. When we get an explanation... it's not really that surprising, you could see the parallels between her and some other.... creatures. Could have been done in a slightly more mysterious way. The same goes for the plot. We see that the world of the novel has some interesting things, hidden ideas and creatures, magic all around. We don't see much of it. It's a series, so it can be opened up, but by the end the lack of exploring the world leads to a certain solution of the issue that felt really abrupt. Serafina comes up with a plan that was absolutely bonkers from the beginning with almost no way of working, but of course you just knew that nothing really bad is going to happen to her. It made no sense, because it wasn't properly built up. The villain is the same; you find out ridiculously soon who is behind all and it took a lot of fun out of it for me. For a light read this was fine, I had no negative feelings about it, but it also wasn't absolutely brilliant. Somehow it got pretty bizarre in places and it wasn't really too deep. Was this for kids with rotting, disintegrating humans? Was it for teens with its lack of complex characters and proper story? I don't even know. It was fine. I didn't give it 3 stars because it was bad in any way, more like it lacked in certain ways. With an additional 100 pages or so it could have been coloured in a bit more, it could have been given something more special and more formed. I am not saying I am not reading any more of the series, I just think I would recommend [b:Greenglass House 18222716 Greenglass House (Greenglass House, #1) Kate Milford https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1379952488s/18222716.jpg 25656381] before this one, even [b:The Blackthorn Key 23270216 The Blackthorn Key (The Blackthorn Key, #1) Kevin Sands https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1433428562s/23270216.jpg 42810383]. Good night and keep your eyes on the overdressed people!

Can we talk about the book covers of this series for a second? They are so... romance novel. The only reason why I realised this was supposed to depict Miranda was the ring on her finger. Otherwise I wouldn't have guessed. I mean.... kinda medieval books with women in totally modern appearance are one of my book pet peeves. These books deserve much better covers. Seriously.

Especially because I actually enjoyed this instalment much more than the first. Not sure if it was my different mental state, the books getting better, me starting to actually connect with the characters, but I really enjoyed this. Was it a brilliant book, a true achievement of literature that opens up a whole new world in fantasy? Nope. But boy, it was such an entertaining thing. I really liked it.

Eli and his group get news of an impossible to rob castle in a ridiculously wealthy part of the world. What do they do? Pffft, of course they try to rob it, partly because as a favour in exchange for help for Nico, partly because Eli's ego can't take the idea of not being able to do something.
At the same time Miranda gets fucked over majorly, which makes her end up in the same place, all of them having to fight off the dictators of the most pleasant place ever.

The action was really fun in this, especially for someone who grew up watching shounen anime. You know, ridiculous power ups, epic fights, the power of friendship and will. It all just felt like all those childhood moments of “ahhhh, the hero is bleeding out because of some mysterious big bad, but he will have some flashback/dream sequence about poetic shit and the strength of having to believe in yourself, so he unlocks a new power that allows him to win”. This was full of that kinda stuff.
Again, it definitely is not the highest class of writing. If you didn't grow up with that, I have no idea how you will like it, but to me this was awesome. After a hard week, finishing this was an awesome way of relaxing and having a good time.

As expected, now I'm starting to be closer to most of the characters as well. Eli is ridiculously full of himself in a kind of charming way. I mean the guy just can't be tamed, he is smooth, he will chat himself out of everything, with humans or spirits. Josef is super tough, rough, really disciplined to give contrast to Eli and at the same time be entertaining even just by himself. Epic fights as well. Nico is the creepy child, she's always 2 seconds away from losing the control of the demon living inside her. She holds a lot of potential for the future books, it's obvious she will have to face her issues sooner than later.
Aaaaand we have Miranda. Not gonna lie, I find her a bit too much of a perfect girl and a brat. She does care about the spirits she controls, which is nice. She's honourable. Not a bad person, really, but she is magically the most greatest and most talented person ever, with the greatest potential. With a super interesting background, being part of a cool organisation, I kind of expect more from her than “this is so unfaaaaair”.

So, I want more of the Spiritualists. More of Banage. More of any of them that is not Miranda. The world is slowly opening up in the series and I want much more of that. If Miss Aaron can build on that, then this has the potential to be even more entertaining, even if not the most inventive thing ever. Where the first book was kind of small scale, it's all feeling much more complex and alive now. I approve.

Basically, I just want more. More of the smaller characters. More of the lore. More of the main trio (sorry, Miranda), more spirits, more countries, more everyone. More creepy white lady being super powerful and having a lady boner for Eli.
I have a feeling that especially that last part can go much darker now. What happens when a lady who doesn't understand NO wants to keep around a guy who would probably drop dead if he ever did anything other people told him.

Really, this one managed to surprise me a bit. I didn't expect it to make me be so excited about reading it. I definitely need to get more of it. Perfect for when I feel completely drained and stressed.

Have a nice day and don't judge a book by its cover!

3,5 stars When I was a young kid my sister was in her late teens, so I remember watching a lot of not particularly child favourite movies and shows with her. I wasn't the type to get nightmares or wet my bed, so I guess the family just never really minded. One of our staples was Sliders and this book reminded me of that one, which was kind of a weird nostalgic feeling, as I don't remember much of the show. I used to LOVE the character played by John Rhys-Davies, though. Here we have a family, Jason, Daniela and their son, Charlie. Jason is a physicist, once meant to be a big name, but when Daniela (meant to be a great artist) got pregnant when they just started dating, they kinda lost their big aspirations. They are happy, until one day Jason gets kidnapped and somehow sent to a different life, where he went with being a world famous and incredibly great scientist, without a family. Now he needs to get home to his family and through that finding out what he actually wants and what he is. I had to think about how many stars to give this. It really isn't my typical thing, I'm more of a fantasy fan and sci-fi is really not something I go with normally. I'm not the target audience. I don't know shit about physics, especially not the dimension travelling crazy type. The only way I passed the vanilla physics classes was through cheating. Don't crucify me, please. So yeah, the plausibility of this whole thing is totally lost on me. Is it all bullshit? Is it in line with some kinda plausible ideas by legit science? Dunno, man. It was entertaining, though. Fast paced, full of action, full of emotion (the second half, especially the very end has some really emotionally charged moments). Sometimes to me it even felt like too many things happened and not enough was fully developed. Again, mostly around the end. It's a single book, not a series, so I guess that makes sense, especially when the very end is the way it is. Perfect pacing? Not at all, but it was making me read more and more and more. The motivations in the book were really clear, you could totally get them, so I think the author's grasp on the behaviour of normal people was on point. I mean I had my phase of neurotically second guessing my own life choices, so I can appreciate this. I'm... also not a middle-aged, geeky suburban dad (surprise?), but I would say some of them would actually act so desperate and ready to do whatever to get home. Again, not bad. Thinking about what makes us us, our choices and their consequences, all the possibilities and the fact that we can't just have it all... Interesting to think about them. Honestly, all that was written in a pretty eventful and approachable way. Mr. Crouch didn't go too deep and turn it into ... too much. I can appreciate that, right now I didn't need anything more deep than this. It was a fun enough little detour into something I usually don't read. Giving it 3,5 stars doesn't mean I disliked the book. Not at all, I just don't feel it is really my thing and so I couldn't just rate it as high as some of the books that truly make me feel at home. It is really not the book, it's me. So even if the rating sounds less than perfect, do not let that scare you away from sitting down and reading the book, it is 100% worth your time. I wasn't wild about the very end, though. It was a bit... sudden. A bit over the top. Sure, it had really interesting ideas and twists, it just really wasn't my kind of a thing. If you are into the kind of sci-fi that is more connected to our reality and maybe more approachable to people new to the genre, then I think this one is a pretty safe bet. It's not even long, it doesn't have long, too technical parts that are only appreciated by the people who are really into sci-fi and know all the typical ideas of it. I would even say that younger people could appreciate this. Sure, some violence and all, but not that much at all. I definitely see the market of this book and I will recommend it to people looking for lighter sci-fi titles. Apparently [b:Pines 15034320 Pines (Wayward Pines, #1) Blake Crouch https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1350740525s/15034320.jpg 20688937] by the same author is pretty popular and it's also on my list. I'm definitely going to give it a try, maybe not right now, but Mr. Crouch convinced me that he has possibilities in him and we could probably get on pretty well. So long and make good choices, kids!

This year I have read many books so far, discovering some truly excellent ones. Seriously, it seems like a pretty good year for reading to me. Bridge of Birds was one of my absolute favourites, though, so grab a drink and prepare for the gushing that is about to happen here. It's not going to be graceful and it's probably not too valuable to anyone who reads it.
I don't really mind.

Number Ten Ox is a nice person living in ancient China, a young man who is not particularly brilliant, but is a generally good one. An orphan, but not really a damaged, poor sod. In his village a mysterious illness makes every child between the age of 8 and 13 to end up in a come, heading straight to death and of course someone like Number Ten Ox can't just let that happen, so he goes to find a wise man to help him cure the children.
He ends up with Master Li, who is wise for sure and really cunning, but a bit of a senior troublemaker. The two of them have to go through everything to save the children and uncover many mysteries and help strangers, some of them dead for centuries already.

The whole thing reads like the most charming, witty, entertaining folk story for real, it doesn't just sound like that. It has life, it truly shines as a hearty tale of hilarious heroes and some sort of a positive, wise outlook on life. It just made me feel warm and fuzzy on the inside, okay? Don't judge me, but this thing was what I needed. You know, sweater weather and all that.
But really, Mr. Hughart managed to create something that feels alive, like a story you could imagine people telling each other, maybe piece by piece, then forming one coherent story, like the mysteries the characters solve, that also formed one big thing that wraps up nicely.

Now the setting is ancient China, which, again, was solved with triumphs of storytelling. You DO feel like the prose takes you to a whole different era and place and it absolutely (thankfully) lacks any form of signifier of being created in the 80's. No, you won't think of that time, you will feel like you are actually getting something much older.
At the same time the “Chinese feel” doesn't distance it from you. At least I never felt like I couldn't follow because of the cultural differences. It just felt... right. Like it was some sort of a universally enjoyable story with values for everyone, really. Timeless, I say.

The character all started out as these typical, slightly over the top fairy tale people, as it is customary in stories like this. But then the author did these things when somehow they managed to rise above that. Some moments were generally touching, not gonna lie, I even cried once or twice.
For a book that was so incredibly hilarious, it had really deep moment of true emotion and beautiful scenes.

It's really hard to write anything else. You have to experience this book. I'm kind of baffled by it not being all that known; this is the kind of treat that deserves to be out there, accessible for everyone and receiving more love. I guess another book I will try to make people read?

Now go and track down your copy (it will be an adventure of its own, Chinese wise man not included)!

Did not finish at 80% I am genuinely disappointed. I wanted to read this book for such a long time and honestly, I usually love middle grade things. There is some sort of magic in them, this genuine joy for all the spooky and wonderful things. They are also often handle things in a very delicate and subtle way, which leaves room for the kids to take them at their own pace and just keep some of the childlike wonder. This, though. Oh, god. This book did the very same thing that I dislike with many of the popular, trendy YA reads; it tried to send its messages with the subtlety of a rail spike being hammered into the back of your skull (see how witty I am????). Up until about half way things just happened. Then suddenly in a few pages we get a lecture on how being a girl is the most horrible, because men whistle at you. How minorities can only ever be victims and white people are the worst. Also, how the only white people who are not automatically horrible are poor. If you are rich, you are default dick. It felt like the author just got a message that he really needs to insert these messages NOW, with the least possible delicate touch known to mankind, even making the characters say things like “Oh, no, fucking over poor people is indeed a bad thing”. Really? REALLY? You don't say. Here is how the story goes, which will only make things make less sense. A poor boy's (Will) father works on building the train tracks, so he goes to meet him. It ends in a mess, but results in the family's luck picking up and with them ending up rich, the dad being a boss with the railway company. Years later, on the first ride of the biggest train ever, the boy ends up separated from his father, being targeted by evil murderers preparing for a big burglary. His only helpers are a circus crew, with a wonderful and gorgeous girl (Maren) and a mysterious boss, who has his own secrets. Here comes one of my issues. A child who grew up poor would not be so sheltered. He is about 16-17 during the train ride, so up until puberty or so he was part of the lower class. Don't freaking tell me he had absolutely no idea that life wasn't just super easy. Why make him poor THEN rich when you still play him as this clueless little moron who only knows first class train cars and good education? Also, he is almost considered a man during the time period. He still acts like a small child. I understand shy and late bloomer characters existing, but it feels like the author didn't understand that back in he day teenage years weren't exactly what they are now. I remember praising Rick Yancey's [b:The Monstrumologist 6457229 The Monstrumologist (The Monstrumologist, #1) Rick Yancey https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1307409930s/6457229.jpg 6647553] for avoiding this exact thing, but that one was a much darker book. The love in this was ridiculous as well. For some reason Will falls in love with Maren after 3 minutes of talking and her stealing his Sasquatch tooth. After years of not forgetting about her, they meet on the train and she is just ridiculously perfect. It's not real. It's just so arbitrary and I felt like it had absolutely no foundation, you just have to take the author's word for it, which is something I genuinely dislike. Sell it to me! This book just lost the exact thing that I love in middle grade. It wasn't charming. It wasn't delicately made. Somehow it was almost like the author couldn't decide to tone down and go for middle grade or to take it up a notch and turn it YA. It went from ladida, sweet, adorable and innocent into genocide territory without anything in between or even building up some gigantic shock and impact. It just happened, because the author realised that whoopsies, he probably should go heavily didactic. I could have probably given in 2 stars. I even intended to do so, but the story just didn't push me to finish. It wasn't really there. Sure, Will was being pursued by people wanting to kill him for seeing too much, but... Here comes the middle grade-YA stuff again. I didn't feel the pressure. I didn't feel that I had to be afraid for real, because it just wasn't edgy enough like that. I don't think the author had thought this through good enough. His target audience, his goals with this story. It was all a mishmash, disjointed mess. The sentence structures simple, the characters naive, the didactic parts extremely serious and just right to the face with force. I don't even know. All aboard the disappointment train... leaving for WTF-just-happened town.

3,5/5 stars God, this took me so long. I mean it makes sense, life is stressful now for me, but still. I was being lazy with this book, partly because I am actually not really a horror fan. There is nothing wrong with horror, but... it's not particularly my thing, so for me it is kind of hard to judge them in any meaningful way. I guess that is what's happening with the newest installation in my series of nonsensical ramblings. Oh, yeah. Jack Sparks is a total dickhead. He is one of those egoistic journalists who keep trying to be special through writing about these predictably “shocking” topics, like drugs and gangs and shit, patting himself on the back constantly. Now he decides to write about... the supernatural, with his idea being that it's all bullcrap, so he can coke himself through it all. The first stop is in Italy, where an old priest is trying to exorcise a teen girl, how original. Jack laughs his ass off and the supernaturals are damn insulted by it, so our hero is in deep shit, which is not made any better by being a shitty person and addicted to all substances that can and will alter your mind. Now does our man sound like a trustworthy, reliable narrator? Didn't think so, so prepare yourself for “Oh, I lied” and “I kinda left this out to sound less like a horrible shithead”, which is something that gives it a bit of charm. Yeah, Jack is like that. As someone who had not particularly good experiences and opinions on many journalists... I can appreciate that. No, he isn't really our charming lad in pursuit of truth, which... makes him painfully realistic for a media personality, not gonna lie. I kind of liked that. On the other hand, this book is REALLY heavy on references to pop culture of the moment, which can REALLY date the thing. It is already happening, I mean I think he mentions Lemmy from Motöhead doing something and the guy is dead since then. I remember reading [b:War for the Oaks 70582 War for the Oaks Emma Bull https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1312059051s/70582.jpg 144029] by Emma Bull a couple of years back and the detailed descriptions of 80's outfits and gushing about Prince being the hottest dude ever. It wasn't too graceful. (Before you ask, I disliked that book.) To be honest, for a horror book, this didn't really freak me out. It wasn't bad, I didn't hate it, but something about it just didn't scare me. Maybe being a bit too much of a sceptic when it comes to genuinely being scared by something like this screwed with me. Oh, well. It was more entertaining than truly scary to me. Don't get me wrong, I am able to be weirded out by fiction (I'm watching Preacher now, Anatol Yusef makes me feel so uneasy, that bastard is good), but this didn't go that far into the uncanny, subtly disturbing and weird territory. Sorry. You emotionally don't get too close to the characters, so not even the shit hitting the fan had too much of an emotional impact on me. Probably part of Jack's detached dickheadery played a part in it; we don't really get to know the characters as human beings, they are more like tools and background items around the protagonist. The cover with the neon colours worked on me, though. It had a bit of some weird feel about it and find that attracts me. Dunno who designed it, but that person is good. It was worth a read. The change of pace for me was enough to make it a totally worthwhile read, even if life intervened and I couldn't just go through it fast. The thing is, I don't know what to expect from the author after this. I have never heard about him. Apparently he did (does?) Doctor Who stuff, which I am not a fan of, so I guess I am just being hindered by my particular tastes yet again. I would be open to read more from him, just not Doctor Who. The final verdict is that you should give it a shot. Short and pretty damn sweet, not at all a difficult read. Avoid if you are easily scared, even though I don't think it went too far. I like that in horror; just the right amount of gory stuff without becoming some parody with cringe-worthy, over the top, comic shock horror that makes me giggle. Have fun and don't let the Devil convince you he doesn't exist!

This book is not particularly my normal pick, but it was just so much fun!
Basically I find the whole idea of spies interesting, but I have issues with reading books that are heavily based on historical things, while assuming you are up to date with all those things. You need to understand the context, to know all the different events, people, important concepts and all. My knowledge usually isn't accurate and detailed enough to truly enjoy the thing.
I got recommended this one by my best friend who knows me more than almost anyone, though, so I knew it wasn't going to be something that I couldn't relate to at all.

The reason for that is that the story is really focused on the protagonists and not the society-wide implications of his deeds, while they also fit into a very specific time period and situation. Basically Mr. Wormold is a British man selling vacuum cleaners in Cuba, living with his manipulator of a teen daughter, being exceptionally mundane. Of course he worries about money to provide for the girl, so when a stranger shows up to turn him into an informant, he decides to go with it.
Now he is not a born spy, right? So he starts creating fake reports, sending in drawings of vacuum cleaners as some secret weapon. He eventually even gets an assistant, a charming lady.
Things get messed up as much as they can, making Wormold's life even more complicated.

The whole thing was just so entertaining in its messed up way. A little person, one who has absolutely no grand aspirations to be more than what he is gets turned into an extremely trusted agent, whose bosses put way too much faith into all the random lies he comes up with. That is something I enjoy; the reluctant person you can feel for, who makes you laugh in an emphatic way.

Again, not really sure what else to say about the book, it's just hard to review something that is so far from my usual picks, so I can't really even compare it to anything else. It was fun, though, which was what I needed right now. Dark comedy is something I love, so I guess this was a great book for me to connect something foreign to me with something I actually know and enjoy.

Have a nice day and keep your head down!

3,5/5 stars This took me far, far longer than the length justifies, but I guess I wasn't in the right mood. Sometimes it's just like that, I guess. Also... I was a bit disappointed. So I guess 3,5 stars is not really a bad rating by any means and to me, the around 3 can mean two things. Either the book had some good ideas and some pleasant stuff, but some mistakes made me unable to give more, or (like here), something was kind of missing. The story was about Eli Monpress, a master thief, with two friends, Josef and Nico, and the aspiration of having a one million gold bounty on his head. But this time he needed to work together with Miranda, a Spiritualist, part of a very serious and very regulated guild (church? gang? country? sect?) of magic users. Eli kidnapped a king, things turned shitty, they got framed for stuff they didn't do. Ya know. Part of the issue is that ‘ya know'. I don't feel the story was particularly original. Things happened, it was really short, didn't really have enough room for something super spectacular and deep. Not like I mind that all that much, just entertain me. Here... sometimes it was a bit lacking and I think I actually know the reason. Not enough time for setting things up. Sure, not everyone loves a gazillion pages long fantasy brick every day of the week, I'm with that, totally, but here the world seemed to lack a certain depth at this point. There were moments that I knew with my rational mind were supposed to have suspense, like a to-death swordfight and all, but I just couldn't feel anything, as it was a culmination of events we don't know about. Imagine a final fight with characters you don't even know, without a context. Not very gripping. I think part of this comes from Miss Aaron probably spending a lot of time working on the story in her head before actually making it happen. This is just my theory, but her already feeling like these people are her babies and not seeing it all with a fresh eye plays a part. Another issue was the mistakes. She compares the city to sand dollar, which is a word derived from a currency that doesn't exist in the book. At one moment there is moonlight, then suddenly sunlight without time passing. She describes blue light as warm. She says a fresh, yellow bruise is standing out stark on pale skin, even though A, fresh bruises aren't yellow, they take that colour as they heal and B, yellow is not stark on pale. Some careful person reading through would have picked up all of these, so I have no idea what her editor and the people actually checking the book did here. Not much, I suppose. These things bother me, not gonna lie, especially with books that got out through a proper publisher. I'm pretty convinced that I gave it a fair chance, though, and I actually kind of liked the characters, the way they are all quirky and just feel like total misfits. I'm a sucker for that kind of a stuff and it is the reason why I will most likely go on with the series. Maybe it gets better. Maybe discovering more about them and their history and motivations will actually make me care about them more. It really wasn't such a bad book. Was it brilliant? Nah. So right now I'm not sure how much I am sold on it. Rachel Aaron still needs to do a lot of work to convince me properly, but that is okay, I guess. I'm also kind of interested in her dragon shifter urban fantasy series, because it sounds kind of fun, so we have room for her spreading her wings and blowing my mind. It's just a bit disappointing, especially right after [a:Sebastien de Castell 7390210 Sebastien de Castell https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/authors/1384883394p2/7390210.jpg] and his absolute brilliance. A bit of an unfair comparison, the guy is just really good, especially when you look at how he is working on his first series. All in all, I wouldn't discourage anyone from reading this, it is fine, but I doubt I will enthusiastically recommend it to anyone if the series will be consistently like this first installation. Now spirit yourself away, guys!

At this point in Tristia everyone has it badly. We managed to reach the point that someone started murdering saints and of course Falcio, Kest and Brasti need to be the ones saving the world yet again. Seems like they are the local experts. Sure, Aline is still not proper queen, but they keep trying to make it happen. As soon as they can avoid the most recent “OMG, we are all going to die, someone do something, please” type of an issue. So... they have to figure out who is killing saints, why and how. A lot of questions.

Aaaaand this book is awesome yet again. We managed to reach the point where Sebastien De Castell could write phone books and yogurt labels and I would probably read them as well.
His Goodreads bio is the most hilarious thing ever, but I still don't know how much of his brilliance is the result of being cultivated with all kinds of fancy Yale courses about artsy writing or he just emerged from his mother's womb as a brilliant guy.
I will pretend it is nature's miracle and you can't stop me. Part of it is his humour. This dude makes me giggle and that is exactly what I like, the kind of jokes buddies on an adventure could realistically crack when they have seen it all.

Another thing you can feel is him having fun with this. Not trying to squeeze his brain dry to be some sort of a snobbish piece of pretentious stuff. Nah. He is having fun while you are having fun. I think a lot of people would profit from learning to appreciate that kind of a stuff. Books with actual heart in them.

Previously I complained about Ethalia and Falcio being magically in love and it just feeling a bit unbelievable. It... actually got acknowledged. The man is hilarious, talented and self-aware. YISS. This happens at the very end, though, so not much development on that front yet, but hey, next year the last book in the series is coming (I'm emotionally not prepared for that, we should all hold each other) and I have really high hopes for it.

I think I also complained about wanting to see more Greatcoats. Or I just thought that, dunno. Now here. Here we have some and I am incredibly happy about it. Some old, some new, all delightful in their quirky, misfit ways. Again, these are people I could totally imagine functioning as their little group of oddball peacekeepers and magistrates, doing their thing. At some point they take their oaths, which are of course never the same, all encompassing the story and motivations of the specific Greatcoat. My ooooonly little complaint is not all of them being written down. Why did we leave out Allister??

In this book there was considerably less Aline and Valiana and much more Ethalia, which was interesting and honestly, I wasn't too annoyed by her. I don't like love stories, I don't like fantasy books with the love interests being around too much and when a lot of the story actively involves both members of the couple. I just don't.
This time it wasn't too much, though, so again, a win. Falcio didn't act like a completely different, moronic lovey-dovey teenager because Ethalia was around. Sure, he cared about her, but it wasn't sickly or overwhelming.

So basically this was awesome. I fangirled about it, I loved it so much. Embarrassing, probably, but I can't help it when Sebastien De Castell writes what I want to read. I'm sure there are people who dislike this series and this specific book, but to me it feels like something specifically made to please me, even if it sound egoistic.

I'm reading the last book when it comes and anything else yet to come by the author. Aaaand now I am going to mark him as one of my favourites, because this series is my favourite new discovery so far this year. After three whole books I am confident when I say that.

Good night and don't bother praying to the saints. The saint is dead. O.o