altlovesbooks

"The river can be such a simple girl, but most lovely when she's unadorned."

I clearly didn't get whatever everyone else got out of this book. I thought the setup was interesting, an aging woman escorting a houseboat full of artistic types against the backdrop of a society in flux. Art in almost all forms is disappearing, there's a plague causing people to vanish, armed uprisings, a whole host of things going wrong on the mainland, but on the river there's just them on a weird journey. After taking the wrong branch of the river they start seeing increasingly bizarre sights and stop in towns with unusual afflictions. The Land of Doze where the crew feel exhausted all the time, the Island of Lost Children, a Lord-of-the-Fliesesque town of children where everyone thinks its 1993 instead of 2033, and a whole host of bizarre encounters on the river.

Honestly, this felt a bit like The Phantom Tollbooth, but with tougher to parse allegories. Each encounter the group aboard Silver Lady runs into felt like it had some sort of deeper meaning or allusion to something, but without more to go on I wasn't able to really get anything out of it. The dystopian society the group is on vacation from isn't really reflected in the story itself beyond mention of how unsafe the world outside the river is, and a constant fear that the art they're making aboard is going to vanish. There's also a lack of a through thread tying everything together, making it hard for me to really stay invested in a story that didn't seem like it was going anywhere. The author also shoehorns in mention of Qigong any chance she can get.

I don't know, there's enough reviews out there to make me think I clearly missed something, but I didn't really enjoy this trip downriver.

I won a copy of this eBook through Goodreads Giveaways.

Maybe I'm just not a cozy person? I drink tea, wear cardigans, have cats, but I felt like this book never went anywhere and was kinda boring besides. I guess I need stakes, a plot, something carrying me through to get me interested in a book. While I'm sure this will appeal to some people, because it is cute, and there's some good elements here, my attention wandered periodically.

We have a cast of four in this book. Tao, the Teller of Small Fortunes, has a cart and a mule and goes around to villages and towns telling people's fortunes for cash. She runs into Mash and Silt, two reformed(?) thieves on the road to find Mash's young daughter who went missing following a bandit raid. She reads Mash's fortune, and the three of them band together to hopefully find her. Along the way, they also absorb Kina, a baker who loves baking but isn't quite as good as her uncle and who wants to see the world, into their ranks. The four of them go on (very episodic) adventures while the issue of where Mash's daughter is hangs over them.

I guess what I didn't like was the episodic feel of the book. It felt like at every town they'd get another call to action in some form or fashion, they'd act on it/resolve it/run from it, and then on to the next town/call to action. The fate of Mash's daughter isn't brought up nearly as much as you might expect, nor does it seem very urgent since they're always off doing other things instead of tracking down this 4-year-old. I sort of felt like this would be more of an urgent task.

I liked how different the four characters felt, but at the same time, they felt shallow and undeveloped throughout the book. Only Tao really has any sort of character arc, and even that felt low stakes and not all that important to Tao/the larger story. The half-finished feel of the rest of the characters made them feel a bit flat and boring, despite how different they felt from each other.

It's a good book for some low stakes, cozy palm reading fun, but I finished the book wishing more had been done to develop literally anything more than what I got.

I'm gonna let you guys in on a little secret, but you have to promise not to tell anyone. I actually liked this romance book. It's not without flaws, but in a book club where I've read several romances now where the people felt like over-the-top caricatures of how real people are, the fact that the two main characters felt like actual people was refreshing.

Xavier is a vet in Minnesota who treats a kitten owned by Samantha, a mustard social media manager on her way back to California. There's a bit of love-at-first-sight (exaggeration, they're both head over heels almost immediately), the two have an epic first date, and Samantha returns to California to help her family take care of her ailing mother, leaving both sad and pining for a relationship that never took off. But as these things happen, Xavier meets her in California, and despite Samantha's reluctance, the two start hesitantly exploring a long distance relationship. Unfortunately things are expensive and complicated, and Samantha's mother is getting worse, leaving the two trying to figure out how to make this relationship work.

I loved the setup and the beginning of this book. Two people who felt like people, trying to make a long distance relationship work out. Maybe I'm biased here, because that's how my husband and I started out, but I loved this. I don't have enough first-hand experience with dementia to know if it was handled properly, but I'm judging from the other reviews that it was, which I also enjoyed. There's some really sad/touching moments here that made me feel things.

I guess what I didn't like was that the middle of the book felt like the same points on repeat. Xavier bankrupting himself (both monetarily and in energy) to make these once-in-a-few-months meet ups work. Samantha mentally saying this will never work, and then immediately forgetting all about that during the next meet up. Samantha's mom in decline, but none of the family want to actually help except Samantha. Around and around with these same points without any real progress until the last 10% of the book or so. All of these points are valid and relevant and smart to consider, but it didn't seem like it moved the book forward any having to rehash them so much. It made the middle part feel a bit of a drag.

I also feel like, maybe, there were other options to explore other than either a) putting mom in a home that will clearly abuse her, or b) keeping mom at home and the entire family burns out. There's plenty of resources out there for dementia care, and not all of them are dirty, diseased, unkempt, neglectful homes. Exploring any of the other avenues (in-home nurse care, monetary/professional resources for family members, etc) may have given Samantha a little freedom for the two of them to feel more comfortable about their relationship.

Finally, and this is incredibly minor, the constant reference to ACOTAR was pure pandering to romance readers. Like, "eh? eh? eh? Here's this book you all like, don't you love this reference???". C'mon.

Still, of the romance books I've had to read for my library's book club, this has been my favorite so far.

I'm almost hesitant to give this a true crime tag, because of the amount of artistic liberties the author took along the way to pad out the story. Rather than a full factual telling of what on the surface sounded like a really interesting case involving arsenic poisonings in Hungary, this felt almost historical fiction-y. The author is up front about the inclusion of fictional elements in her author's note in the beginning: "However, to fill in gaps, I have had to imagine or assume certain scenarios.", but I wasn't really expecting the whole book to read like a novel.

And the story itself, while interesting on the face of it, doesn't seem like there's more to it than what's in the title. I don't know if there just wasn't enough factual info out there to write a full length book on or what, but be prepared to read all sorts of descriptive elements about people, places, and how evil Auntie Suzy looks. The story itself really drags in places while the author shoehorns all this in, which is a shame.

Just not a great example of a true crime book, unfortunately. There's an interesting story somewhere here, but it needs more of a factual touch than it got, I think.

"There should be a cost to power, and I paid it gladly."

I wasn't sure much could get darker tonally than the first book in this series, but this one managed to surprise me with how dark it got. Khraen still doesn't know the entirety of who he is, but he's started collecting the obsidian shards of his heart to find out. Now he has his old flame Henka in tow, but he still doesn't have any memories of her and is, basically, operating under blind faith that she means to him what she says she means to him. We're still never quite sure who's friend or foe yet, but Khraen still is on a journey to find out.

This book felt more like Khraen embracing all the worst parts of his power, while rationalizing it away every time. Each time he swears he'll do better next time, agonizes over it even, but still manages to make the wrong (right?) decision in the moment. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed a lot of his considerable inner turmoil in this book, it's very introspective and thoughtful, but I know it rubs some people the wrong way that he's not this badass demonologist doing badass demonologist things cover to cover.

There's even more visceral detail in this book than the last book, which, yay if you like that sort of thing, but I had to skim portions of the detailed necromancy bits, personally.

Bren is a great character here. A great foil against Khraen's descent into....idk, madness, instability, power, whatever he's got going on here. I look forward to reading book three shortly.