Nadine K

3.5 rounded up

It gave Twilight. It gave CW tv show.

It was melodramatic, the characters were too emotionally driven, they did the STUPIDEST shit.
Not fantastic, not lifechanging, some parts I even disliked.

But it was CAMP.

3.5/5 stars, no notes.

3 starts that dropped to 2.5 with that ending.

I just could not find it in me to care for any of these characters. Even ending in a cliffhanger could not bother me enough to pick up the second book. Maybe I will if I ever get that bored.

It was just trying too hard to be cool but it keeps missing and missing and missing.

3.5 stars. A retelling of Poe's Fall of the House of Usher. Fairly predictable, probably even more-so to people who've read the original story, but fun! I enjoyed it :)

My last book for age 27 😭.

Beautifully written as always. Ray Bradbury's works always reads poetic and lyrical. Sometimes you forget that this book was published in 1950 but OTHER TIMES you are very reminded.

It's wild how different times were when this book was written. It's wild that this imaginative author could imagine a Martian society a decade before humans first reached space but could not imagine a desegregated US just a handful of years before the first laws against it were put into motion. (Let's be clear this book is very much anti-racist, it just says a lot for the beliefs of the time.) Also, widely America (US) centric, which is another thing I blame on the time it was written.

3.5 stars

I liked it, the ending was pretty satisfying. Something about it felt flimsy though. I may be comparing it to the Farseer trilogy too much. In all of Girton's text, I was looking for Fitz.

I thought the political intrigue was fun but imagine how much juicier it would have been had I actually loved the characters.

It lacked the depth I needed from stories like this but I did like it well enough. Might pick up the second book one day.

(I also noticed how much RJ Barker enjoys older women master characters, I appreciate it even tho Merela is almost identical to Maes from the Bone Ships)

3.5 stars.

Had some stories I really liked, no stories I hated, but a lot of stories that I was just okay with. Not a bad collection by any means but it suffers from the fact that I compare all short story collections I read now to Ken Liu's The Hidden Girl and other stories.

Easy read. I thought it was a solid and fun book. It was pretty easy to guess who the real bad guys were from the moment they were introduced, but seeing as the book opens with a reddit post from these guys I don't think it was meant to be that hard to figure out anyway. It didn't take away from my enjoyment.

I'm gonna be honest I didn't think about the book too critically coz I like my horror fun and simple. As long as the story made sense, the characters were believable, and it took me along for the ride, I'd probably enjoy it.

My only complaint is that there were A LOT of characters with detailed backstories. I am horrible at names and take a while to familiarise myself with characters so trying to remember which final girl had which horror villain was a nightmare. I had to go back and reread pages and pages to figure out who this person is. But that's mostly on me and my inability to match names to faces lmao.

4.5 rounded up!

I liked it a lot, it tapered off at the end a bit hence the .5 but overall I really really liked it.

If you are looking for murderous sentient octopi this isn't the book for you. It's an exploration of consciousness, a reflection on the actions of human-kind, and a statement on social responsibility on a grander scale.

I think putting it under the thriller genre was the biggest mistake in this books marketing and why many of it's top liked reviews are so low. There's far more introspection and reflection than there are action sequences but as a Bradbury lover, I fucking love that shit.

ALSO I loved the abundance of South East Asian characters INCLUDING all the named Indonesian characters. A win is a win.

Anyway, I leave you with this.

“Communication is communion. When we communicate with others, we take something from them into ourselves, and give them something of ours. Perhaps it is this thought hat makes us so nervous about the idea of encountering cultures outside of human. The thought that what it means to be human will shift - and we will lose our footing. Or that we will finally have to take responsibility for our actions in this world.”

Art, gorgeous. Colours 💯, character design 💯, style 💯.

Story was good but it really suffered being a oneshot. It did not have the space or time to tell the story the way it deserves to be told. But I do understand the constraints of a graphic novel, so I’m still impressed at what they did with what they had to work with.

🍉

4.5 stars!

I need more. I love these characters.
Some bits dragged on but somehow i got it in my head that it was part of Peter Grant's charm.
I am biased.

3.5 stars

I really liked it and thought it was a lot of fun up until the climax and ending. This may be purely on my personal beef with organised religion and how much I hate it when stories use religion like some kind of super power.

Otherwise, it was a good story that was very well written. It made me feel dread and fear and made me really care about the characters.

Again, pretty fun up until the end but that's mostly on me.

4.5 stars!

I think my love for this one stems from how similar Ged is to Fitzchivalry Farseer in the later Realm of the Elderlings books

2.5 stars

So messy. Ineffective. Not bad enough for a 2 star rating though.

3.5, good read, fantastic closing line