Earwen
I'm not a big Christie fan I mostly picked this up because I want to read more in German and my father had a German copy lying around. I rarely get to read physical books these days and reading this in physical form felt good, I probably enjoyed this more because of this. If this was digital I might not have finished it. Either way it didn't feel like a waste of time because I was mainly reading to reactivate my German vocab - so, rolling the score up.
Even considering the release date this is absurdly sexist. It's not regular period-standard sexism , discussions on women and women's place in society and relationship with power has an overwhelming presence in the first half, and continues to be relevant in the second. I don't know much about Agatha Christie's life or politics to contextualize this, but it definitely felt like she had an agenda here and made the first half of this book an exercise in patience.
The second half is when Poirot makes a real appearance, the aforementioned issue isn't gone completely but much less on the foreground. The solution to the mystery itself wasn't very interesting, but the twist of basically everyone in the family thinking another did it and trying to cover for them was a really fun one. I wish it meandered less in the first half.
Also a random note about my German copy some things seem to have been changed rather arbitrarily, stuff I noticed.
Sarah's name was changed to Sylvia
Carol's name was changed to Carola
A few paragraphs about religion were removed
A lot of reviews will mention a shift in this book in the middle but refuse to say what it is, so if you're curious like me and don't want to go on reading here it is there is a species of ancient Neanderthal like beings living in the mountains, the main character is distantly related to them, she meets and briefly lives with them and the book chronicles this for a while. I didn't feel like this was such a huge diversion, I thought it was pretty well built up and barely a surprise. However I don't think once we got there it was done very well, things felt rushed and some things made little sense. I would have liked that section to be longer as I thought it was the most interesting part in the story. A big theme in this book is motherhood but I don't think it said anything meaningful about it, and in the end she kidnaps one of the not-Neanderthals children for seemingly no reason, knowing she will have to bring her back when she is older and she can't hide her anymore essentially just keeping her from having a real life and community until that age. This wasn't something that was explored further it was at the very end of the book.
This was oddly reminiscent of Theory of Bastards by Audrey Schulman despite the very different premise.
You really should pay attention to the subtitle because I feel almost tricked into reading environmentalism. Which is all fine and good but not what I signed up for. The bits about actual deep sea were far more interesting when talking about environmentalism it became increasingly more general. It also wasn't structured very well, history personal anecdotes, actual deep sea info, and bits about environmentalism were just strung together with no rhyme or reason. I wouldn't say do not read this as it has a lot of interesting (and some very depressing) info if you're interested in the topic, and if there are better books covering these things I do not know of them yet.
Unfortunately I think this was the weakest book so far. Despite liking the world and concept of the story a lot I didn't like what the novel chose to focus on content or style wise. I pushed through to finish this one (mostly because as said I enjoy the world and some characters which is also why I still rolled this up to a 3 despite not enjoying it much) but I don't think I will be continuing the series.
(to elaborate a bit on the above: even though the stakes are higher than ever we get multiple chapters concerned with Harry dating a completely normie human girl, like a full chapter of awkward date banter, later just them hanging out and I think two sex scenes which I skipped because I was so annoyed at that point, this is not a very long book and focusing on this just seems like the wrong priority to me. Also the love interest of the previous book Lilith simply is more interesting on grounds of being already established and not just. a non-magical human. I think this series has a weakness in introducing a new cast of characters in every book so far and by this point it should already have a well established cast (Lilith and Bautista who both make an appearance in this are excellent characters for example). Likely her new love interest in this book is going to become more interesting later but this book suffers for it.)
With a title like that I expected the main character to be more of a cynic but I've been reading it in the wrong tone. She isn't nihilistic about it she is deeply concerned, and thinks about it every waking hour. Reading from a pov that's so anxious, about quite literally everything is sometimes exhausting. In addition to that sometimes I just had to stop reading because Gilda would do something that made me physically cringe. Like when instead of telling the friend of an old woman that she has passed she starts pretending to be her dead friend via email, because she figures that's what will make her happier. Because we are stuck in her head it almost makes sense why she does it. And of course she is constantly anxious about doing that too.
A lot of people seem to have found this to be depressing. Although the subject matter should be and for the characters IS depressing I found it mostly funny because of the absurdity of the situations. It ended on a more positive note than perhaps realistic, it's definitely hopeful too.
Stand in for whole series
A bit melodramatic sometimes, towards the end it started feeling like a soap opera. But overall I enjoyed it a lot. The training sections were fun, and I really liked the sci-fi elements. I thought the way people talk about space missions and peoples objections to it was handled realistically for a near-future setting.
I read this because I saw some cute panels on tumblr, I'm not familiar or interested in reading the main story. It was cute for what it was and the art is great and very expressive. It's short and sweet but doesn't really have a full conclusion. It felt more like a snippet of their lives than a full story (which makes sense! it's a side story).
Wow! This was just bad at every level. Not even entertaining. I pushed through because it's short and everyone was gushing about how fucked up the ending was. And it was just nothing? Also I don't know the author etc but I find it hard to not see the homophobic connotations of a lesbian obsessed of having a child to the point of doing atrocities.
The dialogue was extremely unnatural, so was the relationship progression, I know I know it's not a normal relationship plus it's basically a short story but as is it just feels like a - “wouldn't it be fucked up if that happened”. Have read 2 sentence horror stories with more substance. Boring.
Unfortunately this was just extremely shallow. The worldbuilding was interesting, as was the concept but it never lived up to it's potential. I don't want to be too harsh on it as I am not the target audience and I don't read YA too often, but I am sad to see all that potential squandered regardless.
(okay I said I don't want to be too harsh but I will complain a bit anyway. This book was probably the perfect example of why “show don't tell” is such a common writing tip. This is something I never even cared about before and I rolled my eyes at this criticism. I get it now! Everyone is making such grandiose statements about their relationships. Not just the romantic relationships either. Amani goes on and on about how Maram and she are like sisters and how Maram would be a great queen but I never felt like either was the case. All Maram does is shift responsibility onto Amani, honestly I thought everyone would be better off if she just stepped off as a Queen. As for being like sisters, there were the seeds of it in the last book but in this they barely interact in this book. Amani just read as having the biggest case of Stockholm syndrome. Maram on her end had a romantic relationship with a woman in this book, which was barely touched upon. I can't believe I am saying this but I almost wish it just wasn't there at all. I was excited for Maram's pov but it is all in flashback, not relevant to the current plot thread. Her love interest shows little personality and has barely any pagetime. I wish she was scrapped and we got Maram's actual thoughts on the real plot more, or else that her love story was actually more relevant somehow. This series originally fell on my radar because someone sold me it as “there is an evil lesbian princess in this one”. If you are also interested for this reason just keep in mind it's an extremely minor and imo not well executed plot)
This book was really fun but I was taken aback by how one little child recommended another a fetish anime that exists in real life. Children do watch this stuff, I don't think its unrealistic for one to go “just ignore the huge boobs it's cool” but that doesn't mean it's okay to just put that in a book aimed at kids. Similiarly, in another case one tells the other they “need to get disney+”....just a strange choice in an otherwise really good book.
Stand in for the whole series.
Fun series that doesn't quite live up to it's full potential. The ending in particular was underwhelming and unsatisfying. It also ends on a sequel hook, which will likely never come.
I would still highly recommend it, for people who don't feel endings ruin an experience. Read it if you think Light Yagami is fun to watch but would rather he was anti-facist and anti-capitalist.
(If you're wondering about the lgbt tag, there is a prominent character who is a trans woman and also the best character in the series by far)
I liked the more science-y parts of it, whenever there was a flashback to the MCs past, whenever they talked about the technical stuff. I liked the world introduced, I liked the main characters situation... I didn't care for any of the mystery or “action” in the book, though I couldn't tell you why.
None of the books in this series are bad but it definitely has never caught the high of the first book again. I do like Roxanne a lot, so I will continue reading as long as there are more books. I hope this isn't the last one.
(Also I still really dislike her with Tom, so I'm hoping a 5th book so they can break up for good I'll admit, though I doubt that would happen)
Representative of the ~15-16 volumes I read.
The first 4-5 volumes are by far my favorite comedy manga. Afterwards it gets increasingly repetitive and non-sensical. Plot points keep repeating. Every new character introduced fits one of two molds. I feel for manga-kas strict deadlines but this was just getting tiresome no matter how much I initially liked it.
So I am just stopping reading before I start to completely detest it. I do recommend the first few volumes still, and since it's a slice of life comedy you do not need to worry about any loose ends when reading.