Earwen

this is a book for fans of the game. There is absolutely 0 reason for anyone else to pick it up. Its not well written –it's not well translated (I'm thankful that the fans have taken it upon themselves to translate it but it is what it is. ) but I strongly suspect it wasn't very well written either. So you know, from a non-ff13 fans perspective this is 0 out of 5 no literary or other merit and definitely not the right place to get started.

But if you already played and loved the game, and the characters. Well it's more of the same...sort of. There are some fun interactions, some “oh so that's what happened” moments, a bit of background info and simply more content. But what I said before still applies – it's just not well written. But does it need to be well written – is it not enough to listen to lightning criticize peoples fashion for a whole chapter? Maybe. I don't know. I wish there was more of lightning actually, whether shes criticizing people or not. This girl continues to elude the spotlight despite being the poster girl.

Basically, this isn't essential info but if you love the game you'll find it at least moderately interesting.

A Sheep Among Wolves - 1/5
Fine Print - 5/5
Land of Milk and Honey - 5/5

You see the trouble I have rating this book. It averages out to 3.6 and somehow it feels wrong to give a 4 to a book that contains one of the worst pieces of fiction I read. But also it also contains some of the best? I hope the print version of these are separate so I can rate them accordingly.

I highly recommend the 2nd and 3rd story they were both excellent and everything I wanted this to be.

my original review for first novella below.
—-
First novella was a complete disaster on every level I'm shocked this got approved for the collection. I don't think I read something quite so bad in a while.


-every two sentences there is a thinly veiled psa about mental health, chronic pain, weight, sexuality etc etc inserted very unnaturally. I agree with everything in it technically and generally am weary of people complaining about such topics being shown down their throat but in this case it really was. If this was a YA Issue book that'd be fine but it isn't? I'm not here to be educated about this shit. It wasn't even particularly insightful or new it felt like seeing cold twitter takes inbetween the story. Yes I get it mental health is important. Can we move on.
- and while doing all the above it still managed to fall into classic sexist tropes more at home in a early 2000s teen drama. The most unlikeable characters in this story are beautiful women. In one case the only reason the mc feels disdain for her its that she's hot. In the other case while the chracter is a bully but not in any believable way and the way the story justifies treating her is laughable
-it..completely ignores vtm setting rules. vampires just prancing around during daytime as long as they dont go into the sun? okay. I get the impression this story was written for another setting but the author changed it for this collection. There is nothing tonally or even story wise that ties this to the vtm setting beyond some name drops like saying camarilla once.
-this story had the most obnoxious characters i ever encountered. This is partly because the author uses them to give (unnecessary, unnatural) lessons about mental health but also they're just annoying fucking people who talk in weird unnatural ways. The whole time I was thinking, you guys don't have any friends because you are impossible to converse with.
-the stupid nonsensical twist that makes the whole story laughable if you think about it for two seconds. honestly looking back at some scenes is a comedy and I'm sure this wasn't intended from the start. It was just a twist for twists sake. Nothing in the plot made sense in general and the ending instead of contextualizing it just adds another layer of stupid to it.
-mental health is important <3 unless you're blonde and got big tiddies then well obviously that means you're evil and deserve to die

I think that this is an official part of vtm now is frankly, embarrassing. I hope the other two are better.

mai is super ooc and (spoiler characters) motivations make zero sense. Art is nice as always but none of the beautiful full pages the last one in the series had.

like a trainwreck you can't look away from

cw: bullying, blackmail, physical & sexual abuse, physical & sexual assault, incest probably more

God stop shilling your other book it's obnoxious.

Other than that readable decent thriller. I think it dipped it's hand into topics it didn't know how to handle and what it did handle it did with the grace with nuance of a sledgehammer but it was entertaining enough. Though I think there could be done much more with this premise. The audiobook was pretty well put together. 2.5

This book is as strange as the other reviews say..for the first half. I thought the first half was brilliant I loved the way it entwined the research with the story and the characters own issues. In the second half in comparison it felt aimless and almost generic. I still enjoyed it and I somewhat see the merit in the second half but I don't think it needed to be as long as it is even then.

3.5? I roll it up for now but depending how much it stays with me I might lower it down instead. First half was an easy 4.

Near the end of the book I was annoyed. Everyone was always talking about the shocking twist in it when it was something so straightforward and predictable. I don't think a book needs to be shocking or unpredictable to be good but when it's hyped up this much it's hard not to be disappointed. The rest of the book that element aside while not a slog wasn't anything I was terribly enjoying either. I still think the bulk of it was kind of boring and that the various relationships could have been build up better.

However the very end of the book is in fact truly surprising (though not unpredictable or not foreshadowed- I definitely let my guard down after the first twist) and also made sense looking back. The other thing about it is that it partially resolved a major annoyance I was having with the book that far which is the crazy jilted woman trope with the all signs point to abusive man innocent all along and how the mc kept beating herself over the head with not trusting MEN enough because of her ex. The new ending though does have it's own uncomfortable implications but I'll leave unpacking that to someone else I enjoyed how disturbing it was for what it's worth.

One last thing I want to comment upon is certain controversial element in a thriller story which is that there is a supernatural element to the core fo the story. I cannot believe people actually complained about this considering how early on this comes in. Well not blatantly but it's obvious where it's headed. No idea why anyone would continue reading that is so bothered by this. criticizing this book for the supernatural elements is like criticizing lotr for having rings. The stories existence requires it.

Overall...readable thriller, varying degrees mediocre throughout (depending on your tolerance of straight drama nonsense) but strong last few pages. It really is the kind of book you read for the ending.

Not quite as good as the two other books I read by Melanie Raabe but still a competent thriller. It's a very straightforward story with no huge twists but the characters and writing carry it.

Really wanted to love this book. A lot of the concepts here are good but it shoots itself in the foot with the framing device and constant jokes that ruins all tension. You know from the start things will turn out fine. And while the main character is actually hilarious which makes it even harder to focus on the creepy things that are happening when she's cracking jokes. I don't think it's unrealistic to react to stress and fear that way but because she is writing this book after the fact when we know she is fine it just seemed like she was making fun of the whole situation. I think just the jokes without this framing device I would have welcomed.

On the other hand I do appreciate we know that the dog is going to be fine the whole time I suppose.

This is a puzzle book. If you read it as a regular novel you will be disappointed. Instead see it as the equivalent of the puzzle page of a newspaper. You're not here for the characters or story. You're here to solve a riddle. This is a book that expects your participation. You can just sit back and let the events unfold but you will enjoy it much more if you try to solve it on your own. And it is solveable.

As a puzzle I would give this 5/5

as a novel... the writing and characters were mediocre. There were some instances of classic menwritingwomen.txt too. For all of this I would give it a 2/5. All flaws that would ruin another book. But here it isn't all that relevant. At the end of the day I will mainly judge the book by what it set out to do - be a puzzle. As a puzzle I would give this 5/5. The flaws did bother me to a certain extent but not enough to bog down the rating to more than a 4.

List of rachels offenses (assuming she didnt poison anyone)
-spend a lot of money
-want to go back to italy
-not marry phililp
-be friends with an italian dude who is in love with her

List of rachels offenses (assuming she DID poison both)
-spend a lot of money
-want to go back to italy
-not marry phililp
-be friends with an italian dude who is in love with her
-make some dude who tried to murder her and is a general creep sick for a few weeks
-kill her husband who refused to give her money for basic living expenses and questioned her every move


What's most interesting about this book is that the discussion around it centers around whether Rachel was “evil” or not when even assuming the worst of her it's clear she would be the victim in this scenario. It comes easier to people I suppose to forgive a lovesick man than to excuse a woman for not appreciating his advances. Phillip is obsessed with her, constantly is manipulating her to stay and is just a general creep. Not to mention he attempts to murder her and then acts offended she doesn't want to be alone with him after that. Anything Rachel might have done at that point is self defense. So if she did poison him...good for her! Next time up the dosage.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is exactly the point. Whether rachel did poison him or not is irrelevant entirely. At the end of the book phililp is alive and rachel is dead- because of him. And yet he is still self obsessed about whether the woman he killed was deserving of it - and so is the majority of the readers it seems.

We truly do live in a society.

I was really uncomfortable with the way this book used a characters weight as a shorthand to make her seem gross and dislikeable, but otherwise solid mystery/family drama.

Also the lead characters girlfriend was one of the most insufferable love interests I experienced. That was at least somewhat intentional considering the lead thinks that too at times but ultimately I found it hard to cheer for the two to get a happy ending together.

thank you goodreads for removing my rating and read dates from this because i dared add a missing tag to it today

This book was...fine. I have no criticism at all honestly. The writing was beautiful, I liked the characters, the concept is great. By all accounts this should be 5/5 but it never goes the extra mile to be great. Just a solid good book.

This book is very frustrating at times but overall the message is great and made me think and that's all I can ask for I suppose.

My main complaints are..

I almost dropped it in the first half because of the constant baffling preconceived (and racist) notions he keeps mentioning european/american people particularly his students have. For a while it seemed very aimed at a western audience in that regard but I'm glad a stuck with it. Though it really opened my eyes on how ignorant the average western person is about “non-western” countries. Ironically the chapters that were meant to make the (western) reader think “oh things aren't so bad in the world over!” made me despair for the western world lol anyway...

Second thing is a lot of the “things are better than you think!” talk is..semantics. For example he says most of the word is middle class and a small part of the population is actually extremely poor! Sounds great until you read his definition of middle class which sounds like hell lol. Or the talk about how certain things like vaccination rates or percentage of girls getting an education for example are getting higher. Well duh, they weren't about to go lower?

This all makes it sound very negative and yet I give it 4 stars. I agreed with the bulk of what he said and the core message of fact checking and not falling into what he calls a dramatic word view. We're getting an overload of skewed info everyday and it's important to actually sit down and cross check before falling into hopelessness. And then fall into it anyway probably because the world really is kinda fucked. Just a bit less so thank you might think.

This isn't a thriller, and barely a mystery. It is a family drama. You know the big secret of the family less than halfway in, and the culprit of the main mystery considering the number of characters is more than obvious from the start.

also cw for incest and pedophilia. besides the obvious the protags main love interest as a teen is also much older than her and this is never called attention to even when they reunite when older. Found that strange in a book with such themes. Almost as it's going "hey this dude might have been taken advantage of a teen but at least they're not blood related!"

Really dropped the ball towards the end and I didn't need the transphobia in the final third either.

My final opinion is that this is a very readable thriller despite being 800 pages (I read it in 4 days), and I loved the two leads. But it's awkwardly plotted, and I thought at times it just was shocking and depressing just for the sake of being shocking and depressing. Considering the subject matter is already horrifying enough I don't think they needed to go the extra mile.

A quick search shows a million forum posts decrying that this is about lesbians but no other interpretation of the story makes any sense. Just looking at the hard facts and no personal interpretation of the ice stuff...
-unn keeps away from the other kids for reasons she refuses to talk about
-siss keeps starring at unn at school to the extent the other kids comment on it. Her reaction is basically “and what about it”
- the connection they feel that they cant put into words and their weird awkwardness and excitement around eachother which the first 25% of the story describes
- “we should take our clothes off itd be fun - no wait im embarrassed now this was the worst idea”
-unn tells siss that she has some deep secret that she wouldn't even tell her mother but she may tell siss who then freaks out because she doesn't want to hear it yet and leaves
-talking about the same secret unn says she won't go to heaven
- the next day siss is excited to meet unn at school and greet her so that all her friends know “how they stand”
- siss freaking out about people asking what unn told her even though she technically said nothing unn obviously knows what unn meant.
- siss is afraid the unnamed new leader girl of her friend group will end up missing like unn because she took a liking to her and tells her basically that they can't go to eachothers houses.


Either the author intended to write it as a lesbian story or he has no idea how kids talk to eachother. Either way if you're reading this in the current century it's impossible not to read it as gay.

..this isn't a review I just got annoyed at some forum posts from 2004 ¯_(ツ)_/¯

If I had to describe this book with one word it'd be “unconvincing”. I'm not convinced about Glass' machinations, I'm not convinced about Nona's feelings for her friends and especially not for looks up name Regol (I didn't actually care enough to look his name and I don't care if it's not right), I wasn't convinced of the large scale battle or how it was resolved, I'm not convinced about any of the spoilery developments, and I wasn't even convinced of the person Nona ends up with even though I was rooting for it.

I also wasn't convinced the flashback section of the story had any business being in this book and not the previous one, booth books would have been stronger for it. The last book felt incomplete and this one felt divided.

Could have used those pages to give Ara and Clara much needed focus. They're supposed to be important but barely get more mention than the rest of Nona's friend group. Clara is understandable though when she does appear her conclusion still seems rushed but Ara really neded more (See the ending being unconvincing).

Nothing in it is terrible but nothing is particularly good either? Okay conclusion to a okay continuation of a great start. I'm not even really disappointed it delivered the bare minimum to be good and that's fair enough.

For some reason no one in the reviews deigns this worth mentioning but this book contains brother/sister incest.

It was good otherwise but why did that have to be a thing. I really don't care that they aren't blood related either, in fact the implication that it's fine because of this pisses me off more. Non-blood related family are just as real as blood related. Their relationship would be terrible even if they weren't siblings honestly the male love interest is just an ass.

Moving on...I enjoyed the book, I really like how this author includes malayan beliefs in her work. I didn't think this was nearly as good as the ghost bride though. There just seemed to be a lot of ideas thrown in that didn't really connect and the end of the book weirdly shifted focus to the “romance”. And honestly? Even the romance wasn't really resolved.

The writing was beautiful and I look forward to reading her future works even though I really hope she got the incest stuff out of her system with this.

I have never read a book so mediocre in every conceivable way. The end devolved into a not even laughably bad horror movie. The characters were ridiculously cartoonish it was impossible to care what happened to them. Halfway thru the book the main character declared that she thought of all the others as friends and trusts them. I can't see why considering all they do is bicker. The only ones she had real conversations with were the Designated Love Interest (because we needed one of these) and the rich spoiled teen, and even those barely. The closest time the book got to being scary is the very beginning when the houses history was explained. After that everything was so cartoonish and hard to take seriously. I'm half wondering if this was supposed to be a parody but it wasn't self aware enough for me to really believe that. It wasn't scary, it wasn't thrilling, it wasn't suspenseful. Failing all that you'd think it'd be funny at least but it wasn't even that.
I only wish it was as bad as it was at the end from the get go so I hadn't stuck with it in hopes it might get better.

I question the decision to take the story of a real life scientist woman, who has very little known about her beyond her discoveries, and make a decent chunk of the story about her pining after some man. There is no way to know whether Mary was actually involved with him in reality, but it is telling when the story of a scientist is taken and put a ridiculous romance story in. Is it unfathomable to think a woman might not have interest in men? Or simply prefer her scientific discoveries even if she does have interest? Why must a man take center stage in this story advertised as being about two female friends? Why must the same man be the driving conflict between the two making them get into a ridiculous, unbelievable fight? Why must Mary not only be portrayed as a lovesick, stupid girl but also turn away from fossils because of perceived rejection? Why must Elizabeth be portrayed as jealous of Mary because of the attentions from said man when she herself expresses nothing but annoyance at him? Why when early in the book she seems perfectly content with her lot suddenly she is so upset that Mary might get attention from men, attention Elizabeth recognizes will never lead to anything, and be jealous of her still?

Out of the two fictional books I found about Mary Anning this was the one not labeled romance but about friendship between Elizabeth and Mary. Is it this hard to write a story about two women, two scientist women and not make it about a men and their bickering over men.

Before and after this chunk of the story the book was pretty good. So obviously the author is capable. But writing about women without making it about men is apparently unimaginable to some regardless of talent.

Considering the main plot of this book this spent way too much time on unimportant matters and rushed through the actual meat of it. This volume in itself could be multiple books and it makes no sense within the fiction that this is a memoir that so much time would be just glazed over. All the buildup to the main “twist” (for the lack of a better word) was done very well across all books but then it's just....handwaved away. Disappointing in that regard but enjoyable nonetheless.
Still, good series would recommend.

Do lgbt kids really read these books or is it just for us lgbt adults to coo over I wonder.

4.5...might roll up to 5

I'm sad this book isn't more well known despite being out for 10 years. It's about different generations of lesbian women and how they interact and intersect. The two main point of views are a modern lesbian woman from the 2000s who got dumped by her gf and visits her lesbian aunt she never met, and said lesbian aunt who is nothing like what she expected her to be. The story follows different time lines and spans decades.