Harley
This was one of the most tense books I've ever read. From the first sentence to the last, nothing ever feels solid. Each person's story and motives keep changing throughout the story. Even after finishing, I'm still reeling from the end of the story.
For the first time in a good while, I could never tell where the book was going. I could never tell who was telling the truth, who was lying, who was sane.
I would love to see this in a movie or short series form. It's that good.
Alright. This one is hard to review. I really enjoyed every single character and their dialogue. Honestly, Ursula is gifted with character development. However, the story was just ok. This is more of a 21st Century Lovecraft novel. It's not bad, but the horror parts felt too fantasy-like to be frightening. Anyways. I would definitely consider reading more of her Kingfisher books.
Rating: 4.5
Man this was a whirlwind. It's been awhile since I've been absolutely sucked into a book.
The unnamed main character and her brother live in a poor slum of Argentina where things are a little rough around the edges. The main character finds out at a young age that when she eats earth, the earth tells her stories of what has happened to people. The rest of the community finds this out and start bringing her dirt that is tied to people who are missing or have died without knowing how.
That's as much as I'll give away.
I absolutely loved how grounded in reality the story is. Even though our main character has this fantastic ability, this story isn't a superhero story. Our main character isn't trying to save the world from some unspeakable evil. She's trying to keep herself and brother alive in a world where things can turn quickly.
Honestly, I don't think I've ever read a book with a voice quite like this main character. And I hope to read more from Reyes.
This was a hard one to rate. The story was a slow burn, and absolutely steeped in wonderful culture. I loved learning about different cultures which surprisingly lend themselves to sci-fi writing.
However, Binti's character is very much a Mary Sue. It feels like she's pulled through the story and doesn't get much chance to actually make decisions and survives insurmountable odds that don't always make sense.
There were also some descriptive repetition that felt unnecessary. I loved learning about ojitze and the culture behind it, but felt it was mentioned entirely too many times.
Overall, I will definitely watch the series if it does come to Hulu, and I would probably pick up another Binti book if another is written.
I really enjoyed this one, but there were a few things that held me back from giving this a full 5 stars. Let me start with what I enjoyed, which there is much. The alien-colonizing-earth story is far from new, but Turnbull created a version with an interesting perspective of it being just another colonization in the Virgin Islands long history. I haven't done much research into the topic, but Turnbull gives some of the history of the islands through the lens of one of the characters and it really enlightened me to the issues in the VI. I liked his aliens. They pulled from different sources, but felt entirely refreshing.
His story was a good mix of science fiction and literary fiction. But here is where things diverge a bit. I have absolutely no qualms of the science fiction in this book. However, this book is horny as hell. I almost put this book down after 30 odd pages of affairs and teenage hormones. The first little bit of the story sets up the characters, and then it shifts to five years after colonization. The setting up didn't really feel all that necessary. It almost felt like you could have removed it and sprinkled a bit of background throughout the book, but instead was put all up front in one chapter. Those parts just weren't for me.
I had the pleasure of hearing a bit of the audiobook while reading, and hearing the dialect helped me set the dialect in my brain as I was reading. I really like the representation and enjoyed seeing this kind of story from a different perspective.
This book was beautiful. It's a modern fairy tale that doesn't pull punches. Some of the political/classist humor reminded me of Terry Pratchett's writing which I thoroughly enjoyed. Oyeyemi thoroughly conveys feelings and emotions even during whimsical moments. I love how the setting and story flits between hard reality and whimsy without there being any clear boundaries.
I felt the theme in this story was about holding yourself back from new experiences because you hold onto your past. That's something I struggle with and was a good reminder.
I loved this book (and am slightly confused by the ratings and reviews here), and I'll be reading her other books and keeping an eye on new ones. I also had the pleasure of listening to some of the audiobook which was read by Oyeyemi herself. She has such a wonderful voice and it was nice hearing the nuances of the story through the author herself.
This was a fun pleasant read. There were a few spots that felt a bit out of touch from our current reality, however, nothing too offensive. The politics story arc was mostly lost on me since it seemed to be locked in time. However, the church and the bank robbery story arcs had me laughing out loud. Such classic humor.
DNF.
I'm not the target audience. I figured since I grew up on the east coast of Canada and I'm now a parent I would find some stories that I could relate to, but unfortunately not. The target audience is definitely empty nesters. The stories are wonderful and light hearted, but it just didn't hold my interest.
I had high hopes for this one after the first couple chapters, and then it just kind of fell flat.
It's not bad, but not extremely memorable either. It felt a bit more YA than I like as the story went on. I loved the idea of different Londons as well as Kell's character and his relationship with his “brother” Rhy. Unfortunately I didn't really care for Delilah. She was too much of a cookie-cutter fantasy thief. The action scenes were a bit meh and felt like mostly like luck that anyone survives. There were also scenes that were a bit too anime for my liking.
Won't be continuing the series.
This was just ok. It didn't really add anything to either episode VIII or IX. There were parts that were fun to read, but it felt like the author didn't have much space to do her own thing. I have a feeling the editors and LucasArts had a strangle on RoanHorse as to what she needed to write.
A few things I really didn't like:
- Hearing Wedge Antilles say, “It's like opposite day in here.” It's nearly as bad as Finn saying “the cops will be here any minute,” in episode XIII
- I don't remember Poe Dameron being so narcissistic in the movies. It's mentioned at least three times in the book that he loves his own hair. Even going as far as betting a pilot that he will shave his head if he loses a race against them.
- It didn't really feel like it had that much of a plot. In fact, the McGuffin needed in the story is not even mentioned until almost half way through the book. And it feels like the plot should answer some questions between the two movies, but it doesn't seem to add to either movie.
- Finn's characterization in the book is over-exaggerated and a little annoying to read. Especially at the party.
I'm a parent of 4 kids, ranging from 7 to 2. I've always wanted to be a dad, so I didn't always relate to Birbiglia's feelings and thoughts. However, he wrote them in a way that made it completely understandable and heartfelt. This book was wonderful and sad, and hilarious. I honestly loved it. This is probably the only book that me crying with laughter.
This was a hard read. There were full chapters that could have been left out, however the parts that were good, were really good. But this took me longer to read because I just wasn't interested in a lot of the extra stuff in the book.
I also had a hard time with the ending. I felt like Sapkowski Spoilerdidn't know whether he wanted to kill off Geralt at the end of the series or not. I would have been alright with either, but it flipped back and forth in the last chapter. However, the actual resolution of the story (two chapters before the end of the book) was great.
My two big issues:
1. The full chapters of Nimue and Condwiramurs didn't really seem to add anything to the story. It felt like fluff that you could probably skip (almost) completely and would been fine without it.
2. The war chapter dragged on. I don't mind war scenes, but I struggled with this chapter simply because it wasn't interesting.
I didn't sign on to The Witcher series for the war scenes, or other scholars that are researching historical events, I signed on to follow Geralt and his story. For this being the largest book in the series, I expected more, not less.
Rating: 4.5
This was another great book in the series. Overall I really enjoyed the book and was stoked to start the next one. However, there were a few things that I struggled a bit with. There was a full chapter that felt a like a lull. It didn't feel like it provided all that much information, however, knowing Sapkowski, it probably will come back as important in the next book. Secondly, there was a repeated paragraph that felt like it was alluding to some kind of foreboding tension, but there was none. Thirdly, Sapkowski experiments quite a bit with voice and narration in this book which is quite different from the first 3 books. I enjoyed it in some places, but it pulled me out of my concentration in others. Overall, I'm not sure it was as effective as it was intended.
tl;dr - It was an extremely good entry in the series, with a few minor nitpicks that don't kill the story one bit.
This was a delightful read. I know little about stock markets, but Vaughan makes the subject very interesting. He explains different techniques for trading in ways that even I can understand. Navinder and the people he surrounded himself with were very interesting to read about. The ending actually kind of surprised me and made me smile.
This book was a great mix of biography and story-telling. It never really felt dry and there always seemed to be some kind of interesting drama happening.
I finished reading it the “traditional” way, and I'm waiting to finish reading it in the “Baroness Sequence” before giving a full review.
Read the “traditional” way, this book was quite beautiful. There were a few points where it pulled a little bit, Landragin has a beautiful way of describing emotions and settings. About 7/8 of the way through the book, there is quite a twist that I did not expect and absolutely loved. It's a tragic story, but a beautiful one.
Review of the “Baroness Sequence” to come...
I really wanted to like this book, but I fell off the boat half way through and couldn't finish it.
The way Garber describes life as an undocumented immigrant is riveting and wonderful, and I wish I could have a book just about that. The fantasy aspects of this book were just too shallow and felt poorly planned. I wish I could describe the whole “young adult” feeling I get from certain books, because this is very much it.
I'm marking 3 stars because I really did enjoy the first quarter of the book and wish I had a whole novel based around that idea.
I really really enjoyed this story, but I have to knock off a star for the ending. It feels as though Koep had two stories he wanted to write and mashed them together. I don't want to spoil anything of course. However, I'm still absolutely entranced by the story itself, and would still highly recommend reading it.
The writing and dialogue was fantastic. There were twists and turns at every corner. I can't wait to pick up book two.
Rating: 3.5
This wasn't a bad book by any means, but it wasn't amazing either. I think would've fathered a short tv series based on the material. I really enjoyed the humor, and the story was decent. The setting and the ideas behind Los Verticales was just ok. It actually didn't feel terribly important to the actual story. The brief likened it to Black Mirror, but it felt more like a simple brutish comedy.
It was a fun read, with some twists and turns but ultimately wasn't all that memorable. That being said, I'm going to keep Adams on my radar for his future work.
Rating: 4.5
I'm really not one for romance novels. I tend to find them predictable and pretty shallow when it comes to writing. However, Oona Out of Order was a very good read.
The writing was very well thought out, and the twists were pleasantly surprising. I am a music nerd, so I loved all the music references. The premise was also really unique and worked really well.
So why knock a half a point? Two reasons. I really only give 5 stars to books I would read more than once. And although this was a pleasant read, I probably won't pick it up again. Secondly, there is a lot of explicit sex scenes. I think 4 or 5 in total. I'm not a fan of gratuitous sex scenes in any media. I will say that these scenes were part of Oona's character development, but they could have been a bit less explicit.
I would equate it to watching a pleasant romance movie that has a unique twist.