Melody

I hate to call books "brave" because that often feels patronizing. However, this book continued to surprise me until the last page. Kyr's narrow view of her world was such a perfect restriction and felt so realistic for the situation she's in. She's a little brainwashed fascist being forced to see that her worldview isn't accurate, down to her perspective on the people she loves most. Absolutely lovely book all around.

This book is good! I see quite a few reviewers saying the first 100 pages dragged for them, but I didn't find that to be the case for me. I was very engaged from the beginning and I loved the world instantly.

In particular, I really liked the scale. A lot of sci-fi and fantasy novels I've been reading have featured empires as a part of the history. Makes sense and I generally enjoy that sort of story, but narratives about fighting back and defeating empires can be so exhausting to read for a variety of reasons. In Persephone Station, corporate colonialism is still very present but the story happens at a much, much smaller scale.

However, the author manages to cram in quite a bit of story and I'm super conflicted about it. On one hand, I think this universe is so interesting and would love to see more adventures from this crew. On the other, I think there were a few bits and pieces that just didn't add to the story significantly, including the first chapter. I enjoyed it, but could see why these extraneous bits might annoy other readers.

My only BIG gripe is actually quite small and unimportant. The big bad at the end of the book is pretty underwhelming and talks like a charicature of a villian.

Would not be opposed to some short stories or even another in-world novel!

This could absolutely have taken some bad, tropey turns but Clark managed to avoid them splendidly imo.

Take Luca, who could have been childishly good or cartoonishly evil. She struck a balance between ‘self-intrested' colonialist who doesn't hate the people she's colonizing but also isn't willing to give full sovereignty. The argument she makes for the Qazali to just wait until she gets power and ~then~ they'll receive basic human dignity, sorry about the people who'll die in the meantime, tho. That feels so painfully real.

And Touraine's constant struggle between the Sands, Luca, and the Qazali makes so much sense. Of course her loyalty would be split.

Did knock a point off because I really feel like the first 100 pages could have been condensed to some degree

Seriously, I'm mostly disappointed that it's a triology and book two isn't even out yet

Didn't really do much for me.

Zhu was incredibly boring to me. I wish she had more interests outside of “become great.” Ouyang was so interesting and I would have preferred his story to take more precedence.

No clue if I'll be reading the sequel. I really loved the Author's prose and some of the Gender Things, but I'm not sure if I want to invest the time into reading. We will seeee

unfortunately this is like a 1.5 for me. admittedly, i'm not a huge fan of stories where kids are MCs and i mostly like fantasy and shit, so this book was absolutely not aimed at me. if you generally enjoy high schooler stories, horse girls, teenage sapphics, etc, then you may well like this!!

if you don't really like this sort of story, here's what really turned me off of it lol. the story itself may have been fine but there were some really weird mistakes and tone issues that just killed the whole book for me (like, someone is wearing a “bi-proud” flag instead of “bi-pride” flag or the one sentence fragment a few chapters in that made no sense stylistically so it must have been an editing error??). there were enough of these little weirds that i just couldn't deal. skimmed the last half

it was fine. wish it was gayer tho

man i really don't know about this book. i enjoyed the unspoken name quite a bit, but the tone shift in this one really hit me. everything was a lot more dire and world-endingly bad, instead of the adventurous and momentarily perilous excitement i wanted. also, not enough csorwe :/

if i had to assign colors to each book, the unspoken name is green and blue and dirt brown and the thousand eyes is red and black. if you like the first few chapters after the time jump, stay the course and you may like the end. if you hate them, dnf cause it's not gonna change much until the very, very last pages.

i enjoyed this a lot. it's silly, low-ish stakes and i would murder for winn. it was a good read after something really heavy and dense and i wished i could have spent more time with delly and winn after the end.

Holy fuck

this story really did not work for me in the slightest. the tone, pace, and characters all felt weirdly out of left field and i just really did not get the point by the end. also, this was marketed to me as wlw and there's very little of that on the page, which is a bummer.

also also, petition to remove silly illustrations from e-books? i swear i spent so long scrolling past them

I'm still under the spell of this series, so it's hard to write a clear review. The best thing I can say right now is that, after two months of barely reading, I devoured this whole series in one weekend ¯_(ツ)_/¯

The final epilogue disappointed me a little but it was a mature, realistic ending to a story.

Note I wrote in the back of the book the second I finished: “It's about love and connection and healing and making the world a better place”

I genuinely enjoyed this book so much. While I found the start to be a bit flounder-y and slow, it set the whole story up so well imo. There is definitely a lot of information but thats how I like my mysteries!

The whodunit aspect is so layered that the a-ha! moment is actually quite split up and drawn out. I loved that it wasn't simply, “Oh, here, you're done. Buh-bye!” There are also some interesting moral questions that I'm still thinking about. I honestly could have done with like 20 more pages on the aftermath of the whole thing.

While this is a 5 star rating, I do have some questions (spoilers for the very end of the book): Who is Daniel? How will he stay in Blackheath without competition? Was Oliver lying when he said the rest of Aiden's incarnations would disappear one he left? How are they going to leave this prison and live in the real world? Were Anna and Aiden physically at Blackheath or was it something else? How were the people in charge of the prison able to make this prison without already knowing the murderer?

At the end of the day, I'm gonna put this on my bookshelf and re-read it in a year or two. Can't wait to see it from new eyes. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys a thick manor mystery with a large cast and period settings!

blows a kiss into the wind

This is my first Vonnegut novel. I've been meaning to read his work for years, as I'm frequently getting recc'd his stuff. For whatever reason, I've always been convinced that he wouldn't live up. This book proves that he does. The circular storytelling is such and interesting and perfect way for this story to be told. An inspiration.

First things first, I got this book cause I follow Cheyenne on insta and am a little nerd who liked the outside cover. I made it a goal this year to read less self-help books and more, ya know, other kinds of books, but I'm compulsive and get drunk and order things off Amazon. What can ya do?

As with all self-help books, I am #conflicted about my feelings. There were parts of this that had me going “duh, obviously, who needs this” and parts that had me going “oh damn it was me, i needed this.” I'll most likely slowly implement some of the tips given, but some are just not for me. (No procrastination??? That's literally when I get all of my ideas bruh) But maybe that's the point for me. Procrastination and non-working relaxation are a key part of my loop.

The most important thing, I think, is that I wish this little guy was longer. I think the author could really have expanded on some of the topics and gone deeper and I liked a lot of the anecdotes that were included. I'm interested in this dude's thought processes on some things. He mentioned a blog that I'll probably check out and see if he's written anything more detailed about some of the topics breached here.

I will say that I really like that this guy also works a day job. I get so frustrated reading books like this that are written by people who are so far removed from the place I'm currently at. I think that's what makes me wanna ask him questions about how he schedule's his days, works around his energy flows, etc. This guy gets ~me~ better than a looooooot of people who write self-help style books.

Ultimately, a good book. I'll probably sneak this into my rotation every few months or so (it's only about an hour to read if you don't do any of the activities while reading). I need some of these reminders now and then, even the ones that feel more obvious right now.

I really enjoyed this book and learned quite a lot but DAMN if it wasn't a little difficult to push through. There's a L O T of history and philosophers, ancient historians, cousins of important dudes mentioned. It reads like a textbook, quickly moving from topic to topic. The last two chapters on art and power and portraiture were difficult but ultimately interesting.

Honestly, I'd struggle to give this less than 4 stars anyway, but it's such a quick read that it would feel silly. Less than an hour for a quick one-two punch of inspirtation? Yes, please!

This is full of little bits of advice that Austin Kleon has collected (read: stolen lmao) over the years. Will I use all of his advice? Absolutley not! I live in a studio apartment! I can't have two desks!

But I will start doing the daily log. I'd like to start a swipe file. I'm about to go find a really nice email an old professor wrote to me and put it in my rainy day folder. In a few months/years/decades I might read this again and see what new tips I can glean from it. I'm so excited!

I'm very iffy on this book. There were some chapters and sections that I loved but some were very eh and some were straight up bad advice (the money chapter and the part about tricking yourself out of depression). Overall there are some parts I'll use, like analyzing my stories and such. Definitely glad that I skipped some parts tough.

I really found this to be the kick in the butt I needed to start actively planning my writing and painting practice. While it was somewhat repetitive and not always relevant to me (I get like three emails a day), I think that if you're the kind of person who needs to hear what this book is saying it's worth it!

Look, I've gotta start off with the fact that I first read this book almost a full year ago. I was about to finish college and hadn't read a book that was more than 150 pages for fun in almost 4 years. Don't ask me why I picked up this behemoth but I did. I read it in about a week. It is STILL in my head 49 weeks later.
I'm pretty sure the reason for that is simple: the atmosphere. I underlined and bracketed and scanned pages of whole chunks of this book just to re-read because the atmosphere is truly one of the most beautifully written things I've ever read.
It's funny to me when reviewers say that this is amateurish or an obvious first novel. Genuinely hilarious.

Nice read

Honestly this was a pretty fun book. It's an interesting opportunity to have very morally ambiguous characters who you don't feel obliged to side with. Apparently there may be a sequel coming out, but this book would be fine as a standalone!!

god when i first read reviews for this book i thought people were being overdramatic but dang is the author unlikable. i know she doesnt give a fuck because im a stranger but wowee was that a lot of self-righteousness

thank u, next

Oof. I read this a year or so ago and I still think very sadly of that time. There are a few beautiful turns of phrase and visuals, but mostly I was bored as shit

Read this as a teenager and hated it, but as I'm going through my Goodread's library I feel like I should rate this and leave this article about Card: Orson Scott Card Is Officially the Most Racist Sci-Fi Author