Nathalie
A return to form! My second favorite of this trilogy, probably. And I just really like Eli Vanto.
Thrawn remains an interesting character, but it still remains to be seen how interested I'm going to be for his other upcoming trilogy. He does need interesting side characters for it to work, otherwise it's just getting stale.
This one was, aside from Rebels, also very intertwined with Rogue One and the Death Start project. And therefore also featured a lot of inner Empire and their politics which I find fun to read about.
Started off as a potential 5 star book but then the initial intrigue wore off a bit, and while still solid, not yet a favorite.
A standout positive: the worldbuilding. I barely care about worldbuilding half the time, but this one did it wonderfully and I could perfectly imagine the world while barely a few pages in.
I also really liked the characters, and especially the side characters. Fetch himself is also great, though can be a bit infuriating (so much self-hate!) but in a way it's understandable and just a part of him. I do hope there's some progress in the next ones to learn to move on.
As this was the first book of the series, there's a lot of back and forth between present time and flashbacks, as well as suddenly a bunch of paragraphs about the world's history. Some of those prevented the flow of the story a bit.
Even though I wasn't super gripped by it, I'm still curious enough about the sequel and intend on checking that out. There is a lot of potential here and I hope the next ones takes advantage of that.
What I noticed with this book is that it didn't take me too long to like the characters. Characters are an “end all be all” for me, and I need to like them for a book to be even remotely enjoyable. Sometimes I just never even warm up to any characters, so this was excellent.
I had trouble caring for the main storyline though. The action sequences were very long, half the time I was just confused, and other times I just wanted things to be over with. It also took me an embarassingly long time to learn the characters' full names. Why is this important exactly? In one character's POV people would be referred to by a different name (their first name, or family name) than in the other character's POV. I had to reread the summary just to double check sometimes.
My main points are just silly personal things I have trouble explaining, so it kind of comes across as if I didn't like it. But I did! And I especially liked Winter and Bobby! But I wouldn't say I liked it or them enough to be interested in checking out the sequels.
It started off well enough (I do like Clone Wars era stories, and I like the idea of it) but I got tired of it about halfway through. I've mentioned it before, but I think I would have preferred this story (or well, the flashback parts of it) in the The Clone Wars series itself. The present day parts had a way too talkative Vader and it just didn't really feel like Vader to me. Just not interesting enough for it to be an entire book.
Incredibly interesting and engaging read! I had never heard of Theranos before I listened to this, but it is super fascinating to read about how it all went down. I'm not sure there's a lot more to find out about this (except for more from Holmes' perspective) but I'm still interested in watching other media on this subject. Also great to hear that there's apparently a feature movie announced for this!
I love every single Star Wars movie. Do I recognize the flaws? Yes. Do I still enjoy them with all my heart? Absolutely.
In the same way I also really enjoyed Rise Of Skywalker, though it left a lot of gaps in the why's and the how's of things. This novelization seeks to answer some of those. It also respects the other canon books a bit more than the movie did (cough Snap) and it's a bit easier to slip other canon stuff in there. This movie in particular suffered from things moving too fast and conveying what characters were thinking. This definitely helps in that regard.
A fun read! Not necessarily a must, per se. I don't think it would make you like the movie more if you didn't beforehand, but it provides fun little extras and explanations.
Nothing much to say about this one unfortunately. It's enjoyable enough, but not much more than that. There's a mystery that needs solving, and I had trouble caring about it enough to keep it suspenseful for me. So I took way longer about finishing this than I otherwise would. Still wanted to finish it so it definitely wasn't bad! Just not “keeps you on your toes” good.
Considering this is about a crew with very different people and members who have to learn to trust eachother and it's all just very pirate-y... I didn't love it. It's very Firefly-esque (sometimes eye rollingly so), but I didn't come to care for the characters as much. I found Jez and Bess to be pretty interesting, as well as Crake, but that's all still to an extent. Enjoyable book overall, even if it took me way longer to finish than it should have, but I wouldn't say it convinced me to check out its sequel.
It's an alright story, not super thrilling and I'm glad it wasn't longer than it was. Though unfortunately this story is only available as an audio drama and I sometimes had trouble knowing which character was speaking.
Apparently this has quite a few tie-ins with Master & Apprentice so I can't wait to get on that!
Revenge of the Sith, although in my opinion the best of the prequels, might not be the greatest movie of all time, but it did have one great story hidden in there. Not as executed as well as it could have, but the novelization more than makes up for it. The politics aspect is great, and how Palpatine's influence over everyone and Anakin is described. Anakin's turn is way more believable and it hurts way more if you also have access to all the characters' thoughts, both him and others such as Obi-Wan and Padme. I found it to be very gripping and entertaining to listen to even if I obviously knew all scenes that were going to take place. It really makes the story shine.
I'm... not entirely sure of what I just read? What was the story here exactly? There was a bunch of travelling, with a bit of intrigue happening, some assumed tension going on between Laurence and Temeraire (which then turns out to be a non-issue). There's a confrontation, and then the book is done.
This is almost like a story that could fit in an actual sequel, but it's recounted as something that happens inbetween the books or something. The story doesn't exactly warrant its own novel.
Characters are still great, but otherwise.... eh.
As someone who didn't expect too much from this book, I was really pleasantly surprised. A lot of the stories here were really great, and managed to make me care for certain background characters in a really short amount of time.
Talking about characters - ever wanted to know the stories of the Mos Eisley Cantina Band? Captain Antilles? Biggs? The stormtroopers who were told “These aren't the droids you're looking for”? Hell, even Qui-Gon Jinn and Yoda? You get all of that and more!
Some of the stories do end up being a bit eh, but everything else more than makes up for it.
As the title says, this book is about Leia's pre-Rebellion days. More specifically on how she got caught up in all of it, as a sixteen year old Princess.
There's some cool stuff in here (Crait!), a bunch of new character information (Leia's mother Breha), and, what Claudia Gray excels at, great characterization (both for Leia herself and her own side characters).
I didn't find it as good as either of her other Star Wars works though, but still very much worth a read.
We haven't had many new canon books focused on Luke yet (except for Heir to the Jedi, which we don't talk about). I think his stories will be free roam as soon as The Last Jedi releases, but until then, we get very, VERY, small tidbits.
This one doesn't really add anything to the overall canon, or to the character of Luke himself. What has this book confirmed once again? Luke is a pretty good dude.
The stories (or “legends”) told here though, have to be taken with a grain of salt. This is established as the first story sort of retells the start of A New Hope, and refers to Luke as “Luke Clodplodder”. Other stories are about the characters in this one talking about their experience meeting Luke, and they all range from “really?” to “cool”, but nothing that really stands out. I for one refuse to take the “Jabba's Palace” story seriously, while I did like “I, Droid” a lot.
A fun and surprisingly short read, but not a required one.
Alright, where to begin.
First off, I find giving this 2 stars a tiny bit cruel (as it is well written), but I just did not care about any of it.
The story is about Kvothe (whom is telling his life's story, so there's a mix of the present and the past). I quite get that most of us paint ourselves in a better light than we actually are when recounting events, but not so much that it becomes utterly ridiculous. Kvothe is amazing at everything. He's slaying records left and right, creating legends and stories about him on his first day, has no problems with whatever task he is set out to do. Every woman he ever meets is the most beautiful being on Earth, and luckily he can quite often come to their rescue so of course he is also quite adored.
Mind you, Kvothe is not without his ~flaws. He's lived on the streets for a long time when he was young, he's very poor (they beat you over the head with his one), he also immediately squanders his money whenever he gets some, and he can be quite stupid.
The worst thing though, is that he can be incredibly obnoxious and pretentious at times, and it's no wonder so many other students and teachers can't stand him.
None of these things were apparent at the start of the story though, and I'm not sure what about it made me unable to really get into it. Because I quite like first person POVs (if well done). They can make it easier for me to really get into and understand the character. Yet for some reason in this case it just felt very distant, and I never felt that connection. It might have been because the story is being told to us, rather than happening in current time, but I don't really know.
There's other little things too. I mentioned that they beat us over the head with the fact that Kvothe is poor. They mention at least three times that “You wouldn't understand if you've never been poor” and it just comes across as really condescending. The exact same sentence also appears, but it's replaced with “if you've never been a musician”. It's just weird.
The chapters also frequently end with some ominous sentence like “This would be the last time this guy would tell this story” or “Too bad I'd never see him again”, and sure, such things are quite effective when used moderately. But after the third time in a short while it just makes me roll my eyes. I realize that these specific things are purely nitpicking though.
Aside from Kvothe, I found not much other things to like. Surprisingly, I actually quite liked Denna. Her character isn't ~nice, but I find her interesting. I do not like the pedestal Kvothe puts her on though, or how absurdly obsessive he tends to get.
I'm sure there's other things that were fine, but I can't seem to think of them right now.
I wasn't into it from the start, but it did get better pretty quickly.
We follow 3 POVs in this book - Kaden, Valyn, and Adare. Unfortunately though, the only POV I found interesting was Valyn's (cadet school, murder mystery, great side characters, Annick <3), which luckily was also the biggest part of the book. Kaden's story only got more interesting towards the end, and Adare's never got that great at all.
Overall I did enjoy this way more than I thought I would, but I'm not super invested in its world beyond this book.
Aside from that nothing really jumps out, except that sometimes it had the tendency to take multiple pages to explain a new term that would appear in the dialogue, which in turn took me out of the story for a bit. Nothing too bad, but definitely noticeable.
These are the kinds of books and stories that you wish could just keep going forever and ever.
I've been procrastinating reading this series just because I don't want it to be quite over yet (while yes, I know there's more coming), but I'd hate to arrive at a point where I have no new Royce and Hadrian stories to look forward to.
As for this particular entry - Hell yeah! For some reason I always assumed the Chronicles series would interest me less than Revelations, as there's a lot of interesting development between these two (and other characters) in the latter that changes the dynamic completely, but I am also totally into this. Gwen also gets some much needed development, and I just want everyone to succeed at everything.
Either this was not the ideal book to read at 6 am on the train each morning, or perhaps my expectations were just a bit too high. Which is weird, because I normally appreciate humor like this, and I found characters like Carrot and Vimes very endearing, and I also found it clever at times. Yet for some reason I just didn't connect that much with it, or at least not as much as I would have liked. Which is pretty frustrating for me as I can't exactly pinpoint why that is.
Now this is the kind of dragon story I'm here for.
I really enjoyed this. What mostly makes up my enjoyment is the relationship between Laurence and Temeraire and everything surrounding it. Unfortunately though, I did not care that much about anything else (aside from the other dragons) and so the action scenes felt a bit tedious to me, as I was never all that worried about anyone.
But man, I do quite love these main characters a whole bunch.
I have a few YouTubers that I enjoy and follow, but not a lot I'd buy books for. Emma Blackery however, I find to be worth it. She's also around my age which makes her more “hashtag relatable” to me.
As good as a book this was, I wasn't the targeted demographic for it. Teens and young teens will get a ton out of this, while I more enjoyed the personal anecdotes and just the general motivational messages in it. Still very enjoyable and interesting throughout.
I love team stories, and I especially love stories about morally ambigious people, as from our point of view, they're straight up evil, but they believe they're the good guys.
Inferno Squad is a team that was assembled after the destruction of the first Death Star (and may be an answer to the Rebels' Twilight Company in a way). The book is also a prequel to the Battlefront II single player campaign, which also features a few of this book's characters, mainly Iden Versio. I didn't closely look at the character list of the game, so I wasn't sure whether all the characters would surive in the end or not, which kept things exciting on that front.
I loved the rest of it too. I wasn't too sure about Iden at first as a character, but I was totally into it by the end. The rest of the team grew on me much easier.
Story wise, most of the time in the book is spent as an undercover mission with a Rebel team that have connections to Saw Gerrera's partisans. In there, there are a few connections to the Clone Wars series and the Rebel Rising book about Jyn's youth. Especially the latter might be good reading before getting to this, because there's a few character crossovers and for simply getting a bit of context when it comes to the state of the Rebels at that point.
Even if I'd just be judging it on whether it made me more excited for Battlefront II or not... Hell yeah!