Nathalie
This is a book that I'd been looking forward to reading quite a long time. It's been recommended to me on Audible for about a hundred times, and it interested me a lot based on its description. However, I can't help but feel disappointed now that I've finished it.
I find it very hard to put it into words exactly what was missing for me, but I lacked a connection to the story. It slowed down in pace often enough, and there were chapters that I felt were not needed, and I could live with that, but it was hard to really grasp the story at times. We have a main plot, that is heavily touched upon at the start of the book, and only resurfaces for a bit at the end, but in the meantime we also have (magical?) beasts on the loose in a forest and some high-powered people in the city aren't all what they seem, but neither of those two had a real effect on the story or particularly high stakes. The beasts felt random, and the political intrigue felt almost like a story filler until we got to the actual thing, which will likely be most of the next book. Since they're leaving the city, are we even going to see much of it in the next one?
When it comes to characters, there are quite a few. Aedan is our main character, and he's alright, but again I was missing that connection. Osric is the true MVP though, and I liked Lorrimer as well, but that's about it.
The parts of the story I did find interesting though, was the whole beginning in Mistyvales with just a bunch of kids having adventures and having fun, as well as the school parts with the lessons and the exams and the students helping eachother out. That's definitely when I was most into it, but I felt otherwise it spun a bit out of control and wanting to be too many things at once. Which is why it's three stars, because overall I liked it, but I'm just a bit down on it because I felt that it could have been much more (or at least much less, like just if the story was trimmed down, or just with a focus shift).
Ultimately a very good conclusion to the story. Not my favorite compared to the other trilogies in this world, but satisfying nonetheless.
This might have been the first one in which I really didn't look forward to certain POV chapters, but it still turned out pretty okay by the end. I would still recommend reading it, even if it wasn't a necessity for the following trilogy.
I may very well be missing something, but I feel like most of the story just went over my head.
The style in the book is more descriptive than dialogue-heavy, but even then things moved very fast and were not given time to settle (so. much. travelling.). At times I didn't even know where we were or who certain characters were. Ged also seemed to be very accepting of everything that happened to him and I had trouble relating to him as a character.
I did like the story, in theory, and the last few pages were beautiful, but also abrupt, and I was surprised to see it was over already. I find the prose also very good, but maybe not for me personally.
On a sidenote, I have no idea where the Harry Potter comparisons are coming from? The wizard school is featured in maybe 2-3 chapters and not even very similar? The world and characters are also totally different? But alas.
This installment was very clearly one giant setup for what's to come next (pretty much building on stuff without payoff... yet), but pretty interesting nonetheless. Especially because we finally got back to some perspectives of characters we haven't seen in a while and see what they've been up to.
I'm starting to really dislike the keepers' storyline at this point though, since aside from the dragons, a lot of it has been taken over by the romance (and I use romance lightly because it's more like lusting after one another) and I don't much care for it nor really see the point.
Very excited about certain confrontations that'll hopefully come to pass though, as well as sincerely worried about some! Bring it on.
If you've seen the movie, and you want to get even more out of the movie, read this.
The novelization is pretty much a written out script of the movie, but it adds so much. In the literal sense, there's a few extra scenes that we weren't shown (nothing big), but some of the extra dialogue and really getting what every character is thinking just deepens everything that happens and it makes some scenes even more beautiful than they already were. Absolutely loved it.
Wow. This is a really hard book to describe, both in story and style. Parts of it are in second person (you get used to that pretty quickly) and there's some uses of narrative that are pretty unique and great ways in which different storylines come together.
However, I do think that I need more time to think about it more to truly appreciate it because I'm not sure I fully get and understand everything that happened in it. Granted, there's a sequel, so that may have been the point, but I do feel a bit disconnected from the book and I'm not sure I'm interested in checking out its follow-up at this moment. Maybe someday, because I did find it very intriguing.
Growth. Decay. Transformation. Pretty much a continuation of the first book, with further developments for both characters and story. And especially the characters went places I didn't quite expect (but were great!). Very curious how this series further develops though, since this one did have sort of a definitive ending.
Ultimately a super interesting and juicy story, but I didn't feel as if I got more out of this compared to say, reading the plot outline online. I missed some of the immersion and emotion that some of the other books were able to do, whereas I felt this one was more “matter of fact”.
Lyra is pretty awesome though, and little Jyn is super cute!
I've been reading this book since forever (slightly over exaggerated since it's been 10 days, but I usually do finish a 400 page book in less than a day), so today I said “fuck it” and went ahead and finished it.
That oughta tell you enough about my investment in this book. The story itself is interesting - what if the Nazis won the war, and what if the experiments they conducted lead into a certain girl, Yael, being able to change her appearance at will.
Yael is on a mission to kill Hitler, and to do this she has to, disguised as Adele Wolfe, win a (very long) race. But of course, not everything goes as planned.
I can't immediately say what I didn't like about the book, or what kept me from really immersing in it, but I just didn't. I liked Yael and I liked Luka and Felix, but everything else was just very shortly touched upon. The story is more action-packed than anything else, so it does make for a pretty fast read (combined with short chapters), but not a very soothing one (for me).
Atticus O'Sullivan is a 2100 year old Druid, the last of his kind. He lives in Arizona with his dog (whom he talks to) and his problem is that he has a big beef with a god over an ancient sword.
The story is as exciting as it sounds, but my main problem is of course, that Atticus is over 2000 years old. Nothing phases him. All kinds of magical creatures want him dead, but he doesn't care as much as he should because he's seen some shit. This made it hard for me to really get invested in the book, even if it was enjoyable enough (and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny). He's also pretty powerful with some powerful friends, and I never really felt there was anything at stake.
Oberon is pretty cool though, even if the narrator's voice for him was kind of over the top sometimes that it was sometimes hard to take seriously.
As per usual with Robin Hobb's start of trilogies, or in this case quadrilogy (?), this series is off to a slow start. A lot of what happens is this book is strictly setting up the characters and the situation they find themselves in, and you can clearly see that this was originally supposed to be one big book that was cut in half.
That doesn't mean that it's uninteresting or boring though. I actually really like the dragons in this one, whereas before they were just a part of the story and not one of my main interests in it. The characters are great too, but they all have much room to grow and I can't wait to see what becomes of them.
Two TV critics decide the 100 best US shows of all time, decided on overall quality (writing, performance, directing, editing), innovation, consistency, how much they changed TV overall,... Every entry in the top 100 gets their own essay saying why that show was so good and how it earned their place.
Mixed in with the top 100 there's also a few fun stuff like “Best Bosses” or “Best Cliffhangers” or simply “Best Pilots” and “Best Finales”. After the top 100 is done, there is also a section on current shows that may get their place in the “all-time best” if they don't drop in quality before their end, and also shows that had at least one outstanding season but didn't make it because the overall quality of the series was inconsistent.
I love TV, and I love finding out about TV and discussing TV, so I was a bit disappointed to find out I wasn't really familiar with a lot of shows from the Top 100, since a lot of them were from the 60s-90s era, and a lot of them were classic US shows that I never bothered to check out. But I was way more familiar when they got to the parts after that.
Even then, it's still fun to hear both Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall talk passionately about TV, even if you're not familiar with what they're referencing. Of course, in the print or digital book you get to skip around to shows you know and read their essays, but as I listened to the audiobook, I didn't have that luxury. That's a good thing though! I may have to check out some of those classic TV shows.
Amazing. Incredible. Perfection.
It's so weird to think about how much this series has grown over the course of three books. Characters I felt indifferent towards in the first installment are now fully fleshed out characters I grew to like. The world that was essentially just a backdrop is now a really important element of the story. The story is still hella fun and a joy to spend time in, but it also had its serious moments and it mixed those really well.
While I was reading this, I was a bit worried because at this point, there are no follow-ups to this story, only prequels (which I will get to sooner rather than later!) and I was afraid this wouldn't end so good for these great characters. But the ending was actually really great and I don't mind not checking in with these characters again after that point in time. Though I certainly wouldn't mind if it was ever planned!
I already feel like rereading the entire trilogy, which says a lot about my enjoyment of this series! :)
I had finished my audiobook for the week, so I decided to get this (free!) short one to entertain myself. The story is quite interesting, if not fleshed out to its fullest, and enjoyable enough, but nothing quite more than that. I definitely wouldn't be against reading more books from this world though.
Essentially it's a mystery set in a world where people can't be murdered... technically. You come back from the dead only if you've been killed and your body is reset to a few hours before your death. Dispatchers are people who are hired to effectively “end people's lives” so they can easily come back if they've, for example, just broken their neck.
Tony Valdez is our main character who starts assisting the police when a fellow Dispatcher disappears.
The Dispatcher is currently free on Audible, so if you're interested, go get it!
This was maybe the most entertaining memoir I've read so far. Really good, really interesting, with a variety of topics from Bryan's youth, his relationship with his parents, his love for acting, and some fun behind the scenes stuff of some of his projects. I've really gained a lot of respect for him during this.
I tend to read “celebrity books” as audiobooks by default (except if they're not done by the actual author) and although at times it sort of felt like he was narrating someone else's book, it was still a tremendous joy to listen to. I just really love his voice.
Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. The thing I love the most, I think, is that so much time is spent on ending it. One of my complaints about Assassin's Quest (the final book in the previous Fitz trilogy) was that the ending was very rushed, where in this case, the aftermath of the action (and even the aftermath of the aftermath) was very much what this book built up to, and I liked that a lot.
Definitely don't mind that there's more of these characters though!
Ahsoka Tano may very well be one of the most beloved (if not THE most) characters of the new Star Wars Expanded Universe. We already know plenty about her from The Clone Wars and Rebels, but there are still a few huge gaps in her story. This book is the first to try to fill some of those gaps.
And it's great! We find out A LOT! Lots of things that were casually referenced in Rebels or more on certain characters and events from The Clone Wars (even including some interludes with POVs of a few familiar characters). But also more on Kyber Crystals and how Ahsoka ends up in the Rebellion. And just in general Ahsoka reflecting on her life in the Jedi Order and Order 66.
It's a fun read, and I heartily recommend getting the audiobook, narrated by Ahsoka's voice actress Ashley Eckstein. She made the whole book come alive, which really adds to it.
The Dream Thieves is a sequel to The Raven Boys, which is something I (to be honest, surprisingly) enjoyed. In this one the focus is set more on Ronan Lynch, who is one of the “Raven boys” who didn't get as much attention in the last one.
Sequels are very good at making you realize what you do or do not like about a certain book, and in this one I realized it's basically just the kids I sort of care about. There's lots of fun in here with interpersonal relationships and conflicts and certain events that happen, but it didn't really excite me as much I thought it would and unfortunately I think that means I'm going to leave this series here. I still think it's good and enjoyable and maybe I'll get curious about it again someday and pick it up again, but not right now.
In a way, it's sort of “more of the same” compared to its predecessor Six Of Crows, but just with a little bit more of everything. Though I didn't think it flowed as well as the previous one, it was still pretty enjoyable and you get to know the characters you already liked a bit better. Among which my boys Jesper and Wylan. :) I felt the death at the end was a tad unnecessary though? I'm not sure what it accomplished so close to the end, but then again I didn't particularly care about the character.
For some reason I always expected this book to be very action-packed and be very fast in pacing. Truly it was neither of those things, but that isn't at all a bad thing.
The book focuses a lot on its world, the characters it inhabits and just its rules in general. Even having finished it, I still have no clue what this trilogy is supposed to be about, but I do know what these characters are about and in what state the world is in, which is enough for me for now.
And though the characters are pretty much all assholes, they're interesting assholes, and they have true potential to be lovable assholes. So I'll very likely get my hands on the sequel eventually.
This audiobook was provided by the author, narrator, or publisher at no cost in exchange for an unbiased review courtesy of AudiobookBoom dot com.
Unfortunately the only reason I even finished the book is because of the reason above.
First of all, the narration was excellent. Jeff Hays was great at distinguishing the different voices and accents so I never questioned which character was speaking. Though this was a bit ruined by the quality of the production - the volume was pretty variable depending on which character was speaking (it would suddenly become a lot quieter compared to the non-dialogue parts so that I'd have to turn the volume up to hear it).
The story is, simply put, that six young people (and a seventh who's not “officially” a part of them), most of them strangers to another at the start, have to go on a quest to obtain a crystal. But there are other forces also looking for it.
The problem for me is that the characters never became anything beyond “words on a page” (or “voices” in this case). Now that I finished it, I still have no idea who these characters are or how they're feeling about all this (It's touched upon, but very lightly). Actually, the one that distinguished itself the most might have been Blaidd (I had to look that up because in my mind I spelled it like “Blade”), even if he's technically the seventh of the Six. There's also two friends along on this mission, and we're told they're fairly close friends, but you wouldn't know that if it wasn't explicitly said. This happens with a few other parts, we're told something but we're never shown it.
I never got invested in the characters, and therefore I never got invested in the story. Though I don't know if this would have been a different experience if not for the audiobook.
The story and the execution of it were fine, and that might very well be enough for most people, but I just never cared about any of these characters and that's usually the biggest part of my enjoyment of a book.
Considering I got through this relatively sized book in 2 days (an evening, a day, and a morning), it's safe to say that I greatly enjoyed it. Even moreso than Fool's Errand. Whereas the latter really tugged at my heartstrings at a certain point, this one felt more exciting and yet at the same time, its strength lied in its quieter moments. It starts strong, and it continues to be strong until the very end.
Though this might be the first of the books that doesn't really have an “ending” ending. It sort of just stops, and the only caveat I have about that is that it makes it harder to not immediately jump to Fool's Fate. But I shall resist the urge!
If you like Star Wars, if you really really like Star Wars, and you're always on the hunt for more on Star Wars, go get this book.
No, really, this goes into pretty much everything I've ever wondered about. The first part of the book is more about in what ways Star Wars has taken over our world, how it's something everyone knows something about even if they've never seen any of the movies, on Jediism, the start of the Expanded Universe, some media that inspired George Lucas to want to create “the Star Wars”, on what fans unintentionally contributed to the movies, and a lot more that I can't even remember.
The second part is what I found the most interesting - there it goes through each of the movies, from 1977 to 2005, how they came to be, how they were received, and what happened afterwards. Then it goes further into Star Wars: Underworld (which never made it past pre-production) and the two The Clone Wars series, and eventually, up to when Disney bought Lucasfilm.
Throughout its entirety, they also mention a couple of popular rumors surrounding the franchise that they debunk/disagree with.
As a fan of Star Wars and as someone who wants to get their hands on everything related to it, this was really great. I've read some reviews here and there that this will still be interesting for someone only moderately interested in Star Wars, but I'm not too sure of that. I think in that case, you'd more want to skip ahead to the chapters you're inclined to know more about, instead of some chapters about “obscure” things you might be less interested in.