Lauren

Happy ending, queer love, exotic locale, magic in the ordinary, and a freaking adorable wyvern, what isn't to love?

It had me going for a while, reading fast. It was a good, fast read with an unsatisfying ending. There has to be another book after this one. There are so many unanswered questions.

I'm a sucker for gay boys in a space opera.

Some stories listened to as part of LeVar Burton Reads, some read in print.

Dark, but perhaps a story about surviving and rebuilding is just what we need now.

Read the wonderful audio book.

Pretty good story, plot a little fast at times, enjoyed this take on the “humans living inside a sentient spaceship” bio-fi setting.

This was a DNF, a lemmed book in Sword and Laser speak. I always kind of thought maybe I'd come back to it, maybe it was just me being sensitive when I tried to read it the first time, but:

1. Trying to read it again for a book club made me recall the horrific violence, rape, and misogyny that I encountered the first time,
2. Picking up where I left off (about a third of the way through the book) was right after a very graphic scene that made me put it down in the first place, and it did not get better, it really was that bad, therefore:
3. I do not think I will ever be ready for this book.

I don't know how to rate this book, so it gets three stars. I liked the idea and the plot. I enjoyed the twisty time story and the jump from evil alchemist dark lab to mundane life of teenagers. I hated and liked that I hated Leigh so much. I got so annoyed by Erin until I realized her role. The Hand of Glory depicted on the cover is super creepy.

However, some things in this book just pinged me out. One notable example was the description of graduate school life, with mathematicians going around with antique slide rules, and somehow that working at the library shelving books got you exceptions on due dates and whether you could keep rare books at home. This is like some stylized, convenient version of grad school dreamed up by someone who has never been there and the weird and unnecessary wrong details just bothered me to the point that it took me out of the story.

This was strange one. The writing was beautiful and the world very interesting. The two main characters, Sophie and Mouth, are very different but share the trauma of the past. Sophie, a shy student, falls in love with her classmate Bianca, an upper class politician in the making. Sophie constantly sacrifices herself for Bianca, all the way to the end. Mouth is a grown up who is stuck in the trauma of losing her clan as a child and having to make her way in the world as a smuggler. Their trajectories interesect as they participate in humanity's barely clinging hold to life in the dusky band of inhabitable land on a tidally locked planet. Interaction with the native Gelet change everything, including ideas about humanity itself.

The stories tie together neatly. The death of Mouth's clan is tied in to an extinction event for the Gelet. Sophie, who has to learn early on in the book how to interact with people, learns to understand the Gelet and be a link in communication. The end of the book is a promise of a better future for humans and Gelet, and seems to hint at another book to follow that completes the story. I've read that this is a standalone novel, and I truly hope not. The story is only half told.

I liked this book, but it ended too soon. I want more of it, in general.
I liked Lundy's story. It felt like something that could have happened to me. I liked the Market although it was terrifying. This book was an interesting metaphor for girlhood, on how we give up on the magic of our youth to be something that fits in. I wanted to know more about Lundy's adulthood.

I had to let the language in this book wash over me to experience maximum enjoyment of it. I had to stop trying to catch all the references and trying to figure out what was going on. Then I could enjoy the poetry of it.
There isn't much story here. I don't think we are ever supposed to figure out what a braid is, even though it is so important to the characters. You can get the metaphor and enjoy the process though, even without quite knowing what is happening.
My favorite thing was all the different ways they addressed each other. Red v. Blue can get tired, but part of the fun in not knowing names (or having names) is being creative about addresses.
I also enjoyed the various ways that they “sent” letters to each other. Though slow heating or ingestion, it was always something unexpected.

It was hard to read this book. I admit that I didn't read the jacket text before diving in so it took me some pages to figure out what was going on. I'm honestly disappointed that the reveal of who the mermaid people are is right on the cover - the slow realization was part of the appeal of this book for me.
Yetu's escape from her duty and the effects were powerful. The idea that one person could do the remembering for a whole people is strange and difficult.

I love this series and will always love it. However, by this book, the author's tricks are well known. The asides in the writing and the descent into discussions of pastries are familiar and no longer as delightfully new and refreshing. The story was interesting once it got going, but I really needed a little bit less of Mary Jekyll by the end. I still love the premise and the story but I hope any future installments will take on a different point of view.

A great homage to a great city. I love the magic of this book, everything from the cities having avatars to Manhattan using a debit card to fight evil. I loved the cast of characters, maybe Bronca most of all.

I can sense the next book's move, which might be a battle for the soul of Staten Island. I liked the setup of Staten Island's character, so different from everybody else. I don't know much about the boroughs of NYC but something about the standoffish betrayal and the alignment with R'lyeh rang true. Also, the Lovecraft reuse and references were very much appreciated.

The reason this was not 5 stars for me was honestly that I wasn't looking for time to sneak away and read this. Being excited to read something has become my threshold for a 5 star review versus a four star, which indicates that I enjoyed a book quite a bit and would even recommend it to someone. Other books by Jemisin (e.g. the Broken Earth trilogy) have definitely hit the five star reading excitement.

I learned a few things from this book and enjoyed seeing the different threads, but I got the ebook version and it's probably not the same experience as a physical copy. It mentions cards and grids that maybe were supposed to come with the book, and were (perhaps obviously) not there in the electronic version. I do think I will try to come back to this book later when I'm at a point of designing my own things to practice the stitches.

A great story with some gruesome moments

I almost didn't like this book because of the (true) gruesome depictions of war. Some of the violence, the blood, the terror was almost too much for me. But the story and the time travel and the complete upheaval at the end - these more than made up for all of that.

I also see this book as a commentary on the capitalist hellscape that we could become if corporations keep gaining power. It's a frightening potential future. I loved the loop aspect of the story and how the story revises itself as it goes. The mechanism of the narrative was the five star aspect of this book.

I love spending time in the Three Worlds and hanging out with the Raksura. This book finally brought us to Kish, the land we have heard so much about. I enjoyed the adventure, in particular learning more about the half-Fell and the ways that the Fell behave when not attached to the fleet. I really enjoyed Kethel, for example.
I also enjoyed more of the banter between Malachite and Pearl. They were an unstoppable team.
I hope this isn't the last we will see of the Raksura. I'd return to this world again any time.

Another enjoyable adventure into the world of the Raksura. I really enjoyed reading the history of Indigo Cloud. That was, to me, the highlight of this volume. It was also nice to read more about Chime and his transformation before the events of “The Cloud Roads”. A worthwhile read for anyone who loves this world.

I'm trying to read more outside my genre this year and this book was promoted by my library in Pittsburgh, so I picked it up. The stories are good bite-sized mysteries in a variety of contexts, some mysteries big and some small. What really impressed me about reading this is the atmosphere of the stories, with so much feeling contained in such small packages. As an example, one story describes a woman who has recently become a mother and does not seem to like motherhood very much and struggles to define her own identity in what feels like a perpetual transition period; I found myself very engaged in the character's viewpoint, immersed in her feelings as though I was feeling them myself. This kind of writing is rare, in my experience, especially in short stories. If you enjoy a good bite-sized mystery and a foray into the minds of characters, this is a good collection to pick up.

This book was fun to read, and I always enjoy a good fairy tale retelling. I liked having a protagonist with a prosthetic leg, and all of the annoyance that comes with it.

But wow, the ending. There's no resolution to the story of the creepy bugs, no resolution to her brother's warning, and no resolution to the promise of “grandma's house”. It felt like 200 or so pages were ripped out of the end of the book. I was deeply unsatisfied with a book that has been very enjoyable. It's basically the opposite of the last book I read, In the Company of Others, which I wanted to be half as long - I wanted this one to go on much longer.

My advice about this book: read the first 10% of it. Then skim to about 60%, then read the last 150 or so pages. This book would have been much better with a considerable edit, a lot less of the mind numbing dalliance on the station, and no romance!

I enjoyed the concept of the Quill as an alien species. I liked the characters when they stopped driving me crazy. The writing improved markedly after about 65%. (Before that, particularly around 30%, I thought I was reading something straight out of the “Men Writing Women” subreddit, or a sexual harassment case from a university research lab.) When they get to Pardell's World, that's when it picks up noticeably.

The torture of that 40% or so dropped this to one star for me. The strong finish brought a star back. Now hopefully onto something that's good the whole way through.

This book finds the Raksura moving to their new home but finding trouble - someone has stolen the Seed, the source of power that keeps their home tree alive. An adventure ensues - first exploring their new home, then to another court, then to a strange town of groundlings, and finally to a city built on the back of a sea monster! Encounters with wizards and more species show just how complex the setting and the world is. I enjoyed the adventure and exploration, as well as new insight into the character of Jade. I really loved her in this book! She was diplomat, fighter, lover, and subordinate all in this book. Her relationship with Moon developed. Still enjoying Moon, though this book was all about him settling in to his place. I did love the scenes where there were little things he didn't know - and they sneaked up on him, as they would to anyone in a similar situation.
Can't put these down - immediately got the third book and looking forward to reading it this weekend!

I couldn't put this book down! I loved the world building in this novel. The world is full of creatures and races much different from typical fantasy creatures. The protagonist, Moon, is a good example: he is a shapeshifting creature, someone who can go from a humanoid form to something that I envision to be dragon-like. He is a loner and a stranger in his town because of this unique ability. Early in the book he finds his people - the Raksura, who have a complex caste system and a disdain for loners. Moon finds himself both coveted for his particular caste and reviled for his outsider status - but then, conflict with the evil Fell changes the narrative. Suddenly Moon's knowledge of groundling culture and his ability to fight come in handy, and he is able to help the Raksura fight their enemies. He finally agrees to settle down with them after the battle.

A side note that I think the character of Chime may be intended to be an analog to a trans character. I enjoyed his story, told in the shadow of Moon's, and I hope he appears in the future books.

What a great book to end my 2019 reading challenge! A different setting than I'm used to with Mayan mythology, a fascinating world, and a great protagonist. I enjoyed getting to know Casiopea and Hun-Kamé, as this story seemed to be a character study of the two of them in addition to a mythology story. The prose was delightful to read, going at times quickly and other times slowly, with the occasional line that I had to go back and read again and again.