y
Contains spoilers
Idea of it is good, but in execution it struck me as underdone. It felt like an abstraction of idea rather than a story at times and the Secret History style plot felt tacked on a little. I didn't believe much interiority from the characters. All the themes and techniques in Clarke's novels always seem directly catered to me, however I find the process of reading them grating unfortunately, as I could see other versions becoming firm favourites of mine.
Contains spoilers
???? Baffled by the direction this book took. The beginning with the worldbuilding and characters started with a lot of promise but went quickly downhill. It also took me a very long time to read. I'm glad I never have to hear about Firth again. I assume he's a siren because otherwise him and Nami's relationship is just egregiously bad. It still is but at least then it would make some kind of sense.
The ending was particularly ridiculous, but I'm not going to waste words.
Also, can we stop pretending books are for Adults when it's clearly YA fantasy with the characters 'aged up' in body (if not in voice).
Sorry, I really wanted to like this! :(
These books are pretty awful but they keep dragging me in. I think it has something to do with the fact that they're almost there, I can see the intention, the idea, the shape of things, and I love the potential.
In execution, however, it never lives up.
The first thing that must be spoken about is Kvothe, the main character, whose flaws, biases and travels are supposed to make up the entirety of the trilogy. When we meet Kvothe, he has ‘retired' from a life of adventure and has bought an inn with his fairy boyfriend and listens to tales of his long life of mad exploits as told by locals. Kvothe is wise and reserved and all-knowing due to his interesting life. Fine, it's classic, an interesting framing, whatever.
Then it is revealed that he is – at MOST – in his late twenties, and most of the time he was doing his daring deeds he was no older than sixteen. Okay, so Kvothe is a bit of a child genius, a savant at all things. And I mean all things. There is nothing he can't handle or learn within twenty-four hours. In two books he spends barely a year at the university, and he still becomes a Super Wizard and knows all his way through the unknowable archive.
(Side note: a character is described as unbelievably old and decrepit at some point and then it's revealed he's 40 years old. I laughed very hard.)
His biggest issue is money, he's poor all the time, and he spends more time trying to pay tuition fees than in classes studying when he visits the university. Once again, a nice idea, who doesn't love a magic school plot point? The tuition fee thing was interesting the first time. And it got progressively less. I had hoped we'd leave it behind with the first book, but no.
One of my biggest issues is that to me, it felt more like I was reading a D&D campaign. When the DM is really strict and you have to spend the whole time getting money only for a vital quest item to take it all away again. Only it's okay because you have some contrived reason that everything works out fine in the end. Kvothe has all his skills max-statted. All it takes is a set time of ‘training montage' and he's got that skill locked down.
Ok so now for my points containing spoilers:
I'll be brief as I'm boring myself almost as much as the Adem training scenes.
What the fuck was going on with the Felurian bit? We got to about 60% in the novel and everyone including Kvothe's teachers told him – you need to go to the outside world and Have Sex. So every plot point after that is just Kvothe Has Sex for the rest of the book. And after that, he's ‘mature' and experienced now, (even though he's still like 16) so it's totally fine when all these older women have sex with him.He breaks Felurian's spell by remembering being raped as a child as he is being raped in the current moment mentally and physically. This gets him to summon magic which is cool. Ok that could have been a really poignant moment you know. But then somehow it's all fine??? And he forgets about it?? And he just has loads of sex with his ‘would be rapist' because it's her nature? And it's fine????When he saves the sex-trafficking victims from their rapists he literally ON PAPER says ‘Not all men' to them. I was in disbelief. And then when he says women enablers are worse than male rapists because they know what they're doing... Even not touching whether that's true or not, it doesn't even make sense for Kvothe's character. Despite him being a victim of rape, there is still this constant idea of men being immune to it, while women were nothing but objects of it. It was baffling and offensive to me in a personal capacity. Where the fuck did Tempi go? What was the whole point of all that. I felt so bad for him – imagine betraying everything you've ever known, your family, your life, your society, to teach this guy that makes you a little horny, and then he comes with you to your sex-positive society and you don't even get a thank you, but he DOES fuck most of your professors/revered elders.
Complaints featuring my theories of what's going on (probably wrong, but still):
Okay Denna is the moon or the wind or whatever and also a faerie (she can't touch iron, she's always going between Fae and the real world all the time). Great, love that. Kind of hate the concept that ‘great magicians' learn magic by metaphorically seducing and having sex with the hot female personification of a concept. Whatever.
I assume this has something to do with the Chandrian being gods/demons of death/disease (doors of stone=doors to death) vs the normal ‘gods' of elements like the hot females. And the naked lady on the cup is the moon from the story of Jax/ Iax and could be Felurian or Denna. And then the Amyr are now the Adem and Kvothe is going to become an Amyr and fight the Chandrian in book 3 and save Denna from the Fae or something. And her patron is Lanre who is Hexior or whatever his name is from the Chandrian. And then he's also Taurpalin the Gross or whatever. All of this could be cool. Great. There's potential.
IN WHICH CASE... Why did you spend 2000 pages telling me about Kvothe going to school? About him making lamps? Even when he's playing chess with his grandfather or whatever is more interesting than him going through admissions for the five hundredth time. It's not as if we learnt something other than what pranks he was getting up to or what alcoholic drink he was currently into. No wonder there's so much to go for the next book. It feels to me like this series was discovery drafted, and Rothfuss was trying to find out the plot while writing it. THAT is what Editors are for folks! You have to go back and revise to make it a good story. :)
I didn't hate it even though I did a 30000 page rant review that is incoherent as it is 1am and I've been listening to the audiobook for the last 8 hours. What gets to me is that Patrick Rothfuss has the greatest of intentions and is so desperately trying NOT to be a misogynist all the while refusing to interrogate his own biases and beliefs that it actually makes it feel worse. It's the same with gay people. With the little interlude about being Ambisexual or whatever, and the explicit idea that people in this society can be gay or bisexual or whatever and often are stated, as well as the fact that ‘Kvothe is a gentleman to women' – when Kvothe constantly does his ‘all men need a good woman' and ‘wenching' and ‘women are like alien creatures' shtick it just makes him sound like a homophobic misogynist even if he isn't.
Advice for male writers maybe. Don't try to write ‘a woman', just write a person and give them she/her pronouns. If Simmon doesn't become a prostitute, fall in love with Kvothe instantly and have great creamy tits, your female characters don't have to either.
Anyway BYE. Patrick please email me I will edit your book for free and we can make an awesome book 3 ok. I think your soul is good and I am heartened by your depiction of the Roma.
DNF - hated the characters hated the voice and the plot and was getting tired of the misogyny so googled when you find out the mystery to keep me going and YOU DON'T EVEN FIND IT OUT. Putting it down ... Frustrated because it started strong and I bought both the book and audiobook and gave her other book Faithful place 5 stars.
Ok so I have spent over 40 hours of my life trying to read this novel. I have attempted it four times. I'm a big fan of TJR's premises - they're EXACTLY what I want in a book and get really excited and then I read the book itself and it doesn't quite work in the execution. Like Carrie Soto, I feel like there wasn't enough research done. The structure gets boring fast - it's just a ‘story' told between various narrators. If you've ever read or watched a music documentary, or read a biography, this isn't how they're laid out. The best thing about them is the snippets from all sorts of sources - there's that - ok so whose version of events is true- and she tried to do that, but having every member of the band tell this to you just dissipates any tension. There's no ‘oh is he telling the truth? Do we actually know anything about these guys or have we fallen for the lie that their legend has made? Also, music bands are ABOUT THE MUSIC. This is not about the music. I did not get the impression any of them cared about the music, about actually playing/singing. Ok if some of them are more about the fame, drugs, girls etc as a commentary, but who wants to read about that, and why make it a band anyway? You could do all the messy relationships in a completely different setting and it literally wouldn't change the plot. They could all be annoying nyu graduates and it would have made more sense that they were as annoying as they were. The characters: Hated all of them. No redeeming qualities. Camila and Karen were ‘token women' somehow, despite the novel proclaiming every two seconds that it is ‘feminist'. They had no internality. Nothing existed except for their relationship with Daisy and Billy.Speaking of the worst characters - Manic Pixie Mary Sue in a toxic will they won't they with Brilliant Asshole Guy is the most played out boring relationship of all time. It would have been fine if the book hadn't been centred on it, leaving everything else to the wayside.Drugs: Weird way of almost glamorising drug taking which I hated. Billy gets ‘suddenly sober' after rehab - never thinks about it again. Bland Band - BORING BAND MEMBERS - ok so there's crazy relationships (not that crazy, cheating and that's about it) - I could just read a Fleetwood Mac biography for that. None of them felt real and they blurred together. Having daisy join the band later was the wrong choice. It was kind of like - ok so you made an album, congrats. There's none of that ‘we came from nothing and we built this thing together from scratch and though I hate you all I still love you because we made our dreams real together'. So all tension felt useless and flat really.‘Feminism': This book tries to beat you over the head that it's a feminist novel. Great, I thought, reading the first lines, this has the potential to be awesome. This book is not feminist. Who is Daisy outside of her relationships with men/ ‘cool and tragic' drug habit. Ok her parents didn't pay attention to her - but this is just told and never brought up again. It felt like this was a whole book of ‘Telling, not Showing'. There's nothing for the reader to try and guess or anticipate or analyse because it's all just slopped in front of you. Okay so men are horrible in the band scene and sleep with young girls - this is a really good point to make and could be really powerful - but there's no discussion about why it happens, why it keeps happening, how the whole milleu is structured this way, how it relates to power dynamics and the misogyny of music etc. Like everything was made shallow and surface level and then we had seven thousand pages of melodrama about Daisy and Billy instead.Daisy: I hate Daisy. She's extremely naturally talented, the most beautiful person ever, charming, charismatic but strong. And her ‘flaw' is that she does drugs and also grew up without musical theory (which isn't a flaw because it makes her look better). She's arrogant, and doesn't suffer consequences, and doesn't care about stepping over other people (mainly women) to get what she wants. Now, if we were supposed to see her as a villain, that would be wonderful. Ok so why does she do drugs, why is she arrogant? Is it because she's secretly afraid always, of being ignored? Does she shun female relationships because of a past betrayal? idk I'm not a writer - she just felt like a collection of traits made as one part of an edgy toxic romance that we were meant to root for and love her because she's a ‘strong woman' and all the men in this book are evil.Prose: “If you were a cat, your screech would have every cat running to you.”This is self explanatory. But also it's the pretentious Tumblr prose dialogue that nobody ever speaks like. And a wholeeee book of it. It's partly because the structure is wrong - instead of having Billy say “Daisy was singing beautifully and her voice is great and there's so much emotion. She sang that song with such a heartbreaking lament, she gave it so much more than I gave it.” (Paraphrased) Why not say something like “even the cleaner stopped to listen. Daisy asked if she needed another take. “No, we don't” someone said, “But could you do it anyway?” Like do you know what I mean???Also the song lyrics were bad and also fall into a trap I often see with music fiction. The song is not just the lyrics!!! It's the melody, it's the riffs, they ALWAYS come before the lyrics. If you have a notebook full of lyrics you are not a songwriter, you are a bad poet. Sure, the lyrics have to be there (See: Nickelback) but they have to be with a melody that works - you can't do that without knowing music. Just a little thing that bugs me.Anyway, time to stop this low-key rant, but TJR needs to stop writing about niches I'm obsessive about because I CAN SEE THE POTENTIALL and it's so frustrating 😔😔😔. Could have been the book of all time, based on my favourite band of all time, and unfortunately wasn't. Gonna go watch a Stevie Nicks doc now.
This is a very difficult book to rate. The first half was four or five stars. The second half I hated, skimmed through to 160 pages before the end and hated those even more. It might be personal preference but what happened to Lin and Yag's revelation put a sour taste in my mouth. I know it was purposeful by Miéville, but I didn't enjoy it, nor did I think it made a particularly good story. The prose and the worldbuilding was wonderful.
Where was the architecture?! There were a lot of sentences that didn't make sense on a prose level (what is a “supine-voiced woman”?) and the world building was very flimsy - there's a whole debate about ‘imperialism' and ‘colonial legacy' however it's a reference to the North of a country taking over Southern jobs...that's not imperialism or colonialism, you can't have intranational colonialism/imperialism...This may all sound pendantic, but every element of the book had these slips and they all built up to completely pull me out as a reader from an otherwise enjoyable gothic romance. I also had issues with Effy's characterisation. I don't know why every character in books released recently in adult or young adult sound like a petulant twelve year old even when they're supposedly university age. Even young adult- I promise you the teenagers and kids you're writing for are smarter and have a much more mature voice than you think. Also as someone who has gone through a similar situation as Effy I was disappointed by the way it all seemed easily resolved by the boyfriend at the end. Other than that, there were some parts - especially the excerpts at the beginnings of chapters, that I found particularly excellent. Reid can hit on a delicately gorgeous and meaningful sentence, but unfortunately for me the gems were few and far between as most of the lines that sounded beautiful actually didn't mean anything when you thought about it for two seconds. This review probably sounds harsh, and I'm sorry for that, but I was very much looking forward to the dark academia architecture school ocean gothic fantasy novel that I was promised and didn't get.
Bursting with elegant and artful prose, Groff's Matrix meanders through a pseudo-medieval girlboss fantasy reimagining of the life of writer Marie de France, without the compelling narrative and vivacity of the work of the writer she has fictionalised. I was left admiring the style but lacking in sustenance from a piece that is beautiful but perhaps fall short in the capacity of having something to say.
“Is it possible to enjoy a love story when you know it will end in the kind of heartache that slices time? I think so.”
Do beauty and honesty have to be mutually exclusive? This question Indiyah Schneider has answered with this extraordinary coming-of-age tale which makes sweet music of love, queerness and university life, while not shying away from the inherent awkwardness in the experience of discovering who you are.
Amalia is a student of Music at Oxford originally from Australia, and this novel follows her exploring what it means to be queer, an artist, Jewish, a woman in a wonderfully creative format. The way it's written, in quasi-interview form, in the structure of the famous ‘36 Questions that Lead to Love' New York Times article is ingenious. Schneider's voice is witty, gorgeously fluid and brutally honest, and the main characters so fully formed that it seems like they naturally forge a space for themselves on the page.
I suppose this is the one flaw I found. Although this novel is about a pair of binary star protagonists; the approach, the collision, the after, it does seem to push everything else aside. This, however, is not in a way that ultimately detracts from the story. Minor characters and settings are perhaps not as fully fleshed out as they could be, but it does help to emphasise the somewhat claustrophobic effect of the central character's relationship during their darker points which I much enjoyed.
I found myself taking a ridiculously long time to read this book. It wasn't like it was hard work, far from it. I found myself savouring each chapter, sometimes reading them more than once, committing lines to memory. “First, you were music; now, you're a part of me.”
I give my five star ratings to those books that linger. When a day, week or even month later I find myself thinking about it. When something happens in my life that a book so eloquently describes that I find a quote floats first into my mind before my own thoughts. This was certainly one of those. I want to buy a copy so that I can keep it for when I have one of these moments and I can just flick to the page that captures just how I feel. I've just finished, but I want to read it again. Is it possible to enjoy a novel when you know it will end with the kind of heartache that slices time? Yes, I think so.
Ah! For starters, isn't that such a gorgeous cover? The lush greenery, dragons and magic was the thing that initially drew me to the Leaves of Remedy, and the book itself didn't disappoint! One of the first world-building elements we learn is that the sun, moon and earth, like Greek Gods are personified – or rather anthropomorphised into dragons. Little touches like “The Moon Dragon shone in the north, and the Sun Dragon shone in the south” really made for a rich and fascinating setting that I immediately wanted to explore.
The Leaves of Remedy is an adventure – a quest to save Nepheda, the Earth Dragon from dying, and to discover the runes to save an Earth Dragon egg. The stakes are high and the world is ripe for exploring.
I enjoyed the characters, although I felt like inevitably, some storylines had to be trimmed in favours of the others which made me a little disappointed as some of the characters I had become enamoured with seemed to disappear at the end of the book – I can only hope, as this is a series, they will get their chance in the next one.
The thing that held the Leaves of Remedy back unfortunately, in my view, was the fact that the prose and the way the characters acted was a little too simplistic for the ages that the protagonists were supposed to be – especially Ylva and Everard. This meant that it was hard not to get a little whiplash when I was trying to figure out the tone of the novel. However, as this book was originally published in Dutch, it may be a problem of the translation, so I can't really speak on how I would take Claudia Boon's original prose.
Thank you to the author for supplying me an ARC in exchange for an honest review!
⭐️⭐️⭐️
“Ben Maeden might be a degenerate criminal, but inside, his father's lessons held firm. He couldn't leave her here. Not like this.”
Deep in the woods of a fantastical Ireland where the Sidhe ride, a story of mythological proportions is unfurling. Ben is a downtrodden layabout with an almost supernaturally talented hand at the bow and arrow, and a terrible secret until he meets Una – a girl with the power to shape the future of Innisfail and also the type of man he thinks he is. Political scandal, intrigue, family ties and the most terrifying beasts from Celtic mythology chase the two across the Green Isle alongside their companion, the half-Sidhe healer Rian, in a thrilling and truly epic debut fantasy!
The Sons of Mil took me a while to read, because I wanted to absorb every moment of the sumptuous world building in it. In ‘The Sons of Mil', L.M.Riviere combines a hilarious, warm and honest narrative voice with deftly managed characters who jumped off the page – Ben, Rian and Una especially, but the villains of the novel came alive as the twists and turns of their political machinations came into fruition.
I honestly enjoyed this a lot more than the insanely popular fantasy books always banded about, even if I felt that like it fell prey to the common flaws I see on fantasy bookshelves which is the phenomenon of ‘insta love' and settings so richly imagined that some of the plot and character gets sidelined in the face of them.
One thing that helped me wrangle the world in my minds eye was the very helpful glossary at the back. It's alright to get through without it, but someone unfamiliar with Irish names and history might struggle a little, and even if you don't I was practically salivating at the prospect of learning more about the Tuatha de dann and the Irish setting! And now I know how to pronounce ‘Sidhe' finally! The one thing I will say, however, is there were some world-building elements in the glossary that completely changed my idea of the text and explained some of the anachronisms that had bugged me whilst reading.
Overall, a tremendously exciting debut and I can't wait to see what more L.M. Riviere has on offer!
Thank you to Book Sirens for supplying me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – rating this 4/5 stars!
“The life of a captain, while interesting, does not compare to my true calling,” he said, shaking water out of his ear. “Now would it be possible for a gentleman to get a bubble bath?”
The Crowns of Croswald is a fantasy novel that follows Ivy Lovely, a girl who works as a ‘scaldrony' maid alongside the most mystical of creatures, dragons! She leads a boring if lushly described life alongside her friend the dwarf Rimbrick who feels like a father figure to her, and brings her books on the ancient and arcane study of ‘scrivenry', (the form magic takes in D.E Night's whimsical world) and here she is introduced to the famed scrivenist Derwin Edgar Night, (the very author of the Crowns of Croswald themself?) A mysterious stranger, a prophecy and the twisting threads of fate in the whimsical and Ghibli-esque world D.E Night creates leads Ivy to a school of Magic where she learns that nothing is what it seems!
I adored this book. It brought me back to the days of reading Harry Potter for the first time and both the way setting were described and the characters in it were absolutely charming. Some might say that the Crowns of Croswald could be a little derivative, as the genre has been entirely saturated by ‘Magic School' novels, but I feel that it is with the author's voice whereupon the task of distinguishing the book from its peers lies, and D.E. Night's storytelling is reminiscent of a warm summer's day in childhood; cheery and bright and full of magic!
If you are looking for a rich new fantastical world then this is a delight. Even if it is sure to be a hit with a younger audience, it's fast-paced enough and has enough exciting twists to make it a fun quick read for older readers too. It's also surprisingly funny, and characters like the Captain or ‘Ivory Lucky' – who is especially excellently imagined, are easy to connect with because of it.
I really enjoyed Winsome as a character, and the tension leading up to the Ball was especially fun. One detriment to the Crowns of Croswald I would say, as I can see it intends to be an action packed series building up to a thrilling conclusive battle against the villain introduced in this book, is that some parts seemed a little bit rushed. The book could have perhaps stayed longer in some parts, just to really explore the cast of characters and the setting. I hope Damaris, Rimbrick and Fyn's characters are delved into in the next book, which I will definitely think about reading!
Thank you to the publisher Stories Untold for supplying me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4/5 stars!
There are some books that having on your bookshelf are an immediate comfort. I had the pleasure of getting this book free from Amazon prime readers, but I am hoping to order a copy as soon as possible for precisely this fact.
Song of the Forever Rains is a delight to read. I found myself otherwise in the midst of a reading rut, when I came across this book with its beautiful cover as a light fantasy romance to quick-start my love for reading again. From the start, the prose is lyrical and the tone witty. Far too often are protagonists of novels such as this insufferable, childish and cardboard-esque, but Darius and Larkyra, the protagonists for this novel, are far from this. I adored both their relationship with each other from the start as they unravelled each others secrets like the plentiful silks and absolute luxury described in the rich and intriguing world E.J Mellow has created. Larkyra's relationship with her family was similarly heart warming, and all of this came together to paint very alive characters which were grounded in reality even in contrast to the fantastical magic around them. The magic system, I felt, would be my only pause, as I did not quite get my head around it and its limits, but like the rest, it was described beautifully. The supporting cast were very fun, and I can't wait to see more of Zimri and the Pirate Lord in the rest of the trilogy. If you are debating whether or not this is a book for you, I did not expect it to be so riveting and yet I have not been able to put it down since starting it and it is now the early hours of morning and I cannot stop thinking about the delectably slow burn and how well crafted the tension was. In short, I am sure many fantasy authors could look to this book for notes!
Spoiler
POOR DANIEL.
From the beginning, I didn't think that ‘The Stars We Steal' was going to be my cup of tea, but the first part of the novel was in fact, a delight to read. The problem with pacing and many plot threads and characters being introduced and then disappearing, just to appear again gave a very jarring affect that dampened the enjoyment of my reading. It was still a fun romp until the engagement with Daniel and the subsequent spoilers breaking off of it, with no real resolution for any other characters spoiled it for me. I do find it irritating as an LGBT person when characters who are LGBT are reduced to sidekicks or fall by the wayside for a ‘normal' person's happiness. I very much appreciate Alexa's inclusion of these characters - I loved Daniel and Evgenia, however I just wish that there had been a happy ending for Daniel as the other characters had, and that Evgenia being a lesbian didn't feel so much like a plot device to stop her from being another rival. Overall however, I enjoyed the style and the writing and I will be reading more of The author's books in the future!
Screaming and sobbing and shaking perfect book perfect book I'm incoherent
A Slightly More Coherent Update:
When I tell you this book is perfect, I am not using hyperbole. I listened to the audiobook and both his performance and the words on the page had me sobbing inordinately at many points throughout this novel and I am not a person prone to sobbing. This book is like the warm amber nostalgia that you see your perfect childhood memories in. It's the warm mug of tea your best friend makes for you when you've just trudged your way through a snowstorm. It's a hug from your loved one that holds you tight and safe and tells you that you are loved for who you are. This book is all these things and more.
Every character made me laugh and cry and wish I could meet them. If you are looking for a book to make you feel warm, and alive, and to make you contemplate yourself like never before, look no further.
