This was my first encounter with Sherlock Holmes in written form. I thought this was okay, but nothing overly special. Maybe I'm just sad and no fu2.5
This was my first encounter with Sherlock Holmes in written form. I thought this was okay, but nothing overly special. Maybe I'm just sad and no fun but I really didn't think that the mystery was that interesting, nor were the twists really shocking. Most of the time I just found myself questioning the tenuous links and convenient pieces of evidence which allowed for the solving of the mystery. (Also, the guy who edited the edition I read was driving me insane, he kept putting endnotes that framed themselves as analysis but were literally just him pointing out that this is a clue for the next part of the plot...which is literally the point of reading. He also put an endnote to tell me that Costa Rica was a country, and that's where I lost it). ...more
If I can't even understand it how am I meant to enjoy it; I'm basically just seeing words with one eye and letting them go out the other. Cool the worIf I can't even understand it how am I meant to enjoy it; I'm basically just seeing words with one eye and letting them go out the other. Cool the world sucks and everything is fictional, thanks Thomas....more
This started out as trash but a good time and ended up as literally the most infuriating book I've read in ages. I'm actually genuinely confused as toThis started out as trash but a good time and ended up as literally the most infuriating book I've read in ages. I'm actually genuinely confused as to why this is hyped up because the romance isn't even good. They get together way too fast, so everything is unconvincing and there is no tension between them at all. Violet had me wanting to take out my own eyes by the end of the book. The amount of times the author tries to set her up as clever only for her to do/think the most stupid of stupid actions/thoughts is insufferable. The way she will work out the most stupid basic thing and Xaden is like omg she's so smart and hot I need to bang. She's literally an idiot. An idiot whose physical reactions to things are so cringe worthy. If I read the sentence 'my eyebrows shoot up' or 'I gasp' or 'my eyes widen' one more time I'm going to end it all. She's so annoying, and just to top it all off we get a Xaden perspective at the end which makes her seem like this faultless magical amazing smart woman who has never done anything wrong and it makes me want to hurl. That was my final straw - Rebecca Yarros patting herself on the back for creating such a cool self insert character. I can't do it anymore. If this is the labelled the pinnacle of fantasy romance, I feel truly sorry for the genre. Hope it's doing okay. ...more
I can't begin to describe how disappointed I am not to have loved this. This book imagines a world where elves and Fae exist, and I think that is g2.5
I can't begin to describe how disappointed I am not to have loved this. This book imagines a world where elves and Fae exist, and I think that is genuinely such a cool idea and I really don't think I've read it any where else, at least not as explicitly. Who doesn't want to read that? And there's drum magic, animal companions, and romance. It sounds like it has it all.
Now, I am a fan of Saara El-Arifi's other series, The Ending Fire , which begins with The Final Strife. However, I did have some issues with El-Arifi's writing and character work in both of the books I have read in that series, but overall I think that they can be overlooked because at the heart of the book is a really intriguing story and writing that does provide an image of a detailed and inventive world, even if some moving parts are a little clunky here and there. I was hoping that by El-Arifi's third book, those issues might have been ironed out somewhat. But in Faebound, every issue I have ever had with El-Arifi's writing has been magnified to its very peak, to the point where Faebound doesn't even feel like a completed book. The writing itself feels like the bare bones of a zero draft, when you're just writing as fast as possible to get your ideas down. There is no subtlety to emotions or themes. It isn't even all that descriptive. I know for a fact that this book is a lot shorter than The Final Strife because the font is twice the size, and unfortunately that shortness is felt very strongly. Sometimes to me the writing doesn't even seem to follow an emotional or logical train of thought, and it feels like the author jumped ahead of where the reader was at, because it was written so quickly and not edited for cohesiveness. It was like El-Arifi knew where she wanted her characters to be at emotionally, but didn't quite know how to get them there, and the gap shows. (view spoiler)[ For example, this passage:
Komi hummed deeply before replying. 'The forever war was never about freadia.' Yeeran frowned. 'What is it about?' 'Power, domination, greed.' Yeeran thought of Salawa; she couldn't deny she had some of those traits. But still she shook her head. 'No, I do not think that is the case with our chieftain. She has always wanted to bring prosperity to her people.' 'You were Waning, were you not?' Komi asked. 'I am Waning,' Yeeran corrected him, and his smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. 'Remind me of your chieftain's slogan that got her elected?' ' Forgotten never, avenged forever,' Yeeran replied, unsure what he was getting at. Komi shook his head and spoke. 'I think the whole slogan was: There will be no peace until we have liberated all those under a tyrant's rule. Forgotten never, avenged forever.' 'Yes. She was responding to the massacres wrought by the Chieftain of Crescent. Your chieftain.' She tried to muffle the accusation, but it was hard to shed the preconceptions that had so long fuelled her actions. Komi bobbed his head. 'But none of that is about the fraedia reserves? Is it?' Yeeran settled into her thoughts. He painted Salawa as a vengeful politician with a lust for power.
I can see what is trying to come across here - to challenge Yeeran's ideals about what her how righteous her war really was, and how Salawa contributed to horrific events. That is what I see as the end goal, and that is Yeeran's emotion leaving this conversation. But to me, this conversation itself doesn't logically get us to that point. Komi points out that the war is not about fraedia, but about power. Fine. Then Yeeran says that her Chieftain's slogan is about freeing the oppressed. Komi says that therefore her war isn't about fraedia. But that doesn't immediately lead us to believe Salawa is power hungry at this point. To Yeeran, fraedia represents an end to oppression. Also, surely fighting over that resource is technically more power hungry than fighting for people's rights under a tyrant? So the whole conversation is made up of paradoxical ideals that undermine each other and also themselves, and leads to an emotional outcome that cannot be founded on what is actually said. The author has jumped ahead of us because she knows where she wants to get to, but the writing doesn't convey it properly. This is felt throughout the book, and leads to everything feeling hollow and skeletal. (hide spoiler)]
What also frustrated me about this book is how the world and the story could have been amazing, but it all fell apart very early on. First of all, I can't deny that El-Arifi has an amazing imagination, which is what makes the failures of this book even more disappointing. The visual landscapes of the world itself - the underground city, for example - were incredible. But the world itself was simply not fleshed out enough - especially the elven lands, where we have no real depth to the participants in the war, the layout of the tribes themselves, and even customs, language, etc. It's skimmed over very quickly, as if, once again, this was a first draft to blurt down the plot. It's so sad, because as well El-Arifi writes these beautiful, queer normative worlds, where there is so much representation, which is rare to find often in the fantasy genre. Another problem that I had was that the elves and the Fae have hardly any distinguishing features other than different types of magic, marginally different lifespans, and having sharpened or not sharpened canines. I think the elves genuinely could have been humans and it would have made very little difference at all, especially as the humans in the book are apparently more magical?
As well, the characters felt very YA, which is not necessarily a problem, except that they were meant to be 28 and 34 I believe, and also Yeeran is supposedly the youngest colonel ever in the army. She just does not act like she has any army or even war experience whatsoever - the mistakes she makes are so incredibly frustrating because it is founded on the more immature theme of needing to prove oneself on ones first day (which inevitably leads to disaster). Surely if she has been in the army nearly 20 years she would understand this is stupid. So the whole inciting incident felt very weak and contrived. It also really annoyed me when the characters unanimously ignore something that is so obviously an attempt at foreshadowing. Like when Lettle speaks to an elderly seer who is deemed mad, and she reflects how one time he predicted the return of the Fae and that's when everyone knew he'd finally lost his mind. Like at that point the dramatic irony isn't effective, it feels painfully contrived. Another issue with this is that characters never question what they've been told, but not in a way that makes realistic sense, but in a way that makes it feel like they are so clumsily missing the obvious to make way for the author's twist. (view spoiler)[ I saw the twist about Komi coming the moment he was introduced. To be fair I didn't predict the Rayan twist, but I did predict the queen's deaths and if Lettle, a trained seer, can't interpret her own prophecies better than I can, I think that's a structural issue. (hide spoiler)]
Finally, the romance. Or romances. Lettle's relationship moved a bit too fast for me, but overall it was bearable. It was Yeeran's relationship with her love interest which once again felt like it jumped ahead of itself all over the place. Like how I described with the writing, it felt like the author knew where she wanted them to get to, but hadn't placed any logical foundations for them to get there. And so their tempestuous emotions towards each other felt insanely overblown, because I could never really logically understand how they had got to each point. They were confessing love left and right when they hadn't resolved any of their prior issues. It was just the straw that broke the camel's back for me in redeeming the characters as convincing.
I'm so sad I didn't enjoy this because I think if this book was fleshed out and edited heavily it could genuinely be really amazing. It just felt rushed to me, and therefore underwhelming. It was easy to read, and I flew through it, and I can say I liked the concepts, but the execution was just...not good. And for that reason I can't really justify rating it higher. I would still recommend The Ending Fire trilogy, but I don't think this series was ready to be released yet. And the cover is so beautiful too, which I know it's shallow, but it's the cherry on top of the despair I shall wallow in for a little while....more
I love Alice Oseman, but her work has improved so much since her first book, and unfortunately this one wasn't for me. Personally I found the majorityI love Alice Oseman, but her work has improved so much since her first book, and unfortunately this one wasn't for me. Personally I found the majority of the characters to be extremely unlikable, which perhaps is the point, but it didn't make the reading experience very enjoyable. Alice Oseman's writing style has also matured a lot, so the writing here felt kind of basic. And mostly, this book just kind of made me feel really sad. I guess that was also kind of the point, but on top of everything else, I didn't leave this book feeling great about it....more
I did not enjoy reading this book. I think the concept itself is inherently flawed, because it centres the narratives and struggles of everyone aroundI did not enjoy reading this book. I think the concept itself is inherently flawed, because it centres the narratives and struggles of everyone around Joss and does not ever really give him agency in the novel. It is about everyone else's struggle to cope with his identity, which is frustrating. There is a gratuitous amount of triggering content through perspectives that I thought were completely unnecessary to making the points that the book needed to make. And on a technical note, I just really did not enjoy the writing style; I found it incredibly transactional and made me feel very little about even the most emotional moments of the novel. ...more
The first half of this novel was fairly okay, and introduced some interesting ideas about power and gender roles within relationships, in the cont2.5
The first half of this novel was fairly okay, and introduced some interesting ideas about power and gender roles within relationships, in the context of what constitutes a 'good' education. But the second half undergoes a massive leap in time and suffers as a result. The characters are even flatter than their first half counterparts. Moreover, the conflict in these books seemed to arise from actions that didn't make sense because they seemed to go against even the characters' own desires. It's main merit was being readable, but the story was melodramatic, had little impact, and the characters did not carry the novel as they needed to....more
This was a pretty bad book but I would have rated it 2-2.5 stars if not for how incredibly uncomfortable I felt about this book including potentia1.5
This was a pretty bad book but I would have rated it 2-2.5 stars if not for how incredibly uncomfortable I felt about this book including potential side relationships between side characters and REAL CELEBRITIES (Lizzo) which just bordered on being incredibly creepy fanfiction. Also the cheating Penny did was dodge. However I appreciated that this book addressed the different sides of being a mother, Penny's identity as a cancer survivor, and that the author made an effort to include a diversity of side characters. I wish I could have rated this book a little higher but the aforementioned points really could not be overlooked for me....more
Giving this such a low rating feels somewhat mean, but giving it two stars seems too generous. This book, while not inciting a great amount of deep1.5
Giving this such a low rating feels somewhat mean, but giving it two stars seems too generous. This book, while not inciting a great amount of deep anger in me (most of the time), had few redeeming qualities. To be sure, Andy Weir can come up with a story, but the originality of that story is not so great that it cancels out the rest of the things that I disliked. The main problem for me with this book was the writing style. I feel like I read a different book to everyone else. It is plain, uninteresting, and barely services the plot. I hate the speech like style and Ryland's quirky humour - he genuinely reads like a ten year old to me. The characters also have no...well, character. Ryland is a teacher and he likes science; Yao is serious; Ilyukhina is funny and likes vodka, (view spoiler)[ Rocky is a wholesome alien that everyone will be obsessed with and its easy money (hide spoiler)]. It's like Andy Weir thought of the most basic building blocks of a character, and then thought that would be okay for a 500 page book. And like I said, the plot does nothing to redeem this. There is a memory loss element to it but to me it literally seems irrelevant to the plot because besides like one tiny twist, which is pretty obvious if you ask me, it literally has no bearing on how events play out. The entire book is just longwinded, poorly written (I did this, I do this, I do this, then I do this) explanations of science experiments or maths problems or building weirdly specific machines, with no character work alongside it. I genuinely don't know how this book has such a high rating, because for me, Andy Weir has absolutely no ability to execute a story....more
The premise and world were good but the writing and characters were bad. The writing was a weird clunky mixture of metaphors and weirdly modern phraseThe premise and world were good but the writing and characters were bad. The writing was a weird clunky mixture of metaphors and weirdly modern phrases that I was not a fan of. Also i think I'm just growing tired of some of the tropes associated with enemies to lovers, namely the miscommunication/lack of communication. ...more
kind of annoying in the way English was treated like a real person. I get that that was kind of the point but it just made me roll my eyes. there werekind of annoying in the way English was treated like a real person. I get that that was kind of the point but it just made me roll my eyes. there were some interesting facts but it got really scattered towards the second half and overall was just kind of dull....more
This was....something. I don't really know where to start here other than to say - I didn't really like this book. It's a pretty popular romance boo This was....something. I don't really know where to start here other than to say - I didn't really like this book. It's a pretty popular romance book that a lot of people really love, but I just don't see it? Honestly, it started out pretty okay, but as the book progressed I just became more and more annoyed with everything that was happening. Maybe I wasn't in the mood for irritating romance tropes. Maybe this book is actually just bad. Either way, I didn't enjoy reading it.
I think the main problem I had with this book is that everything about it is so freaking over-dramatic. The only real thing keeping the characters apart is their own stubbornness and immaturity - there's no real barrier to them being together other than ones they create themselves for no reason - like the whole 'I have to resign if the other gets the job' thing. It was a lack of communication and them being stupid about things out of context and I hate when that happens in books SO MUCH.
The main character, Lucy, was so childish. From the first chapter, when we find out her computer password is IHATEJOSHUA4EV@ or something along those lines, to her continual method of taking things that Josh says out of context and making some huge thing out of nothing. She swung back and forth in her feelings towards Josh with literally no reason - one minute they'd be making out, and the next she was back to hating everything about him as if nothing had happened. The intimate scenes felt so out of place simply because in every other situation she was still spewing hatred towards him. To quote Sarah, with whom I read this book with, she is so stupid. And very hypocritical too, in that she would say or do things to Josh, but when he said similar things to her, she'd be angry about it. Even though she kept saying you had to find someone who could take as much as they gave? Clearly she couldn't take it.
Everything else was fine. The stupidity just ruined it for me, and the fact that so many things were similar to other books I've read - namely, lift scenes, important family events, and other romance tropes I'm just completely over at this point. I don't think the writing was bad and the story moved along nicely (I wasn't bored), but I just...grrr. If everyone did their best and things still went wrong, I would care more, but when characters mess things up for themselves when a solution is sitting right in front of them, it frustrates me so much. I realise that romance probably isn't the genre for me if this show I feel (because its everywhere), but its not going to stop me from reading them. ...more
This book was supposed to fulfil my desire to read something fun, fresh, and different. Instead, it was just so deeply, incredibly and unavoidably borThis book was supposed to fulfil my desire to read something fun, fresh, and different. Instead, it was just so deeply, incredibly and unavoidably boring. In no world can this book justify being 608 pages long when for probably 400 of them absolutely nothing happened. I can get behind a book with limited action - but it needs something else to carry the story. For me, the world building was not as interesting as I think the book needed it to be, the characters were bland and the writing was at best, serviceable, and at worst, slightly annoying. All in all, none of the components of this book worked together in a way that made this an interesting read.
It is easy to tell that the author probably had a lot of fun crafting the magic system in the novel. It is incredibly detailed, incredibly complex - and in some ways I think that is its downfall. I like a complex magic system, but in my opinion the magic here wasn't even that interesting to begin with - let alone in the way it was packed into every single page. We get pages and pages of painstaking descriptions of Corin, the main character, using his magic, irrelevant tangents about magical machinery/spells that served no purpose. And even besides its frustrating complexity, the fact that there were so many limitations on what one could actually do with that magic meant that the use of the magic itself wasn't even interesting. For example, magic relies on 'mana', which individuals each have a certain amount of. If you run out of this mana, it can be incredibly dangerous. And that is fair. But Corin measures his mana obsessively (again, fair), but the fact that he is already experiencing pain when he has used barely a quarter of his mana just is so frustrating. And it's so mathematical that anything that one can do with the magic quickly withers in any excitement. And this is just a personal thing but I find that unironic poetry spells are incredibly cringe worthy.
Unfortunately, I think the book used the magic system as its backbone, so when I didn't like it, things could only go further downhill. I really hated the writing at points. For the most part, it was unbearably bland. It was weirdly colloquial in certain parts of the dialogue where it didn't make sense to be - and then some of the colloquial-ness seeped into the prose itself and it was so grating. I also hated every time Corin's thoughts were awkwardly inserted into the narrative. They were never interesting thoughts. It was almost as if the author didn't trust us to be able to take in the information ourselves, and so Corin needed to solidify it by providing a reaction, which was usually: Interesting. I'll have to research that later. I cannot describe to you how many iterations of that phrase I read.
Finally - the characters. The side characters were largely forgettable, and so I will largely focus on Corin himself. His only personality traits seemed to be that he had some limp sarcasm and didn't like killing things (though he seemed not to be bothered by unethical experiments on children). The main thing that bothered me was how he was oddly ignorant about his own world. I know he was taken out of school for a number of years to learn how to take his Judgement (a trial to get magic), but seeing as how he was raised amongst magic and taught things in relation to magic, it felt so odd that he was so oblivious to so many things. Obviously he was not expected to know everything - but I thought he would at least know something. He also never challenges anything that sort of reinforces his class privilege - especially in his interactions with Marissa - and perhaps this is commentary, but at the same time the book just felt too over explained for it to be that subtle in my opinion. I just wish that the book had focused more on the relationships between the characters - particularly between Corin and Jin, because it would have given the central section of the book a much better direction/focus to keep it interesting.
I am truly disappointed that I didn't enjoy this book. Unfortunately nothing about it was able to hold my interest, and so personally I would not recommend it, unless you are in the mood to just read what is essentially a handbook to a magic system. I will say it is easy to read - just not interesting. Other than that, there were few positives I took away, and I don't think I will continue on in the series. ...more