Category Archives: Reviews

books, Dark fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

The Beholden by Cassandra Rose Clarke

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Stars: 3 out of 5

It is sad when you say something like “It was okay,” when you try to describe a book. Unfortunately, this is exactly what this book was. Just okay. The story was okay and moved swiftly enough to keep me interested. The characters were okay, though I question the need for some of them. The worldbuilding was… lacking, honestly. 

There are some aspects that I liked about this book. The relationship between the two sisters being one of them. It felt very real. It wasn’t saccharine sweet. They bickered, they resented each other, they didn’t see eye to eye on some things. But they always cared about each other, even when mad and fighting. 

The sisters were also pretty fleshed out as characters, with distinct motivations and character flaws, so it was easy to empathize and root for them. Though Celestia’s stubborn belief that Lindon would help them and do as she asks “because he is her husband” became a little bit grating overtime. Especially after their first encounter when he proved that no, he wouldn’t do as she asked or even listen to her.

Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about Ico. Honestly, I’m still not sure what purpose he played in this book. He had no motivation for going on this quest (apart from being forced into it for no fault of his own), and he is never a driving force in this story. He is more of a complaining sidekick that the sisters drag along. We could have cut his character out of the book completely and not lost any of the story. The sisters could have hired the help of a nameless boat captain or guide and he would have fulfilled the same role.

I loved the jungle and the valley of the Seraphine river. It is so well described that I could feel the humid heat and smell the sweet and rotting stench of the river. I was less entranced with the other locations in this book, because we spent a lot less time in them, and most of the time spent was indoors, so I couldn’t really picture them in my head.

And speaking of locations, some of them were completely unnecessary. For example, what was the point of the whole visit to the Emperor’s palace? It didn’t move the plot whatsoever. They learned nothing new there. It was just a detour before continuing the story. And it felt shoe-horned into the story as an afterthought.

Finally, I’m still not sure how the magic of this world works, and it’s never really explained. So we have aetheric magic, and the magic of each Airiana is different, but then also you have the Starless mages, and oh wait, the magic in the city of Bloodwine is also different, and there is alchemy… It’s a confusing mess. Don’t get me wrong. I’m more then happy to believe in a complex magical system, if I understand the rules. Here, the author doesn’t even bother explaining them, so that’s frustrating.

Also, I’m not sure I am onboard with the ending. Are we forgetting that the Emperor of the Seraphine had forbidden them to go after Decay? That he kept them as hostages in his palace to prevent them from doing that? That they basically committed treason? And killed a few of his guards escaping the palace? Yet Celestia returns to Cross Winds, like nothing happened. Is she not afraid that Starless Mages will come for her in the night? For her son? The Lady of the Seraphine even told her that those are human affairs that don’t concern her. Yet Celestia seems to continue her life, like nothing happened. 

I am also not particularly sure how I feel about the romance between Celestia and Omaira (spelling). It felt completely unnatural to the story. Probably because it wasn’t woven organically into the story to begin with. Celestia was so focused on finding Decay and preventing her husband from dying that any hint of romance simply wasn’t there (or I missed it). So it was shocking to me to see them so sweet on each other days after her husband died. This as not needed. They could just have been really good friends brought together by pain and loss and the hard times they experienced together. Whatever grew out of that friendship could have been a story for another book.

PS: I received an advanced copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Reviews, science fiction

The End of Sleep by Vyvyan Evans

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Stars: 1.5 out of 5

I didn’t mesh with this book at all, unfortunately. Part of it was because the ARC was horrendously formatted, making it almost impossible to read and follow the story. But my biggest problem was with the protagonist.

I hated Lilith from the first pages of the book until the very end. She has no redeeming qualities. She is self-centered to the extreme. She is cruel and disparaging to anyone she feels is below her in social status (spoil alert, it’s everyone in her eyes). She hates all men, and she even repeats that several times during the book. Mind you, she doesn’t have a much better opinion of women either. I mean just look at the way she treats her one night stand in the first chapter of the book. It’s cruel, it’s shameful, and it’s uncalled for.

Add to that the fact that Lilith is a half-alien with superpowers, and we get the typical trope of the Chosen one that can do no wrong. When she acquires those powers, there is no learning curve, no mess-ups, no time to get used to them. She knows how to use them from the start and does it with frightening efficiency. Unfortunately, that also kills the tension in the book. Why worry about the characters if Lilith can make all the problems go away with a wave of her hand? She is literally like a Terminator against a mob of medieval peasants with pitchforks by the end of the book – overpowered to the extreme. Which makes the end of the book boring as fish.

My other issue is that Lilith says several times that she is only attracted to women and that hates all men after a certain traumatic event that happened in her past. So the insta-love, or should I say insta-lust, between her and her partner comes across as forced and unnatural. Also, why? This love line wasn’t needed in this book.

Oh, and this book could have been at least 100 pages shorter without loosing any of the story. The first 15% of the book is basically an infodump with Lilith talking to various unimportant people about things that should be self-explanatory in their world, but since the reader doesn’t know them, they have to be spelled out. Which makes the other characters look dumb and Lilith sound pedantic and condescending. This is also rookie author mistake 101. 

PS: I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Fantasy, Reviews, Urban fantasy

Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones

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Stars: 3.5 out of 5

This book has been languishing on my TBR list since 2013, and even though I own the book, I never got around to reading it. So thank you for the Cleaning out your TBR challenge for finally giving me the push I needed to tackle it.

All in all, I actually liked the story. It has that magical realism that I love in Neil Gaiman and Garth Nix’s books, where the characters live in a seemingly perfectly normal and mundane world, but sometimes elements of the supernatural infringe upon their existence. Or blend with it, like it happened for most of this book.

I also loved Polly. She is an excellent main character. She is complex and fleshed-out, and really likeable. I can understand why she would be so taken by Mr Lynn – he is the only adult, apart from Granny, that showed her the least bit of care and interest. The more you learn about her home life, the more you realize just how horrible and self-centered her parents are. To them, having a child is an obstacle to their happiness. And the culmination of that is when her mother sends her packing to live with her father… who didn’t even have the courage to tell his new wife that Polly was coming to stay for good. And what kind of father just leaves their daughter at the train station without making sure she has a ticket and enough money for a snack, or actually seeing her off on that train?

Polly was a neglected child who craved for someone who would care about her, so she clung to Mr Lynn who had shown her a little kindness, but most importantly, who listened to her and cheered for her accomplishments, no matter how big or small they were.

So yes, I liked this book, but there is one factor that I simply can’t overlook. That’s the fact that Mr Lynn used her. An adult purposefully befriended a ten year old child and continuously insinuated himself into her life over the years. Yes, you could argue that he had a magical reason for this, and was hoping that she would save him from the fairy queen he was indentured to, but the fact stays – he was grooming her. He knew exactly what he was doing, and it’s not like Polly could give her consent to this. Not when she was a child. And that’s something that I simply can’t overlook. It makes my skin crawl. So I am taking 1 star off my score here.

However, I am glad I finally got around to reading this book, and I will check out other books by this author.

books, Dystopian, Reviews

Curfew by Jayne Cowie

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Stars: 1.5 out of 5.

This is the case where the blurb is more interesting than the actual book. Or where the author had a wonderful idea, but lacked the skill to realize it well. It could have been a wonderful dystopian novel and a great social commentary. Instead, it turned into a frustrating slog that I only finished out of frustration.

As I said, the premise had so much potential – after a wave of violent crimes against women perpetrated by men, a resolution was passed to put all the male population under a curfew from 7pm to 7am each night. And supposedly, things got better for women after that… for 16 years. Until a woman if found clearly murdered in a park overnight, when all men should be indoors. So who killed her? 

I got excited to see how this society, where women are effectively in charge, would work. How is the curfew enforced? Are those ankle monitors removable? Can they be fooled? How did men consent to this clear violation of their freedom? I was also looking forward to the murder mystery and the investigation. Unfortunately, the inherent flaws of this book sabotaged my enjoyment in the end. 

This book is told in several different POVs, which in itself isn’t usually a problem for me. The problem this time is that all of the characters we follow are extremely unlikeable. They are self-centered and react emotionally to anything and everything happening to and around them. What happened to logical thinking? What happened to compassion? 

This makes this whole women-ran society a nightmarish place to be. Which would be okay if this was a subtitle social commentary about vilifying the other genre and critique of normal genre role. But it’s not…

Second problem is that there are no shades of gray in this book. All men, without exceptions, are bad, bad, bad, BAD! Seriously? Being a survivor of abuse myself, I can understand the impulse to vilify those who hurt you, but this is taken to the extreme. What about the fact that the toxic image of masculinity that is so prevalent in the Western countries hurts men just as much as it hurts women? Neither sex is born bad or good, they are made so by their upbringing and their circumstances. It’s nature versus nurture.

Also, this world is very binary. So all women are free, and all men are locked up at night (and BAD people thinking/doing bad things). What about gay men? What about gender fluid people? What about trans men and women? How do these rules apply to them? Or do they simply not exist in this world?

The murder investigation itself was also very badly handled in my opinion. This whole mystery of who was the murder victim was dragged out way too long. I would have preferred to discover their identity earlier and then try to find out what events resulted in their murder, than following several people who could be the potential murder victim and guessing who it was. I guess the author wanted to create a connection with the victim by having us following their life before the murder. Well, since all of them were unlikeable, I didn’t particularly care.

PS: I received an advanced copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Horror, Reviews, science fiction, Space opera

The Immortality Thief (The Kystrom Chronicles 1) by Taran Hunt

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Stars: 3.5 out of 5.

Surprisingly, this book pulled at all of my heartstrings. Even though it’s monster horror in space, it made me care about the characters. Well, at least the main ones. 

I mean, you can’t help but feel sorry for Sean, who survived the destruction of his whole city and saw his family and everyone he knew lying dead at the hands of the Ministers. I understand why he clings so desperately to Benny, even though they have absolutely nothing in common apart from that tragedy that defined their childhood. It’s not a healthy relationship and clinging to it is slowly destroying both of them.

I was also impressed by the sheer capacity for compassion Sean has, even after everything he went through. Or maybe because of it? He saw so many people die that now he tries to do everything in his power to help other in need, because he doesn’t want any more deaths. And once he is stuck on the ship full of monsters with two people who, in his eyes, are responsible for the Kystrom massacre, he doesn’t immediately classify them as enemies. He has the moral strength to overcome that anger and see them for what they are – people.

I also liked Tamara and Indigo and how we progressively got to know more of them and get glimpses of humanity from the emotionless Minister and the battle-hardened soldier. They have to collaborate to survive long enough to recover data that is vital for both their races survival. In the case of the Ministers, that meaning is very literal.

The setting itself is the stuff nightmares are made of – a derelict ship left by a dying star. So vast, so dark and silent… and full of monsters that are very very hard to kill, because the scientists who created them were experimenting with immortality. And now those monsters are angry with their creators. For creating them in the first place, for the horrors they were subjected to during that creation, and for abandoning them to die on this ship without a second thought. It reminded me a bit of the video game Dead Space, which I never could finish because I’m a chicken.

There is a lot to love about this book, but there are a few flaws as well. The flashbacks, even though they serve a purpose of explaining Sean’s frame of mind, get annoying after a while. I wish the author could have found other means of passing the information to the reader. The characters other than our main trio are two-dimensional at best, and Benny was so devoid of redeeming qualities it was almost caricatural. 

The story also started dragging towards the end. It was like the author kept putting away the resolution and throwing more and more obstacles in our characters’ way. They had already been through so much though, that I experienced danger fatigue. I just wanted them to be done with this ship one way or another.

All in all though, I really loved this first book in a new series and I will check out the next one, especially considering the twist at the end.

PS: I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Dark fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

To Ride a Rathorn (Kencyrath 4) by PC Hodgell

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Stars: 5 out of 5

I continue to be impressed with this series. The complexity of the worldbuilding is staggering. Every book adds a new piece of the puzzle to the bigger picture of creation. I am fascinated and I want to know more.

I also really like Jame as a character, and I think that she grew and evolved a lot since the first book where we saw her emerge out of the Haunted Lands. She is finding her stride and her own worth in this world. She is finally making peace with her powers and her destiny, even though, in true Jame fashion, she will follow that destiny on her own terms. I think she is beginning to realize that family isn’t only blood. That it’s also the connections you create or the creatures you bind to yourself (either intentionally or not). And that you are responsible for that family. Speaking of that, I am not happy with how she treats Graykin in this book. Hopefully, she realizes that and course corrects in the next book.

It’s also interesting to see that Jame is already performing her function as Nemesis, albeit in a small way. She is like a hot knife puncturing old abscesses everywhere she goes. Things hidden for decades come to light, horrible crimes committed in the past have repercussions in the present. And Jame is in the middle of it, whether she wants it or not.

Speaking of old crimes. The more we find out about what happened 60 years ago with Jame’s family, the more I feel for both Jame and Torisen. No wonder they are so broken, coming from so much pain, misery and death. No wonder their father went mad. Sounds like his life had been horrific. 

As I said, I think Jame had a lot of character growth in this story and became a better, and more stable, person. My complaint is that Torisen didn’t get that chance. He seems stuck in his soulscape, constantly listening to the poisonous words of his dead father, doubting himself and his sister. He needs to open that door and face what’s behind it, the sooner the better. He can’t afford not to, if he wants to remain the Highlord and save his people from the moral corruption that seems to have infected the Kencyrath. 

I also loved Jame’s dreamlike travels through Rathillien’s countryside and her interactions with the local Gods, Mother Raga especially. And I’m glad that her and the rathorn colt didn’t kill each other. 

I will definitely continue with this series because I want to know more about this complex world and I want Jame and Tori to finally vanquish their demons and become the twins they were destined to be.

books, Fantasy, Reviews, Urban fantasy, YA

The Archived (The Archived 1) by Victoria Schwab

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Stars: 4 out of 5

Another book scratched off my oh so long TBR list. This one has been languishing on it since 2014. 

I really liked it. The world is interesting. The existence of an Archive where all the memories of people who die are kept is fascinating. Though I would like to know who created it and for what purpose. Since technically, the Histories just kind of stay there and should never “wake up”, and should never escape into the Outer world. Yet they do, and they go bad every single time. I wonder why? 

And I definitely could relate to Mac’s pain and her struggle to come to terms with Ben’s death. I understand that she blames herself, no matter how absurd that is. I think for her the grief of loosing her little brother compounded with the grief of loosing her grandfather, with whom she was a lot closer than with her parents. Grief can make you do some stupid things. I also understand how having to keep her job as a Keeper secret isn’t exactly conductive to creating strong friendships. Honestly, I don’t envy Mac her life. It’s lonely, having to lie to everyone all the time. Having to put on a mask for others and never ever show them your real self. 

All in all, I was also pretty okay with our protagonist, though I question her grandfather’s decision to pass his mantle of Keeper to an 11 year old child. This is not just irresponsible, its downright cruel. Not to mention that a child, at least in  normal family, would not have the freedom of movement necessary to do this job. Are you seriously telling me that Mac’s been sneaking out of the house at all kinds of hours of day and night and coming home with cuts and bruises, and nobody noticed? Her parents didn’t sound the alarm? Her teachers didn’t suspect child abuse and call child protective services?

I understand that they might pay less attention to Mac after the tragedy that struck them with Ben, locked in their own grief as they are, but she’s been a Keeper for 4 years before then. Are you telling me that her parents never called her on her lies? Never questioned why she is hurt so often? That was the thing that was the hardest to suspend my disbelief on.

This book also suffers from the usual YA trope where the characters simply don’t talk to each other about important things. A lot of the problems Mac had to deal with were created or made worse by her unwillingness to confide in others. She could have told Wesley about what’s happening in the Archives. He isn’t stupid. He’d figured out that the uptick in woken Histories wasn’t normal. She could have told him about Owen and asked for his help. Instead, she chose to lie and stubbornly try to deal with the situation on her own. Well, we know how that turned out.

We also have the incompetent adults trope that made me roll my eyes a couple times while reading this book. It’s so old and tired that it gives me the hives now. It would honestly make for a much better story if the adults and young adults worked together. Then again, we might not even have a story, because if Mac’s parents paid enough attention to her, she wouldn’t be a Keeper, because she would have been grounded the first time she’d snuck out at night and came back with bruises and knife marks. Oh, and in therapy.

But all in all, I actually really enjoyed the story while I read it, and all those questions didn’t really bother me until AFTER I had finished the book and started thinking about it. And I will definitely read the next book in the series to see if we get more answers about the Archives.

books, Post-Apocalyptic, Reviews

Extasia by Claire Legrand

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Stars: 1 out of 5.

DNF at 35%.

This is definitely not for me. I don’t deal well with religious drama, cults, and religious zealots, and while I was told that the book eventually moves past that, I just didn’t feel the strength to slog through that part of the story to get to the interesting bits. I put this book away and picked it up so many times, I finished 3 other books in the meantime. And I had to force myself to pick it back up every time. The only reason I stuck with it so long is because it’s an advanced copy. I usually feel obligated to at least make it through a quarter of a book I received for review before I call it quits.

Religious oppression and violence is not the only reason I couldn’t finish this book. I can’t stand the main protagonist. I also don’t understand her motivations. The choices she makes don’t makes sense. She is so pious and ready to become a saint, and judgmental of anyone she considers not pious enough, especially her mother… then she decides that she wants to find the Devil? Hmmm, why exactly? How a barely remembered story (that ended badly, by the way) would make her think that confronting the Devil would save her village? Why is she willing to commit theft and perjury for that?

There are a lot of her other choices and behaviors that made me shake me head in dismay. And they made me like her even less. For someone who sees herself as a sort of paragon of piety and virtue, she is extremely judgmental and unkind to everyone who she sees inferior to her. That’s especially glaring towards her fellow saints and her sister. I’m sorry, but I can’t possibly root for someone this unlikeable.

The worldbuilding is wobbly at best. I can’t even picture how this village lives. What kind of technology do they have? How do they feed themselves? What do they wear? How do they craft their tools? Nothing. The explanation about Extasia is also rather unsatisfying. 

I’ve seen a lot of raving reviews for this book on Goodreads, but for me, it was a disappointment.

PS: I received an advanced copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Fantasy, Ghost Story, Reviews, Urban fantasy, YA

The Screaming Staircase (Lockwood & Co 1) by Jonathan Stroud

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Stars: 5 out of 5.

I watched the Netflix series based on these books and liked them, so I decided to check out the original works as well. Especially since there was a lot less backstory and worldbuilding in the tv series then I would have liked. Well, I’m glad I picked up the books, even if they are technically YA. This is quality storytelling, and I loved every minute of it.

I also noticed that while the tv series follow the first book almost word for word when it comes to the events that happen, they are a lot less effective at describing the character motivations. I honestly thought that Lockwood was a pretentious ass when I watched the series. And an ass who constantly puts others in danger to boot. Well, I’m glad to say that he isn’t like that in the books. Reckless, yes. Excitable – definitely. But also brilliant, smart, and with nerves of steel. I actually liked his character in the book while in the tv series I found him mildly irritating at best. 

Same goes for George. The way he is and the way he behaves in the book is much more natural than how they portrayed him in the series. And I’m not against race-swapping characters, but they could have found an actor who fit George’s description a bit better. After all, the fact that he is overweight and not particularly handsome weights heavily on his character and his behavior. That’s where a lot of his insecurities come from. And that opportunity was completely lost in the tv series.

Also, is it me, or is the book a lot more scary and more… cinematic, shall we say? I mean the Red Room episode in the series just made me shrug, but when I was reading about it in the book, I literally had shivers. That whole night in the most haunted house in England was extremely well-written. And showed all the team members at their best, especially Lockwood and Lucy. The whole Annie Ward story was also better presented than in the TV series, in my opinion. 

I also loved that we get a lot more backstory on the Problem and more examples of the Visitors, as well as how everyday life is in a world where nights aren’t safe, and ghosts that the majority of the population can’t see can still seriously harm and even kill them. I would like to know more about this. I also would like to know if this Problem is only local to England or if it spread to the rest of Europe as well. It was mentioned that it had started in London and was slowly spreading into more rural parts of the country over the last fifty years, so maybe it hasn’t made it across the Channel just yet. 

I’m sure I will get answers to at least some of my questions if I continue with the series, which I most certainly will!

books, Reviews, science fiction, Time Travel

Hollow World by Michael J Sullivan

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Stars: 2.5 out of 5

I couldn’t quite mesh with this book, no matter how I tried. Sure, the concept seems fun, and the Hollow World itself is fascinating, but some of the decisions the author took with the story didn’t sit well with me.

I was totally onboard while we were exploring the Hollow World and learning about this very homogeneous society. Heck, I was totally onboard with the murder mystery and trying to understand why somebody would start killing people in a society where murders, or even other crimes, haven’t happened in centuries, so they don’t even have a police force. Then the author threw in this whole Warren angle and the book went downhill from there, at least for me.

First of all, Warren doesn’t work as a villain. He is way too over the top in his misoginistic and patriarchal views. The Warren Ellis spoke to at the beginning of the book was a butthead, but he wasn’t this over the top. Sure, he lived 10 years longer in the past than Ellis, but would he really have changed that much?

Also, the idea that someone like Warren could successfully recreate the experiment that NOBODY else in the world did is ludicrous. Yes, he had Ellis’s notes, but the author tells us that the notes are only half the problem. That Ellis had to make some pretty complicated calculations to make sure he didn’t materialize into space or layers under the earth, or floating a kilometer above the surface in the future. And he had to account for the difference in time between when he was and when he was going and Earth rotation, and a bunch of other factors. Are you telling me that Warren was able to do the same ten years later with completely different parameters? I call bull.

Also, the fact that Warren was Ellis’s best friend turned me off the protagonist. I mean, at one point in the book, Ellis admits that he knew that his friend was a wife beater, yet he let it slide. He never confronted his friend about the physical abuse. Worse, instead of helping, he was making sarcastic comments about the intelligence of the victim for staying with her abuser. After that little gem I lost all respect for the protagonist and all interest for the story. But I was already 80% done by then, so I skimmed until the end and honestly? The ending is disappointing.

What was the point of all this? Yes, we get a pages-long villain monologue from Warren about his motives, but what would have Pol and Hal gotten out of the genocide of their entire species? They can’t reproduce. Did they want to be the last 2 men on Earth forever or what? If so, what stops them from trying it again? They aren’t captured at the end of the book, after all. Yet this fact is treated like some kind of afterthought. Nobody is worried. 

In the end, this was a disappointing read, but at least I managed to tick another book off my TBR list. It’s been languishing there since 2015.