allweatherreader's Reviews (187)

Ridiculously cute, and as someone who was a chonky kid (and isn't a skinny adult), I was invested in these kiddos. Genuinely a bit creepy in places, too! Ordered the next one.

Side note: Birdie is 100% played by Kate McKinnon in my mind, for some reason. 

Welp, I certainly do still hate competitive sports for children.

I'm not sure how effective it is as a body horror. It's not a queer romance. Ren is almost unbearable. I couldn't put it down, I admired the ending, and I was... moved? But I didn't like it. I'm not certain I was meant to. 

I'm not usually so much into the thriller side of horror books; I prefer more fantasy in them. But this was very well done. Carey just has a great way with his characters. He lets them show you who they are. He does perhaps take his sweet time unwinding the plot, here, but I think it works; the first section being quite slow builds anxiety, everyone gets looked at properly, and then the tension can come from that instead of more cheaply from just a twisty plot. Difficult to explain without spoilers but I didn't begrudge the length. If anything, the aftermath of the finale felt a little rushed - I wanted to see the characters interact a bit more post-boss-fight - but I get why.

Haven't read any Carey in a long while despite his books always being solid; there's a few more on the tbr pile yet so hopefully this will encourage me to get to them. And I'd like to reread the Felix Castor books, I think.

Adorable 16 year olds fighting demons, having crushes and loving musical theatre. This was great. Loved the very Buffy-esque banter, and the tone of it all was pitched just right, I think; a sufficiently high threat level but also, teenagers, so emotional trauma is ranked right up there with the physical, and that's done so well here - our narrator gives almost equal weight to demons sucking the life out of the entire school and whether or not her crush likes her back (and how well the fall musical is going to go), and why shouldn't she? They're all important to her, because she's alive and a person, and I liked that she could identify that and not be ashamed. That feels like a good thing for the target audience of this book to understand.Thoroughly enjoyed every page. 

A fun magic school/mystery set up, likeable kids - would've appreciated more showing and less telling, a bit more of the cool magical weirdness of the Bureau, and potentially a higher threat level than there was, but I am not the target audience. My 8 year old was extremely invested and it was a lot of fun to read alongside him while he enjoyed the twists and turns. Will definitely read the rest of the series with him.

I think this might be my favourite Kingfisher, after Nettle and Bone. It's quite dark in places, as she usually is, but it's so lovely. Perfect retelling of Sleeping Beauty. 

Ooooh. This was right on the edge of too silly, for me, but somehow it wasn't. This is an isekai/portal fantasy, in which a young woman with stage four cancer gets popped into a high fantasy, extremely high drama setting, and finds herself the villain ('villain') of the piece; hilarity, gore, betrayal, love and all that good stuff ensues. Overblown fantasy has always been my jam, and this is both a love letter to and a gentle lampoon of it, so even though some of the Americanisms made me actually cringe, if that sounds good to you, I recommend. 

I really enjoy this person's writing. I think the genre is best described as science-horror? The stories are mostly tech-based, futuristic thought experiments, with chilling implications (of course). I'm all about that. It's like micro-dosing Adrian Tchaikovsky. 

Favourites: 'Lena', 'cripes does anyone remember Google People', and 'I don't know, Timmy, being God is a big responsibility'.