andat's Reviews (467)

Clearly on an audiobook run with this travel! This is SO different than the show, I can't help but be fascinated with the whole series. It is absolutely wild the liberties the show took vs what was in the source material. I can't say either is bad, just different. Glass' whole storyline is absolutely wild. And a second drop ship!!! Well, technically a third! Now I'm going to have to keep going just so I can see where/if the stories match up. (Primfaya? Please tell me that's in the books??
!!?)

Also, ngl, I like Octavia as a bit younger than the rest of the crew. It's nice to see her innocence as a contrast to the new, hard life they've been given

Another audiobook from my travels this week. I wanted to love this one but it didn’t quite get there for me. I love the fairy tale elements but the story absolutely dragged in some parts. For something so short, it struggled to keep me invested. Worth the listen but maybe not at 100% full attention 

I listened to this on a car ride with my daughter and very much enjoyed it! The voice cast was phenomenal and anything with Baba Yaga has my vote. Bonus that it’s in Chicago where we plan to move to later this year. It’s clearly left open for more to the story. A fun, fast one (book or audio)!

This reads like a reddit post from someone who desperately wants to prove he was there when it all started. Also has some deep-seated self esteem issues and anger at his parents. DNF. (No more memoirs for me.)

I have regrets. I regret that I waited this long to read this series. I regret that I can't take a solid week off work to read the rest of this series. I regret that I both finished this book and finished it in two days. I regret that I can't read it again for the first time. So yeah, I have regrets.

I am shocked. Stunned. Aghast. Flustered. Agog. This was incredible. From start to finish this book was a whole nother level of experience. You aren't watching this from above, you're in it. You are completely immersed into the story as it is happening. Your heart is racing with every brush of certain death. Your lungs feel like they are running out of air at every near miss. 

I won't go over the plot and all the twists and turns. Far too spoilier-y to even try to give the main themes. But this.... this was a book that I did not see coming. It's woven it's way into my skin, my veins, my entire being. My expectations have competely been rewritten. (Pun intended?)

I'll leave you with this. 1. When they are searching for the book, my brain has supplied Winnie from Hocus Pocus' book as the book they are referring to. This is head canon and will not change. 2. Never trust a name you have no idea how to pronouce (looking at you Ianthe - for the record it seems to be EYE-AN-THEE.) 3. The audiobook narrator does NOT do this book justice. 

I do not have enough expletives and adjectives to cover all the WTF in this book. And trust me, I mean this in the best way, it is MESSED up. Horrifying, terrible, and supernatural in the most general of senses. It's the details that get you. It's the little pieces and parts as Johanna van Veen takes you through this narrative from present to past, includes transcripts with a doctor and patient, and lets you start to color in the lines. Some disturbing lines. Every time I thought I was getting an idea of where they were going, hard left into WTF-ville. Like, for real. It's not super fast-paced, but it's immersive. You can picture every piece of this as it plays out and I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse. You're in it. And IT is messed tf up. This is another one I bounced betwen audio and digital, and the lulling essence of the narrator's voice as she pulls you into this deeply messed up story is incredible. 

V. E. Schwab can’t write a bad book if she tried. Just read it and marvel at the way she weaves the story around monsters that are and aren’t monsters. (Surprise, humans are…humans, and all that usually entails.) This isn’t a love story, no romance here, just two teenagers trying to figure out where they are in a life that is at odds with living. 

As a fan of the Murderbot series, picking up a new novel from Martha Wells was a no-brainer. I went in completely blind, having not looked up any other reviews or even really what the plot synopsis was. If you enjoy having a reluctant hero who is morally gray, then you can rest assured that Wells brings that through in this book which looks to be the first of the series. 

There is a LOT of world-building going on here, like pages and pages of it. It's incredibly detailed, and beautifully written. There's not just a whole magic system, but there's witches, demons, other beings of magic users, and religious zealots. Wells spends a great deal of time between the present and past narrative to help build out the world, the war, and the relationships of the main characters. If you're looking for something action-packed, this ain't it. You can tell this is the foundation of a larger story, and a lot of this is the groundwork. I swapped between physical book and audiobook, which I do think helped. Knowing there's more to follow makes me want to give this world and series a chance, even though I'd given up for less on other authors/books. 

If you're ok with some serious ground being covered that isn't necessarily all action (Sanderson fans, I'm looking at you...), then I'd give this one a shot. But if it's fast-paced escapism you're after, this may not be for you. 

This was so cute! I didn’t realize there were little novellas between the series books and now everything makes more sense. Definitely worth adding to your TBR! 

Meh. Another one I wanted to like but couldn’t get there. The premise was good, the opening had a good hook, and then it slowed down and got lost in the details. Which would have been fine if the action also picked up. It moved into an endless conversation. And for whatever reason the ages didn’t match up. The age of the daughter, how spry/energetic an 80+ year old woman is expected to be, and the overall experiences linking together felt mismatched.