Too YA for my taste. Tropey, self-deprecating, reads like an (admittedly not bad) piece of fanfiction.

Still, very metal, very gay, which we love here. More post-apocalyptic books with trans people in them, please!

All-around mid book.

The premise was promising but a lot of it just plodded on. The villains were textbook, the twist was easily predictable, the characterizations of the lead and the romantic interest fell flat, and the themes were largely hamfisted. I spent a lot of this book waiting for it to end.

The pacing of the romance itself left much to be desired. Calling someone "the love of your life" after knowing her for less than a month feels... Too YA for my taste.

That said, Shesheshen is a very compelling monster design.

I think parts of this book were too high concept for me; it took me a month to read this 400-or-so pager because I kept rereading bits of it in utter incomprehension.

The world Leckie has crafted is swarming with intrigue and culture, both of which are often revealed at the precise moment they're needed to parse what's going on in a particular scene. I have trouble "trusting" the author, having read some pretty terrible books in recent years, so I found myself frustrated often during this read, only to have my pre-emptive confusion untangled when time came. This book, I found, required more patience than I could often spare it.

And yet, I enjoyed it all the same, even if it gave me a bit of a headache. Breq is everything I love in a nonhuman protagonist (see: Murderbot), Seivarden's character growth is fun to watch in real time, and the world in and of itself is a beauty. 

Too short a book to truly be 5 stars, but one I enjoyed nonetheless.

Mandel, as always, crafted a story that felt believable despite its far-fetchedness. Add to that the evocative imagery typical of this author, and you have a beautiful piece that touches (with fondness) on the human condition.

I'm surprised I liked it even this much, considering the prose is so purple it would have cost a fortune in ancient Rome, the characters are teenage stereotypes (from mean girl to meathead and most in between), and that the author, an adult man, spends far too much time focused on the 16 year old female protagonist having graphic sex. He also spends a lot of time focused on the magical boobjob she gets at one point in the book. 

It's very well thought out though. I like an "unconventional school" narrative, be it a school of magic, or assassins, as in this case. The story is tightly woven once it gets going (about 100 pages in), and the climax feels sufficiently built-up. What a twist, too! 

I was near the end of the book when I found out the author also associated himself with racists recently, however, so I'm sorely disappointed and won't be picking up the sequel. 

An interesting premise that I think could have been better executed. None of the characters had a strong enough personality to keep me hooked, and the villain was textbook-level predictable.

Thank god this book was short. I listened to the audio version all in one afternoon and was glad to be done with it.

I don't know what it was, but something in this book absolutely gripped me - perhaps the splendid narration, perhaps the tight (and era-appropriate) writing style, perhaps the immersive world building. Plus, I heard it only gets better from here!

I'm excited to spend more time with Temeraire. 

I grew up on Jansson's books, so maybe it's the nostalgia making me rate this book so high, but the way she writes is just so... Human.

Realistic dialogue is a huge thing for me in books (I hate it when those that are supposed to be ordinary people sound like movie characters), and Fair Play manages to capture daily interactions, daily mundanity, perfectly.

Nothing really happens in this book. But at the same time, it is a love story (a series of love stories?) and everything about it feels so real. 

No wonder this book is a debut - it reads like one. Character motivations are flimsy and there's a lot of "tell, not show". What promised to be a horrifying (and in its horror, relatable) depiction of girlhood turned out to be a repetitive, bleak look at the life of an extremely unpleasant main character and her one-dimensional "friends". 

Ren's character kept me from engaging with the plot: I really hoped for more from this book, but she read so stereotypically "insane" (you know, the way Jinx from Arcane is "insane", the way Harley Quinn is "insane") that I had trouble buying into the themes the story was pushing. Strong beginnings there, sure, the exploration of what puberty and high school and being in competitive sports could do to a girl, but her narrative voice felt weak and underdeveloped.

It's a weird book.

I liked this one about as much as I liked The Chosen And The Beautiful, which is to say, not a lot. They feel similar - they both meander, talk vaguely about never-elaborated-on magic, and conclude in a rush that introduces a whole new element to the story that had previously lay dormant and unexplored. 

The writing is beautiful, but it's a shame it doesn't go much of anywhere.