bennysbooks's Reviews (668)

😭😭😭😭 I can't even really say this was a perfect book, but it would be a disservice to my reading experience to give it any less than 5 stars.

Will never recover from the Fool not ending up with Fitz, but the Molly stuff was sweet and satisfying in a different way. I will just forever be running Fitz and the Fool fanfic in my head...and I am so nervous about what's going to happen between them in future books.

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I cannot wait to read the rest. 

Edit from the next day: just caught myself thinking 'I wonder what the Fool is doing right now'...

Read at the request of my youngest sibling, who loves this book (and the show). I thought it was very sweet, but surprised by how quick it was! Light on the dialogue, but effective nonetheless. Can't wait to watch the show and experience the hype! Lol

I'm just not scared. Could be my state of mind right now. Need to read a book about babies that won't sleep to experience real fear (jk that's my life). 

Okay, so I decided I was going to read the Hugo Award nominees this year. I was already halfway through the list, so why not? But then I started this book.

The DIALOGUE. That's my biggest problem. I cannot force myself to read an entire book with this dialogue. The characters don't speak like real people (or at least anyone I know, I guess), but like characters in Marvel Movie (or, if I'm being really salty, a Disney Channel original show. Like Suite Life in Space). I might have gotten a bit further in despite this, but I found the beginning of the book didn't work for me either. It felt like listening to someone solve one of those escape room style games out loud rather than an actual novel. I'm wary when authors try to pique my interest by withholding lots of information from the get-go. The combination of two things that I can't stand in books made it too difficult to push through in the end. 

I mean, it's a beloved book clearly, and Weir is a very successful author. But I'm decidedly not a fan.

Unsure how to give this a star rating. I found it very captivating - I could easily fall into Butler's writing and the story every time I picked it up. But this was dark, and not something you should pick up if you're not ready for it. Definitely a pessimistic vision of the future for North America, yet a believable one (and in many ways recognizable). My anxiety heightened, and I have already started looking into foraging books and thought about creating a survival pack. So there's that. It was a fine book (some of the Earthseed stuff was a little cringey but otherwise fine).

I'm fully obsessed with this series by this point, but Robin Hobb manages to capture my heart over and over again. In this book in particular Hobb explores

grief, lonelines, trauma, boundaries, prejudice, abusive relationships (and the grooming involved to establish them)

- and that's sort of just my dazed, post-Fool's Errand mind mush list. There's so much in here. The fantasy setting is rich and well-established, and has been from the beginning of the series (yet continues to expand each book). But it's the humanity that draws me in. I cried so many times. I mean, at the obvious bits (if you know, you know), but also at

the Fool and his love for Fitz, which is one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful things I have ever read. Beloved? Omg.

It was also perfectly slow for my taste. I think at this point anyone reading is used to the pace of Hobb's books, and the meandering pace of the beginning was exactly the time with Fitz that we deserved after leaving him for a bit with Liveship books. 

Ugh. I love this series so much. I can't even write a proper review.