bennysbooks's Reviews (668)

A simple but evocative read! My kid asks for chai daily now 😂 

Enjoyed the reading experience and imagining how intense and unlikable this guy must have been. Retained very little though. 

Gracián DEFINITELY would have been a Silicon Valley CEO or something if he were alive today. A bit of a laid-back sociopath vibe. Gives all the energy of those 30 minute YouTube ads where a self-assured white man with a chunky watch tells you how he became successful by reading a book a day. 

LOVED the world-building, and enjoyed the plot. I did feel like some of the characters could use some work, especially Naranpa. She was not a compelling character, and her naivete was annoying (heard the author say in an interview that Naranpa  knew what was happening but took the high road...which is not conveyed in the text well. She just seemed to always be a few steps behind everyone else in the most frustrating way, which I guess *could* be handled well in the continuation of the series). I think if this book had been longer, or focused on Naranpa less, I would have rated it a bit higher. However, this world will absolutely stick with me and I am anxiously awaiting Fevered Star from the library. 

Clever, fascinating, and scathing. Need to read everything Kincaid has written. 

Loved the idea of this book - dystopian future in a fallen Toronto, with Afro-Carribean myth and magic at the forefront. But this was my second attempt, and I can't get into it. The visions Ti-Jeanne keeps having draw me in completely, and then the rest feels like a slog. If I weren't sleep-deprived I might have pushed through, it's a short book, but at this point in time I'd rather just move on. Going to pick up more Hopkinson in the future. Knowing this was a debut, I'm still confident that she is an author I will enjoy. 

I have gripes, but I was also completely freaking hooked so... make of that what you will. 

Gripes:
A) Some of the actions characters chose were bizarre.

Like knocking over a tower of full champagne glasses to annoy your step sister? Massively weird overreaction, esp since it mostly impacts the establishment and servers (and the character who did this was a server so she would know that pain). And putting cayenne in a man's underwear in your quest to break up a couple? Didn't find it believable or entertaining.

B) Some flat characters. Like Spencer? He reminded me of Jed Mosley in the Wedding Bride 😉😂
C) Cringey sex scenes. They vascillated between steamy and embarassing. Why refer to underwear as "cheekies" when writing a sex scene between two grown women? And why call them "centers"? Didn't work for me.
D) It felt like a lot of tropes at play in one book. 
E) Some clunky representation. Not bad, not nonexistent, just felt *slightly* checkbox-ey. Could feel a little more authentic with a bit more attention paid to that aspect, I think. 

That being said, I ate this up. I clutched my kobo to my chest. I became VERY invested in Claire (omg). I don't think it's the best romance I have ever read, but I'm happy to have experienced the love between Delilah and Claire, and the friendship of these women, and will absolutely continue with the series as they are published.

As brilliant as I have come to expect from Tchaikovsky. However, I wasn't a huge fan of the past/present split in this instance. The way that Tchaikovsky writes about these

octopuses

can read like a science/anthropology nonfiction text - captivating, but not as propulsive as the actual storytelling. The rest of the book kind of reads like a space opera/horror. Switching back and forth between past/present meant your brain would have to shift modes from one manner of storytelling to the other, and it would take me quite a while to adjust. Children of Time benefitted from being more straightforward. The linear time-jumps were easier to get used to, unlike the combination of forward and backward (and forward within the backward) time jumps you get here. It wasn't difficult to keep track of, just disrupted my flow as a reader. Ultimately happy to have read this though. I was craving a good science fiction escapade, and this satisfied that craving. Despite the hopeful ending, I will never read the phrase

"We're going on an adventure"

without some level of horror. 😂 

Took a break for a while, and when I went to pick it back up found that I remember very little of what I read previously. It was fine, just not memorable.