chantaal's Reviews (2.32k)

 Hell yeah I liked this one. On a romance level AND a macro plot level.

Payal and Canto's shared background and connection was so interesting, as was the comparison of her family and their use of power vs his. Dark and light, two sides of the same coin. Payal's brother and father felt a little too cartoonishly evil at times, but it ultimately all worked for me.

I am getting sick of countdowns in these books, though. We all know they're going to be safe in the end. 

Having Canto and Payal be designation A and really exploring that part of the Psy structure was SO GOOD, especially as they were integrated into the main plot line. I love the direction it's taking the plot. 

Ivan Mercant really started to piss me off by the end of this, but I blame me binging these books in 3 weeks for that. 

The way I shrieked in my car when I realized how Soleil's backstory linked to a plot thread in past books??? OMG

I liked their romance, though the way it progressed made the pacing feel really strange for the first half of the book.  By the time things balanced out, it made for a really good solid romance and some goooood macro plot. The way Ivan has slotted into the macro plot, we are GOING PLACES, BABY. 

Goddamn, Angela Dawe is such a good narrator.

After the bump in the road that was Ocean Light, Wolf Rain was a nice return to form. Yes we still have the instalove, but it was tempered by the characters actually realizing they needed some good space to figure out their feelings. 

The rest under spoilers because I just ramble about random stuff at this point, spoilers included.

I liked Alexei and Memory as a couple, in the grand scheme of things. At first I was kind of put off by the idea of them being together because he saves her from a literal bunker, but I loved that Sascha pointed out that Memory needed to figure things out separate from him for a little while. 

They were both stubborn in infuriating ways, though. Alexei's trauma over the rogues in his family makes sense, but damn he needed therapy, and badly. Memory needed therapy IMMEDIATELY after leaving that bunker. I guess working with all the other empaths kind of did that? But it was apparent she needed lots of help when she kept going on about how she wasn't a real E and how she was a monster and blah blah blah. I'm glad that started being cleared up really quickly in the story and we got to move on and see her evolve and learn more about her E subdesignation, because I would not have been able to stand a whole book of her on that path. 

The emotional whiplash of finding Memory befriending Arrows - especially Yuri - as a cute thing, to having the Arrows attacked in that way immediately after??? I cried.

Memory's captor was a wildly ridiculous villain, and the big climax showdown felt silly. 

What was the point of Pax and Theodora and the twin thing?? It felt so shoved in here like Singh needed to set up this concept for future plot and a way to bring Yuri back. (Because we all knew he was going to survive, right? There's no way he wasn't.) It was intriguing at first, but it felt awkward after a while. 

So Memory can just...clean and help fix the Psy net? I kind of love that idea, and I love the idea of her doing her best even though she's just one person.

Why are the covers for this series so allergic to showing how diverse the characters are?? (I get it, but still. I will complain.) At least the silhouettes in for the main covers here are obvious that Memory is black - or at least has black hair - but some of the other countries have the whitest of white models for her and it's disappointing.

Book 4 sounds incredibly intriguing, onward!

I had to sit on my feelings about this one for a little bit before deciding on the rating, because going from how much I loved the couple in the first book to the couple in this one was a WILD shift.

Thoughts all under the spoiler tag because I just started blurting out random thoughts with no real structure lmao

Most of these books deal with instalove, I've come to peace with that. But this one was ridiculous in HOW quickly Bo and Kaia fell in love, and especially with how much Kaia hates Bo when we first meet her. Literally, she HAAAATES him and everything he stands for - and she thinks he's responsible for KIDNAPPING AND BRUTALLY MURDERING HER PACK MATES. And yet it only takes one simple conversation for Kaia to change her mind and then they're basically horny for each other in 24 hours, and in love in 48 hours. This entire book takes place in like 2 weeks and they create the mating bond in that time frame. MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!!

The countdown to Bo's brain going to mush was a let down here, and it felt repetitive after Mercant's deal in the last book. Plus, we all know Bo is going to make it - and the story didn't seem to care about the fact that he does make it even though we spend way too much time with them literally counting down in the narrative. Bo survived! Woo! Let's keep the plot moving because now we have to reveal Kaia's big deal and have her get over it with the power of love too!

And y'aaalllll lmaaaooo KAIA HATES BEING ON LAND? Because her parents died on land and nobody helped them?? Like okay yeah, I get it, she was a child and she has a ton of trauma from her childhood - but after the major life or death scenario we got with Bo, having the last chunk of the book deal with her trauma and triggers when we had NOTHING of it until then just feel so weird and jarring.

The best part about this book was learning more about Black Sea, but I still came away from this feeling like we didn't really learn anything of value. Yeah, we got to experience the shifter clan, but they didn't feel any damn different from the wolves or the cats or the bears at all.

Speaking of feeling similar - LMAO @ Bo being named a human alpha and being labeled as a dominant, etc etc. Forcing a human man into the dominant alpha male routine is boring, and they have historically been my least favorite version of the romantic heroes. (Yes, I still fucking hate you, Dev.)

The plot was fine, at least we got a lot more insight into the Black Sea disappearances. 

Wait lmao lmao I forgot Kaia is a DOLPHIN!!! There's a whole scene where Bo watches her shift into a dolphin and she prances in the waves and he's so happy and she jumps into his arms and he thinks she has beautiful dolphin eyes lmaooo I CAN'T TAKE THIS SERIOUSLYYYYYY

I need Malachi's book ASAP if only so I stop being blue balled about what his sea creature form is goddamn.

Kaleb and Bo becoming reluctant friends is objectively hilarious.

Anyway, on to book 3 because I forgot what it's like to be addicted to reading these. 

Loved the resolution of the plot arc dealing with the demon Aura and how it explored more of Frieren's past. Everything else afterward felt a little too slice of life - and I typically LOVE slice of life - and meandering. I liked the growth of the characters and learning more of their past, but I wish the last few chapters had a little more to them. 

I thought I would be done with the Psy-Changeling universe when I finished the first "season", but here I am eating it all up again.

Trinity pretty much takes up immediately after the end of the first season, but with a focus on other parts of the world and other types of shifter packs. Here, it's bears. Russian bears. And I loved them all.

I really enjoyed Silver and Valentin's romance and dynamic here! Though it is still playing up the super possessive alpha male changeling making a Psy female undo her silence, it didn't bother me so much here because the story gave Silver a lot more agency than other past romances. Silver chose to figure out what life without silence would be like, and chose to move forward in a relationship with Valentin. Yes, he was pursuing her, but I liked that we came into it with him pursuing her because he was smitten, and not really pushing so much as constantly being there. It felt different from past male characters. Also, I cried in the last third of the book. I'll admit it.

The story of Valentin's pack dynamics was REALLY good. While learning about all his pack mates felt a bit repetitive and like the same way we've learned about every other pack we get to know in this world, I still enjoyed it all.

Also, one of the main issues I had with the series in the first season is that for a series that is SO diverse and dynamic, it was SO fucking straight. Here, we FINALLY get queer inclusion - and it seems like Singh is writing the world as queer normative, which is fantastic and long overdue.

The only reason this got docked 1 star is because of one thing, and it was so fucking annoying that yes, it did dock a WHOLE STAR from my rating: characters constantly saying Silver Fucking Mercant in the last third of the book. 

Anyway, this was a fun start, and now I have 7 more books to eat up with delight.

This gave me everything and more that I wanted out of Babel. 

Yeesh, this is not good. The mystery is not great, the character work is almost non-existent, the murderer was pretty obvious from the very start, and the entire motive reveal was honestly so bad and quite cringeworthy. 

The art was not good either, which made all the shock factor Hannibal wannabe murder scenes have no punch whatsoever. Oh, is that a dude flayed and holding his own skin? Oh, a dude with his lungs on the outside of his body? Meh. At some point the artist kinda gives up and the last two issues seem to take place in colorful voids with no real sense of place. 

I didn't expect much from this, and it was still disappointing. I normally enjoy Gailey's writing, but they are yet another prose author whose writing did not translate to comics. 

DNF @ 56%. I deeply dislike both these characters and the setup and I'm not interested in whatever semblance of a plot this is moving into.