competencefantasy's Reviews (912)

There's something about the tone and writing style of this that I really like. The prose feels very clean and forward moving. The combination mystery and fantasy kept my interest and was something I had not seen to much before. I also liked the family dynamics and the narrator voice. Overall a good showing

Not sure

This book has a lot going on. There's extensive allegory: justice vs vengeance, what makes.a monster, moral necessity, denial vs truth, the nature of community etc. All of this is intended to be mapped onto the notion that this is a.very near future society approximately one generation past a revolution of the type that might seem to be brewing right now. And it's that mapping I don't think works for me.I don't like my allegory to state outright what it's about. This setup leads me to complaints like how exactly did any society delude itself that it drove emotional abuse to extinction within a generation with a revolution that doesn't even seem to have significantly changed family structures, despite considering structural change an essential part of the process. Too much of the book looked back into this vague revolutionary bridge to modern events for !me and I would have preferred a straight up secondary world false utopia.

That said despite this one genre execution being not to my liking I really did like the rest.

Nice!

I really like this one. The protagonist is a great mix of relatable and unique. I like the cast of other children and creepies, with favorite minor character going to the white witch. I also think most of the themes landed and I just love the use of oranges. However I do wish the through line of they're unlike us but still reasonable had gotten a bit more bite at the end. Some entities that were ambiguous turned out straight up villainous which was disappointing. The book also started a little slow for me, though that may have been my fault . I like it and will be interested to see what the author does next.

I recently looked at a video which speculated that people give higher scores fo books which teach them something novel and discussed whether this is a problem or not. This is definitely one of those situations for me. The few stories that referred to events I already knew about, didn't seem to me like much. However, in this case I don't think grading something up for new teaching is such a bad idea. The organization of the anthology is very good and the art is gorgeous even though the dialog can get a little on the nose at times, especially in the first story, with people having current events conversations. It was also especially novel to me because I am familiar with almost no Canadian history generally. Overall recommend to people looking to know more about the topic.

Read for indigathon

I really like this. I wasn't necessarily expecting to since I struggle with satire when I can't hear the live delivery. Then a second act change that I initially expected to dislike kicked the emotional resonance up. At the same time all the thematic work started landing. I finished the play feeling the kind of freaked out that I like to be with theater. I want to see this performed

This manga translates cultural art and story into something closer to a modern day comic. The color palette is amazing and my favorite thing about the art. To me, the story felt like it stopped as it was getting excellent and I would have liked a little more, but I think that it's likely on my end with me missing a lot of the depth. I hope to read more of this sort of thing so I can build my capacity and experience this from a more developed place.

I am not going to rate this one because I can tell I'm not qualified.

Heartbeat Braves is a rare book, a Mf romance that I don't instinctively hate. Now that leaves me more at a mild like but it's still very impressive. The tone of the book is very pleasant, while still including
conflict in the form of a poor-luck cultural center.The leads and most of the aurillary characters are fully developed with their own priorities and personalities, crucially for me, no one I'm expected to like goes through any behaving line an abusive
jerk phases. I can't claim to feel all that strongly about it, but I might read the next ones.