elementarymydear's Reviews (967)

 Firstly, let’s talk about the first half of this book. We follow a nameless stranger and her various escapades on a futuristic, near-deserted Earth. She meets various different people, gets in and out of various scrapes, and the whole time we don’t find out her name, only knowing her by how she is seen by the people she meets.

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I loved the first half of this book. Curtis’ vision of a future Earth was intriguing and novel, from the culture and religion, to the way climate change has decimated the planet. She conjured up such a vivid image, and the Western mood fit perfectly with the tone of the story. The plot was great fun, meandering from one adventure to another, and I was quite happily settled in for the ride.

And then things took a bit of a turn. The first half was weird, but it somehow got even weirder, and to be honest the second half felt like a completely different book. I don’t know if it was clumsily done or if I zoned out for the crucial few paragraphs, but suddenly I was in a completely different story from the one I’d been in before. In the first half I always knew what was going on (just about), but in the second half I was completely lost. It didn’t help that the audiobook narration was very soothing, which made it hard to focus on the story, especially while driving (which is where I and, I suspect, the majority of people, listen to audiobooks).

The narrator did do a great job of bringing the world to life. The accents she did transported you into the middle of an old Western, so it was a very immersive listening experience. That being said, this might be the slowest audiobook narration I’ve come across! I have never before listened to an audiobook on anything faster than 1.0x speed, but with this one I just had to speed it up to 1.5x, and then it sounded like normal speech. Of course, if you’re happy to speed up your narration this isn’t a problem, but I was really surprised at just how slowly it went.

So all in all, this book was a mixed bag. If you consider DNFing, I urge you to continue; you may prefer the second half considerably. But there were plenty of exciting and interesting ideas in here, so I’m excited to see what the author comes out with next.

I received a free copy for review. All opinions are my own. 

 For such a short book, I feel like I experienced an epic reading this!

Set in the distant future, we are thrown into the middle of ongoing battle between human populations on Earth and Mars. Overly complex world-building is one of my least favourite things in a book, and this book had the perfect balance of creating an immersive and intriguing world without overwhelming the reader with information. Aside from one (self-aware) info-dump, the world is skilfully crafted.

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The real hero of this book is the relationship between the two main characters. It’s somehow unexpected and yet inevitable at the same time, and gave the story a very moving emotional arc. It was the kind where you can feel yourself being swept up into the emotion of the story, unable to tear yourself away from the book, and it really made this book for me.

The only downside for me is I felt that the emotional peak was reached a little too soon. I felt like the emotional side of the story was complete before the plot was, and so by the end I felt like I was done with the book even though there were still a chapter or so to go. But this is the only reason this book didn’t get 5 stars from me; it’s otherwise an excellent short novel.

Thank you for the author for providing me with a copy for review. All opinions are my own. 

 This book was… kind of all over the place. But also, somehow, very little happened.

The main romance was between Aiko and Summer, who shared one anonymous kiss in high school and have been thinking about it (obsessively, and kind of weirdly?) ever since. They re-unite and fall head over heels in love, despite disagreeing over the ethics of gentrification.

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And that’s basically all that happens. They fall on different sides of a re-building project, which is the only conflict for the entire book (and it’s resolved alarmingly easily). The dynamic between them, specifically the way Aiko thinks and talks about Summer’s body, made me very uncomfortable. By the second half of the book I was rooting for them as a couple, but for the first half I couldn’t see why they were well-matched.

There was so much scope for the town and people to be better fleshed-out. Summer would be having a heart-to-heart with someone in the final chapter who we are told she has known for her whole life, but has only appeared at this moment. Other characters only appeared when they specifically serviced the main story, so it felt like they existed in a vacuum.

I also found myself cringing at the way some of the straight characters discussed things like coming out (but not in the way you might think!). For example, when Summer recalls how she told her dad she had a crush on the first time, and he responds with fondly remembering how happy he was that she felt comfortable to tell him. That’s not how anyone talks! It felt a little too textbook, and jarred with the rest of the scene.

There was a lot of potential in this book, but ultimately very little of it was realised.

I received a free copy for review. All opinions are my own. 

I, along with many others, have a strange fascination with abandoned places, so the idea of looking at British history through the lens of lost settlements was a really intriguing idea to me.

Matthew Green is a social historian, and the best parts of this book are where he brings that to the forefront. Knowing the day-to-day lives of neolithic island communities, or how tourism impacted the way of life in the remotest parts of Britain, are fascinating to read about and portrayed brilliantly. Green’s writing is compelling and evocative, creating a very vivid image of what life was like.

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Some of the chapters are much more recent, such as the chapter on Capel Celyn, which I found particularly interesting. Where the ancient settlements are fascinating for how far removed they are from us, this one was because it was so recent and has a visible impact that we still see today.

The one chapter that didn’t really fit was on the military training village, which became more about current military tactics rather than a social history on Britain. I did get the sense that Green would rather have focussed on some former training villages rather than the most current one, but that due to lack of information, or some other reason, that wasn’t possible.

Overall this was a really interesting read, examining different periods of history through the villages and towns left behind.

I received a free copy for review. All opinions are my own.

 

 This book was so much fun and has so much heart!

I love subverted fantasy tropes, and the idea of an octogenarian Chosen One immediately had me sold. Edna is the perfect candidate for a Chosen One; she’s excited for adventure but not prepared to put up with any nonsense along the way. Her fellow adventurers are just as brilliant. There’s the loyal Benjamin, who despite his anxiety goes along on the adventure to make sure Edna is okay. Then there’s Clem, a vengeance-filled teenager who thinks that she should have been the rightful Chosen One.

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They’re a great team of characters, and you can’t help but get swept up in the story. And in the grand tradition of band-of-heroes fantasy adventures, they all find the thing they need (which isn’t always the thing they want). The setting is our world but with magic, so our heroes are armed with iPhones alongside the Sword of Destiny. I thought the fantastical elements were inserted into our world really neatly and cleverly, and the world-building is done really well.

Without spoiling anything, the story also puts a bit of a twist on the usual tropes of the gallant knights. I genuinely didn’t see the reveal towards the end coming (although like any good reveal it made perfect sense in retrospect!) and it made the villain much more human and sympathetic without fully redeeming him. I would have liked to see the Knights fleshed out a little bit more, but I do acknowledge that it would be hard to do that without changing the tone of the novel. There was a brilliant redemption arc for one of my favourite characters, and a sense that even though it wasn’t all solved at the end, things were on their way.

This is a really fun read, full of adventure and characters you can’t help but root for.

I received a free copy for review. All opinions are my own. 

 I’ve FINALLY got around to reading this book, and oh boy is it a long one! Was it worth it? Almost.

I’ll start this off by saying I’m not usually a horror reader. What appealed to me about this book was the sapphic and feminist themes, and the settings – a boarding school in the early 1900s, and modern day Hollywood. So while I can’t comment on how it compares to other horror books, I can say that it was sufficiently creepy and was definitely one I avoided reading late at night!

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In many ways, I got what I was hoping for. Almost every character is queer, and many of them obsessed with the writings of a slightly odd first-wave feminist. Those themes were very present and strong throughout the book, and it was great to see them explored in a genre book like this one. I liked some of the characters, and the ones I didn’t like I loved to hate.

There are two timelines, one in the past and one in the present. While I initially really enjoyed seeing how they interacted, as the book went on I kept hoping for more linking between the two, and was ultimately disappointed. It fizzled out rather than ending with a bang, and I would have liked to see both storylines become much more intertwined.

It was also just too long. The very start was so creepy and intriguing, but we were soon going on meandering side-quests with the modern-day storyline. It could easily have been 100 pages shorter, and much more effective.

Had this book had one more ruthless edit, it would have been a very different reading experience. As it is, I will remember it for its creepiest moments, which were absolutely brilliant.

I received a free copy for review. All opinions are my own. 

This was such a frustrating read for me because it had so much potential!

Some elements of this book were done brilliantly. The relationship between Gaunt and Ellwood, the two main characters, was electric, and the tensions between them felt very tangible. This book also had one of the most brutal descriptions of trench warfare I’ve read, and it was extremely effective. The way the ‘In Memoriam’ pages were included throughout helped to emphasise the extent of the devastation, and give a sense of what it would have been like to live through the First World War.

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This book didn’t have the best start with me, as I really didn’t like the first chapter! I found the two main characters, particularly Ellwood, very childish to begin with, written more like primary school than sixth form students. After the first couple of chapters though I did warm to them. The writing style was generally enjoyable, and there were a few passages in particular that were stunningly written.

I did have my issues with this book though. The first is that we twice (twice!!) had a character be killed off, only for it to be revealed much later on that they were a prisoner of war. The first time, it felt a bit gimmicky but it didn’t both me too much; the second time, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. There is also a scene where the only character of colour sacrifices himself for his white friends, which should have at least been picked up in editing.

At about the 60% mark, we are introduced to a whole host of new characters, some of whom the main character is lifelong friends with and is very fond of. I would much rather have had that backstory planted earlier on in the book, rather than suddenly feel like I’m in a whole other book with another exposition.

I’ve mentioned this before in a couple of other reviews, but one of the big challenges with historical LGBTQ fiction is how to land that happy ending (and whether to include one at all). The ending felt too neat and convenient for me, and more importantly, didn’t fit with the rest of the book tonally. The convenient appearance of a grand opportunity for both of them on another continent from a knowing friend felt at odds with the struggle and darkness in the rest of the book, and a different (still happy and hopeful!) ending might have fitted slightly better.

Overall, I was a bit disappointed by this book. While some of it was a very good read, it was let down a few too many times at other points.

I received a free copy for review. All opinions are my own.