gxuosi's Reviews (390)

that was an awfully long book to start and end with coriolanus being a piece of shit

honest to god idk what just happened

this review will be used for both the prequel free novella “gladiator’s sanctuary (gladiators of vagabond #0.5)” and “beast unburdened (gladiators of vagabond #1).”

gladiator’s sanctuary (#0.5): they fucked way too soon and the action was rushed. the side-side characters lacking names beyond male and female and having no characteristics used to define them from each other made combat sequences confusing. 2/5.

beast unburdened (#1): TBR

dnf at 21%. the language being used between the korean and japanese characters was racially charged, which i imagine is realistic for yakuza and kkangpae/geondal. the problem was my increasing concern over the author being japanese or korean to at least provide cultural context and nuance to offensive racial insults their characters were using. after deep diving on reviews and the author, i've found this isn't particularly a romance novel so much as gay fiction and the author, while having a japanese last name, doesn't (anywhere publicly at least) identify as being japanese. so it's just a no from me.

this was just cute as hell man. best part is the timeline; instalust with a sense of propriety AND injury healing.

dnf’d at 28%. why are we talking about a minor jacking off? i got so apprehensive about going forward that i searched the book for further instances of underage sexual content and there’s more. i don’t want anything to do with that nor is it remotely readable. i wasn’t connecting well with the book in the first place but that’s the final straw.

AO is no binti and noor is mid at best. i felt a complete disconnect with the story and characters from the get go and never felt like i was exposed to the raw emotions that make okorafor’s stories so impactful. it felt like a mathematical equation, step by step description rather than a spiraling descent into the universes okorafor weaves.

sometimes a family is a man, a eldritch 250 million year old spider woman, and her hundreds of babies

i been a nasty girl, nasty. i been a nasty girl, nasty. i been a nasty girl, nasty. i been a nasty, nasty, nasty. is somebody gonna match my freak? is somebody gonna match my freak? is somebody gonna match my nasty?

i cannot even begin to put into words the sheer nauseating, bone chilling terror i felt reading this. no horror novel has upended my mental state as much as this less than 200 page foray into a maybe-hikikomori, fanatic obsessive, toxic masculinity riddled teenage boy's life. at no point can you believe a word haruo says because he's even less reliable as a narrator than holden caulfield. and at no point can you risk not believing him due to the gravity of what he's planning. the precision as we bend back and forth through moments of clarity and fantasy without ever getting a sense that any of it isn't true is so seamless that i had entirely forgotten until the very end that haruo is nowhere near a trustworthy narrator. i've put all of my most sincere effort into this review and it's still not enough because i don't have the words for it.