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inkandplasma
DNF @ 30%.
If you're looking for a horror thriller LOOK ELSEWHERE. This is, at best, a social commentary book in a horror setting. If you like literary fiction focused on social commentary and don't mind a bit of gore, give this a go.
I was bored as hell the entire time I was listening to this. I don't like any of the characters and I don't want to know their entire life stories up to the point of the horror. At 30% in I have literally hit one of the horror house cells and I was willing to go into a full contact escape room myself just to get away from this book.
If you're looking for a horror thriller LOOK ELSEWHERE. This is, at best, a social commentary book in a horror setting. If you like literary fiction focused on social commentary and don't mind a bit of gore, give this a go.
I was bored as hell the entire time I was listening to this. I don't like any of the characters and I don't want to know their entire life stories up to the point of the horror. At 30% in I have literally hit one of the horror house cells and I was willing to go into a full contact escape room myself just to get away from this book.
this was a lot harder on the reread i feel weirdly conflicted bc severin pissed me the hell off this time. i think knowing what happens later didnt help
initial thoughts: hahahaha what the fuck
Full review will be on my blog on September 17th 2020: https://inkandplasma.com/2020/09/17/the-silvered-serpents/
Thanks to Wednesday Books for an eARC of this excellent sequel, it has not affected my honest review.
I enjoyed The Gilded Wolves a lot – enough that I finished it in pretty much one go – but it’s safe to say that The Silvered Serpents does not suffer rom second book syndrome. If anything, The Silvered Serpents is significantly better than the first book. The stakes are higher, the consequences harsh and rough and everyone is going through an absolutely terrible time. Suffice to say, it’s exactly the kind of book I love. The ending of The Gilded Wolves was painful as hell. I read it this morning, as of writing this review) and was fortunate enough to have The Silvered Serpents to leap straight into. But The Silvered Serpents did not ease my troubled soul. Instead it hurt me twice as bad, and now I’m ready to go feral to get my hands on the final part of this trilogy.
The classic heist sections were still very much present in this book, and so were the puzzles and logic aspects that I absolutely loved from the first book. It was one of my favourite things about the ensemble, that they all very clearly had different strengths but also that we got to see them work together, and there’s more of that here. Enrique and Zofia are the best duo and I want to watch them team up together forever. The characters go through absolute hell in this book. All of them are handling the grief of Tristan’s death and subsequent discoveries about what led him to that point, and it’s pulling the team apart. I spent this whole book so conflicted about all of them. There were moments where all the characters were truly toxic to each other, and I wanted to separate them as much as I wanted to smack their heads together and make them play nice. Hypnos remains my absolute favourite, a hilarious hero, and I’m glad that he got to be more involved in the team. It’s hard to go into the character dynamics as much as I’d like to, as I don’t want to spoil significant moments in the book, but it’s safe to say that if you love complex character relationships and trauma-fractured-families, you’re going to love this as much as I did.
The setting was pretty interesting. I think I still prefer the cool-as-hell Forged Paris over the depths of snowy Russia, but the ‘forgotten palace’ mentioned in the summary is an unbelievably cool setting and I hope it spawns a lot of fan art (I want people to draw David, okay?). The Forged ice creatures were unbelievably cool and there were plenty of moments that delved into the idea of Forging a little more than the first book. The pacing in this book was even better than the first one, and it was so unbelievably easy to read. I read this over a few hours because every time I picked it up I couldn’t put it down without having read at least 20% of my eARC.
Overall this was an incredible read, and I highly, highly recommend it. I kind of regret reading an eARC, because now I have to wait forever for the next book to arrive.
Full review will be on my blog on September 17th 2020: https://inkandplasma.com/2020/09/17/the-silvered-serpents/
Thanks to Wednesday Books for an eARC of this excellent sequel, it has not affected my honest review.
I enjoyed The Gilded Wolves a lot – enough that I finished it in pretty much one go – but it’s safe to say that The Silvered Serpents does not suffer rom second book syndrome. If anything, The Silvered Serpents is significantly better than the first book. The stakes are higher, the consequences harsh and rough and everyone is going through an absolutely terrible time. Suffice to say, it’s exactly the kind of book I love. The ending of The Gilded Wolves was painful as hell. I read it this morning, as of writing this review) and was fortunate enough to have The Silvered Serpents to leap straight into. But The Silvered Serpents did not ease my troubled soul. Instead it hurt me twice as bad, and now I’m ready to go feral to get my hands on the final part of this trilogy.
The classic heist sections were still very much present in this book, and so were the puzzles and logic aspects that I absolutely loved from the first book. It was one of my favourite things about the ensemble, that they all very clearly had different strengths but also that we got to see them work together, and there’s more of that here. Enrique and Zofia are the best duo and I want to watch them team up together forever. The characters go through absolute hell in this book. All of them are handling the grief of Tristan’s death and subsequent discoveries about what led him to that point, and it’s pulling the team apart. I spent this whole book so conflicted about all of them. There were moments where all the characters were truly toxic to each other, and I wanted to separate them as much as I wanted to smack their heads together and make them play nice. Hypnos remains my absolute favourite, a hilarious hero, and I’m glad that he got to be more involved in the team. It’s hard to go into the character dynamics as much as I’d like to, as I don’t want to spoil significant moments in the book, but it’s safe to say that if you love complex character relationships and trauma-fractured-families, you’re going to love this as much as I did.
The setting was pretty interesting. I think I still prefer the cool-as-hell Forged Paris over the depths of snowy Russia, but the ‘forgotten palace’ mentioned in the summary is an unbelievably cool setting and I hope it spawns a lot of fan art (I want people to draw David, okay?). The Forged ice creatures were unbelievably cool and there were plenty of moments that delved into the idea of Forging a little more than the first book. The pacing in this book was even better than the first one, and it was so unbelievably easy to read. I read this over a few hours because every time I picked it up I couldn’t put it down without having read at least 20% of my eARC.
Overall this was an incredible read, and I highly, highly recommend it. I kind of regret reading an eARC, because now I have to wait forever for the next book to arrive.
Full review: https://inkandplasma.com/2021/02/25/plain-bad-heroines/
Thanks to The Borough Press for the ARC of this book. It has not affected my honest review.
Trigger Warnings: death, animal attack, gaslighting, murder, attempted sexual assault, curses, unwanted pregnancy, manipulative behaviour, drowning.
I had high, high expectations for this book, which is usually a risk because I’m setting myself up for let down. Somehow this book side stepped every single thing I expected it to be, and still managed to be better than I had hoped. It’s a thick book with two timelines running parallel and while it could have been difficult to follow it was instead perfectly threaded so that I could always keep track. Not that I’m saying for a second that I understood what was going on – I spent most of my reading time spinning too rapidly from fear to confusion to fear again to be able to keep track of what I suspected was happening.
Plain Bad Heroines was my favourite kind of gothic horror. Not overtly jumpscary or gory, instead it created a pervasive kind of fear that left me unable to exactly pinpoint why my heart was racing. Though admittedly it didn’t help that I was plagued by very characteristic horrors while reading – a buzzing sound behind my head while I was in the bath and a truly nightmarish moment where I was reading and all the power cut, plunging me into pitch black darkness. Yes, I screamed like a baby. When it came to the gothic elements, this was pitch perfect. The yellow jackets were so, so unnerving as a repeated theme, showing up unexpectedly and always in a horrible, horrible way. The setting, an old school and a house with a spindly tower named Spite Tower, is mysterious and eerie even when things aren’t going awry and the whole thing was underwritten with the disconcerting feeling of, even as the reader, not knowing what was true and what wasn’t. The book fools you into thinking something might be a trick, then makes it seem entirely impossible, and it leaves you feeling uncertain and worried for the characters that you’ve come to love.
The characters in the past timeline felt doomed from the start, after all we know that Brookhants has a reputation for a reason, but that didn’t stop me wanting more for them. When the present day sections alluded to the tragedies that befall characters we know, my heart leapt into my throat. But it was the present day characters; Harper, Audrey and Merritt, that in my opinion are the stars of the book. Watching them develop from strangers into a new Plain Bad Heroines society made me equal parts excited and jealous. I’m not usually a huge fan of poly romances, mostly because I don’t read romance and I find they’re often less developed as side plots in a SFF or horror story but the romance arc in this book was perfection. I wasn’t expecting it, so when I found myself hoping for a poly romance I was ready to be disappointed. But I wasn’t. It wasn’t at all the main focus of the book but it was developed naturally and beautifully and left me with a very strong desire to go and read so much fanfiction about our modern day heroines.
The horror was there, uncertain and undescribed and absolutely under my skin, but equally I loved every part of this book with a strong sense of joy. I loved the characters, I loved the story. This book is full of sapphic women who have been pushed around and defined by heteronormative expectations carving out their own space in the world. Plain Bad Heroines was, in equal measures, empowering and frightening. I think the inherent queerness in this book and its characters made it addictive to me, watching queer women coming together and forming the kind of intense bonds that I know myself from gravitating towards other LGBT+ people even unintentionally. I can’t wait to reread this one the first chance I get, because I already know that there’s going to be more depth than I could possible have noticed the first time, too busy being scared of the yellow jackets.
Thanks to The Borough Press for the ARC of this book. It has not affected my honest review.
Trigger Warnings: death, animal attack, gaslighting, murder, attempted sexual assault, curses, unwanted pregnancy, manipulative behaviour, drowning.
I had high, high expectations for this book, which is usually a risk because I’m setting myself up for let down. Somehow this book side stepped every single thing I expected it to be, and still managed to be better than I had hoped. It’s a thick book with two timelines running parallel and while it could have been difficult to follow it was instead perfectly threaded so that I could always keep track. Not that I’m saying for a second that I understood what was going on – I spent most of my reading time spinning too rapidly from fear to confusion to fear again to be able to keep track of what I suspected was happening.
Plain Bad Heroines was my favourite kind of gothic horror. Not overtly jumpscary or gory, instead it created a pervasive kind of fear that left me unable to exactly pinpoint why my heart was racing. Though admittedly it didn’t help that I was plagued by very characteristic horrors while reading – a buzzing sound behind my head while I was in the bath and a truly nightmarish moment where I was reading and all the power cut, plunging me into pitch black darkness. Yes, I screamed like a baby. When it came to the gothic elements, this was pitch perfect. The yellow jackets were so, so unnerving as a repeated theme, showing up unexpectedly and always in a horrible, horrible way. The setting, an old school and a house with a spindly tower named Spite Tower, is mysterious and eerie even when things aren’t going awry and the whole thing was underwritten with the disconcerting feeling of, even as the reader, not knowing what was true and what wasn’t. The book fools you into thinking something might be a trick, then makes it seem entirely impossible, and it leaves you feeling uncertain and worried for the characters that you’ve come to love.
The characters in the past timeline felt doomed from the start, after all we know that Brookhants has a reputation for a reason, but that didn’t stop me wanting more for them. When the present day sections alluded to the tragedies that befall characters we know, my heart leapt into my throat. But it was the present day characters; Harper, Audrey and Merritt, that in my opinion are the stars of the book. Watching them develop from strangers into a new Plain Bad Heroines society made me equal parts excited and jealous. I’m not usually a huge fan of poly romances, mostly because I don’t read romance and I find they’re often less developed as side plots in a SFF or horror story but the romance arc in this book was perfection. I wasn’t expecting it, so when I found myself hoping for a poly romance I was ready to be disappointed. But I wasn’t. It wasn’t at all the main focus of the book but it was developed naturally and beautifully and left me with a very strong desire to go and read so much fanfiction about our modern day heroines.
The horror was there, uncertain and undescribed and absolutely under my skin, but equally I loved every part of this book with a strong sense of joy. I loved the characters, I loved the story. This book is full of sapphic women who have been pushed around and defined by heteronormative expectations carving out their own space in the world. Plain Bad Heroines was, in equal measures, empowering and frightening. I think the inherent queerness in this book and its characters made it addictive to me, watching queer women coming together and forming the kind of intense bonds that I know myself from gravitating towards other LGBT+ people even unintentionally. I can’t wait to reread this one the first chance I get, because I already know that there’s going to be more depth than I could possible have noticed the first time, too busy being scared of the yellow jackets.
