Take a photo of a barcode or cover
onceuponanisabel's Reviews (1.48k)
** EDIT: I was going back through my books for the year, and I can't stand by my original rating of two stars. The experience of reading this book was bad. I honestly have no positive memories of this book. I would have DNFed it if it weren't an ARC. All of those things put together should equal a one-star rating, but I think I went with two because this is one of the first ARCs I was approved for, and I was so excited about the experience that I tended to rate ARCs higher than I probably would have if I'd picked them up in the store. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming :) **
Alright friends, let's jump into it. Based on the other reviews of this book and the summary, I thought I would really like it. And I stand by my early analysis that it's a fascinating premise that has a lot of promise. The problem, though, is in the execution. I'm gonna be completely honest here, it took a lot of willpower for me to get through this book. I definitely skimmed through pretty significant chunks of it.
The Thirteenth Guardian is first and foremost a survival apocalypse book, about a group of people working to survive a series of increasingly devastating natural disasters. And yes, it features secret societies and conspiracies and all that delicious goodness. However, I couldn't enjoy those things, because, in my opinion, this book failed in a couple other, more important areas.
1) Main characters. The Thirteenth Guardian follows (mostly) six main characters as they try to survive. However, my beef with literally all of the characters is that they are the kind of characters I wrote as a sixth grader: obnoxiously perfect, good at everything, and extremely unrelatable. Avery is a) extremely beautiful b) a star basketball player and c) Very Smart and studying astrophysics at Stanford. This is just one example, but it tracks for all the rest of our characters. Because of this, I disliked them from the beginning and was never able to root for them or feel invested in their stories. My emotions towards them ranged from apathy to pure hatred, but if there isn't a single character I like, you can bet I won't like the book. (Remi in particular...oof. Talk about unlikable.)
2) Side characters / POVs. If you thought to yourself, "Six main characters? Sounds like kind of a lot" then you have another thing coming. This book switched POVs like nobody's business (like...usually several times each chapter) and added new ones constantly. I believe the author was going for a vignette sort of feel, but for me, every time a new POV was introduced, I rolled my eyes and gritted my teeth. Each POV, no matter how inconsequential, got a backstory which took up entirely too much time. I was bored and even more disinterested in these brief side characters than I was in our main six.
3) Writing style. The last thing that really took me out of this book and made me struggle through it was the writing style. Normally, I wouldn't criticize an author for their writing, but in this book, it negatively impacted my reading experience in a big way. The author seemed to avoid contractions like the plague, which led to unnatural feeling dialogue. It was deadpan to a fault, and in the beginning, in particular, I just felt like I was reading a math textbook or something. There was also a lot of repetition that felt like the author didn't trust the reader to make even the smallest of leaps (a la "'Wow,' he said with shock. He did not expect the other man to know this." Not a direct quote but this was the vibe). I resorted to the skimming because reading every word made me want to smash my face into a wall.
I gave this book two stars because the actual action was pretty good, and I still think the premise has promise. It was a good idea, but man, the execution. I can't recommend this book.
ARC provided via NetGalley
Alright friends, let's jump into it. Based on the other reviews of this book and the summary, I thought I would really like it. And I stand by my early analysis that it's a fascinating premise that has a lot of promise. The problem, though, is in the execution. I'm gonna be completely honest here, it took a lot of willpower for me to get through this book. I definitely skimmed through pretty significant chunks of it.
The Thirteenth Guardian is first and foremost a survival apocalypse book, about a group of people working to survive a series of increasingly devastating natural disasters. And yes, it features secret societies and conspiracies and all that delicious goodness. However, I couldn't enjoy those things, because, in my opinion, this book failed in a couple other, more important areas.
1) Main characters. The Thirteenth Guardian follows (mostly) six main characters as they try to survive. However, my beef with literally all of the characters is that they are the kind of characters I wrote as a sixth grader: obnoxiously perfect, good at everything, and extremely unrelatable. Avery is a) extremely beautiful b) a star basketball player and c) Very Smart and studying astrophysics at Stanford. This is just one example, but it tracks for all the rest of our characters. Because of this, I disliked them from the beginning and was never able to root for them or feel invested in their stories. My emotions towards them ranged from apathy to pure hatred, but if there isn't a single character I like, you can bet I won't like the book. (Remi in particular...oof. Talk about unlikable.)
2) Side characters / POVs. If you thought to yourself, "Six main characters? Sounds like kind of a lot" then you have another thing coming. This book switched POVs like nobody's business (like...usually several times each chapter) and added new ones constantly. I believe the author was going for a vignette sort of feel, but for me, every time a new POV was introduced, I rolled my eyes and gritted my teeth. Each POV, no matter how inconsequential, got a backstory which took up entirely too much time. I was bored and even more disinterested in these brief side characters than I was in our main six.
3) Writing style. The last thing that really took me out of this book and made me struggle through it was the writing style. Normally, I wouldn't criticize an author for their writing, but in this book, it negatively impacted my reading experience in a big way. The author seemed to avoid contractions like the plague, which led to unnatural feeling dialogue. It was deadpan to a fault, and in the beginning, in particular, I just felt like I was reading a math textbook or something. There was also a lot of repetition that felt like the author didn't trust the reader to make even the smallest of leaps (a la "'Wow,' he said with shock. He did not expect the other man to know this." Not a direct quote but this was the vibe). I resorted to the skimming because reading every word made me want to smash my face into a wall.
I gave this book two stars because the actual action was pretty good, and I still think the premise has promise. It was a good idea, but man, the execution. I can't recommend this book.
ARC provided via NetGalley
It was cute. I was pleasantly surprised by how little the romance played into the story while still being a driving force -- The Siren was much more an exploration of Kahlen, her sisters, and their relationship with The Ocean, which I was more interested in, anyway, especially after Kahlen and Akinli's love at first sight (which automatically eliminates any interest I have in a couple -- I really need a slower burn to care at all). Still, it was enjoyable overall. It had the relatively simple vibe of a classic fairytale, which is always a treat.
The Art of Taxidermy is a prose novel set in Australia, somewhere around the 1960s (I'm guessing, but our 11-year-old protagonist's father fought in WWII). It is the story of a girl who has faced an absolute onslaught of trauma in her short life, and the ways in which she copes.
I find it hard to critique this book because it is a prose novel. I've seen criticisms that there wasn't enough plot to keep a reader interested, and while I'll admit that there isn't too terribly much that happens, this didn't bother me for two reasons. 1) This book is very short, and I read it in about an hour. Because there are just so many fewer words on a page, there don't have to be as many plot points as one might expect in a typical novel. I had no trouble remaining interested in the story. I was never bored. 2) This book really isn't a plot-y book, if that makes sense. The Art of Taxidermy is an exploration of grief and one girl's journey through it. The vast majority of the story is just examining Lottie's psyche rather than describing things that happen to her.
Despite being about a young girl, this book is extremely dark and definitely somewhat macabre. Lottie's response to the death she has been forced to deal with is to become somewhat obsessed with it. At the beginning of the book, she is just collecting carcasses she finds while wandering, but this evolves into an interest in taxidermy, as the title might suggest. While Lottie never kills anything, there are fairly graphic descriptions of dead animals and her amateur attempts at taxidermy which might bother some readers.
There are very few other characters in The Art of Taxidermy besides Lottie, but I felt that this meant that they all felt necessary and all received a decent amount of characterization and backstory, which is somewhat surprising for a book so short (it is 240 pages long, but the entire book is made up of free verse poetry, so in the end it feels much, much shorter). I felt so much for Lottie's father, and her sister and grandmother were really interesting characters. Lottie befriends an Aboriginal boy, Jeffrey, who, although he receives less time than I expected, provides a much-needed escape for Lottie and brief moments of levity in an otherwise very sad book. (Sidebar, but I really enjoyed the tidbits of the book about WWII in Australia and on the indigenous peoples just from an educational standpoint) The only character I felt could have been done a little better was Lottie's Aunt Hilda, who is ultimately a caricature of traditional values and whose value is in acting as an obstacle for Lottie's unorthodox interest in taxidermy.
In the end, though, The Art of Taxidermy was made of beautiful poetry that left me feeling distinctly melancholic, but with just the right amount of hopefulness/optimism at the end to keep the book from being too much of a downer. I recommend this book for anyone who, like me, is looking for a quick read on a rainy day.
ARC provided via NetGalley.
I find it hard to critique this book because it is a prose novel. I've seen criticisms that there wasn't enough plot to keep a reader interested, and while I'll admit that there isn't too terribly much that happens, this didn't bother me for two reasons. 1) This book is very short, and I read it in about an hour. Because there are just so many fewer words on a page, there don't have to be as many plot points as one might expect in a typical novel. I had no trouble remaining interested in the story. I was never bored. 2) This book really isn't a plot-y book, if that makes sense. The Art of Taxidermy is an exploration of grief and one girl's journey through it. The vast majority of the story is just examining Lottie's psyche rather than describing things that happen to her.
Despite being about a young girl, this book is extremely dark and definitely somewhat macabre. Lottie's response to the death she has been forced to deal with is to become somewhat obsessed with it. At the beginning of the book, she is just collecting carcasses she finds while wandering, but this evolves into an interest in taxidermy, as the title might suggest. While Lottie never kills anything, there are fairly graphic descriptions of dead animals and her amateur attempts at taxidermy which might bother some readers.
There are very few other characters in The Art of Taxidermy besides Lottie, but I felt that this meant that they all felt necessary and all received a decent amount of characterization and backstory, which is somewhat surprising for a book so short (it is 240 pages long, but the entire book is made up of free verse poetry, so in the end it feels much, much shorter). I felt so much for Lottie's father, and her sister and grandmother were really interesting characters. Lottie befriends an Aboriginal boy, Jeffrey, who, although he receives less time than I expected, provides a much-needed escape for Lottie and brief moments of levity in an otherwise very sad book. (Sidebar, but I really enjoyed the tidbits of the book about WWII in Australia and on the indigenous peoples just from an educational standpoint) The only character I felt could have been done a little better was Lottie's Aunt Hilda, who is ultimately a caricature of traditional values and whose value is in acting as an obstacle for Lottie's unorthodox interest in taxidermy.
In the end, though, The Art of Taxidermy was made of beautiful poetry that left me feeling distinctly melancholic, but with just the right amount of hopefulness/optimism at the end to keep the book from being too much of a downer. I recommend this book for anyone who, like me, is looking for a quick read on a rainy day.
ARC provided via NetGalley.
