randi_jo's Reviews (420)

 A decent, low-stakes genre fantasy. Probably the least favorite I've read of Lackey's Valdemar series thus far, but it's not bad. Most, if not all characters are removed from any high-stakes action that happens, so it feels a little boring until the very end when the characters are finally involved.

Probably would only suggest picking this one up if you've read other Valdemar books and are looking for lore. I feel like the next two books in this trilogy will have a lot of good lore, even if this one was skimping on that. 

If someone asked me to read chapter one and then decide if I should buy this book, I'd say: "Absolutely not." It has some of the strangest sentence structuring I've ever seen in my life, and when I first read it I thought maybe I was too tired to understand what was happening, so I slept only to find it was just as confounding in the morning. It's not written in academia, that's for sure, but I feel like if there are a lot of people saying "this was confusing" or "this made me feel stupid", it's probably not good.

Even though the following chapters weren't as stunted as the first, there was almost no exposition to the world, just throws some made up words at us and expects us to pretend to understand what's happening until we can finally make a few connections later on (which is great when it comes to mysteries, but not when you're trying to paint a setting, PLEASE). Also the character Flip is completely incongruous with literally everything else, so much so that it feels shallow rather a comic relief character.

Thank goodness this was an ARC because without some heavy editing this book is impossible to read unless you have a massive amount of patience and some aspirin for the guarantied headaches.

 A nice space fantasy. 12 year old Myra is your typical angsty tween who gets caught up in the secrets of her Elite lunar boarding school. At this point in time the Earth is no longer habitable because plants became toxic and poisoned Earth's atmosphere.

The plot is fun and has a lot of drama, the characters are your typical tropey school types, the nerd girl, jock boy, the surveillance teacher, the Dean With Secrets. Can't say I didn't see it coming, but also it's an entertaining formula.

My only qualms are: 1) there is virtually no plot resolution. This will be a series and very obviously so. There are answered questions, and an attempt at plot resolution that instead became a conflict point for more drama. It feels unfinished and unsatisfying. 2)

If plants are so evil because what they did to Earth and they haven't been cultivated in at least a couple generations, then how do all these people find and get caught with all these seeds? Seeds show up everywhere. At least one person per family has seeds! Distracting.

 

 1.5 because I'm sure it could've been worse. There were good ideas here and the setting was great. Very atmospheric.

Everything else though... meh.

All the characters read the same: depressed, have a 'dark secret' (I use this term lightly), and they all have a bone to pick. I'm not much of a mystery reader but it was pretty obvious who died and who did it based solely on the fact that

the victim is the most charming then it's cemented that they'll die as soon as the second secret that involves them comes out -- all the others were unnecessary imo. The killer is the one who never draws attention to their woes/murder motives

. I think it was too obvious trying to make literally everyone a red herring.

Book pacing sucked, too. I feel like the time jumps were forced in order to present the idea that there is an actual mystery, at some point in the book, so you don't end up rage quitting while listening to overgrown teenagers whine about their dark pasts for 200+ pages.

Ending was lackluster, everyone just went on their merry way and that was that. Pretty sure it was supposed to be some kind of female comeuppance story since

just about every woman in this book was wronged by the 'victim'

but it was so ridiculous in how everything 'tied together' in the last like 20% that I want to laugh. What are the chances? Slim.

Also:

DID THEY FIND PETE AT THE END AFTER HE WENT MISSING? Feel like that might be important.

The island idea was cool though. 

 This was an interesting blend of astrology nonfiction and mythology, where the Milky Way Galaxy is the narrator speaking their story. It definitely made the material more approachable. All the information is great, good for intro levels to astronomy, and answers all the questions that tend to come up about the universe (will it end? when will our sun die? are there aliens? lol).

I don't know if this book is supposed to be YA, but I'm going to mark it as such. My reasoning being mostly for the strange butt/bulge/sexual jokes. I felt very much like I wasn't the target audience for this, which sucks, but happens. My main complaint though was that the narrative voice either wasn't indifferent enough for the consciousness of a galaxy, or it was just condescending, but not really in a fun or good way.

3.25/5. Would probably be more received by teens 16-19. 

 A collection of short stories and poems by black authors who love speculative fiction/SFF! I found that the majority of these stories leaned closer to the modern/urban fantasy side, but I feel like each one was poignant and thematic. Some highlight the struggle between Africans beliefs and the spread of Christian ideals, others focus solely on the embrace (good or bad connotations) of the myth. The poetry chosen is beautiful - the last one likely the most powerful. Amongst the others I think my favorites were the poem 'Blackman's Flight in 4 Parts' and the story 'A Missile Against the Darkness'.

I'd recommend this to anyone who's interested in Afrofuturism and discovering new black authors. Each story and poem ends with an author biography, which I love, because it gives you a better idea about who they are and many have their twitter handles available if that's an avenue you like to use to keep up with authors.

Thank you netgalley for the advanced copy. 

 Read for Banned Books Week 2022. Did I like it? Not really. Did I hate it? Also no. Was probably great for its time, but did not age gracefully. Also, I can't tell if this was aimed towards YA audiences or not since so much of this was aimed at people above legal drinking age.

In terms of information about the LGBT+ community, it's decent, if not dated in some areas. Best for gay, lesbian, and maybe trans information. Asexuals get mentioned and then steamrolled (and at one point accused of being liars since, to paraphrase: 'anyone who doesn't imagine having sex all the time with multiple people are lying') and bisexuals have some information but mostly get a consolatory pat on the back because their sexuality isn't really seen as an "endgame" sexuality. There's some weirdly worded trans-gatekeeping (and some transphobia mixed in), but otherwise reading this is like reading a 2012 Tumblr text post but with slightly better formatting.

Narrator was annoying and highly opinionated, even accidentally suggesting in the 2014 version that you can only have love in monogamous relationships and therefore shitting on every polyamorous person ever (this has been fixed). The only thing that really made this worth reading were the testimonials from the other LGBT+ people; many were more informative than the actual material being presented, especially towards the end. 

 I don't think I can love this series any more than I already do. There's beauty in the simplicity of it, but also it holds those big, existential questions without ever giving a true answer, rather just letting it be the budding thought.

The relationship between Dex and Mosscap is funny and precious and I love to read it. It's like reading about when people find their person in the most unlikely of places and ways. It's platonic but the emotional and philosophical connection they share is sweet and fulfilling.

And while book one seemed to focus on the meaning of our lives, this one seemed to ask: 'how do we know what to do; how do we know if what we do is right, too much or too little? How do we know if we're really a part of something greater?' The crown-shy trees seem to know, but how? Honestly great food for thought. 

Firstly, thank you to netgalley for an e-ARC of this book for my honest review.

Solid 3.75 stars and after sleeping on it I still have a pretty positive feeling about it.

The start of this book is enchanting. I loved it. I think I should've been made more aware that this was going to involve an OC literally having a romance with Nathaniel Hawthorne and is not a Scarlet Letter retelling. It's more of an alternate history but it affects only a 1 year period and the universe continues as we know it. I don't find this bad, necessarily, but it did catch me off-guard for a moment.

Isobel and her backstory are well written and complex. Almost every character has some ulterior motive or complex narrative and are each attractive in their own way

funnily enough, I think Hawthorne is probably the only exception, but I think it's because as a reader it's assumed you might already know his work and can project more information onto him

. 

The themes of repeating history, how tragic events can separate people for generations (the accused and the accusers), and hidden truths, are woven together throughout the narrative and the prose is nice, sometimes a little purple - usually

whenever synesthesia is described, or 'the colors' and such. It can be a bit too heavy handed there

. The setting is historically accurate and has multiple facets, which is refreshing since most historical fictions rely heavily on one or two aspects of the past; Laurie creates an entire atmosphere of Salem circa ~1817.

I think my only issues were:

Roughly halfway through the book Isobel is <i>painfully</i> ignorant on many issues, including the slave trade (and I mean like NO IDEA about slaves? really?), classism, sexual assault etc. Which are all things she had plenty of opportunity to learn/hear about in Scotland. I know that Isobel is like 17/18 at this point, and that it's super plot dependent that she doesn't just figure things out, but she was so stupid about some sensitive topics that I almost put the book down in disgust. It got better, it did, but that one section was so painful.

The ending was lackluster - and honestly if it had been more thought-out and maybe focused more on Isobel's life after her brief stint with Nathaniel, I would've given a 5 star rating. It's just too glazed over. I wanted to see more of her and

Captain Darling, being happy and not just '18 years later I realized I loved this man who let me live in his house... for 18 years and then we had gentle sex lol

. It really brought me down from the extreme high that the climax of the book had brought.

It's never mentioned that Nathaniel Hawthorne has a deeply emotional affair with Herman Melville. :( /j

It's always great when scientific data like this is presented in an easy-to-access way. The story of the Hawaiian snails and their struggles for survival in an ever changing ecosystem due to invasive species is eye opening - as I never could have imagined the severity of it without this kind of background "story telling". The prose is simple but flows well and the author's voice comes off as genuine and compelling.