reubenalbatross's Reviews (521)

McIntire's writing style just isn't right/good enough for historical writing. The political tension she was trying to build didn't work, and there was zero world-building. Some of the language she used was so modern that it completely took me out of the world. 

I didn't understand the motives of so many characters, and felt absolutely no connection or heat between the love interests.

Which sucks, because I LOVE Hamlet and was really looking forward to this one. 

Re-read -

I definitely understood this more upon re-read, but I still didn't like it very much.

My semi-misogny point still stands, and it was kinda depressing but not in a very thought-provoking way.

Star rating has stayed the same.


First read -

To be totally honest, I just didn't understand this AT ALL. 

It seemed as if the narrator was both the same character (all have a dog, all read by same person in audiobook, all chapters are written with the same narrative voice) and completely different (gets caught at the end of the second chapter but story carries on without mentioning it, no side-character overlap, no location overlap) at the same time. If I had read the foreword I would have learnt this is because the ‘chapters’ are actually short stories Dick wrote separately then combined and linked together. However, I don't usually read forewords as I find they can spoil the story for me, so tend to only read them after I finish a book. In this case, I definitely wish I had read the foreword before reading. 
 
I really appreciate stories with odd concepts that are never fully explained. But SOME explanation is needed to be able to make a compelling point, and I feel there wasn't enough worldbuilding/plot explanation for me to fully get Dick's ideas. My main thoughts throughout were just confusion and bewilderment, rather than being opened up to new ideas. 
 
On another note, I found it mildly infuriating that in each chapter the main character seemed to know almost nothing about the world and the ongoing situation, and it was always explained to them in really simplistic terms by male characters. Maybe this was because the audio book was narrated by a woman, but it did feel a little misogynistic, which is strange coming from a queer, female author. 
 
I am tempted to re-read this with new eyes, so may adjust my rating later...  

Another brilliant Disc World installment.

It (of course) has all of Pratchett's amazingly bizarre jokes and wonderful world building, but it also has some really beautiful ideas about life and death, which almost made me tear up at points.

This was also the first Disc World novel I listened to on audio, and I loved the experience!

This is definitely my favourite book in the series so far.

The plot was much faster paced and way less predictable than the previous books, and loads more interesting things happened.

Also, Perrin and Mat's POVs are by far better than Rand's. I'm sick of self-pitying heroes, so it was a great change. I also loved seeing Perrin stand up to Moiraine so much is this book, it felt very cathartic and EXACTLY what she deserves.

As usual, the ending felt a little rushed, but I've just come to accept this in Jordan's work.

My biggest gripe is that I thought Selene and Zarine were the same person almost the WHOLE way through the book. I only learned they're not by looking it up. I'm sure they were described identically?? Tall, slender, pretty girls with black hair... And THEN in the last few pages a third almost identical chatacter was introduced?? Is this meant to be so confusing/misleading? Either way, I'm annoyed by it.

This is such a good ending to this series. 

For some reason my gut is telling me to give it 4 stars, even though I feel like it should be a 5 star. But I'll go with my gut! 

I stopped listening to this because I've read too much LGBT trauma recently, and did not want to have to read through the aftermath of an attempted sexual assault.   
 
I feel like the writing was really vague while discussing gender and sexuality topics. It was hard for me to get a grasp on the author's points, even though these seem to be the main premise of the book.
 

I'm not sure how I feel about Matty being trans (I assume, nothing has been properly discussed yet, maybe non-binary, or FTM?) being used as a shock twist. It felt a little ingenuine, especially coming from a (as far as I can tell) cis-author.

 
In terms of the audiobook itself - in the first section of the book it was really difficult to tell when certain scenes ended because there was ZERO pause between paragraphs. It got really confusing at times.
 
Maybe I'll come back to this at some point. But all I really want are non-trauma-based books about the LGBT community, written by the LGBT community.  

 I have so many complex feelings about this book.
 
 On one hand I thought it was very beautifully and emotively written. It doesn't shy away from the horrors of the depression era, but it also isn't trauma porn (unlike Kristen Hannah's 'Four Winds'). It shows life still going on and highlights the moments of hope and wonder without being cheesy.
 
 I also thought all of the librarian content was really interesting, and I enjoyed learning about it. 
 
 HOWEVER, this book had one huge problem for me, and that was the discussion about race (or rather the lack thereof).
 
 When I first started the book, I thought the blue-skinned characters were a fantasy element. I like to go into novels blind, and not read blurbs or summaries, so I didn't find out that this was a real medical condition until just over half-way through the book. This definitely didn't help my misgivings around race in the story, and I think it should have been made clear a LOT earlier that this was a real medical condition and not something made up.
 
 Even knowing about the blue-condition being real, I still felt that the inclusion of it was just an excuse for a white person wanting to talk about race/racism, but not wanting to write from a black character's point of view. In parts the writing even seemed to diminish the lived experiences of black people - for example at one point Cussy thinks of a black character 'Maybe there was opportunity and blessings for her color, but I'd never once seen one for mine.' Like SORRY? This happened on other occasions as well, and just seemed COMPLETELTY unnecessary. You can portray your character as having a hard life without diminishing other people's experiences. Of course, if Cussy was meant to be a racist character, this would be different, but SHE WASN'T. 
 
 To make things worse, even though many of Cussy's experiences are described as being identical to those of black people in America, none of her experiences were ONCE compared to those of a black person. Almost as if the (white) author thinks she's creating these experiences herself. 
 
 There is NO discussion of race in the entire book, which I think is heavily remiss of the author. Though the blue-condition does change skin colour, it isn't anything about race. It's also seen that Cussy can change her skin to white if she wants to, but again, no links or discussions are had between this and race.
 
 Also, there is only ONE black character in the entire book?? And she's barely in it, but of course is one of Cussy's best friends. 
 
 It just seems for a book that relies SO heavily on the lived experiences of black people, there should be more of a discussion about race, and NO diminishing of black people's lived experiences. 
 
 Also, some other things that got on my nerves:
 
 - There's a passage where the author just decided to include some casual fat-shaming, without including any commentary/discussion on it
 - Cussy keeps saying she's the 'last blue' but her dad is alive and blue??
 - The baby smiled literally the first day it was born????
 - The n-word is used multiple times at the end of the book for absolutely no reason. This was especially weird for a book with little to no other swearing, and just felt like the author thought she had an excuse/pass to use it and ran with it. 
 
 Overall, I'm really sad this book had so many (or one huge) issue/s. I actually really enjoyed the author's writing and the bulk of the story. But I just can't overlook the issues with race in it. 

This was a great little thriller. 

I love how I really felt every emotion and realisation Billy went through.

Though I don't normally enjoy child POVs, I think Dunnett did it really well here.

I also appreciated how the characters actually made realistic mistakes, rather than them just feeling like heavy handed plot devices in other mystery/thrillers I've read recently.

I'm excited to see where the series goes next! 

I was so insanely disappointed with this book! I thought the first two in this series were amazing, but The Burning God was just a hot mess (pardon the pun). 

I was tempted to DNF it at around 60%, but wanted to continue as I'd invested so much time in the series. I wish I'd just read a plot synopsis instead. 

Most things were so anti-climactic, underdeveloped, or dwelt on for too long. What did I do to deserve this??

 

There were some good points, mainly towards the start of the book: 

1. It powerfully described the brutality of colonisation from the native's point of view

 2. I enjoyed Rin as an anti-hero (at the start of the book) 

And now for the bad points, of which there were many in a book that just seemed rushed in the writing, and such a drag to read:

 

1.

The Trifecta involvement seemed so trivial and badly thought out. It was as if Kuang was building them up for more involvement in books 1+2, then just decided she couldn't be bothered and killed them off. And the slog of travelling through the mountains and losing so many troops to get there was just dull and essentially pointless. Why even bring Riga into it at all??? I'm half convinced it was just for Kuang to bulk up the word count.

 2. More Trifecta thoughts
 - Daji's only purpose was to conveniently show up and get Rin out of situations, and only give her ideas she was already thinking of or would have come to herself.
 - I was hoping for more Jiang content, but he was hardly in it, and all he did was kill Riga.
 - Once again, what's the point of even including Riga if you're just gonna kill him within minutes of us meeting him??

 3. The entire book was just a whole load of fighting and travelling with no real outcomes, meaning nothing felt impactful. And because we're not even shown the fighting most of the time, the stakes felt non-existant.
 
 4.

Throughout the book it felt like there was no real conflict/high stakes. Rin was basically winning everything, and if not was fighting against Nezha, who I couldn't get behind as a real enemy.

 5. I didn't feel any connection to the new characters because they didn't get enough time, even though there was SO much time focused on traveling which would have been the perfect opportunity to get to know them more.
 
 6. The whole book was just the same narrative beats over and over again - Rin trusts someone, Rin gets betrayed, Rin gets cocky, Rin loses OR Rin wins but really she's lost. It was impressive how repetitive this was.

 7. Everything was so predictable and convenient, and by the last 20-30% I was eye-rolling almost every page at the amount if unoriginality in the writing 

8. Rin is either miserable or evil, and nothing else. It just gets BORING. 

9.

The Hesperians left Nikara WAY to easily at Arlong. A fire breathing god was nothing to them, but flood a city and that scares them off for good??

10. Rin's revenge on Petra (which would have been a good time to show Rin's evilness) was way too rushed. I wanted that to last! Not only be a couple of vague sentences.

11. You would expect Rin would have gained SOME humility by this point, but apparently not. However, she also was never villain enough in her POV if that's the way Kuang wanted her to go. If a character is going to be ruthless I want to feel it! Not just be shown a sometimes out of control, confused little girl.

12. Rin's stubbornness is literally JUST for conflict in the story, nothing else, it's so transparent.

13. The end was so anticlimactic, I felt nothing.

 

Having reflected some more, there wasn't enough fantasy in here. Compared to the other two, this was just a history textbook. All wars and politics, whereas the first two books in the series had a nice balance of both. 

In conclusion, this might be the most disappointed I've ever been after finishing a book. I'm planning on reading Babel soon, and I truly hope that it can redeem Kuang for me. 

This was a pleasant book, but it didn't blow me away or leave much of an impression.

It was my first foray into this series, so maybe it would have done more for me if I had read the earlier books first. 

I intend to continue the series.