roadtripreader's Reviews (357)

Timeless Studio Ghibli

If you could get a warm hug from a book, it would be this book. After reading this I just wanted to polish a broom (first find one seeing as the Roomba has put it out of commission) gather up one of my puppies, maybe Pippin (I don't have a cat - damn my allergies, Jiji is adorable) and take to the blue skies with a little portable radio to listen to some sweet sounds.

I love that the world in which this story takes place is not a dark world like ours. A 10-13 year old "coming of age" is a petrifying thing. A 10-13 year old moving away from home to live in another city and help strangers - damn unthinkable. But this book makes you forget the harsh realities of Earth season 2023 and transports you firmly to a world where people like Osono make you feel at home, where ships are littered with belly-band covered wine bottles, where love poems are scribbled on leaves and bring joy, where bells that ring at the stroke of midnight on New Years Eve bring pinkie promises and folksy races around a quaint but massive city.

I loved this journey so much for it's slice of life simplicity with a dash of wonderous magic.

Listen, can you hear it?

Book 3: Readathon

My first disappointment from Tchaikovsky.  I came out of the introduction to the series (Ironclads) with high everything: excitement, anticipation and expectation for greatness and witty writing in the 2nd installment. Little things that persisted throught this book really brought all of that crashing down for me. Still, I powered through but once I became annoyed, I just couldn't get into the great story hidden beneath my not-pet peeves (I refuse to liken a peeve to a pet because my pets are adored). It boils down to two things really:


1. The slang and colloquialism started out fine, but it just became grating, visceral and annoying. Wabenzi, chomie, vai sonko, dangi... It got old really fast. Can they just speak in full sentences without littering every other piece of slang into the conversation? Seems unlikely.


2. The first few pages setting the tone for the heat-stricken planet and what survival would look like in Ankara, the Anchor settlement...or whatever it was. This also started out rather intriguing but at what point does the writer expect the reader to infer the "location" of this setting wuth drips and drabs of information? It feels like Nigeria, or maybe it's South Africa...could be Turkey(just got caught up on Ankara). And then he mentions the equator and I think hhhmmm maybe Central Africa. But dang it, he outright mentions Ecuador in passing and a couple other countries AND YET for the main setting he tap dances around it.

WHY so annoying dude? Would it kill you to say " after the water wars and global catastrophe blah blah blah, the people settled on a now barren and scorching hot (Name of place) yada yada yada and there, time passed until the old country became the new country... bing bang boom, it became Ankara." There, was that so hard?


3. Too damn much- yet not enough is what I get from this book: I was invested in the main character Mao, but then I lost interest. I found myself literally speedreading and skimming through pages like I was back at school and I just wanted the book to end. 


Still, 1 miss in 3 hits means I will still complete the series. I just need to lower my expectations just a tad.


Cant believe I went from 5 stars for Ironclads to 2.5 starsfor this one. 

And That's That. Sweet treats for the month are done.

I really enjoyed trying to bake in the same way a penguin tries to fly. See the sky, try to fly and then wonder why. But in all fairness, whenever my baking attempts would fail, I'd just watch an episode of GBBO or GCBS (New fan of the Canadian version) or even GABO (Aussies for the win) and watch chaos ensue in some episodes and then the showstoppers would come out of the oven and you know even though the judges would critique them - I knew I could NEVER...well, for now I could never make those show stoppers.

I think I'll limit my baking to a once a week little foray into sugar - for my sake and the sake of my poor oven constantly wondering "what the hell is burning" or, "hhhmm are you sure it's suppose to look like that" or "I think you took it out to soon" and so, here I am, at the end of a bake. Time to turn the telly on and watch Noel be adorable with a group of bakers.

Which season to watch? shall I watch Rahul's season...yes, yes I think I shall.

On your marks, get set .... baaaake!

When people ask me which authors are easily the best in their genre, heck even the best across the board, Terry Pratchett's name (along with Neil Gaiman) comes tumbling out like the spell Rincewind flunked out of the Unseen University with firmly stuck in his mind. I cried for Terry Pratchett the same way I cried for Chester Bennington - just a few artists who shaped my mind as a teen. I probably wouldn't have studied what I studied were it not for them oh and my high school English teacher who made me fall inlove with the macabre tale of Macbeth. So, how do I sum up the Discworld in a thought?

It is a treasure trove of true escapism.

I am rereading the series and in The Colour of Magic, we are introduced to the Great A'Tuin as he swims to infinity carrying the world on his back, albeit with the help of a couple of ginormous elephants trotting along on his shell. So anyway, here we are, on the disc and octarine is the name of the game. Because, magic has a colour, or rather a hue that is but an echo of a time when Magic was untamed and wild. This book is all kinds of colourful and fun.

⦁Great Characters: Rincewind the flunky wizard, check. Twofoot, the optimistic and thoroughly clueless and wanderlustful tourist from the counterweight continent, check. and MORT who speaks LIKE THIS, check.

⦁Insane adventures: Read the one about the Wyrmberg and get back to me on that. Dimensional planes existing together and for a second, bursting at the seams from flying a dragon to walking down the aisles of a plane looking utterly confused. Rincewind is a "wizard" but he'd rather have science - a word he can't articulate for a feeling that there should be something out there better than magic.

⦁Endless Curiosities: At every turn, when Pratchett introduces an idea, the reader (well this reader at least) is latched onto it and sees it to the very end. I had to physically shut the book after each story so I could get on with the business of the humdrum of everyday life, lest I ground to a halt and finish the book in just one sitting. At least it made me savor each tale.

Finally, the dance between Mort and Rincewind is particularly entertaining. I can't recommend this book enough - you over there ordering McDonalds - read Discworld! Oi, over there waiting at the DMV for your licence - read Discworld! And how could I forget you, scrolling through Netflix with nothing to watch after they cancel everything twice over - read Discworld!.

Okie Dokie folks. Let's get right to it. Chris Tullbane can take all my money - this book was LEVELS.

It's the perfect blend of cold-dead-somehow-beating heart and wildfire-soul-rushing heroism and bucket loads of social commentary shrouded in teenage angst. You want an anti-hero who is probably better than all those wishy-washy Marvel heroes (no shade) then how about a damn Necromancer superpower. It's a recipe with all my favorites: The Boys (Amazon) Deadpool, Umbrella Academy, Vampire Academy (book and Zoey Deutsch movie), Grishaverse, ATLA even Misfits.

If you have a thing for breaking the 4th wall, this book is right up your alley. Me? This was my jam from the first page to the last. I don't often read YA/NA novels but I do enjoy a few and this is right up there with Interworld by Neil Gaiman (not even remotely the same writing style just that both are YA/NA oriented and highly thrilling). It's also giving very strong X-men school and eccentric professor undertones.

Now, let's talk prose.

Chris Tullbane writes like a gut punch in the middle of an epic battle between Titans. You open the book, you get hit like a ton of bricks and just as Damian kept getting back up again - there you go, turning the page, in for the next chapter and the next and the next.  Until you're all done and walk out and stare at the sky and wonder if there is a Dr Nowhere out there and if the answer is yes, well...when the hell is he going to dream a little dream of power for this world we live in huh? Because tick tock mf.

Anyway, I love a great anti-hero, heck the "villain" ... the antagonist. I can find myself outright rooting for them because come on - for decades heroes have been 2 dimensional characters. So, the anti-hero, the villain, more often than not they are usually endearing, a force of determination and a testament of sheer will to manifest whatever their world-domination plan is. In this case, Damian is not a villain. He is the anti-hero trying to become the hero (but also he could give a toss about becoming a Cape - he is an enigma) and that makes for an excellent little brew (looking at you Deadpool). One can't help but empathize with him regardless of his back-alley layered with pride foulmouthed attitude. Maybe he's endearing because of it. 

What an utterly heartbreaking, devastating beautiful hopeful yet cathartic book. It was not what I expected at all. I had barely read the blurb so what I knew was that: Wallace Price was dead and there was a cafe (pardon me Hugo, a tea shop). So naturally I was expecting a book about the personification of death and its escapades I was expecting Death to speak and hangs out with Wallace etc etc. I did not expect such a poignant tale that reached down into my own grief and soothed it. 

What makes this a beautiful story is the idea that Wallace is unyeilding and set in his ways until the biggest irreversible event in his life occurs and from there on out, watching him blossom and grow is just so pleasing to the soul.

I fell in love with everyone at Charon's Crossing.  From Mei to Hugo, Nelson and Apollo, Wallace and Cameron (I especially identified with him so much). Even Alan, I could see where it all went wrong for him, so deeply wounded and emotionally scarred. Nancy, the weaving of her sadness and loss was so powerful.   


This book had me in tears for most of.the pages. Laughter, tons of smiles and a shower of tears. 

The second installment of the Into the Shadows series is lukewarm at best. The story of Persephone and her father has such an amazing potential but as her day progresses (because everything takes place in a day) I immediately got a sense of the dad's fate before they even boarded the helicopter.

Maybe it needed more by way of the crushing suffocation of having no body and hence no closure for the lost husband/father. Maybe a page with an interaction with the mother - a little more than the text message she received.

The final act is predictable in its attempt to NOT be a hero academy and in its attempt to be different visually to Xaviers School for the Gifted, Umbrella Academy and all the other YA/NA school for heroes/magic tropes.

It was ....nice

Sometimes you see the ending coming a mile away but it doesn't ruin the experience. In fact it probably enhances it because you want to see if you're right as the story twists and turns into uncomfortable poses. But yup, one ending was exactly what I expected despite the very subtle red herring in Grayson and Roanoke's first interactions.

The second ending was somewhat of a blindside. Where I had expected the writer to be done with the Krampus mansion she does the UNTHINKABLE - come on RO, as a horror writer you don't go living in a haunted house. But, that was not the shocker. The shocker happened on the very last page. Still, Roanoke was probably still in shock when she made the foolhardy decision to move to that place.

Repeat after me:

Don't Buy Obviously Haunted Houses

Future tech is so fascinating. I especially love the imagining of what tech will look like in 20 or 30 or 100 years.

In this future where Environmentalists (they're dubbed Greenies)run the world, people have adapted technology to basically be earth-friendly or as mindful as possible. But that's just one interesting aspect of Seanan McGuire's future world and its tech. The second is the absolute decimation of the money system and a reversion back to battering. And I guess that is the sum of this book - equal parts futuristic and equal parts traditional.

The story follows a traveling carnival, the Midway, as it moves from town to town performing for apples and eggs and services. Yes, this happens. I dunno, I am am still deeply embedded in a money society, so of course I found that to be unique and quite frankly hilarious. Way to add layers to a future world. The tech used to move through forests and jungles (regrown now that the Greenies rule) is really quite possible in our time, with the exception of the tent. I loved reading about the balloons carrying equipment, the little cubes holding tents, the video streaming calls (which honestly is less future and more present) and countless other wonders. All of that amazing tech and right beside it is a story about patriarchy, misogyny, abuse of power by men and in particular one cantankerous, psychopathic man who was spurnedby the main character and as a result is the major conflict in this book. The man is all kinds of toxic and doesn't deserve to live in such a glorious future (save for the bartering).

My favorite character was Billie. A humungous, ginormous prehistoric rhino who spends her day walking and eating. Living the dream.