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simonlorden's Reviews (1.38k)
4.5 stars
I enjoyed this a lot more than Waiting in the Wings, and that one was cute as well.
Like Nobody's Watching is a fake dating novel where the guy is into her from the beginning, but he still respects her boundaries. Pio is absolutely adorable.
I had some trouble keeping up with the ages and dates - if I got it right, Pio is 23 or 24, then Audrey is 29, so she's been with Luigi since she was a teen? It just seemed a little too much for me, but I suppose it explains even more why that relationship was significant to her.
I also appreciate the Glossary at the end of the book, but I found it kind of useless, because it's not like I was going to scroll there and back at every phrase. I think footnotes or something would have worked better.
I enjoyed this a lot more than Waiting in the Wings, and that one was cute as well.
Like Nobody's Watching is a fake dating novel where the guy is into her from the beginning, but he still respects her boundaries. Pio is absolutely adorable.
I had some trouble keeping up with the ages and dates - if I got it right, Pio is 23 or 24, then Audrey is 29, so she's been with Luigi since she was a teen? It just seemed a little too much for me, but I suppose it explains even more why that relationship was significant to her.
I also appreciate the Glossary at the end of the book, but I found it kind of useless, because it's not like I was going to scroll there and back at every phrase. I think footnotes or something would have worked better.
Okay, so this book has definitely been the most stressful so far. All the riddles, people!
I also broke my highlighting record. I had 70-something in the previous two books, but 99 in this one. Oops? I should quickly highlight one more thing to make it round.
p.s. I love Raj and May and I hope they show up a lot, thank you.
How am I supposed to wait until April now?
I also broke my highlighting record. I had 70-something in the previous two books, but 99 in this one. Oops? I should quickly highlight one more thing to make it round.
p.s. I love Raj and May and I hope they show up a lot, thank you.
How am I supposed to wait until April now?
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yes please can I go in the all-female utopia that developed without all the horrible competition and violence of our world. what is a capitalism
I received an ARC through Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.
Beasts of the Frozen Sun is the first in a new fantasy trilogy about a girl touched by the gods, and a boy who is supposed to be her enemy.
I love books inspired by mythology and playing with gods, and I loved the narrative in this book around the two different stories about what happened so many years ago. Which god is the hero, and which is the villain? Which one of them is the traitor? And how does the mortal woman the gods love play into all of this?
That being said, there was one thing that stuck with me and became more and more impossible to ignore: the most important women in this book other than the main character are a dead mother and a dead ancestor. Almost everything Lira does is motivated by her brothers, her father, her uncle, the enemy warlord, the male gods warring over her, the boy she finds on the beach, or the boy who was her childhood love. She has a best friend who had potential, and a few other (god-gifted) women appearing here and there, but at the end of the day, Lira is defined by the men in her life. She only realises her life matters when she is useful to Reykel, and even at the end, she claims she belongs to him.
You could argue that Reykel also belongs to her, and that this is part of their star-crossed fated love story, and that's fine - but that doesn't explain the others. Moreover, all this happens in a world soaked in misogyny, full of barbaric, violent men who steal and rape and threaten women. I know this is nothing new in mainstream fantasy, but every time a writer creates a whole new magical world, then goes and fills it with the same stale bigotry, my heart dies a little.
Overall, if you're not yet sick of heteronormative, misogynistic fantasy worlds, you might enjoy this more than I did - the plotline with the gods and Lira's gift is actually nice. But the number of sacrifised and fridged and sidelined and nonexistent women was just too much for me, personally.
Beasts of the Frozen Sun is the first in a new fantasy trilogy about a girl touched by the gods, and a boy who is supposed to be her enemy.
I love books inspired by mythology and playing with gods, and I loved the narrative in this book around the two different stories about what happened so many years ago. Which god is the hero, and which is the villain? Which one of them is the traitor? And how does the mortal woman the gods love play into all of this?
That being said, there was one thing that stuck with me and became more and more impossible to ignore: the most important women in this book other than the main character are a dead mother and a dead ancestor. Almost everything Lira does is motivated by her brothers, her father, her uncle, the enemy warlord, the male gods warring over her, the boy she finds on the beach, or the boy who was her childhood love. She has a best friend who had potential, and a few other (god-gifted) women appearing here and there, but at the end of the day, Lira is defined by the men in her life. She only realises her life matters when she is useful to Reykel, and even at the end, she claims she belongs to him.
You could argue that Reykel also belongs to her, and that this is part of their star-crossed fated love story, and that's fine - but that doesn't explain the others. Moreover, all this happens in a world soaked in misogyny, full of barbaric, violent men who steal and rape and threaten women. I know this is nothing new in mainstream fantasy, but every time a writer creates a whole new magical world, then goes and fills it with the same stale bigotry, my heart dies a little.
Overall, if you're not yet sick of heteronormative, misogynistic fantasy worlds, you might enjoy this more than I did - the plotline with the gods and Lira's gift is actually nice. But the number of sacrifised and fridged and sidelined and nonexistent women was just too much for me, personally.
I received an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Reading this book was... exhausting. I did two full paths, as well as several detours where I checked out another path, and many dead-ends. In the end, I'm sure there are still chapters I haven't read (I might return to them later), but I feel like I have a good enough idea to write a review.
Here's the short version: as an information resource, this book is pretty good. As a choose-your-own-adventure book that emphasises nonbinary people on the cover, it fails terribly.
1) Let's talk about the information first. Most of this book is about binary gender roles in Western culture, with a US focus. It addresses race, class, and has some chapters on transgender healthcare, as well as a few chapters on other countries, and explanation of gender roles in some indigenous cultures. It also deals with some statistics, and gave information about gender in Olympic sports that was really interesting to me. Obviously, I can't speak for the accuracy of all this information, but I appreciated the intersectionality, and the focus on issues that I didn't even think of.
So, why does this book absolutely fail to deliver what the cover and blurb seemed to promise?
2a) A quick word about the formatting. I read an e-ARC that had links to every chapter in the contents, but at the end of chapters (where it gives you the choices and tells you which chapter to go next) there are no links. There are also no page numbers, which (especially in a paperback copy) would have been much more useful in my opinion than chapter numbers. This book required a lot of jumping around, as all choose-your-adventure books do, but the actual activity of jumping around was so inconvenient that after my second read-through it just got frustrating.
2b) And now let me talk about my personal experience trying to read this book as it was intended, as a nonbinary person.
On my first read, I picked that my assigned gender didn't match the gender I felt I was. So far, so good. Next question is whether your parents accept your gender identity or not. I picked no, so I was taken to a chapter that forced me into "pretending to be a cis person for now". And then... the gender questioning thing never came up again. I actually knew about this because another reviewer pointed it out, but it was still a really dysphoric experience, and a pretty big oversight. There could have been a chapter there about transitioning as an adult, or leaving your parents, or ANYTHING. But no, I guess if your parents don't accept your gender then you're out of luck forever.
On my second read, I picked that my parents accept my gender identity. This allowed me some options, like choose to be a transgender man, a transgender woman, nonbinary, or agender. (Yes, nonbinary and agender are separate.) I picked the nonbinary option, and there was about... one chapter about nonbinary experiences. Then at the marriage part, the route merged with the previous path, and I was forced into a binary of picking between being a man or a woman.
Other things I noticed:
1) If you pick the asexual option, you can be either alloromantic or aromantic, but if you pick to be allosexual, there is no mention of aromanticism.
2) I mentioned this above, but I'd just like to emphasize that for a book that emphasises nonbinary people on the cover, all the medical, sports, work and other information is only for men and women. I understand that society is binarist, but at the very least it could have been phrased as "you are perceived as a woman" or something similar, as opposed to "you ARE a woman". There are also very few chapters specifically about nonbinary experiences in non-indigenous cultures.
3) There are several chapters where man vs trans man and woman vs trans woman are used, as opposed to cis man vs trans man or cis woman vs trans woman. There is also a chapter where the sentence "they have lived their lives as normal women" (as opposed to intersex) is used.
In summary, the information in this book focuses on a lot of issues and includes a variety of experiences - however, it heavily erases nonbinary people in non-indigenous cultures, and treats cisgender people as the norm, which was really disappointing after that cover.
Reading this book was... exhausting. I did two full paths, as well as several detours where I checked out another path, and many dead-ends. In the end, I'm sure there are still chapters I haven't read (I might return to them later), but I feel like I have a good enough idea to write a review.
Here's the short version: as an information resource, this book is pretty good. As a choose-your-own-adventure book that emphasises nonbinary people on the cover, it fails terribly.
1) Let's talk about the information first. Most of this book is about binary gender roles in Western culture, with a US focus. It addresses race, class, and has some chapters on transgender healthcare, as well as a few chapters on other countries, and explanation of gender roles in some indigenous cultures. It also deals with some statistics, and gave information about gender in Olympic sports that was really interesting to me. Obviously, I can't speak for the accuracy of all this information, but I appreciated the intersectionality, and the focus on issues that I didn't even think of.
So, why does this book absolutely fail to deliver what the cover and blurb seemed to promise?
2a) A quick word about the formatting. I read an e-ARC that had links to every chapter in the contents, but at the end of chapters (where it gives you the choices and tells you which chapter to go next) there are no links. There are also no page numbers, which (especially in a paperback copy) would have been much more useful in my opinion than chapter numbers. This book required a lot of jumping around, as all choose-your-adventure books do, but the actual activity of jumping around was so inconvenient that after my second read-through it just got frustrating.
2b) And now let me talk about my personal experience trying to read this book as it was intended, as a nonbinary person.
On my first read, I picked that my assigned gender didn't match the gender I felt I was. So far, so good. Next question is whether your parents accept your gender identity or not. I picked no, so I was taken to a chapter that forced me into "pretending to be a cis person for now". And then... the gender questioning thing never came up again. I actually knew about this because another reviewer pointed it out, but it was still a really dysphoric experience, and a pretty big oversight. There could have been a chapter there about transitioning as an adult, or leaving your parents, or ANYTHING. But no, I guess if your parents don't accept your gender then you're out of luck forever.
On my second read, I picked that my parents accept my gender identity. This allowed me some options, like choose to be a transgender man, a transgender woman, nonbinary, or agender. (Yes, nonbinary and agender are separate.) I picked the nonbinary option, and there was about... one chapter about nonbinary experiences. Then at the marriage part, the route merged with the previous path, and I was forced into a binary of picking between being a man or a woman.
Other things I noticed:
1) If you pick the asexual option, you can be either alloromantic or aromantic, but if you pick to be allosexual, there is no mention of aromanticism.
2) I mentioned this above, but I'd just like to emphasize that for a book that emphasises nonbinary people on the cover, all the medical, sports, work and other information is only for men and women. I understand that society is binarist, but at the very least it could have been phrased as "you are perceived as a woman" or something similar, as opposed to "you ARE a woman". There are also very few chapters specifically about nonbinary experiences in non-indigenous cultures.
3) There are several chapters where man vs trans man and woman vs trans woman are used, as opposed to cis man vs trans man or cis woman vs trans woman. There is also a chapter where the sentence "they have lived their lives as normal women" (as opposed to intersex) is used.
In summary, the information in this book focuses on a lot of issues and includes a variety of experiences - however, it heavily erases nonbinary people in non-indigenous cultures, and treats cisgender people as the norm, which was really disappointing after that cover.
Aaaaah!! This was so good. Most good, even. I think I actually liked this more than the first one?
At first I was sad that the previous crew wouldn't be appearing again, but then I ended up loving these characters a lot more. A Closed and Common Orbit tells two stories 20 years apart that eventually meet, and they were both amazing.
I admit that I was more invested in Jane's story and sometimes when we switched to Sidra I was eager to get back to Jane, but Sidra's story was still good.
I especially love that we have two significant AI characters in this book, and they both interact with humans, and it's clear that they're capable of feeling and having relationships with people - BUT these are not romantic relationships like they often are in AI books. Sidra and Owl both form family relationships with humans (and other species) and it's beautiful.
Also, genderfluid alien side character.
At first I was sad that the previous crew wouldn't be appearing again, but then I ended up loving these characters a lot more. A Closed and Common Orbit tells two stories 20 years apart that eventually meet, and they were both amazing.
I admit that I was more invested in Jane's story and sometimes when we switched to Sidra I was eager to get back to Jane, but Sidra's story was still good.
I especially love that we have two significant AI characters in this book, and they both interact with humans, and it's clear that they're capable of feeling and having relationships with people - BUT these are not romantic relationships like they often are in AI books. Sidra and Owl both form family relationships with humans (and other species) and it's beautiful.
Also, genderfluid alien side character.
this is the point where I should probably do my homework before starting the next book, but hey.
also there's way too much death in this series and I'm scared. nobody is safe
also there's way too much death in this series and I'm scared. nobody is safe
