syllareads's Reviews (951)

I read this book as the first of my Scifi Subgenre Exploration challenge this year and while I was certainly intrigued by some of the concepts, I didn't enjoy a good chunk of my experience for various reasons.

Do Androids Dream of electric sheep is a fairly short novel set in some distant future where most of Earth is uninhabitable and a good chunk of humanity has fled the planet already. Some people are left, however - and so are androids, as the title so aptly says. Some of these androids are of human nature, some look like animals for the small human population to possess, since a lot of animal species died out during the catastrophes that brought the earth to the brink of extinction and are driving it down the hill even faster.

The novel deals mostly with an android hunter and his increasing struggle in deciding what actually separates an android from a human being - but this is also sadly where the book fell flat for me. See, he's from an agency that has developed a test for human empathy - and if you're an android, you will fail it in some way. Simple, right? 
Except it's not. The entire premise of the book is that a certain firm claims the test is faulty and would also target mentally ill people whose empathy has been "compromised" by their illness. Our MC gets send to said organization to set things straight, and as he tests the (supposedly) human daughter of the CEO, it turns out that his test fails - SUPPOSEDLY because she is indeed mentally ill. As it turns out, this is false: she's in fact an android, and seems to have not known that. The entire thing left a bad taste in my mouth because at the end of the day, it seems like Androids are INDEED different from humans and the whole debate about mentally ill people perhaps exhibiting certain traits themselves is never brought up again. It felt weirdly ableist to me, and I'd like it to not

There's also a very odd sex scene later in the novel that made me all kinds of uncomfortable, so that's a no thank you from me - even though I found the premise to be fascinating.

I borrowed this book from a friend and I'm very grateful for that because I really did not like it for several personal reasons and some overall issues that I think cannot simply be explained away with personal taste. Let's get into it!

Alice by Christina Henry is a retelling of the famous children's classic "Alice in Wonderland" - I use retelling loosely, however, since the book doesn't truly intend to follow most of the storyline. It, in fact, seems to have more in common with the Disney movie (something I notice as a trend in Alice retellings I've read in the past,,,years because the last one was 2021 :') ) of the same name. We have twisted creatures (though most of them are simply men in this version), weird and inexplicable magic, destiny, and the vorpal sword which Alice has to find to fight the Jabberwocky... classic. 
This is not, however, where I had most of my issues but we'll get to that.

What I liked:

This section will be fairly short. I liked Hatcher as a character (most of the time) because I found him fascinating (most of the time) and also because I am a sucker for men who promise their love interest they'd rather kill them than let them be taken and imprisoned again. Sexy.
I liked parts of the descriptions and some ways the author used to incorporate elements from the original tale, such as the way she found a way to fit all the different creatures in Alice meets along the way (I wasn't too fond of them all being human but you know, fine, I can live with that). I liked some of the descriptions Henry uses and overall, I found the premise to be very interesting!

What I didn't like:

Here we go.

The biggest, most glaring thing possible: the way all of the horrific images centered themselves around rape or disfigurement (or sometimes both) of women. I'm not kidding when I say that each and every creature derived from Alice in Wonderland is either a rapist, a torturer, or usually both with the only exception MAYBE being Cheshire. He's instead just your average unhelpful but secretly kinda still helpful but also screws you over kinda guy, which isn't exactly great but here we are. 

There's also a scene where Hatcher, so far the only good heterosexual cis man (I say this as if the book has rep. It does not), gets weirdly,,,,aroused I have to say by the Butterfly girls in Caterpillar's house. They are girls who are drugged, used and have wings carved into their backs so they look like fairies. Alice's only reaction to this is being slightly scared, disappointed and "idk what to say to this". Hatcher's only comment is "I haven't had a woman in so long" SIR THIS IS A RAPE FEAST AND YOUR VICTIMS CAN'T EVEN CONSENT IN ANY FORM. IT IS CLEAR THE GIRL YOU ARE LOOKING AT IS DRUGGED. WHAT THE FUCK.
The whole "men can't help it" kinda thing is really pushed to the forefront and I can't help but think it extremely,,,,,hetero in this context as well? Alice has to pretend she's a boy (and that doesn't work because everyone can just tell apparently lol) which isn't per se transphobic but feels that way in this book. She is also apparently one of the few if not only ones who is like "hey these girls are massively mistreated, maybe don't do that", which, sure, she's the only female character we get a POV from and all men in this book are horrible but it's still absolutely horrible and reminds me way too much of the heteronormative way of being "women are empathic and men are pigs" and I thought we were over that.
Apparently not. Moving on.

  Henry almost seems to derive pleasure from describing these moments as gruesome as possible and the more it carries on the more you find yourself simply not caring except for the initial shock value. Alice herself is a rape victim (something she remembers through flashbacks throughout the entire book) but the book again doesn't really go anywhere with that except having her say things like "I'm not his toy anymore", which, congratulations. If I sound like I don't care, bear with me for point two in this section:

The Pacing.
The book was way too fast overall. There was a lot of nuanced storytelling and backstory and the author tried to cram it all into 325 pages full of gore and rape - Alice's and Hatcher's memory loss and subsequent regaining of their history and what they choose to do with it, them both visiting several of the creatures from the original tale, now all reduced to Magician Crime LordsTM, a slew of traumatized girls, rescues, fighting scenes, backstory on the lore of this world... It was. So much. And it killed most of the emotional investment I had in the characters because why should I mind when they also only mind for about one paragraph because we don't have any more time left in that scene?
Several conclusions to what could have been interesting subplots also took like half a page or so to happen and at that point, I had lost all hope that the book would ever grip me again, sadly.

On a more personal (but still slightly structural) issue: Henry's inability to write the dialogue structure engaging for me, which, again, killed most of the personal investment I had in those characters previously. There are little to no other dialogue tags than "said", even in highly emotionally charged situations (or what WOULD be highly emotionally charged were I able to give a shit). The structure itself is highly repetitive which lends to quick reading I suppose but not much else - it's like gorging yourself on salty chips before dinner. It fills the stomach fast and easy but not well. And you will probably not remember any of it come the next day.

I think I'm done for NOW but tl;dr: the gratuitous rape and disfigurement of women, the "all men are pigs, actually, even the ones that are supposed to be on a somewhat good side", the pacing and the writing itself really turned me off this book and made this the first disappointment of 2022.

I have to bring the book back to the library and I have decided NOT to frantically finish it before that. I might just get it another time again because it wasn't a bad book at all! 

I made it (crying emoji).

It's been a WILD ride from start to finish, some books I wasn't so sold on, some books I absolutely loved ( like this one), some things that I'm happy we don't see as much in modern fantasy anymore,,,,but overall. A giant series that has ripped my heart out multiple times in a row.

Brandon Sanderson's novels in this series in particular have been weird for me more often than satisfying. The Gathering Storm had a weird feeling of being completely in between writers, something that didn't do it any favors in that regard (I will, however, NEVER deny how incredibly hard it must have been to pick up a behemoth of a series like WoT as a writer and finish it. Despite whatever problems I might have with his stuff, that alone makes Brando worthy of my respect). Towers of Midnight was...odd, from start to finish. The timeline was wobbly, it felt like Brando had just remembered about 10 plotlines he still needed to finish and where Robert Jordan took (sometimes debatably TOO MUCH) time to get everything up and running, Brando was running away from the start line to finish a marathon in a sprint.

So I was, to put it mildly, worried. Worried I wouldn't enjoy this LAST installment in the series, the finale, the final book in a behemoth that to this day shapes a lot of fantasy authors and readers.
And thankfully, I was WRONG.
(apparently this is a theme for my last big reads for this month lol should I maybe learn my lesson here)

A Memory of Light absolutely delivered. I was in it from the start, breathlessly rushed through the pages and when I reached That Infamous Chapter (220 pages or so??? Brando wtf) I was exhilarated and scared at the same time. AS WELL I SHOULD HAVE BEEN.
I don't think I walked out of this fully myself. 

Is this book just one big battle? Basically. Did it make me sob like a child, especially at the end? YOU BET. Am I emotionally stable enough for the series in November, absolutely not. 
Love it!

And with that I say:

Alright, so first of all, Jenn Lyons.
How dare you.

The Memory of Souls is Jenn Lyon's third book in the Chorus of Dragons series, and I will be honest here: my expectations weren't that high. Not abysmally low, absolutely not - but I hadn't enjoyed book 2 as much as was a bit hesitant to continue. I was scared I wouldn't like this at all, that I'd discover it's just really not my style and that I'd sadly have to leave this series behind.

Suffice to say that I was wrong lol

The book more or less seamlessly picks up where book 2 ended (in accidental death and destruction) and has the exact same narrative structure the other two books up to this point had; namely, we have at least 3 different planes of narration right off the bat. One, presumably set in the present, with whoever is talking about the actual happenings inside the story, two, one first-person narration (Kihrin in the first book, Janel in the second, back to Kihrin in this one) and three, one or multiple third-person narrations from various other characters throughout the book's happenings.

Now either I have come to my senses (absolutely possible) OR book 3 has something book 2 did not because I fucking loved it??
I genuinely cannot tell you why! But it was brilliant! I'm confused!

Moving on from that, we have pretty much the same cast, with some additional mentions, and what can I say, I adore my gays. They're smart, yet stupid. They're destined to destroy the world through sheer stupidity, honestly (because none of them are evil! and if they are, they have good reason! so there). Yet they absolutely cannot flirt, or pretend to be functional (unless we're talking about Teraeth, designated babysitter of a bunch of dumbasses. And really, he's still not a good role model LOL). I just love them to pieces.

The stakes in this one were ASTRONOMICALLY high. I don't think I breathed during the last parts of the book! Nonetheless, and I need you all to understand this: these books are VERY character-driven. If you don't like gay banter and stupidity, you might not be patient enough to truly enjoy this masterpiece and what it has to offer....because goddamn. I need to read book 4 like, NOW.

All in all: this was probably the book I loved the MOST in this series. I'll say it now, Jenn Lyons is a genius. Also, she has toxic ships that are shipped by other people in her story. Yes, this is important to me

*deep breath* A heist, a heist, a heist!

Book 6 of The Invisible Library series, The Secret Chapter, is as action-packed as the other books - but this time, Irene and Kai aren't alone - oh no. They're joined by several Fae and even one other dragon! Their goal? Steal a giant painting from Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum - in a highly tech-adjacent dimension of the 21st century, with as little information about the world as they could possibly get. And the heist itself is not the only problem they face....

After book 5, this was more back into the direction the other books took, but the overall themes were still very much visible and I'm really excited to see what we're gonna get next! Book 7 is already waiting for me (though it will probably happen in November and not this month anymore). The Fae-Dragon political alliance is surely going to come up time and again, and I can't wait.
I also have to yet again stress what a genius Genevieve Cogman is! Using Fae stereotypes to forward her story while also being hyperaware that they are indeed stereotypes and using that to her advantage? No one does it like her!

This year is apparently my Brandon Sanderson year lmao because Skyward is his first YA novel in his Scifi-series - and I enjoyed the ride a lot!

The story begins on a planet called "Detritus" where humanity has essentially made its home and subsequently last stand - for the Krell, aliens coming from the sky no one has ever got a glimpse from, have apparently made it their mission to wipe out humanity with their continuous attacks. Pilot numbers have been dwindling for years and every attack gets more and more dangerous.
Enter Spensa, our protagonist. She wants to be a pilot because her father was one - that is, before he died in a Krell attack while being branded a coward. Spensa is determined to show everyone that she's not a coward, like her father (not that she believes he is, anyway), and is willing to do anything to get into a cockpit - but is being a Defiant really worth her life?

I loved Spensa as a protagonist. Sure, she starts out as a little rascal (okay,,,big rascal) but her emotional growth over the course of 500 pages was wonderful to witness. Secondary characters didn't get the short end of the stick either and made for wonderful companions. I did have a few problems overall with Sanderson's writing style, as it's really not my thing but I was very well-entertained and even got sufficiently sad at the emotional scenes! Definitely worth checking this book out imo~

Written in Red is both the first book in The Others' series by Anne Bishop and the first book I finished by this author (because I'm not counting the first book in the Black Jewels Trilogy since it's in a bindup, okay? shush) and I had a blast.

The book is, very simplified, about a human woman who stumbles into a territory ruled by The Others, a bunch of supernatural creatures that are actually fucking terrifying if they want to be thank god, and finds a home there. Found family, healing, overcoming trauma and the like are all very prevalent themes in this book and I liked that a lot. The writing was at times a bit too simple for my taste usually but the dialogues were goddamn hilarious most of the time, and I really enjoyed getting to know all the characters!

The story itself has a lot of foreseeable twists and turns here and there, but it doesn't detract from the enjoyment factor because ultimately, the book is not about unexpected twists in the narrative. Rather, Bishop uses outward motivation like a (pretty standard) villain attacking the town to explore inner themes and self-realization (or at least the start of one, given that this is only book one in a series). If you are not too plot-driven of a reader, I highly suggest you give this series a try for the characters alone!

The Mortal Word is the 5th novel in The Invisible Library series by Genevieve Cogman, a series I have come to love and appreciate a lot - and even within a series overall perfectly well-done, this book exceeds any and all expectations I had for it!

Where every other book in the series so far has been very serialized with only small continuity when it comes to characters and their relationships, book 5 makes it clear how much more connected to a general overarching plot it will be. This time, Irene Winters does not just have a mission - she's asked to assist in uncovering a murder at a politically loaded place: The negotiations of a peace treaty between Fae and Dragons in Paris. Failing will mean the treaty fails. Uncovering the wrong truths might mean war. And Irene isn't even sure where exactly the Library stands in this mess...

The book had incredibly high stakes and I was LIVING for it. Irene has been steadily growing into a far more independent agent of the Library than some of the other Librarians are comfortable with, and it was wonderful seeing her journey unfold itself even more in this particular novel. And seeing her fight both politically and with The Language, a power Librarians can use, was a delight as usual. I just never want to make her angry basically :))