theravenkingx's Reviews (336)

3.75 stars

"I don't believe in ghosts. My nan was fond of telling me, "It's not the dead you need to be scared of, love. It's the living." She was almost right. But I do believe you can still feel the echoes of bad things."

Here is my attempt at chalking out (chalk man, chalk out, get it?) what happend in the book as vaguely as possible. There won't be any spoilers, just my general thoughts and a little description of what the book is about.

Arnhill is an old village with a complicated history and an unexplainable darkness that sits heavy, with an omen of something evil, around it. When Joe recieves an email from a mysterious source, he returns home to face the long burried, but inescapable, ghosts of his past. He lies his way into teaching job at his former high school as a ploy to figure out what really happened 25 years ago to his sister - Annie - and why it is happening again. The answer rest within an infamous abandoned coal mine and with the people who were there that night when his life was changed forever.

Happiness is overrated; it’s far too short-lived, for a start. If you bought it on Amazon, you’d demand a refund. Broke after a month and impossible to fix.  Next time will try misery—apparently that shit lasts forever.

C.J. Tudor write some great thrillers. I really enjoyed her last book - the chalkman - and this one is just as good. It's a light read. Nothing to complicated. Just pure old school mystery that will keep you on ur toes. However, there is one important thing the synopsis has cleverly omitted that this book is part supernatural and part mystery/thriller.  I, personally, really enjoyed the coalition of supernatural and thriller in this book, but I understand not many people are going to enjoy it.

Plot was clevetly contrived and writing was impeccable and appropriately laden with snark and quirkiness. There were tons of insightful and funny passages that I have saved with an intention to use them in my daily life, lol. Although it's not a perfect book, I really enjoyed it. My only problem was with the ending as it didn't answer some of my questions. Author was planting seeds thoughout the book around a mystery regarding kids but those seeds didn't sprout in end. I don't mind open endings but this one could have benefited from some more explanation. 

Favorite Quotes

"The past isn’t real. It is simply a story we tell ourselves. And sometimes, we lie."

"Never trust a person whose bookshelves are lined with pristine books, or worse, someone who places the books with their covers facing outward."

"You might not be able to judge a book by its cover, but you can definitely judge the person who owns the book."

"Gloria might look like a delicate china doll. But the only doll she has anything in common with is Chucky."

"People say time is a great healer. They’re wrong. Time is simply a great eraser. It rolls on and on regardless, eroding our memories, chipping away at those great big boulders of misery until there’s nothing left but sharp little fragments, still painful but small enough to bear. Broken hearts don’t mend. Time just takes the pieces and grinds them to dust."

"There are no such things as white lies. Lies are never black or white. Only gray. A fog obscuring the truth. Sometimes so thick we can barely see it ourselves."

"Newspapers are the place where facts become stories, the Internet is the place where stories become conspiracy theories."

"There’s a line people spout, usually people who want to sound sage and wise, about wherever you travel, you can never escape yourself. That’s bullshit. Get far enough away from the relationships that bind you, the people that define you, the familiar landscapes and routines that tether you to an identity, and you can easily escape yourself, for a while at least. Self is only a construct. You can dismantle it, reconstruct it, pimp up a new you."

" Like many middle-aged men, he turns “casual clothes” into an oxymoron."

"Facebook is the place where people with no friends in real life keep in touch with people they’d never want to be friends with in real life."

Stories are wild creatures, the monster said. When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they might wreak?”

Reading it again after two years has only proved one thing that my love for this book is unremitting and that it still deserve every single star. This book is beautiful, heart wrenching, cleverly contrived and an emotional roller coaster ride that will hold you in its clutches with its sharp as a tack and effectual use of analogies and its  masterful writing. This book is the definition of imaginative and powerful story telling and probably the best book you can read to understand grief, loss, love and conflicting human emotions.

“Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.”

It's an important book for various reasons but the one reason that really stood out to me was its attempt at highlighting the importance of storytelling as a means of communication. Storytelling has a power to help people reach a common ground, to make an understanding, and say things that they can't with just mere words. And It were these stories that really made us understand what was going on inside connor's head and also made us to empathize with him. Every story had a lesson but all stories directed to just one fact: our proclivity for thinking conflicting thoughts punishing ourselves for it.

I can't praise things book enough! It's a masterpiece.

My Favorite Quotes.

"Invisible men make themselves more lonely by being seen."

“There was once an invisible man who had grown tired of being unseen. It was not that he was actually invisible. It was that people had become used to not seeing him. And if no one sees you, are you really there at all?"

“And here was a man who lived on belief, but who sacrificed it at the first challenge, right when he needed it most.”

" I wish I had a hundred years, a hundred years I could give it to you."
 

Edit: My second read was more fun.

I am changing my rating from 3 to 4. However, what I said in my last review still stands true. I still think it's the weakest Jay Kristof book. But the plot is unique and writing is great asual. It deserve more love. Read it guys! 😊

23 Feb, 2019
----------------------------------

A love child of illuminae files and nevernight.

This was probably the weakest Jay Kristoff book I have read. It was by no means a bad book, It just wasn't as great as Nevernight and Illuminae Files. Despite Jay Kristoff's unique writing style and his signature shock elements, this felt a little too underbaked and hastly written. However, it was pretty fast paced with ample amount of plot twists, that we have grown to expect from Jay Kristoff, and was extremely hard to put down. I didn't feel bored at any point. It was entertaining and there wasn't a single dull moment (except for the cringy romance, of course.) Ending didn't disappoint either, it ended in the same Jay Kristoff fashion with not just one but dozens of cliffhangers and left me craving for the next book. However, i am afraid by the time the second book comes out, I will have already forgotten about this book as I wasn't too invested in story or the characters. This would have been better as a standalone novel, in my opnion.

I am more excited for the third book in the nevernight chronicles.

Fear,” the doctor said, “is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.” 

🥉 Guys! I want you to join me in awarding this book with a Badge of Honor. 🥉 Please stand up from your seats and give this book a round of applause for earning a place in my All-time favourite reads.  *clap* *clap*

This book reminded me a lot of my all time favourite movie series Unbreakable, starring Bruce wills, James McAvoy and Samuel L. Jackson. If you love that movie series then I am sure you are going to love vicious too.

Someone could call themselves a hero and still walk around killing dozens. Someone else could be labeled a villain for trying to stop them. Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human.

This book was vile. It trapped me in a viocus cycle and had me running in circles, so much so that when I wasn't reading it, I was constantly thinking about it, and when I was reading it, I wanted it to never end. It's unequivocally the best anti-superhero book I have ever read. 

I have never been a fan of Thesis projects; I have always known in my gut that nothing good can come out of them. And this book has only affirmed my visceral feelings. So let's start a petition togther before some college students set their mind on gaining superpowers by nearly killing themselves.

I am telling you guys, this issue needs our immediate attention!!

Don't believe me?  Okay, keep reading.

One fine morning, Victor and Eliot, fascinated by hard to belief stories about normal people doing abnormal things, decides to explore the idea of EOs (ExtraOrdinaries) for their research project. Eliot discovers that NDE (Near Death Experience) phenomenon was a common in all the stories revolving around EOs, which leads him to deduce that NDE is the source of super human abilities. When Eliot shares his discovery with Victor, he urges him to test his theory. Eliot, a God fearing kid, scruples about playing God but eventually gives in. After convulsing in their death throes several times, both comes out of their NDEs stronger than ever before. However, something goes terribly wrong in the process, creating a rift between Victor and Eliot.

After nearly a decade, when Victor breaks out of prison he learns that Eliot has become a superhero, and he can't take him down without becoming the villain of his story.

Do you see now why we need to stand against the atrocities of Thesis projects? This can happen to anyone, guys. Think about it.

There are no good men in this game.

I loved how you couldn't tell which of the two male leads were on the right path. The ambiguity was really intriguing. And at least for the first quarter of the book, I was unable sperate the good character from the evil one.

Eliot was ambitious with a strong, but questionable, sense of right and wrong, whereas Victor was headstrong and impulsive. They were both flawed but written in a way that i was able to understand their reasons and sympathize with them.

He wanted to care, he wanted to care so badly, but there was this gap between what he felt and what he wanted to feel, a space where something important had been carved out.”

The only thing I didn't like was the ending. It wasn't bad but It could have been better. Also, there wasn't enough use of superpowers throughout the book, but I am hoping second book will make up for the lack.
----------------------

After my failed attempts with Monster of Verity duology and The Shades of Magic Universe Series, I had given up hope on Victoria Schwab; I had assumed that I'd always remain deprived from the joy of loving her books, but that was before I readVicious. Now I am a proud member of V. E. Schwab's Fandom.


PS: Thesis is important, kids. Just don't kill yourself for it.

And it begins, as so many stories do, with a dead girl.

Synopsis

Sadie hasn't had an easy life, and when her drug addict mother disappears, leaving Sadie and her little sister - Mattie - at the mercy of their surrogate grandmother, Sadie tries her best to provide a normal life to Mattie.

But when Mattie is found dead, Sadie's entire world comes crumbling down and she is the only one who knows who killed her, or at least who is to blame for her murder. Filled with rage, she embarks on a journey to avenge her sister but when she doesn't return her grandmother contacts a podcaster - West McCray  - to investigate.

My thoughts

Right after I finished listening to "Sadie" I felt a strange need to scream at the top of my lungs at the cruel world. It felt like someone had just pulled the rug out from under my feet, I felt devasted and defeated, didn't know what to do with my life anymore.

Sadie is one of those books that seem innocent but really is a pawn of the devil. It consumes your thoughts until it is the only thing you can think about, and then buries you deep in the pile of all the emotions known to men.

Sadie is not your typical murder mystery story, where you suspect every character and try to link them to the murder. It's a pretty straightforward story where you know who the killer is and why they did it,
but you still keep wanting more 'cos the plot is that much powerful, and it manages to break you by the end of it with its shocking and unpredictable ending. Mystery here doesn't really revolve around "the murder" but around the disappearance of our protagonist.

It is written in a podcast format and the audiobook really sounds like one. It features more than 30 voices, and every voice actor acts out their character with veritable talent. I don't know if it is usual for an audiobook, but the voice actors in this one has done a great job of bringing the characters to life.

Sadie is a story about family and how far we are willing to go to protect the ones that we love.  It starts with a missing girl and a serial-like podcast following the trails she's left behind. We switch back and forth between podcaster's narrative and Sadie's which allows for an immensely immersive experience. Sadie's chapters are very raw, harrowing and heartbreaking. These multiple perspectives enable readers to experience both sides of the story and unravel the mystery behind Sadie's suspicious disappearance.

For some people, the future ahead is opportunity. For others, it’s only time you haven’t met and where I lived, it was only time. You don’t waste your breath trying to protect it. You just try to survive it until one day, you don’t.

I know some people didn't like the ending, but for me it was perfect. It was real, it was infuriating and it was haunting. I don't understand our predilection for happy endings. The world we live in is not a happy place and most things don't end up the way they are supposed to or the way we expect them to.  The purpose of the ending of this book, in my opnion, was to shake us up to the core so we can at least start talking about the atrocities of the world we live in.

Do i recommend this book? Well, it's complicated; I low key high key want everyone to listen to this book, but I also feel like a very bad person for wanting to shove the trauma and pain that comes with reading this book onto others.

PS: I want to see Katherine Langford playing Sadie, if it gets picked up for a movie adaptation.

PPS: This book comes with multiple trigger warnings.  Please, make sure to read about them before picking it up.

21 January, 2019

This book deserve 3-3.5 stars but I am rating it 4 stars cos I am biased and also trash for Grishaverse.

“The monster is me and I am the monster.”

When Leigh announced a Nikloai centred duology and the return of one of my favourite characters from Six of Crows - Nina Zenik, I felt a rush of excited particles, jostling in my brain like a bunch of overeager children, about to receive a free ice-cream. I waited for this book like a child would for their Christmas present. Unfortunately for me, I was oblivious to the fact that road to disappointment is often paved with high expectations.

If you haven't read Six of Crows and shadow and bone series than refrain from reading further. There might be spoilers.

fears are like weeds. They grow wild if left unattended.

King of Scars? more like king of wrong marketing!! To be honest, I didn't mind multiple POVs as much as I thought I would and the first part of the book balanced multiple POVs quite well - there was enough of everyone, but the second part really messed it up for me.  Out of 36 chapter only 10 were from Nikloai's perspective.  So I guess It's suffice to say that Nikloai was a side character in his own book. It felt more like Zoya's book, to be frank. And even though I liked Zoya, I didn't think it was right of her to usurp an entire Nikolai book. Isaak - a new character Leigh introduced in the second half - was an interesting addition to the plot but his POV was completely unnecessary. I understand Leigh wanted to show what was happening in the castle when Nikolai was away, but in my opnion he shouldn't have left; Story should have taken a different route where Nikolai had an intregal part to play. Everything that happened inside the fold was a big MEH! for me.

If you change the title of the book to Zoya or even Darkling the content will Immediately start making more sense.

No mourners, no funerals.”

Time for an unpopular opnion

I liked Nina's plot more than the main plot. And I don't think it's right for people to hate her because she was different in this book. There was a reason why she was so lackadaisical; I mean, it was pretty obvious she would act a little different cos she was grieving Matthias. Nina's arc had six of crows vibe; it was dark and less fantastical whereas Nikolai's arc reminded me of Shadow and Bone series - entertaining but nothing groundbreaking. I really loved the scene where Nina bade farewell to Matthias. It was raw and emotional. I loved it. It left my eyes watery.

Nina's arc was very loosely connected to the main plot, and it almost felt like I was reading two different books, simultaneously. I was expecting the two plot lines will intersect in the end, but they didn't, and we also didn't get any Nikolai-Nina banter, sadly. Nina's plot, however, was more engaging, and honestly, I would have really liked, if there were more of her and less of Zoya.

Fear is a phoenix. You can watch it burn a thousand times and still it will return.

Magic system was the strongest point of Grishaverse but not anymore. The great thing about magic in this world was its realism. It had logic, scientific explanation, and limitations but this book has changed everything. And It made me wonder why The Darkling was hunting for amplifiers when all the power that he wanted was within him, and why didn't the saints help him? It would be a challenge for Leigh to fill these plot holes in the next book.

I wanted Leigh to explain the magic system not ruin it. I wanted to know how grishas came to be and how exactly does Merzost work? We know Ilya Morozova attempted Merzost but we don't know how he did it or what he did. Did he brought those animals to life, which were later sacrificed to create amplifiers for Alina? Instead of filling these plot holes from the first trilogy Leigh created even more.

Despite everything I still enjoyed the book. It was entertaining and Leigh's writing was phenomenal. There were plenty of positives like great political intrigue, loveable cast and characters and a decent plot line. Leigh extended the grisha world beautifully and gave us a glimpse of political relationships between different nations and these relationships were cleverly concocted and didn't feel out of place or something that Leigh made up specifically for this book. It integrated perfectly with our existing knowledge of Grishaverse.

If you love Grishaverse then you should read it but don't expect a six of crows experience from this book.

5 stars and a heart.

Shawn had more power over me than I could have possibly imagined. He had defined me to myself, and there is no greater power than that.

At the end of every year, out of habit, I go through all the lists major influencers share on the internet of their favorite books of the year, and from those I add the books that intrigue me the most to my own TBR for the coming year. Educated is one those books. I discovered it when I read a great review of it by Bill Gates himself, last year. It took me a while to get my hands on this book but i am happy to announce that all the efforts, all the waiting was totally worth it.

Educated is a story of a woman's struggle, her endurance, and her illuminating journey that ends with her discovering the meaning of positive liberty and what is like to emancipate yourself from mental slavery. Her endeavor to find what it means to be truly free reminded me of a quote from my favourite Netflix TV show: The OA

You are not free because you can see the ocean. Captivity is a mentality, something you carry with you.

TARA faces multiple challenges and set backs throughout this difficult and arduous journey and in doing so she teaches us the transformative power of education that can break the status quo and bring the light in from the crevices of the shattered glass made entirely of fallacies and false beliefs.

There is a word in Greek that describes perfectly the feeling this book ignited in me: charmolypi, which means to feel happy and sad at the same time - a joy-making sorrow. Tara's story was sad but also empowering. It inculcated hope and faith in me that If she can survive such dire circumstances of her life then I am fully capable of dealing with the minor issues of my own life. All I have to do is man up and find the light that's already in me.

You are not fool's gold, shinning only under a particular light. Whomever you become and what ever you make yourself into, that is who you always were. It was always in you. You are gold.

It's wasn't an easy read, though. All the emotional and physical abuse she suffered and the way she described it with all the gory details made me so squeamish that I wanted to put the book down and forget about it. But I made it. it was a hard, but I made it through, and I am glad to own this gem of a book.

Definitely recommend it, if you can handle the bloody and gory stuff.

4 Stars

I didn't read this book sooner because...

- I was unaware of its existence.

LIAR!!

- I thought I wouldn't like it.

LIAR!!

- it's heafty, and I dread heafty books.

BASTARD!!!!

Someone please call the physiker, I think I am dying and a new, more corrupted, immoral and slightly cunning version of myself is taking birth inside me and is desparate to come out. I didn't know thievery can be so lucrative and fun but now thanks to this book i am seriously considering it my a career option.

You’re one-third bad intentions, one-third pure avarice, and one-eighth sawdust.

This book, my dear friends, was amazing. The plot was cleverly contrived, characters were well developed, and writing was whip-smart, loaded with right amount of snark and ruthlessness. There were humongous amount of plot twists that i didn't see coming, and then there were the elaborate schemings of Locke Lamora that left me in awe for his smarts and quick thinking. And for some strange reason I kept imagining Locke as Leonardo Decaprio. I mean, I know, Leo is too old to play Locke, but he can pull this character off with much finesse than any of his contemporaries.

If he had a bloody gash across his throat and a physiker was trying to sew it up, Lamora would steal the needle and thread and die laughing. He…steals too much.

For the most part of the book we follow Locke in two different time lines. In the past we see him as an acolyte, learning the art of deception and thievery from the priest of thieves himself. In the present we find him scheming, with his friends, to rob huge amounts of money from a Duke of greatest influence in the city of Camorr. But things doesn't go as planned and he find himself entangled in a web of complex and dangerous gang politics all the while evading the Midnighters- Anti-theif force of Comorr.

Locke is a brilliantly written and likable main character. He was smart, but he really had to work really hard to get what he wanted. It didn't feel like that everything was falling in his feet; he was outsmarted number of times. He wasn't like those annoying main protagonists that seem to possess all the answers, all the time.

Someday, Locke Lamora,” he said, “someday, you’re going to fuck up so magnificently, so ambitiously, so overwhelmingly that the sky will light up and the moons will spin and the gods themselves will shit comets with glee. And I just hope I’m still around to see it.”

So let's talk about that marvellous and shocking ending. Locke didn't disappoint, he fucked up and fucked everyone up just like his master - the priest - had predicted when he was an acolyte. I was gasping for breathe the whole time. Locke's final move was epic. I am super excited to see how everything is going to play out in the next books.

Locke and Jeann are officially my new favorite bro-OTP. They are friendship goals. I loved how they supported and looked out for each other. The antagonists were great too. They were scary, powerful and someone you wouldn't want to mess with.

I would have given this a 5 stars, if it were a little shorter. It felt like some parts were unnecessary and were being dragged. Specially the Interlude parts by the end of the book started to irritate me a little as they became less and less relevant to the plot.

I am excited to read the second book but I am not sure when I'll read it. These books are hefty and hefty books frighten me.

Docendo discimus (by teaching, we learn.)

This was a very fascinating and informative reading experience. I learned quite a few new and interesting things about human psyche and the working of a human brain from this book. Human brain is complicated and neuroscience is a very vast topic that can't be cramped up in a small book like this one, but Sigman did a decent job, if not the best, of consolidating information and making it accessible even for those who had no prior knowledge on the topic. However, some part could have benefited from further explanation and elaboration. The information that we got wasn't enough to fully comprehend The secret life of the mind, but it provided, nonetheless, a general idea about the working of human brain.

This book can be divided into three parts. First part is developmental psychology that covers the moral and reasoning capacities of newborns, and goes on to prove that newborns are more capable of learning multiples languages than their adult counterparts. Moving on, in the second part, Sigman explores the complicated world of cognitive psychology in adults and deals with topics such as consciousness, dreaming, effects of drugs on our brain, rational vs intuitive decision making, free will and goes on to explain how optimists and pessimists, like liberals and conservatives, are wired differently. He also introduces us to some of the most fundamental Freudian and Socrates concepts in this chapter. The third and final part is related to education where we are are invited to think of a way to apply the knowledge of neuroscience in educational institutions. Sigman suggests that our current knowledge of human brain can help us create better programs specially for students suffering from dyslexia, which, according to him, is a more phonological problem than a visual one. He then builds on the idea laid out by Socrates that learning is actually remembering and establishes a more radical idea that sometime learning can also be attained by forgetting.

There was quote in my favourite Netflix show The OA that perfectly explains how the acquired knowledge should feel like.

Knowledge is a rumor until it lives in the body.

Learning start with us using our dorsal system and end when our ventral system takes over to automize the process. For example: We exert more effort during the initial phase of learning how to read and later, with practice, reading becomes almost automatic.

If such ideas and concepts fascinates you and/or you want to understand the working of human brain then this book is a perfect starting point. It cover plenty of topics in short, digestable and often bite sized format.

I found quite a few parallels between sigmand's and Jonathan Hadit's thoughts on morality and decision and making. If you are interested you can check out my thoughts on Jonathan Hadit's book The Righteous Mind as well.