BulbasaurusThe7th

This is one of those MHI books that are from the point of view of a character other than Owen, this time Julie. Owen is fun, I like him, but this technique is great for making the books feel fresh and to add something extra. Big thumbs up from me. (Now, Mr. Correia, if you could write one for Mosh... I would love you forever. Or more than I do now.

The son of Julie and Owen, Ray is here and he is very cute. An adorable giant baby who comes from two people who are important in the fight between humanity and the evil paranormal powers, so we can't expect him to have a normie childhood, right? Heh. He gets kidnapped and of course almost everyone is still at Severny Island so the remaining few, especially Julie need to solve this. Channel Liam Neeson in Taken, girl.

I love this. Thanks, goodbye.

No, seriously, MHI is one of those things that just make me unreasonably happy. The creatures they fight are full of creativity and they are all unique and interesting challenges. The characters are badass and they certainly make the fights exciting (I tried listening to Nemesis at work once, but I got so excited my hands started trembling so I had to stop).
This time most of the people are gone, so it was in a way easier to read, but at the same time I missed Holly, Earl, Owen, Trip, MOSH OMG. We had Albert around though for a bit, which is nice, he is super underrated. And a bit more of Grimm Berlin, though again, most of them are also gone.

I will always recommend MHI, I will love it forever and my body is ready for the next one even though this just came out. Two thumbs up, only because I don't have more to give.

Agent Franks is a dick. You know it, I know it. Everyone does. But Agent Franks would never do bullshit, backstabbing, cowardly things out of selfishness. So when he gets set up to look like he went to destroy the MHB, he needs to do anything he could (and the dude can do many insane things) to prove he is innocent and find out who and why is trying to make him look like he basically betrayed everyone and everything.

It was time to humanise the MHB and Mr. Correia did one hell of a job. Owen and MHI in general doesn't trust the government and at heart, they want to be left alone to do their thing instead of waiting to some asshole to look up in the government issued handbook how to do it according to politicians. Then again, that's pretty much a returning theme in all of this author's books and I can respect that. The government isn't infallible. The procedure isn't always perfect and I'm really against the idea that any one of us can become the loss that's calculated as acceptable when the rules are made.
When dealing with a huge volume of human beings, you can not just completely ignore that, the human factor. How we are awkward, clumsy creatures who don't always make the best decision. Who will act batshit insane or just criminally stupid sometimes. Who will be unpredictable.

Here comes Agent Franks, though. He isn't human. He can't understand things like getting emotional over a case, having biases or acting in a surprising way. He comes, he fights, he closes the case and he leaves.
But then what will happen when the enemy is not working according to any moral code and even uses creatures that are very familiar to Franks?

When the series started, we were told the MHB is one block of government funded assholes. Sure, we have seen some of them being human, some hints here and there as time went on, but at the same time it was rare to see them interact with each other without it being filtered though the eyes of Owen and Co. Here a bunch of them do exactly that. They apparently have Christmas parties with Secret Santa, they bitch about their assignments. Many of them are actually unhappy about many of the things they have to do to the survivors. Archer and Grant are downright funny.

It was interesting to see how Franks was basically forced to compromise; he realised that to fulfill his big goal of protecting humanity, he needed to do things he found distasteful and deal with people he finds weak. Then again, everyone is weak to him.
I will go there; sometimes Franks was downright charming with how he is totally inhuman and just does his best. Yes, yes, he is not a good person, but he is kind of... not even a person. His past was interesting too.

This one fleshed out a lot of things about the world. If you think the Non-Owen-Centric books are not essential, think again. They are an absolute joy every time.

Overall, this series is pretty fun, but I have to admit I didn't like this one nearly as much as the previous two.

Hannah leaves The Stranger Times to do some investigation on a wellness retreat/cult, meanwhile a previous contributor of the paper disappears without a trace.

The series reached an interesting point. The world of Stranger Times got expanded, we have the big bads set up, the sides in a huge magical conflict. We do have some sort of a case in every book to move the plot, but also there is an overarching thing going on. Some of the bigger rules of the universe are there.
Yet... the whole charm of the book started out as this weird mishmash of cooky characters. The humor is all based on these weirdos interacting with each other in a very immediate sort of way. Now, of course the main characters are tangled in the big thing more and more, but somehow it feels like we have small, funny moments that often felt a bit separate from the main thing.
Many of the characters were also underutilised. Why were we introduced to... John Mór when he is not doing much? Like in this book he was literally Hannah's driver to get her to where the plot was happening. Same goes with a bunch of the major people too! We have barely seen anything of BANECROFT, arguably the most fun character in this thing.
Now, every book usually has new characters introduced and that's fine. But why are we adding them when half the old ones could have been given a bigger role without swamping us with needless people. Just saying.

Another thing was how the “MHHHH, MANSPLAINING” type overused, unimaginative, unoriginal comments are getting more frequent. Not subversive. Not original. Just annoyingly virtue signalling. Don't get me wrong, the first two had some of those, but at this point everyone has to say those things and it's a bit tiresome.

It wasn't an awful read at all, it was pretty easy and fast, but not as fun as I'm used to with this series, sadly.
Hopefully, the next one corrects some of that and finds its way back.

A bunch of people know about Josiah Bancroft. His previous series, with [b:Senlin Ascends 35271523 Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel, #1) Josiah Bancroft https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1502224161l/35271523.SX50.jpg 24467682] was a surprise hit, so weird and just out there, with strong character writing. Then... as the series progressed, it fell off to many people, me included. Something about the story just went in a way I didn't like much, so after the stellar book one and two, I quit on book three. But at the same time, this wasn't one of the cases where I gave up on the author, it was just that specific series. So when I saw this one coming, I had to give it a go. Especially because reading the blurb, it made me think of a fun version of Ed and Lorraine Warren. (Then a friend told me the husband is called WARREN, I just went duh, of course.) Now, I have to point something out. The prose in this goes hard. At first I was a bit disoriented by the language that's used, because it's archaic and very flowery. Maybe it's just me, my lack of experience with such things, but it's different, especially when I'm in an urban fantasy phase, which are typically more connected to our contemporary world. But yes, it can possibly put some people off, though it's not at all impossible to read or unpleasant. It's actually a ton of fun after a few pages of adjusting to it and never seems to be hurting the legibility and the flow of the story. That's a big thing with detective type novels; if it doesn't ease you through it all, then what's the point? Mr. Bancroft does that well, though. I wasn't sure about his oddly whimsical and almost bizarre style being able to pull off a mystery that logically builds up, yet he did it. He was never a bad writer, I would say he was always great, but in this he managed to have a much more accessible appeal in my opinion; I can totally understand why his previous series wasn't for everyone. Another thing that could have failed big time, but didn't. The main couple, Iz and Warren starts from the situation of almost like Sherlock Homes and Dr. Watson. Iz is academic, she works hard, analytical. Not always the most well-mannered, she has no patience for people and she can seem cold and uncaring to people who don't know what's going on with her. Warren is a comically buff man, caring and extremely sociable. He usually approaches iffy situations with empathy and tries to reason with people instead of cracking the case open. There was so much room for it being awful, turning Iz into a “I need no man, I am smarter than everyone” and Warren into a bumbling idiot useless husband. Many writers, both book and screen, would have and do regularly go with that, resulting in awful stories or unlikeable and downright offensively caricature-ish characters. Iz and Warren are better than that, though. They are people with evident love for each other. They are total opposites and both sides are needed for the other to function. They never treat each other as defective, they just are. Even the mostly hinted backgrounds on their relationships with other characters were brilliantly done. Iz's father, specifically, sounds like such a big one, the way he was described in relation to his wife and daughter. It has that haha random whimsical thing many books do, but then we go a little bit into what it is to be in a family with someone who is basically a cartoonish, seemingly random adventurer type character. Plot twists aren't a must to me. I mean, big ones that make you super surprised and such. Normal ones are fine, I'm not even bothered by spoilers, honestly, the “how did we get here” is more important to me, so I'm not sure how good I am at describing the mystery. To me it seemed good, it had enough buildup, enough logical steps leading to each other. I did not see it coming, though this is a first in a series (and a first detective story from an author), so it's not like we have any kind og a baseline to judge. Maybe for seasoned mystery readers it was easy to figure it out. I don't know, I usually don't even try, just let the story take me from A to B. Of course it ends with a bit of a cliffhanger, or more like a hint for the overarching story starting out. Honestly, so far this year, this was one of my biggest surprises and favourite reads. I do recommend it for anyone who is into fun mysteries with outstanding characters. Just a bit patience to get used to the writing style and you will definitely have fun with it. And I'm already waiting for book 2. :/

Orm is a viking, doing his viking things. He gets captured by slavers, goes to battles, finds treasures, founds a village, goes to viking meetings... I know it sounds extremely simple like that and I find that's the beauty of this book; being an old-fashioned, fun adventure that gives you good feelings. Sure, now some of you will go “but... viking were violent and horrible, what the heck are you talking about???”. To which I say yes... and no.
There is violence in this, sure. But also there is a lot of friendship and Orm being a witty person who tries to solve his issues in the smartest way possible. Of course 2017 is all about being offended and triggered, but if you are still able to just let go and read a book that is like a fun old tale about heroes doing their thing, I think you will like this one.

What really surprised me about this was the humour. While vikings went around with axes and plundering ships, they still got on each other's asses with rude little poems and sharp little comments and I kept having good laughs at that. Something felt really free about it, like these people were just having a good time and and even when some of them died they were still fulfilled and went thought everything with the best possible outlook on life. That is mostly what I mean when I say this book made me happy.
I especially loved vikings and their relationships with Christianity. Many of them (Orm too) became Christians through the influence of priests going to the Nordic region, but as with everything they had their own ideas about Christianity, namely how God definitely wants to heal you so you could drink and sleep with hot women. Or that it could potentially be a good idea to get people drunk and then turn them Christian when they are unconscious. You tried.

I've read this in English, so I can't really talk about the original Swedish version, but I have to point out that the prose was old-timey. Not everyone is going to love it, for sure, it was a risk on the part f the author to just go with it, but it was executed great. Somehow the characters, the prose, the story structure, the relationships, the jokes, everything felt cohesive and that is something many new authors now could learn from.
I absolutely understand why this is a Swedish classic and even people outside Sweden should really give it a go, because it's truly an experience of its own.
Some books (even ones rightly held as important works from the point of view of art history) don't age well and lose their connection to people as time passes, making them into a pain in the ass to read. This ISN'T so. It managed to hold its charm and the excitement it gives to the reader.

Honestly, I wholeheartedly recommend this to everyone, because it is one of my new favourites.

Have a nice day and get this shipped to you if you can't find it locally! (Yes, I went there.)

I have no idea what Mr. Nix (that sounds like a magician) did, but this one really didn't measure up to the older stuff. It wasn't horrible, no gigantic heretic nightmare, but crap, this wasn't anything brilliant either.

We are hundreds of years before Sabriel's time and Clariel's family moves from some forest to the capital, because her mother is so great of a goldsmith she just needs to be part of the guild. Our heroine does what any spoilt teenager do and mopes about the fact she is not allowed to become a forest ranger type person. Then she finds out about shit going on in the city, conspiracies and gets involved in everything. Meh.

Not sure if it's much of a spoiler, but... Clariel's story joins into the main body of the series. Yeah. She is there somewhere, which is anifty thing, but I couldn't ignore the feeling that this book wasn't meant to be a novel. Now hear me out. It was a fun idea to develop a backstory for a little character from the original three, I could appreciate things like this, but there just wasn't enough meat for me to warrant a whole, full size novel. A short story, sure, maybe a novella. But this was not something essential for the main story and as such, felt a bit like an afterthought. There, I said it. Rhinestones hot glued on a chainsaw. (Man, I want to see that now.)

I've read Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen a couple of years ago, so I can't remember all the details. I would go as far as to say the storylines weren't the most complex I've ever seen, but this one felt a bit simpler. Not like that in itself is an issue, it just feels a bit weightless to read the story when you know the outcome, so you really needed to do something to still make it more interesting or pick a really beloved, mysterious character who is able to carry it all by themselves. Clariel wasn't that character.

I know most people are crazy about the female characters, but I will be honest, while I found Sabriel and Touchstone pretty evenly matches in likeability, I've always preferred Sameth over Lirael. Here we have this boy called Belatiel. He was such a sweet, sweet kid who really desn't have much going for him, but works hard and manages to achieve something great. People treat him badly, he is ridiculed and overlooked, but he perseveres. I can appreciate that.
Clariel, though. Oh, Clariel. We've all been young, realizing life is not as easy as you imagine. It's understandable to be angry and frustrated when you realize you can't get what you want. My issue is more with the fact that I found her writing being wear. I said it. I don't think she is a well-written character. Even as the readers, knowing her most, all we get to learn about her is that she likes being alone and wants to live in her beloved forest. She has no other interests, no hobbies, no other passion, no opinion on anything, she doesn't really care about anyone, she barely exists as a person. She has no characteristics other than loner and tree hugger. At this point I'm not sure if this is intentional or just poor character development, which is sad.

The conflict was not something to write home about. The villains were cartoonish, Clariel's disinterest in anything and anyone stops us from getting to know the characters or the places. We were meant to concentrate on the heroine, how this normal kid turned bad and to see the exact point where she lost her footing, but her lack of well-rounded personality makes us stuck with... well, not much.

All in all, it was an easy read, something you can do on vacation or if you have a boring weekend, but I wouldn't say it is an essential fantasy experience that should make you throw away whatever you're reading at the moment.
Supposedly there is another book coming in the series with some other character, so I am hoping for this being a bit of an “easing back into the world” thing for Mr. Nix before the new one. I'm definitely picking that up, even if it's just for curiosity and nothing else.

So for now, good bye and get a hobby!

Damn, this is such a fun book, I just feel like I have to review it now, after my second time reading it.

Owen is a bit of a weird dude. He is an accountant, but he used to be an illegal cage fighter. His dad is a war hero and raised both him and his brother to be super tough because of his paranoia about some huge, apocalyptic fuckup in the future. Typical. Crazy dad.
Then one day, while working at his office, Owen gets attacked by his werewolf-ified boss. What does he do? Well, he protects himself and through that scores a new job being a monster hunter. Then the fun begins.

From Lovecraftian horrors to trailer park elves, Correia does a brilliant job fitting supernatural abominations into a fun, action packed universe. I mean we have seen so much of this. Urban fantasy. Vampires. Werewolves. Blagh. But I can tell you, he adds the exact kinds of twists that made me laugh out loud and bounce with joy. Orcs who do magic healing with roadkill and think of metal bands as deities? Come oooon.
If you are willing to embrace the silly, you are going to have a great time with it.

Said silly is absolutely necessary, though, because some moments just kick your heart in the butt. Some things about it are just so dark, which actually adds a lot of the characterisation of the people. Why? Because I can buy that wild, mindless fun is something these people would try to have when they are on the brink of death or worse every day. The one-liners and bizarre situations are believable because they there to oppose all the horrible things.
And man, the characters are great. Not saying they are all fleshed out 100%, firstly because there are just so many, secondly because this is the first book. But they are so memorable. An incredibly cheerful Mormon weapons expert? A stripper-turned monster hunter with some serious anger issues and a foul mouth? The fact all the characters had a “normal” life before becoming monster hunters just adds so much to this mishmash of a group and Mr. Correia really utilises it. If you like stories with an assorted group of weirdos working together to save the world... this ones goes to you, my friend.
(I have read other books from the author, this is a consistent thing with him. He does a bunch of different characters and they are all fascinating and entertaining.)

Most authors seem to have some specific thing they love that they can't help putting into their books. With Tolkien, it was plants and linguistics. With Correia... it's GUNS. He knows his stuff as he is apparently a competitive shooter, gun store owner and he also used to teach gun proficiency classes.
Now I know some people just go into fits at the thought of that. Those people should not read this book. I did not grow up in the US and never been near guns, but my personal opinion is that more accurate knowledge about guns is not going to make you less safe, but more so. From what I have heard from people who do know firearms, Correia knows what he is talking about, so I can respect that.

Because I have already read all the currently available books, I know for a fact that I love this whole series. I am going on for sure and preparing for this summer when book eight is supposedly coming, which I have no reason to doubt, as another great point for Mr. Correia, he is a very consistent and extremely productive author. You can trust him to release things.

This is a separate story from book 1. Some of the characters return from there, like the actual protagonist, Yuu, the emperor who rules the country and some others, but other than that, it's a completely separate story. The things that have happened there are buildings blocks for the events here, but technically, you can just read this. I wouldn't recommend, though.

Yuu, after the death of the Iron Prince, gets recruited by a god. For the role of the ruler of heaven, they have a competition, where the gods all choose a hero and they have to find and collect hidden treasures offered up by the participating deities. She got picked by Natsuko, the goddess of lost things.

I think one of the weaknesses of this book is the fact it is not a proper sequel; both are short and I would have liked a longer time to connect with the characters and start caring about them. This is similar to the first one in the sense that we go from point A to point B, knowing that there will be some artefact with its special way of getting to it. What is different, though, is the fact that we are not building a team; characters come and go and other than Yuu, we only have Natsuko who sticks around the whole way, which gives us even less time to get fond of them.
What's more frustrating is that we don't even get to know what happened to them. They do their thing, they leave and that's about it.

I wouldn't say it was a bad book, it's fun and colourful enough, but the fact it's so short and almost a free-standing story makes it real hard to feel like you are that invested. I would have much preferred to see what's going on with Einrich. Or the others somehow coming back for vengeance. Or something!
That one also had a plot twist at the end that made me want to throw my Kindle at a wall. It was so shocking and just infuriating. Here it's... fine? First of all, I expected things, second, it wasn't all that bad. Nobody really got too emotional over it. Shit happens. You could see it coming.

All in all, this is a worthy read. Not my absolute favourite, but it's fine and it's worth a try if you want something short and easy that's not part of a million book series.

The moment I saw a gigantic dragon on the cover, I knew I needed to read this one.
The book has 3 main characters doing 3 different things that somehow end up tied to each other. Orka is a woman living with her husband and their son on an isolated farm, though it's obvious she is hiding something. Varg is an escaped slave trying to find a way to take revenge for the murder of his sister. Elvar is a warrior in a mercenary group, trying to find relics of long dead gods.

In a way, I am a bit disappointed this isn't a 5 star read for me; I was super excited and everyone seems to love this one. I have read one book by the author previously, though I don't remember much, so I have to get on that. My expectations weren't based on being a gigantic fan of his. Now, don't get me wrong, I still liked the book and some things about it were just great.
The action scenes are fluid. Sometimes when authors go too technical or too long-winded, I kind of zone out. There, I said it, action scenes can be a bit much. Not here. There were a lot of physical fights, people using axes and shields, mostly. They worked well.
The world is modelled after Nordic cultures and societies. Again, a good call. Even though it's getting pretty warm here, the descriptions were evocative and I could almost feel the cold and snow. Concepts around the gods worked fine and by the time we actually get to see more of them, it all makes sense and works. Now if you are not into other languages being used in the story, not always translated fully, you will not enjoy that, but that's about it.

Two out of the three main characters were cool. It's always refreshing to finally have a protagonist who is not a child or young adult. Orka is an established wife and mother, she knows where she is going and what she is doing. She and her family are loving and there is no typical “the husband is always abusive” type thing. It was cool to see them being self-sustaining as well.
Varg is also fine. He is interesting because he makes mistakes. Of course a former slave is not all great when it comes to social norms between free people, he also lacks knowledge and skills others have. The development of his character make him sympathetic. The way he bonds with his new group makes him endearing. Where Orka is practical and almost cold, Varg has these very human moments.
Then there is Elvar... The one that kinda sorta flopped for me a bit. Her story is the good ol' “I don't want to be a wife or whatever, I want to be a warrior”. It's one of those go-to motivations and tropes for uninspired female characters that are supposed to make me feel all powerful, but are just one note. Her part of the story is saved by the interesting things her group does. So she isn't too special, but the storyline works out.

Now I will talk about the few things I didn't love about this.
Did we need the very repetitive descriptions of every single character that shows up for two seconds? They had braids and beards, having axes. Cool. I don't remember which black-haired woman with a braid and an axe was which and I doubt it matters. The repeating words were sometimes very noticeable.
Why is every second warrior a woman? That was never realistic. No, an average woman still can't keep up with average men when it comes to pure physical strength. There is nothing wrong with admitting that, I am kind of annoyed by the fact we can't say that, because it's supposed to be insulting. It's still not. Some female characters are above average, they have special powers, but you can't claim that when it's literally every second freaking warrior. Don't buy made-up things like how totally every single viking woman was a warrior.

All in all, it was a good read, I will pick up the second book when it's coming out.

This book is the perfect example of why you greatly benefit from an amazing cover as an author looking to find an audience and trying to attract attention. 100%. It's colourful and whimsical and I just love it.
Sadly, the story itself did not deliver.

Ning live in a country where tea is magic. You can use it to do a wide variety of things, if you have the talent. Her mother used to do that, but then she died of poisoning, while Shu, Ning's sister is also dying. So our protagonist goes to the capital, to take part in a tea competition organised by the royal court to be able to save her sister.

There are so many elements to this. The royal court, political unrest, the tea magic, all the different competitors with their own agenda, the shady history of Ning's parents. A princess. A handsome boy as a love interest, but also with his own issues.
And it all just doesn't blend well. We are being told there are those things and they all matter, but somehow the writing doesn't do much with them and it all just comes off as unnecessarily complicated and also barebones at the same time. I have no idea how that is possible, but it is. It wasn't serious enough, nor whimsical enough. Stuck somewhere in between that greatly limits it.
It almost felt like we wasted a bunch of time on details. Describing hair styles, foods (which I like, I'm a foodie, both eating and cooking, but still), rooms. It wouldn't have been THAT much of an issue in a beefier book, but this isn't one. It's also a duology, which is weird when you are trying to have so many things going. Something will be ignored, I am sure about it and that's a shame.

There are also many names of people and places introduces at the same time. Ning leaves her home that has a very limited setting and cast of characters early in the story. Of course the royal court will have more people, but again, this is a short book and yet we get thrown a million people at us and I don't even think many of them matter all that much. It's just... “suspicious backstabber No.3” and that's it, they don't interact with the protagonist much, they just form a crowd. But in that case, will I remember which has what hair style? Not really, no.
It's a bit better with the nice characters, thought I didn't connect with them much either. There was one, Lian, who had some potential, but even that got sidelined real quick.
Now the love, interest, Kang... Eh. Typical handsome boy with a dark and difficult past who develops an instant connecting with the main character. As much as we are kiiiinda made to believe he can be shady, it's never realised properly. You just know he is a nice boy. It's so obvious.

The prose is first person, present tense, which I personally dislike. Some of you probably enjoy it, but I don't, so there is that.
All in all, the writing adds to my feelings about this book; I don't think it's the worse written thing ever, but it's lacking something that would actually make it great. It's a first novel, so probably the experience is missing, which is fine, it can be solved in time, but in its current form, I don't think this is really that good.

Now... I am not to claim a hard magic system is needed. Some people do it well, some don't, I can be perfectly content with something working just because magic is unknowable. But here it felt almost like the magic was just a convenient tool to push the plot forward, without us having an understanding of it.
The challenges in the magic tea competition were all underwhelming. We didn't see any form of amazing feat using it. One of them, the one involving a bird, could have been interesting, but they felt like afterthoughts in a story about political intrigue and lovers. From how this ended, the second book will be more about that, so I hope for the communication between Ning and Kang will be better, because... sheesh, it is one of those where we are supposed to see clever plots, but the characters just forget to freaking talk to each other properly.

I didn't love it. I didn't HATE it, I just felt like almost every element was lackluster. Not enough well-developed magic, not a substantial enough love story, not clever enough political things. Maybe I got spoilt by many different books my more experiences authors with skillsets that COULD handle all the things. Dunno.

But I will read book 2, I think. It's coming soon too.

I gave this another try. Someone online basically screamed at me for disliking this and wrote whole essays about why it's literally the most intelligent and best book EVAH.
Which... it isn't. But now I will wrote a slightly longer, proper review. So there we go.

Magical kids attract monsters. Their semi-controlled energy is a feast and they can't put up a fight equal to a fully trained magical adult. So the kids get sent to the Scholomance, a school where kids are locked up for 4 whole years, where survival is the hardest. Food gets poisoned, monsters lurk, you can't even go to the bathroom without looking over your shoulder.
Galadriel, aka El is... not popular. She is gloomy and weird and unfriendly, so she is not really allied to anyone, which is viatl in a hostile enviroment, until... a kid from an influential family, Orion Lake, suddenly starts following her around because he has a crush on her. After that, everyone suddenly cares about El.

I still feel what I felt during my first attempt; El is a bitch. She is rude to everyone, constantly judges, has issues with everyone. We have to root for her, because this is a YA book and she is a female main character, therefore her toxic behaviour is not only accepted, but glorified. She had a bad childhood! A huge part of it is because of her annoying, tree-hugging hippy mother, who is super powerful in healing, but is just too much of a spineless granola to actually DO THINGS to make her child not absolutely miserable. There are always excuses, because wizard groups called enclaves are douchey, and also she doesn't charge money for her skills, and BLAH BLAH BLAH.
It's just shitty parenting.
But all in all, El becomes an asshole. She meets Orion, this heroic, but socially inept boy... and she goes on abusing him. She calls him names, yells at him, lets him know she fucking hates his existence.
Then she also does the same with the people who try to “suck up to him”. The whole thing is excused with “well, it's better because you just want to use him and I don't, I treat him like everyone else”. This annoys me so much.
PSA for everyone reading: just because people treat you weirdly doesn't mean you have to accept constant verbal abuse and making you feel like you're a burden from someone else. NO, that is absolutely abuser behaviour.

Some things are fun about this. A bunch of the stuff going on at school can be interesting, but at the same time... why? Magic exists and people don't even really try protecting their kids, they just send them to a murder factory? Yes, the book tries to explain it away, but danger to their kids is literally one of the biggest things that motivates people.
It's just all too convenient for making it cool and edgy and violent. The whacky things didn't seem to have a good enough reason. You get some, sure, just not strong enough ones to not make me doubt the whole thing.

I did enjoy Orion Lake (stupidest, most Wattpad name ever), he was determined and he did so much good, while being a social zero. It just saddens me he is so stuck to someone who absolutely does not treat him right. It's the gender-swapped version of “he is a dickhead, but it's just because he had a hard childhood, love will change him”.
If Novik plays this straight, or just blames it on conveniently inconvenient magic, I will scream.

All in all, superficially cool idea get bogged down by unpleasantness and “yeah right” edgetastic explanations and rules. It's extremely sellable to a target audience that feels asshole young women are STRONG and INDEPENDENT. It works if you think not treating others like maggots is just internalised patriarchy or whatever.
I will go on with the series to see what half-baked excuse will explain away all this, but... yeah. This is yet another unpleasant YA read.

——————————————————————————
This did not work for me whatsoever. When I say it's basically needlessly edgy Mean Girls and annoying high school drama it probably explains it all.

The protagonist is yet another asshole teenage girl we are supposed to think is all that and so witty, but to me she came off as a bad person. Of course she gets the attention of this super influential and important, rich, connected guy and what does she do? Constantly acts like the biggest bitch to him, which he takes like he enjoys being kicked around.
It was very juvenile, very annoying, very unpleasant.

How is it that books 1 was amazing, book 2 not so much, but then we are back to great again in this one? Maybe not as high as book 1, because that whole thing was one big surprise, but man, was this good.

When I realised Fetch was the protagonist of the second, I really hoped we were going to get a book with Oats, the absolute best boy in this series. AND WE DID!
In the first two, we were shows he is this huge guy, more orc than human and yet he is the most gentle. He notices when people need him and what's more, he gives them what they need without making a huge fanfare about it. He helps without the other person feel weak.
But what happens when a person like that needs to just go crazy and unleash all the fucked up depths he has?

Now, I have to point out something. This series has more elements than you can count. A bunch of different sides forming temporary alliances, but it's always crystal clear that they have their own goals and will fuck over anyone if needed.
That's the reason why this is not a full story. Hell, the author even wrote somewhere on here about how he plans to write another book. I support that idea, there are still so many things to deal with here. Ruin, Starling, N'Keesos, the centaurs, Zirko. What the hell is going on with Hood? Tyrkania? We still have a whole continent of orcs!!!! Even some new characters make me question the plan for them.
Because of that... the end of this felt almost incomplete. But at the same time, it was good. It was heartwarming. It was comforting. Just don't expect it to be completely done.

Another thing I appreciate about this one is that the author did not give up the tone of the books after he got traditionally published. The characters still say “offensive” things. Messed up stuff still happens. It's unapologetic, just like the mongrels are unapologetic about what and who they are. And that adds to today's book market more than anyone is willing to admit.
In a market where everyone is worried about being cancelled, this one leaned into what made it special. The characters are rude and not PC and... they are incredibly loyal, are willing to do whatever for each other.
Some people will get their panties in a bunch over it, I have no illusions about it. None. But if you are willing to read it and not just fake outrage because OMG, bad word, will see how wonderfully the relationships bloom in it.

I love this. I will forever love it and I'm more than willing to wait for the possible next book, though at this point I have no idea what to expect. Which element will it use? I don't know. I have no idea. And I am looking forward to it, because this was a series that surprised me with both its style and the creativity. You will absolutely not mistake it for anything else, these people and events could not belong to any other book you can find and for that, it deserves HUGE kudos.

(As a side note, the trad pub covers are still awful. The original cover of book 1 was fantastic, it's a crime they changed the artist and style of it. I don't like these photoshopped human models, sorry.)

I didn't write a review of the first book, but I decided to do with this one, because why the fuck not. Holy shit, these books are cool. Seriously, I absolutely love them and that's all. The supernatural life in Moscow is insane, which is understandable for a city with such a history. We have the Light Others and the Dark Others, trying to maintain a very delicate equilibrium of power over the normal humans. They police each other through the Night Watch (Lights out at night keeping an eye on the Darks) an Day Watch (vice versa), especially during a time when the balance is really close to being completely ruined. Here, as in the first book, we have three little stories that intertwine through the endless, often decades long machinations of the two sides and their bosses. No spoilers, so I can't really say more, especially without talking too much about the first novel. Urban fantasy to me is fun. I just love it, in all kinds of different interpretations. Some just take fantasy creatures and stories and place them in our modern world, some really try to make magic urban through tying it to specific urban locations really hard. This one... is a bit of both, I guess. It's not exactly like the ridiculously overwritten [b:A Madness of Angels 6186355 A Madness of Angels (Matthew Swift, #1) Kate Griffin https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1305861910s/6186355.jpg 6366640], where all the specifically city (or even London) places have some creature connected to them. No. Here we simply just have people so damn Russian. You read the book and you just can't imagine the same characters being anywhere else, the prose, the dignified, melancholic air... It's artful. Seriously. Mr. Lukyanenko is not cheating you out of your fantasy elements either. Somehow he managed to make vampires and witches and sorcerers feel fresh and perfectly integrated in life with the technology and lifestyle of Russia in 1999. Which... is exactly the thing some people will not get or appreciate at all. I mean I'm Eastern European, let me tell you, some things will feel pretty damn alien about this book for some people from for example the US. Oh well, it's a very nice change of pace, I guess. I adored the fact that in this book we could see stories about the Dark Others, basically the enemy of the protagonists of the first book and... you could actually have empathy for them. It's truly a story where we observe the moral questions of good and bad, without the limitations of being told the obvious answer. Also, the sides here do misunderstand each other and not always able to see the bigger picture, which gives a further little flavour of them being actual, multifaceted people. Now there was this thing that kind of annoyed me, though. Goddamn song lyrics. Somehow I personally can not appreciate poetry of any kind in novels. It just breaks up the prose, it feels awkward, usually it plain sucks. Here they are translated from Russian to English, which makes it even more awkward to read them. They tie in with the stories, but I still can't appreciate that. Sorry. I'm probably just some uncultured swine, but hey. At this point I have no idea where the story will go next, as we have some overarching storylines, but I am definitely interested. I have no idea why I waited so long with reading this second book, but damn, is this series a ton of fun. I'm definitely picking up the next book. So long and don't come to the dark side. Or light side. Keep it neutral.

Technically, this was a horror book. I mean of course it was, it had dicey moments and something really dark going on in the background, but also, I felt it was more defined by its... weirdness? It had some supernatural elements, some things that happened never got explained and it's all open-ended.
Also, really fucking good.
I read about 2 pages of it once before and then I stopped, but now it hit differently and I had an absolute blast.

Kris is middle-aged woman working in a cheap hotel as a receptionist. She used to play guitar in the metal band Dürt Würk. They almost made it, until their singer, Terry, got them a fishy contract with a sleazy manager, which Kris refused to accept and it all ended in a disaster and the band falling apart.
Now Terry is back, a metal superstar while Kris is unhappy, lonely and unsuccessful, not even playing anymore. But she needs to find out what went wrong with their original band, because she can't quite remember and it all seems... wrong.

Now obviously this book is full of references of music, which I completely missed. Why? Because I don't know shit about music. I listen to it and I enjoy it and it's all good fun, but I'm also tone deaf and I don't know anything about theory.
You don't need to. The story still makes sense and the emotions are universal; regret and trying to make things right after events that can't be undone.

Extra points for middle-aged protagonists. We all know the books about people doing it for the first time, but what happens after that? This is a book about picking up the pieces and having one last stand against something fucked up going on.
And it is fucked. The first half of the book is about the current miseries of Kris and her old bandmates. At first it doesn't seem worse than people way over their glory days and feeling sad over not being free and wild.
By the end it becomes about some messed up conspiracy stuff. Things that make perfect sense. Feelings you have probably felt at least in some way about pop culture, about the things that are meant to give joy. Sure, I don't think it's all supernatural, but man, would it make sense. I feel for Kris seeing her passion tuning into something disgusting.
The book was just as much about media and the content we consume as about Kris' personal journey. Now I probably sound very I'm-14-and-this-is-deep, but fuck, commercial media can be such a joyless affair it almost feels like there must be someone behind it being that way.

Now I want to read more by this author. BRB, I need to pick up another one.

DNF at 35%.

Man, this book is not good. Very, very not good.

The author has an astonishing amount of works there, so when it comes to work ethic, I have to salute her, but it honestly feels like she has huge issues when it comes to some other things. Some authors develop in their skill levels very fast, you can see the huge jumps in quality. Here I'm just disappointed. After so many thousands of pages and so many great ratings the whole thing feels very amateur and very... juvenile, honestly. Sure, there are rookie mistakes that are called that because rookies do them and they are common. But she isn't such a rookie. I am disappointed.

Steampunk is something that's either a hit or a miss with people, it's relatively controversial when it comes to subgenres. I personally love it. One of my biggest discoveries last year was Anthony Ryan's Draconis Memoria, I am a huge fan of the Ketty Jay series by Chris Wooding, it all just appeals to me. So I was over the moon when I found an indie author with a steampunk series with dragons. Cool stuff, right?

Would be if the whole execution wasn't so BAD.
Snappy, humorous dialogue isn't easy, I understand. I'm not great at coming up with stuff like that, truly. I have no idea why everyone feels they can ace that shit, honestly. Here it's an absolute disaster in the most childish, “14-year-old sasses in a Tumblr post” way. Sometimes it feels like a lot of authors hinder themselves with spending so much time online and developing the very same type of dialogue writing as you can see in every clone of a clone “I'm so random” blog or comment section. It's derivative, not that funny and... honestly, it doesn't fit the setting. That has to be considered as well; maybe you quip like a god in a casual way with your friends or something, but not every setting benefits from 201X humour. (It will also really date the writing, by the way.)

The humour is not the only thing smashing my immersion, either. The characters are soldiers, they communicate with their subordinates and bosses and NOBODY is ever even just remotely professional. Zero discipline, zero respect. Commanders don't cutesy-cutesy with their wives in front of subordinates they met 2 minutes ago. The way they talk to each other wouldn't fly in any even just barely professional setting.
Sure, you can say it's fantasy, but that doesn't excuse the seemingly nonexistent knowledge the author has about any wartime protocol. It's horrid.

Now we also have the dreadful characters. They are idiots, plain and simple. Priceless weapons just get handed over to random people. Our heroine with 3 uni degrees has no idea how to fix a wobbly table. Important information gets thrown around casually and without proper thinking.
And of course we have to have our “bestestest smartest female character who is such a little victim of men”. Not stale at all. She also blabbers like crazy about supposedly smart things that are basic and people are amazed. Then she looks at an attacking dragon and magically calculates everything for the soldiers to shoot it, because she is a Big Bang Theory level of “genius”.

I will be honest, this was a dumpster fire. I will not mention it to anyone (except to point out it's baaaaaaad), I will not read the sequels or anything else by the author Epic fail.

Have a nice day and let me storm out now!

Some months ago I read the first few pages of [b:Foul Lady Fortune 57190453 Foul Lady Fortune (Foul Lady Fortune, #1) Chloe Gong https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1642713157l/57190453.SY75.jpg 89504589] and I realised that I didn't like it. THIS was what I expected it to be. Jade City has such atmosphere. Mafia stories are extremely easy to mess up. You can go way too romanticised or you can go too bleak and needlessly violent. Both makes the characters unrealistic; no perfect little cinnamon bun will also make people sleep with fishes, but also a mindless killing machine will never be the biggest force and base of a working criminal enterprise. Here we have the Kaul family, war hero granddad and his three grown grandchildren who form the leadership of the No Peak gang of superpowered people, who can use jade to give themselves abilities. (Then there is their young adopted cousin, not quite ready for a life like this. He is a cinnamon bun, but that's his point, so there is that.) Don't get me wrong, they are likeable characters; they have nice moments, they bond, they can be incredibly brave and noble. But when the middle one, Hilo, snaps... HE SNAPS. They are all capable of being cruel and calculating. You can buy them having dimension, their dilemmas feel hard. The grandfather is hardly ever around, but he is very interesting. The nation's hero from a time of foreign occupation. Now here he is, unable to connect with his grandkids. Nobody measures up, but he himself is slowly dying and losing what made him special. Is he angry with his own mortality? Is he truly dissatisfied with his family? He was made for and in a completely different world, the one he can't let go. He is insanely cruel. Is that his mind just going? Or was he always like that, because it was needed during wartime? So much of this book is about that. The perception and the reality, the characters using that distinction to work politics. The difference between the measured Lan, who is liked, but provokes no passion, as opposed to Hilo, who is passionate and dangerously hot-headed, yet incredibly charismatic. What will work in the end? Does it matter? Then there is Shae, who is trying to do something completely different, yet having to realise that maybe she doesn't even have an option, parallelled by Anden, who is coming from the outside, trying to get in. And this powerful family's story is framed by something very little. Someone little, doing something petty. In the story it's often mentioned that lanternmen (civilian supporters of the gangs) were the most important during the war and even for the working of the gangs, which makes it extra ironic that the events were started by one of those civilians. A lot of the story is based on those clever little twists. The lore is a lot. A lot of language, the way they use suffixes and the different forms of people's names. The different words they use for the internal structures of the gangs. The history, religion, culture. Now that was one of my worries. Will it make sense? And it did. I never felt like Lee added any of that just to pad things and make things feel more. It's all enough. It's all needed, it all adds up. The way the island of Kekon is described is so atmospheric. I have never even been to Asia (just you wait!), but everything felt so cinematic. The little shops and restaurants, the way they have temples next to gambling dens. So amazing, it truly feels like a city in transition. I think Shae's chapters bring out a lot of it, because she spends a good part of the book walking around like a normal person. (I don't even think Lee intentionally made it “food porn”, but mentions of food made me hungry. Weird.) A lot of the book is progress. We have a culture that is between modern and traditional. They are over a war, but not yet at peace. They have something specific to them, jade, which they have kept for themselves, but now they are staring to open up to the world. All the characters' individual stories are about transformation as well, though I wouldn't want to spoil them. That said, I don't feel there are such big plot twists. The events are on a trajectory towards... well, absolute chaos and it's exceptionally done, but I don't think this book hinges on surprising you with the absolutely unexpected. I personally don't need those, though. In my opinion just riding things out is much better than some so-so twist. I will go there and say it, I didn't need the sex scenes. I don't care about romance much and I usually just skim sex scenes, so there is that. They weren't overwhelming, I just didn't expect them. At this point, I have to read the rest. I have my doubts about a happy ending being possible, but I want to keep my hopes high. DEFINITELY recommending this to others.

So Kellen is an outlaw now. Him, Ferius and Reichis are basically wandering the lawless deserts between the countries, being chased around by bounty hunters sent by Kellen's people, when they end up in a university city bringing together the young and rich to build their minds and their relationships. Now with some extra shadowblack infection! Something needs to be done.

I don't really like this series that much. It is what it is, I find it nothing even remotely close to what I loved about (at least the first three books of) The Greatcoats. I have no idea what is going on, but this one lacks the charm and the laugh out loud humour, mixed with such fucked up, absolutely horrible things. Now let me elaborate.

What was absolutely brilliant about the The Greatcoats was the fact that the protagonists were good people, but they weren't sweet and perfect. They were horribly messed up and their flaws were quite obvious in an endearing way. Here we have a kind of whiny kid who is super special, a woman who sounds seriously like some granola chick who thinks a “spiritual” trip to India will set her right while feeling incredibly badass and... a talking cat who is actually really funny. A little fluffy edgelord who likes to talk about eating people's eyeballs. Reichis is obviously the best. Other than him I really don't like the characters.
Not even the new ones. They all felt kind of useless vehicles of bringing up the big bad power in he background, but I don't even know why we had to learn their names. They were nothing. The book ended with the three mains leaving, basically going “okay, forget about them, they don't matter”. Not even the insta love interest. (Who was engaged, but then her dude turned out to be dead AND gay, because fuck you so Kellen could charm her with his irresistible fuckup powers and then leave her to shit to be a hippy drifter or whatever. Because fuck you. That is why. This whole lovey-dovey storyline was the most inconsequential, shoehorned, useless thing EVER.)

At one point in the story I thought everything about Kellen's life was going to take a turn. We meet a new character, who seemed kind of legit badass and I was looking forward to it. You know why?
Because I HATE the whole Argosi thing. I can't stand the stupid sayings and the wishy-washy nothing they do. Their whole philosophy is nonsense. You can't just take a kid whose whole like got taken, say nothing concrete to them, then act like a condescending cunt when they are moody and clueless and kind of WTF. As annoying as Kellen can be, I totally understood him in this particular thing.
At one point another Argosi basically claims they don't give a crap about things that don't have big, history changing consequences. So she leaves when kids at an international university are getting ill. At a place that was created to build relations and turn a desert into an actual country. Because a whole new country in the middle of a continent happening or not is not important for history. WTF.
Somehow the whole book feels like the characters are reacting to the events wrong. Like their conclusions are just all messed up.

The world building is still cool. The magic system, the places are rich and interesting. We'll see more of that in the next book, so that is a good thing, but the settings and that talking cat can't save the whole series from being a disappointment. Most people will not agree with me, but this one still feels kind of juvenile and just... watered down. Something edgier is really missing from it and that makes me sad.

I am definitely going to pick up the next book, just because I still hope for it turning into something more. I doubt it will happen, but... you know. I loved the first three Greatcoats. I loved those so much. I probably won't recommend this series to many people. It's just not enough.

(Also, the cover is lovely, but there is no way Kellen's hair grew so much in the few months since the last book. I am nitpicking, yes.)

Have a good night and do not believe cardplayers with stupid philosophical sayings. They suck.

This book was very different from the previous ones in a way. What do I mean by that? So far we have heard about the Heartstriker clan, the many, many siblings and how they all have their functions for the clan and how it's a very intricate hierarchy based on everyone trying like crazy to climb to the top (with the exception of Julius). There are enforcers, politicians, medics, soldiers, ones responsible for raising the new kids, etc. It all connects to support the brood mother, Bethesda, who rules over them by basically making them fight and fear each other.
By now things are changing, though. They all had the epiphany of almost every single one feeling like shit is not good. Like they all had some issues when life wasn't fair and it's seeming like.... they are wasting energy, potential and just generally every single resource because they are unable to work together.

So far we have mostly seen the characters as the kind of mysterious backdrop for Justin being the way he is, but they are starting to get fleshed out. Honestly, they are much more independent from Bethesda than I have expected; I shouldn't be surprised by how they are a lot less than perfect underlings. And at the same time a lot, lot more.
The origins and history of dragons are still not worked with too much, but I am happy with what I can get. Warning, though, I feel this book is not about the action mostly. Which is not an issue, I just feel like I had to mention it.

The war with Algonquin is approaching fast and even the humans are aware it's happening. Marci is getting the attention of some influential humans and... others.

I feel this book will pay off big time with all the huge things being set up. Definitely looking forward to it.

DNF at 65%.
Yes, I actually rate things I did not finish. Deal with it, I don't care if it's fair, this is just how I feel about it. Part of it is probably the fact that I want to read the last Magicians book by Lev Grossman. Oh, well.

So I am the type that picks up books based on the covers sometimes, which is not so unusual for someone who is generally interested in visual art. Sometimes it turns out awesomely (like when I picked up the Johannes Cabal books by Jonathan L. Howard, man, those are such fun ones, definitely recommending them). Some other times... we get this. Seriously, I love the simple cover with the limited colour palette, right up my alley. It is an art to get the feel of the book and condense it into a cover that still doesn't look nonsensical and messy for people who know nothing about the story. In this case, while I loved the art, I found the literature inside really disappointing.

The situation is that by accident a little girl falls into a hole in the ground and finds a gigantic robot hand of unknown origin. Years pass. People find more pieces and start actually working on assembling this gigantic ass mecha woman, because that is what people do. It needs people to control it as well, which is kind of difficult when you realize it was optimized for a body shape that is humanoid, but not quite exact. Of course political machinations happen, I mean we're talking about this virtually indestructible war machine.

Most of the story is told through interviews with people taking part in the events. This is something that will inevitably be controversial with the readers and part of me wants to congratulate Mr. Neuvel for taking such a risk. At the same time... it slows down the storytelling in my opinion. I have no patience for time being blown on the characters (like Kara, one of the military pilots working on the control of the robot) being defiant with the interviewer. Again and again, they sass. Sure, I would probably talk back as well, but it doesn't make a good novel in my opinion. You know you will get to know things sooner or later, but you have to spend time with people bitching, basically.

Another thing is, based on the little blurb and probably my short description as well, you expect a ton of high tech robot badassery. I have bad news for you. The robot is basically a background prop. It feels like I was lied to, if I am honest. I'm not a particularly big sci-fi fan, more into fantasy, but when I want sci-fi, I want it. Not just people talking about it a bit, then doing other shit.

Reading the thing is fast, though. When we're reading the interviews, there is a pretty big gap on the left, so pages just fly by. I started reading it on my little vacation in a hotel bathtub and for that it was fine. When your head is full of other things, but you are a reader and just need to fit in a few pages to wind down. For full attention? Eh. Not for me for sure.

I can't really say much about the author, as I've never heard his name before. I don't think I'm going to actively look for more of his works for now, though. No hard feelings, I'm just not inclined. I wouldn't want to say anything bad about him or his talents, it wasn't so horrid, I just... felt do damn bored by the whole thing that I decided to quit.

Have a nice day and domo arigato, Miss Roboto.

That... was very different.
So basically we have a huge library. One so big it contains the cumulative knowledge of multiple millennia, different cultures. Different species. The whole thing runs on magic and a select group of librarians trying to discover the endless secrets of it.
And that's pretty much about as much as I can say without spoiling it. Why? Because this thing does incredible stuff with time travel, with how we think about knowledge and history.

The central characters are Livira and Evar, a girl and a boy who are destined to meet each other. They share the library and yet they have never talked to each other and they shouldn't, because something about them sets off events that are going to break time and space and essentially, everything.
And man, did the story go in ways I didn't see. It expertly plays with the idea that you can interpret certain things in contradicting ways and so the twists are some of the best I have ever seen. They are not just shocking; they completely change how you see previous events.
You know how clever authors are needed to write clever characters? Mark Lawrence does that perfectly; his concepts are stellar and unique and his prose is fantastic. No, it's not the flowery stuff that has no meat. He carefully picked his words to support the story perfectly. It's not bullshit (I'm looking at you, Rothfuss).

A warning; I am convinced this series will end in a tragic way. The story is just too big, the ideas are not for this to have a clear, happy ending. But so far this is 100% worth a read.

DNF at 27%. What the hell is this? What went so absolutely wrong with this book? Multiple things, actually.

Have any of you seen Snow White and The Huntsman, the movie? It was pretty awful. Every damn character keeps talking about Snow White being the best thing since forever, her personality, her beauty, her aura just so flawless she inspires endless love and devotion in everyone. Even non-human characters. Yet you look at Kristen Stewart, playing Snow White, and she is just standing there, slightly confused, with her mouth a bit open, looking like a totally mundane human who doesn't even understand what is going on.
This book is that. Exact same feeling. Let me elaborate, because this review is unhinged at this point and I can't let you go home feeling that way.

Night Film is about mystery around an elusive movie director called Stanislas Cordova. His movies are visceral and disturbing, a force of nature. They are independently made, because he was just too weird for conventional cinema. His fans have secret communities with illegal screenings underground (sometimes literally). He lives on this secluded compound, where he works and he never engages with the public.
Then his 24-year-old daughter commits suicide.
A journalist, who used to be obsessed with finding out Cordova's secrets and got his career ruined for it, starts to try and unravel the mystery of what happened to Ashley Cordova.

Sounds super spooktastic. Sounds like it would be magnetic, you would get obsessed with Cordova and his family, like the people in universe got obsessed with his movies.
Yeah, no, think again. I know I am supposed to be confused and excited. To see more, to learn more, to get more of the clues. Yet this is incredibly boring and flavourless. The writing holds absolutely sub zero pressure on you. Sure, not all books like this need to be scary. But to be not only not scary, but THIS BORING? That's a crime.
The characters, McGrath, his UWU quirky sidekick Nora and hot, strung out, so indie Sidekick No. 2 Hopper go from place to place. They sneak into a mental hospital! Yet it all reads like an absolute slog. You never feel the danger. It never feels risky. Never feels like something could happen to them.
The prose is so colourless. Sure, we know what kind of stockings Nora wears, but none of the words build any form of momentum. We get the name of the store from which she got her sopping bags REPEATEDLY, but we are not getting any closer to even just opening up the central mystery.

I think one big issue with it is the fact it's never confidently anything. It's not existential enough, never scary enough, never gorey, spooky, atmospheric. It's just in this state of... nothing really. Characters all talk in this samey voice of no real emotion. They say what they saw and what they felt, but it's hollow. I am being told things without being convinced or infected by their ideas and any passion behind them.
Then again, the characters did really all sound the same, main and side ones alike. We get told about their quirks through their looks and surroundings, yet they all come off sounding like the author. I'm sure she is lovely and all, but she sure as hell doesn't know how to give her characters different vocabulary or ways of expressing themselves, from the 19-year-old manic pixie to the retired apple farmer. Indistinct, like the rest of this book.

The book contains a lot of newspaper clippings and such. Could be fun, wasn't.

So all in all, I just don't want to get myself into a reading slump with something that so fundamentally fails one of the big things about its genre.

The shitstorm continues in this book. It's not enough that the sadistic and perfectly insane Trin decided to be queen, Falcio is dying of the poison he barely survived in the previous book, sainthood is starting to make Kest go insane, Brasti breaks down, Aline is in constant danger, but someone decided to start murdering the dukes and their whole families and the signs point to the old Greatcoats. Seems like nobody can catch a break in this damn country, eh?

This was something. When I say something, I mean REALLY dark, more than the first, with hilarious moments, and action galore. Thing got much more complicated as well, which is interesting, I am really looking forward to how the author is going to solve this, because at the moment it seems everyone just decided to burn the country to the ground and restart from there. Seriously, if you want to see clear cut good and bad, don't even bother with this.
Personally I enjoy that. Characters with potential for good seem to come up with the worst possible things to do. Everything leads to things turning worse and worse. To be honest, that is one of my favourite elements in the series; that even the best intentions can and will often lead to the absolute worst.

In this one all three of our guys are having their own issues. They all get tested in their ways, have to face their issues, really think about what they are doing with their lives. The same goes for the accompanying girls. A lot of that happens towards the end of the book, so we won't see too much of the results, which.... yeah, that part makes this book feel a bit like setting things up for the next. I'm not saying it is a bad book, but a lot of their achievements will come to their results later.

So now for the soapbox time. Skip if you are so inclined. I warned you.
Nowadays everyone blabbers about female characters and how we absolutely NEED more, while they are inventing ridiculous guidelines. Female characters always need to be flattering to our whole gender or someone will cry sexism.
My opinion? To hell with that. Females have the capacity for the full range of good AND bad characteristics and that is not an insult, but a great thing. When we are good, it's not because of the lack of other possibility and us just being born good, but because we decided to do it and kept that goodness.
Here we finally have some females with the whole scale. Kind, caring, patient, but also sadistic, full of revenge, too hot headed. All.
Now I just hope Sebastien De Castell is as brave as some of his characters and will keep them that way and not dance back and claim women's bad decisions and flaws are always the men's faults.

All in all, this was good. I hope the next one will finally not have torture scenes (they... get a bit old, not gonna lie), but other than that I am looking forward to it. The end of the book makes it obvious that our characters have some huge work ahead of them. The world got developed in this one more (the Dashini assassins, oh my gooood), now they need to start fixing all the issues with the already existing stuff. Maybe finally they will actually have the power to make some progress and not just stumble from one life or death situation to the next.

There is one element I am not wild about, though. Ethalia, Falcio's love interest. I personally don't really love romance, it just doesn't interest me and this one feels a bit nonsensical as well. Sure, she helps him and she's a kind lady, but this gigantic love after actually spending maybe a day together was a bit... annoying, I guess. Oh, well. I can live with that.

Have a nice day and avoid all the conspiracies!

He is relatively controversial, but I absolutely love Jim Butcher. So... ode to Mr. Butcher first.
Every time I read a book of his, I just know it is coming from a place of genuine love for doing what he is doing, that he is writing with passion and that he will make me feel the same sort of excitement for his art. When I look at anything from him I can know for sure that I am going back to a place that will make me feel better, even if I'm having a worse phase and for that I need to be grateful, no matter what.

Now with that out of the way, I have to talk about my second time reading this book.
IT. WAS. AWESOOOOOME. Thank you. Just kidding.

Humanity was forced to live in gigantic spires, kind of like city states, using flying ships and avoiding the surface of the planet, because of some issue making in uninhabitable. Now even if they grow their food in huge vats and mostly never see the open sky, different spires still have their issues with each other, so we reach a point where our Spire Albion gets attacked by Spire Aurora, in more sneaky and evil ways than even before, so a group of merchant ship crew, young spire guards and crazy magic people have to team up as the ultimate bizarro A Team to save the word. Or spire.

Team stories are my thing, since forever, which is combined with Jim Butcher's great skills at writing different character interactions so I'm basically just a happy camper. Somehow he is just great with bouncing characters off of each other, so as long as he keeps doing it everything is all fine. Here we have yet another round of people who are incredibly lovely. Captain Grimm is serious and hardworking and troubled, Gwen is a snobbish teen girl who is growing nicer, Benedict is a fierce young guy, Bridget is my practical angel, Master Ferus is Doc Brown and more, Creedy is a pompous guy with a kind heart... I don't want any of them to die.
Special shoutout to the animal characters. Now living in a bigass tower is not particularly conductive when it comes to having animals around, but just for a moment think of the most tenacious, shitty little beasts who think they are the best of the universe. Yes, cats survived, as super intelligent, super developed, feral things with proper societies. And they are hilarious. Rowl is the best thing ever.
Now Butcher isn't a GRRM, but man, I worry about these morons constantly.

I do worry a lot because this thing has a lot of battles. Freaking aerial ship battles. For someone with zero ship knowledge (hello) these might sound mighty uninteresting as a description, but as soon as you realise that these objects don't exist and you just go with the flow... technicalities pass you buy and you have a good time. They are genuinely amazing, they would look breathtaking in a movie, which is never happening, but a girl can dream.
Now some other battles happen as well, some of them including... bug creatures.
Can we talk about Butcher's bug thing? The man loves to insert freaky nasty bug creatures in his work and it's truly nasty in an unsettling way. Which is effective when creating a threat. No complaints, they just work on me.

The book as a whole is long, though. Not saying it's unnecessary or that it's a bad thing, but everyone should know that this is a longer book, do with that what you will. Now the reason why I don't mind it at all is because the world it builds is rich and the information is spaced out in a way that is never boring, but it also doesn't bog down the flow. You always get to know the sufficient amount for the story to go on and for you to have something for you.
The concepts are ambitious for sure, but they are just to the level of being conceivable for the reader, which can be tricky.
For this reason I am glad Mr. Butcher started this series at this point of his career. With Dresden Files the thing we always say is that it needed time to warm up, a few books to TRULY catch the flow and become pure awesome instead of just freaking cool. Here we don't have this, because the guy knows what he is doing. From that point of view the more wild world building was a good choice for now.

Aaaaaand here comes my only issue, namely not knowing when the sequel is coming. The moment it's out I'm pouncing on that stuff. This is addictive, I just want more of it. I guess even it was a million pages long I would still want more.
Will I go on? Yes. Do I recommend it? Yup. (Even just last night on a forum I frequent I convinced someone to read it. I am that person.)

Good night and let this review in-spire you! (Oh, dear...)

Something about the book just doesn't work for me. It's short and shouldn't take an effort, but somehow it doesn't read smoothly enough.
The supporting characters are uninteresting and even though Eric is fine, right now I don't feel like forcing myself to go on with it. Maybe later. Maybe in a different mood, I mean it's not bad by any chance just... I don't know.

###

UPDATE: I read it. I tried the book for a second time and now I finished the whole thing.

Eric Carter is a necromancer and pretty emo if you're asking me. After 15 years away from his home in LA he returns because of the brutal murder of his sister, Lucy, his only remaining family. He needs to find out who from his past could have done such a thing, while meeting some old friends who all feel he had abandoned them.

Look at that cover and tell me it doesn't remind you of a certain edition of the Dresden Files series. Even the premise is similar, urban fantasy with this angsty, angry young man who feels he doesn't have any roots. Even the fact supernatural powers are interested in him is Dresden-like.
What makes this not Dresden-like is the fact Eric lacks so much of the charm of Harry. This is not a funny book. He has no lightness about him, not much sarcastic, wiseass flair. Which is fine, he is a darker character from the get go, but I am just warning everyone; this isn't going to be a haha fun times. If anything, Eric is a lot more unashamed about just killing people. He goes in, does his thing, messes with the dead and it's the end of it.
In that regard, I have no idea how we can raise the stakes here. How will this get more serious? Not sure how much that will work when it's already borderline depressing in here.

In a way, I feel having big, emotionally significant deaths in the first book is a bit of a mistake when it's so short and will be part of a longer series, anyway. I don't care about Eric that much so far. That's just a fact, he is fine, but he isn't a character we spent years following. A lot of the impact of book deaths comes from us having a soft spot for either the victim or the surviving other (or both), but in this case Lucy was never a real character and Eric is just... I don't know yet?
In that sense a lot of the drama feels wasted.

Now don't get me wrong, this wasn't a bad book. It's adequate. I wind the urban fantasy genre to be very easily readable, like this one, so in that sense it's successful. It's competent. But it went in too fast, which took a lot out of its impact. I want to read more of this series, but I can't promise I am 100% on board.