BulbasaurusThe7th

3,5 stars

The cover of this is still horrid. Like look at that, it's supposedly a picture of Nico, but what's with the raccoon liner? That wonkyass eyebrow? It just looks like Nico was supposed to be a high school goth girl with questionable fashion sense. Also, it's kind of cheesy romance novel. Absolutely hilarious.

In this one Eli and his team of misfits gets caught up in stuff while they are looking for Slorn, the bear-headed Shaper man. Demon creatures come and start to devour everything to grow, we also get closer to the origin of demonseeds and see more of the creatures of this world. Josef has to fight to death yet again and Nico really needs to think about what she is and what she can do about her situation. Miranda is useless as always, I see no function for her, I'll talk more about that part later.

You know, I think this book was just way too long. Miss Aaron at this point in her career was definitely not ready for introducing so many different storylines and powers at the same time and yeah, you can notice that in this book. The whole thing feels just a bit bloated, things get messy because we have to keep an eye on all the different powers at play and it is not graceful.
I personally like complicated worlds with a lot of elements, with a lot of different characters and conflicting powers, but if you do that it means you have to be exceptionally good at finding the balance between busy and still somehow neat and possible to follow without feel like you are being ripped apart.
Here... yeah. Things just happened. Especially during the climax I felt like the fluidity between the elements just wasn't there. For a book this length, the end was pretty damn rushed and I would have worked more to somehow untangle that before publishing. My opinion, so yeah.

Another issue is how the writing can be wonky. Back in middle school my teacher kept telling us we are only allowed to use a word twice on an A5 page and you lost points if you did more. Sure, that is a really rigid rule and I can understand that certain writing styles and things just make you unable to follow that, but at the same time Miss Aaron seems to be extremely prone to repeating the same word over and over again. There was a part where I swear every second sentence had the word ‘fissure'. At one point she described someone with calling everything about him long, multiple times in the same sentence.
These things are easy to notice! You don't need some special skill or education to realise that saying horrible multiple times in a sentence looks crappy.
It feels like certain passages didn't get enough attention. I'm sorry, I am not trying to be a jerk, but it is true.
(She also makes Eli think about using the fire demon that... is Miranda's, mixing up the names. It's killing me.)

I like the characters, though. I was right in my old review of the first novel, you need time to get attached to them, but they are pretty sweet and I'm warming up to them. The new characters, like the ridiculously flamboyant Sparrow or the now a bit more utilised Slorn were great. I just want all of them to be around more. (Gimme more Master Banage, though.)
This is my problem, though; Miranda is useless. She is this flawless brat who is so magical and I just don't connect to her at all. She can do no wrong and even if she basically deserts and in any normal society that is frowned upon, here she just goes “my master would have told me it's okay”. With her constant blabber about responsibility and all, she is just doing whatever she feels like and getting away with it. I have no idea what Miss Aaron is doing with her.

Again, I see potential. I see interesting things forming, good ideas. I love the magic system, I love the Shaper magic, I LOOOVE Eli's ability of being able to sweet talk the spirits, I love Dead Mountain with the cult and monsters coming.
Just... get better at technical things, please. That's all I ask. A bit more grace and a bit more attention to these little mistakes.

I'm definitely going on with the series, I want to know what's going on and I'm probably reading the author's newer, kind of dragon-y series. I'll want to give it a try and I'm hoping for a more polished final product.

Have a nice day and keep your spirits high!

This was absolutely brutal and I am in love. You know, graphic violence is an interesting thing and I'm pretty picky about it. If the author picks some sort of a violent situation or world for the book, it needs to happen. I dislike when they shy away from it and nicely knock the protagonist out or send them to a different room while shit happens. You know, if you have no inclination to show the thing, then leave it out. I also don't really like the kind of mindless violence that doesn't feel integral and meaningful, just happens with you hearing the author's chuckles in the background, because hehe, you got shocked. In this... it was perfection. I mean basically the story is about a little boy, Will Henry, whose father used to work for a kooky doctor, Dr. Pellinore Warthrop as an assistant. Then one day they family's house burnt down, the parents died and the boy was taken in by the doctor. No, he is no fixer of broken legs and checker of blood pressure. No. Dr. Warthrop is a monstrumologist. That means... monster scientist. So when monsters are found in graves and people get ripped apart alive, who you gonna call? Yeah, Warthrop and Will Henry. Another thing that Rick Yancey (bless his name) did extremely well was sell you on the 1800's. The writing was fitting, as far as I know. Sure, I am no expert, but to me it honestly felt like Mr. Yancey knew what he was doing, didn't just pick this time period for the lulz. Of course the treatment of Will Henry (he basically has a full time, super demanding job at age twelve and nobody babies him) was not according to today's standards. Again, fitting. If it bothers you, this book is not for yourself. The relationship between the Doctor and Will Henry adds to this. The man was raised by an emotionally distant father and he honestly does not do feelings too much. His work, which is extremely strenuous is his top priority. I mean the future of the human race depends on people like him, so there is no time to play around and talk about out feelings. For once an author (and a YA one) actually dares to do this well! So many want to add distant characters who supposedly don't get human interactions, but go soft and just make them a bit quirky, but totally the illegitimate child of Oprah and a Care Bear. Of course Warthrop has his kind little moments, but they are few and far between, which is something I enjoyed, it made those moments much more precious and meaningful. It's really damn hard to not compare this to my previous read, William Ritter's [b:Beastly Bones 24001095 Beastly Bones (Jackaby, #2) William Ritter https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1425592816s/24001095.jpg 43601150]. The premise is the same. The protagonist tells about his/her time as the assistant of a person who works with monsters and creatures, even in the same era. The difference, other than my enjoyment, was the fact that even though Mr. Yancey's monsters are scientific creatures with actual doctors doing scientific experiments (autopsies, hello), the book felt damn magical and fantastic. Mr. Ritter supposedly has magical things, but couldn't make it feel like magic. Funny enough, I've heard about Mr. Yancey before in connection with [b:The 5th Wave 16101128 The 5th Wave (The 5th Wave, #1) Rick Yancey https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1359853842s/16101128.jpg 19187812] and that sounds exactly like the kind of book I would hate. I am not big on books about teen girls kicking major soldier ass and being super cute, while hot dudes fight for her attention. Just... not my jam. But this was absolutely AMAZING. It pulled me in right away. One funny thing was my imagination, though. For some reason at first I imagined Warthrop as this old guy, kind of sickly looking and creepy. Then some time in the book he talks about the fact that he came back to New Jerusalem five years ago, when his father died, from his travels after his studies, which makes him pretty young. Also, he gets called handsome at one point. He can't be over thirty. Whoops? Sleep well and do not look under your bed!

Let me say something before I review the book itself. I have heard about this book because I absolutely love Jim Butcher. The author of this one is his son. But the fact they are related (and that I am a huge fan of Jim) has nothing to do with the fact I actually picked this one up and the rating and opinion I have on it. Why am I getting into ongoing series, though? Why? Now, in this specific case, I will use the excuse of wanting a good, solid, fun urban fantasy. You can say there are many urban fantasy series going on and that's factual. But at the same time... so many of them are what I call “porntasy”. Usually female protagonist, she has men buzzing around her, sex scenes galore, ehhh. I dislike those. But this. THIS. It's just what I wanted; an action mystery with supernatural elements. Yes. Hell, it even hits another thing I love, namely having prominent characters who are older. Yes, make them older, make them kinda ragged and messed up and unhappy. Sure, an enthusiastic young puppy-in-a-human-body is fine, some of them can be even pretty adorable (like here), but we all need the old master who is not there just to die 150 pages in, so the young one can take over. They can both bring something to the table and be equally valuable. LIKE HERE. Now, we are way too early in the series to say the old character won't just drop dead. Maybe he will. But so far it's promising. So we have the grumptastic old guy, Mayflower. Cute name for someone whose blood is more alcohol than... you know, blood. And who drives a beat up tank of a Jeep. And shoots stuff. But he is cool, I promise. Used to be the partner of a witch from the magical law enforcement, but recently she got brutally murdered and as she was dying, she wrote a message; “Kill Grimsby.” The fuck is a Grimsby? It's a hapless, weak, mouthy young guy with mediocre magical abilities, working at fast food restaurant, entertaining kids. So they need to team up to solve the case and find out what happened and why. Everything got set up perfectly for one of those buddy cop comedies. Two people who deal with their issues in different ways, forced on a mission together. Some room for political intrigue. A little world building on that front, though fairly typical at this point. Now, I am not going to moan much about that, we have seen how far a fairly typical start can lead (that time the author's ACTUAL DAD made a wizard detective ride a reanimated T-rex to battle, ehehehe). And honestly, at this point, I am happy with what we have. So far the enemy creatures are dangerous, but not world-ending-dangerous, again, fine for the first book. The powercreep needs to set in little by little, my man. Some of the humour is NOT PG. It's not excessive. Some... sexually themed gags at one point. Again, we are adults here, I wouldn't say it's such a big deal. Plus, it deals with murder and such, so I would say, be mindful of that if you are a child or very sensitive of it. Some of the violent scenes involve descriptions of the main character actually living through being harm done to him. You can feel the story being influenced by Jim Butcher. That's a fact. Then again, he does this kind of a story super well. I am not going to blame a man for being influenced by his dad when he is pretty much a force in a certain subgenre. Plus, I would be a gigantic hypocrite if I did, while not moaning about the same at [a:Benedict Jacka 849723 Benedict Jacka https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1325965585p2/849723.jpg] or [a:Stephen Blackmoore 4449940 Stephen Blackmoore https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1556239891p2/4449940.jpg]. Now I want to read more, both by James J. Butcher and in the urban fantasy/detective topic. Which I take as a win. This one is a funny, action-packed, exciting, well-done first book and the moment book 2 comes, I am reading it. I would say, it's a pretty good pick both for people who are just getting into it and also people who are already familiar with the subgenre. Solid ass book all around.

This is my second time reading Sabriel and honestly, I had to do it because I remember loving it and not much else. The beginning I had, the way Sabriel and Touchstone meet and that's about it. So one day at work I decided to listen to the audiobook and that was that.

Sabriel is a girl sent to a boarding school for girls. And she doesn't hate it! Hear me out, she is actually having a pretty good time living there and it's not about her being horribly mistreated. So why is she there? Because her dad is in an other country, one that is medieval and magical as opposed to the “real” world that already has black and white movies and tanks and such. Said dad is also the person tasked with making the creatures coming back from Death go back and leave the living alone.
Then one day his tools (a sword and a set of magical bells) get delivered to Sabriel, who needs to go to that other country to find her dad and to save the world, as it is inevitable. She is joined by a chaotic magical creature in the shape of a talking cat and a young man who was turned into a statue 200 years ago.

Generally I'm not too much into books about teenage girls. I was one at one point and I much prefer both my child and adult life, so that already is kind of difficult. Sabriel is cool though. She is fairly serious, not very emotional, she is special without being an invincible perfect little angel and very very important to me, she doesn't need to put others down to be cool. Often times I feel YA authors fall into the same mistake teenage girls do as well; having to compare the girl to everyone else to make her seem awesome, instead of doing well because it's in her and that's what she does for herself. It's either other girls or the men and boys around her, but someone needs to be the enemy who is the root of all her problems, because god help us, she is just naturally perfect otherwise. Sabriel is an integral part of her word, though instead of being above everyone.
She is also not defined by being a girl mistreated by men. Another issue I often have. We can have many interesting things going on with a female character other than going the cliche, cheap way of “men hate her, therefore she is suffering”. Okay? Show something new. Another point for this book, Sabriel does many things and she is regarded as a person and not Princess Oppressed.

The way it's written makes me feel like this book is much older and stands apart from its own genre in the best way possible. The ideas are great, the magic is fascinating. There is plenty of action and even a twist here or there, but the book itself stays actually very well-written. The prose is the kind I like, not too emotional and really fits the mood of the whole story.

The only thing I don't like that much is the end. After facing off the Big Bad of the book we get no explanations and no way to know how the characters are going to be after it. It was just sudden, which is especially sad because the protagonist of the second book is NOT Sabriel, but a whole new girl. This is not enough to make me rate the book any worse than I already did, but that's something you need to know. It's about the journey and the destination is just... functional. You don't get big emotional moments at the end, you just hope shit went as well as you want it to be for these people. (They get mentioned in book 2, so we get that, but t the same time you have to fill in between those points.)

I do recommend.

DNF at 54%. Generally, I am not a big fan of the main character telling his own story. Why? Because it almost feels like we are waiting to get to the cool part. I know he is not going to rot in a prison forever. There must be something much cooler waiting for him if he was meant to have his story told, right? There has to be a point. A good 300+ pages in, the point is still not revealed. The fact that this one has a single POV doesn't help with the feeling that I am wasting my time. Being realistic here, hardly any story where every moment is super exciting. I am not going to blame an author for that, real life isn't exciting every day either. But this one... Alvyn is just waiting to escape from every situation so far. It all feels like filler content, the bridge to the cool things. But how many hundreds of pages do I have to read to get at least a little payoff? The talk about martyrs and religion and impending cosmic doom tells me there is big stuff. Big enemies, monumental conflicts. Yet we are fucking around with Alwyn doing meaningless things with a lot of descriptions. What was the use of describing some totally meaningless priest character?? Who cares? Especially because honestly, all of the characters die without any meaningful bond or a way for us to develop empathy for them. Even when they are Alwyn's friends, we never see any of that. We are told that “X character is stuck in this boring situation with Alwyn and they want to escape”. Never seen sharing a good moment. Just being told they were stuck in the same shitty place for years. Because so far, this book is “Escape: The Novel”. They do nothing, but wait around to escape a shitty situation. Just to do the same in another crappy, boring place. I have had my issues with the prison part of [b:The Ember Blade 34673711 The Ember Blade (The Darkwater Legacy, #1) Chris Wooding https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1490348335l/34673711.SY75.jpg 55844744], but at least we got the best character there. But here, we got what? Toria? Who literally never does anything, just mopes? Sometimes the characters have plot armour and that makes things weightless. But here, it's the exact opposite. I know nobody of these characters will actually last, because hey, none of them do. We will just wipe the whole thing, I will have to remember 10 new people, who will also get wiped. Without any consequences. Can anyone tell me why Alwyn needed multiple religious criminal characters in his life? Did we need them to be different people? Did it make a difference? No. Not even a little. So really, just read Draconis Memoria by the same author, that one was fun. This? Boring. Slow.

Hannah used to be a wealthy wife, until her marriage fell apart and she kinda... went batshit on her cheating husband. Probably felt really nice at the moment, though right now she needs to start a new life, which involves getting a job.
Where? Well, at The Stranger Times, a newspaper that focuses on the paranormal and weird. They are eccentric people serving an even more eccentric reader base.

And that is really the selling point of this. The characters are just so crazy and all over the place that you end up having fun, often based on the fact that these people should not exist in the same place. They are all completely different in manners, how they deal with their issues, their work ethic. How they would normally probably murder each other...
And really, their boss is incredibly murderable in a total-asshole-why-do-you-exist, Bernard Black sort of way. Yeah, the guy is absolutely the character from Black Books, played by Dylan Moran. That show should speak to readers anyway, so it all connects there.

Talking about murder. That happens here. It focuses on the characters trying to investigate said series of murders, but it's not too depressing. Don't expect some grimdark type of a thing. This is not going to do that, the tone is overwhelmingly sarcastic, random-ish humour.
It all connects into the very real magical world in this universe. It's not extensive, I mean we are in book 1 of an urban fantasy series. On that front, this one is fairly standard. What's with humourous urban fantasy, by the way? What is with the rule that straight up fantasy needs to be serious, dark and political, meanwhile urban fantasy is goofy? Not like I minded here, it was competently done humour.

The whole thing was competent. You know, sometimes urban fantasy starts out a bit awkward, yet here it all worked just fine. I don't know how long this is going to go, though. We have seen a bit of some shadowy organization when it comes to the magical people and creatures, so there is potential to go that way, though I don't know how long you can keep that up with the characters being “just” normie human journalists who got drawn into this. Is it going to be a murder-of-the-week thing? We will see.
Some personal things connect some of them to the supernatural, but again, how long is the newspaper angle going to go? Because if things get serious with the characters embracing the weird, at some point the “type in articles, have a meeting” things are going to become frustrating. Not yet, though. I have zero idea how a newspaper works, so even that was fine.

Perfect if you want to have a fun time, relax and see the headless chickens run around and the weird shit to transpire.

This series has an amazing concept. A crime family and their survival in a world where certain people get superpower if they have jade on them. Cool, hm? And it was!
Though some of the choices made my the author weren't my favourite. First, about the good things.

The lore of this is insane. All the things that happen will somehow make perfect sense. There is a lot and none of it is just added for extra padding, it all connects incredibly neatly. If anything, this could have been expanded into infinity. Which is exactly why I'm surprised it's just a trilogy. Granted, especially this last one is very very long, but at the same time, urban fantasy seems to have mostly long series with many books in them.
Like the world, the characters are great. This is a story where having multiple points of view is not only well done (they all sound separate, they all have their proper motivations and world views), but it's necessary. The politics of the world are so complicated, you can't cover all of it with just one person. Especially with such strong characterisation. The people never felt like they were acting out of character, which, to me, was especially great with Hilo. To me he started out as a charismatic popular dude who was just incredibly cool. Yet he is petty, moody, not always the nicest person and often short-sighted, but so easy to like. One of the best things about this was the way he was written, honestly.
The city of Janloon is a character in itself as well, it's development through the decades of the story.

Which also brings up my biggest issue with it. So many time skips. For the politics, it was necessarily to see through many decades; it's perfectly logical that these things happen slowly. No Peak makes a decision to do something thing, like invest in business in a different country. The results aren't seen in months; they will obviously need years to play out.
But also, the actual humans doing these things don't live in a world where time doesn't pass for them. Many of the important character developments happen off screen and they are glossed over. Maybe we see a tiny sliver of them, but then we get told real quick what happened in a marriage in 5 years. Hell, he get a brief introduction of one character with one of the old timers, then skip, we get told this person is in a years long relationship with another. Excuse me?? Am I supposed to CARE?
This is why a lot of stressful scenes are only meaningful when the few main characters are involved; I got told this new character is important, but the things that make them so were skipped.
Which is sad, because some of the big scenes we saw were absolutely great, like when Niko returns to go to Ru's funeral.

All in all, I did like the series. I enjoyed the story, I enjoyed most of the characters. The action was really nicely done, just like the politics. But I wish it would have been given more space. Selling a long series is probably hard, not sure if a publisher is willing to buy it, so it was possibly a sacrifice made for marketability, to be possibly for this story to be told at all. I don't know. But there was enough substance here to let it properly breathe and run its course.
It's a great series and an imperfect one and that's fine. I just wonder if, after this, the author will write something that is given enough room for her grand concepts and complicated storytelling.

I was so excited about this and now I'm incredibly disappointed.
The world is a place with all sorts of magical creatures, but then suddenly magic disappears and so everyone is struggling. Except humans, who are becoming more and more dominant as a species when before they were the lowest of low. Fetch is a detective in Sunder City, where recently both an old vampire and a young sired disappeared.

On paper this sounds like a good read and something fun I would enjoy, but the painful one-sided nature of the story bothers me more than I can say, along with the attitude of the protagonist.
So here is the thing. This won't be a spoiler because they keep repeating this from like page 10, but basically magic didn't disappear because of some happenstance, but because humans were jealous of everyone else and wanted to steal magic, damaging the source of it in the process. Because humans are assholes. The shittest of all creatures, but also fuck them for wanting to change that. It's evil to dislike that they are looked down on, it's evil when they want to change it and it's even evil when they form isolated cities when they can live by their own rules without treated like scum.
Fetch keeps repeating these things. No matter what human do, they are the bad guys. No matter what they try to make a place for themselves, fuck humans. The funny thing? Fetch is human. The One Good Human, look at him, he HATES himself ans is ashamed of being human as he also keeps saying. So he must be a good guy, right? Because he hates himself! That's the only good way.
Every human character is an asshole, except wonderful, self-hating, self-pitying Fetch, who drinks to deal with the fact he is the same species as those nasty, disgusting humans.
Man, is this tiresome, the whole phenomena of virtue signalling through hating your own people and loudly declaring that you all are shit. Yes, I find it pathetic and stupid in real life (hello, Twitter, look at me being a good INSERT IDENTITY HERE unlike all the others). Why would I read this?

I don't even care about the mystery when the character and his thoughts annoy me so damn much. I quit it halfway in because I won't torture myself. Nah.
The prose is extremely weird as well. Most of the time it's straight forward gritty crime writing style, which is fine, but then these random, weird things are thrown in about the devil smiling in the moonlight and such. Why? It all feels like it happens without a reason, just to sound cool.

I needed a bit of time to think about my reason why I liked this book less than I did the first one.

The setting is still full of colour and atmosphere. The action is still fun and well-choreographed. There is still politics.

But the relationships are not fleshed out enough. Sure, the characters are great (mostly, I am looking at you, Anden), their voices are different and unique enough so their individual chapters feel different. Yet somehow we are being told about their connections more than we see them. This story, the history of Kekon is FULL of epic friendships, there are betrayals, there are romances and we see nothing.
Don't get me wrong, we see impactful moments between people, that are either pivotal or the climax of a long-standing thing. But they never have a proper buildup. We are told about Hilo and Wen's love. We are told about Papi having a crush on Shae. We are told about Shae and Wen being allies. And yet, it is always just certain moments. Nothing subtle in scenes where that isn't the main focus. Anden is especially guilty of that; can the boy actually have meaningful scene with someone who isn't either family or his crush?

What we don't get with the relationships, we do with the politics and world-building. I remember being like 11 and first reading Harry Potter 4 and realising the magical world is much bigger than I thought. This had the same moment, to a lesser extent.
We see people dealing with jade and the culture around jade in different countries, both Kekonese and foreign. It's well-defined from the start what we have on Kekon, how gangs work, the moral attitudes around owning jade, using it, how jade warriors handle conflicts both with each other and the jadeless. But what happens with this powerful tool in cultures where it doesn't have a cultural and religious significance?
I think Fonda Lee does this well; she handles times of change excellently.

The pacing can be just a bit jarring, there are timeskips that feel a bit too much like “yeah, I didn't feel like dealing with this”.
It brings up an interesting thought. Somehow I think I am more comfortable with longer urban fantasy series. It should on paper be easier to do build lore when it's based on more familiar things, but this is set in a fictional place. Plus, it has so many complex elements. So I am kind of assuming it would have profited from more books.
Not like I am trying to tell anyone to give themselves the responsibility of writing a gazillion books over the decades, but the pacing would have profited from a different format, maybe more, shorter books.

I still appreciate a lot of this, but this book was weaker, compared to the (surprise) excellence of the first one.

DNF at 25%.

This just feels so indistinct. We are running the same circles (Vivian hates Eric and “never wants to see him again” even though she said that a million times and they still see each other again, Eric's Nazi gun just feeeeels so wrooooong, the same not friends thing with Gabriela), almost like no development is happening, and we are on book 4.
Of course, new mysteries are happening, but they are all buried under the same old, same old. Besides, even the mysteries feel kind of samey. No emotional involvement, just same murders that all feel the same.
We get a new character, called Letitia, whom Eric is supposed to already know, but we never met her before and she was never mentioned, just feels tacked on. Also, she doesn't sound in any way distinguished from the other characters.
I don't know why, but it all feels like a lot of the information about the world building is an afterthought that we get told about. Even the South American flare is mostly just the characters listing the names of the different gods. I can't help rolling my eyes when in this book Eric outright states “we are very diverse here!!!”, like this is even more of an intentional thing. (Using Che Guevara as a way to say a character has a cool and badass persona is also a... choice.)

I think I gave this series a chance to draw me in. It never really happened.

This is my review of the whole series. This thing has no right to be this fantastic. I've read another series by this author, but that was so long ago I barely remember anything about the story. It was good, I gave it 4 stars, so I expected this to be at least somewhat enjoyable. Then I started it. 50 years before the story started, ghosts began popping up and attacking people. Humans being humans, a fight started, first with two young visionaries, Marissa Fittes and Tom Rotwell, who developed their methods of dealing with ghost and figured out ways to protect yourself. Time passed, they, then many others, started agencies that specialised in ghost extermination. But here is the catch. Only kids see them. Once you become 18-19-20, you are effective deaf and blind to them, yet they can kill you just the same. The agencies are still led by adults, but the people working there and doing the fighting are all kids and teenagers. Except at Lockwood & Co. They are all teens. At first I really wasn't sure about the era in which this story played out. The whole situation gives industrial revolution child worker vibes, yet... we get mentions of televisions and dishwashers (the machine kind, not a human servant). So it's obviously a somewhat modern world, one that has huge, glass-and-metal skyscrapers, but no social media and cell phones. To me, that was a surprise. Not sure how anyone else feels. Puts the ‘urban' into urban fantasy. We see a world that is lived-in, the ghost situation is part of everyday life in a way that makes sense. It's not just an extra thing on top, but it has been a thing long enough for generations to have grown up in a different lifestyle. It never gets overexplained, you see enough of it to make sense of how things function. Generally, I am not the biggest fan of teenage girl protagonists. They often go into the smug, better than everyone bullshit territory. She is so special, she just doesn't know. Or she knows, and she feels she can be an asshole to everyone, because she is SPECIAL. And here we have Lucy, who is incredibly relatable. Sometimes, she is not nice. She can be standoffish, judgemental. She doesn't always take direction too well. She can be a slob and bad at talking about her feelings. A person who isn't always showing her most flattering side, but is loyal to her friends, works hard and stands up for the right things. I find it hilarious how we get a million books by female authors with bitchy female characters or downright manic pixie dream girls, yet we have a man who writes the best teenage girl. Fantastic work. When it comes to characters, I always need a concrete explanation why teens do most of the heavy lifting in a story. One of the reasons why I hated [b:Six of Crows 23437156 Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1) Leigh Bardugo https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1651710803l/23437156.SY75.jpg 42077459] was because it made no sense that the most feared gang was a bunch of kids. Why? Why them? Why did criminals respect their authority? Here I could buy these children being needed. Sure, Lockwood was essentially his own boss, with a teenage group of fellow agents, but it's not like they technically needed any adults. They would have done the jobs anywhere, because they were the ones who could properly sense the ghosts. Talking about fantastic work, a middle grade/YA series that doesn't sacrifice an ounce of quality for being targeted at a younger age range. This is good writing. Doesn't speak down to the reader. The teenage characters are competent without being supernaturally so or without forming a world that pretends they are the be all, end all. Hell, by the end an adult becomes part of the main group! Which is another odd think I normally don't love about books, late additions to the main group. More often than not, we get new characters who are automatically 100% in and the authors (or showrunners) love to try and make us love them just as much as people we've been following for a long time. Here that is part of the plot! That new people bring new dynamics to a group. Someone finally actually understands! It's so good to be proven that I'm not crazy; many authors just ignore this thing. This series is a parade of those clever little things. Great characterisation. A world building that is enough and never infodump-y. Prose that works perfectly with the mood that is created. Incredibly competent, fun and just overall an A+. It's not even that I would recommend it, I have already done it. So yeah, go and pick this up, it's a blast.

I'm going to be really nice with my rating. This is an indie book and a pretty sweet one at that, so even though I will list some issues with it, I think it has value and Mr. Patrick deserves to be encouraged.

Monsters come at night to small villages in the forest, when people hide in the cellars. Because of a misunderstood incident, Lonan is treated like a horrible person, making everyone hate him, up until he starts having dreams about the mysterious Magpie King, who is the person supposedly defending the people from even more harm being done by the monsters. In the end Lonan needs to work with what he got to know through his dreams to save everyone, from the people of the Magpie King and his own loved ones, including the girl who refused even to be decent towards him until now because of that old incident in their childhood.

The thing I liked about this the most was the atmosphere. It actually felt like something you could see in a twisted fairy tale cartoon, with some interesting visuals. Maybe puppets or some sort, with dark colours. It just had that weird style, like some story that could be the written version of creepy stories told to scare kids. I don't know, it just really worked well. Sometimes it had odd choices of words (don't mention adrenaline in creepy fairy tales, it sticks out in an awkward way). All in all, this part of the story worked well.
I especially liked the little chapters of in-universe folk stories sprinkled in. I generally like it when the novels are broken up with things like that, so I guess not everyone will care so much, but I did. They felt like authentic stuff that could potentially exist.

The story itself had enough twists and turns to keep it interesting. Sure, it is a short one, but I felt like it had enough meat to make it worth your time. Not gonna lie, I am all for the action. This one performed well enough in that, so no complaints from me. Some new ideas thrown in were a tiny bit... abrupt for my taste, which I guess is not surprising in a book so short. Not much time to spend on world building and nothing else to set things up. Again, I approve.

Now we need to talk about two things that I am not wild about at all. I'm apologising already.

Mr. Patrick, please, get someone who checks your writing for teeny tiny inconsistencies. Once a character supposedly lost her mother, then she says father one time, then back to mother. Someone loses two fingers, then a chapter or two later he feels his finger, singular, he lost is hurting him. One character gets his face mauled and loses and eye, but later he has certain looks in his eyeS and all.
All these minors flaws can be solved with someone just reading the whole thing and paying attention. Honestly, the book could be much, much better with some careful eyes going through it. I'm nitpicky with those things and always notice them (god knows I have spent nights way back in time picking apart movies like LOTR for mistakes with my sister's ex-bf, annoying her to death). So yeah. There is that.

The other was the romance. Sure, I know usually folk storied and fairy tales don't really have the most nuanced and subtle love stories, but here I could have appreciated something. The main romance is Lonan and Branwen and I can't stand her. She is moody and colourless. Sure, there are explanations, but I saw absolutely nothing in her that would have made me buy Lonan's obsessive love for her. I saw no lovable thing at all. They were “meant to be”, but I wasn't sold on it. So yeah, that could have handled a bit more work, fleshing her out to seem something other than the most miserable person ever.

The final verdict is that this is a nice book that promises some pretty great stuff from the author in the future. I am planning on keeping an eye open for his new thing as they come out. Promising start. Not perfect at all, Mr. Patrick needs to polish his technique a bit here and there, but I think the talent is there and he seems like someone who has a possibly pretty great future ahead of him if he does that.

Good night and lock your doors carefully!

DNF at 45%

Not sure if I'm being more cynical and just becoming old or whatever or... authors are really selling their souls for being marketable, but this book is not what I felt like the sequel of Vicious was going to be.
I will be brutally honest, the two new characters, Marcella and June did nothing to me, other than make me roll my eyes at how abysmal Miss Schwab is at writing female characters that don't make me pissed off. She really showed that in A Darker Shade of Magic, with Lila basically being your typical special snowflake, perfect little thing who is brilliant and just can do whatever, because it will be justified at the end and no negative consequence will come to her.
The two here are basically just horrible assholes who are supposedly empowered. Honestly, I am over that, female characters being cardboard muh empowerment violence fantasies. Now some people will say “b-but women are not allowed to be angry in society so ridiculous tantrums are so new and subversive”, which is bullshit. Intellectually dishonest bullshit to justify bad behaviour.
Other than being badly written characters, they just didn't feel like they had a place in this story. The core characters from book one had so much extra to give that adding these two for marketability to big spender demographics (young women and girls) was basically just... a good financial decision, but a bad artistic one. Especially because that group already LOVED Victor, Eli, Sydney, Mitch, Dol and just yeah. Them. The ones I actually cared about. The ones whose chapters are broken up by stuck up bitchy mafia wives and crazy doctors and needless, over the top bullcrap.

I think that was one of my main issues here; we didn't need all these things. Random shit thrown in. I actually liked Vicious for being a pretty straight-forward story that didn't need a gazillion and one story lines and elements to make it enjoyable. The message was simple too; Eli wanted to do the right thing and was so wrong, while Victor didn't aim to be good but ended up doing good things.
Here? I don't even know. Honestly, it's a mess. We jump around so much with so many different things I don't care about that the actual interesting parts take forever to go anywhere and by then I'm too frustrated with meaningless crap and characters sitting around, thinking about stuff. And things. It wasn't a coherent story, but random ideas thrown into a blender without consideration.

All in all, I have no idea why this was needed, other than the author becoming a big name and now having a big market to make more money on it. Again, I have probably changed as a person and a reader since Vicious, but this really missed me with everything. I'm starting to feel Miss Schwab is one of the authors I liked that one time and now I should give up trying to recreate that feeling with any of her subsequent books. It's gone.

Have a nice day and know when to end a story!

You know what is similar to this book (and The Rook)? When in Men in Black Will Smith is taken to the HQ by Tommy Lee Jones and you see all the aliens in the background being all kinds of crazy. We will never ever get to see them properly, but they are there in the background to make the world feel richer and quirkier and more interesting.
This whole series is that. We get mentions of old stories, little snippets of characters with interesting abilities, all that. Aaaand they barely ever do ANYTHING. It really feels like Mr. O'Malley had these moments of “yeaaah, imagine a person who can solidify light, that would be kinda badass” at 3am after 4 hours of watching random Youtube stuff, but then not really utilising the ideas.

What did we have instead? After centuries of fear of each other, the Checquy and the Grafters decide to form an alliance, even though the former is a bunch of random people born supernatural, while the latter is the product of super scientists augmenting everything about themselves. But you can't have those big things without some people being against it, so a terrorist group is trying to smash everything.
The two protagonists are a Grafter woman and a Checquy pawn serving as her bodyguard, both young chicks with a kinda sassy attitude. They get tangled in the crazy, of course.

Aaaand that is my issue. Odette (Grafter) and Felicity (Checquy) are just... not that interesting. They are kind of giddy and awkward, which makes me doubt that organisations with such huge history, engaged in history changing negotiations would screw around with absolutely inexperienced little baby fetuses.
They also wouldn't send important diplomats in for super unpredictable, dangerous situations just for the lulz, which they actually did MULTIPLE TIMES. Ridiculous!

Mr. O'Malley's humour comes off weird as well. Don't get me wrong, I did laugh, but he can only do one kind of jokes. Said my old men, young women, Belgians, English, ANYONE. I'm sorry, but that is just not how humour works. It's especially frustrating when we have two protagonists with approximately the same age and virtually indistinguishable inner workings. Maybe it was to show how the two organisations are fundamentally really similar, but switching between the point of views provided no contrast at all. Not pleased with it.

One moment was powerful, though. Once we can read the story of how kids at the Checquy school the older kids keep telling the younger ones a story, one about the time when the Grafters attacked them centuries ago, forcing even the kids to fight back. How supernatural kids need to be prepared to do fighting an unknown, horrible threat at any moment and that is just what they have to live with. That part was pretty damn lovely.

I can't help feeling that this series could have been better. For some reason why keep being stuck with not too interesting characters who are just... adequate, instead of being fabulous, which pisses me off because WE DO have great, interesting, vibrant ones there. Right there. In... the background. If anything, in this book we see even less of the mind splitting twin entity, awesome vampire guy, dream walking boss lady. So I'm not satisfied.

If another book comes out, I will most likely pick it up. Probably not shrieking in ecstasy, going crazy about it and breaking limbs to fight myself through a horde of rabid beasts to get it, but it's fine for some entertainment.

This is a review of the whole series.

The premise of this is really interesting; a sociopath gets obsessed with serial killers, kind of his way of avoiding behaviours that would lead him to give in and do bad things to people. It works for some time, he is a seemingly okay, albeit introverted kid. Until murders start happening in his town, so the main character, John, decides to catch the murderer.
But... it's not even a human being, but some sort of a demonic creature that NEEDS to kill to fulfill his needs. Now John needs to use methods that were developed to understand and catch serial killers to deal with the monsters.
Amazing, right?

Yeeeeah. Forgot to tell you that John is a teenager? Now, I am not saying a book about teenagers is automatically shit. Nope. But in general, teenagers are probably my least favourite kind of protagonists. This series is a perfect example of that. Do I want to read about a 16-year-old doing the edgy “I could kill you in 75 different ways”? Eh.
Sometimes John can be interesting, especially in the first few books, but things quickly spiral and by the end, it doesn't even feel like John is anything special. He becomes completely... well, normal, as far as a person who kills demons can be. But really, he isn't so interesting.

Another thing is, basically no characters introduced after book 2 stay around. I understand that the story necessitates John (and for some time, Brooke) going around and meeting new people, but everything resents at the end of every single book.
New place, new monster of the week, new characters. I don't even start caring about anyone, because I know they will go into the void at the end of the book, never to be seen again. It takes a lot of the stakes; what if the characters die? What then? Not like they would be around later anyway.
The relationships form just as quickly. They arrive somewhere, half the town already likes them and wants to help them. Things like food are a problem only nominally; John worries, yet when they need food, it just appears in the shape of some well-meaning local person who feels the urge to feed the drifter youth.

This leads to another problem. The overarching story is not very satisfying. We know the Withered have relationships with each other. We know they have a history, some way they became what they are. There is some power helping them turn into this. But what? What is going on?
Oh, nevermind, new town, new nice church ladies and group of teenagers who just take them in right away.

And then let's just talk about this last book for a second.
Jasmyn is such a damn annoying character, JESUS. Have any of you seen The Babysitter 2: Killer Queen? Jenna Ortega's annoying special girl, unlike the others is exactly how Jasmyn is. With the tacked on trauma and all. Especially insulting after the development of Brooke (who was already getting on my nerves) through the previous books. Just an even worse replacement.

But the “best” was the end. REALLY? It basically dances back on everything. The series is supposed to be super dark and then we end with “AHHHH, you just need to want to change things and magically everything is solved”.

Honestly, I felt like this was a waste of a great idea. It could have been much more inventive, much less annoying, much cooler. But we got this. Almost smart, almost emotionally impactful.
It's an okay series to read, but it did not give what I expected from it and that makes me kind of disappointed.

When I was looking this up on bookdepository, the site said it's for ages 12-15. I find it extremely dark, with a lot of disgusting elements and surprising philosophical depth for a book for that age group and I am not really sure that the people putting on the stamp were right or that they even cared about being right in the first place.
It's lovely, though. The fact that something supposedly YA can have such quality. Very often I find the genre to be watered down and many people just going “oh, well, it's okay, I mean it's YA, you shouldn't have expected it to be world class writing”, which I find fundamentally wrong. Nobody considering themselves proper, real authors should give up on their art like that and go with the easier way.
Here... Mr. Yancey went all out. Every time I read a book of this series I am impressed by the prose not being the typical, borderline offensively simple one teenager get thrown at their faces nowadays, usually cleverly blamed on the protagonist talking in first person and being not so educated. This is first person and really powerful at that. Will Henry, the protagonist has plenty of passion and emotion in what he is saying, with great descriptions and just everything to make this a very enjoyable read in my opinion.

So now Dr. Warthrop got a package sent to him by the extremely dangerous and still almost playful Dr. Kearns, with a nest woven of woman body parts, covered in a strange, gelatinous substance, delivered by a panicked man claiming to have been poisoned and needing the antidote from Warthrop. Apparently just touching the substance causes you to become... well, kind of a zombie. Now they need to trace the route of the nest, find the creature that made it and take care of everything.

Zombies are one of the creatures I am not sure about. I'm not a zombie fan, I don't hate them, I just find that they are pretty hit or miss to me. In this case it was a hit, as pretty much everything done in this series. Mr. Yancey has a talent at touching all the creatures and topics with some very unique way, not just being one of the thousands of fairly similar and indistinguishable pieces, often blamed on the canon of the creatures.
They are all nasty. All of these books will turn my stomach every time and somehow I still don't feel it's just to be nasty. I think the whole scientific atmosphere is the perfect vessel of being extremely graphic and still not feeling like the author is just trying to gross us out for the lulz. This I can handle. I guess I just have issues with theatrics and melodrama, but I can pretty much handle all the nasty things if they are presented like this.

One thing, though. One thing that feels really unnecessary and kind of lame. We have great prose, a lovely main character with a great and very complex relationship with his mentor, crazy creatures, action....
And then there is Lilly I-would-kill-you-in-your-sleep Bates! She is a spoilt, aggressive, emotional abusive little weasel. I absolute HATE Lilly. Sure, there needs to be a love interest, because blah, but she is seriously an incredibly shitty one.
This is a PSA for men; if she gets so smug and satisfied about constantly belittling you, calling you names, bossing you around, daring you to do incredibly stupid and dangerous things for fun, etc. then you should drop her, because she is a bad person. I don't care if she has cutesy hair and wears pretty frilly clothes, she is shit.
Lilly even has a mother who always needs to get her way and loves micromanaging people, because charity is kindness are about that in spoilt New York rich girl world.

I would have loved to see more monstrumologists, though. They are such a delightfully messed up group of people.
Then again, the whole series is delightfully messed up and that is the reason why I would recommend it to people who are okay with dark and disturbing reads. I find it's not popular enough, even though it is a shining example of what YA literature can achieve. But we are stuck with love triangles, magical teen girls and apocalyptic worlds that only have the nebulous “global warming or nuclear war or some shit”explanation.

Have a nice day and see with eyes, not with your hands!

Correia does something incredibly cool and interesting with this series that makes it even easier to binge. Now normally I don't read multiple volumes in a series right after each other, because mixing things up makes me get stay more interested and motivated to read.
Here, starting with this one, every odd number book is from the point of view of a character other than the OG protagonist. That's freaking fantastic! We get some of them more fleshed out, but also it mixes up things.

Here we have Eral Harbinger, monster hunter and werewolf. He goes to a small town where, under the cover of a huge snowstorm, someone starts killing and turning people. Earl was tricked to go there, along with an old enemy and neither of them know why.

YES YES YES. Earl is one of the coolest people and he really deserved his own book. What's more interesting is there are STILL things to say about him.

Shit, sometimes I have these horrible phases when I can't finish a single book and I hate all of them, but now this is my second surprising find in a row (well, not really, but lets forget about the dud in between). HOW? Not complaining, just... ya know. Cool. I will be honest, I picked it up based on the cover, because it looked awesome. Generally I don't like books with human faces on them, if there is another variant that's not hella ugly I prefer that, but in this case I just really liked the artwork. (Shoot me now or I'll talk about art until I run out of characters, I guess loving books AND visual arts does that.)

Angel sucks at life. She is... white trash, as it says on the tin, but pretty much that's her life. She never finished school, does drugs and drinks, her dad is no good and her boyfriend doesn't give a fuck about anything in life. Neither did she, until recently. She was found unconscious and naked by a road, otherwise pretty much fine. Overdose? Sure. Then she starts getting mysterious letter about how she is expected to go to the coroner's office to start a job or else she will be sent to prison and die there very fast, so she does it. During her new job she notices some.... interesting new ravings, though. Meanwhile decapitated corpses start showing up.

I've noticed something. Everyone tries to be incredibly socially sensitive nowadays, things get banned, people get harassed online and in real life for using the not acceptable word (that changes every two weeks), media gets picked apart viciously for someone wearing the wrong thing. But lower class white people, the “white trash” somehow always get treated with zero sympathy and zero humanity. That's why this was interesting from the get go; Angel's flaws are obvious from the get go. She is not perfect by any means. But she is also a person who is not there because she and her people are basically just one of the few types who you can joke about and hate on without being considered some kind of a bigot. She had her perfectly justifiable feelings and hurts. She's also funny and an enjoyable character, which is not a bad thing for a book that is in first person.

The zombie concept was good too. They are not shambling, brainless (hurr hurr) creatures who pursue you slowly and moan. Basically they can be fine and function normally... if they get the appropriate fuel with the appropriate frequency. Now that was the bare minimum to make them acceptable and readable as characters, I suppose. To make them something other than an enemy or a context for the human heroes to handle we just have to make them somewhat intelligent.
Having them congregate around places that have a lot of dead bodies is funny and logical, though. I also really like the irony of people who handle dead bodies interacting with zombies, it's just really funny. Even in dark scenes, when they discuss the deaths it's interesting, because one part of the conversation is technically also a dead person. (Never had this much fun with that since the living dead attacked the pathologist Waldo Butters in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. I would love that bugger meeting Angel, they would bounce off of each other perfectly.)

The mystery in the book wasn't spectacular. I guess we didn't know enough of the characters to make it a truly interesting and hard to solve case? I don't know. I honestly mostly just enjoyed Angel doing her thing. Not like the crime aspect wasn't fun and enjoyable, but as I said, we don't know who does what and why. Well.
I'm pretty sure based on the blurbs that some bigger story will develop eventually, so there is that. Hopefully Angel won't be turned into a Mary Sue who is the centre of a lovefest by everyone around her with a gigantic horde of adoring men a'la October Daye (eugh), so if we can avoid that I think this can become a surprisingly solid urban fantasy type of a deal.

I don't know shit about the author. I don't read those kind of romantic or erotic paranormal romances and her other series seems to be like that, so not my thing, but I will definitely read more of this series. The bright pink cover could be a bit off-putting or maybe the title, I don't know, but it's genuinely pretty damn fun.

Good night and don't forget your lunch!

I wrote a review and it disappeared. YAY. My wifi is a spectacular piece of shit. So try No. 2 now. It took me a ridiculously long time to actually read this, but in this case that was caused by me having a lot of fun. When a book is good I often take my sweet time, I stop often to think about what is happening and what I feel about it. I look at fanart, the different works of the author, the different books in the series, the whole context of the book. Well, just having fun with the experience. When we pick up the story again the characters form up into little groups to take care of their respective story lines. In the north West is sent to deal with the freshly formed Northern kingdom, try to keep the crown prince in line and to gain him some glory, then he happens to meet up with Logen's old group. Bayaz and Quai pick up Logen, Jezal, Ferro and Longfoot to look for a mysterious artefact that will help them deal with the threat of the Gurkish prophet, Khalul. While Glokta is sent to Dagoska to somehow defend the city from the more immediate danger of the Gurkish Empire, or at least to get information and do what can be done. This is one of the things I actually extremely enjoyed about the story; the different groupings of characters and how they dealt with each other. For anyone interested in different types of people, temperaments and manners clashing and working things out, this is truly a joy about this one. At one point West, who is usually extremely controlled and civilised snaps in a battle and goes totally mental really suddenly. It was great to see the conflicting feelings as he was horrified by himself and felt guilty, while the Northmen were genuinely amazed by him. I absolutely love him in general, so yeah, there is that. Another interesting contrast was Logen and Jezal. Normally they would have no chance of having to communicate like this, but I guess the Fantasy Roadtrip of a Shitshow does that to people, so I can't complain much. Hopefully in the last book Glokta will meet Jezal again, as the latter had changed enough for their dynamic to be completely different now. Thinking of Jezal, he is interesting. I mean he is not a bad character, but in himself I wouldn't say he is all that special either. What he is great for is making others shine, amplifying them and himself gaining depth and colour and more interest through that. I find that quite brilliant. At one point his jaw gets broken and his face a bit... disfigured. I loved the way Mr. Abercrombie using Jezal's vanity. At first it feels silly to see his reaction, crying and all, but then when you think about how connected our face is to our self-identity and everything we are... yeah. It's adding a lot of depth to his character. Genuinely impressed. Glokta is just as cynical as always, with his wit and ruthlessness. Absolutely fantastic. Questionable choices here, a character pushed into situations that have no perfect outcome. With [b:Malice 15750692 Malice (The Faithful and the Fallen, #1) John Gwynne https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1342785006s/15750692.jpg 21444710] I have mentioned how sometimes things were too complicated and hard to follow, like at the very end, where a group of a lot of characters move together and it's hard to visualise all of them. Here the whole thing with the different groups made it so easy and fluid to just go with it and keep everyone in mind. The world scope is great in my opinion, not overwhelming, nor is it too constricted. It all feels comfortable. When I first started reading this and saw the grimdark subgenre marked, I expected it too be much darker than it actually is. Things happen, some people die, there is war and slavery, all kinds of nasty things without it being too much to me. Maybe I am just not that sensitive, I don't know. With darkness it's easy to go overboard. One of the pitfalls of it is going crazy, becoming too much and that taking away from the emotional weight of bad things. Everything becomes cartoonish, your brain tunes it all out and somehow the edge is lost. Even if the things happening are in line with certain things from reality, the depiction just becomes too much. Here it doesn't happen. Appreciated. People also shouldn't expect huge twists here. I don't think the book needs them, though, I feel it has its own atmosphere and flow without huge shockers being dropped on us. Then again, I am not really the type who cares about twists too much, more like the journey and the characters. Even though I said that, something interesting is going on with this one; I have no idea what is happening in the last book, I have no idea what endgame there will be, how we will close things down. I don't feel we are anywhere near, especially because we see literally nothing of the antagonists. None. Not the Northern threat, nor the Southern, the villains just don't come out to play at all. The “good” characters are grey of course, though. So I have no idea what to expect after this and refuse to think about it, because then I will probably give myself crazy ideas and expectations, which would colour my experience. We shouldn't go there. I'm definitely going to pick up the next book. I'm having a lot of fun with this, it's all kinds of entertaining, even if I have no idea where it will end up. Potential for sure, there is a lot and then we'll just wait and see. Have a good night and don't leave me hanging! (ohhhh god, no)

The First Law trilogy was on my to-read list for years. Literally, I am not kidding, I kept going “I will read you” for YEARS now. At one point I was even holding the book in my hand at a store, but as I was about to move back home from abroad, I wasn't sure it was going to fit into my bags, so I didn't get it.
Now I finally got around reading it and it was AWESOME.

Here we have a huge bunch of countries, the Union. It's quite prosperous, just after the war with the aggressively conquering Gurkish Empire, but right now they are facing a threat from not only the Gurkish people now, but also a newly formed Northern kingdom of barbarians.
We have multiple points of views, namely Logen, a barbarian from the North who is hated by the new king, Jezal, the super popular up and coming, snobbish and egotistic pretty boy, Glokta, the ex-pretty boy, now inquisitor after a horrible time being tortured as a prisoner of war, and Ferro, the ex-slave, now bloodthirsty savage looking for revenge. For some chapters we even follow Logen's old group he got separated from at the beginning and they were delightful as well.

For once an author managed to make it so I like reading all the points of views. Yeah, I am picky like that, I often dislike characters or just don't care and many times I feel that way about the popular, beloved ones. Pissed off many people with disliking their favourites in my day.
Here, though, they all had a place and had something interesting enough about them for me to not get bored. None of them are brilliant people, none are kind and perfect and morally great, they are all imperfect and yes, even shitty in their own individual way. That is what I love. The unique ways we all suck. :D Somehow stories with morally superior protagonists always feel a bit ridiculous and saccharine sweet to me, which greatly diminishes my enjoyment.

The world building was good. Nothing extremely new or unexpectedly original, which is not necessarily an issue, especially when it's already so entertaining. The magical elements are (at the moment) not too much, many things happen because of decisions made in a very human way, familiar conflicts, there is politics, corruption, greed... Sure, fantasy means fantasy elements, but it all feels much more realistic when it's not the only thing pushing the plot forward.
For a novel that was obviously not meant to be touching at this point, these human moments had surprising power sometimes, which was especially interesting, as I'm often not too invested when it's just the first part in a series. I loved the little conversation with the misunderstanding betweenGlokta and West, two of my absolute favourites.
There was some romance, there is always some. I could live without it, but here it wasn't too much, so I guess it was tolerable. Especially with some bromance and personality clashes happening. Those kinds of relationships are always better.

Another thing I found great was the scope. It was somewhere between the ASoIaF madness with a gazillion names and ranks and alliances and beefs, and us only seeing two towns in a world. It didn't feel limited at all, but it's suitable for someone not up for having to remember whose vassal is that dude who showed up in that one scene over dinner where there were 75 people with fantasy names and one line each.
In the sequels things will get more complicated, it's obvious, it is happening, but if it's taken step by step, then there won't be any issue.

One more thing where this book is great; it's dark, but not too dark. Horrible things happen. Glokta is a torturee-turned-torturer, so we can assume he is not going to make people confess through the power of laughter and unicorns. Ferro was a slave, again, not an enviable situation. Logan used to go around with his not-so-merry men, pillaging for fun. Jezal... has to survive living among people he doesn't love as much as he does himself? Okay, maybe not every single one of them are suffering equally, but nasty stuff does happen.
At the same time, it's a very approachable and fun read. The dark parts don't weigh it down at all, the action is fluid, it doesn't depress the reader too much.

As far as fantasy books go, this is a successful one. It's a safe choice in the genre, even if you are not going to be as in love as I am.
I definitely need to pick up the rest of the series.

Have a nice day and I am the law, not just the first one either!

3,5 stars

I lived with my best friend for a couple of years. He has a copy of this, a present from his sister and I remember having read about 15 pages of it years back, but now I sat down on my ass and actually did it. It was time.

With a lot of zombie survival stories it is a question who survives and who doesn't and that's basically the source of the story and your interests. Here we know these people have survived, they are remembering the stories of how and all the different challenges of the process. It was definitely a different and interesting way of looking at things.
So why isn't it more stars for me?
- There are many, many technical military elements about it, with descriptions of equipment, technical stuff way above my head. I don't know shit about that. Sure, it was realistic to go into the technicalities, but at the same time to me personally it wasn't as interesting as some other chapters.
- Many of the people sounded the same. Sure, there were very well-written parts and interesting ideas, but the voices weren't as different from each other as they could have been. There were so many different people, I am not going to say it would have been easy. But still.
- Because we spent so little time with individual people I feel sometimes I didn't understand the references to each other. I didn't bother remembering names, so there is that.

Some stuff was really great about it, I especially loved the K-9 unit chapter and the two Japanese men who ended up meeting a teaming up.
There were so many practical things I didn't think of in connection with a zombie invasion, which is a great thing.

All in all, it was a worthwhile read.

I will be honest, I find many journalists are full of themselves and have some sort of a god complex. At some point I felt Adelstein is one of said journalists.

In the early 90s he moved to Japan, went to university and then ended up working for the biggest newspaper of the country. This was the part I enjoyed the most. A young guy, not really knowing what he was doing and having to deal with a culture he wasn't perfectly familiar with, ending up in hilarious and weird situations. At one point Jake gets caught up in a fistfight at a company party. I mean, I never expected Japanese journalists to be so wild.
Then, as his career progresses, he starts working on covering the vice division of the Tokyo police. Surprise surprise, it's all connected to the yakuza, who also don't like people meddling in their affairs. Things get dark and dangerous for Jake as he uncovers things that connect the yakuza even to the US.

I don't think you are meant to like Jake too much as a person. He has certain characteristics that can be admired, but he is also very limited in certain areas. His drive is insane. He also sounds like he is really in love with himself and a lot of the things he does is because he likes hearing his own voice. I don't think he is malicious, but he is not saintly.
One person I wish I could have met was Mr. Sekiguchi, a police officer who was a friend and mentor for Jake. I don't know how accurate his portrayal was, but I feel the way the author talked about him was the purest and most honest. I can appreciate that and he sounded like one hell of a person. Again, maybe it's Mr. Adelstein being extremely biased, but he was one of the shining stars of the book.

Now I will say something that may sound mean. One of the main points of the book is how multiple yakuza bosses got liver transplants at the UCLA. Tadamasa Goto was allowed to enter the US because he provided info on other yakuza members to the FBI (and also money). The others supposedly just donated money.
I refuse to believe the doctors and the administration of UCLA had no idea the sophisticated and extremely rich, heavily tattooed foreign men arriving with secrecy and personal protection were connected to illicit things. The yakuza is so iconic, even my backwater Eastern European self would have known these people were something bigger than just old dudes needing a liver real quick.
In that sense I don't know why those people should be held to a lower standard of responsibility when it comes to collaborating with the yakuza. In Japan they are in all sorts of business, from politics to entertainment. Yes. That's not good. But a university just taking money and then still pretending they are some high and mighty establishment for education and social progress sickens me.

Another interesting thing about this was how... certain things seemed to be part of Japanese culture that everyone knew were about you getting your way, but everyone still accepted them as a polite thing. By that I mean the way journalists went around being all buddy buddy with cops, to get info. Could you sit around accepting snacks from another person, spending time together on a regular basis when you knew it was to get things out of you? I don't know how I would handle that.

All in all, it was an interesting read, though to me mostly at the beginning. I don't know if I could buy Jake Adelstein as an honest knight in shining armor.