BulbasaurusThe7th

Can we talk about the book covers of this series for a second? They are so... romance novel. The only reason why I realised this was supposed to depict Miranda was the ring on her finger. Otherwise I wouldn't have guessed. I mean.... kinda medieval books with women in totally modern appearance are one of my book pet peeves. These books deserve much better covers. Seriously.

Especially because I actually enjoyed this instalment much more than the first. Not sure if it was my different mental state, the books getting better, me starting to actually connect with the characters, but I really enjoyed this. Was it a brilliant book, a true achievement of literature that opens up a whole new world in fantasy? Nope. But boy, it was such an entertaining thing. I really liked it.

Eli and his group get news of an impossible to rob castle in a ridiculously wealthy part of the world. What do they do? Pffft, of course they try to rob it, partly because as a favour in exchange for help for Nico, partly because Eli's ego can't take the idea of not being able to do something.
At the same time Miranda gets fucked over majorly, which makes her end up in the same place, all of them having to fight off the dictators of the most pleasant place ever.

The action was really fun in this, especially for someone who grew up watching shounen anime. You know, ridiculous power ups, epic fights, the power of friendship and will. It all just felt like all those childhood moments of “ahhhh, the hero is bleeding out because of some mysterious big bad, but he will have some flashback/dream sequence about poetic shit and the strength of having to believe in yourself, so he unlocks a new power that allows him to win”. This was full of that kinda stuff.
Again, it definitely is not the highest class of writing. If you didn't grow up with that, I have no idea how you will like it, but to me this was awesome. After a hard week, finishing this was an awesome way of relaxing and having a good time.

As expected, now I'm starting to be closer to most of the characters as well. Eli is ridiculously full of himself in a kind of charming way. I mean the guy just can't be tamed, he is smooth, he will chat himself out of everything, with humans or spirits. Josef is super tough, rough, really disciplined to give contrast to Eli and at the same time be entertaining even just by himself. Epic fights as well. Nico is the creepy child, she's always 2 seconds away from losing the control of the demon living inside her. She holds a lot of potential for the future books, it's obvious she will have to face her issues sooner than later.
Aaaaand we have Miranda. Not gonna lie, I find her a bit too much of a perfect girl and a brat. She does care about the spirits she controls, which is nice. She's honourable. Not a bad person, really, but she is magically the most greatest and most talented person ever, with the greatest potential. With a super interesting background, being part of a cool organisation, I kind of expect more from her than “this is so unfaaaaair”.

So, I want more of the Spiritualists. More of Banage. More of any of them that is not Miranda. The world is slowly opening up in the series and I want much more of that. If Miss Aaron can build on that, then this has the potential to be even more entertaining, even if not the most inventive thing ever. Where the first book was kind of small scale, it's all feeling much more complex and alive now. I approve.

Basically, I just want more. More of the smaller characters. More of the lore. More of the main trio (sorry, Miranda), more spirits, more countries, more everyone. More creepy white lady being super powerful and having a lady boner for Eli.
I have a feeling that especially that last part can go much darker now. What happens when a lady who doesn't understand NO wants to keep around a guy who would probably drop dead if he ever did anything other people told him.

Really, this one managed to surprise me a bit. I didn't expect it to make me be so excited about reading it. I definitely need to get more of it. Perfect for when I feel completely drained and stressed.

Have a nice day and don't judge a book by its cover!

3,5/5 stars This took me far, far longer than the length justifies, but I guess I wasn't in the right mood. Sometimes it's just like that, I guess. Also... I was a bit disappointed. So I guess 3,5 stars is not really a bad rating by any means and to me, the around 3 can mean two things. Either the book had some good ideas and some pleasant stuff, but some mistakes made me unable to give more, or (like here), something was kind of missing. The story was about Eli Monpress, a master thief, with two friends, Josef and Nico, and the aspiration of having a one million gold bounty on his head. But this time he needed to work together with Miranda, a Spiritualist, part of a very serious and very regulated guild (church? gang? country? sect?) of magic users. Eli kidnapped a king, things turned shitty, they got framed for stuff they didn't do. Ya know. Part of the issue is that ‘ya know'. I don't feel the story was particularly original. Things happened, it was really short, didn't really have enough room for something super spectacular and deep. Not like I mind that all that much, just entertain me. Here... sometimes it was a bit lacking and I think I actually know the reason. Not enough time for setting things up. Sure, not everyone loves a gazillion pages long fantasy brick every day of the week, I'm with that, totally, but here the world seemed to lack a certain depth at this point. There were moments that I knew with my rational mind were supposed to have suspense, like a to-death swordfight and all, but I just couldn't feel anything, as it was a culmination of events we don't know about. Imagine a final fight with characters you don't even know, without a context. Not very gripping. I think part of this comes from Miss Aaron probably spending a lot of time working on the story in her head before actually making it happen. This is just my theory, but her already feeling like these people are her babies and not seeing it all with a fresh eye plays a part. Another issue was the mistakes. She compares the city to sand dollar, which is a word derived from a currency that doesn't exist in the book. At one moment there is moonlight, then suddenly sunlight without time passing. She describes blue light as warm. She says a fresh, yellow bruise is standing out stark on pale skin, even though A, fresh bruises aren't yellow, they take that colour as they heal and B, yellow is not stark on pale. Some careful person reading through would have picked up all of these, so I have no idea what her editor and the people actually checking the book did here. Not much, I suppose. These things bother me, not gonna lie, especially with books that got out through a proper publisher. I'm pretty convinced that I gave it a fair chance, though, and I actually kind of liked the characters, the way they are all quirky and just feel like total misfits. I'm a sucker for that kind of a stuff and it is the reason why I will most likely go on with the series. Maybe it gets better. Maybe discovering more about them and their history and motivations will actually make me care about them more. It really wasn't such a bad book. Was it brilliant? Nah. So right now I'm not sure how much I am sold on it. Rachel Aaron still needs to do a lot of work to convince me properly, but that is okay, I guess. I'm also kind of interested in her dragon shifter urban fantasy series, because it sounds kind of fun, so we have room for her spreading her wings and blowing my mind. It's just a bit disappointing, especially right after [a:Sebastien de Castell 7390210 Sebastien de Castell https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/authors/1384883394p2/7390210.jpg] and his absolute brilliance. A bit of an unfair comparison, the guy is just really good, especially when you look at how he is working on his first series. All in all, I wouldn't discourage anyone from reading this, it is fine, but I doubt I will enthusiastically recommend it to anyone if the series will be consistently like this first installation. Now spirit yourself away, guys!

4,5 stars Holy shit, Rick Yancey is one messed up individual and I can't help loving him for that. (Especially funny that I am not interested in his 5th Wave series at all.) This book was absolute nasty stuff, with things that are so dark that you will probably not feel like having a light snack afterwards if you are in any way sensitive. I personally don't care like that, I am always open to a snack, less so to horror novels. I find they often cross the line of what's truly exciting and spooky and go into ridiculously cheesy and over the top laughable territories. This seemed to have a surprising amount of actual value. It was written well, it had enough action, events seemed to happen in a logical way that I could follow and not feel like the author is just trolling me to laugh at me being weirded out. The other guy from an old love triangle from Dr. Warthrop's life disappeared on a trip to look for some monster and the lady showed up begging the help of our doctor (and Will Henry by proxy) to find him in a remote Canadian place. Just to prove everyone wrong, they go on a hunt for a creature Warthrop refuses to believe even exists. Things go weird as always, the yearly monstrumologist convention happens (no cosplays, I'm sorry, just stuffy weirdos getting drunk as shit, beating each other up and solving nasty murders). One thing I really loved was the fact that we met more monstrumologists now. Apparently it's an international community of science bros who are borderline suicidal in their obsessions with ll creatures that can kill you. They are all different, all insane. I love them. Also, nobody parties like monster hunters, apparently. Nobody also has angsty stories where everyone gets emotionally damaged like that either, which... usually isn't really my cup of tea, but here it worked. The whole atmosphere and the writing managed to support the angst in a way that actually made it pretty... nice? I don't mean nice nice, but very readable. Which this was. Readable, I mean. The language is old-fashioned and ornate, very fitting for the settings, but it doesn't seem to suffocate the flow of the book. Kate Griffin (yeah, the [b:A Madness of Angels 6186355 A Madness of Angels (Matthew Swift, #1) Kate Griffin https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1305861910s/6186355.jpg 6366640] lady) should take some lessons from Mr. Yancey. While she kills the action, he manages to just support it even more and make me want to read more more more. I also like how the characters are not really fluffy. Sure, Warthrop does some not entirely horrible things once in a while, but we didn't have any big moments of the cold scientist turning out to be a real sweetheart with a heart of gold. No. He is truly obsessed with what he is doing and it takes away a lot of his possibilities and willingness to be cuddly. Will is an enjoyable child character. He is not a little idiot without any idea of the world, but he isn't some super hero who schools grownass scientists with his amazing kiddo wit. He is flawed, he is not some magical prodigy and I can't help feeling for him. So much is happening to this poor baby, he needs some hugs. The only character who irritated me was Lilly, this annoying little brat who endangers everyone because she is just so infuriatingly smartass. If I had a child like her, I would slap here so hard. I was probably supposed to find her endearing, but I wanted the monsters to take her. About the monster. It was absolutely horrifyingly nasty ass. It was something between a person and a creature, vile as they can be. I kind of liked that. It was disgusting and somehow managed to still keep things from being caricatures. Fantastic balance. Still, I find the first book better. Maybe it was the surprise of finding something so brilliant, I don't know. Both are brilliant, the first book a tiny bit better in my opinion. I am definitely picking up the next book, nothing can stop me. Good night and don't let the cannibalistic crazy monster people bite!

Owen pissed off an interdimensional horror, and now all its minions, a murder cult included, want him dead. Their hobbies included bringing utopia through Lovecraftian monsters and creating monsters from pieces of human an animal cadavers.

Not sure why, but I remembered these books having much more gun talk. I have never been around those circles, so I don't understand that kind of lingo (though I support your right to have guns, so I'm not sitting here and saying they should be taken away because I don't understand them, that's just a stupid thing to do), but on my second time reading through, it seems a lot less, oddly. Maybe I just wasn't used to it back then and it was a bit jarring? Since then this became one of my all time favourite series, so I guess that helps.

This one adds a lot to a bunch of character; we get to meet Owen's family, we learn about the history of Agen Myers with MHI and how Agent Franks works. An absolutely hilarious version of gnomes get added to the list of modernised fantasy creatures.
In that sense it was a very successful sequel; same tone, but a very much expanded and deepened world. On my first try, I was a bit worried, though. How could you go on after this? What bigger danger, bigger things can come after THIS? The fact I am excited about book 8 coming tells you that Correia pulls it off. So no worries, he still has a ton of ideas and things to do. We good.

Something about the no nonsense attitude made me get very attached to the characters so fast. Every time someone gets hurt, I feel it. They are crass and loud and rowdy bunch of people and I still love them so much it's almost funny. They have big guns and big heart.
I know some will hate this on principle and sure, that's their right, but it makes me so ridiculously happy to read this again.

So I finished this series and I would like to talk about it as a whole for a bit, because I believe it totally deserves more attention than it has gotten. The thing about Jim Butcher is that I find he writes such approachable, human characters. In some circles he is treated like a literary criminal, who is lowly and offensive and just generally not okay whatsoever. At the same time... I love what he does. I love how during his works his characters become more than just paper thin things he moves for fun, because they are fun ans quirky, they have strong personalities, they have interesting connections and stories. Maybe they are not always the flattering specimens who will make you feel like you idealised fantasy self (which I see as a trend nowadays, especially with certain groups, where every character has to be the most idealised, positive example). I kind of love that. So Butcher, once again, wrote a series that felt welcoming and familiar, while still action-packed and fun. Because there is no shame in fun, you do not have to read books that are a struggle to get through, just for some sort of an intellectual bragging right. Unapproachable writing doesn't mean it's good writing. Here we had a story that is a perfect gateway drug for history lovers into fantasy, incorporating the idea of an ancient Roman society getting to a place with all kinds of nature spirits called furies, which they have learnt to work with and ultimately use to extend their own powers. After a few centuries of such life, they are being attacked by the vord, mind controlling, vicious bug monsters of a hivemind, lead by queens with crazy powers. The protagonist, Tavi is a boy who goes from a furiless nobody to become the first lord of their home, Alera and this is the end of his journey through becoming the leader of a country he needs to save as his first move to even have something or someone to lord over. So here is the elephant in the room; this is nothing like Mr. Butcher's Dresden Files. Tavi (or Gaius Octavian, because cool Roman names) is not at all like Harry. He has a completely different kind of strength, one he achieved through constant good decisions, always using his wits to achieve respect and to become an esteemed member of his society. He is not at all like the adorable bonehead with a tendency of powering through as his ass gets kicked in all kinds of ways again. Actually... Tavi kind of feels like the opposite of Harry. Hell, social interactions and human relationships come naturally to Tavi, which... we can't say about the chronic loner Mr. Dresden. It's also written in a completely different way. There is less humour, much less of the quirky crazy time of t-rexes running around and polka music and apprentices with coloured hair at horror conventions. Which is fine, because we are given more political intrigue. More subtle social workings, a completely different way of life, a whole different magic system. Aaaaand it's awesome. I would definitely recommend this to everyone who wants to read fantasy that has a bit of a different flavour, something extra. Of course most will still associate the name of Jim Butcher with the style of Dresden Files, but I find he is much more versatile than that, through this series and his new [b:The Aeronaut's Windlass 24876258 The Aeronaut's Windlass (The Cinder Spires, #1) Jim Butcher https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1425415066s/24876258.jpg 24239884].

Quit at 60%. Sorry I'm not sorry. I'm in a rut or something?

No. 328429781 on my list of literary world crimes (word crimes? höhöhö): I do not like Stephen King. I just can't like him, something about his kind of horror just feels over the top nasty to me. Like disgusting and it makes me retch instead of being scared most of the time. Also, what did kids do to the guy? WHAT? We should ask Joe Hill about that, because he is King's kid. As we all know.

I had my doubts about this one, exactly because Mr. Hill is Mr. King's spawn. Not saying they are the same in any way, but I would assume that if you do what your parents did super successfully, then you must be at least a tiny bit influenced by them. Or something. Then again, it's not that hard to write horror and be influenced by him. Big names and all.
Funny enough, I actually didn't feel as repulsed in the not impressive way than I usually do in connection with Mr. King. I didn't even really hate this with passion. I was okay with it, I guess, I just... didn't really care that much, you know.

Here we have Ig, this small town son of rich people. He's awkward, not exactly star material like his great older brother, Terry, but not a bad person either. Ig is fine. But he had this girlfriend, the amazingly wonderful Merrin, who got raped and murdered about a year ago, causing Ig to be the obvious suspect, while he had nothing to do with her death. Never even got convicted, but in small towns people will file you in neat little piles. In his case, as a psycho.
One morning he wakes up with horns on his head and supernatural abilities that cause people to tell him their dirty, horrible secrets and maybe now he can find out what happened to his girlfriend.

The moment realised I didn't care was when Ig gets some of his teeth knocked out. I'm a trainee dental technician and hearing about knocked out teeth I went strait to how to solve that, the Latin names of teeth, I got the image of said teeth in my head, how much of a pain they are to form of wax, but how much I love doing that, it's all fun, I need to practice, I will have to ask one of my “mentors” to borrow the appropriate tool... and shit, I am not reading. I'm thinking about the shape of premolars.
When you care about work stuff more than what is happening in your book... well. I have bad news for you.

Another thing that bothered me was how horrible news lose their edge when almost every character is horrible. Oh, you want to kill someone, also you want to fuck little girls, while you blow up the country with a nuke to the soundtrack of cancer kids. I am just kind of emotionally separating myself when things are so bad it's almost comical.

The characters who fill more purpose than being there to say bad things are boring to me either. Ig is nothing, Merrin in the flawless angel everyone loves, but she is just... so douchy without anyone ever realising she is, the person actually killing her being just... really bad. It never felt like any characters were actual people to me.

I didn't exactly hate this book, really. More like I didn't find the thing that would draw me in enough to invest any more time in it. Nowadays I'm busy enough to not care about something that I don't find satisfying. The whole King family seems to be not my kind of people, which is fine.
This wasn't offensive. I can imagine the people who would love it and give it the attention I couldn't. I even feel a bit sorry about not finishing it. Huh.

Good night and I feel like strangling people on a daily basis and not afraid to say it.

This must be cool, like the Dresden Files, right? It must be, I swear it is going to be awesome like that.
Spoiler: it really isn't.

October Daye is a private detective and half-fae, she lives with her boyfriend and their young daughter, until she gets caught by the person she was following. She doesn't die, though, but gets turned into a koi fish in a park pond for 14 years, until she turns back. Her family doesn't know about magic, so they think she just left, so they want nothing with her. Then a fae boss lady she knows gets murdered and she needs to solve the crime.

You know, by that description Toby probably sounds tough, right? She sounds like a cool person, someone who can stand her ground and just do her shit. I have bad news, she isn't. Toby Daye is pretty much an idiot who doesn't even seem to have a defined personality. One moment she says she has a hard life and was forced to be super though, the next she makes mistakes that make me think she deserves it all for not learning from anything.
Pert of the story is about her ex-bf, who is basically a scary, evil Peter Pan for the half-breed children. Toby goes on long tangents about how he is totally abusive and their relationship was unhealthy and just wrong. What does she do then? Fucking goes to him and sleeps with him because he was nice for 5 minutes. She is not some victim here, she actively makes her own life miserable through sheer stupidity.
But now that we are talking about the men around October we have to discuss that they were all her lovers or flirt like crazy with her. No, honestly, in this one book she has her baby daddy, her evil ex-bf, her nice ex-bf and then also this cat guy who haaaates her, but he is hot and flirty. Do we really need more “I'm so nothing special” female characters who have a horde of male underwear models fighting for their attention? Do we?

The other thing undefined about Toby is her worth. We are told half-human fae types are considered lowly and crap, basically not really taken in by the fae and not suited for living as humans because of their abilities. On the other hand she is connected to all the freaking people. She has her liege, who is super cool, her ex-bf, the lady who got murdered, she is a knight, she solves supernatural cases, she has other friends and such. Honestly, it doesn't really feel like she is in such a bad position when she has extremely powerful people on her side.
She also looks down on said people. Except for the ones who do her bidding, of course.

It's all written in a weird way as well. So lets just imagine someone who is a mother figure to you gets kidnapped and you can't save her. How would you describe her? I have a feeling that “kind and the most egalitarian person ever” is not the way. Egalitarian is cool, but not the way you describe someone whose loss caused you such sorrow, eh? Or if someone around you gets murdered saying “they breached her privacy and murdered her” sounds stupid. Those two things ain't the same kind of heavy. Again, I don't understand why the author made the specific choices when she was writing the book in first person, this is not how a normal human being thinks.
Then again, she seems to have a lot of faux-poetic, melodramatic thoughts. Now of course this is a first novel, which explains a lot, but where Harry Dresden is kind of charmingly goofy in his own first few, kinda clunky books... Toby is more teenage fanfiction.

I'm not saying this can't be okay later on. Maybe it is, I've seen weirder things before, but this first book is not particularly convincing. I don't like the protagonist, the lore is about fae which aren't my favourite fantasy characters, the prose is not at all brilliant, the supporting characters act like Toby is some heavenly perfect creature.
I will most likely read more of it, though. Maybe I'm just not ready to accept that this series is so uninspired and sucky. I would like to like it, to have another fairly light series of fun action and urban fantasy. So I will give it another chance, maybe a few more. For now I'm not sold. But for that Toby needs to grow a freaking spine and stop being such a plain ass nobody who is treated like solid gold.

Good night and let me take a Daye off!

4,5 stars The thing about this series was that when I was reading it I had a blast, but a few months later I always kind of... forgot why. I'm not saying it's for the lack of value, not at all, but the whole thing is written in a way that works so well together that it's kind of hard to point out that one or two or three elements that are the reason why the series is worth a read. It's so effortlessly easy for me at least to read that I have a hard time saying the best features of it. In general, the book is just very fluid. Sometimes I sat down to read for a bit, I looked up and I was 60 pages in. The prose and the story itself are created in a way that doesn't feel like it takes much of an effort for you to get into it. It's dark, genuinely, but something I enjoy about it is the fact that it's not shock horror kind of edgy dark. Those things can become too much very fast and then I have a hard time taking any of the work seriously. The characters are also still great. In the not good people way, of course, by now everyone should have realised that this book is a big pile of total fucking jerks. I mean hello, one of our protagonists is an inquisitor. A very witty one with dark humour that made me chuckle more than once, but Sand dan Glokta is one fucked up individual. Logen is actually really nice. When he doesn't snap and go into a superhuman rage to just murder whoever is closest to him. At least he tried. Bayaz... is a profoundly shitty person, who basically treats the Union as his plaything against his old enemy in the worst feud of history, because he can. Ferro just want to murder. Then there is Jezal. My sweet, sweet boy Jezal, who used to be the single most stupid, selfish, ridiculous idiot on the planet. And fuck me, I actually managed to genuinely care about him, because he became such a vulnerable man who just can't handle not trying to help. He can't really make a difference when everything is going to shit, but he tries so hard. I have no idea how Mr. Abercrombie managed to make me like Jezal so much, but the dude needs someone to protect him. (Ardee can go to hell, though, they deserved each other when Jezal was a dickbag, but now that he became such a genuinely caring person that alcoholic psycho woman of profound “nobody gets me” doesn't deserve him) In the end he is like Quentin Clearwater from the much less loved series of [b:The Magicians 6101718 The Magicians (The Magicians #1) Lev Grossman https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1313772941s/6101718.jpg 6278977]And then there is West, who I love. I don't care, I just... love him. And now for the reason why I took away half a star from a series I loved. What the fuck was that ending? WHAT? I am not going to lie, I was a bit disappointed in how nothing really got resolved, other than the war. Sure, some good things happened, but everyone is being fucked by Bayaz, Logen being fucked over, Ferro going to FINALLY actually take her revenge... I just don't feel like anything got resolved for anyone. Now you can say that this gave the series a unique flavour or whatever, but I don't think all of the things happening paid off and that bothers me. We had so many story lines and characters and conflicts and then we end up with "ehhh, whatever"? So at this point I would definitely recommend this series to many, many people, as it's truly great. I know there are short stories or such still left that add some things to the main body of the thing, but the issue is, I am not a lover of that format, so for now I consider myself to be done with this series. It was definitely one of the highlights of my reading of 2017 and I feel content with starting out the year with finishing this one. Good night and... what now? Are we done? Is this the end of it?

Like every second woman at this point, I love true crime stuff, with the caveat that it's not emotionalised bullshit. I want facts, not a narrator talking about the victim's smile lighting up every room. Fuck off with that cheesy, ridiculous stuff.
So I looked at this and was like “okay, maybe I can try”.

And it was awful.
We have Alix and Josie, two women with polar opposite lives. Alix is a glamourous podcast host and Josie is a repressed, humble housewife. All they have in common is having been born on the very same day at the same hospital. So when Josie begs Alix to document her breaking free of her life, they start working together on a project.

You know, a book like this needs exceptional character writing. We have two people interacting, yet somehow both of them have the inner monologue of the exact same type;that overly detailed one that pretends to be deep by “noticing” ridiculous shit you never specifically think about. Or do you look at people and start thinking about random details regularly? In every bit of your thinking?
Plus, with a book that is based on the contrast of these two, at least make them sound sufficiently different.

The twists were not much either. Like there aren't many ways you can spice up a story with so few characters and so little going on between them. If you can't guess it... what's wrong with you?

After years of reading mostly fantasy, this isn't enough. It's so basic and so uninteresting.

2,5/5
This book was basically that person we all know, who calls you on the phone and while you seriously care about them, they just don't know when to shut up and end their endless stories.
As a lot of people point it out, the prose was so flowery it just felt like the author was sometimes completely losing herself in the details and forgetting about the fact that she was actually telling a story. Every little thing needed to have a million details, with at least six examples. No, you didn't just have food in your fridge, like milk and eggs, but milk, eggs, butter, pickles, juice, jam, and the list just goes on and on. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with being eloquent, but this is not eloquence, this is being way too verbose.
At the beginning, through about the first third I actually kind of liked the different style. Then the boredom started. I honestly believe the author's style would have worked beautifully in a shorter piece of maybe a couple of hundred pages, that is mostly based on the atmosphere. With a book this long? It gets frustrating.
The magic, the different clans of magical people were great. They just felt kind of... wasted when the author seemingly forgot about what she could have done with them if most of the book wasn't spent on talking about trash (thanks lady, I know what thrash is) or feelings. At this point we simply weren't allowed close enough to any of the supporting characters to actually feel too much of a bond, which is a waste, even for a first book in the series.
The main was nice, I actually liked him. His only issue was... again, with the writing. Matthew, the protagonist keeps switching to referring to himself as ‘we', which took some time for me to get used to. It gets an explanation later on, but it can get frustrating sometimes and at the beginning it confused me quite a few times.
All in all, I enjoyed the story, not so much the execution, which is a shame. I'm definitely going to give the second book a try and see what happens next.

I'm sorry, but I really really disliked this one, so DNF at about 50%. Normally I form my opinions and that's it, but this time I had to search online if I was just seeing things. Nope, apparently not, the main character in this one is virtually indistinguishable from the one in [b:The Hollow Places 50892288 The Hollow Places T. Kingfisher https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1600022295l/50892288.SY75.jpg 75788139]. 30s, sarcastic, works in some city, but needs to go back to her family home, boo hoo. A huge part of my problems started out with that. I don't like her. She isn't funny, she isn't interesting. This one (Sam??) is even worse with her CONSTANT mentions of how she is fat, therefore doctors would let her die because of that. At one point she even does the “I am fat, but I am healthier than anyone” thing. She also claims her mother, a known, politically active liberal is suddenly a racist white person. Even when the Latina her mother was supposedly racist to says it wasn't racism. Yet she keeps bringing it up, because of an old painting of a couple, where the man wears a confederate uniform, that is a piece of heirloom. Oh, we also have a really eyerolling paragraph about how the patriarchy is oppressing women through... leg shaving. With all the Current Year comments and lame attempts at jokes, there isn't even much buildup for the mistery. It just feels boring and annoying, really. Halfway in, I was trying to rush through the book, then I realised I didn't care about anyone in it. So then why not just stop and find something better?

On space ships going to new planets to colonise, there are certain jobs that are really dangerous. Things like... experimenting to see if the new vaccine for local hazards is working or not, fixing a thing that will expose you to lethal radiation, exploring new places with unknown hazards, etc. Now, you want to send the best and the brightest to colonise, right? Essential people. Plus, you don't have unlimited space, so it's not like there is room for unlimited amounts of disposable red shit cannon fodder. The solution is having this one guy. He isn't special or the brightest, nor is he an expert at anything. He doesn't need to be. His biological data will be copied, his brain regularly downloaded and saved. When shit needs to be done, he does it. He dies. Then we just print a new copy, upload his brain and be done with that shit. We still have him for the next time. Mickey is this guy, but then... what happens when they accidentally make a new one without the old one being dead first? This idea is so cool from so many angles. How do you deal with yourself? Will people see you as still the same person or someone else? How much difference does it make to have a couple days extra experiences compared to an identical copy without those? Yet.... we get a bunch of boring stuff in a short book about the technicalities of eating. Yes. How these two people divide the rations of one person amongst them. And sharing a girlfriend. I mean sure, rationally you know those things would matter, but at the same time, do we really need to hear about Mickey whining about the same thing continuously, meanwhile many actually potentially super interesting aspects get ignored. The tone doesn't help either, it often goes into that UWU funneh Whedon-speech pattern. I read they are making a movie and that makes sense. It will be whacky and current and probably kind of entertaining. (With Robert Pattinson, what?) If you like [a:Andy Weir 6540057 Andy Weir https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1382592903p2/6540057.jpg], you will absolutely love this. I am so-so on him (liked [b:The Martian 18007564 The Martian Andy Weir https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1413706054l/18007564.SY75.jpg 21825181], disliked [b:Project Hail Mary 54493401 Project Hail Mary Andy Weir https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1597695864l/54493401.SY75.jpg 79106958]), which puts me in a place where I don't LOVE this, but I was fine with it. I'm definitely reading the next book. Why? Because I want to see more of the world and them possibly exploring the ideas properly. It wasn't a bad book either, just not at its full potential yet. I would recommend it as a quick, fun little thing.

How do you numerically rate a memoir? How do you review it with your actual words? Especially one with as much buzz as this one has right now? I keep hearing about it from everywhere, from random podcast segments recommended on Youtube, to Reddit going absolutely nuts.
Don't get me wrong, it was a good read, in the sense that it was written VERY well (I would love to see Jennette McCurdy write more, maybe try fiction or something, I think she would kill it). It was easy to get into, it had a great flow. I binged it.

Without ever having Nickelodeon in my house as a kid, all I know about iCarly is that the girls who used to bully me in grade 4, the “cool”, rich, popular ones liked it. I discovered my love for fantasy at that-ish age, so it's unlikely I would have been into it anyway. But yeah, I went in without the fear of it tainting some amazing, formative childhood memory I ever had. She seems nice is all.

I just don't think I am used to this kind of a non-fiction, one where a person just goes through their personal experiences without a definitive point or end or goal for you to understand. Like, of course she obviously wanted us all to see the specific, not positive experiences she had with something a lot of people assume is glamorous. But it wasn't trying to be educational on a topic.
So because of that, I didn't feel a sense of big intellectual catharsis. Which might sound awful and insensitive, which is not at all my goal. I am not trying to assign a value to this person or her experiences or how she is dealing with them. So there is that.

In a sense, I think the great writing made me just a little emotionally distant from it. Again, weird, but it almost made it feel like a novel at some point. It's not because I am doubtful about any part of her story, I have no reason to be. It's just from the technical standpoint, I guess.
Funny enough, seeing her speak on Youtube, I can totally buy her having written this. There is nothing wrong with using professional help when writing a book as someone who is new to writing and not primarily an author. But in her case, it still has her. Her speech patterns, the ways she uses to express herself. That's absolutely huge in my opinion.

There were some moments where her thoughts really resonated with me, not because our experiences are the same or even similar, but our conclusions were. Which was interesting.
I also wonder how she is doing now. If she gained some more perspective on things. In a way, I also want her to be allowed to do her thing in peace, though. She deserves that, finally having the privacy to concentrate on herself.

DNF at about 20%-ish.

God, is this book bad. I've read something else by this same author previous and found that book stupid as well, but I was willing to give him another chance.

I have zero issue with a man writing a woman character (or vice versa). I have an issue with authors who feel like they have to go with the lowest hanging fruit to make you feel like they totally get what they are doing and they care so much. No, a male author who just has two women meet 2 minutes ago in a situation where one of them almost died and has them talk about “UGH, objectification” is not doing a good job. Nobody cares he knows jargon like that.
I read the end of the book to know what really happened. He does at least one more round of trying to tell us that he knows women, because he makes his female character say that we all live in constant fear. Men who think that is empowering, us being told we must be nothing but fearful wrecks... they are not helpful, they are fucking annoying. Stop performatively pitying women. It's not productive, it's not a good look and I'm tired of it.

Other than that, in the roughly 20% of this novel that I've read, I had to realise that some authors are not clever enough to write suspense and whodunnit mysteries. What do I mean?
At one point, the protagonist is surprised that another character is going swimming in a very deep natural lake, not wearing her wedding ring. She finds it suspicious and we are supposed to take it as a big thing. Ignoring the fact that if you drop your jewellery in one of those lakes, they are gone forever. Maybe she just didn't want that? I would be careful as well, because I don't want to be Kim Kardashian screeching about losing a diamond earring in the sea. Totally understandable sentiment.
Another moment is when the protagonist is observing this same character talking on the phone. She is leaving a message, which you can determine by how she is just talking without stopping for an answer. Which... again, what sort of a shitty Sherlock Holmes is this? Sometimes one person can just talk for an extended time, explaining something. Especially funny as the author says that the woman is covering her mouth with her hand. How do you know she is still speaking? Some of us can speak without our whole entire head moving???????

All in all, I will never understand why people like these books. The author does bogus stuff with the “investigation” that don't even make sense. He is condescending and very 2022 Tiktok feminist about his characters. It all has this half-baked feel.
So yeah, I don't think I will keep trying with him. Just pick something else.

This is a review of the complete series of Chainsaw Man Part 1.

Fuck.
This series is so interesting. At first you look at it and you think it's probably this absolutely batshit insane, over the top action fun gore madness. And that it is.
But it also breaks your heart with the most simple sentiments and thoughts and gestures by the characters. Denji, the main character is so pure, which normally you wouldn't call a guy who can turn into a chainsaw-headed monster and wants to touch boobs more than anything, enough to have that as his big reason why needs to survive. It's such an honest look at this person, who never had anything in his life.
Many times simple characters are played as resistant to outside influences and they are good because they are simple. But here you know Denji can be pushed around just as much as anyone else and I wanted to hug him so much, because fuck it. The dude is dumb, so very dumb and he deserves more than this bullshit. He doesn't use big words and he isn't out there to change the world.
By the end he is stuck with responsibilities that are much bigger than his intellectual capabilities. Part 2 will be interesting. But I have hope for him, because I don't want to believe he can't be great.

I glanced at the author's other bigger work, Fire Punch. Haven't read it yet, so no comment on the story and such, but looking at the two different series, he is capable of very loose and sketchy art (like here) and neat and precise (like there). That's range and I think it's good he does that. A lot of this one's energy would have been lost with too much precision.
It also has a bunch of great character design, ranging from the normal and subtle for the humans (I love Kishibe's face so much) to the absolute trippy and weird. The author made a great choice with Pochita, though, a weird cutesy mascot is always good for marketing.

There are a bunch of concepts and things left to deal with in Part 2. Denji needs to work on himself more, probably a bunch of the old characters will return in different forms. We still have Kishibe, who is badass and interesting. Kobeni is still anxiety incarnate, girl also needs some help. Those two should team up, the person who gives no fucks and the person who is made entirely of fucks being given. Maybe more exploration of foreign places and people dealing with the supernatural elements of the story? Dunno.

With mysteries, I always feel like the conclusion is never as good as I build up in my mind. At first it's kind of fascinating, to see what's going on and building up the pressure. But then we learn the solution to it all and... eh?
Same here, especially because the story is in this weird inbetween situation where I think it's supposed to be rooted in reality, but for no apparent reason we are given these random hints at things maybe being supernatural. Which... they aren't? I think. It's never properly developed, It's never handled well, so it feels very tacked on.

Aaron's wife, Allison, gets killed in a shooting at a mall. She was a journalist, but don't imagine some hot shot person, she did these feel good local stories and such. But after her death, Aaron discovers her having a secret life where she was doing something that seemed to be way over the normal things for her.

One thing about the book that will be a hit or miss is the fact Aaron describes things about Allison is second person. Now, personally I don't like that much, especially because both him and her came off as... well, a couple of kinda insufferable quirky ass hipsters.
Allison give off this mysterious sad tough girl vibe, while Aaron is basically a whimp who thinks of her as way above him. Neither is likeable. I understand I am supposed to feel for these people, which is hard when they come off so unlikeable.
The writing itself is like that as well. Sometimes it's over the top.

The mystery... You can't really solve it yourself. No matter how much you think, you won't be able to piece it together, because there isn't enough information ahead of the reveal. In that sense, it failed.
It's not very special either. Not the victims, the method, the reasoning. It's so mundane, if you can say that about a serial killer, hah. I just expected something more grandiose.

It's a quick and easy read, but I wouldn't specifically seek this one out.

I tried to read this. About 15 pages in, this is fucking god awful.
The way it's written all in this rambling inner monologue makes it sound like the author is incredibly unsure about the world. Do you usually mentally go through everything you do? “So I take my keys out, then I pick out the one with the round head next to the keychain. It's the one to open my front door. Inserting it is not hard, though I have to jiggle it just a little because the door is a bit old. Otherwise it's not incredibly hard to turn it, though, so I can open the door relatively easily.”
Reading it makes me tired, it's like someone is just having word vomit all over me, while I try not to tune it all out.

I've never really LIKED this series. It was always exposition central to explain away how incredibly dumb and illogical the whole premise was.
The characters were always trash, except Orion, who was verbally abused by ELLLLLLLL every fucking line of dialogue she had with him.
Also, I fucking HATE ELLLLLLL's mother. She did literally nothing to take care of her child, except the hippy bullshit she did for literally any asshole who walked in. She could have protected her better. Could have given her a chance at proper survival. But instead she ignored her child's safety and mental well-being (and being an awful, mean-spirited CUNT) and just picked some flowers and dicked around in a field.
Easy to blame both her and ELLLLLLL's shitty personalities on “le trauma, le depression”, but they don't learn from it. We are supposed to love them the way they are and they are both bad people.

End of rant. This series is bad.

Before anything else, I have to point out that I have not seen the show and I honestly am not very interested in it. I prefer this cover over the old ones, though, so I picked this one.

My grandfather used to play chess. Not professionally, just local little tournaments. I never learnt. He could also do things like count cards, so it's safe to assume he was the smart one in this family. He also didn't care about vanity and was extremely... clean, I suppose. Never drank, never even thought of using drugs, he just lived simply and was extremely introverted.
Our main character, Beth is also introverted, though she doesn't skip on a good drink or pills to help her nerves. Damn, girl. She is also a chess prodigy and an orphan. Once she gets adopted in her early teens, she starts her professional chess career that leads her to international fame and even playing against the Russians.

So what was the thing about this book? Beth is extremely successful at chess, but a failure at adjusting to normal life. She doesn't care about anything else, has no other interests. She doesn't care about people who can't challenge her at it and loses interest in people once she is better than them. This includes her lovers; the moment they aren't just at least her equals at chess (either because she is better or they care about other things), she gets disappointed and leaves.
Now some of you will say that's the point. It still made me bored with her. I already knew the end of every interaction and relationship right at the beginning. There was no excitement about seeing her meet a new person, because you knew how it was going to end.

Her only real skill doesn't make that easier. You just know she is going to win. Some few times she gets a bit of hardship, but never more than a few pages and it's all half-hearted. So you know she will be better than anyone. We are told she studies games and replays them and such, but it never feels like she actually struggles. Oh, she does get annoyed when someone twice her age is better than her for a brief time before she beats them, but that's all.
I never felt any real pressure.

The prose played into that. I am not a professor of literature. I don't have a degree, I just read a lot. So bear with me when I have no idea what this style of writing is called. Everything is described with random details, but with some sort of emotional detachment and making everything feel like the bored analysis of the surroundings by a person who notices the weird and unnecessary details. Do I care Beth ate boiled eggs with salt? Do I care about the colour of hand soap? It just makes the book have even less excitement.
Now I didn't expect traditionally defined action. This isn't a book about war, but chess. But still, it made Beth sound so boring.

The other people around her are all defined by how much use they were to her. Her adoptive mother, her fellow competitor Benny Watts, friend Jolene. They are all nothing more than stepping stones so Beth can play more and better chess.

I liked certain things, though. When I first heard this is about a female chess player, I assumed it was going to be yet another tired story about “but like, everyone was so mean to her, because woman and like, life is horrible as a woman” while also telling you women are the greatest thing. On that note, I love the contradiction of those stories; being a woman is the greatest thing, but also let us tell you how being a woman is worse than anything ever and is pure torture.
Here it was handled well. Woman players are rare. But Beth did it and at that point she stopped caring what people said. As long as she wasn't outright banned (which she wasn't) she just did her thing and let that speak for her. And surprise surprise, people were fine after all.

I still can't say it is worth a read other than if you really really want to and have plenty of time. I never questioned Beth being the best. I never thought it could end badly for her.
Hell, even her substance abuse was treated weightlessly; sure, sometimes she got a bit sick, but she bounced right back with no issue and there were no real repercussions. Everything she did just happened without influencing anything else.
It's short, though. So there is that. Short read, which can come in handy by the end of the year, when you are having trouble finishing your challenge, if you care about such things.

Mr. Hendrix, why? May I just ask why this piece of smug piece of shit had to be written? Repeating the same, half-baked, idiotic opinion is not making you profound, it's just ridiculous.
Let me elaborate, my friends.

A bunch of women are in a therapy group, old women, mind you, because at one point in their youth they were all the single survivors of massacres where they killed the perpetrator is self-defence.
One of them gets murdered, though. They automatically think they will be next.

I have liked the author's previous books, but this... Dude.
There is this repeating sentiment in this book, the idea that somehow women are just constantly killed for the lulz. That we are just victims. Always. And that senseless death is specific to women and that it just happens because we are women.
May I remind you how these women ended up there? Their respective groups got murdered. Like camp counsellors. Who aren't even all women. But somehow it's a problem of VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN. It gives me intense “women are the REAL victims of war” energies and those can go fuck themselves.
I'm not saying all this because it was written by a man. Some reviews did that and I find it kind of telling they all went to “IT WAS SAID BY AN UGLY WHITE MAN”, like they wouldn't eat up this ridiculous idea if it was said by some “empowered” New York journo daughter of the elite.

It's just stupid. We can go the other direction; when men die brutally... nobody even cares. It's just background noise and unimportant. Is that any better? Well, maybe that idea isn't popular with the people the author was trying to court here, but hey.

It's a flat and annoying piece.

Anya still tries her best, both socially and academically, for a mission she doesn't fully understands, because she is a small child. She is such a sweetheart. Also, to be fair, she isn't the only one who doesn't have the full picture, so that's good.
I especially liked her bonding with Yuri.

Little by little, we are also introduced to more characters. This manga is relatively small in scope when it comes to characters and settings and the characters are added slowly. It's a nice change of pace. I like busy stories, sure, but this isn't one of those. A bunch of action, but also things don't happen all at once.
The new person is another spy, a lady taught by Loid, who is in love with him and wants to become his wife. So look out, Yor.
Talking about Yor, I just love the fact that the time she is actually doing a perfectly innocent thing, cooking, and suddenly Loid is getting suspicious of what the hell is going on with her. The irony.

Yeah, well. I did not like this based on 20%.

Now, let me start out by saying that I like Darren Shan's demon and vampire books. Why is that relevant here? Because those books are for kids, but they are absolutely brutal and can be really dark and just... Yeah. You can do that. Books for younger people can do that.
So I don't understand why this one is just so not scary. It lacks any of that and somehow not even the fact we just had a pandemic can make the whole “mysterious illness, quarantine, curfew” thing feel more like... something.

I'm also not a huge fan of first person narratives. Which is odd, because I love the Dresden Files books, where we have thousands of pages of first person. But that's because the main character has a personality. You won't necessarily love it (I do, he is a goof), but there is something. His voice is specific to him.
Here it's so unbelievable. If the author wanted to be so wordy and use every single adjective that ever existed in English (which is still just bad form), then why do it in first person? A 16-year-old girl scared by zombies is not going to freaking think about the rolling hills she is running into. That is not what sticks out to someone scared out of her mind! It killed the momentum.
Then again, the protagonist is an idiot. She jumps in front of guns because of reasons. She makes her ex boyfriend run with her into the night to find her parents, even though they know they will be fucked. She forgets to put on shoes when she goes out to the fields to work.

I especially “loved” yet another example of every woman who is practical, shoots a gun and is tough is a lesbian. Nice job.

This one was not good. It felt really amateurish in trying to connect a form (pseudo-poetic waffling) with a story that's supposedly about danger and running and fast action, while not being successful at either. Having teen characters could have been okay if they weren't just idiots.
Aaaaand I know it's going to end with the whole “we were doing such wrong things and this is our punishment by some natural thing”, which is... meh.

All in all, I didn't like it and I don't recommend it.

Denji's mother died when he was a kid. His dad managed to get tens of millions of yens worth in loans from the Yakuza, then just killed himself. Good job. So now Denji has to pay back all of that and he is just a kid. What to do?
Well, “lucky” for him, his world is normal like ours, with the exception of devils. They exist as the embodiments of fears/phobias and they are here to make trouble and kill people. So Denji befriends a little demon, a creature that's half chubby doggy, half chainsaw, called Pochita, so they can kill devils together and slowly pay back.
Yeah, well, Denji is still starving and having no life, until it turns out that he can join the official, governmentally regulated demon killers, under the leadership of this beautiful girl called Makima.

The thing happening here exists in a weird space, psychologically. Denji doesn't have a good life. We can even say he has a pretty fucked up, shit life. You can see it. He also has amazing powers. But somehow the author makes a point of not overdoing his aspirations. Often in stories like this, the hero is lonely and sad and aims to be THE BEST. Powerful and famous and a leader.
Denji is different. He just wants the bare minimum. Regular meals. A comfortable, ordinary quality life. A girlfriend. Dude wants to just touch some boobs.
I absolutely love the way we have insane monsters and such, superpowers and chainsaw heads. But also, the main character is the type who wants to hug a pretty girl and eat jam on toast. He is so relatable on an everyday scale in a setting that is so out there.
It's almost saddening, really. It's jarring how they go from chainsawing a bunch of zombies to... Denji being happy about finally being able to take warm baths every day.

It also tells you how messed up it is from the get go. Makima is not a nice girl. I have a feeling she won't ever actually love Denji or take proper care of him in a way that's not calculated and selfish. Sometimes even Denji realises this and he still does his thing, because he is not aiming high. So what if she is a bitch who uses him as she wishes? It's not like he expected a healthy, loving relationship like... ever.

The art is kind of messy. Sometimes the characters look almost off model, it's fast and lose and I think it really works with the story. In winders view panels sometimes the characters' faces are not drawn in, they are just distant shapes. I think in a way, that works well with the violence and erratic action.
Then there are these moments with amazing, creative panelling.

Yes, it is violent. Do not get into this if you can't handle gore. Then again, the title is Chainsaw Man, not Stuffed Toy Man.

I'm really curious where it will lead, where Denji will end up. If he will ever realise that not aspiring to be too much still doesn't mean you are supposed to let someone use you. I wish the best for him and so far, it doesn't seem like that's where things are going.

Merged review:

Denji's mother died when he was a kid. His dad managed to get tens of millions of yens worth in loans from the Yakuza, then just killed himself. Good job. So now Denji has to pay back all of that and he is just a kid. What to do?
Well, “lucky” for him, his world is normal like ours, with the exception of devils. They exist as the embodiments of fears/phobias and they are here to make trouble and kill people. So Denji befriends a little demon, a creature that's half chubby doggy, half chainsaw, called Pochita, so they can kill devils together and slowly pay back.
Yeah, well, Denji is still starving and having no life, until it turns out that he can join the official, governmentally regulated demon killers, under the leadership of this beautiful girl called Makima.

The thing happening here exists in a weird space, psychologically. Denji doesn't have a good life. We can even say he has a pretty fucked up, shit life. You can see it. He also has amazing powers. But somehow the author makes a point of not overdoing his aspirations. Often in stories like this, the hero is lonely and sad and aims to be THE BEST. Powerful and famous and a leader.
Denji is different. He just wants the bare minimum. Regular meals. A comfortable, ordinary quality life. A girlfriend. Dude wants to just touch some boobs.
I absolutely love the way we have insane monsters and such, superpowers and chainsaw heads. But also, the main character is the type who wants to hug a pretty girl and eat jam on toast. He is so relatable on an everyday scale in a setting that is so out there.
It's almost saddening, really. It's jarring how they go from chainsawing a bunch of zombies to... Denji being happy about finally being able to take warm baths every day.

It also tells you how messed up it is from the get go. Makima is not a nice girl. I have a feeling she won't ever actually love Denji or take proper care of him in a way that's not calculated and selfish. Sometimes even Denji realises this and he still does his thing, because he is not aiming high. So what if she is a bitch who uses him as she wishes? It's not like he expected a healthy, loving relationship like... ever.

The art is kind of messy. Sometimes the characters look almost off model, it's fast and lose and I think it really works with the story. In winders view panels sometimes the characters' faces are not drawn in, they are just distant shapes. I think in a way, that works well with the violence and erratic action.
Then there are these moments with amazing, creative panelling.

Yes, it is violent. Do not get into this if you can't handle gore. Then again, the title is Chainsaw Man, not Stuffed Toy Man.

I'm really curious where it will lead, where Denji will end up. If he will ever realise that not aspiring to be too much still doesn't mean you are supposed to let someone use you. I wish the best for him and so far, it doesn't seem like that's where things are going.

This series is not good. It's not good in multiple ways, but let's just start from the beginning.

The main characters are about to graduate from the Scholomance and that means they need to find a way to do it without dying to a horde of monsters. Simple, right?

The thing about the Scholomance is that it is fucking awful. The food is shit and poisoned, you can't leave and there aren't even windows or a yard or anything, you have to do basically impossible schoolwork, including just super quick learning about 70000 languages, you can't get any belongings in once you enter, everything from showers to getting stationery from the closet is dangerous.
It's so DUMB. It's so unnecessarily bleak and edgy and “badass”. I just can't stand this whole thing of everything being bad and literally a whole world being invented just to be so emo about it.
And honest, it's not even well thought out. Half the book is spent on El mentally going through things to somehow patch up the gigantic stupid plotholes in this unnecessarily edgetastic nonsensical world. It's bad writing to keep telling and barely showing
Like yeeeeah, totally, it's productive to fucking get the kids murdered for going to grab some fucking pencils. That develops their skills in... what exactly?

Another thing is the super unhealthy relationship between El and Orion.
She keeps shitting on him and acting like a colossal bitch, but then gets territorial and hates others for being dicks to Orion. Or being too nice to him. Or being anything, because the only person who gets Orion is her and her alone and that is why she keeps calling him names.
Just because the magical world is shitty and corrupt doesn't mean her being shitty to him is any less of a bad thing. Such a typical abusive thing.
Before anyone start, NO, I do not care about life being shitty for El. That is no reason to be an ass to Orion. Who is an okay character. But his name is Orion Lake. Literally the stupidest, most fan fiction name EVER.

Things were also repetitive. How many scenes of characters going through an obstacle course do we really need? How many mentions of them going to lunch or to the bathroom together?
How much stream of consciousness BLAH BLAH BLAH?

The last scene had some nice things, that was okay, but this whole idea is just half-baked, kept somewhat afloat by constant expositional inner monologue. Like did the author just realise in book two that the food the kids eat needs to come from somewhere?

Honestly, it's not good. It's focusing on an aesthetic social media fad (dark academia) and the substance is not there.

I knew about this book, hard not to. Never seen the movie before, though, I don't watch many. But I guess, it was time to get on this one.

Johnnie is a normal high school student in the future, where space travel is readily available. Though there is one more thing about said future; only people who have served in their version of (space) army have the right to vote. They are the only full rights citizens.
Now our Johnnie doesn't join because he is just so passionate about the whole thing. He does because a friend also does, just like a cute girl from his class.
Then, while he is training... a war with space bugs starts.

When we read books about the future or a utopia/dystopia, the focus is usually someone special. Someone who changes the world, someone who causes big events to happen. A genius, a hero, someone like that. Johnnie is good at what he does, he puts in effort and is a good person, but he is not unique. He is not some magical special person. He is just one who gets caught up in events and does the best he can. It makes the book much more approachable; you can totally understand Johnnie.
It also helps with a lot of the technical details. I'm not someone who is super knowledgeable about science, but hey. The protagonist isn't either. He explains how the in-universe things work in practice, so you understand what's going on, but at the same time, it doesn't go into such details that make it difficult if you are not into science. Which was a great decision; it doesn't date the book too badly.

For a novel that plays out in space, it is not huge when it comes to scale. There are only a few more important characters and they are used sparingly. The story feels much more intimate this way, with interactions only being used without the full relationships between the characters fully portrayed. A lot of it is not even resolved; without spoilers, there are a couple of times when we are told Johnnie wants to/will meet someone again and we never get to see that.
We also often don't see the reactions to deaths, just get told it happened. You could think it makes things less emotional, but overall, this is a book with very little theatrics.

What it has a lot is people thinking about... society, I suppose. How it works, how we make it work. Those parts can be a bit dense, but they are never drawn out and I don't felt preached at. Possibly because as those things were mentioned, Johnnie was also learning and trying to understand them. I'm not even attempting to explain said things in detail, though, just read it. Mr. Heinlein did a better job than I would.

I think this is a good choice for even people who are not that deep in sci-fi and I understand why it's condsidered a classic.