Mandy

Idk man. This is such a classic children's book and I've heard so much good things about it, but honestly it fell a little flat for me. I think I would've appreciated it a lot more if I had read it for the first time as a child instead of an adult almost in my mid-30s though.

It isn't so much that it was childish - in fact, I think this book was shockingly mature in a lot of its elements. In fact, I felt like it had some themes that were almost a bit too politically charged for a children's book imo. It was very disparaging over a society that is driven by unison and equality, and to my jaded adult brain it feels a bit too much like anti-communism, perhaps appropriate given that the book was first published in the early 60s at the height of such tensions. I'm personally no supporter of communism, but at the same time I feel like because the book is aimed at children, it has to necessarily simplify communism into something digestible and therefore kinda paints any society where everyone is encouraged to blend together into a homogenous whole as somehow evil and unnatural. This simplification is dangerous imo and can become problematic when viewing other cultures in the world outside of America and maybe Europe.

I was also a little creeped out by this puppy love between 14 year old Calvin and I think 12 year old Meg. It's probably more normal back when it was first published, but then the expressions of this puppy love seems a bit over the top for this modern age: Calvin kept putting his arm around Meg's waist, telling her not to stop wearing her glasses because he didn't want anyone else to see her “dream-boat eyes”, and then ending everything off with a kiss.

The pacing also felt a bit disjointed in a lot of parts. For most of the first half of the book, I couldn't really quite figure out the outline of the story aside from the fact that we're on a mission to find Meg's missing father. Then even by the end, we still have no clarity on who or what the three W's were, or what Charles Wallace was either, considering he immediately claimed Calvin as “one of us” after first meeting him, and saying that Meg was neither here nor there. All these fantasy elements were mixed in really weirdly with some science fiction as well, with some really hard astrophysics being randomly repeated here and there. I just couldn't really get a grasp on things.

I'm just... speechless. Stephen King wasn't kidding when he talked about how he felt like this was his scariest book. Not in the usual, jump-scarey, gory sense, but in the subject matters and topics that it deals with with raw, brutal clarity. This book had me on the verge of tears at some parts, or froze a permanent grimace on my face at others, but it was all engaging and I got sucked in so hard that I was late to feed my cats (hah!) dinner because I just had to get to the end.

Dr Louis Creed decides to make the move to Ludlow, Maine, with his wife Rachel, two young children, Ellie and Gage, and their cat Winston Churchill to start a new career as a doctor in the local university's infirmary. It's not a glamourous job, but it's a relatively pleasant and stable one. The Creeds make friends with their elderly neighbours, Jud and Norma Crandall. Jud shows the family around, and takes them hiking along the nature path behind the Creeds' new house, which leads to a communal pet burial grounds called the Pet Sematary.

What follows after is a master class in how to write a seemingly normal narrative with a sickening sense of something's not quite right and eerie foreboding. But what this book delivers isn't just horror in the supernatural sense, but also horror in a very, very human sense. This book is all about death: how children begin to parse it, how adults confront it, and how old people look at it straight in the eye. It's about grief, trauma, and how the road to Hell is always paved with good intentions.

This is my first ever Stephen King book so I don't really have much to compare it to, but I am absolutely bowled over by his writing. I've said before in other reviews that I'm an impatient reader, I like to skim passages because I want to get to the end quicker, but Stephen King had me clinging on to every word, even when it was seemingly unimportant. There's no high-flown vocabulary or weird gimmicks here, it's just the sheer magnetism of his writing style.

Horror is a genre that is almost entirely new to me. I have steered clear of it because I'm not very good with jump scares and things that go bump in the dark. I don't know what freak mood I'm in to make me want to dip my toes in this genre now but I'm very much enjoying the ride. What I like most about it is that so many horror novels, especially King's, is only superficially concerned with the scary unreal things - the real crux of it is examining the horrors of being human, the things that scare us in everyday life. Often times, the human protagonists almost always end up just as scary as the supernatural antagonists, and I love it.

This book is deeply unsettling to read. It's brutal and it's uncomfortable af. But it's also insightful and reflective on so many things. I have so many quotes saved from this because King goes off on short tangents sometimes to reflect on some irrelevant topics, like the realities of marriage and parenthood. In Pet Sematary, of course, the most uncomfortable bit to read was when Gage died from the accident, especially during the fight between Louis and his father in law over the coffin, knocking it over and causing the latch to open just a bit, just enough for Louis to have seen Gage's hand. That was the part where I had to close the book and set it aside for a few minutes before continuing. I've never done this with a book before, but I guess there's a first time for everything. A lot of the things in the plot makes you uncomfortable, but it also never feels meaningless or cheap, like it's just there for no reason. These aren't jack-in-boxes in haunted houses, but real solid traumatic events that's handled with brutal honesty and insight.

I never thought I'd say this, I thought I was past this, but this book gave me nightmares on the first night I read it, after the scene where Victor Pascow comes back in Louis's waking dream. There was just something so visceral about the way events played out during that part, and I also made the poor decision of reading that at about 2-3am in the morning before turning in. I woke up in the middle of the night because of that.

In short, I will need some time to digest and recover from this book, but I will definitely be reading more Stephen King again.

This was a pretty fun, wuxia-inspired fantasy world about carving out a destiny for yourself. I picked up this book because I'd like to support more LGBTQ+ authors from Singapore, and I'm very happy to find that this is a series that I'd definitely want to read more of in the future.

Mokoya and Akeha are twins born to the cruel, ruthless Protector, leader of the Protectorate. They grow up discovering that they each have their own talents, though it is Mokoya's gift of prophetic dreams that catches their mother's attention. No longer willing to be a part of their mother's machinations, Akeha strikes out on his own, aligning himself with the Machinists, the rebels fighting against the Protectorate, and realises that he can swim against the black tides of heaven.

This book is largely told from Akeha's perspective and is very much a coming-of-age story. In this world, all children are gender-neutral until they are old enough to be “confirmed”, that is, choose their gender identity. When Mokoya eventually decides to be confirmed as a woman, Akeha feels a sense of loss and struggles with their own gender identity until they eventually decide to be confirmed as a man. I suspect that some of the struggles that Akeha goes through might also have been a bit of an authorial self-insert, given that they are queer and non-binary in a society which is largely ignorant of such movements.

Then there's also the question of how far one should go to carve out an identity and a path for oneself, even when one is bound so intimately with a twin who is more like a soulmate. Akeha is always treated as the spare, the one who isn't even a disappointment because his mother does not have any expectations of him at all. This might be any journey of self-growth but I read in this specifically the journey of a LGBTQ+ person trying to break away from the status quo and deciding to go against the grain.

Overall, definitely a series I'd like to continue and would recommend to anyone looking for wuxia fantasy or just simply a bildungsroman with a gender-fluid protagonist.

Probably somewhere around 3.5 to 3.75 stars. Overall, this was a book that had a refreshingly unique premise. There were some important issues in it that were just a bit touch-and-go and weren't explored as in-depth as I would wish, and I felt like the book could do with a bit more focus and impact, but overall this was not a bad read and while the 1950s misogyny in it has softened somewhat today (though perhaps not in certain fields of study), a lot about it is sadly all too relatable.

Our protagonist is Elma York, an ex-WASP pilot for the USA during WW2 and also mathematics genius. She and her husband Nathaniel York are taking a break in the outskirts of Washington when a meteorite impacts D.C., wiping everyone and everything within a large radius. Aside from the immediate devastation, climate scientists ring the alarm bells to state that the greenhouse effect from the meteorite impact will greatly accelerate and heat up the planet, making it uninhabitable for humans. Suddenly, the space race becomes imminently important, and no longer a race as much as a collaborative international effort - if humanity is going to survive at all, colonizing other more habitable planets in space may be the only way out.

This book is set during the early 50's and reimagines how human history may have turned out if such an extinction event had happened just then, right at the beginning of the space race. Most his-fic books merely use time periods as a pretty backdrop for characters who still sound and act and think very much like they're from 21st century, but this one - doesn't, and I have to give Kowal credit for that. This also means that we see some attitudes from pretty much every character in the book that would be pretty unpalatable to us today - misogyny, racism, sexism, anti-semitism, fanatic nationalism... the works. I liked that these attitudes weren't just attributed to the antagonists of the novel while the protagonist and the people allied to her are miraculously liberal-minded just so that they'd be more appealing to a 21st century readership. While Elma is certainly feminist for her time, and her husband Nathaniel is almost unrealistically supportive of her career in STEM, both of them still occasionally slip up with thoughts that are very much of that time period. Elma gets moments where she is racked with guilt for not being a proper wife, because she's not taking care of the bills or doing house chores. Nathaniel, while supportive, sometimes still struggles to balance his support for Elma with the pressures of the all-male and misogynist environment that he works in, being the lead engineer of the IAC (the book's fictional equivalent of NASA).

I did enjoy that we saw character growth and development in the book, especially for Elma since the whole book is from her perspective. At the beginning of the book, though not actively racist, she is still fairly sheltered. The first time she enters a bar frequented by Black people with Eugene Lindholm, a Black pilot who hosts Elma and Nathaniel after they escape the devastation of the meteorite impact, Elma realises that she has never been in a room with so many Black people before, and makes some faux pas along the way. She does advocate for diversity in the Lady Astronauts being hired by the IAC, championing for Helen, a Taiwanese pilot and “computer” (a name given to mathematicians in the IAC, I suppose?) and who gets frequently passed over because she isn't white.

That being said, however, I felt that the book barely scratched the surface of these topics. A lot could have been done for a book set in the 50s, but ultimately Elma was still the white heroine of the story, set apart from her peers even though she acknowledges that they are just as deserving as her. I wouldn't usually have a problem with this because that's how most stories go, but if the topics were touched on in the book but then we still have an ending where we only have one white person winning out, the issue of racism and diversity feels like they were just shoehorned in to check mass appeal boxes. We did see Elma struggle massively against the weight of misogyny through the book, but then I think not enough was said about the privilege she had because she was 1) white and 2) married to a relatively influential engineer - both of which were briefly acknowledged but then never delved into.

Another huge part that didn't work for me in this book were the really awkward intimate scenes. I'm totally fine with sex scenes when they make sense for the plot but it just didn't really feel necessary at all in this book, and there were so many! Not only that, but they were all bogged down by really, really cringey maths and rocket-inspired sexual innuendo. E.g. ”I'll have to see how good you are at launching rockets.” Oh my god, I get it, Elma and Nathaniel are a very, unrealistically happily married couple whose sex drives are always on high. It just felt like very out of place, and also detracted from the other more important issues I'd have liked to see discussed more in the book, as I mentioned above.

We also have our primary antagonist for the book, Lt Parker, misogynist supreme and primary obstacle in Elma's way. I appreciate that Kowal tried to give him some depth instead of being a cartoon villain, but I also felt like he flip-flopped a lot between being weirdly tolerable and even giving Elma some opportunities, to downright blackmailing her and then actively trying to leak potentially damaging information about her to the press. It was all very confusing.

I also felt like the ending could've been more fully fleshed out - everything felt a bit too rushed and convenient to get the nice ending that we expected. In particular, I was very surprised that we didn't even get to see a last farewell scene between Elma and Nathaniel, considering how much intimacy we've been seeing from them through the book. However, I also really liked how we saw Elma's anxiety play out in the way she kept having thoughts about it could be the last time she talked to this person, or the last time she did this thing, in the days and moments leading up to her first space flight. It was incredibly relatable for me as someone who also has those anxious thoughts leading up to an event that I'm fearful and anxious about, so I appreciated the accuracy of that.

Ultimately, it was entertaining enough. I may pick up the next book but probably not so soon.

4 stars. This book was intricately written and beautiful to read, although I also have a feeling that perhaps the translations don't do the original text justice. The pacing was just about right for most of the book, except when it slowed down somewhat around the halfway mark. The ending was satisfying and felt proportionate to the thrill of the rest of the book.

Ultimately, this book was juicy and soap-opera-ish following in the traditions of Spanish predecessors like The Count of Monte Cristo. It uses its pretext of being a book about books pretty well and it's not just some gimmick that only serves as a hook, but I also kinda wish that that theme was more intricately bound to the central plot and mystery. Nevertheless though, it was overall thoroughly entertaining and I spent at least one night unable to stop reading because I just had to find out what was going to happen next.

Daniel made a pretty good protagonist. We first begin following him when he's an innocent 10 year old boy, and follow him through some embarrassing and cringey pre-pubescent years. He develops his first crush and though the way he sets about it is undoubtedly cringey as you might expect of a character that age, there's also something sympathetic about the way Zafron writes him - I certainly commiserated with Daniel as much as I rolled my eyes at his adolescent antics.

Perhaps my favourite character in the book is Fermin, a boisterous former beggar who has more personality than his skeletal frame might hint at. One of the most memorable parts of the book for me is when he compared men to lightbulbs and women to heating irons in terms of how quickly these two genders are sexually aroused. Or perhaps this gem:

“That woman is a volcano on the point of eruption, with a libido of igneous magma yet the heart of an angel.”

I don't know how accurately this has been translated but I'm just here for it.

If you like book about books, or just want a thoroughly engaging and exciting historical mystery with juicy drama, this book is absolutely for you.

Everything about this book was completely out of my comfort zone and not at all what I would gravitate towards, but I enjoyed it so much. The protagonist was more endearing than most other protagonists I've read, despite being part-robot. The storytelling was solid, and the plot was such a breath of fresh air. This is a 4 to 4.5* read for me, with the only thing stopping it from being a 5* simply being that I zoned out sometimes during the more sci-fi-ish bits, which was sometimes quite dense for a sci-fi layperson like me.

This is a pretty short book, but it took me probably more than half of it to figure out exactly what was going on in terms of the world, the plot, and even just the names for everything (I'm just not used to so much sci-fi and tech jargon in my books). Despite that, the book still managed to be engaging enough almost right from the start, primarily due to the the protagonist's engaging voice - it might be a Murderbot, but it's also just a really shy, introverted entity that just wants to hide behind its opaque face shield thing all day, watch the amazing amount of TV serials it's downloaded, and not have to talk to humans, especially not about its feelings. Honestly, kind of relatable.

Murderbot (it doesn't really have an actual name, so we'll just call it that) is contracted out to a group of scientists and explorers, presumably in some spacefaring civilisation. It's actually a SecUnit (a security unit) that is rented out to these expeditions to protect people from hostile alien lifeforms (or other humans, I suppose). We kinda sorta get to know the scientists in Murderbot's group and they play a big role in the actual plot of this particular story, but the book being as short as it is means that we don't get the time to actually know these characters very well. While I'd love to hear more of them in the subsequent instalments, the main attraction of the story really is Murderbot and its perspective so I wouldn't say this at all detracts from the beauty of the book.

The group and Murderbot discover another expedition of scientists brutally murdered, and then it's a rollercoaster ride from there as they try to figure out who's behind that massacre before the culprits catch up with them to do the same.

What I particularly liked about the storytelling is that, even though we get the events from Murderbot's perspective, we can't help also feeling a little distrustful of Murderbot and wondering if it might be an unreliable narrator. Does that mean I'm siding with the humans over the non-human, even though we are seeing the story through the latter's eyes? What makes Murderbot, who is only part-robot with “organic parts” (i.e. human bits, since it has an actual face and other human organs, which it is able to regenerate when injured or even regrow when it's completely blasted off), different from the augmented humans in this story, when both of them are able to access feeds and information systems presumably via their brains alone? Tl;dr this is a sci-fi story but I find that it made me ask a lot of pretty interesting questions about the nature of robots and artificial intelligence, especially when juxtaposed with human emotions. And the book didn't bald-facedly ask those questions, just set things up so that readers might be provoked into asking these for themselves. That's damn good writing there.

Overall, highly recommended for anyone, especially if you're a sci-fi fan. But even if you're like me and not familiar with sci-fi at all, this still remains a great read.

Hovering between 3 and 3.5. This was a solid world with an intriguing, if sometimes confusing, magic system, although it felt really rushed during some major scenes and I wound up not feeling attached to most of the main characters.

Every two decades or so, there is a Turning: a magical tournament in which the various magical Houses participate in for a chance to win and become the leading House of the Unseen World. This time though, the Turning happens in 13 years instead of 20, and a mysterious champion turns everything upside down when she emerges from the Shadows to represent an unknown, new candidate.

I usually don't like urban fantasy but I'll give this book props for writing urban fantasy in a way that still somehow managed to engage me a lot. I also really appreciate that the book casually weaves in modern technology into the magical world. The magicians live in a world pretty much like our own, just that they take care to hide themselves from us “mundanes”, something pretty akin to the world of Harry Potter. But they don't shy away from technology. In fact, they've found a way to wrap up some magic with technology itself, so emails can be sent with wards and spells, or similarly some wards over information can make a person unable to type anything but nonsense if they attempted to convey that information electronically.

The characters were OK, but honestly I didn't find most of them super interesting. Our protagonist, Sydney, is probably the most fleshed out person in this book, but for some reason she fell a little flat for me. She was okay. I didn't hate her, I didn't love her, and because she has a pretty traumatic past, she wasn't much given to expressing affection or humour. The only way she knew how to express herself was in asserting her magical powers, which was pretty badass but I felt like we barely scratched the surface of what she could do.

She has a bit of a romance with another character in the book, but the beginning of it felt a little abrupt. I get that it was a one-night stand, but then they just randomly ditched a Challenge that Sydney had just finished and hopped off within 5 sentences of meeting each other? I didn't really buy it. I didn't mind the romance. I didn't really buy into it, but it wasn't obnoxiously annoying and was really kinda barely-there for me to really have much thoughts about it either way.

The antagonists in this book all kinda felt a little too much like cartoon villains, and not even particularly powerful ones at that. The only one I was remotely interested in was Shara, and I felt like it'd have been nice to see more from her perspective, what her motivations were, what she may possibly have suffered before, what had caused her to be trapped to the House of Shadows etc. but then she died but none of these were answered, at least not in this instalment. I was also a little miffed that the major confrontations in this with the villains near the end was so short and abrupt. Both of them, even the big fight scene at the end, lasted a grand total of TWO pages each. That's really hardly enough and barely gives us a taste of what badassery magic is capable of. So the climax of the book was really anticlimactic - over before it even really began - and the bad people were just casually eliminated or chased away before we really felt like anyone was in danger. Heck, even Sydney's destruction of the House of Shadows took me by surprise at how short and abrupt it was. I even had to read back and check whether it wasn't just a dream sequence because it felt like it. So she waited all this time and suffered at the hands of Shara, when she could've just gone in and burnt everything down as soon as she acquired the magic from the Four Seasons duel? Why did she even wait? I don't think her magic even increased much between the Four Seasons duel and when she finally decided to tear the House down.

There generally seemed to be a lack of stakes in this book too. Although the tournament was all about killing people, and there were a few slightly gruesome deaths that happened, we barely see any of the major characters being killed off. I had expected Miranda to die during the duel between Sydney and Ian, but nope, she just got her magic somehow sheered off for some inexplicable reason. Between Sydney's little support group of Laurent, Harper, and Madison, I really expected one of them to die - but nope, none of them did, even though Madison came close. Sydney was never even close to dying so by the end I wasn't even sorry that she lost her magic because I felt like she had been in god mode for the entire story and we were finally seeing some sacrifices on her part.

Just want to give a shoutout to the only character that I actually got attached to: the actual House Prospero, who is a cinnamon roll.

The first chapter or two were a bit of an info dump. Tyson doesn't shy away from the numbers, and the basic scientific principles underlying the concepts he is attempting to drive across, and therefore assumes some basic knowledge of chemistry and physics right from the get-go. From the third chapter or so onwards, he eases into a more laypeople-friendly tone, inserting everyday analogies to help us understand the concepts or the scales at which he is describing astrophysics. Overall, an entertaining and educational book on one of my favourite non-fiction topics which I thoroughly enjoyed - though it's probably not for everyone.

This was perfectly what I needed right now. Short and sweet cases with all the comforting quality of Agatha Christie's writing. Some of them have pretty obvious solutions, others not so, while still others aren't even mysteries at all but supernatural short stories hidden within this collection, and have absolutely nothing to do with Miss Marple.

Christie just had such an accessible, comforting style of writing that I can't find in many other writers, even her contemporaries. She might be writing about death and murder and poison and assault, but everything just fills so breezy and like a cozy day in the English countryside. Her stories are also generally concise and to-the-point: everything you need to know is on the page, but it isn't in your face either so you need to be particularly looking out for it.

Of the actual mystery stories in this collection, perhaps The Tape-Measure Murder or Sanctuary were my favourites. The rest were fine but fairly standard. If you've read enough Christie, you probably could make a fairly good guess at the solutions. The Tape-Measure Murder and Sanctuary had a bit more of an oomph to them, having more complex backstories or a standout feature of the murder.

But the stories that I might actually remember most in this collection are the two non-mystery stories: The Dressmaker's Doll and In A Glass Darkly. I was caught off guard at first by The Dressmaker's Doll because I expected a mystery to be behind all of this, but then imagine my surprise when no mystery happened and there really was some kind of supernatural phenomenon happening here. In A Glass Darkly toned down the supernatural aspect a bit, but it was still pretty engaging. These made me keen to try out Christie's non-mystery novels which I have been meaning to read for years and years and still haven't picked up.

Overall, I rated this at 4 stars mainly because they were just all so darn comforting and enjoyable to read. Definitely a great filler book when you're in a bit of a reading slump or when you just want something a bit light-hearted but engaging and enjoyable.

I basically finished this entire book almost in one sitting. It was so fun, so weird, and so creative! It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea though, because the whole crux of the premise lies in the words it uses to tell the story, so a lot of big words and confusing made-up words are used. I personally love that kinda thing, so this was right up my alley. This was a 4.5 star read for me, slightly rounded down.

The story is about a fictional island off the east coast of the USA that was founded by Nevin Nollop, also the author of the pangram: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” A statue commemorating him and his famous pangram stands in the town center. This is also an epistolary novel, where we just read letters written between characters in the story, mainly between two cousins who live on different parts of the island, Ella and Tassie. Everyone on this island seems to be very literary and use VERY big words in their letters, but almost in a very satirical way so I was pretty into it. In the first chapter, the “z” tile from Nollop's statue drops off and the Council governing the island takes it as a divine manifestation that the letter should be eradicated from their language, so everybody above the age of 7 must no longer use the letter in speaking or writing. More and more letters drop off and are banned from use until only LMNOP remain, appropriately foreshadowed by our heroine's name, Ella Minnow Pea.

The premise sounds pretty humorous and absurd, but the book actually has a pretty dark tinge of dystopia in it. The Council quickly devolves the island into a cult-like totalitarian state, worshipping Nollop and his “Omniglory”. It almost feels like A Handmaid's Tale but with the premise of banning alphabets. Not all characters make it out alive from this regime. While the premise sounds childish, this isn't a book for children. The letters between the characters are almost purple-prosey with how many multisyllabic words they use, and then devolve so much that I had to verbally read it out to decipher what they were saying. This is a book most suited for adults who love wordplay in creative forms.

The premise is by far one of the most refreshingly unique ones I've read about in a while and I appreciate the book for that. Because of that and the short length, I couldn't put the book down and basically finished it within a couple of hours. The only reason why this wasn't a full 5 stars for me was just because I got incredibly confused with the relationships of the characters writing to each other, as well as where they were. For a long time I couldn't figure out if Ella or Tassie were both in the same place or not, or where they were, and who was attached to whom. In the bigger picture it didn't really matter that much, but I wish I had more clarity on that.

Overall, this was such a fun and short read. I'd recommend it to anyone who loves wordplay and letters, and a narrative that isn't afraid to play around with that to tell a story.

Honestly, most of this book had pretty A-class humour and Wodehouse's sharp comedic writing was brilliant in here. The reason why I gave this only a 3 stars is because, after about the 50% mark, there are a lot of racist themes that pop up and which unfortunately happen to be integral to the plot. Personally, I'm all for reading books in the context of the time period it's written in and that is the reason why I haven't already DNFed and rated it lower. It was uncomfortable to read and ultimately I just can't, in good conscience, give it anything higher than 3 stars.

Bertie Wooster is infatuated with the banjolele and in his steadfast determination to keep up with the instrument, Jeeves resigns from his service. Thrown out of his apartment for being a noise pollutant, Bertie finds solace in lodging at Chuffnell Regis, a cottage belonging to an old school pal Chuffy, who had immediately snapped up Jeeves as his valet straight after his resignation. As with any Jeeves story goes, things get complicated when American heiress Pauline Stoker, to whom Bertie had been engaged to for just two days some time ago, and her father turns up as guests of Chuffy, along with Sir Roderick Glossop.

Wodehouse stories are entertaining but they do follow a bit of a formula: Bertie and Jeeves has some sort of disagreement over some thing or other (a banjolele in this one, but it could be Bertie insisting on a certain tie, or being mad about a girl), and separately Bertie will get called into a situation where he sinks into trouble quicker than someone flailing in quicksand. Everything seems to get hopelessly messed up and entangled, but eventually by the end, Jeeves works everything out, usually at Bertie's expense (usually making a huge fool out of his employer, but which Bertie would be past caring about at that point), and also neatly finding a way to eliminate the thorn in their relationship at the same time. Jeeves always prevails.

This is primarily a reason why I love Bertie & Jeeves stories. Everything becomes so messy and then everything is neatened up so beautifully. Along the way, you get some really sparking examples of humourous writing. If Wodehouse set about trying to satirize the foppish, empty-headedness of the average upper-class young male specimen, he could not have done it better in the dynamic between Jeeves and Bertie. This book is no different in that regard and the writing, at least in the first half of this book, is one of the better examples in the whole series.

But then we come to the disastrous second half, to put things lightly, really did not age well. To summarize the offending plot element, a troupe of travelling musicians of African descent are in the Chuffnell Regis neighbourhood. Some terms are used to refer to them which were fine back in the 1930s, but certainly derogatory now - this I could have closed an eye to given the time period. It is however when Bertie finds himself in a sticky situation and then has to use “boot polish” on his face in order to disguise himself as one of the musicians in order to make his way out is when the trouble starts. I was hoping that this is just a transient scene which would end in a chapter or two, but nope - this goes on and on almost for the rest of the book, with other characters responding negatively to seeing Bertie in what is essentially blackface.

I reiterate that I'm a believer that books should be taken in the context of the time, age, and society it was written in. I don't know about Wodehouse's own personal belief systems and have not read up about his life at all, but taking the book on its own merit, I don't think that there was an overt racist agenda in this plot. It just read like an author who was reproducing the (harmful) values that has been ingrained into him by the time period and society he lived in, but not that he was enthusiastically goading people on to do harmful or malicious things. Nevertheless, there's no denying that reading it in 2022 was rough, which is why I could only rate it at 3 stars. If the plot element had been completely absent, this would be minimally a 4 star, if not higher.

If this is something you could probably stomach reading and you are already a fan of Jeeves stories, then this book would be good to check out, but it's not something I'd be actively recommending to people, and especially not those new to the series.

This was a book. I've never read anything quite like it. It occupies that rare, weird spot where I appreciate what Dickens was trying to do with it, I thought the concept was interesting and I acknowledge the impact the book did have on actual society at the time of its publication, but I can't decide if I personally enjoyed it and I certainly wouldn't give this as a blanket recommendation to just anyone.

In a nutshell, the crux of the plot lies in two conflicting wills disposing of a significant fortune. One favours a Mr Jarndyce, while the other favours his distant cousins, Ada Clare and Richard Carstone. Not wanting to sow discord, Mr Jarndyce takes in Ada and Richard as his wards while the legal battle between the wills is wrought. We see all this through the eyes of our sometime narrator, Esther Summerson, a girl whose parentage is unknown and was also left in Mr Jarndyce's care as his ward and brought up in a boarding school, from which she was asked to live with Ada as her companion.

This is only my third Dickens novel (and I haven't read him in years and years), so the writing style here was a huge problem for me. While I read a fair bit of classics, I still can't get used to the way Dickens writes. Bleak House has the advantage of having an unusual dash of humour that wasn't present in the other two Dickens novels I've read - I was surprised by how almost Wodehouse-ian the narrative sounded at some points. However, there were still a lot of convoluted sentences that required some re-reading to understand and as a result, I felt like I missed at least 20% of the important plot details by the time I had finished and had to supplement my reading with a quick gander through the Wikipedia synopsis. A quick example - while I'm not expecting anything so unpoetic as baldly stating, “He died.” Dickens chose to write this as “He began the world, but not this one. The world that sets this right.” It's not unintelligible, but it really is a hit-or-miss style of writing that could either bowl you over with how beautiful it is, or just make you go, “I'm sorry, what?!” I feel like I'm straddling the midway point there, and probably leaning a bit towards the latter.

Furthermore, the way this book was written was... phew. Thank goodness I read some GR reviews while I was about a quarter way through, which gave me an idea of what this book was meant to achieve. Bleak House, was apparently, Dickens's attempt to criticise the English legal system at the time for being long-winded, meandering, inefficient and bloated with unnecessary, irrelevant details. The way he chose to do it was to make the progress of Bleak House feel like a court case - long-winded, meandering, bloated with unnecessary, irrelevant details. In the first half of the book, I constantly felt like I had no idea what the hook of the story was. We kept switching perspectives between Esther's narrative, to third-person chapters of random scenes with apparently random characters. I much preferred Esther's thread because at least there was a semblance of a storyline to follow, whereas the third-person chapters felt so irrelevant that I probably skimmed quite a few of these.

Of course, Dickens finds a way to tie everything together in the end and some time in the second half, you realise that these random scenes and random characters are not quite so random after all. But I did have to persevere up to around the 65% mark before things started making a lot more sense and I was finally somewhat hooked. If I hadn't been reading this for a buddy read, I might quite likely have dropped the book some time in the first half though - waiting for the 65% mark before a long and meandering book starts to pull you in does seem to be asking too much for most readers unless they're already a huge fan of Dickens or are interested in the English legal system.

This was OK, kinda fun in some places, kinda draggy in others. As usual, there was some pretty heavy-handed religious allegory in the second half of the book, but without as much of a narrative drive as in Lion, Witch, Wardrobe.

More than anything, I felt that the personalities of the children here felt a bit more effaced compared to the first book. In the first book, Lucy was gentle, innocent, and pure, Edmund was self-centered, narrow-minded but ultimately repentant, and Peter was always noble and righteous. Susan was a bit of a non-entity in the first book, and she takes a different turn from her siblings in this second book, more on that later. In this book, I found that the children's personalities became more blurry, indistinct, and bland.

Lucy had her moments of being the innocent clinging on to her faith despite the mockery and disbelief of the world, as she did in the first book, but there was a bit less of her wonder and joy at being in Narnia. Peter was pretty much as he was in the first book, apparently always doing the right thing but there's nothing much to make him stand out. Edmund, who was one of the most interesting characters in the first book because he actually had character growth and a redemption arc which is more than any of his siblings did, became a pseudo-Peter in this one. He even manages to out-Peter Peter when he chooses to believe Lucy when the others would not. This might be part of his redemption arc but I wish more had been done with him.

By an unintended twist, Susan became a bit more interesting in this one. I couldn't really tell you what she did at all in the first book because she was just along for the ride and didn't do much else. In this one though, out of the four siblings, she is the first one to start choosing not to believe in Aslan - not because of any dramatic evil personae working on her mind like the White Witch did with Edmund in the first book, but simply because she... chooses not to? She doesn't turn evil or bad or anything, but it's interesting and a little saddening to see one's childhood incredulity and energy slip away so visibly.

The Prince Caspian storyline comes straight out of a fairytale and was just okay. It was entertaining enough but also nothing mind-blowing. What was most interesting about it was perhaps at the end when it's revealed that the Telmarines are actually descendents of real-world pirates who had somehow slipped into Narnia. It was a really wild story with them being stuck on an island and brutalizing the natives there and then somehow traversing a crack in the world into Narnia. I think there might be some message here about colonialism, not just in the real world with the pirates killing the natives of the Pacific island and “taking their native women as wives”, but also coming into Narnia and then colonizing Narnians. It all introduces a very interesting thread that I didn't think I would come across in the Narnia series.

Looking forward to go on to the next one.

This was really just... okay. This was Charlotte Bronte's first written novel (but last published) and it shows. While it had some glimmers of her descriptive talents shown with aplomb in Jane Eyre, and the vibe of this one had more than a little similarity with Villette, ultimately this didn't reach up to the standards of either. But that's a good thing for Bronte then, since she clearly grew as a writer so much more.

Our titular narrator is a William Crimsworth and we spend a good nearly ten chapters trudging through his life at the abusive hands of his brother and employer. We see how he meets his friend Hunsden. It is only very nearly halfway through the book when Crimsworth finally throws his resignation at his brother and, assisted by Hunsden's recommendation, makes his way to Brussels where he finds employment at a school to be The Professor.

I was a little afraid that this book might turn out to be a 19th century version of Lolita but I was pleased to note that the student mentioned in every blurb of this book is not exactly an underaged flower (and honestly you can't assume with these 19th century novels, it was a wildly different time back then), but actually a fellow teacher who is just sitting in in Crimsworth's classes to improve her English. Granted, however, that the lady in question is still incredibly young at nineteen but I was really expecting much worse.

I also felt a little ostracised that so much dialogue in this book was in French and I don't know the language. I know Jane Eyre had a bit of French in it but it was more obtrusive in this one given that it's set in a French-speaking part of Brussels, Belgium.

There were a lot of passages which I kinda skimmed through because it all felt a bit besides the point. I felt that the ending could've been a lot tighter as well. I was skimming through the whole bit where Frances was arguing with Hunsden, and then right at the end where we had all that information about what happened to the Crimsworths after they got married and set up that school but no clue why this was related to us. Why do we need to know about William shooting the poor dog? That was just upsetting.

Overall, this was fine. Not the most boring classic I've read and it did have a somewhat tight storyline that was easy to follow, but not by far the best of Charlotte Bronte's works.

i grew up on TV adaptations of Jin Yong novels, but i've never actually read the source material of any of them. Legend of the Condor Heroes is not the most popular story to adapt, but it's a good place to start for me because it's really chronologically the beginning of everything else - all the other popular Jin Yong stories are almost like sequels and take place generationally downstream from Legend.

this is the first official English translation of a Jin Yong novel and while i can read Chinese, i found it difficult to understand the complex writing style the the original books were written in, so i was really excited for this one. overall, it was enjoyable, but a few things put me off - mostly to do with the translation work, unfortunately.

Skyfury Guo and Ironheart Yang are fellow patriots of the fallen Song dynasty, who are trying to eke out a humble living in a rural village while biding their time to rebel against the reigning Jin empire. they're sworn brothers, so when their wives get pregnant at the same time, they agree to name each other's unborn child, who eventually turn out to be Guo Jing and Yang Kang, the real main characters of this entire series. shit goes down, and the families are separated. Guo Jing grows up in the steppes of Mongolia, in the retinue of Temujin, also known as Genghis Khan, no less. he learns horsemanship and archery from his Mongolian tutors, and martial arts from a bunch of famous martial artists called the Seven Freaks of the South. unbeknownst to him, he is actually the subject of a bet that the Seven Freaks have placed with a Taoist that they had met years before, Qiu Chuji, and is being trained to defeat Qiu Chuji's protege when he turns 18.

a huge thing i noticed almost immediately in the opening few chapters is how much more violent the book is compared to the TV adaptations that i grew up in. the story pulls no punches when it comes to just how gruesome and ruthless the martial arts world can be, whereas this is mostly censored and sanitised to be family-friendly in the TV shows. this is great though, and gives me more incentive to continue reading the source material.

i had issues with the names of the characters - why were some translated and some not? Skyfury Guo is also known as Guo Xiaotian in the original novel; “Skyfury” is a very literal translation of the characters “Xiaotian”, and it seemed unnecessary to make that translation. it was also jarring because so many other characters did not have translated names, like Guo Jing, Qiu Chuji, Wang Chuyi, etc. it seemed almost like a random decision on which characters got their names translated and which didn't. i wish it had been more consistent in that aspect.

i has issues with the way the book was translated. this is a long epic story that has captured the attention and affection in Chinese pop culture since the 1950s, along with other Jin Yong works. my dad said he made it a point to rush home and listen to the radio drama of Jin Yong novels broadcasted at a certain time every day. it was the 50s and 60s equivalent of a soap opera almost. it's meant to be mad exciting and keeping you at the edge of your seat. the fact that Jin Yong novels are still continually being adapted for TV till today is testament to the undying popularity of his works. but the translation in this one fell a bit flat for me. i found myself getting bored towards the second half of the book, and started skimming really hard in the last third.

but as i've mentioned before, Jin Yong's writing style is really complex and i can only imagine how nightmarish it must have been to attempt to translate it, so for that i have to give Anna Holmwood kudos. although the translation wasn't as exciting as i may have wanted, i can still appreciate how much effort it took to even get it to this decent standard.

this book started off really slow in the first 1/3 but it got better after that and i couldn't put it down in the last third of the book. this is a book that is better read not solely for its plot, which is generally slow-going, but for the introspection that it offers on how it might feel like, and the different paths open, to gay gentlemen in early 20th C England. Maurice pretty early on realises that his sexuality cannot be reconciled with Christianity so he gives up on that, but he takes a much longer time to face up to the realities of living as a homosexual man in his society. i like the idea near the end where the book says that Clive and him are descended from the same Clive from their time in Cambridge - they were both in almost identical positions in life, but one chose respectability and the other rebellion. man, Alec's letters to Maurice also twisted knives in my heart :( it's also interesting that Maurice's love of his life ended up being a gamekeeper, and presumably of a different class. i'm sure class hierarchy was still a big thing even at that time, so i think in having this relationship be doubly taboo in that it also transcends class boundaries, it also rebels against the Greek ideals that Maurice had initially based his sexual awakening on, because (iirc) Greek homosexuality was only amongst men of the same class? and it felt like in making big sacrifices for each other and deserting their own classes, both of them ended up becoming equal with each other. frankly i skimmed through some parts of this book but i enjoyed it overall because in writing fiction instead of a biography, we can sort of have a more intimate insight into the inner workings of perhaps Forster himself, and the generally-hidden world of homosexuality he was a part of at the time.

This isn't going to be much of a review cos I honestly don't feel like I know this book well enough to even write a fair review, despite having finished it.

I'm quite glad that Waugh wrote a preface before this book explaining his frame of mind when writing this, and what he had set out to achieve. He had written this when on medical leave in WW2, sickened by his experiences, simultaneously homesick and also jaded. He wanted to write an eulogy to the culture of the English country house and its upper classes, which he saw to be on its way to irrelevance and obscurity. This helped me put a lot of this book into context, but even then - boy, was it a difficult book to finish.

Waugh's surfeit of descriptions and narrative was probably analogous to the meaningless excesses of the English upper class, but it didn't make it any easier to get through. I nearly DNFed multiple times in the first 25%. Things got a little smoother after that when some semblance of a plot picks up, but also not by a whole lot.

I'm really on the fence about this book. On one hand, I think I have some idea of what it's trying to do in a metatextual kind of way, and I can give props to that. On the other, it was sometimes entrancing, but sometimes really a slog to get through (and that may have been intentional on the author's part - but even so). There is maybe a group of people I would recommend this to but this is far from a blanket recommendation to anyone, even if they like classic literature.

This is a bit of a hard book to rate. Technically, it had some flaws that I couldn't ignore with its pacing, structure, etc. and the characters were generally not likeable, but... despite these I enjoyed it, and certainly more than I expected to at the beginning. If you go into this one throwing realism out of the window and expecting almost a sort of modern Shakespearean drama with all its attendant wild and crazy happenings, you might end up enjoying this one.

Our narrator and protagonist, Oliver Marks, has just been released from prison where he had served 10 years for murder. As he walks out of prison, the sympathetic detective who had arrested him in the first place asks him to tell him the real story of what happened. Oliver reminisces about his time in the Dellecher School a decade ago, and the group of 7 theatre students that he had been intimately part of. Filippa, Wren, Alexander, Richard, James, Meredith, and himself, and how their group, once so close together, slowly came to a climax of tragedy and heartbreak before falling apart.

When I first started this book, I was a little annoyed by how stupid pretentious these students were. They ate, lived, and breathed Shakespeare, to the point of inserting random quotations into their everyday speech when it fit the occasion. It felt like a lite version of The Secret History, a book which I DNFed about a third through and didn't enjoy very much, so I was pretty nervous and apprehensive at the beginning of this one when it gave me a lot of TSH vibes. Luckily though, this eased as the book went on. I'm not sure if I just got used to it or because the drama between the students were a bit more compelling and engaging, or the characters were more interesting to read about. Whatever the case, there was certainly a compulsion for me to keep reading and I finished probably the last 75% of the book at one shot, unable to put it down because I wanted to know what happened.

There are two things to keep in mind here that might make the book go down easier. Firstly, like what present-day Oliver mentions in one of the prologues, on hindsight Dellecher felt more like a cult than a school. It's not obvious when you're reading about it from the perspective of fourth-year-student Oliver, but then again cults never are that obvious when you're in the thick of it. It does also explain some of the more over-the-top moments where it almost felt like Oliver would rather die than leave Dellecher, and would certainly sacrifice any number of his family members to stay. It explains why these ostensibly well-educated, intelligent, and sensitive young adults are willing to put up with so much crap in their time at Dellecher, apparently to become better at their craft of acting.

Secondly, this book is a homage and a love letter to Shakespearean plays, particularly tragic dramas. It's not aiming for realism here. A lot of events that happen, especially in the last 25% are so incredibly unrealistic that I find it pretty clear that the author was deliberately steering away from realism and really indulging in that wild, fantastic endings that Shakespeare is famous for. It's basically a modern-day Shakespearean soap opera. This book demands suspension of disbelief In the same way that one would do so when watching soap operas. If you can get past that, you might actually enjoy it.

Thoughts on the ending: I had actually wondered that perhaps Oliver had been convicted for the the murder of someone else and not Richard, and that we're going to see him murder James at the end, but I was wrong. Some people thought the ending was a little shoehorned in with Oliver and James being gay, but I would disagree with that. There have always been little hints and stuff through the book where you might wonder if you were imagining things and thinking too much, or if you were meant to think that there was something between the two. I did really enjoy the fact that this was building up in the background all along and it finally emerged at the end. I do kinda think that James's possibly faking his own death at the end was a bit unnecessary, but it's just about as unnecessary as, say, a faked-death in Romeo & Juliet. I think the just-missed opportunity at a HEA and the OTT sacrifice from Oliver was Rio paying homage to all these tragic plays where everyone winds up accidentally dead or maligned some way or other.

McDowell has got that sweet balance between atmospheric and supernatural horror down to an art. This book kept me on the edge of my seat almost the whole way through and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The Elementals is basically architectural horror a la [b:House of Leaves 24800 House of Leaves Mark Z. Danielewski https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403889034l/24800.SX50.jpg 856555] meets a touch of Edgar Allan Poe and a good dash of Stephen King.The McCray and Savage families have always been inseparable - for generations, they have been neighbours in Beldame, Alabama, owning Victorian houses in the remote small peninsula that is occasionally cut off from the rest of the town by high tide. But there's also a third house next to theirs, supposedly unoccupied through the decades or centuries and now threatening to be eroded by the sand dune that has built up next to it. When the Savage matriarch, Marian Savage, passes away suddenly, the families decides to go back to Beldame to recover and pick up the pieces of their individual relationships. But the sand gets everywhere.The suspense and horror in this book was exquisite. It doesn't rely so much on jumpscare or graphic moments, but slowly builds up a creepy sense of uneasiness that something isn't quite right, before occasionally plunging you into an EEEK! moment. There were moments in this book that actually elicited a hair-raising response from me and for that, this is already a 5 star. I was even a little spooked to be reading this at 3.30am and being the last one awake in the house.At the same time, the premise of this book isn't just... ghosts. There's something a bit more complex than that, and it keeps the book fresh and interesting. There's clearly a haunted house in the book, but what exactly is haunting it? Without going too much into spoilers, I'll just say that McDowell keeps you guessing right till the end. It's an interesting concept that would certainly ruminate in my mind for a while to come.Overall, I cannot but highly recommend this book for fans of architectural and atmospheric horror, or really just anyone looking for a thoroughly spooky read.

Overall, really enjoyed this one. While Alloy of Law felt more self contained western/Victorian action thriller, I found that Shadows of Self started expanding that to the wider Mistborn lore and a lot of very interesting and far-reaching questions are being asked. We also have your usual Sanderson mix of tortured heroes, semi-mysterious comic relief characters, unknowable omnipresent gods and demi-gods, and just a whole lot of fun.

Continuing where the first book left off, we follow Wax now as he, at the behest of Harmony himself, tracks down a mysterious and nigh invincible creature that's looking to start a revolution in Elendel. Marasi is now pursuing her dreams as a constable led by Aradel, while Wayne is still... Wayne.

Steris continues to be my favourite character of this series, if not of the entire Cosmere, which is saying a lot considering she's such a side character who has barely appeared in Books 1 and 2 so far. She's like Mr Collins from Pride and Prejudice, but less pompous and more honest. We left off Book 1 with a really weird and sticky romance undercurrent going on between Wax and Marasi, but which Wax has pointedly avoided by stupidly getting engaged to Steris - and yet, he seems to be gaining ever more affection and respect for her, his partner in this almost-marriage of convenience. I wouldn't be mad if Steris ended up with Wax, but tbh I don't think she needs him to shine on her own. I'm kinda hoping that she'll turn out to be an OP character in a later book - why would Sanderson put such a bright and unique character in the wings for no reason and to serve no plot purpose? Her damsel in distress role has already expired at the end of Book 1.

Some lore theories for the rest of the series: I still wonder what is it that "moves" Bleeder and Bloody Tan and it's not Harmony (and that conversation he had with Wax in his head was so weird and hilarious), it can't be Ruin/Preservation anymore so I'm not sure if it was ever fully explained. I had a Cosmere super-fan explain to me that name Marasi mentions at the end, Trell, is the god of Sazed's old religion. My cross-Cosmere theory is that Trell is going to end up being someone from the Stormlight Archives... it's wild and I don't know enough of my Sanderson timeline and connections enough to back it up but I just have a hunch like that.

Some thoughts on the ending: The moment Bleeder took on Lessie's face and mannerisms, I had a sneaking suspicion that Lessie had been Bleeder all along, but I quelled those suspicions given that Bleeder never revealed it and chose to only say it *just* after Wax had to kill her - again. I gotta say **poor Wax**!! having to kill the person you loved not once but *twice*!! He not only has to work through that but also the whole trauma of realizing that this person you loved had lied big time to you, had murdered a vast number of people, had conspired with your murdering uncle against you, and was inches away from putting a bullet through your head just moments before. I hope Wax realizes that Bleeder, though she had been Lessie, was no less of a murdering psychopath of a kandra.

I'm in too deep now to stop reading this series and so intend to finish up Book 3 before the new book for Era 2 comes out in mid-November.

To be very honest, I didn't really like this one a lot overall, but let me start off with what I did like about it. The magic system had really great promise and I was genuinely interested in finding out more about the mysterious clock that Matt had, and what powers India was going to turn out to have regarding clocks. The set-up for the mystery around Matt and his watch was pretty neat, and that really kept me going in the beginning chapters. I also kinda enjoyed the banter and chemistry between Willie, Duke, and Cyclops.

Now, things I didn't like. Relating to the above, I wish more had been done with the magic system. The book kinda starts off with that particular mystery, but then switches tack halfway to the hunt for an American outlaw, the Dark Rider, and we only find out some answers to the magic system in a pretty hasty and anticlimactic revelation scene at the end. It's like their magic powers is more of an afterthought even though I personally found it much more interesting than the American outlaw thread.

There was also a lot about the book that didn't make sense to me, especially India's ridiculous crime-solving skills: Matt is newly arrived from America, an America outlaw has been newly spotted around town, therefore he must be the outlaw! Matt's cousin is named Johnson, the American outlaw is named Johnson, therefore the outlaw must be from Matt's family! The leaps in logic here really took me out of the story a lot.

I was also not a huge fan of the romance between India and Matt. Aside from the insta-lust thing going on which I get is a trope in this genre by this time, it was honestly a little discomfiting how much India would get sexual thoughts about Matt at the worst moments, like in the middle of a high-speed chase, or when mysterious gunshots ring in the house in the middle of the night and when she is comforting a scared old lady.

There were many other instances where characters' motivations felt inconsistent to me and sadly, I couldn't really immerse myself into the story as much as I would've liked. I really really wish the magic system played more of a part in this story though! It had such great potential to be something new and refreshing.

I don't knowwwww, man. This book is so well-liked with all the great reviews and stuff but it just didn't work for me. It wasn't terrible by any means and had a fairly interesting story, but I just... found it a little draggy almost.

We get a split narrative here, first with Lovelace's brand new iteration after the end of the first book, now also stuck in a “kit”, i.e. a synthetic body that looks and can behave like a human but isn't. Pepper brings her back to her home planet of Coriol, where Lovelace gains a new name (Sidra), meets Pepper's friend/partner, and eventually learns about life as a sentient AI. In the other narrative, we learn about Pepper's origins, from her beginning as possibly some kind of clone, her life in a factory (literally a factory in which she and other girls like her are made), and then eventually how she ended up as a mechanic.

Book 1 was amazing for me because it had a strong plot driving things forward while also giving us the readers time to know the different members of the crew, the ways different species behaved and interacted, and the unique stories for each member. Because there was an underlying point of the story, I appreciated everything else the book was showing me about species that were gender-fluid, or had much more complex family units (more than two parents, most of whom are not biological), etc. This book - didn't have that.

Instead, Book 2 spends a lot of time in both narratives meandering and taking its time. We don't really have any crisis or a “mission objective” for the narrative until maybe about 75% in. In a sense, it reminded me a lot of Chambers's other novella series, Monk and Robot, but it worked for that one because the point of that book was to be contemplative and to almost function like Plato's Dialogues in the way it was exploring concepts and asking thought-provoking questions. In this one, I didn't get the feeling that that was its objective. Instead, we get smatterings of action here and there, smatterings of questions here and there, but honestly nothing that really had a huge impact on me, or which made me stop and think, “That's such a good question.” which I usually do with most of Chambers's work.

I've heard that the rest of the series will take its time with other characters and so aren't narratively linked to each other, so will still give them a try!

This manga was first published in 2002 and it shows. It's light-hearted enough but chock full of shounen tropes that may have been the rage 20 years ago but feels a little exhausting to read today.

Ichigo Kurosaki is a 15 year old teenager who can see ghosts. Upon seeing an invisible girl in his bedroom, Rukia Kuchiki, who introduces herself as a Soul Reaper, Ichigo also learns that he is somehow imbued with a massive amount of “spiritual energy”. There are two types of ghosts in the world - Wholes and Hollows. Soul Reapers are in charge of sending all these spirits onwards to the Soul Society, although it usually ends up with lots of action chasing down and slashing Hollows, who appears as gigantic monsters.

Firstly, there's the trope of the OP self-insert male protagonist, a classic of so many shounen manga. Ichigo almost from the very first page is overpowered af, just clueless about how much power he possesses. We don't know anything about his background, history, etc. but are immediately asked to believe that he's basically the second coming. The whole first episode with a Hollow attacking his family is solely there to blatantly hammer in a few points to readers: 1) Ichigo is morally upright and, despite his prickly exterior, will do anything to save his family; 2) Ichigo is exponentially more powerful than the only actual Soul Reaper we've met in the story, Rukia. We don't know why, but we just need to accept it anyway; 3) With no training whatsoever, Ichigo is not only able to drain Rukia's entire “dark force” to fight the Hollow, but also able to flawlessly and intuitively do what even experienced Soul Reapers do everyday; 4) It's all a very convenient scene for Rukia to basically info-dump all the lore about Wholes, Hollows, Soul Reapers, Soul Society, etc. etc. to Ichigo and therefore to us, the readers.

Now, all of this might be pretty standard fare in manga of the time but I'm almost certain that there are plenty of manga out there that tell their stories in a better and more immersive way. This is all not to say that I'm DNFing Bleach - I may continue it because there's some comfort in the fairly standard but still interesting magic system and lore here - but the first volume really isn't the most mindblowing piece of manga ever written.

4 stars. Honestly I went into this with almost no recollection of what happened in the first book and was confused for a great part of it. A lot of explanations and recaps came after the 75% mark which I certainly wish could have been earlier. Overall, though, the book got off from a slightly confusing and very introspective beginning, an exciting middle, and an excellent end.

The thing about these Valdemar's stories is that half the dialogue is MindSpeech, or basically telepathy. That being the case, you not only have entire conversations taking place in italics, but we readers are also very privy to our protagonist Vanyel's every thought and mental soliloquy. I don't feel like I've read a book like this before but I'm not mad. It does get a bit much in the beginning, maybe even the whole first half of the book, where I felt like we were just getting Vanyel lamenting about how tired he was and traveling from place to place catching up with people. That's fine though because it was oddly relatable to my life.

I think things really kicked up a notch in the middle after Tashir is introduced (and the circumstances around that). I gotta say that I had trouble sort of telling apart Tashir and Medren quite often, them both being young boys who are hero-worshipping Vanyel for whatever reasons and for whom Van does good turns.

I really enjoyed the whole ending sequence which I won't spoil here, but especially when Van is presented with a certain choice which is really interesting to me and already makes me want to read the next instalment to see how shit is going to hit the fan.

This was an easy and engaging read with magic school and romance elements - but which then takes a darker and more epic turn in the second act.Vanyel Ashkevron is the odd one out in his family - he runs away from rather than allows himself to be “heroically” bullied by various teachers hired by his father, the epitome of toxic masculinity, and is this exiled to his aunt Savil's school. There he finds more appropriate education - and love. But then things don't go according to plan when Savil discovers a hidden well of previously locked abilities in Van.Van reminded me strongly of the teen angst rife in [b:Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 2 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5) J.K. Rowling https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1546910265l/2.SX50.jpg 2809203], especially with the suffering at the hands of parental figures, and the magic school setting. I sympathized with his situation but was also ultimately fairly indifferent to Van until the second act. The character growth then started slow and didn't in fact reach any kind of peak or max potential by the end of the book - which I wasn't mad at since this is a series after all, and Van showed enough growth to give us a good taster of what was to come, without leaving him stranded with no clear path to take in subsequent instalments.While I somewhat enjoyed the relationship between Van and Lendel, I felt that more could be done in the leading-up to it. We got a lot of their chemistry and dynamics after they had reached an understanding, but not so much on how they got there. So I wasn't quite sure or convinced about why they were almost immediately attracted to each other, even to the extent of becoming Lifebound (did I remember that term correctly?) so quickly. I also don't know the mechanics and principles of becoming Lifebound as that wasn't explored in much detail in the book, but it seems pretty scary to me that you would be so inextricably bound to this person that you may not even know that well.The magic system was complex and intriguing. I'm still not sure if I completely understand all there is to know about the world or the system, which augurs well for a series. Even the last third of the book introduces to us the whole new world of Tayledras and its magic, similar but different to that learnt in Valdemar, which I suppose we will learn even more about in later books. The Tayledras strongly reminded me of the elves in Lord of the Rings, just as the Valdemar mages reminded me of the wizards in Harry Potter.More importantly, Lackey tackles a number of relevant and surprisingly modern issues in the book. Surprising because this book was, after all, published in 1989! From the very beginning up to the end, Van (and other characters like his aunt Savil and his sister Lissa) rebels against the mindless toxic masculinity in his world, which preaches that mindless war and violence was glorious and exciting simply because it was manly. There was also some exploration about the social stigmas of being homosexual, and I can see this being a great coming-of-age story to read especially for teens and young adults struggling with the same issues that Vanyel does.