jules
maybe i'm biased because i always enjoy vampires and werewolves but this is my favourite discworld book to date. it has everything! vampires! werewolves! igors! politics! and most importantly! SYBIL!!!
i just loved how characters who hadn't gotten much of the spotlight so far got a lot of attention in this book, sybil especially. she's never relegated to being vimes' damsel in distress, she's always very much her own person with a lot of agency.
carrot also isn't as much the unfailing hero he is in the other city watch books, so we get to focus more on angua (who i am in love with on account of me loving fictional women with issues<3) and her origins/character. i love her relationship with carrot by the way... they're so sweet.
i also love cheery/cheri as a character, and for how long ago this was written (1999!) i think the dwarf gender stuff is done pretty well.
lastly... the action scenes are engrossing, the darker moments hit just as hard as they need to while still feeling consistent with the usual lightheartedness of discworld, and the setting, though it's not Ankh-Morpork, is fun and fresh... just an all around good book. Night watch is next!! i'm excited for this one!!!
stayed up late finishing this... i wasn't going to but i only had half left and was having fun reading (this book is soooo funny but i've been saying that about every discworld book (i had to pause for like 5 minutes so i could catch my breath when colon decided to use "Al" as his fake name)) so i finished it! since i finally have time to read again.
i enjoyed it, lots of focus on vimes and nobby this time round, and i always love getting to see what vetinari's up to when he has a more active role. still hoping for more sybil...! i won't lose hope...!
this book is so SO good. i adore the city watch cast and the mystery in this story is really engaging... and as always vetinari is a great character. he really shines when he's used sparingly
putting this down cause i’m not really liking it much. maybe i’ll return to it someday but so far vetinari feels like he’s being overused ☹️
Contains spoilers
SO SOOO GOOD AND SO FUNNY how did sir terry do it... love the new additions to the guard, especially angua being kind of a pathetic wet dog and cuddy & detritus' sweet relationship. (spoilers) i miss cuddy :( curse you doctor cruces... i was so scared when i thought angua died too i was like NO? But what tips you off is that Death doesn't show up... clever...!
overall i enjoyed this a lot. hopefully there's more sybil in the other city watch books though because i like her a lot... onward to the next discworld book
4.5 stars
i honestly did put this down for a while... not because i didnt like it, but because i have the huge illustrated edition and the sheer size of it was just kind of intimidating. it was just hard to bring around with me and i got lazy for a little bit.
a wizard of earthsea is relatively short though, and i really enjoyed it all the way through. the prose has a sort of nostalgic feeling to it (TO ME) and i really loved it. this is definitely one of the fantasy books of all time
i would rather female characters just be excluded instead of being written the way they are in this book if i'm honest. but the world is interesting and i like morley dotes.
it pisses me off that teachers are STILL assigning this fucking book to their students. every time a kid at my workplace tells me they're reading it for their english class it makes me want to scream!!! it's important to teach about the holocaust and you can't do that by using a book where the author has done NONE of the proper research required for such a topic. this should have never been published.
so good. i loved the realization (that i had) at the end... would've loved to have studied this in school
"Mort," said Mort.
very very fun. enjoyed very much mort saying his own name like a pokemon throughout. also my favourite personification of Death i've ever seen. would go out for drinks with him.
where do i begin... first time in a long time that a book's made me tear up. incredible book.
so so in love with the prose. my favourite thing about it is probably how madeleine writes about the relationships in the book (not just the romantic ones). the way characters & their relationships to circe are explored ... UGH!!!!!!
also greek myth weirdness aside i enjoyed circe/telemachus but i still wish it had been her and penelope instead
will write more later but i read this at night cause i couldnt sleep and got spooked by the descriptions of the ghuls lol
(it's later so let me write more) i love love the setting and the characters, siti in particular, are really engaging. the prose is sometimes more Tell than Show (the most egregious being the way Fatma's physical appearance is described at the beginning by her catching her reflection on a surface) but it's not bad at all. i may check out clark's other books at some point because magical Cairo is suchhh an interesting setting.
thought i would like this more than i did but it was kind of dull a lot of the time and jim is an annoying protagonist... sorry. long john silver was the most interesting part of the book by far. the whole time i was reading this i was just thinking... I should rewatch treasure planet...
3.5 stars
life and death, death and life, beginnings and ends... i didn't love this book as much as i loved the first two, but i appreciated the discussions about life - what it means to die, what it means to live. her books and her prose make me... ponder.
i think what makes me like this book less is that the stakes are too high... i don't know. but i liked how the first two & tehanu are more contained, more... i can't think of the right word. this one feels a little more like a classic hero's journey than the others. i liked it but i didn't love it - i think that's the best way i can express this.
i could NOT put this book down. really incredible story about redemption and darkness and freedom and light. tenar is a different protagonist to ged, but in some ways they're still alike. i love the way ursula puts it in her author's notes:
“The dark side of the world was what she had to learn, as Ged had to learn the darkness in his own heart. [...] Each has to ask for the other's help and learn to trust and depend on the other. A large lesson, a new knowledge for both these strong, willful, lonely souls.”
“A girl who could not seek power, as young Ged could, or find training in the use of it as he did, but who had power forced upon her. A girl whose name was not given to her by a kind teacher, but taken from her by a masked executioner.
The boy Ged, offered wisdom, refused it through his own pride and willfulness; the girl Tenar, given the arbitary power of a goddess, was taught nothing about living her life as a human being.”
my first discworld book! it was pretty good and really funny. it's too bad they're cops
4.5 stars ⭐️
the prose was hard to get used to at first but i ended up really enjoying it ^_^ my favourite straight people
thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed this series. loved the world, loved the magic, and i enjoyed the prose although it sometimes bordered on too descriptive for me. i liked the different style the last two novellas had.
sometimes it felt like these novellas should have been fully realised as fantasy epics instead of the shorter snippets we got! but the snippets are good for what they are. i think i just wanted to spend more time with the characters (my favourites are akeha and lady han btw). overall very good, keen to read more of yang's works.
4.5 stars
a nice collection of short stories from zen cho. i really enjoy her prose, it's very... practical.
my favourites:
- The House of Aunts ♥
- Odette
- One Day Travelcard for Fairyland
- Prudence and the Dragon ♥
- The Earth Spirit's Favorite Anecdote ♥
- Monkey King, Faerie Queen ♥
- The Terra-cotta Bride ♥
mina and jonathan's deeply profound love for each other is so ... <3
also the cowboy was my favourite