themelodyofspring

This is the best book in the series so far! Murderbot just keeps having one breakdown after another, emotionally and physically.

Spoilers

Favorite scenes:

- Ameena and SecUnit bickering!

- Hiding in the toilet because you're having an emotional response.

- SecUnit realising ART has been deleted.

- SecUnit and ART bickering over and over till they decide to rescue ART's crew.

- SecUnit intentionally playing Worldhoppers knowing that it's ART's favorite show and that'll lure them both into a conversation.

- Ameena saying that writing a code together is like having a baby

Enjoyed this a lot. The art was stunning. The stories were good.

It filled in some of the gaps from the trilogy like where the Alice in Wonderland book came from, what happened with Nicasia. The present day story was nice. Cardan's POV was a lot different than I expected.

The different versions of the boy with the wicked tongue and the artwork in the margins complementing the stories was my favourite

4 stars because I felt like it was missing pages at the end. It was good enough that I read it non-stop and finished it in record time. The characters were likable and the writing was very good.
But I very strongly wanted some more closure at the end. Half of the things didn't even get resolved. I'd love to read a sequel for this!

Super fun to read as always. Wren was an interesting character to read about, and so was Oak. You guess what's coming from miles away but then get to see it unravel to a satisfying end.

Loved the main trio (quadruple counting Hyacinthe). Their dynamic was fun even though Tiernan was understandably a bit prickly. 
Oak was hilarious and delirious! 
Wren was that quote from Six of Crows: “When everyone knows you're a monster, you needn't waste time doing every monstrous thing.”

Audiobook narration was cool. The Russia part had Russian accents so I enjoyed a lot. Otherwise, story was very weak.

—avert your eyes, spoilers ahead—

So many problems!
• Ok the SciFi was not my favorite as it wasn't well explained. Please just read Recursion by Blake Crouch which also has a consciousness device but it is so well thought out and properly explained.

• They made a dimension jumping device which lets your consciousness jump dimensions but the damn device jumps physically with you. That's basically a teleportation device! Leave parallel worlds, you guys can teleport. Just change your device a little and you have another scientific discovery.

• The body remains behind but in what state? What if somebody walks in on you while you're dimension jumping? Don't tell me it's quantum physics and say it's hard to explain. What is this, Ant-Man?

* Also just remembered, for you to be able to jump dimensions and come back to your original dimension, you would need to know how many dimensions in total there are, and what dimension you're jumping into next to act as a point of reference. But do we know that? Noooooo. Think Shades of Magic by Schwab where we knew and used tokens from each world. Otherwise, there is no way Paul knew which dimension he was jumping into next. (Can't believe I'm realising this 3 days after finishing this disaster).

• The romance! Ugh. The love triangle. Ughhhh. If I wanted to read a love triangle, I'd read Twilight.

• Stupid Russian storyline! Meg has sex with the love of her life in another dimension, TWICE, while she is in an alternate version of herself, with the guy from that dimension. Dudeeee! Think of the consequences for your other self! Also, if you're gonna do it, at least have safe sex. But nooooo! I really just stopped caring for the story at this point.

• The only likable character is Paul, but not by a lot. Theo is just downright suspicious from page one. Meg is awful for making stupid decisions. She went from trying to kill Paul to trying to kill Theo with barely any thought.

• Till the last page, we're talking about the love triangle. Oh go to hell, Theoooo! We don't like you. “If I have to let somebody else have you, at least it's him.” Oh fuck offfffff!

• Lastly, if people can overtake your body and consciousness and make you do bad things, maybeee make a device that blocks other people from jumping into you. Phhhhhbbbbttt!!!

Loved this. It was so enjoyable. I loved the relationship portrayed between Eden and Daniel. Loved how soft they both were.

There were a lot of things reminiscent from the original trilogy but thank you for mentioning the paper clip ring again! That was my favorite part and I loved seeing it being mentioned again.
Also, super cute ending

This is almost close to 4.5 stars. It was very short and enjoyable.

Sirus and Essa (?) were really good characters. Their interactions were funny. The whole mystery surrounding the deathless was so well written.

The God King and the Infinity Blade kept reminding me of Warbreaker and Nightblood (same vibes).

The ending was typical Brandon, completely woah. I know nothing about the actual video game but this short story was amazing.

Great. Awesome. The ending was warm, fuzzy and open? Like Strange The Dreamer. So these guys are ramping up to fight the Nithilam, and the crew from Strange The Dreamer is moving through the portals. So the last open portal is from Earth to Eretz and the other side from Eretz was closed off. So, is there going to be a story where everyone meets in Eretz(?) and gathers together to fight off the Nithilam?! That'd be awesome to read.

This was more of a mystery novel, than fantasy or sci-fi. I picked it up because of chalk magic but it turned out to be a lot more than that.

The beginning was slow, but really good once the murder mystery started. Joel and Melody were both interesting characters. Professor Fitch was my favorite, and I have no idea what Nalizar was in the end

Finally! A book about friendship that doesn't get overpowered by romance!!

I loved this way too much. Might've cried a bunch of times because of the perfect narration in which the narrator sobbed so many times, I had a hard time controlling my own tears.

Plot: 5/5
Narration: 6/5
Characters: 6/5

Frances was so pure and sweet and lovely. Where do I get a friend like her? Aled was awesome. I read this book because he showed up in the Nick and Charlie novella and I wanted to read more about him.

Raineee was my third fav character. She was soooo niceeee. Also the scene with her stroking her car near the end made me laugh.I was mad at Daniel for half the story but then I just felt bad for him after listening to his side. Also, once again, the narrator cried during that one Cambridge scene and I just lost it too.

God, I hated their crappy mother. She genuinely scared me and I was so worried that it might end badly.I really liked the podcasts ☺️ The audiobook actually had different voices for different Universe City characters like the book mentioned.

* Also, so many Tumblr mentions. I guess this book was written during a time when Tumblr was famous and we didn't have Instagram yet? Because my god, I get annoyed when a book mentions social media over and over again. But this one did it just right.

Fav scenes:
The birthday night.The discussion at the very end in the university dorm.
Cambridge interview - before and after.Raine helping Frances - at the party and the train station.

Scythe was a very well written, engaging and a very realistic science fiction story.

I loved the idea of Cloud evolving into Thunderhead. People have a solution to all the problems, including death and what do they decide to do? Slack off! You got that right. The idea that humans have all the knowledge in the world and yet do nothing with it because they also have all the time in the world, was very realistic. Procrastination at its best.

I really enjoyed reading the journal entries for the Scythes. The little twists and turns throughout were well planned and not something I was able to guess.

The ending was even better. It wasn't just a way to circumvent the laws but it also proved to be a way for Citra and Rowan to help each other. Very smart.

The romance was not overpowering, barely there and never let the characters make stupid decisions because of it. I really enjoyed this book.

The audiobooks for this series are really well done. Loved listening to them.

This one got the original crew of smart humans + Murderbot together again. Murderbot does one stupid thing after another to save said humans and is self-aware enough to call itself stupid.

The ending was nice (thank goodness Murderbot didn't do the thing from book 1 again).

Also, this is my favourite crew because they work really well together, are genuinely good people, and don't mind Murderbot being sarcastic or rude to them.