2 star

Why Fourth Wing’s Dragons Steal the Show

by Stefani

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

Published: May 3, 2023 by Entangled: Red Tower Books

Buy this book at: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Kobo

Synopsis:

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general—also known as her tough-as-talons mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.

But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away…because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them.

With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.

She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.

Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom’s protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.

Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.

Rating:

Review:

Unless you’ve been living under a rock or out in the vast wilderness you’ll know that the 3rd book of this series came out recently. You can’t get away from it. Onyx Storm is everywhere. And everyone seems to love it. Maybe if I was still a doe-eyed 20 something then I would have liked it more too. I decided to give this series a shot and while it is entertaining, it has problems.

I listened to this on audiobook and thought the narrators did a fabulous job. They told this story and the characters to the best of their ability.

**Spoiler alert** Read no further if you wish to remain unspoiled

I love dragons. Adding dragons to a fantasy is a really big winner for me, especially intelligent dragons. The dragon that pairs with Violet is very witty and intelligent, and frankly he was my favorite character. But, it also made me wonder, what does it say about a book when the most logical character is a dragon? The dragon politics in this book was interesting but it also made me ask a lot of questions. Mainly, what do dragons need humans for? They have power, intellect and magic all on their own. They have their own laws, their own politics and their own functioning world. Why do they want to bond with humans? Share their magic with humans? Weaken themselves to empower the humans? Most importantly, why do they want to assist the humans in their wars? Even if the dragons had the same enemy, they seem perfectly capable of fighting on their own. And unfortunately we never get the answers to those questions.

Xaden was a great character, very complex and morally grey. But as soon as I heard his name I knew we were getting a cheesy romance starring Xaden Riorson. And it’s the stuff of every YA book’s dreams. Unreasonably jealousy, trying to make jealousy sexy. On a side note, can we please stop trying to make jealous outbursts sexy? They aren’t. But most importantly, we get Violet and Xaden angsting at each other until they finally find their way into each other’s pants. I probably would have enjoyed this more if I was still a naive 20-something. Instead, fully adult me, rolled my eyes and moved along.

I also found the timeline really confusing. So, there’s a war that seems to have been going on for centuries. The enemy wants to break into their kingdom, but they don’t know why. Everyone seems to just suggest that they obviously want something really badly but…it’s been 600 years? You haven’t had a single peace negotiation to find out? And there was also an internal rebellion that seemed to have happened a lot more recently. A lot of the characters talk about it like it was a long time ago, but since Xaden is involved with the ending of that rebellion it can’t have been any more than maybe 5 years earlier? Xaden is only around 23, so it can’t have been too long ago. But as it turns out the people they’re fighting against (the people in the war or the rebellion, can’t really tell) want magic from the kingdom, because they’re being attacked by magical creatures that no one thinks actually exist. So…instead of just explaining the situation you’re in, you start a war and sacrifice more fighters trying to steal the thing you need? Someone was missing battle sense.

This book was full of tropes. Violet is “so frail”, so tiny, so boring, so unremarkable. Who then ends up doing so many amazing things that no one has ever done before! Eye roll. Sexy jealousy. Eye roll. Childhood friend who has all the feelings. Eye roll. Heroine having an “addiction” to the bad boy. Eye roll. So many tropes.

The things that pulled me into this were the dragons, who were pretty badass. The magic system was very well done and interesting. And the enemies we finally get introduced to right at the very end. Those things have kept me invested enough to probably read the 2nd book. But if the worldbuilding doesn’t get a lot tighter than I’m bowing out of the series for good.

Found Family and Fortune Telling: A Review of Julie Leong’s Debut

by Stefani

The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong

Published: November 5, 2024 by Ace

Buy this book at: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Kobo

Synopsis:

A wandering fortune teller finds an unexpected family in this warm and wonderful debut fantasy, perfect for readers of Travis Baldree and Sangu Mandanna.

Tao is an immigrant fortune teller, traveling between villages with just her trusty mule for company. She only tells “small” fortunes: whether it will hail next week; which boy the barmaid will kiss; when the cow will calve. She knows from bitter experience that big fortunes come with big consequences…

Even if it’s a lonely life, it’s better than the one she left behind. But a small fortune unexpectedly becomes something more when a (semi) reformed thief and an ex-mercenary recruit her into their desperate search for a lost child. Soon, they’re joined by a baker with a knead for adventure, and—of course—a slightly magical cat.

Tao sets down a new path with companions as big-hearted as her fortunes are small. But as she lowers her walls, the shadows of her past are closing in—and she’ll have to decide whether to risk everything to preserve the family she never thought she could have.

Rating:

Review:

This book was one of my most anticipated books last year. The cover is lovely, the synopsis is intriguing, it sounded like a perfect mix of a fantasy and a cozy mystery. But, is it possible that a cozy book can be TOO cozy? After reading it I believe the answer is yes, yes it can.

One of the best things about this book was the heavy theme of “found family”. The characters in this book either had terrible families or they were separated from their families by circumstance. And through a series of events in the book they are brought together. They come to rely on one another and trust one another. Eventually they realize that they have become a family. That was a really beautiful story and frankly one of the only reasons this didn’t get one star.

When I think of a cozy mystery, I think of a book that feels warm and inviting with loveable characters. But a book that has a compelling mystery too, to guide all these warm elements along the path of the narrative. This book has plenty of warm, fuzzy and inviting people and stories. Unfortunately the story is not at all compelling. Literally almost nothing happens in this book. What we get is a meandering story of a group of friends who travel from place to place, completing little side quests along the way, but otherwise have no actual goal. Seemingly the goal is to find one of the friend’s missing daughter. We don’t seem to accomplish anything toward this end. Everything is just rather dull.

In the end I got a lot of fuzzy feelings but not a lot of actual content.

Josh Malerman’s Latest Thriller: Family Secrets and Horror

by Stefani

Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman

Published: June 25, 2024 by Del Rey

Buy this book at: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Kobo

Synopsis:

A chilling horror novel about a haunting told from the perspective of a young girl whose troubled family is targeted by an entity she calls “Other Mommy,” from the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box
 
To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s Mommy, Daddo, and Grandma Ruth. But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every day: “Can I go inside your heart?”  
 
When horrifying incidents around the house signal that Other Mommy is growing tired of asking Bela the same question, over and over . . . Bela understands that unless she says yes, soon her family must pay. 
 
Other Mommy is getting restless, stronger, bolder. Only the bonds of family can keep Bela safe but other incidents show cracks in her parents’ marriage. The safety Bela relies on is on the brink of unraveling.  
 
But Other Mommy needs an answer. 

Rating:

Review:

After two books by Josh Malerman, and two disappointments, I think maybe this author just isn’t for me. When I read Bird Box it had problems that severely impacted how much I enjoyed the book. But the horror aspects of the book were superb, and so I hoped that a different story would incorporate those good elements and be a much better story. But alas, another letdown.

The biggest asset this book had was the horror. The descriptions of Other Mommy were downright terrifying. Legitimately sent a chill up my spine. I also really enjoyed the changing narrative as the parents discover what this entity is capable of. At first they think Other Mommy is tethered to the house, then to their child, then she’s just everywhere. That was great.

There were also a few things that I may not have minded if the rest of the story was as good as the horror and suspense. I don’t mind never finding out what a supernatural entity is. From a logical standpoint it makes sense. If my child was being terrorized by some kind of paranormal entity, I wouldn’t give a single shit what the thing was or the origins of it. The only concern I would have is how to get rid of it and save my child. So, the fact that Malerman doesn’t tell us exactly what Other Mommy is was fine with me. He did something similar with Bird Box. So clearly this is a horror element that he enjoys and he uses it well.

I also don’t inherently mind a child narrator. For obvious reasons a child narrator can be limiting to the narrative. There are things that adults understand and can explain that a child cannot. Some authors use this to their advantage, like with Room by Emma Donoghue. But, in this case, I don’t think Malerman understands children. We are told that Bela is 8 years old. She speaks like a 4 or 5 year old child though. Her short, clipped sentences were really distracting and annoying. I’ve had an 8 year old child, I know how they speak. I’ve seen her speaking with her friends, I know how they interact. I find it hard to believe that an 8 year old wouldn’t be able to remember the word reincarnation, and would mispronounce it repeatedly. Many 8 year olds can spell reincarnation and use it in a sentence. I found it really irritating.

I found it hard to understand why Bela trusted Other Mommy. When we start the story, Other Mommy is already terrorizing her. We get no lead up to how this entity earned her trust. Bela tells us that she trusts and loves Other Mommy, and tells her things that she can’t tell other people. But I have absolutely no idea why because the author didn’t bother to show me that relationship at all. I completely understand why Bela would want another mommy, her parents are absolutely insufferable. The only thing her parents seem to do is placate her, not comfort her concerns and refuse to directly answer her questions and then argue about who’s fault it is that Bela is scared. And they both have highly inappropriate conversations with their 8 year old child.

For example, Bela’s mother has a whole conversation with her about why married people sometimes cheat on each other. An why she’s unhappy in her marriage to her father, without saying it’s about her marriage but still this was a highly inappropriate adult topic that had no business being discussed with a child. And Bela’s father likes to sit on her bed when he thinks she’s asleep an have long winded chats about his existential crisis and other pedantic philosophical topics. That was so bizarre. Who does things like that? Who has long philosophical conversations with their apparently sleeping child? I hated them both so much. This entire book convinced that this author doesn’t have children and probably hasn’t spent any time with children in his life.

The ending was also really confusing. I have no idea what happened. In the end this was a book with a good premise and really poor execution. I think I will pass on the next Malerman book that comes my way. He gets a lot of hype but I seem to be reading entirely different books than everyone else.

Audiobook review: My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

by Stefani

My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

Narrated by: Richard Poe, Julia Gibson, Barbara McCullough and others

Published: March 29, 2016 by Simon & Schuster Audio

Buy this book at: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Kobo

Synopsis:

Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate — a life and a role that she has never challenged… until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister—and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable, a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves.

A provocative novel that raises some important ethical issues, My Sister’s Keeper is the story of one family’s struggle for survival at all human costs and a stunning parable for all time.

Rating:

Review: Spoiler alert: This book irritated me, so I doubt that I will be able to discuss it without spoilers. Consider this your warning.

From the audiobook side, this was very well done. The narrators were very good. I always enjoy having a full voice cast on an audiobook. It makes the audiobook much more of a performance, which I find a wonderful experience. I am very pleased that a lot of audiobooks are moving in the direction of a full voice cast and I hope that’s a continuing trend.

I gave this book two stars mainly because of the moral issues and dilemmas that it discusses. I found the concept of the book fascinating. What would any of us do in the face of our child’s inevitable death? To what lengths would we go to save them? In this book, the parents decide to conceive a child through in-vitro fertilization. But they implant an embryo that is genetically match to their sick child. They have the best of intentions, they are only going to give their sick daughter an umbilical cord blood transfusion, which the new baby doesn’t need anyway. And it works for awhile. Kate goes into remission. But, then she doesn’t. And all of a sudden, it starts becoming reasonable to have your young daughter donate other things. Blood, plasma, bone marrow. The story kicks off when Anna is expected to donate a kidney to her sister, and she doesn’t want to. So she goes to a lawyer and asks if she can sue her parents for the right to make this decision on her own. As she points out, as a child, no one ever bothered to ask what she wanted.

This book had so much wonderful potential! The very issues of bodily autonomy, parental decision making, bodily consent are highlighted on every page. The problem is that the only sympathetic people in this book are Anna and Kate. Their parents are awful, horrendous people. I thought they would be sympathetic people who felt desperate to do the right thing. Instead I found horrendous abusers who berate their healthy children because they have the audacity to be healthy. For example, when Anna isn’t allowed to play hockey because practice would interfere with her ability to donate plasma to her sister. When Anna wants to go to a summer camp, she is berated for even asking. At one point her mother screams at her “Your organs need to be here for Kate, not off at camp!” Wow. Just wow. You’ve entirely reduced your child’s existence down to being body parts that need to be available to someone else. I wanted to vomit. These people were awful.

The ending of the book was similarly terrible. It felt like the author lost her nerve. She didn’t want to make a hard decision so she just opted out of making any decision at all. At the end of the book, Anna confesses that she actually wanted to donate her kidney to Kate. But Kate asked her to refuse, because Kate is ready to die. Kate doesn’t want to keep living like this. That part was ok. It made the book less compelling than Anna wanting to fight for her autonomy, but I was willing to go with it.

Then, it all goes to hell. Anna wins her case. She is awarded autonomy to make her medical decisions, and her attorney is appointed as her POA to sign all the paperwork for her and do the official things that she is too young to do. Anna decides that she is going to donate her kidney after all, if Kate will accept it. And on the way to the hospital to see Kate, Anna is killed in a car accident. And the book happily recounts how Anna ended up donating her kidney to Kate in the end after all. What a letdown. While I had no sympathy for the parents, I had a lot of sympathy for Anna and Kate. They were both in an impossible situation and I wanted to see how it ended. But it didn’t end. Anna wins a pointless victory, and ends up being a kidney donor anyway…..well, that happened.

Audiobook review: Small Town Horror by Ronald Malfi

by Stefani

Small Town Horror by Ronald Malfi

Narrated by: Joe Hempel

Released: June 4, 2024 by Tantor Media

Buy this audiobook at: Audible / Audiobooks.com / Kobo

Synopsis:

Five childhood friends are forced to confront their own dark past as well as the curse placed upon them in this horror masterpiece from the bestselling author of Come with Me.

Maybe this is a ghost story…

Andrew Larimer thought he left the past behind. But when he receives a late-night phone call from an old friend, he finds he has no choice but to return home, and to confront the memories—and the horror—of a night, years ago, that changed everything.

For Andrew and his friends, the past is not dead, and the curse that has befallen them now threatens to destroy all that they’ve become.

One dark secret…

One small-town horror…

Rating:

Review:

This ended up being a difficult book to rate. Initially after I finished it I was contemplating three stars. But the more I thought about it, the more disappointed I was in it. So ultimately this falls at a two star, maybe two and a half if I’m feeling generous. This book has also given me a case of “everyone loves it but me”. The book world is RAVING about this book right now. And I can’t quite figure out why?

The writing was good. I have never read Malfi before but his writing was good enough that I’d probably pick up one of his books again. He is very good at creating a creepy feel and an increasing sense of dread. Those are very desirable qualities in a horror author. I also enjoyed the narrator. He kept a good pace, he made the characters inflections and tone unique, and he told the story in a compelling. So, what was the problem then?

I think there were two problems here. First, I don’t believe this book is well suited to an audiobook. We jump around in time quite a lot, and there’s not much introduction to inform the listener about what year we’re in. As a result I felt jarred by the story. I couldn’t remember where in time we were. And so I ended up re-listening to entire chapters because I was thoroughly confused about what was going on. And the characters were also pretty dull people. It wasn’t just the main protagonist, it was all of them. The problem is that it’s very difficult for an audiobook narrator to tell a compelling story when the characters are not compelling. This was another thing that made me tune out of the audio and have to go back and listen again.

Down to the story itself. It was okay. The lead up to the reveal was quite good. The increasing sense of doom and dread was really fun. And I liked seeing how each of the characters came to their conclusion about what was going on, and why they got to that conclusion. It only started to fall apart near the end. It seemed at first like the ending was going to be a twist, it wasn’t actually a curse it was an entirely mundane answer. But then it wasn’t the mundane answer after all, it was the supernatural answer. Then it felt like we went into an infomercial because “wait, there’s more!” It wasn’t just supernatural, here’s the cunning plan, and the unwilling accomplice! “But wait, if you order now you’ll get a free gift!” And even the unwilling accomplice was deceived in this brilliant plan! It was convoluted. Sometimes it’s okay for the simple answer to the correct answer. Sometimes it’s okay for the ending not to have a twist. Instead, I feel like the author was trying so hard to do something unexpected that it just got weird and confusing.

In the end, there was enough redeeming qualities about the writing for me to give the author another chance. But this one wasn’t a hit for me. Or maybe it was, in the end, just me. Because everyone else in the book world seems to love it.

Audiobook Review: The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers

by Stefani

The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers

Published: January 30, 2024 by Redhook

Buy this book at: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / AbeBooks

Synopsis:

A young woman descends into a seductive magical underworld of power-hungry scholars, fickle gods and monsters bent on revenge to break her family’s curse in this spellbinding contemporary fantasy debut.

For centuries, generations of Everlys have seen their brightest and best disappear, taken as punishment for a crime no one remembers, for a purpose no one understands. Their tormentor, a woman named Penelope, never ages, never grows sick – and never forgives a debt.

Violet Everly was a child when her mother left on a stormy night, determined to break the curse. When Marianne never returns, Penelope issues an ultimatum: Violet has ten years to find her mother, or she will take her place. Violet is the last of the Everly line, the last to suffer. Unless she can break it first.

To do so, she must descend into a seductive magical underworld of power-hungry scholars, fickle gods and monsters bent on revenge. She must also contend with Penelope’s quiet assistant, Aleksander, who she knows cannot be trusted – and yet whose knowledge of a world beyond her own is too valuable to avoid.

Tied to a very literal deadline, Violet will travel the edges of the world to find Marianne and the key to the city of stardust, where the Everly story began.

Rating:

Review:

The premise of this book is fantastic. A family curse. A missing mother. A deadline to meet or else certain doom. A magical world that might hold all the answers. This book had all the makings of a really excellent novel. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t executed very well. This is a debut novel and I feel like the author didn’t really know how to wrap her arms around this story. It got away from her.

Let’s start with the good stuff. The narrator for this audiobook was very good. Her voice was soothing, her pacing was excellent, and she presented the material in the best way possible. The villains in this book were also fantastic. Penelope is such a great villain, I enjoyed her from beginning to end. Some of the other side stories were very interesting also. I was eager to learn more about certain people.

The biggest problem that this book had was a lack of character building and a complete absence of world building. At the end of the book the only thing I know about Violet is that she’s stupidly naïve and looks a lot like her mother. I don’t know anything else about her. I do know that she showed no sense of urgency at the looming deadline to find her mother. She is casually going to parties and going for coffee in Prague. Not to mention the complete lack of urgency that her uncles displayed for the nine years before Violet finds out about the deadline. What were they doing all that time? We don’t really know because the author doesn’t tell us.

I was incredibly frustrating with the way the last year is handled. Violet has a year to find her mother. During this time she is learning about the scholars, learning about magic, learning about Penelope. This was a perfect opportunity for the author to explain this world to us. We could discover all of the amazing things that Violet is discovering! But instead we get a montage that is over in less than a few paragraphs. “Violet learned all of these amazing things, went all of these amazing places and then suddenly it was six weeks until the deadline.” It felt like a wasted opportunity. It was the perfect chance to build this world and instead we got nothing.

By the time we reached the end of the book, I mainly just wanted it to be over. It had gone on for too long. What I thought was the ending was still two and a half hours away from the ending of the audiobook. I couldn’t fathom what exactly we were going to do for that long. It got tiresome. At the end I was left disappointed because this could have been a five star book, but it wasn’t.

Audiobook Review: These Vengeful Hearts by Katherine Laurin

by Stefani

These Vengeful Hearts by Katherine Laurin

Published: September 8, 2020 by RB Media

Buy this book: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository

Rating:

Synopsis: Anyone can ask the Red Court for a favor…but every request comes at a cost. And once the deed is done, you’re forever in their debt.

Whenever something scandalous happens at Heller High, the Red Court is the name on everyone’s lips. Its members–the most elite female students in the school–deal out social ruin and favors in equal measure, their true identities a secret known only to their ruthless leader: the Queen of Hearts.

Sixteen-year-old Ember Williams has seen firsthand the damage the Red Court can do. Two years ago, they caused the accident that left her older sister paralyzed. Now, Ember is determined to hold them accountable…by taking the Red Court down from the inside.

But crossing enemy lines will mean crossing moral boundaries, too–ones Ember may never be able to come back from. She always knew taking on the Red Court would come at a price, but will the cost of revenge be more than she’s willing to sacrifice?

Review: ***Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review. Thank you NetGalley and RB Media!***

I have to confess that I am a sucker for a book about a dark secret society that has a pretty cover. That is exactly the reason why I asked for this audiobook. I was intrigued by the synopsis of a girl who wants to take down the secret mean girls society from the inside. That’s a compelling story! Unfortunately it just wasn’t that good.

Ember started out as an interesting narrator but she lost her shine very quickly. She is supposed to be enacting this giant plot for revenge on behalf of her sister! But most of the time she is worrying and comiserating on the steps she has to take to get there. Surely you thought about these things when you were hatching this plan? No? Why not?

The plot was very cliqued with people asking the Red Court to make them homecoming queen, breaking up a couple, or embarrass someone for stealing a boyfriend. But the logistics are never really fleshed out. What if multiple people are asking to be made homecoming queen? Which one do you choose to help over the others? It’s all about trading in favors and this secret society is largely an unspoken about open secret. None of those things are talked about, which made the story seem trite.

I can’t tell you how this ended, to be entirely honest, because I tuned out. I was so bored with the story that it just became white noise. And then suddenly it was over and I didn’t even hear how it ended.

Review: Unearthed by Marc Mulero

by Stefani

Unearthed by Marc Mulero

Published: July 26, 2020 by Amazon CreateSpace

Buy this book: Amazon | Book Depository

Rating:

Synopsis: I wish the global quake had buried me. It would be easier, then, to cope.

My love? Murdered. My family? Betrayed. Friends? Fallen.

And all that in the name of the Hiezers.

My name is Blague. Just Blague. My surname was stripped the day I was marked for exile. Now I wander in the sands of the forgotten continents, scraping by among the rest of the outcasts. There are others like me, out here. Capable minds and able bodies, all scorned in one way or another by our oppressors. Every one of us has witnessed that same terrible scene: screaming citizens as they’re bagged and dragged off into labs, intended for some experimental purpose. We dare not act out, of course. Not under the watchful gaze of the Hiezers. Not beneath their lashing whips, where one false move could be our last.

It’s only in the shadows where we can plot. Tactically. Quietly. Gathering munitions until the time is right. I know something is amiss about the chemical they’ve used to brand our skin. It burns hot when we fight. So I’ll use it… I’ll use it, and light the fire that defines the legacy of an entire rebellion, even if it kills me.

By the time this is over, I’m going to make them wish they’d buried me too…

Review: ***Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you NetGalley!***

I really wanted to like this book. The premise sounds interesting, the synopsis piqued my interest, and the cover is awesome. I really tried to love this book. But I just couldn’t. I made it about 75% if the way through but then just lost interest.

None of the characters really made a dent for me at all. Blague was incredibly dull and he had no reason to be. He should have been a really compelling character. But all he did was quiet and brooding, never saying much, then he’d come out with a rousing speech and that was about it. None of the other characters felt authentic to me. They didn’t feel like real people and they didn’t feel like the personalities they were given fit them at all.

There were a lot of great ideas in this book and I wanted to look forward to where it was going. The writing needs a lot of work though. The sentences are very clunky and there’s so many similes and metaphors stuffed in there that I had no idea what was going on most of the time. And other times there was way too much description, so much that it confused the situation. In a fight scene a character is described as having a mohawk, and I get reminded about his hair style no less than four times in the scene. I got it. I know. I didn’t forget. I could tell that there was a really good idea in there somewhere, but the abundance of simile and metaphor and flowery language just obliterated the meaning of the words.

There also wasn’t much explaining of this world at all. What is a sin? How did the world get this way? What exactly is the social structure here? Who are the ruling class? Why? I feel like we spent so much time on fighting scenes that we didn’t actually explain this world and that’s a problem because I needed to live in it for a time.

I also don’t really see how the first part of the book related to the second part of the book. Maybe it all came together at the end, but I just couldn’t get that far. If the author decided to get some serious editing and rework this and publish it again, I would give it another shot for sure.

Review: Hella by David Gerrold

by Stefani

Hella by David Gerrold

Published: June 16, 2020 by DAW

Buy this book: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository

Rating:

Synopsis: A master of science fiction introduces a world where everything is large and the problems of survival even larger in this exciting new novel.

Hella is a planet where everything is oversized—especially the ambitions of the colonists.

The trees are mile-high, the dinosaur herds are huge, and the weather is extreme—so extreme, the colonists have to migrate twice a year to escape the blistering heat of summer and the atmosphere-freezing cold of winter.

Kyle is a neuro-atypical young man, emotionally challenged, but with an implant that gives him real-time access to the colony’s computer network, making him a very misunderstood savant. When an overburdened starship arrives, he becomes the link between the established colonists and the refugees from a ravaged Earth.

The Hella colony is barely self-sufficient. Can it stand the strain of a thousand new arrivals, bringing with them the same kinds of problems they thought they were fleeing?

Despite the dangers to himself and his family, Kyle is in the middle of everything—in possession of the most dangerous secret of all. Will he be caught in a growing political conspiracy? Will his reawakened emotions overwhelm his rationality? Or will he be able to use his unique ability to prevent disaster?

Review: ***Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you DAW and NetGalley!***

I went into this book with a mixture of expectations and unfortunately it didn’t really meet any of them. On the one hand, I would have been happy if this was a B-movie style Creature Feature. But it wasn’t. And on the other hand it comes to me from David Gerrold. I have not read Gerrold before but I know him from being the writer of the “Trouble with Tribbles” episode of Star Trek and writing The Man who Folded Himself. A highly acclaimed writer in the sci-fi landscape and so I would have been happy with a wonderful sci-fi adventure from a practiced hand. Unfortunately it wasn’t that either.

The world was built in a convincing way, even if the descriptions were not that great. I liked hearing about the trees that weren’t really trees, and the creatures so large that they have their own small ecosystem. The settlers on this planet seem to have a structure similar to that of the show Stargate. Half military, half scientific exploration. You have the head of the expedition who is called Captain and there is largely a military like structure to a lot of the colonists activities. And they are there for the express purpose of conducting scientific exploration of their new home to figure out how to exist there with minimal impact on the natural environment. Why then are we naming things “bug-things” or “bat-things.” Our narrator, Kyle, is highly scientifically minded and he tells us that all of these things have scientific names…..so why are we calling them stupid things? They even have a giant salt flat that is called, no joke, “Oh my God!” because that’s all anyone could think of saying when they discovered it. It was really lame and annoying. I mean, they named the planet Hella because everything is “hella big”. Eye roll.

Kyle was a great character. He has some kind of “syndrome” that they never actually name but many have speculated is supposed to be somewhere on the autism spectrum. He was volatile and aggressive as a young child and so got a chip implanted in his brain to help him suppress his emotions. I loved how Kyle transitioned and changed throughout this book. He starts as a boy who feels that he doesn’t fit in and the only person he can talk to is his brother, Jaime. He relies on Jaime for just about everything. Throughout the events of the book Kyle decides to explore his emotions and build himself a more expansive support system. It was really great character development.

The author also introduced us to some really intriguing concepts in this society that I really wanted to learn more about, the government structure of the colony and the evolution of how society understands sexuality and gender. The government seemed to be a ruling committee that is guided by their Charters in making decisions for the good of the whole colony. I wanted to know what the ramifications would be when one of the committee decided to put themselves over the needs of the colony. Unfortunately we never really spend much time on that.

This is also a society that can change gender at will. Kyle’s brother, Jaime, was born a girl and decided to change. Kyle was also born a girl and decided to change because Jaime did. Later Kyle and his boyfriend have a discussion about whether the boyfriend would prefer Kyle to be a girl and he’d change back. It seemed that most people had changed genders at least once and technology has evolved to a point that the change can fully make you the other gender. Kyle’s mom was a girl, switched to be a boy for awhile, then went back to being a girl so she could experience pregnancy and childbirth. But it just seemed so casual. People are changing out of curiosity, just because, pressure from romantic interests, etc. But we never actually met someone who wanted to change their gender because they wanted to be their authentic self. It was more like choosing a new hair color. I wanted to see some depth to that discussion, but that never comes either.

This book was also way too long. At 448 pages I didn’t expect to be bored. But literally nothing happens for about 260 of those pages. The last half is very action packed. But literally NOTHING happens before then. Nothing. So overall, the whole thing left me feeling underwhelmed.

Audiobook Review: Broken People by Sam Lansky

by Stefani

Broken People by Sam Lansky

Published: June 9, 2020 by Hanover Square Press

Buy this book: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository

Rating:

Synopsis: A groundbreaking, incandescent debut novel about coming to grips with the past and ourselves, for fans of Sally Rooney, Hanya Yanagihara and Garth Greenwell

“He fixes everything that’s wrong with you in three days.”

This is what hooks Sam when he first overhears it at a fancy dinner party in the Hollywood hills: the story of a globe-trotting shaman who claims to perform “open-soul surgery” on emotionally damaged people. For neurotic, depressed Sam, new to Los Angeles after his life in New York imploded, the possibility of total transformation is utterly tantalizing. He’s desperate for something to believe in, and the shaman—who promises ancient rituals, plant medicine and encounters with the divine—seems convincing, enough for Sam to sign up for a weekend under his care.

But are the great spirits the shaman says he’s summoning real at all? Or are the ghosts in Sam’s memory more powerful than any magic?

At turns tender and acid, funny and wise, Broken People is a journey into the nature of truth and fiction—a story of discovering hope amid cynicism, intimacy within chaos and peace in our own skin.

Review: I gave up on this book about halfway through. It was just boring. It wasn’t so awful that I felt I needed to give it one star, and the writing was somewhat competent, but it was really pointless. Another point that hindered this book is that it read like a poorly disguised memoir and the audiobook was voiced by the author. It was monotone and came across as whiny.

The first 20% of this audiobook was about the main character, Sam, whining to his friends. And his friends whining back at him. Seriously, we spent (what felt like) hours hearing his friends drone on and on about their pointless lives. Brand name clothes they bought, disappointing lovers they had, drugs they did recently, bad parties they attended, and on and on. At one point I forgot to put it on pause and walked away for 20 minutes and when I returned had no idea that I’d missed anything because we were STILL WHINING when I got back.

I thought things would pick up once we got to the shaman. That was mildly more interesting until Sam has a conversation with his friend about whether it’s a moral problem to see a white shaman who was using rituals inspired by indigenous people. And his friend replies (not an exact quote but close), “Well yeah, probably, but capitalist worshippers are screwing over everyone anyway so whatever.”

It was just so asinine. Nothing actually happens. Then I realized what happened when I read a few other reviews. Sam wrote a memoir, by all accounts a profound one. He approaches his editor (this is real life Sam, not character Sam) and says he wants to write a memoir. His editor replies, “Sam, buddy, memoir sequels are not really a thing. So that’s a no.” So Sam went home and wrote this memoir and then called it fiction.

In the end this was nothing more than a young white male whining about the endless privileges he enjoys. It was boring. I didn’t want to read an entire book about Sam’s self loathing and woes about being a prep school graduate who would consider a dusty condo in the middle of Manhattan to be slumming.