alexampersand's reviews
448 reviews

I really enjoyed this one! A fun little tale that didn't feel too repetitive, and took some genuinely unexpected turns and developments. I'd probably actually put this among the top of the Goosebumps series to be honest, even it did lack some of the spookiness of the classics.

I found this quite a difficult book to really get to grips with. It felt like there was a lot of subtext and things that were being hinted at, but just a little too far out of my reach.

The writing style itself was interesting - long and rambling descriptions, followed by solid, punctuation-less dialogue. Repeat ad infinitum. And then in the middle of the book is an interlude where we read a play apparently written by the protagonist, 30 years later.

It was hard to sort of fit all of the jigsaw pieces together of what the author was actually trying to achieve. 

On its face it was a fairly straight forward tale about a gay man living in an oppressive time, who has a short fling with another man. But it felt like the author was trying to convey more than that (especially with the flash-forward play), but for me I don't think it fully landed. 

An interesting read, and I haven't quite read anything like it in the past I don't think - a trans protagonist, who's escaped a religious cult who has unleashed a genocidal virus on the world, and is now fighting alongside a band of queer resistance fighters trying to take down the religious cult.

I enjoyed the thoughtful examination of some of the religious aspects - although there are obviously very overarching negative impressions due to the cult mentality, I enjoyed Benji talking to some of the other queer people who did still have a faith, and how they marry their personal faith against the institution of the cult. There were also some deep and moving parts of Benji examining his own trauma with coming out, and how his mother especially reacted. 

Unfortunately there was also quite a lot of the book that didn't really work for me. I found that the premise wasn't explained particularly clearly; there were a lot of disparate elements, and it took a while to fully be able to piece together the Flood, and Seraph, and Graces, and how Seraph functioned, on top of what the general timeline of the post-apocalyptic events looked like. Part of this is probably me not being particularly familiar with fantasy storylines, but I read it with my partner who also shared some of my confusion.

This same thing occured again at the end of the book, with the big final battle. I honestly found myself quite confused about what exactly was happening; lots of people dying, some succumbing to the Flood, and then mix in some sort of hallucinatory/purgatory sequence as well, and I found myself quite baffled... and then all of a sudden it was over.

I also didn't find the ending particularly satisfactory; throughout the book, we are essentially told how Benji's story is going to end. And then by the end, it doesn't go there. I don't know whether we're supposed to interpret that as Benji just accepting that his fate will come 'soon', or whether for some reason he's escaped that fate... but it just left me feeling a little bewildered. 

I also felt like some of the diversity and inclusion around the ALC felt a little... shoehorned in. I'm all for a diverse range of characters, and I thought that when attention was paid to these characters (such as Benji's transition story) it worked really nicely. Unfortunately it felt like because every character at the ALC had to be queer, and seemingly all a different 'flavour' of queerness, oftentimes they were boiled down to just their identity, and it was hard for me to actually get a grip of any of the characters at all. Basically I was aware of Nick and Benji, and... that was it. I also felt like Nick's autism was a bit of a mixed bag; towards the latter half discussing his shutdowns, and his need for the lizard, it felt like a nice exploration. But early on especially, it often felt like there weren't really any autistic traits being particularly displayed, and instead several characters just had to mention several times that he was autistic just as a matter of making sure it's mentioned. I almost wonder if it would have been more effective to have not mentioned it, and then just under the high stress situations see him exhibit some of the behaviours and then at that point have Benji having a discussion with other members of the ALC about the behaviour and how Nick can react at times.

I guess I had a lot of thoughts on this! 

I think I enjoyed this slightly more than I did last time I read it - but maybe that's because this time I knew what I was getting into, and set my expectations accordingly.

It does of course feel like a tone shift from the TV show, as we are very quickly talking indepth about UFOs and secret government conspiracies. A slight detour in the middle to just talk about the history of Twin Peaks characters, and then back to UFOs. 

But for what it is, I would say the information is actually quite intriguing and interesting, and it's well put together for the most part (maybe aside from the jarring tone shift). 

This was an odd little book. I enjoyed reading it - I thought the narrative style was quite interesting in how detached the protagonist felt from the story. I also thought there were some really interesting political perspectives raised - I enjoyed the conflict that arose between Helen who seemed to be sort of a vaguely left-leaning centrist, and Hew who was obviously much more hard left. I particularly liked their exchange where he was chastising her for not being more politically engaged, and she tells him that she does agree with him but simply doesn't feel the need to grandstand and signpost her ideals for the sake of societal approval.

Unfortunately, the ending of the book fell a bit flat for me. After a book that seemed to navigate some murky and morally grey areas, it felt like it took a very reductive turn with one character taking a particular action that turns them into some sort of comic book superhero with all of society applauding them and being fully on their side forever more.

Overall, it was an interesting book - and one that was short and light enough that I got through it very quickly - but I came out the other end not necessarily being entirely sure what the message or stance of the book itself was. Maybe that cancel culture doesn't work; that we can try and exile people, but by doing that they'll still just continue their behaviours, and instead we need to learn to integrate? Maybe that's me extrapolating a little too much.

Picked up a little from the last book, if only because there was less tech sci-fi and less gang warfare. However, the plotting here just wasn't doing it for me. It felt like we took forever to get Buffy and Angel into the alternate world, and when they're there they once again just sort of meander around, and then start rescuing hostages with very little fanfare. Faith is introduced as a sort of deus ex machina to bring them home in literally the last 50 pages of the book.

Thoughts on the trilogy as a whole - it feels like, on paper, when you read the blurb, this whole series is really interesting. In reality, it feels like the writers just didn't really know how to go about expanding that idea into a novel, let alone three novels. So much meandering. So much back and forth. 

And the concept of the 'Unseen' felt... weak? There were a couple of lines thrown in about characters feeling unseen, but not in a way that really felt thematically poignant or developed enough to even warrant throwing in, let alone enough to name the trilogy after it.

I think that if this had been one book, I might not have felt quite so negative towards it, but stretching it out over a trilogy just honestly made me quite resentful of how much time I was investing in it, sorry!

Lord, this one was... a struggle.

For starters, the plot was almost non-existent. I truly do not know why this was a trilogy, when this entry into the series consisted of almost entirely filler. Eventually we find out the reasons behind everything that's been going down, but it didn't require 300 pages for us to get there. Instead it's full of the Scooby gang just venturing out and fighting some demons and then regrouping, talking about the demons, and then going out again. And we have some flashbacks throughout 20 years of Russian history and scientists carrying out experimental physics tests, something that just felt too science-fiction for Buffy. And the final missing piece to all of this? Some gang warfare!

So all in all, a pretty uninteresting combination.

Add into that some incredibly uncharacteristic dialogue (Giles and Wesley greeting each other with "God save the Queen"? Willow acting as though she can't tell the difference between Giles and Wesley? Anya just making constant blunt references to sex?) and it was very hard to push myself through.

It's hard to give an overall rating to a collection, and this is a real mixed bag, so I'll settle on 3.5 overall.

I thought the opening Faith story was great, if a little hard to adjust to seeing the Mayor's "afterlife". Unfortunately the collection took a bit of a turn for me with Blood of Carthage; I didn't hugely enjoy it and found it quite hard to get engaged, which is a shame as it made up over half the book. 

I did enjoy Heart of a Slayer and Cemetery of Lost Love, but the Oz story I also felt was a little underwhelming, and didn't love it!

Good book, a lot of disparate plots that were all interesting to some degree, that seems to be more interconnected than they might first appear. I also like having the crossover aspect so we get to see a multitude of characters. For the most part the dialogue was accurate for the characters, a couple of clunky bits (mostly around Anya) but I can forgive it. Looking forward to seeing where Part 2 of the trilogy goes. 

Really enjoyed it - I think maybe even more than the first book. The vampire story felt more developed and hooked me more than the werewolf story from book one, and I think it also helped that we have already established the Stranger Times team so here we got to develop them a little more. I actually really appreciated the inclusion of Simon, and also seeing more depth to Bancroft besides simply being an insolent drunk man was interesting.

I also thought the resolution to the vampire "mystery" was really nicely done, and left just enough unresolved that I'm intrigued to see if any of it pops up again. 

Loved the hints at a larger, overriding menace coming into play too, and looking forward to seeing how that develops!