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ashurredly's reviews
453 reviews
The Forgotten Kingdom by Signe Pike
3.0
Not a bad read. I stayed interested and read pretty quickly but there's a lot of plot points that just don't have follow-through.
Spoilers below:
1. The biggest one is the raid on Tutgual's place near the end. Lailoken describes it a bit, the chapter ends, and then the next chapter picks up six years later. All Langueth has to say about it is that everything has been rebuilt. There's almost no fallout or significance to it.
2. What happened to Brodyn? Maybe He'll pop back up in book 3.
3. Why did the Dragons kill the man sent to trade for Angharad? Why did Langueth not ask Fendrin or Lailoken? It doesn't make sense that someone would just go rogue when all the Dragon leaders wanted to get Angharad to safety.
Spoilers below:
1. The biggest one is the raid on Tutgual's place near the end. Lailoken describes it a bit, the chapter ends, and then the next chapter picks up six years later. All Langueth has to say about it is that everything has been rebuilt. There's almost no fallout or significance to it.
2. What happened to Brodyn? Maybe He'll pop back up in book 3.
3. Why did the Dragons kill the man sent to trade for Angharad? Why did Langueth not ask Fendrin or Lailoken? It doesn't make sense that someone would just go rogue when all the Dragon leaders wanted to get Angharad to safety.
The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
5.0
This was very, very good. I particularly liked the way characters were actually allowed grow beyond their initial relationships (thinking of Rin and Nezha).
To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara
I'm not sure how I can even rate this book. It was a hard read, especially the third section which is about a near-future society that's become a fascist state in response to pandemics. It was hard to read; I'm still not sure what the author's politics are because I was having so many feelings during the whole thing. It's also one of those books that purposefully doesn't give closure, that doesn't have a clear ending.
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
4.0
I would likely have given this five stars but for two things:
1) The ending. It's a big and sudden thing and feels a bit like a betrayal.
2) One would probably be offset if some of the development between characters was more rounded out. I would have like to be let into the characters' thought processes just a little more. It would probably have made the end a bit easier to accept.
1) The ending. It's a big and sudden thing and feels a bit like a betrayal.
2) One would probably be offset if some of the development between characters was more rounded out. I would have like to be let into the characters' thought processes just a little more. It would probably have made the end a bit easier to accept.
The Unbroken by C.L. Clark
5.0
This was so good! The world building is very good, the tensions are very strong, and the resolutions aren't easy. If there are two things I wish were different, they are:
1) Touraine's past could have been a little more fleshed out. That she's a lieutenant is really important to her both personally and in the narrative, but there's very little that shows why she's a lieutenant. She makes some incredibly bad judgment calls (which, fair, tbh. The story is very clear it's b/c of her own internal struggles), but a few examples of what she'd been like as a soldier that got her promoted would have helped.
2) Luca seems a little too willing to accept people from a culture she's been taught is uncivilized. In some ways, that's good - there's some good growth around her taking responsibility for her/her empire's actions, but it seems unlikely that she wouldn't have harbored any of her own prejudices to have to push back against.
1) Touraine's past could have been a little more fleshed out. That she's a lieutenant is really important to her both personally and in the narrative, but there's very little that shows why she's a lieutenant. She makes some incredibly bad judgment calls (which, fair, tbh. The story is very clear it's b/c of her own internal struggles), but a few examples of what she'd been like as a soldier that got her promoted would have helped.
2) Luca seems a little too willing to accept people from a culture she's been taught is uncivilized. In some ways, that's good - there's some good growth around her taking responsibility for her/her empire's actions, but it seems unlikely that she wouldn't have harbored any of her own prejudices to have to push back against.