chantaal's reviews
2276 reviews

I just really enjoy this series a lot, especially Aresh and Kondou being dumb dumbs in looooove

So. I'm trying to read more past Hugo/Nebula award winners and I've enjoyed Nancy Kress in the past so I thought this would be a good place to start.

Unfortunately, all I got here was a bunch of ideas thrown together in a way that tried to provide something compelling and thoughtful, but only made me groan. The general climate fiction theme here feels clunky, and everything that had to do with the After sections, I haaaated. I get that it was a very specific point of view, but I hated reading it. The other sections weren't much better.

I don't know. It was whatever. My reading slump to close out the year continues.

So this was a cute idea and for what it's doing, it's great! Fun times! It's a bit silly and anachronistic and not meant to be taken seriously. World building is non-existent. The story exists only to ask the question of what happens after the D&D campaign is over and two of your party are in love and one of them accidentally triggers a magical binding to be the new king and has to find his soulmate or die and how can you make a romcom out of it. It's predictable and fun.

It just went on maybe 100 pages too long for how absolutely goddamn OBLIVIOUS the two main characters were. You fucking love each other, just fucking SAY IT and GET TOGETHER ALREADY.

Literally every trope you can think of that would keep apart two characters who totally love each other but think the other DOESN'T love them is utilized. If that's your jam, I am so happy for you. Go forth! Enjoy this book! It just frustrated me to no end and that frustration ultimately took away from the fun time I was having with the rest of it.  

I….what? What was the point of this existing?

I'm glad I finally picked this up to finish up this first "season" of the series. It's been an interesting ride over the last couple of years, and the political macro plot here exemplifies why I invested so much time in this series - the world building and the greater overall plot is just so good. 

The romance was fine here, nothing super interesting beyond the fact that Zaira struggles with believing she's "evil" and has intense rage blackouts...and Aden is incredibly boring. I did like that this started out with them being kidnapped and meeting up with a new (to the story) pack that they form a bond with. Aden taking Alpha lessons from them was a nice way of showing how he wants to move the Arrows forward. 

I wonder if this is a fact of having left so much time between this and the last book, but I really do not understand how the Arrows are supposedly such a huuuge part of the political landscape now and for the stability of the Psy world. Very weird, especially because they weren't really a thing until around book 8? 10?

Anyway, this has been a nice enjoyable long series with some great world building and low and high romances. Singh is just enjoyable to read. I'm still debating whether to continue on, but I can't deny that I've had a good time.

DNF at 47%. While this was an easy read, it wasn't really enjoyable. I hesitate to call it boring because there are the bones of something good here, but...the execution is severely lacking this far into it, and I just don't care enough to keep pushing through.

I've also just found out through this Guardian article (https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/may/11/the-ministry-of-time-author-kaliane-bradley-it-was-just-so-much-fun) that the author is basically writing self-insert fanfic of The Terror, which I am NOT surprised by. That show had a bustling fandom on Tumblr, and the writing here gives all the best of the Tumblr aesthetic especially in the constant, CONSTANT long metaphors that don't make sense when you actually try to understand the sentences but still give The Vibes overall. Good for her, I guess, but I'm not gonna continue on. 

I wish this had something more going for it. I can see why people enjoy it so much - it is punchy and muses on how strange modern life is, and the time traveling fish out of water trope makes for some fun moments. The seeding of the weirdness at the Ministry makes me want more of that, and less of whatever is going on with the narrator and Graham. But the point of this novel isn't that it's sci-fi or mystery, despite using that as a backdrop to the main themes (and that I think it would be more interesting if it leaned more into the genre aspects). It's musing on the human condition and the author's struggle with their biracial identity and Cambodian culture and living in a world full of microaggressions. It's also trying to tell a story about this weird Ministry and Graham and his time travel cohort trying to acclimate. And whatever romance is about to happen. I wish it was a bit more focused in one way or another.

Someone tell me if I'm right on this prediction about one of the weird tertiary characters who keeps popping up at the Ministry and everyone is all "they're weird, right? idk what they even do here":

People from the future? It has to be. That dude is just too weird not to be from the future.

Anyway. This ultimately wasn't for me, and it joins the 60% of books in the top 10 of the Goodreads sci-fi category that I firmly believe shouldn't be in the sci-fi category. 🤷🏾‍♀️