jasperdotpdf's reviews
140 reviews

I‘m just so unbelievably bored, and not invested at all. 

It took me an embarrassingly long time to read this. I got it as a christmas gift 3 years ago, tried reading it several times and took it with me on almost every trip I went on; determined to finally read it on the train/plane. For some reason I never managed to get past the first chapter, but something posessed me at the beginning of this month (and by something I mean 2 friends and I starting a book club and deciding to read this book) and I finally pushed past the first chapter and oh boy was it worth it. I have never heard a single bad thing about this book and turns out that the masses were right.

The cast of characters is an absolute delight. They're so deeply and vividly developed they're virtually jumping off the page while reading and I fell in love with them so fast. While I didn't love the fact that they were all so young, it wasn't that hard to mentally age them up a bit while reading and their masterful characterisation more than makes up for it. 
Both the characters as individuals and their dynamics between each other are so wonderful and I had a blast reading about them.

I've never read a book that does such an incredible job at planting seeds and returning to them, at picking leads back up that it establishes earlier in the book and then fully delivering on whatever it set up. It does an absolutely amazing job at being tightly paced yet leaving enough room for the cast to shine. 

The entire book is incredibly well developed, from the world to the plot to the characters, and I'm beyond obsessed with it. 

I really wasn't the biggest fan of the format and the writing. While I don't inherently dislike stories being told through journal entries/written accounts, it unfortunately didn't work very well for me here. The main con of the format for me is feeling like you're never there with the characters in the present; the fact that events are being retold by the characters rather than experienced with the characters made moments of suspense fall really flat for me. On top of that, Emily's own voice as a scientist felt very dry and just wasn't very fun to read. It didn't impact my reading experience too negatively until I read the chapter written from Brambelby's POV and noticed just how much of a breath of fresh air it was. 

Even though I feel like the book's worldbuilding should've felt like it had a lot of depth just by the sheer fact that there's so many footnotes telling the reader about the lore through mentions of other scientific works, it felt way too arbitrary for me. I wish the book had had more setup or exposition in some areas, because oftentimes when the characters encountered a roadblock the solution for said problem felt like it was dropped into their laps, rather than being a rewarding follow-up on something that was established earlier in the book. However, the book heavily plays with the idea of the world of the faeries being capricious and arbitrary, so I don't want to fault it too much for it; it might have just been a narrative choice that didn't work for me as a reader. 

To give the book some credit, it isn't all bad. Some moments had a really cozy atmosphere and I liked seeing the mystery unfold. I also absolutely adored Poe and Brambleby as characters and I think they singlehandedly saved this book for me. 

this book changed my brain chemistry, i‘m absolutely obsessed with it and i want to fall asleep with it under my pillow

Thank you to NetGalley and 47North for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

DNF at 16%

I really wanted to like this book, because it seemed right up my alley. I love nature, mysteries and fantasy; so a book about an unknown world of an ancient forest should appeal to me. Unfortunately, I found myself struggling to stay focused. I constantly slipped into skimming pages in hopes of finally getting to a chapter that would catch my interest, but it never happened.
I really tried to like this book. I kept losing interest, but came back to it in the hopes that it would finally catch me, but it's been sitting in my NetGalley library for over a month and I haven't been able to read more than 50 pages, so I had to DNF it.

The book starts out with a pretty good hook, but we move on pretty quickly to chapters that seem so far removed from what I was reading the book for. Following Syrah's every day life is no-doubt something important to show, but it took up such a big part of the book and it just wasn't very engaging.
The constant switching between the flashbacks to Syrah's childhood, her present-day life as a firefighter (without ever seeing her in action during an actual fire, by the way), an errant chapter from her brother's POV and occasional interludes from the Mother Tree constantly pulled me out of immersion and left me confused on what I was supposed to focus on. I read 7 chapters, and every single one had a switch in POV or time, told either in 2042 or 2014. It was so frustrating, especially considering that the majority of the flashback chapters could have been summarised in a few sentences. Still giving insight on Syrah's childhood while managing to stay on track of a more concisely told, engaging narrative.

Unfortunately, The Canopy Keepers ended up feeling like a slog to read due to there being almost no sign of the central conflict mentioned in the blurb, despite it showing a lot of potential.

Thank you to NetGalley and E. G. Creel for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

This novella definitely had potential, but unfortunately wasn't nearly fleshed out enough to warrant a higher rating.

I really liked the premise of a girl being born alone in a society that usually only has twin-births, and exploring the consequences of that in a grim, atmospheric setting. The book is also an incredibly easy read, and could definitely be enjoyed by someone looking for a bedtime-esque story. Other than that, I really struggled to enjoy my time reading Lily.

A lot of the scenes could have used a little bit more care. I oftentimes felt like the novella was falling woefully short of the atmosphere it was trying to convey.
There were also a few things that had no real anchor in the novella as it stands. The description of the book says Creel imagined it to be narrated by David Attenborough, but the few lines of narration were sprinkled in with otherwise very sterile/barebones writing. There wasn't enough consistency with these 4th wall breaks to make them humorous or endearing rather than immersion breaking.
Halfway through the book, we're also introduced to some themes of Norse mythology that came seemingly out of nowhere, and 90% of the characters and creatures we meet could have used a lot more fleshing out.

The book sits at less than 40 pages, so there was definitely room for more exposition and scene-setting, and I wish Lily had been allowed to take up the space it could have filled with its very interesting premise.