mspilesofpaper's reviews
889 reviews

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for sending me an eArc.

For the record: I was very excited about the book and thought that it would be a great YA fantasy read but oh boy, I was in for a disappointment because ultimately, the novel feels very half-baked and unfinished.

Ultimately, the novel doesn't just feel very unfinished, it also seems to be aimed at the wrong target group. Based on Ying's age (18 years), I would have expected something that is aimed at 16+ but it reads as if it should be aimed at younger readers (e.g., Middle Grade). The only aspect that is slightly too much for Middle Grade is the light violence, the brothel scene (although it's mild), the romance and Ying's age herself.

Aside from this, my main issues are:
1) The engineering focus is lacking. The setup makes it seem as if it will be on the engineering aspect as Ying also enrols in the equivalent of a university for engineering that offers academic competition. It could have been great to highlight how technologically advanced the nation is and could have been used to showcase Ying's genius for engineering. Instead, it is shoe-horned into the plot instead of acting as a well-incorporated device for plot and character development. If I'm not mistaken, there are four scenes where Ying does something related to engineering. The author mentions multiple times how much Ying loves engineering, how much she learned from her father by shadowing him and being trained by him, so I would have assumed that her skill would be a major key element to solve the murder mystery. Instead, Ying just shows her skills when she meets her love interest, during two trials, and when she develops two weapons in the last 80%. It is very underwhelming because the author could have done so much with engineering in an Asian-inspired fantasy world.

2) The lack of character development for Ying and the side characters. Ying is the main character who is 18 years old, is the oldest daughter of her family and has ultra manly brother (yes, she highlights that Wen is very manly in comparison to the boys/young men that she meets in the Guild), and several younger siblings. Unfortunately, she acts much younger than her 18 years because she is reckless, hot-headed and never thinks things through. Concerning her siblings: as oldest daughter, I would have expected her to step up into a mother-like role as it would fit into the expectations of their society/culture. Instead, she seems not to be involved in their upbringing at all. Further, she is completely unchanged and unfazed by the deaths of her parents. Yes, she is angry at her father's death, and whines that neither him nor her mother fought enough to stay alive, but she never truly grieves. He's dead, they hold the funeral and then she is off to find revenge. Of course, she's a special snowflake who survives everything by luck or because of the side character.
The side characters are two-dimensional, stereotypical-like, underdeveloped and often inconsistent. There's Ye-kan who is feisty/bratty/selfish/entitled/angry/... and whose behaviour differs in terms of "Does it benefit Ying or not?". Chang-en is supposed to be Ying's best friend in the Guild but you could swap him for anyone else and it wouldn't make a difference. His only personality trait is to rile up another character. Ye-yang, the love interest, is as grey and bleak as his eyes.

3) The romance happens out of nowhere. It felt very unrequired to begin with as it quickly becomes just a plot device to add some tension. Aside from that, it is instant love/attraction after one scene and I don't understand what they saw in each other.

4) The world-building doesn't exist. The book starts on Ying's home island and highlights that they live in tents and have a semi-nomadic lifestyle. Then, Ying travels to the neighbouring island which has solid houses and already fancy technology. Then, she ends up on the main island with the capital and here, the world-building just leaves the book. The city is barely described and when it is described, I cannot get an image of it in my mind. There's the guild, the new palace, the most famous brothel, tons of canals, a bridge that's 10 stories high (???), and an artificial forest outside of it. Apparently, there are six more islands (technically seven islands but the 10th island is forbidden and the kingdom's leader even wages war against the 10th island although one of his wives/concubines came from there) but names are never mentioned. In general, the entire political aspect of the kingdom's clans & co is extremely underdeveloped. An important aspect of the novel is engineering and how technologically advanced they are with airships, robots, and steam-powered carriages, ... - it's very futuristic in some aspects but there's no explanation of how they got to it aside from "yeah we basically copied the airships from the Jade Empire and the green-eyed strangers". There's also no explanation for why the capital is so advanced while Ying's island has no technological tools to use.


TL;DR
A Middle Grade novel in the trenchcoat of a Young Adult novel. Extremely underdeveloped in terms of writing, world-building, plot and characters. The engineering and competition aspect is reduced to the sidelines and the plot is inconsistent and jumps from chapter to chapter. The murder mystery is no true mystery and the author throws a romance into the mix to keep the reader from figuring it out too early. The only reason why I gave it two stars instead of one star is that there's nothing truly problematic in the book. It just needs more editing and a few more rounds of revisions. And another marketing strategy that pushes it to younger readers in the Middle Grade age range. 

It reads like a Wattpad fanfiction of Gossip Girl - just with adult characters. It's so badly written.

What's with the obsession of American authors with Italian men for their male love interests? And why are they all called Dante? And why is the brother always called Luca? 

How We End takes the zombie apocalypse but instead of showing how to beat it by using a white straight man, the author took the question "How do we survive it without losing our humanity?" and created a small and diverse group as their main characters. The story is told from a dual perspective (Jake and Liv) and starts at very mundane points - being in the tube to meet friends in Central London, and being in a bar - and follows the group on their way out of Greater London towards a point where they thought it would lead to safety. It's a very character-driven story and is very stressful to read, especially the first 40% or so when no one knows exactly what is going on. If you like The Last of Us (either as the series or as one of the games), you should give it a try because it's difficult not to notice the inspiration.

Unlike the average zombie book (or movie), the zombies here are very diverse and not all act as "stupid, brain-rotten and driven by hunger" monsters who shuffle slowly along streets to get to their next meal. Instead, you have a wild variety of zombies who are often very fast and some are surprisingly intelligent. In addition, I think the book handled the governmental and civilian response very well. Normally, society falls instantly and everyone knows exactly what happened when the truth is that the governments would try to hide what is happening, you would have conspiracy theories running wild (just remember all the nonsense that was spruced during COVID-19) and people not believing it, people who would take advantage of the situation, ... - you get all of these points in How We End. Further, the novel includes issues such as "How do you defend yourself if you don't have access to guns?" (since the book is set in England and we have stricter gun laws than the US, so, of course, having a gun for defence would be far-fetched), how do you deal with the need for prescribed medication (for health reasons but also for an addiction), and how do you get new clothes and food because there won't be any shops open where you can buy anything. 

My only criticism would be the fast development of the zombies and the virus behind it. It took the zombies in The Last of Us game quite long to have so many different kinds but it's rather instanteneous in the novel. Where in the game, we are talking about several years, the timeline for the book is just a few weeks as the group leaves London in September/October and finds out about the mutations in October/November. While the author has a scene where it's hinted at the fact that the virus is out for longer than anyone thought, it still feels off. I think it would have been better to include a few more scenes to establish an actual timeline, so the reader would learn how long the virus LYM-1 was exposed to the public, about the first cases (they have to be outside of London since the mutations start to appear in the countryside) and then have London with the extreme amount of cases out of seemingly nowhere. 

TL;DR: If you like video games like The Last of Us, Resident Evil or movies/TV series like World War Z or The Walking Dead, you should give it a try. If you are new to the zombie genre but like stories with BIPOC and queer representation in them: give it a try! Either way, it is a smaller take on the zombie apocalypse where people try to survive instead of beating the zombies. Wonderful use of the 'found family' trope as well! 

A Soul to Keep isn't my first monster romance novel nor will it be my last one but it will be certainly the only one from the series that I will read. Why?

First of all: Why is it 544 pages long? Sure, the author included more plot than most monster romances/paranormal romances have but it is still too long. Often it is just Reia's internal monologue, which repeats itself every four pages, which is so annoying. In addition to the fact that it is just too long, the pacing is just off. If it had been tighter, and maybe just 300 pages long, I might have enjoyed it more. However, my rating dipped from 3.5 stars to 2 stars due to the arc that happened in the last 30%.

Why?
A) It was unrequired to implement the "original woman" plot in such a way.

B) Reia "I'm not like other girls" is a fucking arse. She lives her monster fucking dreams with the version of Orpheus who is very humane as he went through 19 (!) relationship (attempts) and had countless of humans devoured by the time he takes Reia. Reia meets a Duskwalker who has extremely limited humanity and notices several times that he is very stupid and lacks humanity. (It is important to point out, trust me.) And while she loves to get fucked by Orpheus, the original woman (Katerina) was living with the version of Orpheus that lacks humanity and who was at his most dangerous. It irked me so much that the author then reduces Katerina to a caricaturish villain who is vilified for leaving Orpheus because "she never saw the humanity in him". Please be serious, what kind of humanity was he supposed to have when he didn't even have a name? Of course, she gave him when he pushed for sex to satisfy his desire and didn't say "no" because she wanted to survive. Technically, she was sexually abused and raped. The audacity of Reia to be like "you could have said no, he would have stopped" because present Orpheus would have done it. Past Orpheus would have been triggered and would have killed Katerina.
TL;DR: Katerina is portrayed as a slutty, greedy ex-girlfriend who willingly fucks the Demon King, accepted all the physical gifts by Orpheus, and then left him because she felt like it when she is the survivor of a horror story. Victim shaming isn't cool. (Her sexual relationship with the Demon King isn't any better, she just deals better with it because he has a higher level of humanity than Orpheus.)

C) Orpheus would have still picked Katerina if Reia wouldn't have been willing to be with him. He's still extremely hung up on her and just picked Reia because she was there and willing. I didn't buy that he loves Reia more than Katerina. The man would need therapy (or a few therapists as snacks to gain wisdom).


As for the romance between Orpheus and Reia: there's no chemistry. He imprints on every human that's with him and pretty much just fell for her because she didn't smell of fear and was willing to touch him. She flees from him and nearly dies in the process? He's angry for some time but quickly forgives her because she touches him. Also, the sex is ... something. Yes, it's monster sex but I wouldn't consider the scenes as good as they are utterly cringy and remind me of some very dark and twisted fan fictions that I might or might not have read. Concerning his size: his entire cock is pretty much over 40cm long (likely longer since he is described as massive and around 220cm tall (without his horns)). Please take a measuring tape and put it against your body to see where the cock would end; it should be directly beneath your breasts. Fun fact: the average length of a vagina is between 6cm - 15cm (depending if it's stimulated or not). If you are wondering how he is fitting his length (the girth is never stated but she can barely grasp it with both hands, so it will be thick) into her: magic. He manipulates her body to take her and it results in such a change that she would never find a human cock fulfilling. 

The world-building is not as swallow as I thought it would be but it isn't as deep as it could be. For the majority of the time, I thought that it played in an apocalyptic USA until it is revealed that humankind never went through the Industrial Revolution and their most developed weapons were swords, bow & arrow etc. In the last third, it is then revealed that the story isn't taking place on planet Earth but happens in an unnamed world that is simply populated by humans. The reveal? The Demon King mentions that the canyon, in which the Veil is, covers 1/4 of the world, which is larger than all canyons on our planet. In the last third, elves are also thrown into the mix and Reia learns in the last chapter what Duskwalkers are, which doesn't help with the world-building. The explanation behind the Duskwalkers' existence is also so anticlimactic. 

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the eARC

When I heard about The Spellshop via TikTok, I was hooked. Low-stakes cosy fantasy with cottage-core vibes? Hell yes. I wanted to like the book so much. Unfortunately, the book fell utterly flat for me. Please, don't get me wrong: it is a cute cosy fantasy with cottage-core vibes but it isn't exactly a low-stakes cosy fantasy because the author included a rather big conflict towards the end.

What I did like was the wide variety of magical creatures that the author included in the book. Sentient plants? Yes. Merhorses and merfolk? Hell yes. Centaurs and other non-human beings that aren't just elves/fae? Yes.

And while I loved the inclusion of these elements, they highlight one of my issues with the book: the world-building. It is so extremely vague that it just disappoints me. A few points are explained as "magic created them" but that's it. I'm aware that cosy fantasy books tend to lack intensive world-building but I would appreciate it if authors of those novels would just put in some effort. I don't need Sanderson's massive worlds but at least enough to get an idea of the world where the book plays in.

Aside from the vague world-building, I didn't connect with any of the characters but especially not with Kiela. All characters are rather underdeveloped and require some editing to flesh them out but Kiela ... God, I disliked her so much at the end. She grew up loved by her parents (although partly it feels like she doesn't remember them very well, which is weird) and then lived very secluded in the Great Library of the Empire where she worked as a librarian. Her character relies very heavily on the "reclusive librarian who lives for books and hates people" trope and there's not much about her besides it. In the first half, she constantly reminds the reader that she hates to deal with people and doesn't trust anyone aside from her books. Unfortunately, she has zero skills to live on her own and requires constant help from the other characters, which in turn, is something that she hates. Most often, the help arrives in the form of her love interest to whom she is incredibly rude because of her distrust of people and because she's utterly set in her ways. The lack of social skills doesn't help either. It got annoying to read again how she berates herself again for trusting him despite him proving that he has no hidden agenda. Also, I didn't understand her logic concerning the books. First, she acts as if she is saving them from the revolution when it spills into the library, which is understandable in my opinion. As soon as she arrives at the island, she berates herself for taking the books with her because they are spellbooks and no one can know that she has them. Yet, she sets up a shop to sell jam and "remedies" (aka spells) to help the island. Of course, people realise rather soon what her remedies are but she still acts like "if we do not say it aloud, it is not true", which is the logic of a small child and not an adult woman. As for Larran, her love interest: he is a wet paper towel who has zero social skills either and cannot take a hint from her. The combined awkwardness from Kiela and Larran was too much and is utterly cringe-worthy.

As for their romance: what the fuck? It is instant love with zero chemistry and I don't understand why they fell for each other because their interactions are so awkward. I truly wish that the author would have left out their romance and the romance between two side characters (likely being the main characters in another book) and would have focused on friendship, found family and community as themes. It would have worked so much better, in my opinion, and not every book requires a romance.

Concerning the high stakes towards the end: it was so unnecessary and felt just like the typical third-act break-up in contemporary romances. It just added tension and stress for a few chapters until it gets solved rather smoothly and without any issues, because it is along the lines of "doing good deeds will always prevail".

TL;DR: Cosy fantasy with cottage-core vibes, insta-love, characters with poor social skills, sentient plants who can speak (either fluently or just "meep") and unrequired third-act tension plot. The main character basically oopsies her way into friendship and love. On the plus side: it is a fast and quick read. 

The Dragon's Promise is the sequel to Six Crimson Cranes, which was/is one of my favourite Young Adult fantasy books because it was beautifully written, and I loved the mythology, the inclusion of fairytales, and the budding romance between Shiori and Takkan. While it did take me rather long to read the finale of the duology, I was excited to read it because of how much I liked the first book. Although I was a bit anxious about it as well because Six Crimson Cranes could have worked well as a standalone too (well, with a few tiny adjustments). 

Unfortunately, the second book disappointed me. While it's still beautifully written, it's so hectic in terms of plot because the author has to finish the dragon arc, the pearl arc, the demon arc, the stepmother arc, and the romance arc, which results in a stressful read and very superficial descriptions (especially for the first part where Shiori is in the dragon kingdom). The dragon arc is so quickly paced and dealt with that I felt like getting whiplash when Shiori gets back to her home country. The other arcs are similarly quickly finished, which results in all these chapters having tiny cliffhangers as Shiori either faints, blacks out, was forcefully moved from place A to B, ... - which just increases the stressfulness of the book. There's rarely a moment where the reader could just breathe in.

The fast-paced treatment results in side characters becoming not very important. Takkan? Does barely anything aside from confessing his love for Shiori over and over again. The brothers? Very similar, they just appear to help Shiori out when she's trying to get on with one of her ridiculous solutions. Seryu? Just appears in the first part and then dragons vanish pretty much completely (aside from one side character), which results in "the first 30% are a different book than the rest of the novel". Everything that Shiori learned in the dragon's kingdom about the pearl, could have been handled in 50 pages but the constant "Shiori gets arrested, gets freed, gets into trouble again, gets arrested again, ..." stretches the part out. 

And please, do not get me started about the end of the book. For the majority of the two books, demons are portrayed as evil beings that would ruin the kingdom if they were freed. Suddenly, they are more than just evil creatures and they deserve the reader's compassion and sympathy? Yeah, no. The demon antagonist was also rather lacklustre here.

TL;DR: It feels like a Disney movie with all the high stakes that are conveniently solved despite Shiori's poor planning and reckless behaviour. Too many plot arcs need to be dealt with, which results in quickly finished arcs that feel underdeveloped and often pushed to the side to include a new arc (e.g., the cult). 

DNF @ 51% (Chapter 31)

I started to read the book because it is likely the pick for the Page & Wick September box and I wanted to know if I can skip the box or not. 

I can wholeheartedly say: this is the blandest bullshit that I have read in a very long time and it has no right to be 662 pages long as the Kindle edition.

Aside from the general boring blandness that could have been written as a 300-page book: the FMC annoyed me so much. I'm all in for flawed characters as long as they have a development arc but Karys ... Karys only survives by having plot armour and being the female main character who manages to bang a god. I have no idea why she thinks that she is a good actress and why she is even surprised that the court's gods know who she is. She's as transparent as a white t-shirt in a wet t-shirt contest.

The romance has zero evolution as the main male character appears very late, which makes the enemies-to-lovers trope rather useless. He doesn't even consider her as his enemy at any point. It's all in her head that they are enemies because her race was wronged by the Higher Gods. Due to his absences, it's pretty much instant love and by chapter 31, I didn't even get any of the spicy scenes. I suppose they will be as cringy as all the "tension-filled scenes" with them so far. Their banter is so fucking cringy as it is always sexual innuendos. I have the feeling that there will be a scene where he betrays her and she betrays him, and she will be mad at him for betraying her as if she didn't plan to do the same.

The world-building is 100% info dumping in never-ending monologues and the reader is still left with questions. The author brings up points where the reader would think that they would be important for later, but no ... they just vanish. Instead, the reader gets constant never-ending inner monologues about cooking and painting because the FMC is so quirky with her hobbies. She has a photogenic memory and excels at diagrams, so she can paint photorealistic images of people, scenes but also fucking building plans after looking at the building once. Cooking calms her down, btw. The worst is that the author rarely even mentions ingredients. It is always "[non-named ingredient A] could work well with [non-named ingredient B] as long as she will include [non-named ingredients C and D]". The constant never-ending monologues concerning the drawing, cooking and her anger (which she forgets half of the time) are the main reasons why the book is over 600 pages long. It needs professional editing to cut it down to 300 - 400 pages. As it stands now, it is just so long so the author would get paid more via Kindle Unlimited. 

Aside from the overwhelming preaching writing style and the blatant racism (Africans are corrupt, incompetent, primitive; Asians are deceitful, thieves and thrive on murder): I do not need to read about the rape of two young girls (8 and 10) to such extent or about the rape of their mother. Or how their brother (4) was murdered.

It is vile and I feel sick now.

Concerning the racism: of course the white British man who's conveniently attractive and couldn't touch another woman after his beloved white wife died will safe the day. I bet that every woman that will appear on-page (and is alive when doing so) will get the sexism treatment.

Don't Want You Like a Best Friend (also known as "More Than A Best Friend", which already annoys me so much) is a sapphic romance set in Regency England (rather fictional though) that is the first instalment in the series. It's supposed to be Parent Trap ft. Bridgerton with Taylor Swift vibes/references. Despite being a historical romance, it is very modern in terms of vocabulary and feels more like a contemporary romance in a historical dress. It's only set in the Regency time for the ✨drama✨. While the two main characters are adults (20 and 21 if I'm not mistaken) the entire novel feels incredibly young and they might have been adults only to include sex scenes. 

Unfortunately, I found it rather lacklustre and the girls' relationship lacks development. Their "Oh, I'm in love with her" is very instant after a couple of hangouts during the season's parties. If it weren't for Gwen's father, they would still think that they are just friends. There's no pining, no yearning prior "Oh I love her" because they just jump from A to B in their relationship. If you use the friends-to-lovers trope, you need to include more pining after your characters become friends. I don't even know why the two girls became friends to begin with! It doesn't help that they try to set up their parents as a couple, which makes them stepsisters, and they are so eager for it because "we can continue to love each other under their protection". Yes, you aren't related by blood but ... it's too close to step-family porn for my comfort. 😶

I think the author should have just set it as a contemporary romance in a modern setting. Maybe let the girls meet at a summer camp where they realise that they a) live close together and b) their parents have a history with each other. They could have become best of friends while trying to set their parents up (and horribly failing!) until they realise "Oh I love her". The main obstacle to them becoming a couple could have been the potential issue of picking different universities or so. Or if you truly want the setting to be Regency, then Beth should have married her beau. He would have been accepting of the girls' relationship, his father would have kicked the bucket so he would become truly the Earl. Book 2 would have been him finding love with another of the male side characters then who would marry Gwen for the sake of appearances and everyone lives happily ever after. The entire parent trap thing could have been avoided or the girls could have tried matchmaking for their parents with someone else. Basically, anything would have been better than this because as it stands, I'm not curious about the second instalment anymore. 

The Stolen Throne is the prequel to the video game Dragon Age: Origins. The story is set roughly thirty years before the events of the video game and it follows Maric, Loghain and Rowan on their way to free Ferelden from the Orlesian occupation.

As much as I like Gaider's work as lead writer for the video games: writing for video games and writing a novel are two different kind of shoes and his strength lies in being a writer for video games. The book's main issue is that it tells everything but rarely shows something, which leads to an overly long book. For example, the reader is told that Loghain warms up to Maric over time (to the point where they become friends) but there's rarely a scene where the development actually happens.

Starting from 40% onwards, Gaider just summarises several years in a few paragraphs, which is a) a massive change from the extensive earlier chapters and b) erases a lot of character growth and potential (inner) conflict for them. I still don't care much about Rowan because she's very much the "shieldmaiden"/"warrior maiden" archetype who's suddenly in love with Maric but also in love with Loghain but has otherwise no personality. I feel like even Morrigan and Alistair have more chemistry when they create Old God Child than Rowan and Maric will ever have. Concerning Maric and Loghain: you can see from where Cailin and Alistair have their himbo genes because Maric is ... something. Weirdly enough, sometimes it feels like he's quite smitten with Loghain (of course, the reader never gets the scenes to explain why it might be something) and the best Gaider could have done would have been to make Loghain-Maric-Rowan a fucking throuple and be done with it. Meanwhile, Loghain is just as unlikeable as in the video game. He's creepy and emotionally nonexistent and pushes Maric into "you have to make difficult decisions as a king", which leads to killing a woman because the women in Thedas get constantly sexually assaulted and murdered (which is even an issue with the video games for me).

The best part of the book was certainly when Maric, Loghain, Rowan and another character are in the Deep Roads and show personality in their dialogue while the entire setting is so tense (like most Deep Roads scenes in the video games). Meanwhile, the villain of the story - the usurper - is finished off in the epilogue, which is so unsatisfying since he was the reason why Ferelden flocked to Maric's banner.

Personally, the book could have been shorter if the goal was to introduce the background story for Origins and why certain quests/characters are of importance in the video game because there's little to no new information in the novel. The constant summarisation would have worked if Gaider had written a shorter book, so the reader would be updated on major events or would have written a book that would have covered even more years and where every chapter would have been dedicated to a specific event/period. As it stands, you could read a bunch of wiki pages and would be just as good due to the lack of new information for fans. Just skip this one unless your goal is to read all novels (text and graphic ones) before Dragon Age: The Veilguard comes out.

To authors: please do not let your characters have sex while they are gravely injured to the point of blacking out mid-conversation from the pain. It is rather unbelievable.