Scan barcode
mynameismarines's reviews
1076 reviews
The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by S.A. Chakraborty
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Fang Fiction by Kate Stayman-London
adventurous
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.5
I wanted to like this, but I'm going to need romance to make it back into romance books.
The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon
1.0
Retooled fanfiction is certainly nothing new, but it seems to be thriving in a publishing industry that is salivating over titles with built-in audiences. Unfortunately, no one is telling these people that trying to pull the IP out of these works is like trying to remove the foundation from a house.
From start to finish, <i>The Hurricane Wars</i> is plagued with the kind of issues you'd expect of a story that was built on someone else's IP. This book seemed to think all there was to world-building was hitting us with a barrage of proper nouns delivered with little to no context. It felt less like being dropped into a carefully crafted world and more like a control-find replacement of <i>Star Wars</i> terms with “original” ones.
Our Rey and Kylo Ren, as they were, are thinly veiled archetypes with little personality beyond their angst and physical attributes. Their dynamic leans heavily into overblown descriptions and repetitive internal monologues. It’s a relationship built on "but why does he look at me like that if he hates me?" moments, which are only more annoying because the "save the world" stakes are preserved from the original work. We are being asked to both accept that Rey would be both fighting for her life and stopping to think about how the light dances in Kylo Ren's eyes. And, I suppose, that's all great when you sign up for a fanfiction where that is exactly what you want Rey to do. It works less well when this isn't Rey- it's a shell of a character who really should be paying more attention to fighting for her life.
The romantic tension between the leads is further undermined by their lack of meaningful development. Instead of building an arc and showing us steady progress, the story ping-pongs between enemies and almost-lovers in a repetitive cycle. Emotional growth and narrative progression are sacrificed in favor of endless descriptions of big, big hands and pouty lips. This is why I often hate enemies TO lovers. Authors don't seem interested in showing the incremental ways that relationship might change, but instead in just showing us that there was always attraction to the person killing all of their friends, and they are just fighting it the whole way in increasingly angst-ridden and nonsensical ways.
The prose itself is overwrought, and it struggles to pick up any momentum under its own weight. I had multiple moments where I had to stop reading and just groan. You can tell Guanzon has potential, but she should've had a stronger editing hand. Her prose is weighed down by the sheer volume of adjectives. Sentences often feel bloated, trying too hard to evoke grandeur but instead landing in the realm of melodrama or straight cheese. You get genuinely painful, overwrought prose like, “By the world father’s untrimmed beard, it was colder than the night emperor’s heart out here!”
This book was simply unable to transition from fanfiction to its own thing. The absence of Star Wars’ established framework reveals glaring problems in <i>The Hurricane Wars</i>—the narrative is incomplete, with meandering plots and underdeveloped characters propped up by boring tropes doing badly. Any attempts to delve into the politics of the world are simultaneously convoluted and shallow, serving more as set dressing for the romance than as integral elements of the story.
I found this often painful to read and cannot recommend it to anyone. Well, I guess, unless you are going to like any iteration of Kylo Ren, as long as the author reminds you of his big, big hands and pouty lips regularly.
From start to finish, <i>The Hurricane Wars</i> is plagued with the kind of issues you'd expect of a story that was built on someone else's IP. This book seemed to think all there was to world-building was hitting us with a barrage of proper nouns delivered with little to no context. It felt less like being dropped into a carefully crafted world and more like a control-find replacement of <i>Star Wars</i> terms with “original” ones.
Our Rey and Kylo Ren, as they were, are thinly veiled archetypes with little personality beyond their angst and physical attributes. Their dynamic leans heavily into overblown descriptions and repetitive internal monologues. It’s a relationship built on "but why does he look at me like that if he hates me?" moments, which are only more annoying because the "save the world" stakes are preserved from the original work. We are being asked to both accept that Rey would be both fighting for her life and stopping to think about how the light dances in Kylo Ren's eyes. And, I suppose, that's all great when you sign up for a fanfiction where that is exactly what you want Rey to do. It works less well when this isn't Rey- it's a shell of a character who really should be paying more attention to fighting for her life.
The romantic tension between the leads is further undermined by their lack of meaningful development. Instead of building an arc and showing us steady progress, the story ping-pongs between enemies and almost-lovers in a repetitive cycle. Emotional growth and narrative progression are sacrificed in favor of endless descriptions of big, big hands and pouty lips. This is why I often hate enemies TO lovers. Authors don't seem interested in showing the incremental ways that relationship might change, but instead in just showing us that there was always attraction to the person killing all of their friends, and they are just fighting it the whole way in increasingly angst-ridden and nonsensical ways.
The prose itself is overwrought, and it struggles to pick up any momentum under its own weight. I had multiple moments where I had to stop reading and just groan. You can tell Guanzon has potential, but she should've had a stronger editing hand. Her prose is weighed down by the sheer volume of adjectives. Sentences often feel bloated, trying too hard to evoke grandeur but instead landing in the realm of melodrama or straight cheese. You get genuinely painful, overwrought prose like, “By the world father’s untrimmed beard, it was colder than the night emperor’s heart out here!”
This book was simply unable to transition from fanfiction to its own thing. The absence of Star Wars’ established framework reveals glaring problems in <i>The Hurricane Wars</i>—the narrative is incomplete, with meandering plots and underdeveloped characters propped up by boring tropes doing badly. Any attempts to delve into the politics of the world are simultaneously convoluted and shallow, serving more as set dressing for the romance than as integral elements of the story.
I found this often painful to read and cannot recommend it to anyone. Well, I guess, unless you are going to like any iteration of Kylo Ren, as long as the author reminds you of his big, big hands and pouty lips regularly.