shane_the_reading_rat's reviews
1083 reviews

incredible premise, but not executed super great (i still liked it though)
the different guilds being named after animals came off kind of silly, especially with the fact that the enemies-to-lovers are... a Hound and a Cat. idk but that kept wildly pulling me out of the story with how silly it was. also man i needed a glossary for all these characters
HOWEVER the entire premise of "time loop party that gets weirder and weirder the farther down into the alternate universes they go?"?? i love that so much. literally one of the coolest fantasy worlds i've ever seen. i'll probably read the sequel just for the world. although i am begging that the sequel mentions Kem and Rika being a Hound and a Cat at least a little bit less. i am on my knees please don't mention it so much it does not work with the tone of the book

me when im on a lovely journey with my friends
i’m not sure if this comparison will make sense to anyone but myself, but what Teller of Small Fortunes reminds me of most is season 1 of OFMD (which says a lot, considering how close OFMD is to my heart). the banter, the found family, just everything (it helps that in every scene with Silt i was picturing him as Frenchie)

Mash my guy. my beloved. my darling

gonna be honest, i never would have expected to love this as much as i did. i dnf’ed the only other ava reid book i’ve tried and only got this because it was available at my library and i was curious, but man this was a banger. it felt like a queer version of the ya dystopian books i would devour a few years ago.
i just loved everything about this— the characters, the worldbuilding, the ENDING (i love bittersweet endings man they’re amazing), the writing and pacing— i sped through this each time i picked it up and it was amazing.

wow i want to read the sequel to this immediately, this was amazing. i think the simplicity of the black-and-white art and how the people and backgrounds are drawn really makes the impact of events feel much more intense. basically, i love everything about the art in Persepolis.
there are a couple of nitpicks i have— how the chapters (or pseudo-chapters, i guess? they weren’t officially chapters but were distinct sections) felt short and choppy in a bad way, and it was difficult to tell how much time was passing between events —but honestly both of these only affected my reading experience slightly negatively. loved this, very excited to read the next one about Marjane Satrapi’s time in Vienna and her return to Iran.

this book has interested me for a long time, as i’ve known im very likely autistic for a while and knew this was by an autistic author. this book was interesting but definitely hit a problem i’ve noticed in books of this style, that they’re just too academic for my tastes and don’t feel as grounded as i’d like them to. and that may just be a problem with me, i can have a difficult time sometimes understanding theory and the point of it/how it can be applied for use to help people (i tend to be a very literal thinker, so often theory is a little too abstract and, yknow, theoretical for me)
the essays also sometimes felt disjointed, due to the fact that they were originally published on a blog and not meant to be put all next to each other in a book.
interesting read, i did really like the entire point of “throwing away the master’s tools” in terms of language we use, but overall just a little too confusing and academic for me.

just not holding my interest currently. might try this again in the future, but not at all confident enough in that to just put this under ‘paused’

yes this did make me cry. i will be so normal about this book forever and ever and ever

:/ feeling very meh about this.
in general i love the concept, but it often felt like i was being beaten over the head with worldbuilding and telling-not-showing of what the book means (especially towards the end when the answer to what actually happened is revealed).
+a lot of what the characters say is melodramatic to the extreme. so yeah, love the concept but the execution was (at least to me) Not Great

this is an incredible memoir and i wish Ahed all the best. it was good to get to read about the struggles for Palestine’s freedom pre-2023, as admittedly i knew next to nothing about Palestine and Israel pre-Oct 7th (i was also very much a child in the 2010s when the protests Ahed was involved in were first happening, so yeah. i was very unaware). i think she is one of the bravest people i have ever heard of.

this was fun, but to me just didn’t stand out that much among Adiba Jaigirdar’s other books. Meghna and Rani both felt like pretty bland characters, and Zak (while he was absolutely horrible) was at least the most interesting character. it also feels like them making an app that is straight up spyware should have been a way bigger deal than it was???
anyway, i did like their romance and the pacing of it. felt like it was paced very well (which, knowing me, means it was paced very slowly lmao).