skywhales's reviews
53 reviews

reviewing another book i haven't read which is bad goodreads etiquette or something but URGH and BLEUGH and every other expression of disgust, i had to do something about my immense disappointment. i haven't had an author let me down this badly since she of the british child wizard books. and even in that scenario i wasn't that into those books in the first place because i'd kind of outgrown them. i loved everything i've ever read by shaun david hutchinson but knowing he wrote this appalling centrist ripoff of a book i already didn't like has pretty much permanently tainted my view of him. what a fucking disaster. i'd advise reading other reviews by people who more eloquently sum up the problems with this book, particularly poc pointing out the terrible handling of race throughout. just. ugh. wish i had known about this when it was released so i didn't waste my money on sdh's other books.

waugh this was good actually?? i haven't read kiersten white since seventh grade and wasn't a fan of her then but i was very stupid in seventh grade so i wouldn't take anything i thought at that point very seriously. mack got on my nerves a little bit at first because Brooding Hero Who Hates Everything is a trope i have very very little patience for but it's a little better if they're a wlw. and i warmed up to her. a lot of people said they didn't like the pov switching to different characters but honestly i liked it. makes you remember that these people aren't cardboard cutout tropey npcs. they have their own reasons for doing things. i kind of wish we got to learn more about some of them post-mortem or something. jaden can fuck himself though.

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also i don't think the characters were THAT exaggerated as representations of modern millennials?? if anyone came off as a caricature it was linda because holy shit in the final 10 percent did she go full racist old lady with zero hesitation. jarring to say the least.

i don't think they ever stated her ethnicity but i hope ava wasn't supposed to be the only black character in the book because even though she's one of the good guys it would be weird considering she's the tough ex-military buzzcut butch. i love her lots but propping her up as the only main character of color is treading on thin ice.

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honestly the monster reveal was kind of underwhelming for me but i think i'm just desensitized to literally any Beast Reveal after spending too much time on r/nosleep and seeing every possible way you could describe a scary thing. being stalked by the unknown is honestly a hundred times scarier for me. kind of one of the only things that still gives me chills when reading horror? aw look at me all grown up. i used to not be able to read goosebumps. anyway with the buildup we were getting and the Feeding it was supposed to be doing i was expecting something fully eldritch but after we saw what it looked like i started seeing it as a zombie piglin from minecraft and couldn't stop. i like the minotaur/maze thing that was going on though that was a neat idea.

the Themes sort of battered you over the head in the last portion of the book which was kind of a reason i took a star off i think. not that i disagree with what they were saying but it was delivered so clunkily.

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also i don't like the implications that mack ava and legrand are just going to let the monster eat innocent townspeople now?? at least i like. assume they're innocent. i guess it only eats descendants of the original families who summoned it but not all those guys are bad! the majority of them literally didn't know this was going on! mack and legrand included! ending felt rushed and a little weird for me idk.

okay now i need to talk about good stuff. i'm always only talking about the bad stuff even if i liked the book. characters were sweet. i felt sad when some of them died even when i hadn't known them for very long which is uhhhh. rare at this point.

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(ian and rosiee. and brandon. sweet brandon. gone too soon. and beautiful ava i guess i'm wary of influencers but i have a soft spot for popular girls having a downward spiral.)

it has an original plot, not something i've seen 1000 times before which i drop to my knees and praise. when your favorite genres are sci-fi fantasy and horror original plots become kind of a guiding light. if i have to see one more dark fae romance, i swear. good book. might go back and read some of kiersten white's other stuff. see if seventh grade me's takes hold up or not.

OKAY SO HERE'S THE THING.

i will not be getting into my long-standing weird guilty pleasure-y love affair with everything these two authors write together, because i don't feel like it. i know they're not particularly good people, i know the books are not particularly good as far as these kinda books go, but, again, not everything i read is Good Literature.

i didn't even read this book recently. it was a long time ago. shit, maybe it was last year. but i am still thinking about it, because this one goddamn thing will not let me go. this isn't really a review of the book as a whole, then, as much as it is...i don't know, some sort of angry-sad stream of consciousness.

let's talk about zila.

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zila, zila, god, zila, you were EVERYTHING to me from the moment you appeared on the page. i love girls like this. girls who are smart and weird and not very much fun to be around. girls who other people don't Get. i saw so much of myself in her from book one. then book two rolls around and she likes girls. she likes girls, for real and canonically she does. holy fucking shit, zila really likes girls.

they don't use the word "autistic," and they don't use the word "lesbian," because this is space and idk if those exist anymore, but inside me i fucking ache with recognition. zila means the world to me. even if there was still like a Lot of unintentional ableism in the way she was written.

and in book 3...

in book 3, zila falls in love with a girl she barely really gets a chance to know, and literally gives up her life for her friends. she LIVES, i guess, but she'll never see them again, these people who she supposedly found connection with after so long.

and i wanted to justify this to myself! i wanted to say this was what she wanted! what made her happy! what her arc was about! fucking hell i still don't dislike nari, i think she's fucking fine! the thing is, she's just fine, because i barely got to know her at all! and the thing is, this ISN'T what zila wanted, it's what her WRITERS wanted, because someone had to be a sacrifice and of course it had to be the one who was the outsider from the beginning, huh!

the time loop shtick set it up from the beginning and all, yeah, okay. and of course it was gonna be zila, right? she's the only one who didn't have anything tying her down to the modern day (COUGH. A LOVE INTEREST. COUGH). of course it was gonna be zila.

of course it was gonna be zila. and now i feel like i got played.

because of course there was a catch, huh? of course the (hypothetically) autistic (hypothetical) lesbian (who also happens to be black, huh, how 'bout that) was a perfectly implemented tool who had to fall into place just right so everyone else could save the day. of course she doesn't get to keep her found family. of course her purpose is to be separated from them. of course she's expendable.

of course of course of course of course of course. of fucking course.

the book is done. i guess she's happy. at the end of the day she's just a character. but a character who meant everything to me. and a reminder that i am always going to have to try a little harder to fit in. and even when i do, i'm still the odd one out. right up until it turns out my purpose was with some girl i just met all along, i guess.

(literally so much of the romance in this book would have been better if the authors weren't afraid of polyamory. scarlett has two hands. let her have finian and zila for crying out loud. and just do kal/auri/tyler while you're at it because love triangles suck and i didn't forget about the time kal and tyler Literally Did The Kissing To Distract The Authorities thing???? ell emm ay oh.)

i don't really know how to end this. maybe one day there will be a thousand autistic lesbian characters who will bury their way into my heart and it won't feel as lonely out here anymore. maybe one day i'll forget about zila entirely and won't have that little pinprick of hurt in me anymore. but also the thing is i don't want to forget about zila. i want to remember her. i want this to hurt. i want it to make me mad. i want to reread this series in the future, because god damn it i actually like it, and i want to see myself in zila. i want to see her get taken in by these people who actually learn to care about her and understand the way she thinks, the way she feels, the way she loves.

then it'll end and tear me open a little bit again. and i'll have to learn to deal with it.

i'm willing to do that. i just wish i didn't have to.

justice for zila. maybe now i can finally stop thinking so much about this for a while.

i've been getting recommended ursula k le guin by almost everyone i know for years now and this is the first book of hers i actually picked up. and yes, i did enjoy it very very much. worldbuilding is something that is crucial to good sci fi for me, and the planet of winter really does come across as a fully realized world with its own cultures, traditions, geography and people.

the book held up very well for something written in 1969. straight up better than a lot of modern stuff i've read. the gethenians' permanently ambisexual state is truly completely natural to them, and it is implemented in a smart and non-derogatory way. i will say it's honestly more surprising that of all the eighty (?) or so worlds that are part of the ekumen, gethen is the Only one without a strict gender binary system. you're seriously telling me that this many entirely different planets all happened to evolve the same kind of sexual differentiations? at the same time, though, i understand why it had to be this way. the gethenians are supposed to be a curiosity that challenges genly's (and our own) views on gender, and at the time it was written this kind of thing was basically unheard of. as a nonbinary person in 2022, i have a completely different perspective shaped by time and my own identity journey.

there are, obviously, minor aspects that have not aged as well, though i think the people trying to claim this as "problematic" have forgotten that despite the subject matter, this book was literally written Over Forty Years Ago. yeah, the descriptions of race leave something to be desired, but the very fact that the entire named cast of this book is nonwhite is practically unheard of in science fiction to this day, so, again, the insensitive-seeming aspects of this book were truly written with good intentions, or at least i believe that.

hated the incest though. disgusting. what was all that. i can grudgingly accept that a different world wouldn't have the same taboos with that kind of relationship that we would on earth but

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making a main character have a sexual relationship with his older brother felt incredibly INCREDIBLY unnecessary. maybe i'm just not smart enough to grasp the reasons behind it but ewww. also didn't like the fact that genly gets compared to estraven's brother. even if they don't explicitly have a romantic/sexual relationship (because i guess that'd be a step too far) you really could have gone any other route to imply they did have some feelings for each other.

unpleasant and (to me) unnecessary.

still, though, i genuinely really enjoyed this book. it truly wasn't like anything else i read recently, and i think that's very much a good thing. a refreshing, tragic, thought-provoking, intriguing piece of sci-fi that does not involve spaceships blowing each other up (though unfortunately i have been known to enjoy a story or two about spaceships blowing each other up).

ohhhh man oh man oh man this had a lot of stuff i really liked but also some stuff i really didn't like. in my opinion the good outweighed the bad but i was definitely left feeling unsatisfied in certain aspects.

the good:

-dragons <3 intelligent dragons in an urban fantasy setting <33 (is it still urban fantasy if it's historical?)

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polyamorous lesbian dragons <33333

-honestly i liked alex. she perhaps doesn't have the most satisfying perspective to read from because she's a child for the majority of the book but i have a bias for smart exhausted kids doing their best who are a little mean and snappy sometimes.

-i liked the little dragoning vignettes interspersed throughout the story-based chapters. this might be an unpopular opinion but i thought they were fun. i liked that they gave us insight into some of the perspectives we didn't get to see in the straightforward narrative (which does tie into the bad a little bit but we'll get there).

-very sapphic power fantasy in many aspects and i'm always down for that.

the bad:

-feminism leaned too gender essentialist for my liking. they do sort of combat that more towards the end

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(approximately 7% of dragons were trans women and less than half were mothers)

but there was still sooooo much shit that made me roll my eyes. especially that drawing of a uterus transforming into a dragon's head or whatever. i cannot read feminist literature that makes it all about Divine Feminine Biological Magic at this point in my life i am done with it. this was going to lower the book a whole star if they didn't kind of backpedal there at the end.

-general lack of diversity in the main cast. if i'm remembering right every single main character was white and cisgender. there's so much you could do with like, what the dragoning means to people with such different lived experiences, but we only get to see more "different from the norm" dragons in short snippets.

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also, if dragoning isn't actually sex-linked like it was originally assumed to be, i'm surprised there was never a single anecdote of men of color or gay men transforming. i know this is primarily a women's power narrative, but feminism should be intersectional if you actually want to make a statement with it.

idk some reviews are saying this was specifically meant to be about the experiences of the middle class white housewife demographic so it makes sense it was primarily about them but i still wish we got more varied perspectives.

-no butch dragons? :( this is more a personal pet peeve but you've got giant scaly fire-breathing beasts and they're all still trying to conform to femininity? did marla have to wear bright red lipstick?

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in general the whole "giant dragons doing mundane human things" came off as cringy to me more than it came off as like. meaningful. i don't even mind that a lot of the dragons came home in the end but like. the depictions of dragons knitting and applying lipstick felt dumb to me. i came here for dragons being dragons. i genuinely could not care less about dragons trying to be humans.

anyway yeah, i enjoyed it, but if any of the stuff in the bad section is a dealbreaker for you you probably will not. i am literally always on the lookout for dragon literature so you know. maybe it's lowered my standards.

a friend of mine read this book recently and liveblogged her reactions to me which reminded me i never like Actually reviewed this book which needs to be remedied.

god this is. i know a lot of people who are no longer in high school shy away from reading books with high school age protagonists because their stories have ceased to be relatable to them and that's fair. i, myself, am no longer in high school (whoa.) and understand that feeling. but this book feels different to me. yeah it's a book about high schoolers--it's a book about high school itself even--but it is very cognizant of the idea that high school is simulataneously a) not the whole world and b) can sure feel like it sometimes. you'll probably get different things out of this book depending on the age and life stage you read it at, but i wouldn't argue any of those things are less valuable than other things.

the characters are genuinely unique, and very, very lovable. i rarely get so attached to a cast of characters from a stand-alone novel as i did this book. cliff is a witty, endearing, all-around delightful narrator and i love him so much. i love so many of these characters. god this has reminded me just how nice it is to have a cast of characters where you really truly care about so many of them. thank you to every author who has successfully made me Feel Things about their word people. also shout out to robin who continues to be the best minor character. bookworm lesbians represent.

this book is heavy at times and maybe not for the particularly faint-hearted, but it is ultimately my very favorite thing to find in literally any kind of media: a story that is wildly funny in a non-annoying way and despite its lighthearted exterior has a hopeful, kindhearted core. books like this are so important to me.

as a devoted animaniacs and pinky and the brain fan, and as someone who's planning to go into the volatile world of showbiz after college (i know, i know, not the smartest move) i was prepared for this to be an incredibly enjoyable read. it delivered. this is the heartwarming, funny, bittersweet story of a voice actor who shaped childhoods (and teenhoods and adulthoods too) told quite literally in a way only he can. i pretty much never listen to audiobooks normally for a variety of reasons, but this is the first time in my life that my experience was improved exponentially by having an audiobook copy. i just wanted to hear rob do his character voices, sue me. some slightly unpleasant dated stuff in here but it's kept to a minimum. a lovely experience overall. this probably hits more as someone who's a fan of rob's work or someone who wants to go into a similar field (or maybe someone who's gone through their own cancer journey?) but you know. i was that. so it did hit for me.

RAUGHHHH OHHH THIS WAS SOOOO MY THING. sarah gailey my god how do you keep finding my favorite specific tropes and combining them. holy shittttt.

i'm not usually really into mysteries but if given the right backdrop i can get into them and this was just perfect for me. i love the setting of noir and all i just tend to get so bogged down in the details that the reading experience becomes less fun. but i was actually able to follow along with this mystery pretty well and actually "solved the case" a Little bit before it had to be explained to me. go me!

Ohhhh These Characters. all of them got on my nerves at times in their own special ways but i can forgive them for it because they made such a fun reading experience in general. big old soft spot for loser detectives and ivy was great for that. a lot of reviews say she's too self pitying or whiny and i mean. i kind of get it but also i found her almost uncomfortably relatable at times. laughs nervously in "my brother is the scientific one and the overachiever and the one with actual everyday applicable skills and i'm the Artsy One who does pretty good in school but not like straight a's" you know. whatever. whatever. this is a fucking book review. rahul was sweet. it's rare to see a bisexual male love interest and i liked that. just all around a sweetie pie, not trying to be brooding or super hot or some dumb bullshit, he was literally just some guy which is pretty much my favorite kind of male love interest. dylan and alexandria were SOOOOOOOOO! i LOVE messed up kids who kind of think their issues are the Most Important in the Whole World but then also kind of avoid actual serious topics out of fear. and i got like a big evil grin on about them kind of being foils to ivy and tabitha. speaking of tabitha i saved her for last because i've got like...thoughts.

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i mean like i didn't haaaaate the reveal at the end i guess but it was sort of unsatisfying. if tabitha had really been motivated by not being able to save her mom the whole time it feels like she should have had a more serious reaction to ivy accusing her of not being able to do that exact thing earlier on? it felt like that should have remained in ivy's head the whole time or someone else told her that that would be impossible instead of tabitha saying it because it just feels so on the nose to bring it back later on. tabitha testing the limits of magic and Actually Doing It and then fucking up in a terrible gory way was kind of delicious though. i eat that shit up. hubristic downfall and all that! it does annoy me that she was then made out to be some kind of Master Manipulator who never genuinely wanted to mend her relationship with ivy or whatever. idk. i wish she had been portrayed as a little more unhinged throughout and not just at the very end so it doesn't seem like her whole personality just did a 180.

the magic system was interesting, if not fully fleshed out. the healing magic especially. the high school setting and kids doing like High Schooler Magic was kind of funny and charming. the whole overarching themes of youth and things that seem important when you're a kid vs when you're an adult and how adults perceive kids and vice versa and figuring our your identity as a teenager was also something that really hit as someone who's on that precarious cusp between childhood and adulthood (college student). couldn't help but smile about the dick shaped clouds. yeah that'd happen if magic was real.

was kind of dissatisfied with how sad the ending was. i know, i know. i am a loser sappy bitch. i just really prefer getting closure and it felt like we didn't really get that with anyone. but i guess that's a personal style preference or whatever. but in so many other ways this book was So Me in ways i couldn't even predict! kind of awesome! everyone say thank you fucked up women!

GODDAMN......FUCK, MAN.

oh my god the thing is i was SPOILED for some of this! i KNEW that ending was coming! and it still fucking Destroyed Meeeee! this is a book that will stick with you in simultaneously good and terrible ways and i loveddd it.

in many ways this wouldn't normally be my thing. i really don't like political fantasy. i hate remembering names and following along with complex schemes and all of that. but i was willing to give it a shot here and well i still struggled at times but the important thing was i was never bored! a book confusing me is infinitely better than a book boring me any day of the week. also maybe in the future i should just take notes on names and places i have a feeling that would help me a lot actually. had that realization 75% of the way into this book. between the tense pacing and the deeply intricate worldbuilding i was genuinely invested even when i only half understood what was going on.

this is, obviously, a heavy novel. ESPECIALLY AT THE END. it does not shy away from the horrors of colonialism, and how much of yourself it forces you to give up. it was painful, obviously, but i appreciate when a book doesn't handle you with kid gloves. it's authentic. it's important. for all that i love the soft fluffy stuff, these books matter just as much.

and okay, yeah, the worldbuilding was obviously incredibly thought out and detailed, but good worldbuilding falls apart when not bolstered by good characters. i cannot count the number of times a book has had a good premise and the author proceeded to completely fail at making me care about these characters half as much as the author themself did. happy to report this wasn't the case here.

BARU!!!!!!!!!!!!! my most dearly beloved favorite kind of character archetype strikes again!! look i already said my whole bit down there but like. an incredibly intelligent and calculating woman who cultivates an image of herself as cold and unfeeling for her own safety, but feels so deeply that it motivates her every action. and she's a LESBIAN! and she's a BUTCH LESBIAN! this is the sound of me clapping and cheering and cartwheeling with joy! god. i love her. straight up never thought i would love an accountant this much. admittedly i didn't get quite as attached to the whole side cast because well there were a lot of them. but tain hu and muire lo did get me right in the heart. guh. not to be one of those annoying people who looks at a story that was always going to be a tragedy and goes "but what if they were happy..." but what if. they were happy...

parting thoughts. that bit about how they'll let prisoners escape from jail and then recapture them so they learn that there's no escape? and then when. yeah. that'll stick with me i think.

currently reading review: haven't finished it yet so i can't write a full review but i just need to say: so many reviews are saying what a bold choice it was to create an unlikeable protagonist and how baru is a character you love to hate and stuff like that. and i need to say i CANNOT RELATE!!! i LOOOOOOVVVEEEE baru in all of her fucked up messy mean cold calculating glory!!! this is my favorite kind of character ever! as you probably know! she was tailor fucking made for me! also like. i was half expecting her to be this emotionless husk of a person from the way some people talk about her but she's literally having Inconvenient Feelings all the damn time. come on folks you know if she was a guy you couldn't go two feet without tripping over a thirstpost. anyway i love baru i think she's amazing rip to everyone else i guess but you're wrong.

:/ 2.5/5 rounded down. was planning to be more charitable since this was by an author i've liked in the past but writing the review made me remember all the shit i didn't like.

of the books by silvia moreno-garcia i've read (mexican gothic, gods of jade and shadow, and now this one) this one was definitely my least favorite. which is disappointing considering how interested i was in the premise. i haven't read the island of doctor moreau yet, though i'm interested in early sci-fi/horror and and i'll probably read it at some point. i was aware of the basic premise and wanted way more to dive into the actual horror aspects of the hybrids or honestly...more of the hybrids at all because they were what i wanted to read the book for and we got barely any of them!

the characters were very underwhelming, carlota especially. i know not all women have to be Strong Female Characters and there are many interesting feminine/passive women in literature but carlota did not do it for me at allllll. i know she's supposed to be naive and sheltered and have attachment issues but her constant mooning over hot men and her frankly childish attempts at being fiery or standing up for herself were just not fun to read. i would have much preferred if the book was from the pov of lupe honestly for so many reasons. she's my favorite character, she has a more interesting personality, and we'd get more of a viewpoint of what living as a hybrid is like. montgomery Could have been a character i liked if he didn't fall in love with a girl he met when she was FOURTEEN and he was TWENTY NINE!!!! jesus christ i'd honestly still be uncomfortable with it if they met at twenty and thirty five!!! he refers to her as a child multiple times in the beginning of the book! eugh. i really didn't expect silvia moreno-garcia to play into the "sheltered innocent naive young woman x much older angsty Mature man" trope and i'm really disappointed. it was foul and awful to read about this relationship when they kept mentioning the age and experience gap between them. this was my number one problem with the book and if their relationship hadn't been romantic i still wouldn't have loved it but i would have probably bumped it up to at least a 3.5.

the plot felt poorly paced. big reveals went by extremely fast. the "twist" near the end of the book was transparently obvious. characters' reactions to events would seem too severe or not severe enough. dr. moreau somehow made a complete 180 to being a good guy and a caring father who'd never done anything wrong and carlota barely held him accountable for being a shithead to her and the hybrids once he got sick. i feel like the majority of anything that was actually interesting is stuff that was probably already in the original anyway.

just. ugh. i'm gonna continue to read moreno-garcia's sff books because i'm hoping this one was just a blip but this was suchhhh a disappointing read. sad