Jonathan

Easy 5 stars. I will defend these characters with my life.

One star for each Body

Did it for the meme. Now I've finished and I'm free.

4.5
I didn't love the train aspects necessarily, and some parts were confusing, but this one delivered on and improved on a few different aspects, mainly having real emotional weight to characters and actions.

Still very good overall but a step down from book 1. I didn't care for the first half's plot so much, it wasn't quite as funny, and this book didn't have as much of a sense of progression as the first. But still very good. 3.75 overall

This is now two out of two times I've enjoyed the novellas more than the main series books.....

Marking this as 5 instead of 4 just because of sheer enjoyment factor, and how well the author took a premise that is absolutely absurd and stupid, but wrote it in a surprisingly thorough and fleshed out way.
It shouldn't work, but somehow it does.

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
3.75/5⭐
First off, and if nothing else, this book is very unique and doesn't really feel like anything I've really read. Between the strange world and snarky writing.
As far as that writing, I can totally see how it would be cringey and annoying to some, but i personally enjoyed it.
I enjoyed the story and the ending is NOT what i expected but I was very pleasantly surprised by it.
I had some issues though. Mainly the confusion I felt as a reader throughout. I've been told this is part of the experience but at certain times it took me out of it.
And the worldbuilding. I was left wanting more. Early in i wondered if the worldbuilding was thin or incomplete. Certain parts were held back for strategic reveals later on (very well done) but I still don't feel it fully fleshed out. Hopefully the later books correct this.
Anyway. Had issues with it but it was a very fun read with a unique feel and characters and I'll definitely read the rest of the series.

4.5/5⭐
Another pleasant surprise.
This book is written with a certain lightheartedness that i found very enjoyable from page one. The plot was fast paced and intriguing with pretty decent characters and some very interesting concepts that allowed for some fun discussions in the book that I enjoyed a lot. At one point I worried the female characters felt a bit one-sided but this turned out to be mostly not true.
The end didn't go where I expected but I was happy with it. I'll end up reading the 2nd book some time this year and I'm now very excited for the movie.

*2.75
That was an experience
Started this off by seeing VanderMeer speak last year on a promotional tour for this book. He read an excerpt and I'd been rather excited.
The book is split in 3 parts.
Part 1:
Amazing cosmic horror in a florida swamp. At this point Absolution was on track to be my favorite Southern Reach book. 5/5
Part 2: (the longest part)
Pretty good, standard, par for the course. Felt a lot like the other 3 books in the series. 4/5
Part 3:
I completely lose my immersion in the story due to writing choices and then the book just falls on its face.
2/5

I really want to like this book more but the pacing was just not right. Book 1 established some clear goals and things that need to be done. In particular, 3 objects that need to be obtained. I expected book 2 to continue this very clear direction forward. Instead, this whole book ended up being all of your characters traveling, traveling, and traveling more. Things would happen to them in their travels, and these things were interesting and engaging, but most of it felt like it had very little impact on where the story needed to go. For how long and slow this book is, it feels like very, very little was accomplished.

Incredible. Immediately one of my new favorite sci-fi books.

4.25

Catriona Ward,
Are you okay?
Who hurt you?

A genuinely brilliantly written horror, multi-layered, never what you expect, but constantly captivating...
(Also one of the books you can't say much about without spoilers)

I feel conflicted.
Overall 3.75/5
The quality and charm of the writing itself is easily 5/5, and it is a very, very unique read if nothing else.
The plot is SLOW, and for a huge chunk of the book, there isn't a clear plot moving forward. For the first two thirds of the book, I did not care about this as I was just so charmed and transported by the writing. But after a certain point, I could feel my patience wearing thin as the charm wore off, and I found myself less excited to read and just hoping the plot would pick up soon. Overall, I still enjoyed it. It was disappointing in some areas, but in other areas, it exceeded my expectations.

The fact that this is a debut novel still hurts my brain. So ambitious and unique!

There are a lot of good things in this book, and generally very good writing to make it a solid four star read, but ultimately the mashup between pagan traditional themes/legends and trailer trash in the American south was just not for me.

This book was just fun.
It felt extremely binge-able and I just flew through it.
I was a little confused at times about how the systems/worldbuilding work exactly, but I'm sure that will all make more sense as I progress through the series and get more familiar with it.
I would like for it to have a little bit more focus on building the characters, but again, this first book is so short and there are 12 books so I'm sure that will come in time. This is an entirely new genre for me and I would say it isn't my normal cup of tea, but I'm interested in seeing how the series moves forward.

So torn on this one between 4 and 5 stars.
Easy 5 stars in terms of what it delivered. The plot, characters, twists, and emotional gut punches were fully here and this is true epic fantasy.
But, the writing just feels off at times. More juvenile sometimes, and at several points just very very clumsy and heavy handed...
But ultimately my sheer enjoyment and hype will push this to be 5 stars.

Currently exploring the Goodreads app trying to figure out how to give a book 6 stars...

The amount of scientific detail in this book is staggering, and I loved that aspect of it, but the story elements were frustrating. Each time I'd get invested in a character and/or situation and think
“oh okay, the rest of the novel will be about this”
Then BOOM – time jump, skipping over large sections of things I wanted to read about...

Simply brilliant and unique.

This is such a tricky one to rate. The bulk of the book, I loved. Some stories were better than other, the soldier's being the weakest, but overall I was still riveted. The Priest's Tale in particular was INCREDIBLE and I would have been happy to read a full length novel of just that story. Religious sci-fi horror with a very Clive Barker ending.
But I can't bring myself to give it 5 stars because of the ending, or lack thereof. But hey, I'll be moving on to the sequel(s) soon.

As an actual book: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

As pure hilarious entertainment: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Very entertaining, especially shortly after reading Fourth Wing, and realizing in some ways (and I realise the scale and scope of this story is much smaller) the writing is of a higher quality than Fourth Wing. Specifically, the characters being fleshed out, emotional, understandable, and, well, not idiotic.

Just the fact that I'm giving this book a higher rating than Fourth Wing is hilarious, as I fully expected this to be god-awful, and it actually wasn't.

Terry is generally pretty good at coming up with fantasy names but..... Eton Shart? Really, did no one in writing or editing say that one out loud?

The first 1/3 of this book was a solid 5 stars, and felt like a setup for something that did not happen in this book. The other 2/3, the “game”, felt like a detour that took longer than it needed to, so that we can get to the actual fight. I just have to hope that is what book 2 focuses on. I've heard so many people online say book 1 wasn't the best, and that book 2 is where everything picks up, so I have higher hopes.