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bargainbinkazbrekker's reviews
833 reviews
Fireblood by Jeff Wheeler
1.0
well. when i originally put this one my tbr about 4 years ago i was intent on reading it and the sequel because i had copies of both (family copies i would not use my own money for this). but i am much nicer to myself than i was four years ago and i will not be forcing myself to read the sequel(s).
maybe i’ll come back once my thoughts have settled down and write more in depth but for now we’ll go with initial thoughts upon finishing.
what i liked
- the descriptions of the world, specifically of Mirrowen, were well done and provided some much needed atmosphere to the novel
that’s it.
everything else (disliked and hated):
- racism. surprise! this was my biggest issue with the book! in a book where everyone has fancy fantasy names and races, you can imagine my absolute surprise and horror when i turned a page and say the word “Romani”. it only got worse; it’s like wheeler looked up every stereotype of Rroma and said “yes, that’s what i want in my fantasy novel. change the name? why bother!” the Romani in the book: steal and sell children, travel in caravans that stop outside cities where they steal, cheat, and rob. girl what???? why was this necessary— it’s wasn’t!!!! and the way wheeler didn’t even change the name, he was so confident in his bigotry that he wrote pretty much every stereotype about Rroma into his book and called them Romani, just in case we couldn’t catch what he was alluding to i guess. absolutely mind boggling to me.
- bad boring characters. for a more technical stand point (the book isn’t great from an actual plot and writing perspective, not just the bigotry), the characters are so BORING. i do not care about any of them, they feel so disjointed from any emotion, they rarely do anything, things just happen to them. how am i supposed to learn about this people? why won’t they *do* anything?
- dialogue. i couldn’t do it. it was like two ai’s trying to out human each other but failing.
- and plot. i actually don’t remember it.
anyway, 1 star for the descriptions, everything else was either hateful or just badly written!
The Ghost Cat by Alex Howard
2.5
thank you too Harlequin Trade Publishing and Netgalley for providing me with an Ebook Arc in exchange for an honest review!
I am the first to admit that Cats and History are two of my favorite all time things so when i saw the tagline and summary for this book, i was excited! in concept, this book is perfect for me but alas, in execution, it fell short.
i think for a book to succeed 9 times out of 10, it needs to establish a main character or narrator that the reader can relate or connect with. it gets more difficult when our main character isn’t human but an animal. i think with an animal being our main narrator, in order to have them be a head the reader wants to be in, a writer needs to establish an connection with another animal or human so we can better get attached to our animal narrator. Unfortunately, our main cat Grimalkin doesn’t really have any genuine feeling connections with anyone, so he becomes a bit of a mouth and eyes for the reader to just peer through. i being in Grimalkins head rather boring and tedious. he felt more like a clueless tour guide than a cat to me.
as for the history aspect, the choice of having the historical context for each year Grimalkin visited relayed to us via footnotes was… interesting. i personally really didn’t like it, i felt like i was reading a text book and it took me out of the story— like who is adding this footnotes? can Grimalkin also see them? where are they coming from i’m so confused how this works within the story.
Grimalkin learns about each new year he visits by observing new humans each time (for the most part) but unfortunately, i can really tell that these characters are just there to relay what time period they’re in, what’s changed, and show the passage of time. they don’t feel real at all. (personal preference, but it really irks me when an author overcompensates for a characters accents. like i could handle words like “feeling” being shorten to feelin’ or such but having slavic characters saying things like “vait” instead of wait or scottish one’s constantly saying “wee” every time they speak was getting on my nerve. just say they have an accent, the reader can take it from there).
the actual passage of time being shown from the same general area was pretty cool, and i liked the random cat god/lore, wish he had gotten more of that but i understand why we didn’t.
there were a lot of stylistic things that didn’t mesh with my tastes, so unfortunately this was a bit of a let down. i wouldn’t discourage anyone from checking it out at least if it sounds interesting to them though! my tastes aren’t for everyone !
Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover
0.5
if this can be a best seller, than the story i wrote at 9 years old is gonna blow the book industry away
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Martin J. Sherwin, Kai Bird
4.0
a very thorough technical look into Oppenheimers life, there’s very little emotion in the writing and we’re told about all the scientific work he did in great detail which can be very tedious. it felt like i learned every book he read, every person he met even in passing, and briefly touched in a very dispassionate way into his personal life. his relationships aren’t really given depth, sure they’re talked about but they don’t feel real, which is bizarre that they’re written that way considering Oppenheimer was a real person? but i do think this is the technical partner to the movie. the movie touches on the emotional aspects much more while this book delves deeply into the history. if one feels the movie didn’t provide enough context historically, this book will make up for it and vise versa, if one feels the book doesn’t provide much emotional complexity, the movie will do that for you. i think they work best as a package deal if one cares enough.
Sing Me to Sleep by Gabi Burton
3.0
it’s giving, darker, more diverse, Ella enchanted (the movie specifically). It ate in some places but lowkey wanted a bit more violence but i should’ve toned down my expectations when i remembered it was YA. it would’ve been cool if we did delve into those darker subject matters a wee bit more imo!
fantastic vibes, even if i wasn’t a huge fan of the romance, i had fun
fantastic vibes, even if i wasn’t a huge fan of the romance, i had fun
The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green
4.5
i am insufferably mentally ill and i enjoy essays so i think this book was written for me.