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Very Painful

Reviewed: 08-17-24

I had an incredibly hard time finishing this. The plot was driven by the characters being naive or missing the obvious. The antagonists were mundane, but so persistent that they were like Die Hard the villain. No character was very well developed, including important backstory not really being developed, but there are tedious long sections where characters dwell at length about small parts of their pasts. Basically, awesome that this guy wrote a book, but also not my favorite book ever.

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Well Written Jane Eyre Adaptation

Reviewed: 04-24-24

Very fun book idea and well written. There is more romance in this than in Jane Eyre, but without compromising the capable, strong, nature of Jane. Adding English mythology style magic was a fun idea.

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Christian Literature-- Should Be in Description

Reviewed: 04-19-24

The book is solidly in the category of Christian literature, which isn't anywhere in the description. It should be made very obvious so the rest of us can avoid the book.

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1 person found this helpful

Entertaining and also Incredibly Stupid

Reviewed: 04-18-24

The book is entertaining-- fast-paced, fairly engaging characters. It is also VERY stupid, with people, including police, throwing out blind supposition, making vast assumptions based on social class, and believing things to be the truth merely because someone said so. It is far from a work of mystery master work... Read it if you want a cute, cozy, mystery that is basically fluff and skip it if you will be annoyed by intellectually empty content.

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Painfully Repetitive-- Abuse Against Groundhog Day of Women

Reviewed: 04-14-24

This book is odd-- the type of story usually written by neurotic female authors, but this one is written by a male author. The duration of the book is a parade of weak female characters who are victimized by abusive, manipulative, men. The women are close to identical, which makes reading this book like reading many versions of the same short story, but set in different times and places. The central plot of each is a naive girl or woman allowing themselves to be bullied and/or duped by a similar, abusive, man or men, in a cheerleader, awful, life. There are nearly no balancing, positive, factors. It makes me wonder if this author thinks all women are (1) victims by nature and (2) incredibly emotional to the point of instability. Maybe he is just using that yo drive his multi-generational story, but it's so tiresome that it was hard to keep listening after the first half. I eventually sped the book up to over 200% normal speed. People who like histrionics and depressive drama may enjoy the book. It's unfortunate that the speculative fiction element of the book was so overwhelmed by the victimization and needless tragedy.

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Whimsical Naive Story

Reviewed: 04-10-24

Graceling is an entertaining, fast-paced, YA fantasy novel that turns into 50% romance novel, and shows incredible naivety with respect to everything practical that is rural or wilderness-related. It seems like the author might be a naive girl with fantastical daydreams, but little experience outdoors. For example, the protagonist kills and skins and animal, then refers to the fresh, unbanned, hide as "leather" and makes clothing out of it with no mention of how gross that would actually be (slimy, rotting, cold.... you get the picture). This happens multiple times. The protagonist also does things like kill fairly large animals just for two people to eat for dinner, with no apparent thought for the waste or other plans to use the meat, not to mention the apparent lack of other food items packed most of the time... just meat, every meal, by itself. More or less, the story reads like stories little kids create during playtime before they have any idea of realistic constraints, except that this story also has adult-only content-- violence and, uh, abundant romantic content. Maybe it's more like a video game novel than a kids' story. That would fit with the wolves and cougars who swarm out of the woodwork to attack people whenever there are mountains or cold-- another childlike or video game concept that doesn't agree with reality. Adult women who clutch stuffed unicorns, identify with being independent, and have a lot of excess emotion will probably really like this book. People who have spent a lot of time in the wilderness will probably hate it.

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Descending Into Juvenile Squabbles

Reviewed: 04-01-24

The first book was good in terms of being a credible depiction of juvenile psychology and the story was entertaining. This second book is tedious. A huge amount of writing is spent on squabbles between characters-- particularly Tobias and Tris. There is also a huge focus on Tris' juvenile angst. It's probably realistic, but is tedious and annoying to listen to... for the same reason melodramatic teen angst is tedious and annoying in person. I think every adult is relieved when teens grow out of that phase. To make matters worse, the villains/antagonists are flat characters-- basically mindlessly evil. Overall, it's an annoying slog.

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Solidly Good Book

Reviewed: 03-28-24

The writing style is engaging and the plot is interesting and reasonably well developed. Overall, I found the book entertaining. The African cultural themes are a good departure from typical European and American-based fantasy and sci-fi. I would definitely call this a fantasy book set in the future, rather than sci-fi, since there is a lot of magic and almost no speculative technology. Shortcomings include woefully emotionally immature characters who constantly flare up in anger over trivial things (constantly). That gets pretty tiresome after a while-- like reading about some particularly immature high school students having spats over dating and insecurities. There is also an odd choice of plot where a character chooses not to kill the primary antagonist despite that same character taking no issue with killing innumerable other people... it's just a jarring choice that makes it harder to stay immersed in the plot. Overall, it's worth reading. More pages devoted to developing the plot or the universe and fewer pages rehashing juvenile emotions might have made it a great book.

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Definitely a "Cozy" Book for Mothers

Reviewed: 03-20-24

I basically intensely dislike this entire genera, but the book is reasonably well-written and I think many middle-aged "moms" would relate to it. I can't imagine anyone child-free by choice having any interest in it, nor can I imagine men reading past the second page. That said, if a person likes a story that is part romance novel, part coming-of-middle-age, and part mom book, they will probably like it.

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Annoying Protagonist and Trivial Plot

Reviewed: 03-08-24

The writing style is fine, but "Felicity" is an annoying character who I lack sympathy for-- nasty to people for no other reason than indulging her own negative emotions, can't accept that her life is pretty fatned good despite the shock of being in a slightly altered (emphasis on slightly) reality. Likewise, there is just nothing interesting about a totally vapid actress character, "Maddie", or her angry stalker. Basically, the only interesting thing about the book is the inter-dimensional travel. The people are trivial and are 99% of the subject matter.

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