Book reviews: 3/4 DNFs
Oct. 15th, 2022 10:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainwatersparkPretty Dead Queens by Alexa Donne
Genre: YA, mystery, thriller
Content warnings: Death of a parent due to cancer
I really loved The Ivies and I'm excited for the author's 2024 take on And Then There Were None, so of course I had to read this!
Unfortunately, I was spoiled on the ending ahead of time due to a Goodreads review that had unmarked spoilers regarding the killer's identity (I hope the writer of that review walks on Legos). I wish I hadn't known, because of course nothing felt surprising in the wake of that review.
Like with The Ivies, this was a quick read. Sometimes it felt a bit too quick; there were certain plotlines that I wish had been expanded upon. I also feel like "death of a Mean Girl who was popular but hated at the same time" is starting to feel like an overdone trope. For me, this book stands out less than The Ivies, though it's probably because "small town murder" feels a little bit overdone these days, on top of the "Mean Girl murder victim" trope. Though I did really love the angle revolving around the protagonist's grandmother being a famous murder mystery writer who was popular enough to have her own fan convention. I also found Cecelia a well done character and totally believed in her grief motivating her to throw herself into a murder investigation in order to regain some sense of control.
The City of Dusk by Tara Sim
Genre: Adult, fantasy
DNF ~20%. I was excited for this book when I borrowed it, but unfortunately the combination of not great audiobook and not great writing made me put it down.
The audiobook narrator isn't bad, it's just that sometimes, I feel like British narrators can be a bit too smooth and monotone. I listened to some of the chapters three times and still could not process what was happening because I kept zoning out. It didn't really help that the narrator didn't differentiate between the voices outside of giving some of the Houses a different accent; the lack of difference in voices for male and female characters was pretty immersion-breaking and also made it hard to keep track of who was speaking.
I have more complaints about the writing itself, though. This is a long book (the audiobook is *25 hours*!), and it feels long. About 20% of the way in, I still wasn't sure what the plot was supposed to be and whether it had started yet. There are things happening, but the events all feel disjointed—not sure if this was because of the number of POVs there were, though I have to admit I'm biased against too many POVs in fantasy—and it was hard to tell what was important and what was filler.
I feel bad for having many harsh complaints about this book, because I know the author is a person of color. But I'm honestly a bit shocked that this isn't her debut (although it is her debut Adult book), because it reads so...amateur, in certain ways? The worldbuilding felt like she added every single "cool" idea she's ever had into one world. Yes, it's handwaved with the explanation that the city of Nexus is supposed to be a melting pot, but even then, it still feels like a bunch of random fantasy ideas that are disconnected from each other with no sense of cohesion. And I'm sorry, but shadow and light magic being reduced to having shadow and light familiars is just...the most boring interpretation of those fantasy concepts. (I know Nikolas was able to use "light speed" or something like that, and I wish the author had relied on those kinds of concepts and gotten rid of the familiars.)
Also, for a supposed "melting pot," there aren't really cultural distinctions among the different realms, outside of Parithvi being Indian-coded and Azana being Japanese-coded. Which makes it even odder that there are different linguistic bases for the character names—the Lastrider family has children named Dante, Taesia, and Brailee, then there's Angelica Mardova and Nikolas Cyr—without any cultural distinction among the families. Also, the lords are called "Don" and "Doña" and just, the linguistic inconsistencies were killing me.
I found all of the main characters boring. I hate to say it of a non-debut author, but it feels like the author confused "quippy banter" and "in a relationship" for personality. I could not describe the personalities of any of the main characters. I was totally apathetic to Taesia and Nikolas being in a relationship because I didn't care about either one of them individually, so obviously I didn't care about their relationship. I also found it odd that the author chose to make not one, but two of the royal heirs (a.k.a. half of the four of them) struggle with not being able to use their special magical powers properly. The fact that each of the royal families has special magic was supposed to be a selling point of this book; having maybe one of them struggle would have been okay, but two of them feels like not living up to the promise of the premise.
All in all, this book felt like a bit of a mess, and I felt like cutting it down would have been an improvement.
Beach Read by Emily Henry
Genre: Adult, contemporary romance
This was pretty much the book that convinced me to give up writing romance.
Emily Henry is so famous in the romance world that I felt like I should try her books. And the premise of this wasn't bad; I liked the concept of two rival authors falling in love.
But I could not stand the overly quirky style that seems to predominate Adult romance. It doesn't read as endearing to me; it reads as artificial. No one actually talks like this!!! And real life isn't made up of a bunch of quirky people/events happening one after another. It all just feels so...exaggerated and unreal.
(Sigh.)
Babel by RF Kuang
Genre: Adult, historical fantasy
DNF ~55%.
Honestly...I've spent the past few weeks ranting to all my friends and family members about how much I hate this book. So I'll boil down my complaints to a few points:
(1) This book is so goddamn condescending.
(2) It was full of so much telling rather than showing, which resulted in the characters being paper-thin cutouts and the pacing being all over the place. I am stunned that this is being praised as Kuang's masterpiece when The Poppy War trilogy was written better.
(3) There is so much racist violence in the book that it practically became a trigger for me.
(4) This book was so bad that, despite the fact that I generally enjoyed The Poppy War trilogy, I never want to read another RF Kuang book again.
Genre: YA, mystery, thriller
Content warnings: Death of a parent due to cancer
I really loved The Ivies and I'm excited for the author's 2024 take on And Then There Were None, so of course I had to read this!
Unfortunately, I was spoiled on the ending ahead of time due to a Goodreads review that had unmarked spoilers regarding the killer's identity (I hope the writer of that review walks on Legos). I wish I hadn't known, because of course nothing felt surprising in the wake of that review.
Like with The Ivies, this was a quick read. Sometimes it felt a bit too quick; there were certain plotlines that I wish had been expanded upon. I also feel like "death of a Mean Girl who was popular but hated at the same time" is starting to feel like an overdone trope. For me, this book stands out less than The Ivies, though it's probably because "small town murder" feels a little bit overdone these days, on top of the "Mean Girl murder victim" trope. Though I did really love the angle revolving around the protagonist's grandmother being a famous murder mystery writer who was popular enough to have her own fan convention. I also found Cecelia a well done character and totally believed in her grief motivating her to throw herself into a murder investigation in order to regain some sense of control.
The City of Dusk by Tara Sim
Genre: Adult, fantasy
DNF ~20%. I was excited for this book when I borrowed it, but unfortunately the combination of not great audiobook and not great writing made me put it down.
The audiobook narrator isn't bad, it's just that sometimes, I feel like British narrators can be a bit too smooth and monotone. I listened to some of the chapters three times and still could not process what was happening because I kept zoning out. It didn't really help that the narrator didn't differentiate between the voices outside of giving some of the Houses a different accent; the lack of difference in voices for male and female characters was pretty immersion-breaking and also made it hard to keep track of who was speaking.
I have more complaints about the writing itself, though. This is a long book (the audiobook is *25 hours*!), and it feels long. About 20% of the way in, I still wasn't sure what the plot was supposed to be and whether it had started yet. There are things happening, but the events all feel disjointed—not sure if this was because of the number of POVs there were, though I have to admit I'm biased against too many POVs in fantasy—and it was hard to tell what was important and what was filler.
I feel bad for having many harsh complaints about this book, because I know the author is a person of color. But I'm honestly a bit shocked that this isn't her debut (although it is her debut Adult book), because it reads so...amateur, in certain ways? The worldbuilding felt like she added every single "cool" idea she's ever had into one world. Yes, it's handwaved with the explanation that the city of Nexus is supposed to be a melting pot, but even then, it still feels like a bunch of random fantasy ideas that are disconnected from each other with no sense of cohesion. And I'm sorry, but shadow and light magic being reduced to having shadow and light familiars is just...the most boring interpretation of those fantasy concepts. (I know Nikolas was able to use "light speed" or something like that, and I wish the author had relied on those kinds of concepts and gotten rid of the familiars.)
Also, for a supposed "melting pot," there aren't really cultural distinctions among the different realms, outside of Parithvi being Indian-coded and Azana being Japanese-coded. Which makes it even odder that there are different linguistic bases for the character names—the Lastrider family has children named Dante, Taesia, and Brailee, then there's Angelica Mardova and Nikolas Cyr—without any cultural distinction among the families. Also, the lords are called "Don" and "Doña" and just, the linguistic inconsistencies were killing me.
I found all of the main characters boring. I hate to say it of a non-debut author, but it feels like the author confused "quippy banter" and "in a relationship" for personality. I could not describe the personalities of any of the main characters. I was totally apathetic to Taesia and Nikolas being in a relationship because I didn't care about either one of them individually, so obviously I didn't care about their relationship. I also found it odd that the author chose to make not one, but two of the royal heirs (a.k.a. half of the four of them) struggle with not being able to use their special magical powers properly. The fact that each of the royal families has special magic was supposed to be a selling point of this book; having maybe one of them struggle would have been okay, but two of them feels like not living up to the promise of the premise.
All in all, this book felt like a bit of a mess, and I felt like cutting it down would have been an improvement.
Beach Read by Emily Henry
Genre: Adult, contemporary romance
This was pretty much the book that convinced me to give up writing romance.
Emily Henry is so famous in the romance world that I felt like I should try her books. And the premise of this wasn't bad; I liked the concept of two rival authors falling in love.
But I could not stand the overly quirky style that seems to predominate Adult romance. It doesn't read as endearing to me; it reads as artificial. No one actually talks like this!!! And real life isn't made up of a bunch of quirky people/events happening one after another. It all just feels so...exaggerated and unreal.
(Sigh.)
Babel by RF Kuang
Genre: Adult, historical fantasy
DNF ~55%.
Honestly...I've spent the past few weeks ranting to all my friends and family members about how much I hate this book. So I'll boil down my complaints to a few points:
(1) This book is so goddamn condescending.
(2) It was full of so much telling rather than showing, which resulted in the characters being paper-thin cutouts and the pacing being all over the place. I am stunned that this is being praised as Kuang's masterpiece when The Poppy War trilogy was written better.
(3) There is so much racist violence in the book that it practically became a trigger for me.
(4) This book was so bad that, despite the fact that I generally enjoyed The Poppy War trilogy, I never want to read another RF Kuang book again.
