Take a photo of a barcode or cover
2.76 AVERAGE
2.76 AVERAGE
dnf, which sucks because the premise is AMAZING.
i absolutely could not stand the author's way of writing a bilingual character. every instance of 'but' was 'pero.' when a spanish phrase was used, the english translation was the next sentence, in italics. i know what claro está means, and if i didn't, it's p obvious from context.
instead of reading like a bilingual character, it reads like english with spanish words chucked in so you don't forget she's bilingual/not speaking english.
i absolutely could not stand the author's way of writing a bilingual character. every instance of 'but' was 'pero.' when a spanish phrase was used, the english translation was the next sentence, in italics. i know what claro está means, and if i didn't, it's p obvious from context.
instead of reading like a bilingual character, it reads like english with spanish words chucked in so you don't forget she's bilingual/not speaking english.
After the alien Krom made first contact Earth was left with one unique commodity, chocolate. Everyone in the galaxy adores the stuff and will do whatever it takes to get their hand equivalents on it. To protect itself Earth has closed its doors to the greater universe, no aliens allowed. In light of that and recent pirate attacks resulting in the accidental destruction of a civilian ship by and HGB pilot, culinary student Bodacious Benitez is summoned back to Earth to serve as the face of HGB, the Princess of Chocolate. Face of the company or not Bo has long disagreed with HGB’s methods and, with her Krom boyfriend’s help, is going to do everything she can to break HGB’s monopoly and bring chocolate to the universe.
I have a lot of thoughts on Amber Royer’s Free Chocolate. There was a lot of stuff that I feel like could have been fun and some stuff that I feel like needed more focus to work at all. More than anything, I feel like the book lacks focus. There are a number of places in Free Chocolate where it feels like Royer had three or four ideas for a book but not enough for any single one of them, so she kind of stitched them together. Things happen and don’t seem to have any consequences. There’s some stuff that gets talked about not at all, but then both Bo and the reader are expected to just roll with it. It feels disjointed.
A lot of this is down to how the book deals with its timeline. It takes ages for Bo to actually get into space and on the run from Tyson, the space cop, and then it seems like the action is constantly interrupted. There’s the corporate assassin who calls Bo repeatedly to remind her that there’s only so long until he has to hurt her family. There’s cooking for aliens while on the run and being terrified of said aliens. It slows things to a crawl and makes the book super easy to put down
There is also a linguistic thing that I feel slows Free Chocolate down as well, it also contributed to it being pretty easy to put down. There’s a number of alien languages mentioned as being spoken and a handful of words used when Bo doesn’t know them. It’s just sort of tagged and let go. But then Bo is a native Spanish speaker so, while I would expect some Spanish to be used, it’s done largely in a way that feels like the author is reminding the reader of that rather than as a natural part of how she talks. It’s this sort of immersion breaking thing that Bo never says but or head, it’s always pero or cabeza, or she’ll use a phrase and then immediately provide the translation. This wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that a lot of this happens in Bo’s internal monologue, so she winds up translating for an audience she shouldn’t be aware of. I feel like leaving the phrases without the extra translation could have worked well. Bo referring to Brill using various terms of endearment worked really well, I thought. It just sort of feels strange that we get more translating for the existent Earth language than the handful of alien languages.
All of that boils down to it being kind of hard to care about the characters and what’s happening to them. Bo is on the run from a massive corporation with an assassin threatening her family and a venomous space cop on her tail. She’s stuck surrounded by aliens that could easily eat her if she messes up while her boyfriend may have been playing her this whole time. All of that, with all the interruptions and characters dropping in and out in an attempt to keep the drama level high, and I really just could have cared less. Like, the pilot who’s accident kicked off the plot, he’s given this level of importance within Bo’s story that is usually saved for major side characters, love interests or best friends. But after she leaves Earth, he takes a background spot for the vast majority of the story. This is the guy she’s essentially willing to trade her life for, they knew each other for two or three days, tops. Brill, the alien boyfriend, swaps between being super loving and sketchy to no end. It’s like the story couldn’t make up its mind about if he was one of the antagonists, just using Bo to get a hold of the cacao beans, or if he legitimately cares about her and is doing something at least sort of heroic. That leaves the reader to decide about him right up until the end, but then there’s this attempt at explaining his behavior in context of Krom society, but he had not wanted to talk to Bo about Krom society so neither she nor the reader knows anything about it until then. It just doesn’t work for me. I’d have liked to have seen more of the space cop, especially the post Bo stowing away version of him, and Chestla, the cat girl TA, though. They were pretty entertaining.
The galley crew on the Zantite ship were also interesting and I found myself enjoying the cooking segments. Talking about cooking and food were the parts where Royer’s writing shines best. If this had been more of a science fiction cozy mystery thing and focused more on the food and cooking I think it could have worked better, those scenes are just that enjoyable.
That’s where I land on Free Chocolate I think. There are a lot of first novel issues here, largely in the character work and how scattered the overall plot can feel. There are the bones of something good here, but it exists in the small moments where Bo is allowed to be a chef and interact with other characters on that level. I could see Royer handling the grander scale, galactic conflict stuff after she’s written more fiction. That said, this is a book that I found incredibly easy to put down in favor of doing any number of other things. So, I’m giving Free Chocolate a two out of five with the note that, while I’m not likely to read the inevitable sequel, I might check out another one of Royer’s books later on in her writing career.
A review copy was provided through net Galley.
I have a lot of thoughts on Amber Royer’s Free Chocolate. There was a lot of stuff that I feel like could have been fun and some stuff that I feel like needed more focus to work at all. More than anything, I feel like the book lacks focus. There are a number of places in Free Chocolate where it feels like Royer had three or four ideas for a book but not enough for any single one of them, so she kind of stitched them together. Things happen and don’t seem to have any consequences. There’s some stuff that gets talked about not at all, but then both Bo and the reader are expected to just roll with it. It feels disjointed.
A lot of this is down to how the book deals with its timeline. It takes ages for Bo to actually get into space and on the run from Tyson, the space cop, and then it seems like the action is constantly interrupted. There’s the corporate assassin who calls Bo repeatedly to remind her that there’s only so long until he has to hurt her family. There’s cooking for aliens while on the run and being terrified of said aliens. It slows things to a crawl and makes the book super easy to put down
There is also a linguistic thing that I feel slows Free Chocolate down as well, it also contributed to it being pretty easy to put down. There’s a number of alien languages mentioned as being spoken and a handful of words used when Bo doesn’t know them. It’s just sort of tagged and let go. But then Bo is a native Spanish speaker so, while I would expect some Spanish to be used, it’s done largely in a way that feels like the author is reminding the reader of that rather than as a natural part of how she talks. It’s this sort of immersion breaking thing that Bo never says but or head, it’s always pero or cabeza, or she’ll use a phrase and then immediately provide the translation. This wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that a lot of this happens in Bo’s internal monologue, so she winds up translating for an audience she shouldn’t be aware of. I feel like leaving the phrases without the extra translation could have worked well. Bo referring to Brill using various terms of endearment worked really well, I thought. It just sort of feels strange that we get more translating for the existent Earth language than the handful of alien languages.
All of that boils down to it being kind of hard to care about the characters and what’s happening to them. Bo is on the run from a massive corporation with an assassin threatening her family and a venomous space cop on her tail. She’s stuck surrounded by aliens that could easily eat her if she messes up while her boyfriend may have been playing her this whole time. All of that, with all the interruptions and characters dropping in and out in an attempt to keep the drama level high, and I really just could have cared less. Like, the pilot who’s accident kicked off the plot, he’s given this level of importance within Bo’s story that is usually saved for major side characters, love interests or best friends. But after she leaves Earth, he takes a background spot for the vast majority of the story. This is the guy she’s essentially willing to trade her life for, they knew each other for two or three days, tops. Brill, the alien boyfriend, swaps between being super loving and sketchy to no end. It’s like the story couldn’t make up its mind about if he was one of the antagonists, just using Bo to get a hold of the cacao beans, or if he legitimately cares about her and is doing something at least sort of heroic. That leaves the reader to decide about him right up until the end, but then there’s this attempt at explaining his behavior in context of Krom society, but he had not wanted to talk to Bo about Krom society so neither she nor the reader knows anything about it until then. It just doesn’t work for me. I’d have liked to have seen more of the space cop, especially the post Bo stowing away version of him, and Chestla, the cat girl TA, though. They were pretty entertaining.
The galley crew on the Zantite ship were also interesting and I found myself enjoying the cooking segments. Talking about cooking and food were the parts where Royer’s writing shines best. If this had been more of a science fiction cozy mystery thing and focused more on the food and cooking I think it could have worked better, those scenes are just that enjoyable.
That’s where I land on Free Chocolate I think. There are a lot of first novel issues here, largely in the character work and how scattered the overall plot can feel. There are the bones of something good here, but it exists in the small moments where Bo is allowed to be a chef and interact with other characters on that level. I could see Royer handling the grander scale, galactic conflict stuff after she’s written more fiction. That said, this is a book that I found incredibly easy to put down in favor of doing any number of other things. So, I’m giving Free Chocolate a two out of five with the note that, while I’m not likely to read the inevitable sequel, I might check out another one of Royer’s books later on in her writing career.
A review copy was provided through net Galley.
Terrible. Awful. Not really worthy of even one star.
I read the blurb for the book and thought to myself that this sounds like it might be a humorous romp in space. Royer also seems to be the author of "How to Write"-books which to me would be an indicator of her knowing a thing or two about storytelling.
However, I should have read reviews before purchase, because nothing makes sense, the language(s) are a mess, there are too many characters and very few of them act logically.
Not humorous.
I read the blurb for the book and thought to myself that this sounds like it might be a humorous romp in space. Royer also seems to be the author of "How to Write"-books which to me would be an indicator of her knowing a thing or two about storytelling.
However, I should have read reviews before purchase, because nothing makes sense, the language(s) are a mess, there are too many characters and very few of them act logically.
Not humorous.
When someone says Jane The Virgin meets Firefly in a galaxy fighting over chocolate, I thought I was totally there for it. I am actually rather disappointed to say that while that description does kinda fit, it also just didn't gel for me. I spent most of the book in a state of confusion, and not because of the bi-lingual scattering of Spanish in with English sentences as feared. It's because there narrative is actually rather confusingly put together.
Bo(dacious) is a culinary arts student on Larksis 9, in a steady relationship with Brill (a human-like alien from the race known as the Krom whose eyes change colour depending on their emotions), and is trying to enjoy a little down time with her famous chef Mama. Because tomorrow, she has to drop out of school and go work for her mom's employers, HGB, back on Earth. They are the biggest supplier of chocolate in the entire galaxy. Scrap that; they are the only suppliers. When Earth joined up with all things interstellar, the Krom came, saw, and... took a sample of everything Earth had to offer. Everything except the cacao plant. It's the only thing Earth has that everyone else wants, and humans have had wars over who controls this valued commodity. It must never be out of HGB's grubby corporate mitts. Bo and her beau have other ideas. As does virtually everyone else...
I adored the world building here. Even if I questioned it from time to time (you know, the whole sci-fi future using old style tech conundrum) it really worked. A universe where chocolate is a second currency makes for a super inventive setting. Add in the idea that virtually everyone is a vlogger (or FeedCaster in the book's terms) and some pop culture references and there's a nicely done touch of parody. Takes a little bi of back and forth explaining at the beginning what with all the alien races, but it's pretty darn cool.
What didn't work for me was... Well, mostly everything else. The characters never really seemed to develop logically, and I found that I couldn't understand their motivations or feelings for each other (except when explicitly told, like Bo's undying love of Brill which she goes on about but I just never felt). It was hard to really tell each character apart in the end, as none of them stood out to me.
The plot-line is a convoluted as any telenovela, but all those threads are hard to follow. We seem to be kept two steps behind whatever the characters are planning, or else important things seem to happen off screen and are only reported via short phone conversations. I didn't remember the subplots enough to really make sense of them. I felt so lost.
SpoilerExamples: Bo and Brill plan a heist, but oh no! Bo's been taken to the wrong facility. Out of nowhere, she has a replacement plan and acts on it! Later Chestla and Bo infiltrate the rainforest, hide out in a secret warehouse/lab because they're being chased by deathbot monkeys and then... sit on the floor and sample all the chocolate they find? I thought they needed to get out of there, stat. Then off screen Chestla meets Eugene and learns some important things about HGB. How come Eugene (whoever he is) is fine with all this?
What struck me mostly is that characters barely exchange names and then are suddenly friends. I just couldn't understand why. Eugene, Jeska, the Zanites... Not a clue why they behaved the way they did.
The ending does bring everything together more or less Spoilerbut points deducted for that "I guess we'll never know" cliffhanger about the mystery all the events actually centred on. But by then I had lost the will to care. It was all so tangled that nothing, not even the life-and-death situations Bo & co regularly faced, had the urgency it should have had. I'd forgotten half the subplot details in all the crazy that was going on, so that stuff about Brill's Krom sensibilities or the Pure scandal didn't hit the mark for me.
The "Spanglish" (as I've seen it called) was a little disconcerting to begin with, but not the deal-breaker I initially feared after reading other reviews. Right off the bat, Bo's narration is peppered with Spanish and strange blended words. Some sentences feel difficult to parse, especially as things aren't usually translated for the less language-minded people reading (like me; sorry). But over time it's possible to pick up enough of her exclamations from their context, and during the middle part of the book it flows a lot better without the longer phrases.
I wished it had that telenovela silliness that the blurb hinted at, but perhaps it just doesn't translate well into writing. Without body language, tone of voice, visual gags and the like, the tone didn't feel quite right (Bo shouting "Noooooo" didn't convey a great deal of drama when I don't know how it was supposed to be said).
So while I desperately wanted to like this book, it was just too much stretched out over too long without a strong central narrative or character to hang it all upon. 1.5 stars, because it's not a book for those like me who get easily confused and disappointed by not knowing what's going on.
Bo(dacious) is a culinary arts student on Larksis 9, in a steady relationship with Brill (a human-like alien from the race known as the Krom whose eyes change colour depending on their emotions), and is trying to enjoy a little down time with her famous chef Mama. Because tomorrow, she has to drop out of school and go work for her mom's employers, HGB, back on Earth. They are the biggest supplier of chocolate in the entire galaxy. Scrap that; they are the only suppliers. When Earth joined up with all things interstellar, the Krom came, saw, and... took a sample of everything Earth had to offer. Everything except the cacao plant. It's the only thing Earth has that everyone else wants, and humans have had wars over who controls this valued commodity. It must never be out of HGB's grubby corporate mitts. Bo and her beau have other ideas. As does virtually everyone else...
I adored the world building here. Even if I questioned it from time to time (you know, the whole sci-fi future using old style tech conundrum) it really worked. A universe where chocolate is a second currency makes for a super inventive setting. Add in the idea that virtually everyone is a vlogger (or FeedCaster in the book's terms) and some pop culture references and there's a nicely done touch of parody. Takes a little bi of back and forth explaining at the beginning what with all the alien races, but it's pretty darn cool.
What didn't work for me was... Well, mostly everything else. The characters never really seemed to develop logically, and I found that I couldn't understand their motivations or feelings for each other (except when explicitly told, like Bo's undying love of Brill which she goes on about but I just never felt). It was hard to really tell each character apart in the end, as none of them stood out to me.
The plot-line is a convoluted as any telenovela, but all those threads are hard to follow. We seem to be kept two steps behind whatever the characters are planning, or else important things seem to happen off screen and are only reported via short phone conversations. I didn't remember the subplots enough to really make sense of them. I felt so lost.
SpoilerExamples: Bo and Brill plan a heist, but oh no! Bo's been taken to the wrong facility. Out of nowhere, she has a replacement plan and acts on it! Later Chestla and Bo infiltrate the rainforest, hide out in a secret warehouse/lab because they're being chased by deathbot monkeys and then... sit on the floor and sample all the chocolate they find? I thought they needed to get out of there, stat. Then off screen Chestla meets Eugene and learns some important things about HGB. How come Eugene (whoever he is) is fine with all this?
What struck me mostly is that characters barely exchange names and then are suddenly friends. I just couldn't understand why. Eugene, Jeska, the Zanites... Not a clue why they behaved the way they did.
The ending does bring everything together more or less Spoilerbut points deducted for that "I guess we'll never know" cliffhanger about the mystery all the events actually centred on. But by then I had lost the will to care. It was all so tangled that nothing, not even the life-and-death situations Bo & co regularly faced, had the urgency it should have had. I'd forgotten half the subplot details in all the crazy that was going on, so that stuff about Brill's Krom sensibilities or the Pure scandal didn't hit the mark for me.
The "Spanglish" (as I've seen it called) was a little disconcerting to begin with, but not the deal-breaker I initially feared after reading other reviews. Right off the bat, Bo's narration is peppered with Spanish and strange blended words. Some sentences feel difficult to parse, especially as things aren't usually translated for the less language-minded people reading (like me; sorry). But over time it's possible to pick up enough of her exclamations from their context, and during the middle part of the book it flows a lot better without the longer phrases.
I wished it had that telenovela silliness that the blurb hinted at, but perhaps it just doesn't translate well into writing. Without body language, tone of voice, visual gags and the like, the tone didn't feel quite right (Bo shouting "Noooooo" didn't convey a great deal of drama when I don't know how it was supposed to be said).
So while I desperately wanted to like this book, it was just too much stretched out over too long without a strong central narrative or character to hang it all upon. 1.5 stars, because it's not a book for those like me who get easily confused and disappointed by not knowing what's going on.
DNF. I gave up after the first 5 chapters. I liked the premise and world building was promising but the writing style just got on my nerves. The random phrases in Spanish, almost always followed by the English translation just was too jarring for me. I'd start a chapter enjoying the story but then put it down by the end in irritation. A minor quibble really but just too much for me.
Lots to love about this, but if I had to choose my favorite thing it would be the Spanish/alien word combos. So much fun!
Aliens have come to Earth and stolen IP of value for things like tea and coffee, but they missed chocolate. A huge conglomerate now controls it and runs the earth like a dictatorship. Great concept, really bad writing. First, the Spanglish gets old very, very, fast. Second, the characters are, as they are in too many bad books, cardboard. Third, the plot is completely standard. Nothing here to enjoy but it's not quite bad enough for 1-star.
In the end, I enjoyed this book. I think I was trying to take it too seriously. It's more hitchhiker and less ender's game. I guess. I don't know. I don't generally like scifi. But I'm glad I read it. The plot was interesting and the characters wild.
If there was every a book made for me, this was it. Chocolate, SciFi, Spanish... Yet I couldn't make it to Chapter 5. DNF.
I mean what can I even say about this book? It’s more of an experience than anything else. Shark banana aliens, robot capuchins, salt-eating bodyguard cats, love triangles with Krom boys, “death” by chocolate, and a lizard cop with a lisp. That about covers it. Entertaining but I can’t in good conscience give it more than 2 stars. Don’t know if I’ll continue the trilogy.