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3.66 AVERAGE
3.66 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
A very clever heist story with a cast of characters inspired by, primarily Nigerian, folklore. I really enjoyed this! The non-linear story telling was very clever and built tension well.
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I wanted to like this book so much more than I did and it comes down to...3 things, I think.
1) The worldbuilding was way more interesting than the characters holding it. Teh whole corporate belief structure thing was fascinating and felt like there was so much there to dig into, but it's mostly just background to set up the plot and that annoys me.
2) I just had very little invested in the main characters. (The Incomparable review that touches on their nature as beings that prey on humans made a point, but I'm not sure that's it.) They also kind of felt like plot vehicles, maybe?
3) Right on the heels of of my "contemporary romance trope of seeing love as the reward for finding yourself, not the method by which one does" comment, this bookplays straight into the trope of romance as the thing that saves and, like, Talabi does kind of lampshade it, but it's still jarring. . Shigidi and Nneoma's relationship frustrated me, and reminded me of a conversation about a completely different author that the men fall fast because the women have so much more to lose. And Nneoma's resistance is written more as a trauma response rather than something that feels like a real and reasonable evaluation of her situation.
I don't know, this one took forever and I ended up switching to audiobook because I kept looking for excuses to read other things. But I appreciated so much of what was in there; it's just that everything I liked was kind of in the background. Can we talk about the belief and mythology thing?
1) The worldbuilding was way more interesting than the characters holding it. Teh whole corporate belief structure thing was fascinating and felt like there was so much there to dig into, but it's mostly just background to set up the plot and that annoys me.
2) I just had very little invested in the main characters. (The Incomparable review that touches on their nature as beings that prey on humans made a point, but I'm not sure that's it.) They also kind of felt like plot vehicles, maybe?
3) Right on the heels of of my "contemporary romance trope of seeing love as the reward for finding yourself, not the method by which one does" comment, this book
I don't know, this one took forever and I ended up switching to audiobook because I kept looking for excuses to read other things. But I appreciated so much of what was in there; it's just that everything I liked was kind of in the background. Can we talk about the belief and mythology thing?
It’s seems like it’s less ‘heist’ and more ‘romance’ which is fine but not what I thought I’d be reading.
Dnf at 36%
I don't like having to dnf a book I got as an ARC but it was too painful to continue
I was on the fence but a sexual assault happens at 36% and that's just it for me.
First things first, there is nothing wrong with the writing per say, it is descriptive but not hard to read or anything. Unfortunately the pacing is just bad. In the span of seven chapters (albeit they are not short) three of them are flashbacks. It really takes you out of the main story.
First chapter is a chase happening right now : exciting "you're probably wondering how I got there" okay why not. Second chapter introduces the two main characters and the beginning of the situation. And then flashback to how they met which just makes no narrative sense in my opinion and adds nothing but incel vibes to the story. Chapter 7 is where I dnf because it is once again a flashback, I suppose about how Nneoma met someone they will need for the heist. But it just makes the whole story goes sooo slow. I don't care about that random man and I don't care how they met !
Okay then let's chat about how this book suffers from "written by a man" syndrome. I could tell very fast without looking anything up that the author was a man. The main character, Shigidi, is a nightmare God and because of that he has to be ugly and it makes him very sad but such is life. Also because he is very ugly he is still a virgin :( but then he meets a succubus who is like wowza I want a piece of that and he magically becomes a hunk after sleeping with her. And then Shigidi is very upset because he tells her he loves her and she is like... I love being with you? Yikes.
I also understand that Nneoma is a succubus but every sex scene where she was involved made my skin crawl.
Finally I couldn't get attached to any of the main characters as I don't feel they were well written.
On the positive side : interesting Yoruba mythology, the scene where Shigidi does nightmare kills was pretty cool.
Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an ARC but yikes this was not it.
I don't like having to dnf a book I got as an ARC but it was too painful to continue
I was on the fence but a sexual assault happens at 36% and that's just it for me.
First things first, there is nothing wrong with the writing per say, it is descriptive but not hard to read or anything. Unfortunately the pacing is just bad. In the span of seven chapters (albeit they are not short) three of them are flashbacks. It really takes you out of the main story.
First chapter is a chase happening right now : exciting "you're probably wondering how I got there" okay why not. Second chapter introduces the two main characters and the beginning of the situation. And then flashback to how they met which just makes no narrative sense in my opinion and adds nothing but incel vibes to the story. Chapter 7 is where I dnf because it is once again a flashback, I suppose about how Nneoma met someone they will need for the heist. But it just makes the whole story goes sooo slow. I don't care about that random man and I don't care how they met !
Okay then let's chat about how this book suffers from "written by a man" syndrome. I could tell very fast without looking anything up that the author was a man. The main character, Shigidi, is a nightmare God and because of that he has to be ugly and it makes him very sad but such is life. Also because he is very ugly he is still a virgin :( but then he meets a succubus who is like wowza I want a piece of that and he magically becomes a hunk after sleeping with her. And then Shigidi is very upset because he tells her he loves her and she is like... I love being with you? Yikes.
I also understand that Nneoma is a succubus but every sex scene where she was involved made my skin crawl.
Finally I couldn't get attached to any of the main characters as I don't feel they were well written.
On the positive side : interesting Yoruba mythology, the scene where Shigidi does nightmare kills was pretty cool.
Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an ARC but yikes this was not it.
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Review to come.
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
If you loved American Gods, you'll like this book. The characters are complex and well-developed. Multiple storylines across time and geography offer an interesting story structure. The central heist is engaging. Oh and the interpretation of magic and different cultural pantheons is unique and also comments on capitalism. The ending felt a little rushed, but this was a very enjoyable read overall.
adventurous
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This one was always going to be a hard sell for me, frankly. Urban fantasy and stories about gods walking the earth aren't among my favourites and I often find it hard to connect with them. There's plenty to like here, and I gave it a real effort, but I ended up DNFing at around 37%.
This has been compared quite widely to American Gods (P.S. Fuck Neil Gaiman), and though I can see the comparison it's fairly surface-level. Both books are about gods walking the earth and interacting with mortals, but that's about where the similarities end. What makes stories like American Gods and G. Willow Wilson's Alif the Unseen work, though, is that they have a mortal character at the centre of them to ground us in the world. Shigidi is lacking that grounding, and I struggled to find any way to connect with the characters - especially Nneoma, a succubus who spends much of the narrative sexually assaulting people.
When the writing is good it's great, but there are moments - particularly in flashback sequences - where it becomes quite plodding and dense, and I felt like those sections were doing little more than providing exposition that didn't yet have any context to be meaningful. I'm sure it all pays off in the end, but I never got to that point.
The main thing I struggled with was trying to take the world that we're presented with seriously. This isn't something unique to Shigidi, it's something I struggle with in lots of urban fantasy when their are shadowy organisations whose role revolves around keeping the magical world secret from mortals. What little we see of the Orisha spirit company reminded me far too much of Monsters, Inc., and I couldn't separate that from Shigidi's early missions to kill humans by sneaking into their bedrooms and inflicting them with lethal nightmares.
I was managing okay with it and willing to give it a chance and see where it was going right up until the point at which Alesteir Crowley became an important character. After a scene in which Nneoma sexually assaults a magically-bound man in an alleyway and then grants Crowley immortality so that he can return to the narrative a hundred years later as a key part of their heist team, I realised that I was enjoying the book less often than I wasn't, and I decided to put it down.
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes