effingunicorns's reviews
373 reviews

I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons by Peter S. Beagle

adventurous dark funny lighthearted medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

There were many excellent things about this book, but

the fact that Robert more than once wondered at the larger dragons' ability to fly in the first place, only to not even see how it was accomplished when he finally got the chance,

makes me feel like we're on the same wavelength, at least a little bit. It's a world of magic! Things should be magical!

The Innocent Sleep by Seanan McGuire

slow-paced

3.0

Just realized I've been caught up to this series for a decade now, so that probably accounts for some of my growing distance from it in recent years. I can't say it wasn't nice to see what Tybalt was actually up to over the course of the previous book and finally get a proper bridge between the beginning of that one and the end of the one before it, but my favorite parts were

The Great Costco Heist

and

Tybalt & Company Discover GPS

, both of which were far too brief. The story otherwise felt repetitive even when it wasn't trying to be--with so many characters who had to be brought up to speed, this was a perfect opportunity to experiment with more natural exposition, but instead it felt like we got double the reminders about nearly every person and situation that came up.

I plan to stick with the series for a while longer, but unless the next one really tightens up, I think I'll be less concerned about reading them as soon as they come out.

My Sister Took My Fiance and Now I'm Being Courted by a Beastly Prince (Manga) Vol. 1 by Yu Sakurai

medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.0

Main character: hyper-competent, clever, insightful, level-headed, nigh-unflappable.

Also the main character: overthinks things so much she invents elaborate political machinations and a glove fetish to explain a cute guy showing interest in her.

Anyway, so far this series is a solid mix of cute romance with social drama that's petty and horrible without being overly grimdark. I want to see how things progress!

The Gathering Dark: An Anthology of Folk Horror by Tori Bovalino

3.0

This wasn't bad, but it wasn't quite landing with me, either, and I can't decide whether it's just that I've grown tired of YA, I didn't feel like there was enough of a horror vibe, or some combination of the two. I think all but two stories were either explicitly or implicitly set in small American towns, too, which frankly flattens the potential of a folk horror anthology.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

slow-paced

3.75

It's been so long since I read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that I forgot about the strange, wonderful realness Susanna Clarke writes magic with. It mostly takes a back seat to the slow snowballing revelation of Piranesi's true circumstances, but it lingers often in the periphery.

The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter, Vol. 4 by Yatsuki Wakatsu

3.5

The Angel of Indian Lake by Stephen Graham Jones

dark emotional slow-paced

4.25

This didn't go one bit how I thought it would, but the nice thing about saying that here is that I can think back to the previous two books and figure out the seeds of The Angel of Indian Lake, as opposed to the out-of-left-field bullshit we've all encountered a time or ten. A part of me wishes there'd been a little more telegraphing of The Ultimate Culprit, but another part of me was just like "yes, of course", a third part of me was satisfied by the cultural comeuppance, and then a whole fourth part of me just went straight to,

"Did you know that most non-indigenous North American folk magic has ties to Christianity?"

Anyway! Wonderful end to a wonderful trilogy. Easily as gory and brutal as the previous books (maybe more, really, my brain doesn't really register that sort of thing the first time around), deeply ruthless but not as ruthless as I feared, and the things that mattered the most, I think, all got resolved by the end.

Also Jade got a sick-ass superpower for all her suffering, so she's not allowed to argue anymore that she was never the final girl.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Child death

Minor: Child abuse and Sexual assault

Dune by Frank Herbert

adventurous dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes

3.5

The two best genres to prepare you for reading this are the most head-hopping danmei you can find and door-stopper western high fantasy. The writing style feels surprisingly modern in some ways--bits of it have osmosed their way into my own, even, perhaps from a common ancestor--but at the same I can see it as a clear midpoint between Lawrence of Arabia and Star Wars.

I also feel a certain kinship with the way Herbert spent so much of the book slowly setting things up, only to plow headlong through an ending that screams "I'm not done here but I have to send this thing out". Maybe in a different world, it could've been a tighter narrative, or more complex, or at least more of a story where all these important-feeling characters actually get to live up to that importance. I think I would've loved that! But we live in this world, where Herbert had 600 pages and still couldn't get anywhere close to finishing things, and... honestly, I'm okay with that.

Voices From The Other Side by Brandon Massey

2.5

I was so caught up in the euphoria of Christmas and Other Horrors that for a few months I lived in a world where multi-author anthologies aren't generally kind of mediocre. Welcome back to reality, me!

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

3.5

I feel like a traitor to the reading community saying this, but I liked the show better! The book certainly isn't bad, but there's more of a disjointed feeling, like every chapter is one of a series of interconnected short stories rather than readable segments of an intended whole. Maybe that was intentional, and maybe it works for other people, but I wasn't a huge fan. It's also a total sausage fest, and many of the events as they play out in the book have a certain smallness to them that I find disappointing. I don't know that I'll bother with the sequel I've heard is coming, or if I do it won't be for a while yet.