gxuosi's reviews
326 reviews

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi (Novel) Vol. 1 by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

5.0

is this the best translation? god no. but is it still fun to read? ABSOLUTELY. i am down sooooo bad for wangji bro it’s criminal

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi (Novel) Vol. 2 by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

5.0

i let loose a crying scream for the horror that the world puts qin su AND jin ling through for no fucking reason.

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi (Novel) Vol. 4 by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

5.0

god the ANGST. the unbridled agony at the cards wuxian, wangji, yanli, and wen ning have been dealt. also wuxian that man was NOT drunk quit hurting ur husband’s feelings on accident

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi (Novel) Vol. 5 by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

4.0

it’s a 5/5 if you just finish the main story; such a perfect love ballad across time. i love this fucked up family so bad.
BUT when you read the extra stories that make up half of this book it’s a 3/5; inexplicably pointless and irrelevant, often meandering tableaus or just like sadomasochistic sex scenes.

Paris: The Memoir by Paris Hilton

4.0

3.5/5. paris lays her history bare, but not her whole heart and that's probably just part of protecting herself. this book contains the worst of who paris was and the worst of what paris went through, but contextualizes in jarring clarity why she is who she is. it seeks to explain and allegedly not excuse some of her more problematic behaviors as an it girl influencer, but it leaves a taste of attempted absolution in my mouth. she doubles down often on acknowledging her privilege leading up into complaints or successes, as if she's too afraid to complain or celebrate without a giving the reader a warning sign. the letdown of the book was her no less than 5 times bringing up cryptocurrency, metaverse, and NFTs. paris, AI will not heal your trauma, digital escapism isn't saving your life.

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

5.0

nothing will ever hit the way reading catching fire for the first time did. the honor to have read this without any knowledge of the film cannot be understated. i've always loved catching fire best because of the sheer rage in it. and i've known anger best all my life. nothing is quite as tangible and as fulfilling as anger. you don't have to question anger the way you do sorrow. you just pull it taut and let it loose, like an arrow into a weak corner of a forcefield.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

3.0

that was an awfully long book to start and end with coriolanus being a piece of shit

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

3.0

honest to god idk what just happened

Beast Unburdened by Robin O'Connor

2.0

this review will be used for both the prequel free novella “gladiator’s sanctuary (gladiators of vagabond #0.5)” and “beast unburdened (gladiators of vagabond #1).”

gladiator’s sanctuary (#0.5): they fucked way too soon and the action was rushed. the side-side characters lacking names beyond male and female and having no characteristics used to define them from each other made combat sequences confusing. 2/5.

beast unburdened (#1): TBR

Blood Stained Tea by Amy Tasukada
Did not finish book.

dnf at 21%. the language being used between the korean and japanese characters was racially charged, which i imagine is realistic for yakuza and kkangpae/geondal. the problem was my increasing concern over the author being japanese or korean to at least provide cultural context and nuance to offensive racial insults their characters were using. after deep diving on reviews and the author, i've found this isn't particularly a romance novel so much as gay fiction and the author, while having a japanese last name, doesn't (anywhere publicly at least) identify as being japanese. so it's just a no from me.