kimmyt_isreading's Reviews (233)

The Shadow Rising

DID NOT FINISH: 20%

I'm just not connecting with the story even though the worldbuilding is beautiful. I know "The Slog" starts soon and if I'm already struggling I just don't think the commitment is worth it for me. (Also an anticipated library hold just came through!)

Paladin's Grace

T. Kingfisher

4.0

emotional funny lighthearted mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

The Storm

Rachel Hawkins

3.0

mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review of The Storm, by Rachel Hawkins!

This book was an entertaining read! The story was fairly straightforward, though there was one twist to the climax that came out of left field for me. There were occasional details that stuck out as unrealistic or at least highly improbable, but they were never enough to detract from the story, just enough to momentarily distract from it.

One thing I really enjoyed about this book were all the emails and news articles and book excerpts. Often in real life there's a difference between hindsight and how we view things as they're happening, so I thought that was a very neat tool to give us backstory and clues both about what had happened in the past, as well as what was going to happen in the book.

Overall, this was a fun, quick read.

Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea

Rita Chang-Eppig

DID NOT FINISH: 29%

I went into this expecting a swashbuckling pirate queen adventure, and it turned out to be more of a dry, research-heavy historical fiction with hardly any action. I didn't jive with the writing style and was disappointed by the lack of acts of actual piracy

The Crippled God

Steven Erikson

5.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I'd seen the reviews. Even in the spoiler-free ones that I forced myself to keep to, I knew something big was coming. But even though I had my suspicions, the series title name-drop about a third of the way in that confirmed my suspicions still took me so much by surprise that I started yelling and had to put the book down for a bit and send a bookish friend multiple probably nonsensical voice notes. What do you MEAN that's what this has all been about and why didn't it click for me until now and why was it SO SATISFYING?

And then the hits kept coming and the hits kept coming (and the hits kepts coming and the hits kept coming...). The emotional and narrative payoffs in this book were frankly just on another level.

The Crippled God doesn't tie up every loose thread (how could it, the Malazan Book of the Fallen being as sprawling as it was?), but it did a damn good job of bringing themes, elements and details full circle. As I was reading the climactic battles (that's right, plural climactic battles), my thoughts kept coming back to a quote I've seen circulating on various social media:

"People speak of hope as if it is this delicate, ephemeral thing made of whispers and spider’s webs. It’s not. Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of the cobblestones in her hair, and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go." - Matthew on Twitter (@CrowsFault)

Because that really sums it all up for me. Not just this book, but the entire Malazan Book of the Fallen. The series is certainly challenging in many ways, but it's such a masterpiece and I am desperately wishing for the day some of my friends pick the series up so I can relive it through them. I will definitely do a reread at some point - this feels like a series you get even more out of the second time around.