lumie's reviews
134 reviews

The Savior's Book Café Story in Another World (Manga) Vol. 2 by Oumiya, Reiko Sakurada, Kyouka Izumi

lighthearted relaxing fast-paced

3.0

Unfortunately, everything resolved itself far too quickly. 

Together We Burn by Isabel Ibañez

medium-paced

0.5

For the first time in my life, I really, thoroughly hated a book. And I don't use that word lightly. 

 

Together we Burn is the story of a girl (MC) and her family in a made-up place that is effectively Spain with a different name. They are the proud owners of a dragon fighting arena. We follow them through several disasters and their struggle to keep their family business alive; the family business of killing dragons for the entertainment of the masses that is.

 

Now, I'm Portuguese and we unfortunately share the culture of bullfighting with the Spanish. It's a highly controversial tradition in both countries (to say the least). Needless to say, I am one of many who is quite opposed to this tradition as I find it frankly barbaric and a black stain upon my culture. 

 

So I couldn't not, for the life of me, root for these characters. Quite the opposite actually, I spent the whole book hoping their endeavours would fail miserably. The MC is really quite unlikeable. Beyond being completely opposed to her choice of livelihood and the fact that she seems oblivious to any ethical dilemma, she is insufferable by nature. 

We are talking about a character who harasses the main male character (MMC), for days, completely disregarding the fact that he does not wish to fight dragons. She bribes him, guilts him, and manipulates him to ignore his principles for her economic benefit. This is naturally explained as good thing in the book, it's not a character flaw, she's just feisty™ and passionate. In fact the MMC later reveals how being pestered and having his principles disregarded is what made him fall in love with her… Peak romance for sure... 

 

Right at the start, the dragons her family keeps are released, causing a bloody massacre in the arena. Her response to the anti-dragon fighting activists who are rightfully protesting against the practice after such a massive loss? "... creating noise and dirtying the street with their discarded pamphlets." Oh yes, how dare they make a mess when your family is responsible for the death of DOZENS of people?! 

 

Later in the book, the dragons are released yet again, this time not only killing many but destroying half the village. Her response? "How dare they destroy our livelihood?" You mean the livelihood that was directly responsible for the killing and destruction of their town? Yeah how dare they be that unreasonable?! And we are supposed to be sympathetic? How?!

 

At around the 90% mark, we have an abrupt shift in opinion, suddenly the MC isn't so cool with the whole dragon killing thing. Why? Did we have explore the ethics of it all? Did we ask the difficult questions of dealing with a country/family tradition that causes needless suffering yet it's a fundamental part of your culture and your main source of income? Did we grapple with the dilemma of hating an animal because they killed your beloved mother, but also rationally understanding that perhaps they were put into a position that as a wild animal had no choice but to retaliate? 

 

Nah, she just found an alternative way of making a spectacle out of the dragons without killing them and suddenly (quite literally, it happens in a couple pages) all the arena cheers (yes that really does happens) and the culture is now changed! Amazing! Everything is neatly tied with a bow right at the end, making everything right with no consequences whatsoever!

 

Beyond that, the villain is a moustache twirling cartoon with an absolutely unconvincing motivation that come out of nowhere. In fact, I would even call it character assassination for the sake of a plot twist. Her beloved dad dies off screen and it's barely explored and frankly I could care less. 

Finally, regarding the writing:

 

Ibañez suffers from an acute case of Spanglish. It's the obnoxious insistence in writing random Spanish sentences only to have immediate English translations right after. An example: 

 

He has an angular, sharp face with deep, weathered lines forged by years in the sun and taming beasts. “¿Tienes un momento, por favor?” 
“Give me an update, Benito.” 

 

For those of us who can understand it, it's redundant. To those who can't, it surely breaks the flow of the story causing confusion. To all it breaks immersion: it's implicit that everyone is speaking Spanish though all writing is in English for the benefit of the reader. Yet, when there's a random Spanish sentence you can't help but think where they talking in English then and just happen to burst into Spanish randomly? It's just so clumsy, I'm astonished how this wasn't removed during the editing process. 

 

In conclusion, Together we Burn is a mediocre book that fails to do what it set out to do. It has annoying writing, horrendous characterisation and a boring plot full of stereotypes and a shallow comprehension of the culture it pulls from. 

0.5/5 

Starling House by Alix E. Harrow

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

Wolf Children: Ame & Yuki by Mamoru Hosoda

lighthearted sad fast-paced

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

4.0

It's a sweet story that while not particularly interesting for me, was an enjoyable, fast read. 

What I really loved about it though was the art style, so much so that it motivated me to pick up drawing again. And for that alone I'm happy to have read it.

Our Hideous Progeny by C.E. McGill

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.25

Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential by Tiago Forte

informative slow-paced

1.75

Now I'm a huge fan of lists, notes and organisation, so a book about all the optimal ways of building your own personal Wikipedia seemed like a must-read. Unfortunately, I found this book to be repetitive and obvious to the point of condescension. 

A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid
Did not finish book. Stopped at 23%.

I got fooled by the admittedly gorgeous cover, which clearly catfished me with a Hermione Granger look-alike, and no one can convince me otherwise. 

The writing is competent and the atmosphere fairly compelling, though the world building felt quite hazy at times with a lot of talk about warring neighbouring kingdoms and a supposed second drowning that's not particularly well explained. However I found the main character Effy to be so insufferable I couldn't bare it anymore and had to DNF the book. 

This book is sold as a enemies-to-lover gothic story. Are Effy and Preston enemies or rivals by any definition of the word? No. 

The girl has a one-sided hissyfit with the guy because he's a half-Argantian who requested the books in the library that she wanted to request (I know. How dare he?!)

And so she got so pissed at this completely irrational thing that as soon as she met him:

          She felt breathless. She had spent the last weeks conjuring a wicked version of P. Héloury in her mind, a perfect amalgam of everything she despised. A literature student. A shrewdly opportunistic Myrddin scholar. 
         
         An Argantian.
         
         “You’re the one who took out my books,” she said at last, the only words she could summon as her blood pulsed with adrenaline.
            The memory of standing in front of the circulation desk, the boy’s number in bleeding ink on the back of her hand, filled
            her with a jilted anger anew. “On Myrddin. I went to the library and the librarian told me they had all been checked out.”
         
         “Well, they’re not your books. That’s the entire premise of a library.”
    
         Effy just stared at him. Her hands were shaking. She had practiced arguments in her mind against her imagined version of P. Héloury, but now that she was standing before him, all eloquent reasoning had abandoned her.

Oh yeah the "eloquent reasoning" of: he can study literature and I can't, he requested the books I wanted and he's studying my favourite author, therefore he's the anti-christ! 

Girl what?

And she then goes on racist tirade because he's a foreigner who wishes to study her land's national writer (Yeah, how DARE he?!)

The straw that broke the camels back was Effy having the brilliant idea to walk from the house into the town, without telling anyone, during a downpour in a clearly dangerously unstable cliffside, because she panicked she did a bad decision. And then when Preston had the nerve to save her ass,  she goes:

“Put your seat belt on.”

He was trying to humiliate her, to treat her like a child. “My mother doesn’t even make me wear my seat belt,” she scoffed.
         
         “I don’t suppose your mother spends a lot of time driving you down half-sunken roads.”
         
         She couldn’t think of a clever reply to that. Preston had his seat belt on, and she was too cold and wet to argue. As she
            buckled herself in, she thought, You are so insufferable. She almost said it out loud.

Yeah, HOW DARE HE worry about your safety?!

And that's when I DNFd the book, because my god. I don't mind unlikeable characters, but this one was one of the most insufferable, rude, bitchy, argumentative for no reason characters I've had the misfortune of reading. So much so I went through the trouble of writing this all down.

In conclusion, If this kind of characterisation annoys you then don't read this book.

Swordheart by T. Kingfisher

adventurous funny lighthearted relaxing medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

Throne in the Dark by A.K. Caggiano
Did not finish book. Stopped at 17%.

I wasn't expecting much from this book. I was looking for a chill, low-stakes kind of story with a cute romance alongside it and from what little I read, this book seems to have it. But something about it just didn't stick with me. The humour was a little bit hit or miss, particularly the funny dialogue. I like that the story didn't take itself too seriously, where it's almost making fun of a lot cliché, but some of the dialogue was quite clunky. 

And ultimately what I didn't enjoy about this was the writing. There's long run-on sentences that sometimes didn't make any sense, with strange word's placement.

A brighter mood was, after all, a much easier way to exist in the world, whether it was kind back to one or not.

One what? 

It's just feels a bin unpolished, like it really could have used a heavy editing hand.

And overall I'm not very interested in the characters. I'm not a fan of

the obedience stone plot line that completely removes the main female character's agency

. And Amma seems particularly ditzy and that's really not my cup of tea.

I'm just not gripped enough to bother wasting the time to read the 400+ pages plus the next book in the series. But I think it can scratch an itch for a lot of people, as long as they curb their expectations.

The Dragon's Promise by Elizabeth Lim

adventurous lighthearted medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0