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mesal's reviews
572 reviews
The Art of Prophecy by Wesley Chu
adventurous
funny
3.0
Despite the pretty decent rating you can see I've given this book, I count The Art of Prophecy as one of my worst reads of the year. This is primarily due to the hype surrounding it: the book has been lauded by friends and strangers alike, it has an average rating of 4.11 stars (not a small feat!), and its premise—with a wrongly chosen Chosen One and a famed war artist long past her prime deciding to train him into shape—promises a great time to anyone who enjoys martial arts in a fantasy setting. All of the above made my expectations skyrocket, leading only to a steeper disappointment when I realized just how badly the potential for an excellent story had been fumbled.
Chu's writing style depends upon his audience's familiarity with webtoons and webnovels. Without that familiarity, it honestly reads like a badly written book that somehow made it past the usual barriers to traditional publication. Not only is its style very simple, with the written word as a medium being used as nothing more than a functional tool to get the story across, but it's also written very lazily: the reliance on readers' knowledge of general webnovel tropes and conventions means we often get sentences like this
Chu's writing style depends upon his audience's familiarity with webtoons and webnovels. Without that familiarity, it honestly reads like a badly written book that somehow made it past the usual barriers to traditional publication. Not only is its style very simple, with the written word as a medium being used as nothing more than a functional tool to get the story across, but it's also written very lazily: the reliance on readers' knowledge of general webnovel tropes and conventions means we often get sentences like this
Lunging Snake in the Weeds was countered by Crane Waves at Starlight, just as Cutting the Giant's Knees was countered by Sweep the Floors
without any explanation of what the above-named martial arts moves (for that is what they are) actually look like. Such sentences make up a substantial portion of the fight scenes in this book, actually. And when the moves aren't named, we get phrases like "a flurry of punches" and "moved with a mastery of space and distance" that also tell us nothing about what the battles really look like.
Issues with writing style extend to the way in which the different points of view are presented. My problem is specifically with Jian's chapters: while everyone else's usually (if not always) make it sound like the narrator and the character are one and the same—even if in third person—with Jian it seems as if a separate adult narrator is presenting his life to the reader. This does make his chapters funnier, what with his boyish foibles and misplaced pride being ridiculed; however, it creates a disconnect between narrator and character which, when compared to the other perspectives, is confusing to see.
The characters themselves were supposed to be unique, but the one similarity they all shared—being good at fighting—dampened the parts of their personalities that were meant to make them stand out. Tianshi is a great fighter; Salminde is a great fighter; Qisami is a great fighter; Jian is a great fighter-in-training (in spite of his introduction as a terrible one; the moment he ends up at that war arts school he's suddenly hiding his true talents and generally acting like your average great-fighter-in-training in disguise). If they all had to be exceptional at something, did it have to be the same thing each time, regardless of the fact that they were all trained in different methods of killing? Couldn't a single one of the main cast have been good at, say, scholarship?
Inconsistencies within the plot and a severe lack of development of character relationships, especially regarding side characters—but also prominent within the main cast—make up the bulk of my remaining complaints with this book. (Really, the plotline regarding the temple's whereabouts was abysmal. It's one thing to say that the location of your religion's most revered temple has been lost to time; it's quite another to claim that the same temple is visited regularly by pilgrims and yet somehow—at the same time—nobody knows where it is. Tianshi's whole journey to said temple, a good third of the plot, was based on this one weird contradiction.) The reason I've given this book the rating I did instead of my originally intended two stars is because it did get much more engaging nearer the end, with me genuinely wanting to find out how the story unfolded. I just think the novel could have been better than it turned out.
If you're wondering whether The Art of Prophecy is for you, read the following quote. If absolutely nothing about it bothers you, then you might enjoy this book! If you're like me, read something else instead.
Issues with writing style extend to the way in which the different points of view are presented. My problem is specifically with Jian's chapters: while everyone else's usually (if not always) make it sound like the narrator and the character are one and the same—even if in third person—with Jian it seems as if a separate adult narrator is presenting his life to the reader. This does make his chapters funnier, what with his boyish foibles and misplaced pride being ridiculed; however, it creates a disconnect between narrator and character which, when compared to the other perspectives, is confusing to see.
The characters themselves were supposed to be unique, but the one similarity they all shared—being good at fighting—dampened the parts of their personalities that were meant to make them stand out. Tianshi is a great fighter; Salminde is a great fighter; Qisami is a great fighter; Jian is a great fighter-in-training (in spite of his introduction as a terrible one; the moment he ends up at that war arts school he's suddenly hiding his true talents and generally acting like your average great-fighter-in-training in disguise). If they all had to be exceptional at something, did it have to be the same thing each time, regardless of the fact that they were all trained in different methods of killing? Couldn't a single one of the main cast have been good at, say, scholarship?
Inconsistencies within the plot and a severe lack of development of character relationships, especially regarding side characters—but also prominent within the main cast—make up the bulk of my remaining complaints with this book. (Really, the plotline regarding the temple's whereabouts was abysmal. It's one thing to say that the location of your religion's most revered temple has been lost to time; it's quite another to claim that the same temple is visited regularly by pilgrims and yet somehow—at the same time—nobody knows where it is. Tianshi's whole journey to said temple, a good third of the plot, was based on this one weird contradiction.) The reason I've given this book the rating I did instead of my originally intended two stars is because it did get much more engaging nearer the end, with me genuinely wanting to find out how the story unfolded. I just think the novel could have been better than it turned out.
If you're wondering whether The Art of Prophecy is for you, read the following quote. If absolutely nothing about it bothers you, then you might enjoy this book! If you're like me, read something else instead.
It was early into the night and Salminde the Viperstrike, hailing from the Katuia clan and capital city of Nezra, had just settled into her sleep sack after a long day of travel, and within moments was already flirting with Zharia, the spirit storyteller of dreams. Though her mind was at rest, Sali, as she was known to those with whom she shared a hearth, had never felt as awake as she did at that moment with her barely conscious mind soaking in the sounds and sensations of the Grass Sea.
So?
Pleasantview by Celeste Mohammed
4.0
Occasionally a bit heavy-handed with its imagery, but otherwise a very good collection of interconnected short stories. The language used—a mix of English and Trinidad Creole—takes a few pages to get used to, but once you've understood the rhythm it's easy to see how the shifts in language represent the different mannerisms and backgrounds of each major character.
Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
History repeats itself, over and over and over and over and over. The segment of history Black Butterflies portrays is one I was unfamiliar with, a fact which amplified my interest in this read on account of teaching me something new through characters compelling and true to life. Whether you're already familiar with the Siege of Sarajevo or not, I highly recommend this book if you enjoy literary fiction and narratives based on true stories.
Deeplight by Frances Hardinge
adventurous
mysterious
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
More people need to read Hardinge's books. I have very little to say about this book except that it was so much fun to read, with one of my favorite fictional settings (on the water) and with a cast of characters that had excellently written, well-crafted relationships. The one thing that I feel did not hit the mark was its portrayal of politics, even if meant for young readers. Saying that the governor was "perhaps just the best of the wrong answers available" out of nowhere, without any reader even knowing what the other wrong answers available were, felt like a message without context or background, thrown in without being properly explored. All the other themes of the book were given significant depth and detail; this one fell short of the mark.
The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe
2.5
By far the least enjoyable of any of Poe's short stories. It was fine, I guess, but I simply did not care for it at all.
The Surviving Sky by Kritika H. Rao
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
The worldbuilding was really the highlight of this book. I already love cli-fi, and Rao blended the subgenre with fantasy to create a very unique and captivating setting. What I was primarily looking forward to before beginning my read, though, was the relationship between Ahilya and Iravan: a marriage in trouble and the question in the air of whether they'll be able to get back together makes for an excellent romance trope.
I don't think I was as invested in the two of them as I expected to be. There were far too many emotional moments in the first few chapters of the novel, before I as a reader could even begin to care about the characters, for their emotions to mean something to me; this probably carried forward into later scenes, unfavorably coloring my read. The lack of attention given to Ahilya's relationships with other characters did not help, either: we find out in Chapter 36 that she and Dhruv had grown up as siblings, despite there being nothing in their interactions to suggest such a closeness; in a terrifying experience that Ahilya and Tariya both shared, the sisters didn't so much as share a glance to express their worry to and about each other.
The way the book ended did make up for a significant portion of my complaints, and I walked out of it having overall enjoyed my read.
I don't think I was as invested in the two of them as I expected to be. There were far too many emotional moments in the first few chapters of the novel, before I as a reader could even begin to care about the characters, for their emotions to mean something to me; this probably carried forward into later scenes, unfavorably coloring my read. The lack of attention given to Ahilya's relationships with other characters did not help, either: we find out in Chapter 36 that she and Dhruv had grown up as siblings, despite there being nothing in their interactions to suggest such a closeness; in a terrifying experience that Ahilya and Tariya both shared, the sisters didn't so much as share a glance to express their worry to and about each other.
The way the book ended did make up for a significant portion of my complaints, and I walked out of it having overall enjoyed my read.
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
adventurous
dark
funny
medium-paced
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
If you exclude the already well-known jokes lifted directly from popular sources on the internet, this book was hilarious. I loved Gideon's character and her interactions with everyone else, and the plot was just so addictive that I couldn't put the book down. Although I was aware that Gideon the Ninth was influenced in some way, shape or form by Homestuck, I knew so little about the latter that I was unable to connect a single element of it to the former's worldbuilding, which was probably for the best.
Not Another Vampire Book by Cassandra Gannon
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
2.5
This was a book! It was honestly the exact type of book I like to read when I'm looking for something lighthearted and humorous: a parody of popular tropes, isekai via book, an easy-to-read writing style that doesn't take itself too seriously. Initially, I found myself enjoying the book despite the grammatical errors in passages that weren't reproductions of Eternal Passion at Sunset; however, soon the plotholes and confusing narrative choices that Karalynn insisted Tanya kept introducing to her book started seeping into Gannon's own. Often important plot points would only be mentioned after the fact, thrown in to explain away why Damien couldn't immediately rescue Kara, or why he had very little time to do so. Infodumping done wrong, basically.
Probably the worst thing about this book was the animal metaphors. I am not a fan of animal metaphors. If I see the words "purr" or "growl" or "territorial" or "male" or particularly "mate" in any context outside of actual animals, you can bet I'm immediately turned off. Romance is already a genre I try to avoid, and throwing fated mates into a book I did not expect to find them in just makes the experience that much more unpleasant.
It would work for certain audiences, I guess. Damien was actually nice until the "animalistic side of his nature" suddenly showed up on page. What I will say, though, is that he is by no means the first character in history to pull off glowing black eyes: that honor goes to Astrophil's Stella.
Probably the worst thing about this book was the animal metaphors. I am not a fan of animal metaphors. If I see the words "purr" or "growl" or "territorial" or "male" or particularly "mate" in any context outside of actual animals, you can bet I'm immediately turned off. Romance is already a genre I try to avoid, and throwing fated mates into a book I did not expect to find them in just makes the experience that much more unpleasant.
It would work for certain audiences, I guess. Damien was actually nice until the "animalistic side of his nature" suddenly showed up on page. What I will say, though, is that he is by no means the first character in history to pull off glowing black eyes: that honor goes to Astrophil's Stella.
When Nature made her chief work — Stella’s eyes;
In colour black, why wrapt she beams so bright?