mothptera's Reviews (40)

The first disappointment of this book was the fact that even though it was marked as 'adult', it definitely read like a young adult book, and the characters came off as much younger than they were supposed to be. Ganymedes is not a character that comes off as charming or fun like I think he's supposed to, instead seeming wildly immature and self interested. I did not enjoy having to be stuck in his head, having to read all his 'witty' thoughts, but I continued on because I wanted to get to the mystery.

Once the mystery began I hope to be able to enjoy the book a bit more. While the worldbuilding was simplistic and didn't seem very well thought out, I did my best to ignore it to focus on the mystery. This proved difficult as even after it's confirmed that there are definitely murders happening, everyone is weirdly not that affected by this. Even Ganymedes just goes to his room to eat sadly once someone he has an incredible amount of affection for has been murdered, luckily he is convinced that he needs to start working on solving the murders again. Unfortunately, while I was invested in finding out the who, why, and how of it all, the way the characters were 'investigating' just felt.. bland to me. Ganymedes never really felt like any sort of a detective character, just that he was a guy who was randomly walking around and others would occasionally talk to him and reveal relevant plot info.

Then, at around the 80% mark of the book, the worst twist happened. This twist almost made me decide to stop reading right then because it was just so disappointing and felt like an uninteresting choice to make. I decided to continue because I figured I might as well, and the ending was an equally disappointing,

Spoiler

'the main character learned self worth and is now going to fix the world with their genuine goodness (goodness that I do not feel was actually shown all that much, but rather told)'.

While there are many more things about this book I could single out to criticize, my overall feeling is just one of disappointment.

Winter's Orbit

Everina Maxwell

4.0

The book starts slow and I think that helps set up the two characters and the way they are not at all on the same page and tend to just speak past one another. While miscommunication can be a frustrating trope, I did not personally find it frustrating here and thought it made sense based on the two characters. Jainan's deep insecurity and self doubt stemming from his years of being abused by his former partner is well written into the story. I enjoyed that while Kiem is not politically minded he is very good with people and specifically befriending them.

The world building felt like it could use some work, or just more explanations as to why certain things were the way they were. I also didn't love Kiem watching the clip of Jainan being abused, it felt like an invasion of privacy and that it would've been more impactful for character development for Jainan to choose to tell Kiem rather than being forced to.

Overall I liked the writing and found the book to be an enjoyable read.