valpyre's reviews
173 reviews

Soul of Stars by Ashley Poston

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adventurous emotional hopeful lighthearted medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

i was long overdue to read this sequel. due to life stuff, I had to pause halfway through and came back to it after a while, so maybe that's why i felt a little disconnected from it while finishing the latter half. a lot of things ended up being a bit predictable, but not unenjoyable.

i did enjoy the action and a lot of the lore that was dropped throughout the book -- i guess i also just wanted more yearning at the same time? the ending for them seemed so abrupt after them being at odds for most of the book. i was also so curious about elara and xu -- i honestly had forgotten about them when i returned to reading this, and wished we'd gotten a pov chapter from one of them, especially considering xu's backstory with the hive. i think there was just a lot crammed into the second book, considering all we learned -- like even jax's storyline could've used some more time, although it did make me feel a sense of urgency.

overall, though, i was really touched by the exploration of found family and home throughout the book, especially as ana was coming into her own as siege's daughter. speaking of siege, i have so many questions about her!! but i actually respected the decision to keep the mystery about her. 

ultimately, the hero of this story is E0S, who i love and would die for.

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The Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

i love ded grib. i would die for ded grib.

cws for animal death, child death, suicide.

god, this was such a bittersweet experience. it was a stunning conclusion to a trilogy i never wanted to end. i'm still thinking about vasya and what adventures she will be going on after this -- taking care of the lake, going to the sea, perhaps even back to her childhood home.

i cried a lot at the start of this, understandably. the grief and despair and panic that saturated much of the first half of the book was palpable for me -- i was agonized over the loss and also that vasya just had such little time to grieve. and then when she was safe at the lake, ded grib's eventual and steadfast faith in vasya had me in my feels. 

vasya coming into her magic was so satisfying -- i was so curious throughout the first two books as to when that would happen. also learning and getting some answers as to vasya's heritage was so fun, even if tragic.

konstantin had me feeling actual rage -- this guy sucks! i did think his and the bear's relationship was very interesting though. when i saw i was only about halfway through the book at a very climactic moment with the bear, i was so intrigued. i like that the relationship with the bear and morozko (and the rest of the chyerti) wasn't just good vs. evil. i think the story was stronger for it.

also, vasya and morozko. i love them, i want so much more of them. i so enjoy how much they care for each other and it's not easy, and they both feel so complicated about it, but they feel it deeply, and they always find their way back to each other.

arden's writing, as always, captivated me. the details of the world never truly overwhelmed me, and i've always admired how she weaves and holds the more magical parts effortlessly with a society more familiar (at least to me) to a reader. the dry humour throughout the book was also a delight.

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A World Without Princes by Soman Chainani

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emotional funny tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

idek what to say other than i still cannot, in good conscience, recommend this series lol

this book is so weirdly and wildly comphet that i feel like it has to be satire (it's not), especially in the way it constantly describes characters physical features (most of them are tweens/teens! also im over the fatphobia!) im all for a destined couple but man this story felt like it undid everything the two protags went through in the first book, and it was so flippy floppy with their motivations. i just wanted everyone to trust each other and communicate but perhaps that's too much to ask from 13-16 year olds who need to commit to their apparent hetero soulmate Right Now 

i didnt dislike it writing-wise -- in fact, these first two books actively had me highlighting and annotating bc I liked all the little details/breadcrumbs spread throughout, even though stuff ended up getting predictable (like with dean sader, and with yara's identity)

i suggest reading top reviews of this on gr for more comprehensive breakdowns of the issues with this book lol
The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

technically a reread -- i think i must have read this in high school at some point and reading it now was a whole new experience (i didnt remember a whole lot anyways). 

i personally vibed with this book -- it was fantastical and nonsensical enough without being actually unreasonable, if that makes sense. something about it just grabbed my attention and held it there.

i will say i wouldn't go as far as to recommend this book though -- it gets really tiring hearing about how Evil people are different, and ugly, and lonely, etc. as opposed to Good people (especially with the enforced gender roles) are beautiful, and only they can have/deserve love. i honestly think this book could have unpacked and subverted those notions more -- we only really saw those rules fall apart in the climax. 

im interested to see how comphet this series will turn out cause if romance will fix these characters problems, i feel like there is a simple queer solution lol. also aren't all the characters like 12-ish? some of the content was reeaaal weird (lookin at you school master)

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The Girl in The Tower by Katherine Arden

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

the fact that i have to wait 11 weeks until i get a copy of the third book is a travesty

this book made me feel the biggest feelings. once again, i am in awe of how arden writes the omniscient pov, especially as we haven't seen or heard from sasha and olga since the first book. their roles in moscow and their characters were really refreshing and made the setting more immersive. and much like vasya, their minds are always at work, detecting and deducing, so i as the reader always felt like the story kept moving. 

i took a really big break from the book around 75% (ish) in, mostly due to life stuff, but also the story itself -- i wasn't totally surprised by the reveal that happened, but i was hoping it wouldn't and it was a lot of secondhand embarrassment for me to handle. i got right into it again when i came back to it though, and everything wrapped up a bit quicker than i expected, but with so much foreshadowing that i just want to know what happens next.

also obsessed with vasya and the frost demon. ive never highlighted a book more.

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The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

one of my fave authors reviewed this, so i had to check it out for myself and i'm so glad i did. this was a really refreshing read. 

i'm not super familiar with russian mythology and folklore, and i appreciated the way this wasn't just a beat for beat retelling of a fairy tale. the way magic was intertwined with the way of life in the country, and with the main character in particular, just made sense -- i never felt too overwhelmed by new information, but there is a glossary at the end for reference.

i wasn't sure how to feel when i saw that the narrative involved multiple pov's but i really appreciated them all in the end as they lent sympathy to all the characters. the chapters/sections of different pov's were also brief enough that i appreciated the information i was learning, as opposed to just wanting to get back to the main character. even the omniscience of the prose was so smoothly written that it didn't break flow for me. 

i'm really interested to see the development of the mc's magic so i'm diving right into the second book!

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The Witch Collector by Charissa Weaks

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mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

there were a lot of bits and pieces of this book that were interesting enough for me to read the entire thing, and the writing itself held up fairly well throughout. ultimately, i thought that while the bones of the worldbuilding and romance were good, they fell flat, and I was losing interest by the end. raina was a little too "not-like-other-girls" for my taste, and alexus was kind of bland to be honest. i liked a lot of the concepts this book had but they weren't built upon enough to truly capture my interest. i generally enjoy multiple povs, but i think this book wouldve benefitted from focusing on a single one. there was also an incredible amount of exposition that was told, and not shown, which I found boring and didn't have the impact it should have had for me. still not a bad read, and while I'm not interested in continuing the series, I might give the book with the sister a shot.
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao

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mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

this ended up being an almost aggressively average read for me. i should have learned my lesson by now, but i did actually have higher expectations for this, and was disappointed about halfway through.

i will give this book its roses for being good enough that i was able to pick at it over time without wanting to tear my hair out or DNF. the writing itself was far from the worst i've ever read, but i still found it a little awkward and cheesy in parts ("welcome to your nightmare"). the prose was quite blunt and left little to mull over.

i was mostly interested in the first couple of chapters while zetian is still at home -- the exposition laid out at the beginning was compelling to me, especially regarding the chrysalises and the media/live streaming aspect that capitalized on their existence.

i respect that the author was extremely transparent about the sources they drew on for inspiration (historical figures and other media), and while i wasn't familiar with many of them, the book still read as transformative fiction than original to me. many parts of the story felt underbaked -- i felt that there was so much more to be said about pilot training, about concubines (a position zetian was never truly in due to her Specialness), about the different types of qi, and more. i found that many developments were talked about and not shown (e.g. we got one random ice dancing scene, li shimin teaches zetian martial arts off screen). i definitely felt this acutely regarding the love interests -- zetian suddenly always returned yizhi's feelings, and i never felt the "tension" between her and li shimin. it's not that they weren't compelling, but just weren't developed enough.

i think many of the top rated reviews of this book articulate the issues with its presentation of misogyny and feminism -- eventually, it just felt like the book wasn't telling me anything new. i totally understood the lens of zetian overcoming the constant propagandized knowledge of women being "lesser" than men, but at the same time she was special for knowing it was bullshit the entire time, which made it frustrating as a reader who knew the same. zetian's big sister was just another fridged character -- i honestly forgot about her until she was mentioned closer to the end of the book.

the major "plot twists" weren't all that surprising to me, and i mostly just wanted to know more about them exactly, as opposed to uncovering them. zetian's point of view was frustratingly slow in figuring some of this stuff out, especially at the end, which i found rushed (particularly in the epilogue).

i put the sequel on my TBR because i am interested in the worldbuilding reveal from the end, and want to see if that'll come to anything in the next one.

one line that i liked: "They may think they do, but no matter how they scold or threaten or beat me, they can't really control what goes on in my head." 

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Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 65%.
looking through the other books in the series it really is like, damn, mediocre books stay getting nice book covers

caveat i'm def not the target audience for this book but i don't think that disqualifies me from criticizing it

i honestly really wanted to like the MC of this book but she was written as such a mary sue it just completely put me off. it was so frustrating bc she had inherently good qualities that i really enjoyed reading about and tween struggles that i think younger readers could relate to. there was also an underlying current of grief that i thought added depth to her character and those around her that pleasantly surprised me, but not much more than that. to

overall, the worldbuilding of the super special and magical fantasy world was poorly executed and not compelling -- the book smugglers review of this book articulates this much better than i can.

i also found it really awkward how often it was pointed out/hinted that the boys at school (specifically her close-ish friends) were crushing on her -- it was so repetitive and discomfiting. this, of course, came along with all the other girls at school disliking her because of that.

i really tried to give this book a shot but i never found more redeeming qualities in it, and having had a peek at reviews of the other books in the series, i don't think i'm missing out on much. good for the author, get your bag, i guess.

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Meet Cute by Ibi Zoboi, Sara Shepard, Nina LaCour, Nicola Yoon, Jennifer L. Armentrout, Dhonielle Clayton, Julie Murphy, Emery Lord, Katharine McGee, Katie Cotugno, Kass Morgan, Meredith Russo, Jocelyn Davies

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

whoa i read this a while ago and forgot to review it, oops! 

not all stories in this are created equal -- there was one in particular of which the writing style and plot was not at all my vibe. but overall this was a really lovely and creative anthology, and i really admire all the authors' abilities to come up with these characters and have us know them and root for them.

the very first story in this collection (siege etiquette by katie cotugno) was a standout for me and easily my favourite. there was something compelling about the tension between the two characters that took my breath away. and okay, maybe i'm a sucker for second person pov, but the prose was in a style that i just love to read -- the kind where you unravel the character, in a way. i honestly think about this short story a lot, and wish i could read more of those two characters.

i also really enjoyed emery lord's and nicola yoon's chapters. really lovely and interesting explorations of love and relationships.