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| 125026930X
| 9781250269300
| 125026930X
| 3.76
| 1,963
| Nov 15, 2021
| Nov 16, 2021
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liked it
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Last year I took a chance on reading Devil’s Gun, the sequel to You Sexy Thing, even though I hadn’t read the first book. This was a big chance, for C
Last year I took a chance on reading Devil’s Gun, the sequel to You Sexy Thing, even though I hadn’t read the first book. This was a big chance, for Cat Rambo’s fiction up to that point hadn’t worked for me. Fortunately, I loved Devil’s Gun enough to accept the offer of an eARC of the first book as well, and now I’ve read it too. With the amount of time that has elapsed, I actually don’t remember much of the sequel, which is kind of perfect in that I had no idea how this one was going to end! Niko Larssen is the owner and nominal head chef of the Last Chance restaurant. Her employees are, for the most part, former members of her squad within the army of the Holy Hive Mind. They are now retired—supposedly—though not out of reach of this formidable entity. Disaster strikes on the eve of what could have been a great triumph for Niko and the Last Chance. She and her crew find themselves aboard a petulant bioship that thinks they’re trying to steal it. Saddled with a food critic who is more than she seems and an imperial heir mailed to Niko as cargo just before the disaster, this ragtag group must work hard to stay together and thwart the whims of a pirate out for revenge. Everything I liked about Devil’s Gun is present in some form here. I don’t remember if the second book has the same omniscient narration. It’s not technically omniscient so much as it is a fast-switching type of limited third person. It works fine here, though the formatting of my ebook didn’t separate when the omniscient narrator switches perspective, and that can be confusing sometimes. Rambo also pulls a fast one in the sense that there are definitely some viewpoints we don’t see—Gio, Milly, Dabry, etc. This isn’t a criticism, of course. I appreciate Rambo leaving some questions open. You can read these two books in any order, as far as I am concerned. Both scratch the itch of wanting a space opera that is loose in its affiliations. This story isn’t about the political machinations and military movements of a nation. It’s about family, in a way that might appeal to fans of Becky Chambers. Getting to see the genesis of You Sexy Thing’s sentience and personality (including its obsession with printing its logo on everything) is fun. Watching Atlanta become part of the family is likewise very touching. I would gladly read many more novels set in this universe, with this crew. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 24, 2024
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Aug 26, 2024
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Sep 16, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 1616964200
| 9781616964207
| 1616964200
| 4.03
| 104
| Aug 13, 2024
| Aug 13, 2024
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really liked it
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Years and years ago, I said that my love for space opera was dimming. Space opera has always been one step away from science fantasy, of course, but I
Years and years ago, I said that my love for space opera was dimming. Space opera has always been one step away from science fantasy, of course, but I was getting bored with how same same all the nanotech-fuelled, AI-high stories seemed to feel. In the last couple of years, something has changed. I don’t know if it is me or the field or both, but I have been loving space opera again! When I opened my eARC of New Adventures in Space Opera, provided by Tachyon Publications in exchange for this review, I was pleasantly surprised by how many of the names I recognized among the contributors. The book lifts off with Jonathan Strahan’s introduction, which provides escape velocity. He puts into words a lot of what I was feeling, described above, crystallizing how it feels like we are definitely in a new vogue of this subgenre. The military science fiction of the nineties and early 2000s is metamorphosing into a decolonial, or at least postcolonial, attempt at deconstructing the imperialist sides of space opera. I think that is what most fascinates me about the subgenre. Beyond that, however, I think the way authors are exploring how advanced tech and a sprawling, galactic humanity might reshape our understanding of personhood and autonomy has changed for the better. The Big Ideas are becoming more complex, more nuanced, than in decades previous. That isn’t to trash science fiction or space opera from before—but like any genre, science fiction must be responsive to its times. These new adventures feel different in the right way for the world in which we currently live. The anthology opens with a banger, “Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance,” by Tobias S. Buckell. It ends with an astrophysical twist which is clever but doesn’t exactly feel all that original, so your mileage may vary. What actually intrigued me more about the story is its handling of the idea of free will. The main character is a maintenance intelligence that is basically a copy of an uploaded human; when they uploaded themself, they signed a contract that removed their free will. At the same time, they seem to have plenty of autonomy, which is an intriguing paradox. These meditations on personhood continue in “Belladonna Nights,” by Alastair Reynolds; “Metal Like Blood in the Dark,” by T. Kingfisher; and “A Good Heretic,” by Becky Chambers. These stories all variously have either nonhuman or transhuman protagonists and, as such, truly stretch one’s imagination when it comes to understanding how such protagonists navigate and learn concepts—like deceit—we humans take for granted. Some of the stories are more prosaic. “Extracurricular Activities,” by Yoon Ha Lee, follows a young Shuos Jedao (one of the main characters from Lee’s Machineries of Empire series) on a special op. “A Temporary Embarrassment in Spacetime” by Charlie Jane Anders feels very season 3 Star Trek, if you know what I mean, and I can’t say I loved it, but I understand what she’s going for. “Planetstuck,” by Sam J. Miller, is a little melancholy and haunting. I bounced off a few of the stories hard. Lavie Tidhar continues to be an author who I think is just not for me, nor did I really follow “Morrigan in the Sunglare,” by Seth Dickinson. I liked Arkady Martine’s “All the Colors You Thought Were Kings”—it was interesting reading this as a contrast to her Teixcalaan duology that I just recently finished. That being said, I think the theme I got from the story—that we are doomed to be assimilated into oppressive, imperalist institutions if we think we can change them from within—isn’t sufficiently explored, even for a short story. Similarly, “The Last Voyage of Skidbladnir,” while rich in pathos and imagination, didn’t intrigue me or excite me that much. All of this is to say: this is a varied collection. It’s unlikely you will enjoy them all, but you will probably enjoy some (hopefully most) of these stories—maybe the ones I didn’t like as much are the ones you’ll love! That there is probably something for every science-fiction reader in this anthology is a testament not only to Strahan and Tachyon’s curatorial skills but also to the cornucopia of space opera available these days, especially in shorter forms. And as much as I am less enamoured by slower stories like “The Last Voyage of Skidbladnir,” I really want to emphasize that I don’t think those stories are any less worthy of celebration or inclusion—space opera should not just be bang-bang-big-shoot-em-up-in-space! There is room for and value in stories that focus more on inner lives, on relationships, on giant space crabs! Anthologies are always hit-or-miss for me, yet I had a feeling New Adventures in Space Opera would be more hit than miss. Maybe I just read it at the right time. Whatever the case, I was right. This book is just fuelling the fire stoked by my recent reads in the subgenre and leaving me hungry for more, more, more. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 08, 2024
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Aug 11, 2024
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Aug 14, 2024
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Paperback
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| 1250269148
| 9781250269140
| 1250269148
| 3.77
| 97
| Jul 1980
| Apr 30, 2024
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it was ok
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Not bad, John M. Ford. Not bad. That’s about all I’ve got for opening thoughts. I received an eARC of this reprint edition of classic Web of Angels fr
Not bad, John M. Ford. Not bad. That’s about all I’ve got for opening thoughts. I received an eARC of this reprint edition of classic Web of Angels from Tor and NetGalley in exchange for a review. This edition has a foreword from Cory Doctorow, who delivers an encomium of Ford while waxing poetically about Web of Angels as a kind of evolutionary cousin of what became cyberpunk. It makes a lot of sense. As Doctorow says, a lot in this book is familiar, right down to the naming of Ford’s cyberspace as the Web—however, a lot of it also feels dated, a result of Ford writing just prior to the PC and internet displacing the phone as the primary mode of telecommunication. Grailer Diomede is nine years old when the book opens, a precocious boy singled out by a fascist interstellar law enforcement agency for death. Rescued in the nick of time, Grailer is raised to embrace his abilities as someone with “Fourth Literacy,” which means he can not only operate and program for the vast, interstellar Web, but he actually has the ability to conceive of it and its myriad connections in an intuitive way. He’s a l33t hax0rz, as I might have put it back when I started my journey on the web in 2004. This book is a bildungsroman that follows Grailer as he quickly grows up, falls in love, and starts sticking it to the man. Ford takes us to various exotic locations, and we meet a small but plucky cast of characters who alternately aid or antagonize Grailer while he is posing in one of his many Web-forged identities. The vignettes within this story overlap and spiral towards an inevitable conclusion, echoes of which reside in later science fiction, like The Matrix. Doctorow mentions that this is one of Ford’s less accessible works, and I believe it. Time slips, unmarked flashbacks, and precious little exposition—especially for a reader unfamiliar with what operating a computer terminal felt like in the seventies. I won’t lie to you: I was really confused about what was going on for a great deal of this book. I still am, kind of, but rather than worry too much about it, I’m going to roll with it. Here’s what I liked about this book: even without reading that foreword, I would have been able to see the connections between Ford’s writing and the authors who have come since. In this way, Web of Angels is clearly a classic worthy of this reissue, belonging up there among the other greats like Butler, Le Guin, Asimov. Ford’s prose has a fairytale-like quality that reminds me of Neil Gaiman. He can quickly set a scene even when descriptive language is at a premium. The future of humanity that Ford sketches here is a lush one but also full of people, places, and things that aren’t entirely what they seem. Ford and his contemporary cyberpunk founder, William Gibson, share in common a view of cyberspace as something that exists independently of the humans who use it. Grailer ponders whether the Web can be intelligent, as in self-aware, for it spans the entirety of human existence. Ideas like the Singularity lurk in the background of this novel, occasionally mentioned or hinted at in that way that happens when we haven’t quite coined all the terms that are now familiar to us. But actually, the author whose writing this most reminds me of is Dan Simmons. His Hyperion novels feel ripped out of the pages of Web of Angels in the sense that both books posit a future of humanity steeped in literary trappings of our past. A lot of science fiction imagines that our culture will trend further towards secularism, towards a cold, minimalist aesthetic of starship hull blues and greys (or it goes solarpunk and imagines us all in the greens and browns of cholorphyll bioships, lol). Ford and Simmons draw their inspiration from humanity’s literary past in telling of our literary future: from subcultures whose every movements are part of an intricate Dance to doctors who wear capes and receive the title of Lord, these anachronisms, more even than the faster-than-light drives and lifespan-enhancing treatments, mark this society as futuristic and alien. Web of Angels is not a novel that “holds up” in a modern sense of what most readers want from their novels. The story is not straightforward. The characters are not particularly deep. In many ways, this reads like a novella stretched thinly over the frame of a novel—and I mean that as a compliment. This is a book for the anthropologist of science fiction, for the fan digging into the archives to glimpse their favourite authors’ inspiration. I stipulate to Ford’s brilliance while also admitting that this book, on its own, didn’t do a lot for me. I won’t rush out to read more by Ford, but I am pleased to have read something by him, and perhaps I will explore his oeuvre further now that Tor has rights to republish! Originally posted on Kara.Reviews. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 22, 2024
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Apr 28, 2024
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May 01, 2024
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Paperback
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| 1616964146
| 9781616964146
| 1616964146
| 4.03
| 468
| Apr 23, 2024
| Apr 23, 2024
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really liked it
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There’s a now-classic sketch from comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb called
“Are We the Baddies?”
. It’s worth a watch if you haven’t seen it
There’s a now-classic sketch from comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb called
“Are We the Baddies?”
. It’s worth a watch if you haven’t seen it, but to spoil the bit, it’s about two SS officers having a conversation on the front line in which it gradually dawns on them that they might be the bad guys in this war. Involving Nazis in your comedy is always a dicey proposition, but Mitchell and Webb pull it off: the sketch illustrates how challenging it can be to break the cognitive dissonance required to rationalize one’s place in human suffering on a mass scale. The Wings Upon Her Back does the same thing. Through an intimate story told across two times, Samantha Mills illustrates how it’s harder to stand up to fascism when every step towards that fascism felt logical and just at the time. I received a review copy from the publisher in exchange for my review. Zemolai has spent the past decades of her life as a Winged. She flies through the air on mechanical wings attached to her body via implants. This technology is a gift from the gods, specifically the Mecha god, one of the five who sleep watchfully over Zemolai’s city. At the start of the novel, Zemolai makes a tragic mistake that leads to her downfall. Cast out of her paradise, she finds herself the unwilling companion of the rebels she has spent so long despising. Mills intersperses these chapters with a look back at who Zemolai was before she was Winged: Zenya, a descendant of scholars who dreamed of flying and set her sights on being a warrior who could protect her city. Mills doesn’t pull punches here. This book is laser-focused, restricting its perspective almost entirely to Zemolai or her younger self, Zenya. The parallel storytelling drives home the central theme with startling clarity: Zenya is idealistic and optimistic, driven to impress Vodaya at all costs, devoted to the mission; Zemolai is bitter, tired, divided, and eventually resentful of Vodaya’s deceit. Like two ships passing in the night, Zenya’s radicalization proceeds apace with Zemolai’s deprogramming. The result is a kind of synergy foreshadowed by one of the city’s scholars: we are who we always were, all our selves across all points of our existence. She is Zemolai and Zenya, even if it takes her a while to recognize this. You’ve seen elements of Zemolai’s story in plenty of media before. The prisoner who eventually comes around to the side of good, the face turn, is a common enough trope, particularly in science fiction and fantasy. So Zemolai’s gruff, half-hearted cooperation with Galiana and the others feels familiar. However, it has been a while (if ever) that I’ve read this story from the prisoner’s point of view. To have such a direct and personal audience to someone slowly being deradicalized is a fascinating experience. As the cracks appear in Zemolai’s faith in the mission, her desperation becomes palpable. It’s hard to come to terms with one’s complicity in causing suffering. It’s also hard to write such a flawed protagonist. It’s easy to write a shining hero, someone who’s always trying to do the right thing (even if they misstep occasionally). That’s not Zemolai. She believes that what she is doing is for the greater good, of course. But each chapter, each decision, compromises Zenya’s connection to her past and her community a little more. She is such a sympathetic figure, but it’s hard to call her a good person, and that’s the point. Few people set out to be the baddie. Zemolai certainly didn’t. Mills expertly depicts how Zenya endures the perfect storm: Vodaya’s manipulations, Zenya’s idealism, the secretive politics of the city’s most powerful, etc. (The nature of the gods lurks in the backdrop, a tantalizing mystery but not one that ultimately matters all that much to the overall plot.) All of Zemolai’s pain, particularly the deterioration of her relationship with Vodaya, is so bold on the page. I was really invested in seeing this story through to the end, and I really like where Mills chooses to end it. This is a tight, contained novel with an excellent setting and a strong protagonist who can carry this story on her shoulders, much like she carried her wings for twenty years. In a time where we need to reflect more on our own complicity (those of us who live in countries that benefit from companies exploiting child labour in Congo, or countries that fund genocide), The Wings Upon Her Back offers a potent combination of admonishment and hope. You can’t wipe your sins away simply by announcing you’ve had a change of heart. You can’t excuse away your actions by pointing to the influences that shaped you into that person. But it is never too late to make a choice, to turn around, to embrace that past self that has been inside you all along. I picked up The Wings Upon Her Back because I was intrigued by the idea of mechanical angels protecting a city. I got so much more than I bargained for: a story of fascism and abuse, of resilience and rebuilding, of loss and pain and sorrow. This is a poignant but worthwhile read, one I highly recommend when you are ready for it. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 19, 2024
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Apr 21, 2024
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Apr 30, 2024
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Paperback
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| 1250885000
| 9781250885005
| 1250885000
| 4.01
| 1,740
| Apr 16, 2024
| Apr 16, 2024
|
it was amazing
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What’s better than a romcom? A story about friendship in the style of a romcom. Dear Wendy checks off so many boxes that it’s actually eerie: aro/ace
What’s better than a romcom? A story about friendship in the style of a romcom. Dear Wendy checks off so many boxes that it’s actually eerie: aro/ace protagonists, supportive secondary cast, plenty of humour, and a compassionate story to its core. This was one of my most-anticipated books of 2024, and that does not surprise me. I received an eARC from NetGalley and publisher Feiwel & Friends in exchange for a review. Sophie and Jo are both aromantic and asexual students at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. They meet and befriend one another in their introductory women’s studies course. However, they have something else in common in addition to sexual orientation: each is behind an anonymous Instagram account for relationship advice. Sophie has been running the “Dear Wendy” account for several months, and Jo recently started up “Sincerely, Wanda” as an acerbic Dear Wendy spoof that inadvertently gained its own following. As the two students navigate college life, friendship, and being young aro/ace people in a sea of horny roommates and peers, Sophie and Jo bond while their alter egos feud. What could possibly go wrong? To say that I love this setup, with its implicit promise of romcom-level misunderstandings and hope for reconciliation, would be an understatement. Although romance isn’t my favourite genre, I have nothing against it, and I actually enjoy a good romcom. But comedies that privilege friendship tend to be quirky buddy comedies. Dear Wendy joins a handful of other stories I can recall that give us a romcom-like story arc to a platonic relationship (shout-out to the Canadian indie film Almost Adults as another example). To say that I felt seen as an aroace woman with this book is also an understatement. I kept comparing myself to each of the two protagonists, alternatively at times identifying more with Sophie or Jo (but, if I am being honest with myself, I am a total Sophie!). While a lot about each character is different from my story (I’m not the child of immigrants; I don’t have two moms; I never went to an American college, let alone a historically “women’s” college like Wellesley), those details don’t matter as much as the vibes present here. Plus, like these two, I am that aroace always giving her friends relationship advice—seriously. But most importantly, I know what it is like to watch my friends hook up, pair off, find a romantic soulmate, and wonder what’s out there for me. I know what it is like to question my gender. And I know what it’s like to be confident in my identity but have others (not my parents, thank goodness, but plenty of other people) tell me it’s just a phase or something I will get over once I find “the right person” (it’s not, and I won’t). All of this is to say that many aro/ace readers are going to see parts of themselves in Sophie and Jo, and it’s lovely. But I think I need to speak to allo readers (those of you who experience sexual or romantic attraction) for a moment. I don’t want to give the impression that this book is only for aro/ace readers. If anything, I think it is more important for allo readers to pick up Dear Wendy, and I think you will enjoy it too. First, so many of the best parts of this book are only tangentially related to Sophie and Jo’s queer identities. Zhao suffuses this book with nonstop gags and powerful scenes of female friendship. Whether it’s Sophie bonding with her women’s studies prof, Jo spending time with their roommates, or the two of them hanging out and watching a movie (until Jo disturbs Sophie by breaking down and crying, lol), Dear Wendy is pitch-perfect new adult storytelling. It’s about two young people finding their independence in college, getting super excited about dumb shit and important stuff alike, making mistakes, and picking themselves back up after they fall down. It’s beautiful. Second, I love how the conflict in this story is so mellow. Everyone around Sophie and Jo is just so damn supportive, and it is the kind of wholesome energy I need in April 2024. All of the conflict in this book comes from realistic misunderstandings and behaviour that makes sense for young college students. When everything inevitably blows up in Sophie and Jo’s friendship, it blows up in a sensible way, the drama far from melodramatic. There are no larger-than-life villains in this book. Even Sophie’s relationship with her aphobic mother is a nuanced one. Zhao has somehow managed to capture what it’s like to live in an aphobic (and, more broadly, queerphobic) society without including overt instances of aphobia, homophobia, transphobia, etc. Maybe this is a consequence of the inclusive setting of Wellesley—which, as Sophie and Jo discover, is far from perfect but seems to be a refreshing bubble of acceptance. There are no moustache-twirling queerphobes here. (The dearth of cis straight male characters in the book might also have something to do with this, but I was even expecting one of the female characters to take off her mask and reveal she was secretly a TERF or aphobe or something, and it never happens.) Which brings me to the final reason I need allo readers to devour Dear Wendy: I need you to see happy, well-adjusted aro/ace characters in fiction. Yeah, Sophie has some friction with her parents, and Jo has their moments of struggling with what their sexuality means for their future. At the end of the day, though, they are no more or less happy than their allo peers. (If anything, they both embody the sheer relief I often feel as my friends recount their relationship problems to me, and all I can think is, “That sounds exhausting. Couldn’t be me!”) Dear Wendy, with its subversion of romantic tropes to deliver us an HEA predicated upon platonic values, is a daring form of resistance to compulsory sexuality. At this point you might be thinking, “Kara, of course you’re going to give this book five stars because you are incredibly biased.” And, reader, you might be right (but whomst among us is not?). Except that when I look back at my asexual-themed reads, I find that I actually tend to be quite critical. So instead of taking this rating and review with a grain of salt, view it as what it is: a full-throated and unabashed endorsement of an aro/ace-themed novel that gets it. And no, Dear Wendy cannot be everything to every aro/ace reader. Sophie and Jo are but two characters, of a particular age, following a particular plot. We continue to need a plethora of diverse aro/ace stories, and many of those won’t work for me. But this one does. Oh, does it ever. If I could have a platonic life partnership with this book, I would. I will never walk down an aisle towards the partner of my dreams. I will probably never live with anyone else. I am in my thirties, and my friends are pairing up and having children, and I feel like a movie character caught in a time-lapse effect where they stand still while the background extras turn into motion blurs around them. Being aro/ace can be incredibly lonely at times. But it can also feel incredibly freeing. Dear Wendy explores both of these truths, and it does so with incredible grace and no small amount of wisdom. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 02, 2024
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Apr 06, 2024
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Apr 17, 2024
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Hardcover
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| unknown
| 4.51
| 70
| unknown
| Apr 16, 2024
|
liked it
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The phrase “burn it all down” is a popular one, but how many people really mean it? What would that look like? A.D. Sui explores this in The Dragonfly
The phrase “burn it all down” is a popular one, but how many people really mean it? What would that look like? A.D. Sui explores this in The Dragonfly Gambit, a revenge novella featuring a former fighter pilot with nothing to lose, an empire staving off a rebellion, and a small cast of supporting characters caught in the middle. I received a review copy. Inez Kato was a hot-shot pilot for the Rule—until an accident changed her life. Tossed aside, bitter, and on the wrong side of the Rule’s fascism, Inez hatches a plan to take down the empire from the inside. Bringing this plan to fruition will require her to work with her ex, as well as the Rule’s new hot-shot pilot, and the general who oversees it all. Inez has no one she can trust, no one to back her up, and as she wrestles with her attraction to the general, she realizes she is running out of time. As it is, this book is about power. Who wields it. What they do with it. Inez is nominally powerless, a prisoner, conscripted to win a war she is opposed to. Yet she tells us she is the one with all the power, that she has a plan to win the war—for the other side—and destroy the Rule. Is she delusional? Will she be found out? Or will her plan succeed? There are some good sapphic elements here—the sexytimes stuff doesn’t do that much for me, and I don’t entirely understand the appeal of “enemies to lovers,” but if that is your thing then Sui does it well. There’s a good kind of love (or at least attraction) triangle going on here, limited only in the sense that, as a novella, there isn’t much time to fully develop the relationships. In the same way, I’d say that Sui makes good use of a lot of standard tropes in military science fiction: decrepit, fascist empire; a rebellion; war-weary soldiers. Yet I never really felt like the story was interested in saying anything about any of these things. This is very much a revenge plot through and through; if you are hoping for a deeper story about fascism, resistance, or war, then you won’t find that here. That being said, while I won’t spoil it, I’ll say is that this is the most satisfying downer ending I have had in a while. The Dragonfly Gambit is a tragedy through and through, and I admire Sui’s commitment to the bit. I picked up heavy Battlestar Galactica vibes—maybe it was the discussion of fighter plots and hangar decks and the mention of how rundown the ship feels after Inez boards. The Dragonfly Gambit is a pitch-perfect example of the pacing appropriate for a novella. Too long for a short story yet too short for a full novel, the plot here works perfectly for its length. I read the book in a single day, though not a single sitting, very much enjoying the steady elevation of tension as Inez worms her way deeper into the Rule’s hierarchy. Sui has a good grasp of when to sketch a character and when to fill them in, and it’s this careful awareness that makes this novella so tight and satisfying. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 31, 2024
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Mar 31, 2024
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Apr 13, 2024
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||||
| 0306831252
| 9780306831256
| 0306831252
| 4.27
| 892
| unknown
| Mar 26, 2024
|
really liked it
|
With most memoirs, I already have a good sense of who the author is, like in the case of
Making It So
, and I’ve picked up the memoir because I’m i
With most memoirs, I already have a good sense of who the author is, like in the case of
Making It So
, and I’ve picked up the memoir because I’m interested in hearing their story in their own words. In the case of But Everyone Feels This Way, I hadn’t heard of Paige Layle before. Instagram recommended a Reel by her. I don’t remember the Reel or what she said in it, but she mentioned her book coming out soon. I was intrigued, looked it up, and was able to get an eARC through NetGalley/Hachette. Paige Layle is a twenty-three-year-old from Ontario, Canada—the same province as me, and a fact I only realized when I was well into the book and noticed she was using a lot of Canadian school terms, like saying “Grade 3” instead of “third grade,” and then she mentioned Toronto, and I was like, “CANADIAN. WE HAVE A CANADIAN HERE. FROM ONTARIO LIKE ME.” Sorry, I get unreasonably excited when unexpected Ontarians show up in my to-read list. Anyway, Layle is quite young to write a memoir, but they are passionate about being an autism communicator. Layle takes us chronologically through their life, sharing how they struggled through early childhood and adolescence. She expected her autism diagnosis, received at fifteen, to change everything and was surprised when it didn’t—but it allowed her to better express her needs, work on her relationship with her mom, and figure out what she wanted after high school. Autism as a condition is drastically misunderstood. At its core, But Everyone Feels This Way is a first-person account of “discovering” autism. It has two major audiences: allistic people like myself who want to learn more about autistic people’s experiences, and young, neurodivergent people who might be autistic and not realize it. For that latter group, I hope some of them find this book illuminating. Women in particular are underrepresented among autism diagnoses. This compounds misunderstandings about what it means to be autistic, what “#ActuallyAutistic” looks like, as the hashtag might say. I briefly perused Layle’s Instagram as I prepared to write this review, and I noticed a disturbing trend of comments like so: “You aren’t autistic, stop pretending. If you were autistic you wouldn’t be able to talk to us like this.” Now, it’s no surprise that the comments are a toxic trashfire. Still, I think these comments represent an unwillingness among the public to believe that autistic people can be verbal, can communicate with grace and elegance, can have complex and nuanced takes on things. This comes down to stereotypes—but I’d argue it’s also symptom of insecurity among neurotypical and allistic people who are invested in the idea that autism is something to be feared rather than embraced, at best tolerated as opposed to accepted and even celebrated. It’s these people whom Layle hopes to disarm, I think. But Everyone Feels This Way is quite raw and pointed. While some will call Layle’s style simplistic, there is a difference between simplistic and simple, and Layle’s writing is the latter. It’s clear, and it’s honest—allistic readers are just used to people not saying exactly what they mean, engaging in ellipsis, etc. While I won’t litigate the legitimacy of Layle’s autism, let me say that Layle’s writing is, to me, one of the clearest indicators that they are autistic. It’s not bad writing; it’s just different from the range of styles that tend to be drummed into neurotypical writers—and if that isn’t your thing, cool, but I think you would be missing out. What I found most compelling about this book is how Layle builds, layer by layer, our understanding of her experience of autism as she moves through the each year of her life. I like to think I had a good handle on general facts about autism, many of which Layle shares in various fact-box sidebars throughout the book. However, there is a difference between holding a mental list of autistic traits in my head and actually hearing an autistic person describe how she embodies and experiences those traits on a daily basis. In this way, this book serves its primary purpose as a memoir: to build a richer empathy for autistic life than a work of more general reference nonfiction could ever achieve. As a teacher, I found the chapters in which Layle is in high school very helpful and challenging. She describes in detail the process of getting an IEP, an individual education plan (this is the point where I realized she’s in Ontario) and how some teachers would abide by this plan while others would … not. This doesn’t surprise met, but it does sadden me. I would like more Ontario high school teachers to read this book so they can hear directly from an autistic person why the accommodations in an IEP are not niceties, not wants, but needs. The problem, Layle makes clear here, is not Layle themself. It’s that we built our society for neurotypical people, so neurodivergent people are often at a disadvantage in meeting expectations. School is difficult because you need to be quiet, sit still, not challenge your teacher’s authority or expertise even if you’re confused by how they are teaching you, etc. Neurotypical people, and most allistic, neurodivergent people like myself, learn how to play the game well enough to mostly fit in. (In my case, for example, I can relate to a lot of Layle’s experience in terms of being highly intelligent and academically motivated while not very socially involved. However, I didn’t experience her struggles to understand her teachers’ or peers’ emotions and motivations, so I had an easier time figuring out “how to behave” in high school. This is the privilege of an allistic brain.) Ironically, for a book with a subtitle all about the diagnosis itself, this aspect of the book seems to be the least well-developed. I thought it was really interesting how Layle admits to disappointment that their diagnosis did not magically fix how people relate to them—there is a particular scene between Layle and their former best friend that highlights this keenly. I wish Layle had gone more into this side of things, but instead she focuses more on how the diagnosis changed her family dynamic. This isn’t a perfect book, and of course it behoves me to observe that Layle in many ways fits the mould of influencer: young, white, woman. But Everyone Feels This Way runs the risk of being elevated into some universal tale of autistic experience because we would like it to be that simple. We like it when we can read one book about something and say we know about that identity. But it’s not that simple, of course. Layle can’t speak for all autistic people, doesn’t pretend to, and if you expect this to be a general crash course in autism, look elsewhere. Although there are some basic definitions and facts sprinkled throughout, this book is a memoir first—it just happens to be a memoir by an Actually Autistic person. And that, in my opinion, is a good enough reason to pick it up. Layle’s unrelenting honesty, the way she matter-of-factly links her struggles to her suicide ideation and attempts, is a good enough reason to keep reading to the end. Because ultimately this is a book about someone trying to come to terms with the fact that the world was not built for them—and the people for whom it was built have no idea just how different things seem the people on the outside. Sometimes bemused, sometimes distraught, sometimes nonchalant, Layle’s memories reveal the kaleidoscope of rich, wonderful, uplifting, terrifying truths that accompany being a young autistic person coming of age in the 2010s and navigating adulthood in the 2020s. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews. [image] ...more |
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1
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Mar 19, 2024
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Mar 20, 2024
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Apr 07, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 075641931X
| 9780756419318
| B0CD1JQR35
| 3.69
| 2,232
| Mar 19, 2024
| Mar 19, 2024
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liked it
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The description of Floating Hotel overtly likens it to The Grand Budapest Hotel, and this comparison is both correct and compelling. Recreating the sa
The description of Floating Hotel overtly likens it to The Grand Budapest Hotel, and this comparison is both correct and compelling. Recreating the same tragicomic balance with her wandering space hotel, Grace Curtis takes this story places I didn’t expect it to go. Simultaneously heartwarming and heartwrenching, this is a book about doing what you love—and then saying goodbye to what you love. I received a copy in exchange for a review. Carl is the manager of the Grand Abeona Hotel. This spacecraft makes a circuit of the known galaxy, taking on new guests for a system or two, hosting conferences, etc. Populated by a quirky cast of misfits and the occasional malcontent, the hotel is renowned and beloved by many, yet behind the scenes it has seen better days. The book follows Carl and several employees and guests in a series of interwoven plots, culminating in a confrontation that threatens the survival not only of Carl and his guests but of the Grand Abeona itself. Curtis is skilled at a kind of shorthand with characterization, and the structure of this novel serves that well. At first, I was annoyed that I didn’t learn more about Carl immediately, didn’t get more of his backstory with Nina and how he came of age aboard the hotel. However, Curtis quickly won me over. With each chapter and each new viewpoint character there is a new opportunity to learn about the hotel through their eyes. I’m not exaggerating when I say that each character’s story has sufficient depth to be its own novel (or at least novella). Although Curtis returns to some of them throughout the novel, others only have a brief moment in the spotlight, and it always felt bittersweet to swipe left and say goodbye. There are several intersecting mysteries at the heart of this novel. None of them by themselves are particularly deep or intricate. Whether it’s the identity of the Lamplighter or the nature of the mysterious message investigated by the Problem Solvers conference, I thought the solutions were fairly obvious from the start. However, that’s OK—the mysteries themselves are kind of beside the point, for the real reward here is the immersion in the setting and the characters who populate it. The vibe reminds me a lot of Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series, though less cozy than quirky. Indeed, the transformation in tone that this book undergoes is perhaps the most enjoyable thing about it. When I reached the chapter with the spies, when there was a scene with the bathtub, I realized this story was turning serious. From there, each chapter turned up the tension, yet the book overall never lost its charm and wit. Once again, a delightful sense of balance infuses Curtis’s writing. After several heavier books—many of which I enjoyed—Floating Hotel managed to be exactly what I needed. Although I easily guessed the resolution of most of the mysteries, I was surprised by how the book itself ends—and I’m happy about that. Without spoilers, let’s just say that I expected Carl to come up with a very different plan from the one he ends up implementing. I expected something … perhaps more trite, more storybook? And instead, Curtis reminds us that sometimes the only way to win is not to play the game. It would be harsh if it weren’t also so hopeful: this book is a reminder that no matter what you lose, no matter what happens, your life goes on and you can always move forward. You’ll be different, that’s for sure, but you can move forward. This is a sweet, sometimes sad, always entertaining novel. Highly recommend for people who want some soft, creative, and satisfying science fiction. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 16, 2024
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Mar 18, 2024
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Apr 07, 2024
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Kindle Edition
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| 052551144X
| 9780525511441
| 052551144X
| 4.18
| 360
| Mar 12, 2024
| Mar 12, 2024
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liked it
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Amid the calumnious pushback in the United States against so-called “critical race theory” (it’s not) in schools remains the single truth: you don’t l
Amid the calumnious pushback in the United States against so-called “critical race theory” (it’s not) in schools remains the single truth: you don’t learn the true history of the US in school. The same goes for Canada, where we learn about the enslavement of African people in the US, but we don’t learn about slavery in Canada or our own history of anti-Black racism following abolition. So I do my best to read and learn, especially from Black women. In You Get What You Pay For, Morgan Parker engages with the legacy of slavery and nearly four centuries of anti-Blackness on this continent. Her tone is brutally forthright, holding nothing back as she looks at how the shape of American society has influenced her life. In an era that has too long billed itself post-racial or colour-blind, Parker insists that, yes, you need to see her race in order to see the arc of her life so far. I received an eARC from NetGalley and Penguin Random House in exchange for a review. This is an essay collection loosely masquerading as memoir and following a rough chronology of Parker’s life. She returns to a few regular motifs throughout: her next therapist, the slave ship as a metaphor for living under white supremacy in the US, the impossibility of survival for so many Black people as a result of police brutality. Many of the essays engage with seminal moments of the American zeitgeist in the past couple decades: the ascension of Serena and Venus Williams, Ye’s infamous remark about George W. Bush in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the trial of Bill Cosby. Parker acknowledges the complexity of her subject while writing with an appealing simplicity. Some of her discussions of her therapists reminded me of It’s Always Been Ours , by Jessica Wilson. Both books were illuminating. We white women often fail to consider race as a factor in our professional interactions, whether it’s therapy, treatment for eating disorders, or in my case, teaching. Which is not to say that race is the only factor in finding a good fit with a professional. But as Parker makes clear in this book, it wasn’t until she found a Black female therapist that she was finally able to connect in a way that was authentic and useful for her. Her white therapists prior lacked the experience and ancestors required to see all of Parker. That’s what we are talking about here. Seeing. Seeing the weight of intergenerational trauma. Seeing resilience not as a buzzword (“oh, you are so strong”) but as a rebellion against being put into a box. Seeing and understanding that racism isn’t simply, “Oh, people are mean to you because of your skin colour?”—racism is a kaleoidoscope of Rubik’s cubes of dominoes that fall every single day. It’s a behemoth, visible and invisible at the same time. You Get What You Pay For is dolorous at times. It lacks the rah-rah inspirational tone that we have come to demand from racialized writers. This is my first time reading anything by Parker that I can recall, so my point of comparison is to Roxane Gay, who is likewise unapologetic in her take-it-or-leave-it attitude towards her opinions. This is something we unthinkingly praise in white writers but often see as too adversarial or cynical in Black writers. While Parker has obviously met with a fair amount of success, she opens up and discusses how that hasn’t always translated into better mental health. This reminds me of Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey’s Harvard Business Review article, “Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome”. Before I read that article, I probably would have labelled Parker’s description of her experiences as imposter syndrome. Now I know better. Now I know that the driving force is systemic, misogynoir. At the same time, I think it’s important to emphasize that this collection is not hopeless. It’s just honest. You won’t exit it with a warm, fuzzy feeling, and you aren’t meant to. Now, that might not be what you want on your reading schedule right now—and I don’t blame you; I won’t pretend that I revelled in reading this. At the same time, I did fly through it, for as bleak as this book feels sometimes, Parker’s writing is also compelling. Intergenerational trauma is no joke. White supremacy is alive and well in the US, as well as here in Canada. You Get What You Pay For brings a powerful voice to the conversation. Above all else, Parker insists that survival is not enough. She wants her life to be hers, as she should. Freedom on paper is not freedom in reality. Not yet. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews. [image] ...more |
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1
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Mar 12, 2024
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Mar 14, 2024
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Mar 29, 2024
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Hardcover
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| 161696412X
| 9781616964122
| 161696412X
| 3.72
| 177
| Mar 12, 2024
| Mar 12, 2024
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liked it
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**spoiler alert** Sometimes we get stuck in a loop, too stubborn for our own good. Sometimes we have good reason to be stubborn. I was thinking a lot
**spoiler alert** Sometimes we get stuck in a loop, too stubborn for our own good. Sometimes we have good reason to be stubborn. I was thinking a lot about trauma as I read These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart, by Izzy Wasserstein. This is a novella that knows exactly what it’s about and does exactly what it’s meant to do. Although it didn’t end up wowing me, I still thoroughly enjoyed its premise and execution. I received an eARC in exchange for a review. If Dora knows one thing, it’s op sec. She left a commune over a disagreement about security: as anarchists, they wanted their commune to be as open as possible, whereas Dora believed more stringent checks and balances were required to keep out people who might have nefarious, ulterior motives. When she is called back to the commune to investigate the murder of her ex-girlfriend, Kay, Dora’s worst fears seem to have been proved well-founded. Her investigation will take her into neighbourhoods even more destitute than the one where the commune crouches and pit her against enemies who wear her face from before her transition. Much of my criticism of These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart might be waved away by simply saying, “It’s a novella, Kara.” The other characters are paper thin. The villain is predictable, and his overarching motives are shrouded in convenient shorthands. The setting is something ripped straight out of Verhoven, Robocop tinted for modern storytelling. These criticisms levelled at a novel-length work might stick. Applied to a novella, however, they actually become strengths. Because this is not really a mystery. No, this is a story about identity. The brilliance of this story lies in how Dora deals with one of her clones, whose life she spares. Here come the spoilers. Dora deals with her rescued clone’s emergence into individuality quite gracefully. I appreciate how much she respects Theo’s agency, to the point that she carefully avoids using pronouns until Theo, at the very end, settles on they/them. This is a potent reminder of the fluidity of gender: Theo might be genetically identical to Dora, but their experiences and memories are distinct. I suppose that should mitigate my discomfort over the idea of Theo and Dora having sex … still. I appreciate that Wasserstein acknowledges in the afterword that this development is hella weird, that she simply couldn’t find a way to tell the story without it happening because Theo insisted. The consent thing isn’t as much an issue for me—I understand Theo’s perspective there—but … yeah … hmm. As an asexual and sex-averse person, I’ve never much thought about sex with a partner—would partnered sex with myself be … better? Even if that self is me through a funhouse mirror, as Dora describes her pre-transition clones? See, this ese are the important questions science fiction is here to ask! Gonzo sexuality subplots aside, Dora and Theo’s nascent friendship is the heart of this story. The way that Theo goes from enemy to lover to friend is very endearing. Set against a backdrop of post-apocalyptic, capitalist purgatory, these connections become all the more significant. Dora, now that she has left the commune, is very alone and lonely. Although her being alone hasn’t changed by the end of the story, I think her loneliness has started to unravel. She starts to see that in order to protect, one has to have something worth protecting. These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart is as cute as a semi-noir, grim dystopian science-fiction novella can be. Wasserstein effectively pulls from established tropes, particularly around cloning, to tell a story of choosing found family over blood and staying true to one’s ideals while still learning to bend and grow. It’s worth an afternoon of your time. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 10, 2024
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Mar 11, 2024
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Mar 19, 2024
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Paperback
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| 0063240963
| 9780063240964
| 0063240963
| 3.61
| 433
| Oct 24, 2023
| Oct 24, 2023
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really liked it
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Epic fantasy heist. Those three words in the subject line of an email were all it took for me to windmill slam “yes” on getting an eARC of The Queen o
Epic fantasy heist. Those three words in the subject line of an email were all it took for me to windmill slam “yes” on getting an eARC of The Queen of Days from NetGalley and publisher HarperVoyager. Some marketing person knew the magic words that would pique my interest instantly. I was excited to dive in, and thankfully, the book lived up to the hype! This is a delightful, powerful adventure that left me wanting more in all the right ways. Balthazar, aka Bal, is a scion of a noble family that has fallen on hard times. He now makes a living as a thief in the city that his family once ruled, and his latest heist sees him reluctantly partnering up with the mythical and mysterious Queen of Days. The heist, as heists often do, goes pear-shaped. On the run and outgunned, Bal and his crew and the Queen of Days find themselves as unlikely allies on a quest to kill a god, save their city (and possibly the world), and keep their skins intact. The book opens with Bal meeting the Queen of Days, whose name we soon learn is Tassiel, or Tass. From there, we quickly move into meeting the supporting cast and the heist itself. I appreciate this pacing—I don’t mind when a heist book builds up to the heist-as-climax, but I also like when they do what Kelly does here. The heist, you see, is actually an appetizer before the real plot takes off. After a brief diversion into a mysterious Archive for some exposition and raising of stakes, Bal and Tass and the crew are back out into the city, on the run, trying to figure out what to do next. The found family vibes are strong here. Kelly alternates chapters between Bal and Tass’s perspectives. Something I really liked is how the chapter titles for Tass evolve. At the start of the book, they provide her full name and title; as the story continues, they shorten to “Tassiel” and then eventually “Tass,” signifying her acceptance of this identity and her connection to Bal and his crew. The mystery of Tass’s identity—who she is, where her magic comes from, where she herself comes from—is one of the earliest and most central mysteries in this book, and it’s fun. The way that Kelly teases out the mystery, not giving us everything at once yet also never lingering too long before dropping another clue, is tantalizing and kept me reading. I needed to know more about Tass, more about the magic in this world—and the others. Kelly artfully combines several standard tropes in a way that breathes new life into them. Similarly, Bal’s own character arc, though less dramatic, is no less important in this story. At the beginning, he is fixated on revenge and protecting his kid sister. That second desire never changes, of course. Yet Bal must confront what “revenge” means against the backdrop of bigger, more existential threats, and it’s in this crucible that he demonstrates his ability to be heroic. I really like how his friendship with Tass develops. There is a kindness to the core of his character that often feels lacking in male protagonists of his mould. He isn’t quite a lovable rogue, and he also isn’t a blustering blowhard of a fighter. Kelly has carved out an unique and interesting man who, despite numerous flaws, brings people together in a way that is its own kind of magic. Though I praised the pacing earlier, if I were to critique anything about this book, it would actually be how too much happens. This is a book with a lot of side quests. Not all of them held my interest. I’m thinking of one in particular, a foray finally into Tass’s home—I can see why Kelly includes this, but at the same time, I kept thinking, “I just want us to get back to the main conflict here.” This is the problem when you try to write an epic fantasy story that also wants to be a cozy, family-centric heist story: the two genres are difficult to mash together since they have diametrically opposed atmospheres. That Kelly manages to make them work as well as she does is, in and of itself, quite impressive. If one of those two genres wins out, it’s the latter. The Queen of Days is indeed epic on paper; there is no denying that. There are gods. An entire city trembles. The stakes are real. Yet we don’t really care about that. The readers are here for Bal and Tass and the lovable crew that surrounds them. The Queen of Days raised me from a reading slump. It elevated my resting, reading heart rate. If you could hook me up to a faucet of hot-and-cold running fantasy in this style, I would be a happy woman. As it is, I am left wanting more—in a good way—and I can’t recommend this book enough to people who want epic fantasy with cozy characters. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 14, 2023
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Oct 18, 2023
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Nov 20, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 1728275792
| 9781728275796
| B0BV8S6CQ9
| 3.52
| 1,091
| Oct 17, 2023
| Oct 17, 2023
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it was ok
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The summer(?) of witches continues with The Witches at the End of the World, by Chelsea Iversen. From contemporary romance we travel to historical fic
The summer(?) of witches continues with The Witches at the End of the World, by Chelsea Iversen. From contemporary romance we travel to historical fiction with this small tale of sisterhood nestled in the woods of Norway centuries ago. I’m impressed with how Iversen won me over despite my qualms about the book’s pacing and plot! I received an eARC from NetGalley and publisher Sourcebooks in exchange for my review. Kaija and Minna are witches. For most of their lives, they have lived in seclusion in the birchwoods with their adoptive mother, who spirited them away from the village of their birth after their mother was burned at the stake for witchcraft. Now grown, their adoptive mother dead, Kaija and Minna are at a crossroads. Kaija is determined to return to the village and establish an “ordinary” life for herself. Minna, far darker of temperament, sees no need to suppress her magic or fit in with ordinary people. The sisters part ways, each trying to find success at the life they want to lead. Of course, it can’t be that simple…. I was intrigued by the promise of sister drama. Minna’s bitterness towards the world as a result of her and her mother’s persecution is a dark seed that she willingly nurtures. When Kaija abandons her—as she sees it—she is rightly furious. As Kaija works to establish a new life for herself, Minna seeks her out and plots something that is, if not revenge, then revenge-adjacent. The tragedy of Minna’s descent into antagonist and eventual blackhearted villain was so tantalizing for me. However, lest I misrepresent the book and at risk of spoilers—it is not quite meant to be. Now, the book is still about the bond of sisterhood. That much remains intact, and it’s this theme that kept me going. Watching Minna pull herself back from the brink of darkness proves compelling even as Kaija must grapple with her own setbacks. I admit that Iversen likely made the right call by ensuring that the worst of Kaija’s misfortunes are not directly wrought by Minna. Not only does it offer a pathway to redemption for Minna in the eyes of Kaija and the reader alike, but it’s a potent reminder that often our worst moments in life are not anyone’s fault. Circumstances just suck sometimes. I liked this book. I also struggled with this book. It’s just slow. It’s a lot of narration from each sister, and it takes forever to get going. Yet at the same time, it feels like we never get to know anyone other than Kaija and Minna. They hold every other character at arm’s length in their narration. Fifteen years in and I still don’t have a great term to describe how I feel about this style of writing. The closest I can get is that I can’t connect with the characters. It’s possibly related to my inability to visualize as I read: authors who rely primarily on descriptive language tend to fall flatter for me than authors who use more dialogue and action. So, as is usually the case, your mileage may vary. This is a sweet story of sisterhood and dreams denied. It’s a tragedy wrapped around family ties, and it’s an interesting exploration of the ways in which internalized misogyny can fuck you up. But it’s a little slow, and it never quite lives up to the promises I feel like it establishes at the start of the story. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Oct 07, 2023
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Oct 13, 2023
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Nov 04, 2023
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ebook
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| 164567956X
| 9781645679561
| 3.97
| 515
| Oct 10, 2023
| Oct 10, 2023
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really liked it
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Asexuality is everywhere, yet because it is classically the absence of something, its presence can be difficult to see. Being Ace: An Anthology of Que
Asexuality is everywhere, yet because it is classically the absence of something, its presence can be difficult to see. Being Ace: An Anthology of Queer, Trans, Femme, and Disabled Stories of Asexual Love and Connection is an attempt to foreground asexuality within a variety of environments. Madeline Dyer has assembled an ace team (oh, you know the puns are just starting) of authors to contribute stories and even a poem that get you thinking. Cody Daigle-Orians, who wrote
I Am Ace
, offers a heartfelt introduction to the collection. I received an eARC of this book from NetGalley and Page Street. Some of these authors are familiar to me, either from other books of theirs I have read or simply from following them on social media. Although I’ve pretty much always known I am asexual, it wasn’t until around university that I started to learn more about that label, and it wasn’t until later than that—2012 or thereabouts—that I started to find online community and realize that my sexuality falls under the umbrella of queerness. Following acespec authors and finding acespec stories was very important to me. The same goes for arospec authors and stories (as I am in fact aroace). Indeed, Being Ace serves as a comfortable companion text to Common Bonds: An Aromantic Speculative Fiction Anthology (and the two anthologies share contributors). The stories take place everywhere and everywhen, from fairytale-inspired fantasy worlds to science-fictional settings on asteroids to vaguely contemporary tales in the here and now. Aces are witches; aces are asteroid miners taking on moon goddesses; aces are patients in eating disorder clinics; aces are monster hunters. The potpourri of settings seems to emphasize the anthology’s message: aces are everywhere, deal with it. Stand-out stories in this collection for me include “Across the Stars,” by Akemi Dawn Bowman; “Give Up the Ghost,” by Linsey Miller; “Smells Like Teen Virgin,” by S.E. Anderson; and “The Mermaid’s Sister,” by Moniza Hossain. However, I would like to emphasize that this is a remarkably consistent collection, in my opinion, as far as enjoyment of its stories goes. The hit ratio is high with this one. “Across the Stars” is really just an adorable story about finding friendship while trying to preserve one’s connection to family. I like that it is less about the protagonist needing to navigate coming out or finding acceptance and more simply about them existing as asexual in this universe. (I would also read more set in this universe.) “Give Up the Ghost” is poignant in a really kind of sad, devastating way, as ghost stories and murder mysteries often are. “Smells Like Teen Virgin” is a fun send-up of purity culture as well as monster-hunting schlock. The family and sibling dynamics are very compelling. “The Mermaid’s Sister” is a quaint reimagining of The Little Mermaid told from the perspective of Ariel’s ace sister; I like that the prince was not a dick in this one. I do think allosexual people should read this anthology and will find a lot in it that helps them better understand ace experiences. That being said, I can only review this book from my perspective as a fellow ace gal … and I didn’t expect this book to make me feel so sad at times. So emotional. I am largely having a very happy life as a single ace person, especially now in my thirties—but compulsory sexuality is a trip, and sometimes our society is not kind to single people or people who live alone. Being Ace certainly offers hope and compassion, but there are moments when it really does hold up a mirror to that toughness. Which is, I suppose, a testament to how powerful its stories are. I’m not surprised I enjoyed this anthology, and I highly recommend it. But more than that, I hope that it encourages readers to check out other work by authors in this collection. The more ace voices we hear and read, the better we are able to question what we think of as normal or the default when it comes to our experiences of sex, love, desire, companionship, and belonging in our society. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
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1
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Oct 02, 2023
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Oct 07, 2023
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Oct 23, 2023
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Hardcover
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| 1250835437
| 9781250835437
| 1250835437
| 3.71
| 1,859
| Oct 03, 2023
| Sep 26, 2023
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liked it
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What would you do if a relative died and left you her creepy house, and fortune, on the condition that you relocate your life to live on the property?
What would you do if a relative died and left you her creepy house, and fortune, on the condition that you relocate your life to live on the property? Oh, and everyone around you keeps acting super sketch? That’s Cordelia Bone’s problem in The Witches of Bone Hill. Part romance, part thriller, all fantasy, this book uses a lot of classic tropes, often to good effect. Ava Morgyn’s writing took me a while to warm up to, yet by the end of the book, I found myself sad to say goodbye to the Bone sisters. Thanks to St. Martin’s Griffin and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for a review. Cordelia and Eustace Bone are estranged sisters of a mother estranged from her family. Cordelia is going through a messy divorce with a cheating husband when she hears from her sister for the first time in years: their great aunt Augusta is dead. Time to return to the family property in Connecticut, where a stodgy lawyer named Todgers (I kid you not) informs them that they can only inherit if they stick around. Sounds strange but OK. Then the weird shit gets weirder, for Cordelia and Eustace’s relatives weren’t just eccentric, reclusive, and rich—they were witches. And so are these two sisters. I did not like the opening of this book at all. Cordelia comes across as a well-off, if scorned, woman of privilege. Morgyn kind of infodumps a bunch of stuff, like her relationship (or lack thereof) with Eustace, as well as most of the John/cheating backstory. Then a mafia boss shows up and shakes her down, and it all feels … cheesy. To be honest, that feeling never really goes away for the rest of the book. I guess I kind of just … started to roll with it. I could have dealt without either John or Busy’s extended involvement in the plot—neither of them feel all that necessary, and Busy is almost completely extraneous. But these are minor complaints. The romance, similarly, didn’t work for me—but that’s just how I am with romance, as many of you might already know. For someone coming to this book specifically looking for such a subplot, I think you’ll like it. Sparks fly, the usual misunderstandings and recriminations occur, but in the end, you know how these things go. It’s standard—though not, I should say, all that steamy. So I won’t lie: The Witches of Bone Hill was a slog for me at first. This book is also long, relatively speaking (I read it on my Kindle, but it’s 384 pages in print), and it takes a while for Morgyn to get to the point of the story. But once we get there, it’s really good. See, this is a story about two sisters who have to find their way separately but together. Eustace is ecstatic with their inheritance. She wants nothing more but to accept it, settle down, and embrace her burgeoning gift. Cordelia sees her gift as sinister, and she isn’t ready to leave behind her old life. The way that Morgyn contrasts these sisters, even as we learn more about their sordid and complex family history, is delightful. This is a book about how inheriting darkness doesn’t mean embracing it. I really liked how Eustace and Cordelia plot to turn the tables on their adversary by throwing a party. The climax of the book is well done—though the identity of the villain is predictable, and the resolution equally easy to foresee, it’s still a fun ride. It’s still powerful to see these two women come into their own, connect to their ancestors, and rise to the occasion. The Witches of Bone Hill is not quite a book for me, but I liked it well enough. If you like romance a bit more than me and want something that feels both fresh and familiar at the same time, I think you’ll enjoy this. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 26, 2023
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Oct 2023
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Oct 10, 2023
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Paperback
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| 1250905524
| 9781250905529
| 1250905524
| 3.01
| 761
| Sep 26, 2023
| Sep 26, 2023
|
it was ok
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My summer of witches has extended into an autumn of auguries by dint of my reading schedule attenuating in these waning days of 2023. What Became of M
My summer of witches has extended into an autumn of auguries by dint of my reading schedule attenuating in these waning days of 2023. What Became of Magic is a book I was looking forward to reading on my deck at the end of August, but it also worked well in the cooler days of September. Paige Crutcher brings a dazzling dash of creativity to her storytelling. Alas, I didn’t enjoy her narrative style or her characterization. My thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Griffin for the eARC in exchange for a review. Aline Weir was always the loner kid. One day at a sleepover, a ghost of a girl named Dragon befriends her. Aline grows up and grows into her witchy power to help spirits cross over. An accident with a boy her age, however, reverberates across the world and will have consequences for more than Aline. Practically raised by Fates, she finds herself drawn to the magical town of Matchstick. Soon she is in a pitched battle against an ancient enemy who has designs on the personifications of magic themselves—unless Aline and her allies can find a way to restore the balance. What Became of Magic keeps insisting that Aline is special—indeed that she is inextricably bound up with Magic, who is both a force and a man. But I don’t see it. Aline is boring, at least from the distance at which we get to know her. Crutcher’s narrative choices don’t work for me. There is a veritable montage of Aline’s childhood at the beginning of the book. Instead, bits and bobs of flashbacks spread out through the narrative might have kept me more interested. As it is, I never felt myself connecting to Aline. Like, Crutcher makes it very clear that her parents were always distant and never thought Aline would amount to much of anything—but we never really see Aline feel it, you know? Then, after Aline leaves the bookstore for the town of Matchstick, the plot spins wildly out of control. Suddenly Crutcher throws us into a quest-like structure. Again, she puts a lot of work into establishing both allies and enemies, as well as laying out the stakes. It should all come together to create a great story. Yet it’s messy, convoluted—the rules are constantly shifting. And none of the characters are three-dimensional enough for me to care about them. Not even Aline. I also can’t stand romantic subplots premised on destiny, for it veers uncomfortably close to removing agency (or even consent). To be clear, that’s a personal preference of mine; I’m not trying to say that is what Crutcher implies happens here. Indeed, if anyone is going to enjoy this chaotic book, it’s going to be romance fans who want to swoon over the idea of True Love between a witch and a magic man. As it is, there was just nothing for me to grab onto as I read this book. I felt like I was listening to a child tell me the fantasy story they had just made up—each time they jump to a new scene, I need to stop them and ask questions because I cannot keep it straight in my head. Crutcher’s imagination is unquestionable—but the organization of this book, its editing, the plotting and pacing and protagonist—none of it works for me. In the end, What Became of Magic felt like a missed opportunity. I say this not to be harsh. I don’t think it is a bad book. But I came really close to DNFing it. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 22, 2023
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Sep 25, 2023
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Oct 10, 2023
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Paperback
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| 1786189984
| 9781786189981
| 1786189984
| 3.37
| 1,862
| Sep 12, 2023
| Sep 12, 2023
|
liked it
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This is one of those rare books that is exactly what the cover copy promises: “A lyrical, queer sci-fi retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet as a locked-r
This is one of those rare books that is exactly what the cover copy promises: “A lyrical, queer sci-fi retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet as a locked-room thriller.” The Death I Gave Him lives up to this hype, and I can easily see how some people would adore this book. I loved Em X. Liu’s obvious love for Shakespeare, and as far as Shakespearean retellings go, this one is pretty good. As far as thrillers go—well, we all know I’m not the biggest fan of thrillers to begin with. As far as murder mysteries go—well, it’s not much of a mystery, now is it? Thanks to NetGalley and publisher Solaris for the eARC. Look, I won’t summarize Hamlet for you. Elsinore is a lab rather than a castle; Hayden and his murdered dad are scientists working on life-prolonging serums; Felicia (Ophelia) is an intern, and her dad, Paul (Polonius) is the head of Elsinore’s security. Liu casts Horatio as the lab’s disembodied artificial intelligence. The book opens on Horatio “regaining consciousness” and seeing Hayden next to his father’s body. From there, things quickly spiral out of control. It’s tense; it’s queer; it’s hot and heavy at points (not my thing). I’m mostly interested in looking at this book and how it represents an evolution of Shakespeare. What I mean by this is that Shakespeare has been reinterpreted from the moment his plays started to be performed. Each era, each society, projects its own ideas on to Shakespeare’s stories and reifies them in different ways. Liu has taken Hamlet and reimagined it as a locked-room murder mystery set in the 2050s—yet it is still definitely Shakespeare. However, I also really like how Liu took liberties with the characters and plot—this is more reimagining than retelling, and that is for the better. If Shakespeare were alive today, I have no doubt he would write science fiction (and also historical fiction, and let’s face it, he would probably make his living writing erotica or porn or something). The inclusion of an AI main character—Horatio, no less—and the subplot around developing a life-prolonging serum both feel true to ideas that show up time and again Shakespeare’s work. So much of what he talks about, in Hamlet but also in The Tempest and other plays, comes down to ruminating on how well we can really know others (or even ourselves). Horatio and Hayden’s relationship here, the use of a neural-mapping interface to allow them to communicate with each other and know each other far more intimately than would otherwise be possible, is an intriguing reading of Horatio and Hayden’s relationship in the original play. That Horatio is an AI and thus an “other” speaks to the ambivalence with which the play treats Horatio, the way that he always seems to be present yet seldom gets much acknowledgement from everyone else. I don’t want to go into spoiler territory, but let’s just say that I think what happens with Horatio and Hayden in the end is a great change to the original story. The same goes for the fates of Felicia and even the way that Liu characterizes Hayden’s mother—I feel like Liu spent a lot of time thinking about the role of women in the original play. Felicia certainly receives much more depth and time than Ophelia does, and her fate is likewise both more hopeful and more palatable. She is arguably as much of a protagonist in this book as Hayden is, and the story is better for it. The “lyrical” nature of the book is where The Death I Gave Him loses me. While I really liked Liu’s plot and character choices, I didn’t like their writing style as much. Both the description and the dialogue would occasionally grate on me, and the conceit that the book is a manuscript by a researcher looking back on the entire incident felt unnecessary. There’s a lot of layers here that I’m not sure the story needed. The Death I Gave Him is creative and original (despite being based on Hamlet). It didn’t land all the way for me, but it came close enough that I know there’s an audience out there just waiting to fall in love with this tragedy. I can’t wait for that audience to find it, for I would like to see more of what Liu has to offer in the future. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 09, 2023
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Sep 14, 2023
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Sep 28, 2023
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 161696362X
| 9781616963620
| 161696362X
| 3.43
| 540
| Sep 05, 2023
| Sep 05, 2023
|
it was ok
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Another story about stories, this time a metafictional romp through a Scientologyesque religion and the end of the universe. Lavie Tidhar’s The Circum
Another story about stories, this time a metafictional romp through a Scientologyesque religion and the end of the universe. Lavie Tidhar’s The Circumference of the World is imaginative and, dare I say, quite a bit wacky; however, it never coalesced into something I would call enjoyable. Thanks to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for the eARC. Delia is a mathematician from Vanuatu, though now she lives in London. Her boyfriend’s disappearance causes her to start looking for a book so rare some think it doesn’t exist. This pulp science-fiction novel is at the centre of a cult-like church that believes reading the book conveys protection against the “Eaters,” mysterious creatures connected to black holes (I am keeping the details vague to avoid spoilers here). Delia enlists the help of a book detective, essentially, who then falls in with a gangster, who then … you know what, it’s turtles all the way down. The best and perhaps also worst aspect of The Circumference of the World for me was the structure of the narrative. We leave Delia in the first part of the book to follow Daniel, and then leave him to follow Oskar, and there is also an interstitial moment where we are in the Lode Stars story itself, which may or may not be real or even more real than the rest of this story. The way that Tidhar plays with the flexible nature of reality and fiction is skillful and thought-provoking. The scenes set within Lode Stars, in a far, posthuman future, demonstrate some really neat thinking about the nature of humanity and the cosmos. The wider novel as a whole dances around notions of the simulation hypothesis, albeit coming at it from a very different angle than we might be used to. This is all to the good. Where the book failed to work for me was the characters themselves. The narration often felt stilted, and I had trouble connecting to most of the main characters. Although I like the segmented structure of the book, I wish we had come back to Delia and spent more time with her than we did. Overall, the book itself felt both too long and too short—with characters and plots being picked up and then dropped without resolution. File this under “some amazing science fiction happening here but in a way that never comes together as a single coherent story.” Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 03, 2023
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Sep 08, 2023
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Sep 23, 2023
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1250269350
| 9781250269355
| 1250269350
| 3.84
| 392
| Aug 29, 2023
| Aug 29, 2023
|
liked it
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You would think that as I age and have more disposable income (at least in theory) and more control over my free time (at least in theory) that I woul
You would think that as I age and have more disposable income (at least in theory) and more control over my free time (at least in theory) that I would get better, not worse, at reading series … but no. So here I am, partaking in Devil’s Gun, having not read You Sexy Thing first. I don’t know if the first book in this series from Cat Rambo just passed me by or if I passed on it because the title made it sound like not my kind of thing. If it was the latter, that was a mistake, for this series delivers delightful and surprisingly cozy space opera. I’m sure I won’t be alone in comparing this to Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series (though I have also managed to somehow not read all of those as well). I received an eARC from NetGalley and Tor in exchange for a review. Picking up on the events of the book I didn’t read, Devil’s Gun follows the now-legitimized crew of the You Sexy Thing, a sentient bioship. It’s a ragtag crew very much giving Farscape vibes, and I am here for it. They spend this book processing trauma from the first while trying to figure out their next move, which eventually comes down to finding the eponymous MacGuffin in the hopes that it will help them deal with the space pirate who is hunting them all. Oh, and there’s clones and con artists and all manner of discussion of food. I took a chance that it was OK I hadn’t read the first book, and that gamble paid off big. Firstly, Rambo has written the book in such a way that despite definitely not being standalone you can slide into this world and still understand the characters and their current struggles. Secondly, this book provides a synopsis of You Sexy Thing at the start—thank you! I really do wish more series did this; it improved my experience of this book immensely. Thus, while I recommend you read the first book, you don’t need to. The cast is delightfully diverse and varied in how they deal with situations. I think I am (re)learning how much I enjoy space opera involving heterogeneous crews rather than the military SF or adjacent setups of more rigid, hierarchal structures. Niko is captain, sure, but she has far from the last word about You Sexy Thing—and Thing itself has a startling level of “ask for forgiveness” attitude about it. This all makes for a great deal of drama and conflict, though it is often very low stakes. Through a hopping, limited third-person narrator, we get to know some of the characters more than others. Overall, I love how Rambo develops each of them. Atlanta is probably my favourite in that respect. Similarly, I loved following along as Rambo fleshed out the larger universe. They draw easily on established tropes (like an extinct civilization literally called the Forerunners) to create their own unique take on a cosmopolitan, intergalactic society. I especially love how they set up what appears to be a great and dramatic mystery surrounding the Gates, arguably the most important Forerunner tech around, only to provide an anticlimactic solution near the end of the book in what is almost a throwaway line. This firmly establishes Devil’s Gun as “cozy” science fiction. Yes, there are hardships and existential conflict; on the other hand, the conflict is extremely interpersonal. If you’re looking for space battles and military strategy or high-stakes, boots-on-the-ground combat, you won’t get it here. But if you want arguments, people sneaking around behind each other’s backs, a sarcastic sentient spaceship, and more such shenanigans—then, yeah, Devil’s Gun and the previous book in this series are going to be just your thing. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 29, 2023
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Sep 2023
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Sep 23, 2023
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1250866812
| 9781250866813
| 1250866812
| 3.56
| 798
| Jul 25, 2023
| Jul 25, 2023
|
liked it
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Many a moon ago I read a duology (plus inciting novella) from Guy Haley called
Reality 36
and Omega Point. It features, among other things, a dyna
Many a moon ago I read a duology (plus inciting novella) from Guy Haley called
Reality 36
and Omega Point. It features, among other things, a dynamic duo of an AI and a cyborg as private investigators. I predictably loved it. I thought Emergent Properties, by Aimee Ogden, might give me some of the same flavour—and I was partly right. Thank you to NetGalley and publisher Tor for the eARC. Scorn is one of the earliest sentient AIs and one of few AIs emancipated from their creators. Scorn’s creators are a couple of scientists ze calls Mum and Maman; once a powerhouse team, they have since divorced and fallen into a cycle of very public acrimony. Scorn has tried to stay out of it, ducking zir purpose as a space-exploration AI to become an investigator instead. When the story starts, a backup of Scorn has just been restored—missing the last ten days of memories! Ze must retrace zir steps, and fast, not only to get to the bottom of the mystery but also figure out who might have had it out for zir—and why. Lots of stuff to recommend this book to lovers of science fiction. First, it doesn’t overstay its welcome. The plot is brisk. Despite that, Ogden does a lot of worldbuilding. Scorn explains the basics of this world, which is cyberpunk dusted with a bit of failed singularity: corporations have replaced failed nation-states, and AI exists, but most of it is not particularly powerful. Scorn is an exception, a fact that definitely makes zir lonely. We also meet a few other examples of AIs of various levels of complexity, including a “sibling” of Scorn’s. The actual mystery and its resolution is predictable, in my opinion. The culprit was (to me) fairly obvious, the climax pretty clearly telegraphed early on. Since this is a novella I will cut it a bit more slack, simply because it is meant to be shorter and shallower than a full novel. If execution over originality is your desire (and mystery, like romance, often encourages that desire), then this book will work fine for you. Indeed, Ogden has prioritized a fun and sympathetic protagonist over the mystery. And that’s fine. Scorn is cool. Ze is an exhausted, hardworking, somewhat sarcastic AI. I liked how Ogden clearly took time to consider how to write an AI in first person. At a few points, Scorn mentions things like locking zir sarcasm subroutines behind a time-delay lock, so ze will be less sarcastic for a certain period of time. Ogden acknowledges how the vast differences between Scorn’s experience and those of a vanilla human—both in terms of embodiment but also how we process stimuli—would make Scorn think and act differently. Emergent Properties is a great science-fiction novella that’s pretty much what it says on the tin. Don’t go in expecting the moon—do go in expecting an intense visit to the moon! Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 24, 2023
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Jul 25, 2023
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Aug 05, 2023
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1786188465
| 9781786188465
| 1786188465
| 3.40
| 582
| Jul 18, 2023
| Jul 18, 2023
|
it was ok
|
Revenge plots are always fun. Give me a woman scorned any day. Charmed combines a revenge plot with another one of my favourite tropes—a fairy-tale re
Revenge plots are always fun. Give me a woman scorned any day. Charmed combines a revenge plot with another one of my favourite tropes—a fairy-tale remix setting. Jade Linwood takes elements of some of the most familiar fairy tales of the Western canon, turning their protagonists into women who are out to avenge themselves, and in some cases their countries, against none other than Prince Charming. I received an eARC from NetGalley and publisher Rebellion. Like many fairy tales, Charmed contains stories within stories. The book opens with Prince Charming arriving to rescue Sleeping Beauty (Bella in this version). After he absconds with some of the palace wealth, the book jumps ahead to Bella meeting Marie Blanche de Neige (Snow White) and Doctor Emilia Rapunzel. These two each tell their tale in turn, and having discovered that the rogue in each tale is the same man, they make a revenge pact. The last act of the book comprises the actual plot unfolding, involving a deal with a dragon, another fairy tale protagonist, and more. I love how Linwood has reimagined each of these protagonists. This feminist revisionism has itself almost become a trope of remixing fairy tales. Linwood takes it one step further, however, essentially syncretizing these tales into their own, imaginary European theatre. Each comes from a region clearly reminiscent of a specific part of Europe, such as Italy or France or Germany, albeit with the addition of creatures like dwarves, dragons, and demons. The three women at the centre of this story are each their own person, with different motivations, dreams, and goals. In particular, Bella proves very difficult for the other two to deal with (perhaps because her century of sleep has suspended her growth into adulthood)—however, I think Linwood makes it evident that Bella’s perspective is just as valid as Marie or Emilia’s. The pacing of Charmed frustrated me a little, especially at first. I felt like it was taking too long to go from backstory to revenge story. I’m not sure if there is a solution for this (other than making each story-within-the-story shorter, but perhaps that would lose some of the rich character development). Similarly, I’m glad Linwood did her best to give Charming himself sympathetic motives. At the same time, the way in which that exposition is finally delivered to us was clunky. Finally, our protagonists themselves don’t seem to grow or change all that much. We see a little bit of it in their backstories (any of which could make an interesting novel in its own right), and then the ending hints at growth that can happen now that they are each able to move on. But for the duration of the book itself, they don’t really develop as characters, which is frustrating. Ultimately, Charmed is a charming book (yes, I went there), but like so many remixes, it felt like it was missing something. I don’t know if my bar is just too high or if I have unrealistic expectations. In any event, this is a book that has a great premise that is faithfully and competently executed—I had fun reading it over the course of an afternoon on my deck—but I’m not sure it is memorable. Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter. [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 08, 2023
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Jul 10, 2023
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Jul 17, 2023
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Paperback
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my rating |
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| 3.76
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liked it
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Aug 26, 2024
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Sep 16, 2024
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| 4.03
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really liked it
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Aug 11, 2024
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Aug 14, 2024
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| 3.77
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it was ok
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Apr 28, 2024
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May 01, 2024
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| 4.03
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really liked it
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Apr 21, 2024
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Apr 30, 2024
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|||||
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| 4.01
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it was amazing
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Apr 06, 2024
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Apr 17, 2024
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| 4.51
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liked it
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Mar 31, 2024
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Apr 13, 2024
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|||||
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| 4.27
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really liked it
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Mar 20, 2024
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Apr 07, 2024
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|||||
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| 3.69
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liked it
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Mar 18, 2024
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Apr 07, 2024
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| 4.18
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liked it
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Mar 14, 2024
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Mar 29, 2024
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| 3.72
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liked it
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Mar 11, 2024
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Mar 19, 2024
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| 3.61
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really liked it
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Oct 18, 2023
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Nov 20, 2023
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| 3.52
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it was ok
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Oct 13, 2023
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Nov 04, 2023
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| 3.97
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really liked it
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Oct 07, 2023
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Oct 23, 2023
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| 3.71
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liked it
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Oct 2023
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Oct 10, 2023
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| 3.01
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it was ok
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Sep 25, 2023
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Oct 10, 2023
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| 3.37
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liked it
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Sep 14, 2023
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Sep 28, 2023
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|||||
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| 3.43
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it was ok
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Sep 08, 2023
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Sep 23, 2023
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| 3.84
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liked it
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Sep 2023
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Sep 23, 2023
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| 3.56
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liked it
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Jul 25, 2023
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Aug 05, 2023
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| 3.40
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it was ok
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Jul 10, 2023
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Jul 17, 2023
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