chantaal's reviews
2272 reviews

DNF @ p. 139. Oh boy, what a horrible introduction to Neal Stephenson.

Had to sit with this one for a while because I wasn't sure how to feel about it. Well, almost two weeks later, the major feeling is disappointment. 

This is a decent premise that is completely bogged down by the narrative POV decision made. If it works for you, then it works, but it just kept grating at me as the book went on, and only got worse as the mysteries of the murder and the world itself began to unfold. 

Marking as a spoiler, though the POV is revealed almost immediately.

The problem with having a murder mystery set in the POV of an all knowing, all seeing AI is that the narrative itself purposefully keeps things from you, the reader. It has to, in order to keep the suspense going. It forces the writing into a certain pattern, one that very rarely works for me - and it certainly didn't here. It forces the author to create ways to justify not telling the reader information when you know the narrative voice you're in has it. There is NO mystery and NO story unless you create false suspense. It's FRUSTRATING.

There was some interesting character work and the world building was intriguing, but I think it all just kind of falls apart in the third act.  The speculative dystopian aspect had some promise but didn't feel totally fleshed out. 

I wish I liked this better, because I own the hardcover with nice orange sprayed edges. At least it looks good, I guess. 

Wish I loved this as much as I did volume 1, but it was still a good time. Good art, decent character work, shoddy world building, found family and queer joy.

This is a fantastic and wonderful graphic memoir about Sara Soler and her partner Diana, following their journey after Diana comes out as trans. It's a successful blend of personal and informative, giving a strong emotional heart to the more informative sections. 

The art is very cute, and very much NOT like the cover. Sara's artwork is much more stylized, in cute comic form that is round and bouncy and dynamic. The color palette is also great, using only the trans flag colors to bring everything to life, and it works. 

I much preferred the personal story of Sara and Diana's relationship to the mini lectures, mostly because I'm already aware of the explanations and ideas being brought up in them. However, this is written in Spanish by a Spanish native, and I have no idea what transgender life is like in Spain - it may be the case that the simple lecture style married with the personal memoir style is exactly what some people may need to understand the broader picture, or to empathize more deeply. 

Overall, this is a fun and emotional and lovely graphic novel. It's a great memoir of a relationship, it's educational, and I think would work for any age group from young teen and up. 

This is book is so much fun, LET'S TALK ABOUT IT.

If you don't know what Bury Your Gays is referring to, here's the TVTropes page about it. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BuryYourGays

The book itself does well to explain the trope that is at the heart of it all, but I think having a background idea of just how prevalent the trope has been is good for going into this.

This story focuses on Misha Byrne, a Hollywood writer who came up writing horror movies and is currently wrapping up a season of a TV show where he's ready for his two main female leads to profess their love for each other. However, The Studio wants him to kill them off in the name of Ratings.  Thus kicks off a weird, meta-filled, horrifying, gory odyssey as Misha grapples with his own identity in the face of absolute, all-encompassing, all-powerful capitalism. Oh, and it tackles the struggle of AI "art" as well. No big deal.

As a book that is full of meta-textual references to gay culture, there are references galore that are fun to pick out if you get them. There were also a few things I didn't totally get, and some sections of the story itself that I think were a little too meta for me and lost me for short periods of time. I feel like my husband, who loves horror films and writes screenplays, will probably get a lot more out of some parts of the meta horror & screenwriter elements when he finally reads this. 

The character work of Misha was pretty great. We get flashbacks to some big parts of his past that inform the decisions he makes in the present, and he has two important relationships - a best friend and his boyfriend - that also ground him. I could have used a little bit more development of Tara and Zeke, though; I didn't feel deeply for them despite Misha's relationships and how those drive some of his actions later on.

I wish I could talk about more elements, but anything else I say would fall into the spoiler zone - or, at least, ruining some fun surprises zone. Misha is a compelling character to follow, and the journey he takes is fun and funny and horrifying all at once. The book satirizes so much about Hollywood while also exposing just how insanely awful it is at the same time. 

Chuck Tingle has always had a lot to say about society through his work (YES, that includes his erotica). Camp Damascus explored one aspect of queer life in our world, and Bury Your Gays explores another. It feels like he's doing a lot of self-reflecting and expunging of his thoughts and feelings onto the page, and honestly I'm all here for it. 

LOVE IS REAL, FRIENDS! HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!

Generation Ship got its hooks into me and dragged me along for a wild ride, read in two sittings. Or is it layings, when you're in bed reading on your Kindle, desperately ignoring how tired you are as you thumb just one more page...

It's a pretty solid premise: a generation ship, hundreds of years after it left Earth, is finally reaching its destination: a planet they can possibly colonize. As the ship approaches, political unrest churns and erupts thanks to the actions of our five main characters. We follow a scientist, a hacker, a police officer, a governor, and a reluctant union leader. Everyone is a mess, acting and reacting and reacting again, decisions pinging off each other until the ship is ready for an entire class revolution. It's great, that way.

Where the book failed for me was in the fact that I did not for one moment believe any of our main characters were <i>real people.</i> They all felt like puppets being moved around by the author to make his story move forward. Like I could see every decision the author was making so it could lead to the next, so it could lead to another, so that this outcome could happen. The constant forward momentum was great and obviously kept me reading, but I felt so dissatisfied with the whole journey by the end, mainly because of the characters.

It also did not need to be nearly 600 pages long.

Issues aside, this was still an incredibly compelling read. It's pure political drama set in space, like John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Stacy Abrams, and Lois McMaster Bujold were all set in a blender and this was the result. 

Would I recommend it? Maybe, if you're looking for something easy to read and need to scratch a political drama, space opera itch. 

The Necessity of Stars is a lush, quiet novella that explores decline in big and small ways. Set in the future, our main character Breone is an elderly UN diplomat who lives in France in a nice house with a nice garden that somehow still flourishes even as the climate crisis has ravaged the world at large. Her best friend Delphine lives next door. She is starting to forget things. And then an alien, a creature, shows up in her garden.

That is about all I can say for a plot. This is a character study at heart, weaving together themes that explore loss of self, loss of the world, how we see the world around us and how or when we choose to look away. 

Tobler's writing is beautiful, but at times I felt that the writing overpowered the story a little. I would get a slightly lost in the scene going on, but then remember Breone is also a little lost and maybe it's all on purpose and things felt right again. 

It's a lovely little novella, one I would recommend for anyone looking for something a little quieter yet still impactful in the themes its exploring.

DNF @ 61% because I got to a point last night while reading where I just laughed and threw my Kindle down onto the bed and decided to finally put it down and go to sleep.

The pacing in this is fucking insane. It's made up of tons of random scenes of full throttle action, juxtaposed with the slowest overall plot momentum. The general plot happens because the main character has to lie to her found family crew, a trope I generally hate. Nothing happened with the psychic cats. The time jumps are wild. 

And it's straight up Mass Effect fanfiction. THE ELEVATORS LMAO.

Honestly, I think this could have been more successful for me if it had been tightened up - a few less side questy hijinks, a bit more of a focus on each side character that Eva is close with. If it's really Mass Effect fanfic, then why were there only two characters who ever did off-ship missions with her? And one of them didn't get anywhere near the character development that the love interest does.

Too many hijinks, not enough heart.