ketreads's reviews
339 reviews

This was a fantastic read! This is an anthology series featuring 13 short stories ranging from 20-50 pages (roughly).

I'd never heard of this author until recently and, due to it being spooky season, I decided now was a great time to give this book a go. I was sold on this book when I found out the first short story features a retelling of The Thing from the perspective of the alien itself. The author does such a impressive job of introducing us to a wide array of perspectives with every new character and their story. We come to each story curious and cautiously excited to see just where he'll take us next. 

Each short story felt well paced and filled with a wide variety of concepts ranging from first contact, to murder mystery, to existential dread on what it means to be human. I loved that no story ever overstayed it's welcome, nor left too much to be unenjoyable to the imagination. It gave just enough to truly make us understand the scope of the characters situation before starting anew. 
While these stories do lean towards the more dark and distressing in nature but the author says it best in the final chapter of this book:

Overall, if you're looking for well written & thought provoking speculative sci-fi stories, I highly recommend this collection. I hope to read more of this authors work in the future.

Screw it! This book deserves the 5 stars for making me cry as much as I did.

This is book 3 (PART 2) to the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy by Tad Williams. I read this series together with a friend and we had a wild ride for the last few weeks/months. Tad William's world and scope is reminiscent of some of my favourite authors such as Robin Hobb & G.R.R. Martin. The world this story inhabits is filled to the brim with mystery and a history that we get glimpses of throughout that adds a whole new layer to an already epic fantasy tale. 

Don't get me wrong, this series isn't perfect. There were a lot of times I found myself questioning certain story choices, or inclusions of certain characters. The pacing of the series is well known for being slow but even though I'm well used to slow fantasy, I did often find myself waiting for the story to continue.

Saying that, I have not found myself as invested in a story and it's characters in a long time. Every time I found myself questioning just how much I love this series, William's would find a way to make me eat my words. The character of Simon, Miriamele, and Binabik especially were some of the best I've seen in fantasy. Williams is able to make me not only care about these characters, but also emotionally attach myself to those they surround themselves with. As I said in my other review, the relationships in this series is some of the best in fantasy that I've read. 

Despite not loving everything about this book, I still can't justify rating it less than a 5 after the whirlwind of emotions both me and my buddy reading friend went through in those last few chapters. I have not emotionally recovered!!!!!

Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn book 3 (PART 1) review!

I read this series with a friend, though we quickly discovered my book 3 is split into 2 books. I'll be reviewing them separately though I did read them right after the other as though they're a single novel.
Boy was this a wild ride! Where book 2 felt like an intermediary between books 1 & 3, book 3 hits the ground running. Major plot elements come to fruition within this book and even knowing they were going to happen, Tad Williams does a fantastic job of making them nerve wracking. 

I know me and Sam have probably harped on this a lot, but the way William's writes characters is one of the highlight of the series for me. Every character feels so distinct both in their actions and the way they see/react to the world. Reading the interplay between all of these characters makes for some highly emotional scenes, which in turn make major events all the scarier as the author does not shy away from having character die.

While this book IS a big step up from book 2, I still found the pacing a bit lacking in places and certain storylines didn't come together as smoothly as I would have hoped. But, overall, I really loved this continuation of the series.

Another book for my Storygraph Reads the World challenge I decided to join this year.
I've not only been trying to pick from authors who grew up in their respective countries, but also explore genres I'm familiar with (fantasy/sci-fi) from these countries. This is one of those books!

Tail of the Blue Bird is a novella following a young forensic pathologist who is called a rural village following the mysterious disappearance of an local old recluse. This story fantastically captures the clash between long held cultural traditions and modern pathology. The books main character, Kayo, is the perfect vessel for this exploration having grown up with close ties to his mothers community, while also having gained perspective while travelling abroad to learn. He is the only character in the unique position of being able to utilise both of these knowledge bases in a story that weaves mystery & belief seamlessly.

Another book, another fun read!
This book is the 3rd in Sarah J. Maas' A Court of Thorns and Roses series which, if you aren't aware, I've been lent by a friend. I continue to be pleasantly surprised at my enjoyment throughout this series. 

This book kicks off almost exactly where the last left off and hits the ground running. There were many satisfying story moments that had been built up from the previous 2 books, as well as introducing enough new content to keep me entertained throughout. The character development, while a bit clunky in places, was believable enough to not be too distracting (even though Nesta & Elaine are still on my last nerve!!!!) 

Overall, this was a fun continuation from the previous books and added nice development to the overarching plot of the series.

This was a series I very almost did not continue with. Thankfully, I have bookstagram to credit for convincing me as I picked this up in my birthday book haul in July.

I honestly have been struggling to put into words how I feel about this book. I recently reread Gideon the Ninth in preparation to continue the series and found myself LOVING it way more than I did the previous time.

Harrow feels like a fantastic continuation of the series. Where Gideon was witty, heartfelt, and action-packed, Harrow is confusing, mysterious... and action-packed! I was pretty aware going in that I'd most likely be confused for the majority of this book, and yet I still found myself not only enjoying it a lot more than I'd hoped, I also picked up on a surprising amount of details being put down. By the time the reveals started revealing, I felt like one pretty smart cookie! Even though I missed way more than I caught, Muir does a fantastic job of making the reveals entertaining regardless of how much you may have worked out. 

Harrow was such a vastly different character to follow, and I loved Muir's choice in changing our MC in this book. We got snippets of Harrow from Gideon book, but she truly shines as her own complex and easy to root for character here. I loved the secondary characters, and God was great.

If you liked the first, I can not see you disliking the second! Unless you really don't do hidden information stories. It is worth the read, I swear!

This is a book I've seen floating around quite a bit both online & IRL so when I saw it during my birthday book haul I just had to get it!

I recently finished this book and I'm very conflicted on how I feel about it. On the one hand, it didn't quite live up to the exploration of octopus society and the potential confrontation of two intelligent species. But on the other, I loved the existentialism and the questioning the limits of human perception, and memory and what defines consciousness. I loved the way it was written, where I kept feeling on the verge of not understanding what was going on but still managed to cling to the characters as an anchor point.

This book follows 3 main story lines:
Ha, a marine biologist bought on to investigate a new society of octopus
Rustem, a hacker
and Eiko, a recent graduate looking for a job
I really enjoyed the former two. I spent a lot of the book trying to work out how both stories intertwined and once it finally clicked, I had a lot of fun rereading certain chapters with this new knowledge. My complaint comes with Eiko's storyline. We spend the majority of the book not quite understanding why or how Eiko fits into our plot, and unlike Rustem, there's no solid reasoning in the finale that has the previous chapters feeling worth the space. I liked what the author was trying to do with Eiko's storyline, but I did not like the story or it's eventual conclusion. 

Overall, while the ending itself was a bit rushed I did like the outcome of it. I also wish we saw more octopus shenanigans as that's half the reason I was here but once the book was recontextualised as a thought experiment on humanities definition of sentience, it was less of an issue.

I've taken a few days since finishing this book and have decided that it's a solid 2 stars (out of 5). Not terrible, but I definitely didn't connect with it as much as I hoped I would.

The book starts strong. The author introduces us to our main PoVs of Reina, an outcast who at the start of the book has been summoned by her well-known and powerful grandmother who she hasn't seen for years, and Eva, a different sort of outcast who is held at arms length by her family due to her mixed heritage giving her strange magic that the locals look upon as demonic. The world they both inhabit is post revolution so the countries and people we see are still reeling from the consequences from this tumultuous time.

The book eases us into the world, slowly introducing us to the various species, magic systems, and how they are thought of throughout the mapped world. I loved the different in flavouring to each magic system and the clearly well thought upon history to the world we're in. I enjoyed the different humanoid species and the way they're both woven into the story. 

Sadly, despite all these positives I still found myself struggling to connect with any characters plight. Initially both were easy to root for but as the plot progresses and the pacing stretches it got harder to feel any meaningful affinity to either character. This also goes for their relationships between secondary characters, especially Reina. The book is constantly attempting a balancing act of nuance when it comes to impact of class division among two institutionally oppressed races within our main cast but kept only telling one side of this impact destroying all attempt at subtlety. By the end of the book, at the height of danger our characters are being put in, I couldn't find myself caring for the characters plight. Nor was the ending memorable enough for me to be interested in continuing the story.

Overall, I really did appreciate the use of a lesser known folklore to build this fantastical world upon but don't think the author quite stuck the landing in pacing or character work.

 This is yet another instalment to the fantastic Wheel of Time series. This book marks the 13th in the series and the 2nd book written by Brandon Sanderson.

SPOILER FREE:
While I do LOVE this series, this book definitely seemed to suffer from the 'middle book syndrome'... even though it's the 13th book! Let me explain:
So much of this book feels like build-up upon build-up, and while I found myself enjoying all the twists and turns, that's all it ended up amounting to. Storylines don't develop much further than where they stood in the last book, barring some like Matts (who, THANK GOD, finally got off his ass!). After leaving my feelings for a few weeks, I could not tell you what happened in this book, which probably means no single scene had a big impact on me.

Saying that, I did love the conclusion to the Matt storyline (I'm keeping it vague as I can not begin to explain 13 books' worth of build up) but this conclusion was long overdue. So, I am glad we finally got to see it on paper, and it gave us a pretty satisfying ending to that particular narrative. I also continue to love both Egwene and Perrin PoV chapters. I see my girls getting so much hate throughout the series, and I genuinely don't see what there is to dislike. Egwene has undergone such fantastic growth as a character over the last few books, and this book felt like the culmination of this growth. This same feeling goes towards Perrin as well. Seeing them both interact with other characters who haven't seen them since before this growth puts into perspective just how far both them and we as a reader have come.

Overall, I did really enjoy this book even if it didn't hit as hard as some of the others in the series. I'm still 1000% invested in both the characters and the narrative.

I am both scared and excited for the final book.

Soooo, this is my second read of this book, and if (by some miracle) you've seen my previous review, you'd know I gave it a solid 3 stars.

BOY, do I love this on a reread. Somehow, knowing the twists and turns (and often forgetting the majority of them) let me truly enjoy the work Muir has put into this book. Rewatching Gideons and Harrows relationship develops, the world being slowly built up while still having an air of mystery to it, the magic system being barely explained yet still somehow working for me this time around. 

The setting of Canaan House, an old decrepit mansion filled with locked rooms and mysterious staff who inhabit it, made for a fantastic introduction to the series. The confusion of settings, keys, murders (?!), big scary ghosts (???!!!), and whether or not Gideon can truly talk to the others made for endless entertainment. 

I mostly reread this as I'm starting on book 2, but I'm more than glad I did. I pretty much regret donating my original paperback copy and may have to go out and buy a new one now that I love it. DAMN IT!!