lermonysnickers's reviews
263 reviews

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

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adventurous challenging dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I really did not appreciate these books and the work they did enough as a kid when I read them for the first time. I won't type a whole essay here, but this makes some great points about the power of propaganda and how though privilege will absolutely help you live a better life, it ultimately will not save you from experiencing the effects of oppression if you are not one of the people in power. How we could have grown up on this and not staged a rebellion by now is beyond me.
Steel Scars by Victoria Aveyard

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adventurous fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? N/A
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

You won't miss anything by skipping this novella. It's probably only worth it if Farley is your favorite character. I read along with the Broken Throne audio and holy shit the Scarlet Guard messages were repetitive and annoying. I also don't understand why Farley is narrated with a British accent when she's canonically from the Midwest, specifically the Wisconsin/Minnesota area. This was so not worth it!
Queen Song by Victoria Aveyard

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

3.0

The concept of this novella is great. Coriane is a character who never got enough attention during the series. So it's sad to see her not get enough attention in her own novella. This is a snapshot and not really a background on her. The time jumps leave a lot of gaps and she ages from 15-22ish within very few pages and very little actual development as a person. There are hints of it but it never gets fully fleshed out. Her paranoia seems a little unfounded since she only had that one interaction with Elara that honestly wasn't that bad and there's barely confirmation that Elara has been in her head for years. It's actually directly stated that she wasn't, which is probably untrue, but we don't get it confirmed strongly enough for that line to not conflict with the canon established by the main series. Ultimately, this novella doesn't live up to what it could be and leans too heavily on the reader already knowing the story rather than working to add something new to the lore.
War Storm by Victoria Aveyard

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I think this book could've been shorter but the pacing issues I noticed in the last two weren't a problem. This is a solid conclusion to the series, though I do believe it would've worked better as a trilogy. I've heard so many people focus on the romance when talking about these books and it's actually really frustrating to see them get treated like The Hunger Games in that way. The Red Queen series builds on The Hunger Games in such a critical way that can best be described as if THG played out on an international scale. If all you noticed in these books was the "romance" (Mare is literally single for a solid 75% of the series), then you missed the point. These books strip back the layers and consequences of oppression and war in ways that many other books fail to and I will defend them until the end of time. Yes, the execution of these stories can have issues but that's a result of Red Queen being Victoria Aveyard's first book ever and the rest being her first series, and these issues do smoothe out by the third book.
The Lost Art of Dying: Reviving Forgotten Wisdom by L. S. Dugdale

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 46%.
DNF and donate.
I was enjoying this book up until the terrible and flat out insulting stance on physician assist suicide left me unable to read to a single other thing this author wants to say. Physician assisted suicide is not fleeing from death or a fear response and is actually probably one of the best examples you could have of putting the ars moriendi into practicing and ensuring that you die the way you want to. Absolutely disgusting and degrading stance.
Land of the Lustrous 10 by Haruko Ichikawa

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

3.5

It's been 6 months since I read the last volume and the marriage plot threw me off so bad I'm still not sure if what I read was canon or if it was an elaborate hallucination.
The Hunger Games: Illustrated Edition by Suzanne Collins

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adventurous challenging dark informative sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The illustrated edition is a must have for any fan of this book and a great way to revisit a story I haven't read since middle school. This story has so much surface meaning as well as many layers of nuance and subtext. I could go on so many rants about the greater implications of so many events in this book and how the continuous narrative works to convey trauma. There is so much to unpack here and anyone who says otherwise or writes this book off for being "depressing" is entitled to their opinion, but also blatantly missed the entire point of the book and the social/political critiques it makes. Hunger Games needs to become a standard book in high school curriculum because it presents so many perfect avenues for learning how to critically engage with literature at a level that is far more accessible for teenagers to digest than the classics that are normally taught.
King's Cage by Victoria Aveyard

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I liked this more than the last book, but I can still say with absolutely certainty that this series could've been condensed into a trilogy. The second and third books have a lot more downtime than the first one did. Red Queen did have plenty of faster and slower moments, but it always maintained its forward progression even in the lulls. Books 2 and 3 seem to move forward and then stagnate for a while, which I'm not a huge fan of in pacing. And dear god why is each book roughly 100 pages longer than the one before it. I can definitely see Victoria Aveyard growing as a writer throughout this series and even though it's not my favorite, I do really like these books and I think they're a fantasticly solid debut!
Tinsel & Tentacles by Kate McDarris

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Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I didn't like this as much as the first book, but that might just be because I fell into a little bit of a reading slump during finals and it took me far too long to read. I'm still getting confused by sudden transitions within scenes where it seems like characters sometimes randomly appear/disappear and it's unclear how they got there/why they left. I'm loving Mare's corruption arc, but I hate how this book ended even things have clearly been building up to that moment. I won't be able to tell for sure until I read the next book, but the vibes of this one feel a little bit like this should've been the middle book of a trilogy but got fleshed out with filler instead to make things 4 books. We'll have to see after King's Cage. Mostly I can say that this sequel is a bit of a step down from Red Queen and the Realm Breaker series is far superior.