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V171@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 2 months ago

I'm gay and I read books. New Jersey.

Main account is at @V171@4bear.com

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Only Human (2018, Del Rey Books) 2 stars

Brilliant scientist Rose Franklin has devoted her adult life to solving the mystery she accidentally …

What a mess

2 stars

I was really looking forward to this one after the second really recaptured my attention, but it was disappointing. This one introduced kind of a parallel story storytelling approach, which I'd usually be all about, but the way that the book is written, it felt jarring and poorly paced. My number one gripe with the first book was how similar the characters were written, and this dialed that up to 11 to the point that it was distracting. Story was interesting enough, but not good enough to overlook some of my other issues with the book and the trilogy.

reviewed Veniss underground by Jeff VanderMeer

Veniss underground (2005, Bantam Books) 4 stars

In his debut novel, literary alchemist Jeff VanderMeer takes us on an unforgettable journey, a …

Yeah so what the fuck.

4 stars

This is probably one of the most fucked up, horrific books I've read. And I have read a decent amount of splatterpunk. Felt like a twisted mix between Cyberpunk and Dante's Inferno. We are following three people's point of view, and the book is sectioned off into three POV parts respectively, each longer than the last. Nicholas is a biongineer, or an engineer that creates biological constructs, who has fallen on hard times and is interested in finding the mysterious "Quin", a renowned biongineer who has created numerous "meerkats" and "elephantmen" who serve the near dystopian city of Veniss in many ways. Nicholas consults with his old friend Shadrach who points him in the right direction, but quickly gets in over his head. Nicola is Nichola's twin sister, a well regarded and successful programmer in the city who has lost contact with her brother after he seems to have ghosted …

Project Hail Mary (Hardcover, 2021, Ballantine Books) 4 stars

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission--and if he fails, humanity …

Review of 'Project Hail Mary' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

In Project Hail Mary, the sun is going out. Huge bummer. We also don't know why, and it's happening to many stars in the local area of the galaxy. But we figure out why! And we also find one system where the star ISN'T going out even though it should. So we gotta throw together a ship and crew as quickly as possible to investigate, find a solution, and get it back to Earth in time to save the sun. Enter Ryland Grace, one of the crew members of this ship. He doesn't know any of that though, because he woke up on the space ship billions of miles from home without his memory. As his memory returns, he has to work to figure out who he is, what he's doing, and how to save his home. After a shocking discovery in this alien solar system, he has new exciting …

Review of 'Death Valley' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Thanks so much to the publisher for providing me an advanced reader copy of this book.

Having not read anything by the author before, I wasn't sure what to expect. But I was really happy to find that Death Valley worked really well for me. We follow our unnamed protagonist, an author, in the throes of grief as her father is in the hospital doing poorly. She deals with days of care taking and medical emergencies that she can't seem to escape because her husband also deals with chronic illness. She decides to take a brief retreat to the desert, staying at a prototypical yet eccentric Best Western (a personal favorite of myself as well), where she's recommended a local hiking trail through the desert. On these hikes she comes face to face with physical manifestations of her grief, phantom cacti, children, and personified rocks. And also she gets lost. …

Red Rising (Hardcover, 2014, Del Rey) 4 stars

Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of …

Review of 'Red Rising' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

dnf at 10%

the main character's wife gets fridged to advance his personal character development. Any story that utilizes such a tired and lazy trope has nothing interesting to offer in my opinion.

History of Wild Places (2021, Atria Books) 2 stars

Review of 'History of Wild Places' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Listen, reviews are subjective and I can rate a book whatever I want for whatever reason. Was this book bad? No not at all, I can't really think of anything that it did poorly. But do I feel like I was lied to about the premise? Yeah, so I'm going to rate it accordingly.

We start our story being introduced to Travis, a kind of washed up personal investigator who takes missing persons cases for cash because of his unique ability: he can touch objects and view the memories of the people who used them. He takes a job from a married couple who hires him to find their missing daughter, Maggie, a well-known children's book author who went missing 5 years ago. After a cryptic exchange, he gets a lead from the woman's mother and he sets off into the woods to locate where he thinks she went.

Wow! …

The Employees (Paperback, 2020, Lolli Editions) 4 stars

Funny and doom-drenched, The Employees chronicles the fate of the Six-Thousand Ship. The human and …

Review of 'The Employees' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

STATEMENT 084

"...I dream that there are hundreds of black seeds in my skin, and when I scratch at them they get caught under my nails like fish eggs. Then, with a popping sound, new ones appear where I scratched the other ones away. I feel that this has something to do with the objects in the rooms, but I don't know how. There's something about their smoothness in relation to my skin...I got the impression that one of the objects wanted to take my skin away from me..."

The Employees is a short novel comprised of numbered interviews with "Employees" of the Six-Thousand ship, an exploration vessel whose full purpose is mostly unknown, but one of its functions is to house some strange objects that are recovered from an unknown place. Through the interviews with the employees, we get a vague idea of these mysterious objects which may or …

What Moves the Dead (Hardcover, 2022, Tor Nightfire) 4 stars

From T. Kingfisher, the award-winning author of The Twisted Ones, comes What Moves the Dead, …

Review of 'What Moves the Dead' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Oh my gosh, I was really really enjoying this book up until maybe the last three chapters. Incredible how it pivoted so hard. I couldn't help but compare this to Mexican Gothic, a book I was a fan of. But this improved on that story in so many ways. The creepiness factor was really dialed up, and I found myself to be legitimately freaked out at times. I loved the body horror and almost alien, incomprehensible horror that they were trying to uncover. However all of that went downhill when Madeline, quite predictably, arose from the dead, being controlled by the fungus. That in and of itself wasn't an issue. I thought that was creepy. But having possessed a human, it gave voice to the fungus, which was apparently semi-conscious, had motivations, and was like a child wanting to learn more. There was a comically bad scene of Madeline moaning …

Review of 'Orbital' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Thanks so much to the publisher for providing an advanced reader copy for me to review.

Firstly, this book contains the exact recipe for a book that I would love. To Be Taught If Fortunate, by Becky Chambers, Providence by Max Barry, The Freeze Frame Revolution and Blindsight by Peter Watts... if it involves a few people on a spaceship together with no space and no choice but to become deeply invested in each other's lives, I'm very likely going to love it.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey was no exception. We follow one "day" cycle of 6 astronauts from different backgrounds orbiting the earth in the present day, 16 orbits total. However briefly in this quick ~200 page book, we get to spend an intimate amount of time with these astronauts: their thoughts, their duties, and their relationships, almost as if we are the seventh astronaut sharing the claustrophobic space …

Orbital (AudiobookFormat, 2023, Penguin Random House) 4 stars

A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments …

Review of 'Orbital' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Thanks so much to the publisher for providing an advanced reader copy for me to review.

Firstly, this book contains the exact recipe for a book that I would love. To Be Taught If Fortunate, by Becky Chambers, Providence by Max Barry, The Freeze Frame Revolution and Blindsight by Peter Watts... if it involves a few people on a spaceship together with no space and no choice but to become deeply invested in each other's lives, I'm very likely going to love it.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey was no exception. We follow one "day" cycle of 6 astronauts from different backgrounds orbiting the earth in the present day, 16 orbits total. However briefly in this quick ~200 page book, we get to spend an intimate amount of time with these astronauts: their thoughts, their duties, and their relationships, almost as if we are the seventh astronaut sharing the claustrophobic space …

The Blade Itself (2007, Gollancz) 4 stars

Logen Ninefingers, infamous barbarian, has finally run out of luck. Caught in one feud too …

Review of 'The Blade Itself' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Wow, this ended up really surprising me. I walked into this book having heard some of the more common criticisms, namely the almost complete lack of plot. I'm more of a character reader myself, so I wasn't terribly worried. But even though interesting character work is important to me as a reader, I also really REALLY don't like it when the first book of a series exists solely as an introduction without its own story to lean on, so I started this off This book expecting to be really critical of that. However I knew that Abercrombie's character work was very well regarded, so I was curious to see how that tension panned out. And I have to admit, the characters won me over hard.

We follow several different POV characters as they move about their own individual adventures without any real consistent through line or story. There are hints …

White Horse (2022, Flatiron Books) 1 star

Review of 'White Horse' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

This committed the most egregious sin of horror books: it wasn't scary. At all. Not once. But even worse, it wasn't even horror. This never should have been pitched as a horror book. If I weren't petty, I'd say this is definitely more of a mystery than it is horror. But I am petty, so I'll be honest and say this is first and foremost a relationship drama book about a shitty marriage between the protagonist's cousin and her husband, viewed through the lens of someone who occasionally sees the ghost of her mother. I couldn't believe that, half way through the book, we had the protagonist and her cousin have, quite literally, the same exact argument in three different settings. And it just kept happening over and over and over. I'd actually think it was funny if it weren't so tiresome. There was such hyper focus on the damn …

Review of 'The Stardust Thief' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This was good! A very accessible, fast paced, intriguing fantasy retelling of the Forty Thieves. I particularly loved the world building. Abhullah did a fantastic job of creating a rich and lively setting that felt genuine and interesting. I didn't like the character work so much, most characters were extremely one-dimensional, and while they each had an appropriate character arc that influenced their actions, none of them really had an arc that impacted who they were. Granted, it's the first book in a series, so I imagine we'll see more of that in subsequent installations. But overall this was very charming. I do think it may not end up being terribly memorable as time goes on, but I'm definitely interested enough to pick up the next one that's supposed to release this year.