randi_jo's reviews
358 reviews

I had a really good time with this one! Thanks to Netgalley and Orbit for my copy! This releases October 8th! Mark those calendars. 

Pros:
🧚The humor great and not childish in nature.
🧚The portrayal of how childhood neglect and emotional/verbal abuse can warp a person's self-image and esteem.
🧚Great characters. FMC is vibrant, witty, and a bit broken. The antagonist(s) have great motivations but are still so very hate-able.
🧚FMC made me feel so petty because I was 100% waiting for the revenge moment.

Cons:
🧚The ending. I really do think this would've been so so so satisfying and fill that spiritual moralizing cup if it had been a standalone.
🧚Awkward love triangle. I think it's hard to have an instalove relationship AND make a dramatic love hinge at the same time. 

The humor here really did make me chuckle aloud quite a few times. Sure, there's a couple of lewd jokes thrown in there, but most of them are extremely witty and sarcastic. Theo is a fun, relatable, if a bit broken, FMC. I liked the twist of the Cinderella concept, too - they're all just caught in generational spirals of abuse and lashing out.

I think the fun sort've stopped around 90%.

This is simply because I don't like love-hinges (or triangles, however you prefer to call them) too much and then the ending just . . . petered out with a bunch of moralizing that felt rushed (also tacking on at the end that she made the right choice because she spared -unknowingly- an unborn baby was left field). But, then literally the last thing to tie up after the main plot ended was just Theo deciding who to actually be with, which obviously doesn't happen because this is apparently a series so SOMETHING had to be drawn out. I don't know if the romance was the way to go with it though. There doesn't feel like there's a lot of leg to stand on for a second book, and while I didn't hate either of the MMCs or anything, I just don't feel like Theo has really explored the idea of any kind of long-term romance even semi-realistically.

4.25/5 stars but it was a good ride.

So's posthumous writing, both fiction and nonfiction, collection is both astounding and saddening. The interconnected short stories "Straight Outta Cambotown" were are so good, that same undercurrent of helpless searching for meaning that was found in "Afterparties" present, while presenting a quest for the protagonists - I'm sad there will never be more, but I am enthralled by what there is.

I don't really know how to start this review, but I will be honest. It's been a full 12 hours since I finished this and I'm still so mad at it. Like yeah, sometimes comedy pokes fun at big topics and it might be hit or miss, but to have SO MANY in one book?? Unacceptable.

I could NEVER in good conscience, recommend this book to anyone. Not only because it is just Not Good and because it really misses on bringing what made Pride and Prejudice so adored into the mix, but because I would genuinely worry that anyone I recommended this book to, would maybe believe that I also have similar opinions to Big Topics presented in this novel. Some of those things being:

🚩 Capitalism. FMC Rachel hates capitalism (same) but only in the sense that SHE personally is not getting that money. She still slaves away for a cooperation and then ends up moving laterally in the company to something she "enjoys". Still capitalism. And obliquely she hates that capitalist society destroys the planet etc, but even though she TOTALLY mic drops 'fake' Jeff Bezos about not having more awareness for plant based diets in order to create a more sustainable food industry, she cannot go more than two days on a vegan diet. Because cheese, duh!

🚩 The perception of what poverty/getting by is. Rachel complains that capitalism keeps her down, barely able to pay rent and that rich people can't check their own privilege. She herself comes from a family with a home in a million dollar neighborhood, her parents paid for two entire college educations, she CONTINUOUSLY shops at Nordstrom, buys a bottle of wine a day, etc. And while her parent's aren't as financially secure as when she was a kid, it's not like she would be on the streets if she lost her job; I mean her parents let her younger sisters shop at Sephora on a whim with no spending limit. Rachel just sucks at everything in general.

🚩 The views on adultery and that it's OK for women to step out of their marriage and "try new things". I believe Rachel's thoughts were that "people no longer burned women at the stake" for having an affair. BUT THEN, to somehow make this worse, everyone agrees not to tell the woman's husband about it because they RESPECT HER DECISION. And the poor man is basically vilified and lowkey sounded out as if he deserves it because he's sexually insecure, plays Warhammer with his friends (HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING FROM HENRY CAVILL?), and is allergic to cats. If it were me I could not be friends with said person no matter how long I've known them because I find it abhorrent to harbor a secret like that but ALSO THE MAN SHE SLEPT WITH WAS HER FRIEND'S BOYFRIEND and they're just... ok with it? Yeah, no.

🚩 Joking about #MeToo. In any capacity that's just tactless and disgusting, but then to go as far as to NEVER APOLOGIZE and NEVER VILIFY the characters who do it??? Abhorrent. For someone who hates men SO MUCH, Rachel hates women even more. And yes, HER SISTER loses her job for laughing at her #MeToo jokes, Rachel is the lead for SENSITIVITY TRAINING at her job! She should've been fired as well AT THE VERY LEAST! To make it worse, Rachel is never, ever, sorry for her comments. She's sorry she was caught and that her sister suffered for it. Scrubbing the internet of the video and then getting Jane her job back with her BIG BRAIN REPORT was basically just saying Fuck You to assault victims everywhere.

Anyway, there's more but I'm tired of thinking about it. The characters are just big fat caricatures who make absolutely stupid decisions at every opportunity, no one EVER suffers real consequences for their, often, awful actions, and tokenism is present with the token gay Eva and token diversity queen Sumira. Just - no thank you.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Forever publishing for this advanced copy, despite my misgivings of the material itself.

To start out: I have not read the Master and Commander series that this book was based on (heavily?). So maybe some things are the way they are because of that and I'm on the ignorant side.

Anyway, I did end up DNFing this at 31%. I'm not one for DNFing and normally I'd push through, but The Price of Redemption has the misfortune of coming to me at a time where there are SO MANY good fantasy books coming out right now that I don't really have the patience (stubbornness?) to make myself continue. 

Some contributing factors to my decision:

⚓ Why isn't this a historical fantasy rather than toted as a full blown fantasy? Obviously the map is just the British Isles and Europe with different names. . . same with language/cultures/governments etc. Like, why make things more complicated than necessary? Not only am I stuck trying to follow every single nuance of 18th century English Naval Command, but now I have to figure out what made up name denotes which country on top of it.

⚓ There is a lot of dialogue. A lot. And it's very stilted at the best of times and unintelligible without heavy googling at the worst. Honestly I think of the 30% I read, at least 20% of it was just people talking. And maybe I might've understood all the jargon if I'd read Master and Commander. Maybe. They mostly talked about how ships work or the command chain or maybe obliquely about magic or introducing more and more characters who are very samey.

⚓ Enid feels very male-gazey. She's noble and handsome and people sniff her/notice her scent and admire her neck and the hollows under her collarbones. In fact if she hadn't used that one paragraph of magic in the first chapter, I'd be willing to believe she was just there to be a distraction to all the men! Also she is literally sniffed, the man is publicly rebuked for it, and THEN the captain who punished him spends an inordinate amount of time waxing poetic to himself about the curve of her neck. Just. Ok. I honestly feel like character dynamics and interactions would've been better/more organic if Enid had been a man.

⚓ I just was not having fun. Enid mentions if they'll go out and have some good old naval battles and whatnot to disrupt trade and Rue literally says oh no we have to sail a week with no fun times to get new orders. At the pace (three to four days had passed so far!!) of the story thus far I am too tired to find out how narratively long that week will be.

In a way, this is a very long essay about human perception and that humans will always look out for human interest first and foremost over that of animals. However, the information on the variety of animals that are/have been/should be considered pests based on the definition of having a negative impact on human interests, is good, interesting, and sometimes surprising. Also author's humor is great and doesn't detract too much from the topic.

So after reading The Day of the Triffids, I wanted to read more of John Wyndham's works, mostly out of curiosity. Since he is a product of his times, his portrayal of women isn't . . . great, but it's not offensive either. Some stories I found not so great, but I did enjoy quite a few of the stories, particularly the flea tamer haha, and I could see how a lot of the themes and tropes he worked on have evolved over the years, which is fun to see! In all, it was interesting to see how SFF has changed and yet not changed much since the 50's and 60's.

I didn't set out reading this to be depressed about food, but alas, I am now depressed out food AND the fate of humanity and food security. LOL. Anyway, this really has inspired me to plant more heirloom vegetables next year to do my small part.  🐌 

I feel super neutral about this book. Like it had some flaws, but some good stuff too? I can see why it's popular, but uh, I don't think I'll be watching the show any time soon haha.

Pros:

🦌 Really interesting setting with Russian opulence inspiration
🦌 An understandable magic system
🦌 Probably one of the most developed villains I've read in a long time

Cons:
🦌 Mal and Alina's relationship is basically the red flag version of childhood friend romance trope
🦌 Romance in general in this book is . . . well, dry and unbelievable at best. Creepy at worst
🦌 Alina

In all, I'll keep going with this series because I want to see where it goes.

I didn't hate it, but also I'm not sure I liked it much. Alex Easton was an interesting character in the first book, and with this installment I feel like there could've been so much MORE bout ka, but it really became a repetition of talking about ka's tinnitus and soldier's pstd, that really I don't think we learned anything new at all. The horror wasn't as eerie as book one, if a bit more on the gore side instead (meh), and it annoyed me that Angus's mustache was personified for over half the book.

Either way it was a quick, easy read and the initial fairytale it draws from is interesting. 

I'm on the fence on this one. I don't know if I actually enjoyed it or not. Like, it was just interesting enough for me to finish it but if you asked me what my favorite things about it are - well, I'm struggling.

Pros:
✨ - the setting is gorgeous and the prose is nice
✨ - one of the better time-loop time travel plots
✨ - murder mystery solved when no one was <i>trying</i> to solve it lol

Cons:
✨ - weird insta-love-ish romance; like it would've been cute if it weren't borderline creepy
✨ - weird love triangle fake tease that made me feel really bad for Mason
✨ - everything about the idea that

what essentially ended up being suicide

ended up being the answer to "the family curse"
✨ - the mixed genres all ended up feeling very mid when you look at them separately. Shallow romance, mediocre mystery, and an overly convoluted time travel plot.