sarahdm's reviews
156 reviews

This took awhile to get into (some of these stories are very sad) but once I did I couldn't put it down. Southon take on Pop History is honestly really enjoyable and easy to digest. Definitely recommend.

Well they can’t all be bangers.

I wasn't expecting for this to be the all female hero adventuring group book, but it was and I'm honestly delighted. Every woman is strong, smart, brave, and total bad asses while also being incredibly diverse in their personalities. There are also autistic and disabled MAIN characters. Every character is so tenderly written and crafted. I love all of them. This is SO REFRESHING in the epic fantasy genre. This is some good soup.

That being said I think Age of Swords does suffer from MBS: Middle Book Syndrome. There are points where it did kind of drag but over all I loved the characters so much, once the narrative started picking up I could not put it down.

I honestly think Age of Swords in near perfection.

Got 39 pages in and just didn't care. My library loan laps and I have no desire to put in another loan for it. 

 
That's quite the personality you got there Wilson. Not for me. DNF before finishing chapter one (5% mark, about 25 mins in) 

DNF-ing this before even finishing chapter one. (3% mark, about 9 mins in)

The authorial voice is grating. I agree with other that Ness does not translate well to text.

Interesting, weird. A little more human and informative than the Wikipedia page for Mr. Knight. But this really felt like it was lacking something, and I just can't quite put my finger on what that is.

Tobias is such a beautifully tragic character and I love him so much. Again, there are a lot of mature themes in this book, including suicide, body dysphoria, confusion about identity, etc. But Tobias is such a deeply emotional and feeling character, I really feel like it was handled well. Honestly looking forward to more of his POV books but I know he doesn't have a lot which is just TRAGIC. I love you bird boy ;A;

 This book was honestly depressing. These kids out here mourning war casualties. And then the big emotions of fear while animorphing. Jeez, I just keep thinking about how these are 13 year olds and its kind of heart breaking.

The dialogue between the character was great. Love Rachael's character here. 

This was okay. The first few chapters about the historical context for the "failed heterosexuality" was interesting. As well as the sections about pick-up culture. I think these chapters are REALLY GOOD and what really kept this book out of the two star zone for me.

But there was something else that kept bothering me through out the whole book. The author kept pausing to say "well of course this is not all men." Ward is letting this phrase "not all men" do a lot of the heavy lifting. Not once did she analyze successfully heterosexual relationships to see what the "not all men" guys were doing differently to perform successful heterosexuality. The only form of "successful" sexuality that she presented was LGBT relationships, which I don't think is entirely fair. Queer relationships are not the pinnacle of success. There are plenty of queer relationships that are just as toxic as straight ones. She suggests in later chapters that successful heterosexuality could be obtained by men functioning outside the patriarchy, gaining empathy for women, and "queering up" their relationships. But Ward doesn't actually interview successful heterosexual relationships who are doing that and getting results. Like, I don't think she interviewed ONE straight couples or persons besides the interviews with the pick-up artist guys.

I also agree with most reviewers: chapter four was completely unprofessional and unnecessary. She surveyed, what, 57 of her Twitter followers and their complaints about heterosexual culture. And most of these complaints the audience is already pretty aware of. Reiterating them in this way and in this context just seems weird. Nothing about this chapter felt academic or analytical the way the rest of the book did.

I'm queer myself so a lot of this book I enjoyed. But just because I agree with a lot of the arguments don't really give it a pass on criticism.