Scan barcode
vigil's reviews
189 reviews
The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Gore, Sexual content, Violence, Blood, Death of parent, Murder, Abandonment, Alcohol, War, and Injury/Injury detail
Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
a cute yet underbaked novella. thanh was, to put it bluntly, a dislikable idiot and her plotlines were unconvincing in regards to the character that we see on the page. the other characters were there mostly, aside from the mother, who i couldn’t figure what the author wanted me to think about her. i’m assuming we’re supposed to feel bad and disagree with her mother calling her a stubborn selfish idiot who’s bad at her job but she IS a stubborn selfish idiot who’s bad at her job.
theendgame romance was awfully rushed and uninteresting (considering their backstory, it didn’t need to be) it but it saved me from the clutches of eldris x thanh so i can find it in my heart to forgive it.
this book does fall prey to the narrative of “violence upon your abusers / colonizers makes you just as bad as they are! see how you can go too far!” which i feel as if every fiction book that is even vaguely about abuse or colonization takes this position and i’d dearly like for authors to cut that shit out. it is not nuanced, it is not revolutionary, it’s not even interesting. do something else.
the
this book does fall prey to the narrative of “violence upon your abusers / colonizers makes you just as bad as they are! see how you can go too far!” which i feel as if every fiction book that is even vaguely about abuse or colonization takes this position and i’d dearly like for authors to cut that shit out. it is not nuanced, it is not revolutionary, it’s not even interesting. do something else.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Toxic relationship, Xenophobia, Fire/Fire injury, and War
The Mask of Mirrors by M.A. Carrick
Did not finish book. Stopped at 39%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 39%.
uninteresting, and a cheap shallow take on race and colonialism that the white authors had no business trying to include, considering their lack of skill. i don’t care about a race traitor cop, or a con woman who barely gets to do cons, and has the morals of your average victorian aristocrat, despite being a mixed race street orphan.
and for a novel that goes to painstaking lengths to demonstrate a queernormative society, this book is oddly against anyone doing anything really queer.
and for a novel that goes to painstaking lengths to demonstrate a queernormative society, this book is oddly against anyone doing anything really queer.
The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.5
if nothing else, this book serves as a great manifesto to the vile natures of boy moms.
somewhere in this book there is a promising story. unfortunately, it comes in small increments, few and far between.
the first issue with this book is structural. there are two timelines, a past timeline, and a present timeline. in her commitment to the dual timeline, dean gives justice to neither of them, creating an uneven overly drawn out narrative but also an undeveloped and not well thought out one. this book, when it is not repeating itself, giving long drawn out explanations, revealing plot points too early or too late, will actively contradict itself, even when concerning information that was given not even three pages prior.
in my opinion, this reads like the first draft of a book. the seeds of promise are there, but is ultimately bogged down by nonsense and unnecessary factors. any editor worth their salt would not have sent this book out to print; i am upset that dean doesn’t seem to have that editor in her corner.
another issue is the premise. book eaters are a species, created by an alien known as the collector, to eat and gather knowledge. however the collector apparently abandoned them, and this plot point is utterly irrelevant to the novel. they live in secret societies for no good reason, and it seems to only make things harder on themselves. there is a sort of vampire racism here (the book eaters here are a very dumb vampire allegory) in the mind eaters who do exactly what you’d think they’d do. this sort of biological reasoning for oppression and discrimination is a common and short sighted trope in sci-fi fantasy and i really wish it would die off already.
this book also chose to essentially make a poor imitation of the handmaid’s tale, by implementing a gender essentialist society (which is utterly ridiculous in general, but especially here where the basis of the society is that knowledge is power) and recreating patriarchal structures, despite book eaters being secluded from human society and explicitly not sharing their customs, aside from stupid moments of christianity that are unaddressed and make no sense.
the author’s handling of this misogyny is shallow and reductive, and often ends up falling prey to the very structures it is attempting to criticize. it writes a cartoon character of a villain in her elder brother ramsay, who’s pov is written identically to that of a 13 year old boy who’s been radicalized by andrew tate.
devon herself is mostly devoid of a personality, aside from being kind of selfish (though she has been given no reason and often no option to be selfless) and her most important trait, being a mommy. you’d think that as a former childbride who was sold off twice to become an incubator and had to abandon her first child at three, and had her second unwanted child be a monster who eats brains, her relationship to motherhood and her children would be fraught and complicated, especially in the case of cai, where she is forced to murder innocents to keep him fed. but alas, no. everything is overcome through the power of motherlove which overcomes all, and is magic, instantaneous, and controls all your thoughts. give me a goddamn break.
devon has approximately two positive female dynamics, one is the sister of her male friend who she talks too all of twice, and bond over #motherlove with, and the other is a woman she spent two days with and somehow fell in love. the other women are generally portrayed as jealous old hags, and not usually mentioned.
and the ending. the ending is contingent around the fact that the book eater families are undocumented and thus the women cannot leave. so they must go to ireland where there is an unguarded border.
the issue is that the idea for the ending is introduced just a few chapters after the reveal that one of the book eater families uses undocumented immigrants for cheap labor. if you can traffic people in, surely, as an ancient super race, you can find a way to get across the ocean. (if you’re wondering if the human trafficking is relevant or commented upon much, the answer is no. like 50% of all the other information in this book.
the only reason I’m not giving it a flat one star is because this book is exactly like a cw show. it’s not outstanding but mostly banal in its inoffensiveness(aside from the aforementioned shallow treatment of feminism and the fact that the author creates an asexual character just to be aphobic to him whenever it’s brought up) and somewhat interesting in its ideas. you can see the promise and potential it has, and occasionally it lives up to it….. then crashes and burns back down.
it’s like if julie plec did a vegan vampire take on the handmaid’s tale. if that doesn’t make you shiver in horror then i can’t help you.
somewhere in this book there is a promising story. unfortunately, it comes in small increments, few and far between.
the first issue with this book is structural. there are two timelines, a past timeline, and a present timeline. in her commitment to the dual timeline, dean gives justice to neither of them, creating an uneven overly drawn out narrative but also an undeveloped and not well thought out one. this book, when it is not repeating itself, giving long drawn out explanations, revealing plot points too early or too late, will actively contradict itself, even when concerning information that was given not even three pages prior.
in my opinion, this reads like the first draft of a book. the seeds of promise are there, but is ultimately bogged down by nonsense and unnecessary factors. any editor worth their salt would not have sent this book out to print; i am upset that dean doesn’t seem to have that editor in her corner.
another issue is the premise.
this book also chose to essentially make a poor imitation of the handmaid’s tale, by implementing a gender essentialist society (which is utterly ridiculous in general, but especially here where the basis of the society is that knowledge is power) and recreating patriarchal structures, despite book eaters being secluded from human society and explicitly not sharing their customs, aside from stupid moments of christianity that are unaddressed and make no sense.
the author’s handling of this misogyny is shallow and reductive, and often ends up falling prey to the very structures it is attempting to criticize. it writes a cartoon character of a villain in her elder brother ramsay, who’s pov is written identically to that of a 13 year old boy who’s been radicalized by andrew tate.
devon herself is mostly devoid of a personality, aside from being kind of selfish (though she has been given no reason and often no option to be selfless) and her most important trait, being a mommy. you’d think that as a former childbride who was sold off twice to become an incubator and had to abandon her first child at three, and had her second unwanted child be a monster who eats brains, her relationship to motherhood and her children would be fraught and complicated, especially in the case of cai, where she is forced to murder innocents to keep him fed. but alas, no. everything is overcome through the power of motherlove which overcomes all, and is magic, instantaneous, and controls all your thoughts. give me a goddamn break.
devon has approximately two positive female dynamics, one is the sister of her male friend who she talks too all of twice, and bond over #motherlove with, and the other is a woman she spent two days with and somehow fell in love. the other women are generally portrayed as jealous old hags, and not usually mentioned.
and the ending. the ending is contingent around the fact that the book eater families are undocumented and thus the women cannot leave. so they must go to ireland where there is an unguarded border.
the issue is that the idea for the ending is introduced just a few chapters after the reveal that one of the book eater families uses undocumented immigrants for cheap labor. if you can traffic people in, surely, as an ancient super race, you can find a way to get across the ocean. (if you’re wondering if the human trafficking is relevant or commented upon much, the answer is no. like 50% of all the other information in this book.
the only reason I’m not giving it a flat one star is because this book is exactly like a cw show. it’s not outstanding but mostly banal in its inoffensiveness
it’s like if julie plec did a vegan vampire take on the handmaid’s tale. if that doesn’t make you shiver in horror then i can’t help you.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Confinement, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Gore, Infertility, Misogyny, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Violence, Blood, Pregnancy, and Alcohol
Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories by Charlie Jane Anders
Did not finish book. Stopped at 38%.
LMAOOO absolutely not.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 38%.
“And after watching approximately 10,000 hours of the CW, I've started to notice just how ruthlessly efficient the scenes in a typical episode of The Vampire Diaries or Arrow are. Each episode is juggling a dozen subplots, so every scene needs to carry its own weight and move at least one subplot forward, if not several. Characters on the CW enter each scene with an axe to grind, or a problem they need to solve, or often the need to murder each other. They interact, and something shifts in their dynamic, often heightening their conflict (if it's the middle of an episode), and then each scene ends with some kind of knife twist-_-or neck twist, if it's Vampire Diaries.
If you want to see how to strip a scene down to just its bones, then watching the CW provides a masterclass.”
LMAOOO absolutely not.
In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide, Suicide attempt, and Murder
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
this book, was not amazing. plotwise, it was very promising and admittedly, i love an apotheosis story, so on this front i was easy to please. that said i don’t think it was done as deftly as it could’ve been, as any real moments of insight into plot and character developments where easily undercut by scene after scene of yeine’s coochie quaking because of nahadoth, a half baked and unconvincing romance that never made me quite believe that their feelings towards each other where separate from enefa’s influence nor that they genuinely enjoyed each other outside of inexplicable horniness. it grew more believable at the final portions, but by then it was too late.
the romance in general is not to my taste, as i can only liken it to being nk jemisin’s take on a sarah j mass plot, with shoddy the worldbuilding and flat characters included. yeine has moments where she’s almost interesting, as does nahadoth, but then jemisin has them fall back into the role of the new adult jerkass inhuman romance plot (which i must say, an inhuman mortal immortal romance can in fact work, and my prime recommendation is the winternight trilogy, starting with the bear and the nightingale) and then their boring again. the most intriguing aspects of this book happen when they are not involved with one another (and thus the main plot as the two are inextricably tied) such as when yeine is looking into her mother’s past, or her own personal connection with her home country and family there, and when nahadoth interacts with the other gods, particularly the flashbacks.
this book could’ve been great, and it wasn’t a terrible reading experience, but it wasn’t all it could’ve been.
the romance in general is not to my taste, as i can only liken it to being nk jemisin’s take on a sarah j mass plot, with shoddy the worldbuilding and flat characters included. yeine has moments where she’s almost interesting, as does nahadoth, but then jemisin has them fall back into the role of the new adult jerkass inhuman romance plot (which i must say, an inhuman mortal immortal romance can in fact work, and my prime recommendation is the winternight trilogy, starting with the bear and the nightingale) and then their boring again. the most intriguing aspects of this book happen when they are not involved with one another (and thus the main plot as the two are inextricably tied) such as when yeine is looking into her mother’s past, or her own personal connection with her home country and family there, and when nahadoth interacts with the other gods, particularly the flashbacks.
this book could’ve been great, and it wasn’t a terrible reading experience, but it wasn’t all it could’ve been.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cursing, Death, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
Did not finish book. Stopped at 36%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 36%.
bizarre anachronisms, repetitive and boring, stilted and modern tone for characters ostensibly in the 19th century, set in britain of all places with a protagonist from a fictional country with neopronouns and 2020s social justice language, yet also manages to read like an upper class english soldier, making the worldbuilding of the fictional country with absolutely no bearing on the plot even more useless than it is in the story (which is quite useless, aside from the obvious sequel bait, and kingfisher can fuck right off with that shit), incredibly flat characters with the most personally egregious being an elder mycologist who is a thinly veiled english take on a quirky not like other girls character (her second scene in the book draws attention to how bold and blunt and passionate she is, unlike most english women), whose only other personality trait (other than mushrooms) being “someone who experiences misogyny,” and getting sixty pages into a 156 page novella and still having no sense the house, the ushers, thematic purpose or why kingfisher wrote this book. i’m
not in the habit of going ride or die for old dead white men, but instead of reading this boring book, read the original house of usher for free on the internet.
i could go on for hours just from what i’ve gleaned from 60 pages (only christ knows what i would’ve ended up with had i finished) but i’ll refrain. after trying and failing to read nettle & bone and now this, i think it’s safe to say kingfisher is not the author for me.
not in the habit of going ride or die for old dead white men, but instead of reading this boring book, read the original house of usher for free on the internet.
i could go on for hours just from what i’ve gleaned from 60 pages (only christ knows what i would’ve ended up with had i finished) but i’ll refrain. after trying and failing to read nettle & bone and now this, i think it’s safe to say kingfisher is not the author for me.
Verge: Stories by Lidia Yuknavitch
adventurous
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
like my experience with thrust, i adored this book. yuknavitch isn’t one to pull her punches and isn’t afraid to get weird with it in a way that i really enjoyed.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Drug abuse, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Trafficking, and Murder
Through the Woods by E.M. Carroll
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
much better than my previous jaunt into emily carroll’s work but my primary criticism remains: emily carroll is a gifted artist and a mediocre storyteller. this collection did have a better narrative than when i arrived at the castle, but nothing stood out for me personally.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Death, Blood, Death of parent, and Murder