Tattooed Bibliophile

I’m mad at the ending

Revisado: 02-15-23

This book probably deserves every bit of 5 stars. But I read for fantasy, because real life doesn’t have a happy ending, but we can at least read one in a book. And I knew that it had to end a certain way, I knew. Buy I needed some hope. This ending feels like despair.

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Life changing

Revisado: 02-02-23

Read books that weren’t written for you, outside of your box, books that make you uncomfortable. Read THIS book.

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Stunning

Revisado: 01-11-23

I adored this book. Especially the ending, just beautiful! I’m only disappointed that I let it sit on my shelf this long before reading it. It’s certainly not receiving the media attention it deserves, what an underhyped book!

I love sci-fi space opera, and time travel is cool. But this is a combination of dystopian and multi-dimensional travel that is at the same time entertaining and poignant. I can’t wait for more from this author.

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WHY HAVE I NOT HEARD OF THIS BEFORE?!!!

Revisado: 02-19-21 El oyente recibió este título gratis

Vega Volante was almost done with her mandatory service to the Axis government. Until her squad was attacked by aliens. Only...she is the only survivor, and many don't believe her story.

The attack on her squad caused the government to extend all of the active military contracts, including her conscription. Now she's stuck on a far out post training for war when she should be helping her family with the harvest.

As if most of the other soldiers disbelief of her story didn't make her enough of a pariah, she's also a "grounder," someone who was born on a world instead of in space. She's shorter and stronger than her space born counterparts.

So when an accident on her first day at her new post results in her saving the life of a fellow cadet with her strength should have given her some credit, instead she finds suspicion aimed at her, not only from her fellow soldiers but also from command.

Not to mention the fact that she knows she didn't make up the story about the aliens. And she knows how little good their human weapons are against them.

WOW WOW WOW.

Do you ever read a book and get mad that it isn't more popular, that you've never heard of it? Well, here I am, pissed off that people know about Brian Sanderson's Skyward series but they've never heard of Pamela Stewart. As an avid sci-fi fan I'm always excited to see women writing the non-romance version of sci-fi, something I so rarely see. That's why I picked it up.

But I didn't expect it to be THIS good. If it was THIS good why haven't I heard of it? Maybe because it's independently published, maybe because the author is female. Either way I intend to rectify this situation by telling every sci-fi reader I know about this series and this author.

Vega is just the right amount of vulnerable and just the right amount of strong. She makes a few bad choices - it is YA after all and she's only 17 - to further the plot without being annoying. Her new squad is full of misfits like her, people who don't fit the mold, and they are all so interesting and fun. I've got such a "thing" for a squad of misfits. What can I say, it's a trope I love!

The only criticism I have of this book is that I want MORE. I wanted it to be longer, I wanted more everything - more world building, more training, more mystery and people acting weird and not knowing why - twists and turns and the unpredictability! Yes yes yes, I want more!

5 Stars, I can't wait to read the second book! (And if you're wondering - yes, I did follow Pamela Stewart on Amazon so that I can binge read everything she's published! She's an indie writer to watch folks!)

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Not as good as the others

Revisado: 12-02-20

While I enjoyed all the dialogue and quips and the story very much, there were long swaths of story solely describing battles and technical jargon without any character action or plot. This made for some boring sections of the book that seemed like filler. I also feel like there could have been so much more imagination put into the anthropology of the alien species. Alien squids in M/F + 2 kids in an apartment building is just so blah. So strange that the nuclear family in our society is also somehow a construct of an alien society of squids. All the other species in this series were so interesting, but this one we got to see a home planet and the daily lives of a non-bipedal species, and we didn’t focus on that even a little? Such a lost opportunity. But of course the overall plot and comedy was on point as always.

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I can't wait to see how this ends!

Revisado: 09-03-20 El oyente recibió este título gratis

In the second book of the Silrith epic saga, we have new players enter the power struggle. Silrith makes mistakes she pays dearly for, Jostan continues to be his hateful self, converting or killing everyone in his path. Ezrina learns that while an enemy is predictable in their hate, an ally can be far more challenging to anticipate.

So the Game of Thrones continues. I kept referring back to it in my review of the first book, Vengeance of Hope, but the comparison holds true. There are many chess pieces on the board, and even the ones you root for are not the "good guy." But of course there are always bad guys!

I find myself with the same sort of feelings I had while reading Game of Thrones. There is of course an overall contender for the throne that we want to win (the name if the series is Silrith after all,) but she is not ineffable. And some of the other characters are trying to do good as well. So while Ezrina is sometimes thinking of Jezna more than her people, and Zethun lets his new found power go to his head, in the end they are trying to do what's right. So in this chess game it's hard to predict where all the pieces will fall. (I also want to take a moment to compliment the author that his characters' names are pronounced just like they are spelled. While the names are unique, they're still pronounceable and not hard to read. This may seem like an odd soap box to jump on, but it's so distracting when I struggle to pronounce character names in my head while I'm reading. I don't want to trip over them every time I come across them! So thanks PJ!)

That's what I love about this series. I hate being able to predict everything that will happen in a book. It's why I generally veer away from anything romance, because there's really only one way for those to end.

Epic sagas on the other hand? Who the eff knows?! And that's why we love them.

This story is very intricately woven, but not hard to keep track of. The characters are distinct enough for me to remember who they are most of the time, and I loved the ending. Even though I had hints, I didn't see that coming!!! But it all made sense. So props to the author for that very carefully woven tapestry, it's not easy to do! (I may not be a writer myself, but it's rare for me to read a book where I don't find a lot of "convenient" plot holes. Even The Lord of the Rings had big ones - WHY didn't the eagles fly them to Mordor in the first place?!)

I digress. The only thing that knocked off a star for me is that there are shades of mystery without magic, and it seems like you kind of have to choose one or the other. Is there magic in this world or not? I still don't know. Are Ezrina and Jostan truly talking to their gods, or are they religious zealots? There's a vague mention of a battle ground being haunted, is that a thing? Maybe as an epic fantasy reader I'm so used to magic that I just miss it here. But I feel like just a bit of it would add to the story. The battle scenes are a tad overdone to me but that's really just a personal preference. Overall I enjoyed this epic story!

4 stars, I definitely want to see how this ends!

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I cannot forgive this series for letting me down

Revisado: 11-15-19

They call her Robin Hood...

CRAS is the Child Redistribution Adoption System. In the absolute epitome of socialism, children are taken from the poor and given to the wealthy, so as to create less of a burden on the government welfare system. But like any man-made government, it can be corrupt. And Robin, an adoptee herself, figures out just how deep the corruption goes after becoming pregnant herself as an unwed teen.

First I want to say that I am the Queen Goddess Superfan of dystopian novels. I love them. I adore them. I devour them like a man lost at sea devours fresh water. So by all rights I should have absolutely been obsessed with this series.

I also would like to say that, for the record, I am a very forgiving reviewer. I've tried to write my own books, and I know how desperately difficult it is to put a great idea onto paper, having been mostly unsuccessful at it myself.

But I cannot forgive this series for letting me down so truly.

I shall now outline my shocking letdown for you.

Point 1 - it seems to be written in more of a movie script style than a novel. It moves very slowly, and there is excessive useless dialogue used to reach very obvious conclusions. There is a massive overuse of the word "realized," as if the characters in the book are very stupid. This makes you dislike, and frequently want to shake, the protagonist, instead of rooting for her.

A couple examples - 1. a character is captured. He lives with another character. The characters all go back to that guys house, as if its location has not been compromised by the capture of a person who lives there! 2. this is not a fantasy series, but wolves show up at one point and lead them to safety. Then the characters just stop and chat for a few minutes when they are being chased, and I literally was screaming aloud for them to continue to run. After they outrun the bad guys they literally LIGHT A FIRE in the woods to camp, like some kind of damn homing beacon.

Point 2 - I only know how to describe this as too much convenience. Here, let me give you an example. Numerous times throughout the story, the author describes what seems like a very serious injury that makes you very concerned for that character. Then, 5 minutes later, that character walks them right off. Then they suddenly appear later at an inopportune time, when that injury should have been causing that character pain and difficulty the whole time. But that wouldn't be convenient, so the author just glosses it right over.

Point 3 - each book is the same recycled story. I don't even have to include spoilers. Characters go into dangerous situation unprepared. They almost get caught. They run away. They go back to a place they've already been or another obviously unsafe place, have 5 minutes to breathe and discuss the obvious, and then just as they are about to leave, the bad guys show up again. Rinse and repeat.

Point 4 - Because of all of the above points, the books are extremely predictable.

Point 5 - None of the books I read have an ending. They literally just stop mid-story. You can't call it a cliffhanger if you haven't had any kind of conclusion. These books could have easily been edited down and put into one story. I have seen this practice before, forcing a reader who has become invested in a story to buy the next book. This series is quite blatantly trying to do just that.

Which brings me to Point 6 - was any editing at all done to this story? Sometimes I thought that it must have been ghost written. The ideas are there, the premise of the story is interesting. But the writing is terrible. Did the author scratch the idea into an outline and then hand it to a series of other writers, and then patch together each person's part without making sure they were cohesive? Or is Bella Forrest secretly a 12 year old girl, who self-published her story in parts as it was written, forgetting what was in the last story and not bothering to go back and check? I'm not sure.

Oh, how I lament to be hating on someone's work, but this story had SUCH POTENTIAL, and it makes me angry that it was so poorly executed. If somehow my review makes its way to the writer's eyes (which I hope that it doesn't because I truly don't want to hurt someone's feelings,) please get some beta readers and an editor.

1 star. I could not finish this series, and I tried. OH, how I tried. But I could only suffer through 4 of the 6 before throwing in the towel in utter despair.

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I'd be forced to really live without walls.

Revisado: 10-11-19 El oyente recibió este título gratis

"I'd be forced to really live without walls. I'd be forced to live on an edge where things might actually be good, and every day I'd risk having it ripped away. Nothing lasts forever. Everything is fleeting, and yet that's the very reason that life has meaning. When things cost effort to gain, and are finite, they have value."

Ren is a dream traveler, a secret race of people with the power to travel out-of-body to anywhere. Some dream travelers have other powers. Ren was born with the unique ability to both read and influence minds. He has far too much power for any mortal.

But even a monster can develop a conscience. And with the people who love him, will he be able to turn his curse to good? Or will he truly become the monster he's always believed he is?

Are you in to morally ambiguous characters? I AM. Give me a Victor over an Eli any day. I don't want a hero, I want a broken man who chooses good over everything in his life pushing him to do bad. I want a redeemed man. A deeply troubled smartass of a redeemed man. And this quote endeared him to me forever:

"I ignored the first knock. A minute later it came again.

'Go away!' I said from my armchair. My feet were propped on the mahogany coffee table, Brave New World opened and nestled in my lap. I detested being disturbed when reading. Hell, I detested being disturbed period. Some people have a preference for being alone most of the time. For me, it's an absolute necessity."

I mean, relatable AF amiright?!!

But first he needs to be very, very bad. Ren fits this bill excellently. After a few chapters, his personality seemed very much like Lucifer from the hit Netflix series. He loves to be bad, but deep down, somewhere in the dark pits of the heart he doesn't believe he has, there is a place where all he wants is to be normal, to be loved.

Luckily for our Ren, he is loved. But loss makes him run from love, and the people he runs to have the potential to make him the biggest villain the world has yet seen. I was on the edge of my seat waiting to find out if he could overcome his demons, or whether he would embrace them instead.

4 Stars, I loved it and will keep on reading the series!

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