leannbolesch

[leannbolesch]

Just spilled hot tea all over myself and it's Brandon Sanderson's fault. I'm reading The Well of Ascension for the first time and was so flabbergasted by the notion that anyone would be so cruel as to name a character Gneorndin that my grip on my mug slipped.

#mistborn #the well of ascension #i hope this character doesn't turn out to do something to deserve that name

[leannbolesch]

For all the Miguel de Cervantes has derided outlandish exaggeration in fiction, it had better have been a common occurence in olden day Spain for entire villages worth of men to become goat/shepherds at the same time as a way of coping with their crush rejecting them.

#don quixote

[leannbolesch]

I made a thing.

Couldn't find an existing page, so now there is one. If someone else who's better at tvtropes editing knows how to add images, please do.

Thought it would be funny if I went to Fourth Wing to see what tropes it had that applied as a starting point for building this list but… that’s a short page. Ended up having to start from combing political and dragon related indexes instead.

Imma feel silly if it turns out this series already had a page under another name.

#the aurelian cycle #fireborne

[leannbolesch]

I finished the overdue library book, but haven't had a chance the past couple days to run to the library and drop it off--although I did log into my account during my lunch break to put the next two Aurelian Cycle books on hold.

For some reason, even though there was as queue to get Fireborne and I had to wait for it and can't renew it due to other people wanting it, the book 2 and 3 copies aren't in nearly as high of demand. It did start slower, and with a disappointingly small amount of dragon time, but it was such a good read and I'm a little confused by why more people in my county don't seem to be moving on to book 2.

That aside, the important part is that both Furysong and Flamefall, despite me expecting a queue to check them out, could immediately be pulled off shelves and sent to my pick up location, and have arrived just in time for me to grab them on the errand trip where I can return Firborne. Now it feels like a hostage situation where I'm only returning book 1 when they give me book 2.

#fireborne #furysong #readblr #leann's corner

[leannbolesch]

How many people from all around Spain who happen to know each other are going to stumble into this small inn on the same night, and will we ever stumble out?

#bookblr #readblr #don quixote #the next chapter title suggests we're gonna be here for another 30 pages at least

[leannbolesch]

A Curse For True Love (2.75 stars)

What the heck was that?

Stephanie Garber has written some books I gave 5 stars to. (I'd probably nitpick more now that I'm using a site that allows for partial stars, but still.) It kinda hurts to get a book that I hesitate to rate as high as "mid" from her.

Spoilers for the previous books in this series:

Compared to the last two books, where there was a continuous arc and goal and things escalated, I had the sense reading this book that Garber realized she had loose ends to tie up--but not a book's worth of them. So we got a half a book worth of plot to cover how Apollo handled being messed with for two books and what releasing the Valors entails. (Kind of. Sort of. We could have just not given Apollo closure the same way we never revisited most of the other supporting characters whose fates are unknown. The Valors thing also screams "this is set up for future books" rather than bringing any plot about them to a close.)

Evangeline's amnesia plot is just a mistake, narratively, on every level. It was a Diablous ex Machina in the last book that I was willing to overlook because of how fast and loose the magic in this story is, but getting it explained midway through this book grated on me. In this book, it primarily served to stall the plot. Between that and her extremely minimal resistance to Apollo keeping her locked up, coupled with the fact that her 'quest' for half the book is to learn information that the readers already know, it's straight up boring to read about her. There isn't even a sense of tragedy in her forgotten bonds. Jacks was already trying to dump her in the last book, and no other characters who she built up a relationship with in previous books interact with her basically until she regains her memories. Rather than add any emotion to their dynamic, it just denied readers the chance to see them as they'd been built up for most of the book.

Presumably because Evangeline is locked out of the plot for so long, the parts of the plot that she cares about are rushed at the end of the book. Exposition is dumped in a forced manner on the newly introduced villain and major developments with a Jacks happen off page twice. This despite Jacks having POV chapters and the author absolutely having enough weight to throw around with the success of this series to ask for a few extra chapters in her book. If her publisher told her she had to cut back anywhere, the useless amnesia plot would have been a better place to cut than the build up to the climax.

Speaking of climaxes, this book also does that obnoxious thing with one of its villains where it turns out you could have just left them to their own devices and they would self-destruct. Thematically, I understand what the author was going for, but it still makes the protagonist feel like they weren't as relevant in their own adventure.

I still like the way the author writes, and Apollo finally became an interesting character in this book. Watching his downward spiral as he struggled with the trauma the last two books put him through and an implied sketchy upbringing was a delight. My only gripe is that the books never establish why he like Evangeline, aside from possibly as a lingering side effect of when he was enchanted to fall in love with her. That makes it feel kind of mean-spirited on the author's part that he was treated as an outright villain with love for Evangeline as his stated motive. Particularly when other equally morally dubious characters are allowed to seek redemption and happy endings.

As a conclusion to Evangeline and Jacks' story, this book does not justify its existence. As the start of another potential story, it's still too bogged down with Evangeline and Jacks to let all the new elements and characters we've added breath. (And I'm freaking counting Apollo as a new character, since we only see his un-cursed personality for the first time in this book.) We could have wrapped up Evangeline's story in the last book and let her have her happy ending with Jacks then, and started yet another series revolving more around Apollo and the Valors and whoever else without the Broken Heart Duo taking up so much oddly apportioned page space.

It just feels like their story was basically done, and it was uselessly dragged out to milk fans for one more book and advertise new characters to sell in the next series, when this one did well enough without the Caraval series having to be misused in the same way to set Evangeline up. Combine that with the author bragging about store exclusive alternate endings and the whole thing feels icky.

#bookblr #readblr #book review #a curse for true love #stephanie garber

[leannbolesch]

Divine Rivals (3.25 stars)

Just crossed my mind that I can do these here.

This book was super hyped, and since learning it was a BookTok darling, I understand why my reading experience did not live up to my expectations.

I can't think of anything particular that really wowed me or that really put me off. I neither liked nor disliked the protagonist, but rather found her somewhat bland. She wasn't flat. Her personality just didn't click for me. A lot of who she is at the start of her story is wrapped up in her family struggles and while I do like a character who's motivated by past family trauma, I find things like loved one away at war and fate unknown or parent struggling with alcoholism tedious to read about as it happens. Apparently, the inclusion of Roman as a second POV was added to later drafts and I'm glad for that. Even if it was narratively unnecessary, he was just a more entertaining character for me

I liked the time period aesthetic and the way in which the author built up exposition about the gods, but I feel like more needed to be explained about the war for it to be included in the plot in the way that it was. More detail about the war itself. More detail about the gods powers and how they were waging the war. The characters, despite being paid to report objectively on what's happening, mostly exist at the periphery of the conflict. I got way too far in before realizing this was standard trench warfare (with one side also using demons as a magic stand in for bomber planes) and not the more classic magic battle I'd expected from a war between gods in a world filled with wild magic.

The romance was okay. It is, as the title might suggest, rivals to lovers, although it felt a little weak on that aspect because Iris starts the book already making efforts to befriend Roman and Roman knows for most of their rivalry about all her intimate thoughts due to him saving her letters. As is typical of a romance fantasy (think power fantasy but for romance, rather than the genre with elves) the male love interest becomes a little too devoted a little too quickly, to the point that other personality traits get eclipsed so he can spend more page space being in love and devoted. The development wasn't too clunky otherwise. The two are given some believable moments and interactions to bring them together.

If I see the sequel sitting out at my library, I'll probably grab it. This book was an okay use of my time. The writing style was nice and easy to read. I didn't fall in love with it and I've got enough else to read about, so I don't see myself going out of the way to find the next book in the near future, despite it already being out. In fact, a day out from reading it I thought "Later this year" and two weeks out I feel more like "If I never get around to it then oh well."

I usually grab a bunch of books before taking a vacation. Maybe as a matter of recency bias, I'll pick up the sequel to read on a plane or something.

#bookblr #readblr #divine rivals #rebecca ross #book review

[leannbolesch]

My friend surprise-visited from out of state at the same time that I had three unfinished books with looming return dates at the library. It was nice seeing her, but I couldn't ignore my house guest in order to binge those books like I planned and now I'm truant.

I highly doubt that anyone in my library system is desperate to read The Burning Kingdom. The only entity that cares is the library's computer system--and me, a little bit. I checked this book out half a year ago. It's only due back now because I hit the renewal limit. I held onto the first two books in the series the whole time as well and only returned them as they finally hit the top of my to-read list this month. Fireborne, however, has 3 people queued to read it next and I just wanna apologize to whoever gets it a few days later than they ought to have. 'Twill be a binge weekend for me to see if I can get both these books finished.

#bookblr #reading #i'm a bad library member

[leannbolesch]

I have learned what the renewal limit is at my library.

[leannbolesch]

Too many books came in from the library at once. I've finished 3 books since the start of the year and I still feel like I'm not reading fast enough.

A friend is about to come in from out of state too, so I'm torn between the pressure to binge-read and the need to freakin' clean before she arrives.

#bookblr

[leannbolesch]

Good

Fucking

God

Okay. So first off, the apparent correct response to "I want you to tempt my wife to cheat so I can confirm she's actually faithful and not just shielded from temptation" is not "It's really shitty of you to baselessly distrust your wife and deceive her like that" but actually "it's rude of you to ask me to look like a cad and you're better off just assuming she's faithful 'cause nothing really changes if she passes the test but you get egg on your face if she fails. Also, it's a blight on her honor if I act like she's unfaithful, and it's a blight on your honor to have married someone with blighted honor. (But also yeah I agree with you most women would probably cheat if tempted and that's why we gotta shelter them.)"

Forgive me if I didn't convey the 'correct' argument in great enough detail. I was trying to summarize 6 pages of dialogue. 6 pages of completely unbroken dialogue, with paragraphs so long that one fell a single line short of taking up an entire page. Pages and pages of metaphors for 'here's why you're better off not knowing' and 'here's how it reflects badly on you and me if we even entertain the odds that she's a floozy.'

I am determined to one day finish this book, but honestly getting through that 6 page monologue felt like running a marathon. I got through a chapter and a half today and I'm gonna take a freaking break.

30% of the way through Don Quixote (which I think I deserve a medal for) and we've put the original story on hold so we can spend what appears to be about 40 pages of the supporting characters reading a tragic romance about a man who tempted his wife to cheat on him.

When this book-within-a-book character said "Dear best friend, I have a confession to do with me being unhappy in my marriage," I was totally expecting him to just... come out as gay. In hindsight, obviously that wasn't going to happen. If not for how Christian the book is, then for the time period alone. It's just so what you'd get from a modern book that my brain went there anyway. (I mean, I didn't expect it to end well, so I wasn't totally fooling myself, but I still expected it to happen.) The lecture I actually got about how you can't trust a woman's virtue unless she proves it and most would probably fail the test is way more in-line with the attitudes in this book.

[leannbolesch]

30% of the way through Don Quixote (which I think I deserve a medal for) and we've put the original story on hold so we can spend what appears to be about 40 pages of the supporting characters reading a tragic romance about a man who tempted his wife to cheat on him.

When this book-within-a-book character said "Dear best friend, I have a confession to do with me being unhappy in my marriage," I was totally expecting him to just... come out as gay. In hindsight, obviously that wasn't going to happen. If not for how Christian the book is, then for the time period alone. It's just so what you'd get from a modern book that my brain went there anyway. (I mean, I didn't expect it to end well, so I wasn't totally fooling myself, but I still expected it to happen.) The lecture I actually got about how you can't trust a woman's virtue unless she proves it and most would probably fail the test is way more in-line with the attitudes in this book.

#don quixote #bookblr

[leannbolesch]

I have finished The Lies of Locke Lamora and will not be requesting book 2 from my library.

I'mma just buy every book that's currently published. This one needs to live on my shelf.

#the lies of locke lamora #gentleman bastards #i actually finished it a week ago but is it really that urgent to announce?

[leannbolesch]

Indie authors I beg of you

Please stop trying to reassure me that your morally ambiguous character with a criminal job has Good Politics Actually I beg of you

John Wick has never had to look me in the face and assure me he is not homophobic, you don't have to either

#this is what ruined killers of a certain age for me #that and the humor just not being as good as i was told #like slip it in organically if you must #but don't hit pause every couple pages and make it all anyone talks about

[leannbolesch]

Just finished the prologue for The Lies of Locke Lamora, which I don't know the premise of because I picked up the book on a recommendation from a stranger without reading the jacket blurb, and damn. I know I'm reading the fully edited version, but this must be what agents and editors are taking about when they say they can tell if a book is good in a single page. The writing is so good that I was excited to be along for the ride, whatever the heck that is, before I even got a vague sense for how enjoyable the characters are.

#bookblr #the lies of locke lamora #gentleman bastards

[leannbolesch]

I started up a StoryGraph account because I heard it's better than Goodreads at recommendations. So far I've input my preferences and loaded in like 5 books. It has rec'd me a book I thought I would like (but actually hated) that I have yet to add, and also one of my all time favorite manga.

I used to wish Goodreads let you do half-stars, but now I realize that offers too much power. Before, I knew exactly what to rank everything. Having the ability to give quarter-stars is too much. I'm being forced to re-evaluate everything I ever thought about a book's quality. 5-star books are getting demoted to 4.75. I'm starting to see why a mid 3 rating on StoryGraph is worse than a mid 3 on Goodreads.

#goodreads #storygraph

[leannbolesch]

I'm getting over some health stuff have no creative energy today, so I'm just doing jigsaw puzzles while listening to story critiques, and YouTube has presented to me a seven hour long video going through the events of Lightlark in chronological order. Personally, I don't like the format and wish the guy would just spoil future events in order to explain why he thinks the setup sucks, rather than keep me waiting for 6 more hours to learn. But it otherwise suffices because I have lots of nothing to do today and it really cuts down on time spent searching for more videos if one lasts this long. It also helps that its a story I'd also determined isn't for me so I don't have to care about spoilers or have to hear something I like get crapped on.

Midway through, got curious and paused the vid to see if Tumblr stans this book or if the guy's takes are popular, and the answer seems to be that the book's quality is controversial, but also I was amused to see that I'm not alone in thinking that 7 hours of nitpick for a book I already wasn't gonna read is great background noise.

#lightlark #youtube #booktube