This was absolutely precious in concept and in execution. The art is gorgeous, and the storylines had moments funny enough that I actually laughed out loud. I can't wait to see where else this is going to go in future volumes in terms of character development!
This is a beautiful, heartbreaking book, that left me in real, literal tears at the culmination of it. It tells us a bittersweet tale of two men in 19th century France, and the growth of their relationship from acquaintances, to friends, to something more. A true slow-burn romance.
I enjoyed this story very much, and I found the author had a great gift for prose, painting the landscape both physical and emotional with lush and evocative description. That said, there really is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and I did find myself skimming over some of her lovely comparisons simply because there were too many of them, and because some were hyperbolic enough to stretch credulity.
The slow growth of romance really suited the author's style of writing, as well as the time period, putting one in mind of romances written during the period. It was appropriate and very sweet, and it was a refreshing change from many of the stories in this genre on the market.
I was fully prepared to give this book a solid 3/5, because I enjoyed it and I didn't regret the time I spent reading it... and then the end came, and it undid me. Well done, Lily Velez. I haven't cried while reading a book in longer than I can remember. Bonus star for drawing actual tears from the depths of my cold, black heart.
* I received an advance copy of this title through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review *
I enjoyed this story very much, and I found the author had a great gift for prose, painting the landscape both physical and emotional with lush and evocative description. That said, there really is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and I did find myself skimming over some of her lovely comparisons simply because there were too many of them, and because some were hyperbolic enough to stretch credulity.
The slow growth of romance really suited the author's style of writing, as well as the time period, putting one in mind of romances written during the period. It was appropriate and very sweet, and it was a refreshing change from many of the stories in this genre on the market.
I was fully prepared to give this book a solid 3/5, because I enjoyed it and I didn't regret the time I spent reading it... and then the end came, and it undid me. Well done, Lily Velez. I haven't cried while reading a book in longer than I can remember. Bonus star for drawing actual tears from the depths of my cold, black heart.
* I received an advance copy of this title through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review *
Monstress is a beautiful, beautiful book, with intricate and enchanting artwork that can tell a story by itself. Three of my four stars are really just for the art alone. It will take your breath away and leave you scouring the panels to pick out the tiniest details. I really cannot say enough wonderful things about it.
The art of course is only part of the graphic novel, and the remainder is still quite enjoyable, if not as well-wrought. The main character is not the most sympathetic, and in a world where everyone else seems to be pretty terrible too, that can be difficult to handle at times. There's very little light in the shadowy depths of this tale, and it can make things a little muddy when you're down in it. It's a gritty story about terrible people, and at the end of it I'm really not sure just how I would WANT things to turn out. Hopefully in later issues we'll see a broader cast of characters who can perhaps provide the plot with someone we can empathize with.
Despite this, I still found the story of Monstress to be quite compelling, and I can't wait to see just how much worse things get, with war on the horizon and Halfwolf's nature changing into something positively monstrous.
* I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. *
The art of course is only part of the graphic novel, and the remainder is still quite enjoyable, if not as well-wrought. The main character is not the most sympathetic, and in a world where everyone else seems to be pretty terrible too, that can be difficult to handle at times. There's very little light in the shadowy depths of this tale, and it can make things a little muddy when you're down in it. It's a gritty story about terrible people, and at the end of it I'm really not sure just how I would WANT things to turn out. Hopefully in later issues we'll see a broader cast of characters who can perhaps provide the plot with someone we can empathize with.
Despite this, I still found the story of Monstress to be quite compelling, and I can't wait to see just how much worse things get, with war on the horizon and Halfwolf's nature changing into something positively monstrous.
* I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. *
Oh my word. I was hoping for a good, punchy ending to the series after the slow build-up of the first two books, and I was definitely not disappointed. Morgan does a fantastic job of wrapping up his loose ends (almost all of them, if you read carefully between the lines), with a legitimate twist or two that left me cursing and staring at the pages in disbelief. With the sheer volume of fantasy that I've read, the fact that Morgan still managed to surprise me ensures this book will be among my favorites for a very long time coming.
I loved this book. I really, really did. The pace is slow, the plot is thin, and yet... Morgan continues to wow me with his excellent prose and non-awkward dialogue. This book is clearly meant to be a bridge to the end of the story, which is a purpose it serve very well. If you need something to happen in your stories, this one is sure to disappoint, but I loved it all the same.
It's not terribly often a book makes it onto the tiny list of "things I loved like breathing" on the first go-around. Usually it takes a couple of re-reads before I realize that yes, this is one of them, this is a book I'll tell everyone I know to read with all the passion of a newly besotted lover.
This was an exception to the standard.
I sit here basking in the afterglow of this book, counting down the seconds until tomorrow when I can pick up the next one, and probably in no more than the four days this one took, I'll be fiending for the third. After that is something I'm not really ready to contemplate, which is parting ways with Gil and company, and this fascinating place that Morgan has conjured for us. This is the tl;dr. I loved this book and I hope you will too.
What's to love? Well, a lot. We can start broad and get smaller.
Let's touch on the elephant in the room, first: the genre. Grim-dark fantasy kind of has a rep for trying too hard, and frankly a lot of it does exactly that, leaving you rolling your eyes at how "edgy" everything has to be, picking your way through prose littered with absolutely unnecessary swears. Does this book have prose littered with swears? Oh you betcha. Are they unnecessary? Maybe sometimes, but mostly not. They suit the mood. Where it really shines in the genre is simply by not trying too hard. The story is what it is, it doesn't feel like anything has been tacked on just to shock or appall you.
The prose is not overly flowery, but show more Morgan does have a way with words. The action scenes are frankly my favorite out of any book I've ever read. Usually in books these are parts I skim, because it's difficult to paint a clear enough picture for me to imagine it, and without that they're pretty dull. Morgan makes them interesting and exciting, without getting too overly into all the horrible details. This is grimdark fantasy, so they're present, but he doesn't overdo it.
Morgan's world-building is top-notch, in my opinion. He gives you a lot without telling you what it is, and then slowly unveils details and information in a natural way. You are left confused at first, and it gives you sense that you should know, because everyone else seems to, and this actually works really, really well. You feel like a traveler in a strange place, waiting for things that make perfect sense to the locals to come clear to you. Since you're only an observer you can't ask; you have to wait and watch for all the pieces to come together.
Morgan is also not afraid to sprinkle a little of his scifi roots in his fantasy, and this is another thing that I think works very well. There's touches of realism in unexpected places, like characters' awareness that time marches on and that this medieval fantasy lifestyle cannot persist forever. Technology will change, swords will be outmoded. Too often a fantasy novel resists these things, as if afraid that bringing them to light will spoil the escapism. It could, but Morgan handles it deftly, and instead we are given the vision of a place that doesn't just exist in the time of the story, but will continue to exist after it's done.
Plot is not something I usually give much attention to in books, and that's kind of a good thing here, because the plot in this one flirts with anticlimactic. It's very clear that this is just setting the stage for where the story goes later, without having to one-up something tremendous that happened at the very beginning. It starts slow, and doesn't really pick up the pace until about 3/4ths in, by which point, well, time to wrap things up. I'm okay with that, not everyone will be.
For me the plot is a vehicle to deliver interesting characters and dialogue, and this is definitely my favorite part of the book. Dialogue is very well done, and not once did I have to roll my eyes because people don't talk like that. There's not too much of it, and not too little. Morgan managed to make it just right.
Every character you meet clearly has a past, and you're not always privy to that, because hey, you just met these people. They have their own inside jokes and their own relationship dynamics, which just like the world building, are doled out to you in natural pieces, uncovered through watching characters interact with each other, the world around them, and often themselves. There's clearly more to dig up, and that's one of the aspects of the sequels that I'm looking forward to most.
Oh, and Gil is gay, and while nobody else seems to be okay with that, he is, and that's really what matters. Having a gay male MC in mainstream fantasy is a bold move, and I was ecstatic to see it handled so well. Gil is definitely not a stereotype, and he won't hesitate to make anyone suffer for trying to paint him as one. show less
This was an exception to the standard.
I sit here basking in the afterglow of this book, counting down the seconds until tomorrow when I can pick up the next one, and probably in no more than the four days this one took, I'll be fiending for the third. After that is something I'm not really ready to contemplate, which is parting ways with Gil and company, and this fascinating place that Morgan has conjured for us. This is the tl;dr. I loved this book and I hope you will too.
What's to love? Well, a lot. We can start broad and get smaller.
Let's touch on the elephant in the room, first: the genre. Grim-dark fantasy kind of has a rep for trying too hard, and frankly a lot of it does exactly that, leaving you rolling your eyes at how "edgy" everything has to be, picking your way through prose littered with absolutely unnecessary swears. Does this book have prose littered with swears? Oh you betcha. Are they unnecessary? Maybe sometimes, but mostly not. They suit the mood. Where it really shines in the genre is simply by not trying too hard. The story is what it is, it doesn't feel like anything has been tacked on just to shock or appall you.
The prose is not overly flowery, but show more Morgan does have a way with words. The action scenes are frankly my favorite out of any book I've ever read. Usually in books these are parts I skim, because it's difficult to paint a clear enough picture for me to imagine it, and without that they're pretty dull. Morgan makes them interesting and exciting, without getting too overly into all the horrible details. This is grimdark fantasy, so they're present, but he doesn't overdo it.
Morgan's world-building is top-notch, in my opinion. He gives you a lot without telling you what it is, and then slowly unveils details and information in a natural way. You are left confused at first, and it gives you sense that you should know, because everyone else seems to, and this actually works really, really well. You feel like a traveler in a strange place, waiting for things that make perfect sense to the locals to come clear to you. Since you're only an observer you can't ask; you have to wait and watch for all the pieces to come together.
Morgan is also not afraid to sprinkle a little of his scifi roots in his fantasy, and this is another thing that I think works very well. There's touches of realism in unexpected places, like characters' awareness that time marches on and that this medieval fantasy lifestyle cannot persist forever. Technology will change, swords will be outmoded. Too often a fantasy novel resists these things, as if afraid that bringing them to light will spoil the escapism. It could, but Morgan handles it deftly, and instead we are given the vision of a place that doesn't just exist in the time of the story, but will continue to exist after it's done.
Plot is not something I usually give much attention to in books, and that's kind of a good thing here, because the plot in this one flirts with anticlimactic. It's very clear that this is just setting the stage for where the story goes later, without having to one-up something tremendous that happened at the very beginning. It starts slow, and doesn't really pick up the pace until about 3/4ths in, by which point, well, time to wrap things up. I'm okay with that, not everyone will be.
For me the plot is a vehicle to deliver interesting characters and dialogue, and this is definitely my favorite part of the book. Dialogue is very well done, and not once did I have to roll my eyes because people don't talk like that. There's not too much of it, and not too little. Morgan managed to make it just right.
Every character you meet clearly has a past, and you're not always privy to that, because hey, you just met these people. They have their own inside jokes and their own relationship dynamics, which just like the world building, are doled out to you in natural pieces, uncovered through watching characters interact with each other, the world around them, and often themselves. There's clearly more to dig up, and that's one of the aspects of the sequels that I'm looking forward to most.
Oh, and Gil is gay, and while nobody else seems to be okay with that, he is, and that's really what matters. Having a gay male MC in mainstream fantasy is a bold move, and I was ecstatic to see it handled so well. Gil is definitely not a stereotype, and he won't hesitate to make anyone suffer for trying to paint him as one. show less
DNF at around 40%. I'm not sure if it's just reading this in a marathon with the previous books or what, but I am just sick of Will and the repetitive metaphors. I may pick this up again at a later date to see how it all turns out, but for now I'm going to stop trying to make myself like it. I did enjoy the previous books in the series, so I'm not sure what's not clicking here.
Ariah is an interesting book, and it was very little like I expected upon reading the synopsis. What is presented on the surface as a sweeping, magical, romance, with a plot to drive it forward, is quite another thing entirely. Ariah is instead the coming-of-age story of a man (well, elf) who learns that he is nothing at all like he thought he was, and that the world outside of his sheltered upbringing is colorful and beautiful, with much to offer that he once was happy to live without.
The romance is a bittersweet thing, pulling at your heartstrings at moments when you least expect it, and the plot of the book is really just a thin vehicle to move that along. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, depending on the kind of reader you are. The story is incredibly character driven, and wouldn't have functioned any other way. I personally wouldn't have had it any other way even if it could have. A character driven novel gives you an opportunity to really dig deep into the hearts of the characters and ferret out all their secrets. You get the chance to see them truly grow and change, and in this instance it was beautiful to watch.
The style of story and the writing put me strongly in mind of Katherine Addision's The Goblin Emperor, and the carefully laid out, alluded to without being hammered over your head world-building reminded me of Elizabeth Bear's fantasy novels. Since these are two of my favorite authors, I was absolutely delighted to come across someone else who fit in show more with them. It's a rare breed that can paint you a beautiful fantasy world in bits and pieces, letting it unfold without dumping exposition into your lap, while leaving you enchanted and mesmerized just watching it exist.
The breadth of gender and sexuality so carefully explored in this book was also a joy to read. Never was I made to feel like characters were token representations of their labels. It was a part of them, not what defined them, and that's something that doesn't come up often in novels, much less in the fantasy genre.
It was superb, and I am glad to have read it. I wasn't ready to leave Ariah, Sorcha, and Shayat for a long time yet, but sadly, the book is done and read. I look forward to reading more by Sanders in the future.
* I was provided a review copy of this title in exchange for an honest review. * show less
The romance is a bittersweet thing, pulling at your heartstrings at moments when you least expect it, and the plot of the book is really just a thin vehicle to move that along. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, depending on the kind of reader you are. The story is incredibly character driven, and wouldn't have functioned any other way. I personally wouldn't have had it any other way even if it could have. A character driven novel gives you an opportunity to really dig deep into the hearts of the characters and ferret out all their secrets. You get the chance to see them truly grow and change, and in this instance it was beautiful to watch.
The style of story and the writing put me strongly in mind of Katherine Addision's The Goblin Emperor, and the carefully laid out, alluded to without being hammered over your head world-building reminded me of Elizabeth Bear's fantasy novels. Since these are two of my favorite authors, I was absolutely delighted to come across someone else who fit in show more with them. It's a rare breed that can paint you a beautiful fantasy world in bits and pieces, letting it unfold without dumping exposition into your lap, while leaving you enchanted and mesmerized just watching it exist.
The breadth of gender and sexuality so carefully explored in this book was also a joy to read. Never was I made to feel like characters were token representations of their labels. It was a part of them, not what defined them, and that's something that doesn't come up often in novels, much less in the fantasy genre.
It was superb, and I am glad to have read it. I wasn't ready to leave Ariah, Sorcha, and Shayat for a long time yet, but sadly, the book is done and read. I look forward to reading more by Sanders in the future.
* I was provided a review copy of this title in exchange for an honest review. * show less
IceraMyst tells us the story of Sebastian / The Black Viper, a half-fairy prostitute who works in his mother's brothel, and his slow coming to self-realization and love, through a convoluted web of intrigue, plot, and magic.
It was readable, it was fun in places. I wouldn't call it terrible by any stretch. It did, however, seem to drag on a great deal further than it really needed to. There were several chapters that seemed to serve as filler, or to simply repeat something we'd already read once before, and there are threads of story set out that aren't ever picked up on again later. Cutting these things out would improve the pacing of the story.
This story also relied heavily on the device of "miscommunication", which was helped along by the fact that really only a couple of characters (particularly Cameo) seemed to have any powers of observation at all. The main character was clueless to a degree that stretched believability sometimes (especially for a character who, in a couple of places, looked down on those of lesser intelligence). I can't quite buy someone who lives in a place with a garden not knowing what an ant is. Nor can I quite buy someone who was raised in a place with a stable knowing absolutely nothing at all about horses. It almost seems as though the average characters were dumbed down in order to make the intelligent ones stand above them.
Between the last most recent reviews and now, IceraMyst has actually done a round of editing on this story to fix show more most of the egregious homonyms, and has changed the pronouns used for her intersexed character to "they/them" instead of "it". There are still a few errors remaining, and a couple of places where "it" persists, but they're few enough to be completely forgivable for free online fiction.
The story came together in a somewhat contrived HEA at the end, but that's not very unusual for a HEA. On the whole I don't regret reading it, though it did end up being something of a slog somewhere in the middle. I think with a good round of solid editing this story could be something pretty great. As it stands, it was pretty okay. I'd like to see some pieces written by IceraMyst since then, as the promise shown here may have matured over time in other stories. show less
It was readable, it was fun in places. I wouldn't call it terrible by any stretch. It did, however, seem to drag on a great deal further than it really needed to. There were several chapters that seemed to serve as filler, or to simply repeat something we'd already read once before, and there are threads of story set out that aren't ever picked up on again later. Cutting these things out would improve the pacing of the story.
This story also relied heavily on the device of "miscommunication", which was helped along by the fact that really only a couple of characters (particularly Cameo) seemed to have any powers of observation at all. The main character was clueless to a degree that stretched believability sometimes (especially for a character who, in a couple of places, looked down on those of lesser intelligence). I can't quite buy someone who lives in a place with a garden not knowing what an ant is. Nor can I quite buy someone who was raised in a place with a stable knowing absolutely nothing at all about horses. It almost seems as though the average characters were dumbed down in order to make the intelligent ones stand above them.
Between the last most recent reviews and now, IceraMyst has actually done a round of editing on this story to fix show more most of the egregious homonyms, and has changed the pronouns used for her intersexed character to "they/them" instead of "it". There are still a few errors remaining, and a couple of places where "it" persists, but they're few enough to be completely forgivable for free online fiction.
The story came together in a somewhat contrived HEA at the end, but that's not very unusual for a HEA. On the whole I don't regret reading it, though it did end up being something of a slog somewhere in the middle. I think with a good round of solid editing this story could be something pretty great. As it stands, it was pretty okay. I'd like to see some pieces written by IceraMyst since then, as the promise shown here may have matured over time in other stories. show less