Series: The Illuminae Files

Review Round Up | Nice Try Jane Sinner and Obsidio

Posted April 6, 2018 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 3 Comments

In an effort to cut down on posts and burnout, my Review Roundups will feature 2-4 books I’ve read or listened to recently. Sometimes they’re newer releases and sometimes they’re all backlist titles. My ARC reviews usually get the solo treatment. Enjoy the mini reviews! I had been looking forward to NICE TRY, JANE SINNER, despite never watching Big Brother (or most reality shows, really). The concept of that style of housing situation for college students definitely appealed to me though. It sounded like Jane would be an interesting main character to read about and I was eager to read this one for sure. I didn’t realize it was set in Canada, which was interesting! I honestly don’t know if I’ve read a book set there before… I was wondering why the place names didn’t sound familiar and some of the high school things were a bit different. As I suspected, Jane was definitely an interesting main character. She had a lot of things going on in her life and in her past (it took a long time to learn what the “event” was that kept being referenced). I didn’t really feel super connected to her, which is unfortunate when a book is written in the form of journal entries. Usually that style makes me feel close to the character, like I’m REALLY inside their head. I think it’s just that Jane was kind of hard to pin down; she would be funny and sarcastic sometimes but it was hard to figure out what […]

ARC Review: Gemina

Posted October 10, 2016 / Book Reviews / 6 Comments

Initial Excitement Unlike most people, I wasn’t utterly blown away by ILLUMINAE. I definitely REALLY enjoyed it and gave it four stars, but it wasn’t perfect like it was for so many other people. I was pretty excited for GEMINA when I saw some early reviews roll in and the lovely Wendy let me borrow her copy. Summary in a Second This book is a companion to ILLUMINAE and seems to take place right after the events of the first book. There are different main characters, which was sad at first but got much better. GEMINA follows Hanna, the attractive daughter of the ship’s captain, and Nik, a criminal from a criminal family doing criminal things a lot of the time. Their ship (Hypatia) is the next victim of BeiTech’s siege of all the ships and space things I don’t know how to describe. Storytelling & Setting Like ILLUMINAE, this book is told through various documents, files, IM chats, radio transmissions, and video camera footage (transcribed). Because I read an ARC, there were some final drawings and pictures missing from the book but it didn’t make much of a difference for the actual story itself. The space setting is really fun because it pulls me right out of my comfort zone. I don’t do a lot of sci-fi because I get confused, and honestly this series is no exception, but I just enjoy these more because of the format. The actual plot for this book was incredibly engaging. It featured […]

ARC Review: Illuminae

Posted October 14, 2015 / Book Reviews / 9 Comments

I feel weird calling myself a black sheep about a book I still gave four stars, but it seems like I definitely am. Everyone else who read this (especially the early reviews back when I read it in July) was literally blown away by how epic it was. Don’t get me wrong – it’s REALLY GOOD. Intense and interesting and crazy and unique. But for some reason it just didn’t have that same WOW factor that everyone else saw. Kady and Ezra broke up right before the book started, when their planet was invaded and they were taken onto different space shuttles. Honestly I’m still a little unclear about what happened and why, but it was crazy and bad I guess. It’s actually impossible to explain much about the plot of this though because (a) not much really happens, if you think about it, and (b) the major plot points are super spoilery. I REALLY LIKED THIS A LOT, I PROMISE. Like I said, there was just a bit of wow factor missing for me. I loved the drawings and the format: so many interesting things to read and look at. It made it pretty fast-paced and intriguing. You really never knew what the next page’s format was going to be. It’s totally unique and adds a lot to the story. I loved following the different chat conversations and official documents towards the beginning, and the format towards the end got fucking intense. I can’t even really pinpoint what parts […]