Joey De La Torre

Bloodydamn! 🌹

Revisado: 07-13-24

I'm very much delayed in writing a review for Red Rising, more so considering I made a blog post a long time ago about The Problem with Red Rising, but this is because it’s easier to articulate why you dislike 👎 something rather than why you like 👍 something.

To take an excerpt from that post:
There may be some debate around this, but I think many fans will agree with me when I say that Red Rising is the worst book in the series. It’s important to understand exactly what people mean when they say, “OMG, I love Red Rising!” They’re not talking about the first book that’s actually titled “Red Rising”, they’re talking about the series as a whole. This is the biggest detriment to Red Rising growing its fanbase. People get drawn in by the hype, decide to give the first book a try, come out the other side disappointed, and are simply told, “it gets better.” But it’s hard to explain just how true that is. What you just read was the series at its absolute lowest, and going into the second book, the quality skyrockets. Whenever I’m recommending Red Rising to someone, I always try to make it clear that the first book is a bit of a grind. It’s all introduction and setup; world building and character development. It’s very reserved in its exploration beyond the hierarchy and caste system, with comparisons to other battle royale themed books being very evident and offering little deviation.

HOWEVER, this lack of "more" isn't necessarily a bad thing and may be best for the series as a whole. The world-building is almost perfectly balanced with the pacing of the story. You're told what you need to know when you need to know it, rather than being handed a giant info dump. This drip-feed of information simultaneously leaves no detail neglected, while making it much easier to keep track of everything without getting lost, allowing you to take in and appreciate the depth and expansiveness of the world 🤩.

This format is applied to the characters and their development as well. They're steadily introduced throughout the course of the book and clearly distinguishable from each other. It's very rare that you need to remind yourself who a character is, they all have something about them, when they enter a scene, you know who they are. As much as you are disgusted by Sevro, you love him ❤️. As much as you despise The Jackal, you are fascinated by him 😈.

Lastly, a hard to miss standout aspect of this book is the prose. Oh, the prose! Elegant and beautiful, as if it were written by the Golds themselves, Pierce Brown is a master of monologues, build up, and making you feel the emotion you are meant to be feeling in that moment. I think it would only be appropriate if Red Rising were to ever be printed in calligraphy 🖋️.

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Is Kiera Cass getting worse as time goes on?

Revisado: 03-17-24

Answer: Yes.

I honestly wanted this book to be good 🙏. I wanted this to be Kiera Cass' return to form after her fumbling the end of The Selection series and missing the mark on The Betrothed series. But Cass' writing has regressed so much that she's lost all intrigue and variety. The world-building that she used to accel at have become overly generic settings that lend nothing to the story. A Thousand Heartbeats could've easily taken place in modern day America, Ancient Rome, or a cyberpunk future, and nothing would've changed 🚫.

Her characters have become uninteresting slabs of gray. The majority of them are just... there. They have no depth of their own, don't feel real, and are often there to just spew dialogue 🗣️. But even the dialogue is cringely unnatural to the point where various scenes are genuinely hard to get through, with the funeral somehow being the most awkward scene in the book. But the general narration has also taken a huge hit, Cass' lexicon seems to have lost all variety and has become so repetitive that certain words lose meaning by the end of the book (there are other ways to convey a characters nervousness than just having them swallow 😰).

All this combined leads to the book just being boring 🥱. It's overly long (Kiera Cass' longest book yet), the world is pointless, the characters are bland while also being bipolar, Annika and Lennox's love for each other doesn't make sense, and they have no chemistry (ironically, the book was actually more interesting before they met). The story itself is actually really solid, but the execution is what failed it.

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I knew this was going to be bad, but WOW! 😯💩

Revisado: 03-17-24

RP2 is just a worse version of its predecessor. It's just another race to hunt down powerful hidden objects within the Oasis. The problem here is the lack of capitalizing on the world building that's been done. For all intents and purposes, the series takes place within the Oasis, a virtual reality world where anything is possible and a countless variety of stories can be told 💭, and yet Cline decided to just do the same thing 🤦‍♂️. It's as if he doesn't know how to think outside of the box he's created for himself. Adding to this complete lack of creativity, Cline blatantly rips off Sword Art Online and tries to get away with it by making one of his trademark references to it. Even if he had literally told the same story from the first book, but maybe just from a different perspective, it still would've been better than what we got.

Getting into the actual story, Wade is a complete jerk, and not even a likable jerk. I borderline wanted him to fail. At no point in the story was I rooting for him to succeed. He's an entitled man-child who cyberstalks his ex. He can't take criticism and zeroes-out (kills) ☠️ the avatars of his detractors, which, overlooked in the book, is effectively ruining their livelihood. But it's not just Wade, nearly every character has been changed into shell of their former self.

Worst of all though is Ernest Cline's heavy-handed attempt to be "woke" by tackling gender and racial politics. In very identifiable tangents throughout the book, Cline goes out of his way talk about gender, sex, and race in ways that try to be sensitive and inclusive but end up coming off as annoying. Scenes will start out normal, then take a sharp left turn out of nowhere to talk about some woke agenda topic, then come right back to the scene like it never happen. These tangents are so noticeable and out of place that you almost come out of them confused in a "what-was-the-point-of-that?" kind of way 🤷‍♂️.

RP2 was clearly born off the success of the RP1 movie, but it isn't just a cash grab, it's an unnecessary cash grab. It's a book that didn't need to be written. RP1 deserved to remain a standalone novel, and the best thing you can do with Ready Player Two is pretend it doesn't exist 🚫.

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Needs Multiple Narrators

Revisado: 09-04-23

As good a narrator as Tim Gerard Reynolds is, there’s not a lot of diversity in his voice. And in a book with multiple POV‘s, you need that diversity. There were times, when I was well into a chapter and lost track of who’s perspective I was listening from, because they all sound the same. And this only becomes amplified in scenes with multiple main characters. Good book, but listening to the audiobook was detrimental to the overall experience when trying to experience the story. Recommend reading it normally or waiting for the GraphicAudio version.

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A night and day experience

Revisado: 11-24-22

This book is split right down the middle. There’s a lot of time spent in the beginning setting the stage, this is primarily moving characters around into their new rolls amongst the aftermath of the previous book, The Moscow Offensive, and (for the most part) introducing a plethora of new... everything. I don’t know how many new technologies, devices, weapons and crafts are introduced in the first half, but it’s a LOT. And for a while, I thought The Kremlin Strike was going to be another Starfire, where the entire thing is mostly just setup for the next book in the series.

Then about halfway through, everything got dialed up to 11.

You could say that the second half consist entirely of only two scenes: a massive search and rescue mission, followed by a climactic space battle with an ending that will surprise many longtime fans.

Now there’s only one real negative here (but it’s kind of a big one), and it’s that Dale Brown goes a little overboard with the military terminology in this one. Now I’ve been reading Dale Brown for a while now, so I do understand that the specific plane models and weapon calibers he puts into his writing is part of his appeal. While I am a fan of this, it really seemed to get in the way during the second half when the pace skyrockets (quite literally). All of a sudden, all the new things that were introduced in the beginning are being thrown at you all at once. It’s cool, but between the military jargon of different plane models and the many acronyms of various radar systems, it gets confusing. When there are several different planes and ships and weapons and locations taking part in a single event, keeping things simple can make it easier to keep track of everything. It got to the point where I was no longer trying to keep track of exactly what was what, and instead I just started asking myself, “Is it American or Russian? That’s all I need to know.”

*Side note*
While the McLanahan series has often dabbled in near-future tech with a hint of science fiction, I would love to see Dale Brown write an actual hard science fiction novel. With his military expertise and prowess for fast paced action, I have no doubt it would make for some interstellar warfare that’s actually interesting (because it often isn’t).

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I’m sure there’s a good story in here somewhere

Revisado: 11-01-22

The world building is absolutely amazing with interesting characters, places and creatures. The giant birds are awesome and the assassin’s are total badass’s (can’t remember what either of them are called, I’ll come back to that later).

The problem is that the writing style is incredibly bland, and gives an amazing world a dull story that’s hard to get through. Even otherwise exciting scenes lose there impact by writing that just seems to drone on. Even now, having just finished it, I couldn’t really tell you what exactly the book is about. I often found myself bored and uninterested, and not really paying attention to what was happening (hence, why I can’t remember).

I really wanted to like this book and this series, but the reality is, after starting and stopping it twice already, I finished it more out of principle. Ultimately, I don’t think I’ll be continuing the series, but I don’t know, perhaps sometime in the future I might decide to give it a second chance. I definitely see the potential.

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Reading it backwards made it better ⏪

Revisado: 11-01-22

If you just want to read my review, then scroll down ⬇️. But I’m going to go off on a small tangent here first, because I feel like I should explain myself:

So as previously mentioned, I read this book backwards (literally). I started at the end and read each chapter in reverse order 🤪 (don’t judge me, I had my reasons). Admittedly, this was an experiment. Partially because I was just curious. Primarily because of the way I read, I often find myself rereading previous portions in order to fully understand what I just read. But also, I find that I enjoy books more when I know where they’re going. Not necessarily knowing the ending, but the comfort in knowing that things are happening for a reason, that it’s leading to something, and the writing isn’t just aimless (cough ACOTAR cough).

And honestly, I think I liked it better. If I had read it normally I’d probably be criticizing this book as another unoriginal YA novel trying too hard to be original. In my experience, YA novels are incredibly boring early on. But by starting at the end, all the good parts happened at the “beginning”, and did a much better job of holding my attention “later” in the book. On top of that, it was rather interesting to jump right into the action, and then work backwards to see how they got there (like my own little version of Momento).

*Review*
So yes, this is yet another YA novel riding the coattails of Black Panther. But what I like is that War Girls doesn’t try to hide it, and instead was its intention all along. Between its characters, setting, and advanced technology, War Girls knows that it’s basically copying Black Panther, but to a point were it’s more of an homage than a rip-off.

EXCERPT:
"She can’t waver now. Not when everything that has happened has finally caught up to her. The murder of her family, her life with the Biafran War Girls, her kidnapping, her time with the Nigerians overseeing the separation of families and the detention of children dubbed “enemy combatants,” her time in prison when she had lived as an accused traitor, her attempted assassination of the person who slaughtered her family. All of it has been leading to this moment."

(Going back to reading it backwards, this segment gave me quite a bit to look “forward” to.)

Just like any other YA fantasy, War Girls is slow in the beginning, predictable in the end, and mediocre as a whole. There’s no x-factor or wow-factor here, and nothing that hasn’t already been done before to make it standout in an already over-saturated genre.

But where I will give it credit is, in comparison to other YA fantasy, War Girls is pretty nonstop. As mentioned in the excerpt, lot happens throughout the story, and they come almost one after another with little downtime in-between. It does a good job of keeping you on edge, but once you get about halfway through is when things really get interesting. Alliances are made and broken, scenes of mass destruction, body augmentation, hover bike chases, and if anything, War Girls offers a unique perspective on futuristic terrorism.

Typically, I don’t recommend reading a book backwards, but I was really curious. I knew what kind of book this was, and knew I wouldn’t have liked normally. It worked out pretty well, but I doubt I’ll be doing it again (except for maybe the sequel, just because 😉).

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This series is OUT THERE!!

Revisado: 11-01-22

Very fast paced. The story is insane, the universe is crazy, and the characters are one-of-a-kind.
🥺 It’s perfect 🥺

Let’s see:
- The pilot is a giant bird with an attitude problem. (Yes, you read that correctly. A giant bird. 🦅)
- The doctor is a gender swapping 8 foot lizard species with razor sharp scales known for eating humans. 🦎🧟‍♂️ (Now, one could argue that because it eats humans, it's intimately familiar with the human body, which makes them a great doctor. But still, WTF!)
- A cook that can morph into what’s basically a superhero with dragon scales. 🦸‍♂️🐉
- Planet-size space squids. 🦑
- A character named Novascape Starchild who can see peoples auras. (Because that's just an awesome name.)
- Plasmex. (Which is basically this series' version of the force.)
- Memory wiping.
- Space knights. ⚔️
- Children sacrificed into mind controlled slavery. Then executed before they themselves go insane.
- Said children are also the only ones who can see and kill the phantoms. What are the phantoms? No one knows. But they can destroy entire planets, so they need to be dealt with.
- BUT, our main character has been infected with a virus that can kill all the phantoms. However, it can also kill... EVERYTHING. 🦠 So she needs to get that under control.

And yet somehow, SOMEHOW... it all works. 🙌

There are a lot of questions left over from the first book, but thankfully there's no second book lull, many of those questions are not only answered, but expanded upon. Instead of the second book just being giant tease for the third, it becomes a vital must-read entry with revelations and plot twist galore.

Many series will string you along to the very end, where they deliver a barrage of action and revelations in a densely pact climax, making you think that it was all worth it (maybe not on purpose). But the fact is that you can often skip large sections (sometimes entire books) and still have the same experience.

With Paradox, you can't do that. Every entry is vital. In fact, in terms of information, Honor's Knight is easily the most important book in the series. By the end of it, your only real question is, how's it all going to end? Which, trust me, is motivation enough.

One of the more compelling things about this story is that there is no definitive Hero or Villain. The closest things to villains would either be the Xith'cal or the phantoms. The Xith'cal are the same alien race as the previously mentioned doctor, but I would consider them more of a hazard that our main characters just need to try and stay away from. The phantoms would be the more obvious villain, but there's the lingering question of whether or not the phantoms are even aware of the damage they're causing.

Even our heroes are not all good. There is a clear mentality of "the end justifies the means" amoung many of the characters, and they are simply doing what they believe is best for the greater good.

“But how could you do that to those poor girls? How could you use and kill the daughters?”
“Because it was worth it,” he said. “Maat and her daughters are the only weapons we have against the phantoms, and phantoms destroy worlds. When you look at it that way, what is one girl’s life? What is one family’s pain weighed against the potential loss of billions?”

This series is outlandish, wildly imaginative, action packed, and throws grounded science out the airlock to provide utterly unique space opera escape. It's AWESOME! 👍

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A barrage of action & comedy 💥🤣

Revisado: 11-01-22

I don't consider myself well-read. I never took any writing classes. I don't know what's needed to properly tell a story, build a world, or develop characters. But I know what I like, and that's action. Call me uncultured, call me a shallow reader, but I love it when a book takes me on an adventure at a million mph, and The Cruel Stars does that in spades. 👍

There are 6 different characters you follow, and the first 6 chapters are dedicated to introducing each character. After that, all hell breaks loose. And from that point on for about 50% of the book, it's constant action.

Now, when said hell breaks loose, it may cause some confusion for the reader (or at least it did for me). That's because there is no lead up, it happens almost instantly (damn near mid-sentence). Things start out normal, people going about their day, then suddenly gunfire, explosions, people trying to eat each other. It comes out of nowhere and almost makes you feel like you accidentally skipped a page or something. But it's okay, just roll with it. My thought is that this was intentional in order to give the reader the same sense of surprise and confusion as the characters.

But I do want to take a moment to mention, what I feel, is probably the books only downfall. It's that there are a lot of sci-fi words and acronyms that get thrown at you with no explanation as to what they mean. It often seems like your just expected to know, or you're left to figure it out through context. While the context does help, it felt like a sci-fi version of English slang: these aren’t real words, this isn’t a real sentence... but I know what you mean.

And finally, not only does this book have tons of action, it's also hilarious 🤣. McLennan's banter with his AI partner Hero (favorite character), Seph's "screw it" attitude, and Booker's struggle of trying to find a new body; when there's no action, there's comedy. There's one part in particular, when the action subsides and the all protagonists finally meet each other for the first time, it's a laugh-out-loud collision of personality types.

I can't wait for the sequel. 😬

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Not the best medium for this story

Revisado: 11-01-22

It's definitely entertaining, unique, funny at times, and is certainly not bad by any means, but Chilling Effect seems to rely too much on situational comedy, where the characters find themselves in unusual situations and settings (which there's nothing wrong with). But books inherently take longer to setup and describe these situations and settings, often causing them to lose there impact. While this is a great form of comedy, I don’t think it works well in books. Witty banter and slapstick comedy is usually better for writing, but what little there was here seemed pretty stale.

Also not really of fan of it being, yet another, Firefly copycat. Many have tried to replicate the successful motley crew formula, and Chilling Effect is the latest in a long line of letdowns.

This was most likely better than I interpreted it as, but I'm just burnt out on sci-fi comedies lately, and this one's brand of comedy just wasn't up to par.

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