I loved this book so much but I totally agree with your points in this video, especially characterization wise, I wasn't as invested in the cohort as a group as I thought I would be. But I still I was deeply impacted by the overall story. It felt very cathartic to read the anger these characters felt towards their colonizers and white people as an opressive class. And I'm still in the beginning stages of educating myself about colonialism so this book was really good in illustrating to me all of the small and big ways the world is shaped by it, maybe that's the target audience: people who agree with the message but still haven't fully realized what colonialism looks like. I'll definitely be reading the books that RF Kuang used as reference for Babel to learn more. And I've seen people criticize Robin and Ramy's relationship, that it was underdeveloped or forgotten, but I think she did the same thing here that she did in The Poppy War with Rin and Nezha, where the romantic tension was definitely there but the characters simply didn't have the time or headspace to deal with it
I am so glad to see I’m not the only one who was not feeling it with this book. My bestie is obsessed with it. The writing style is absolutely not for me and yes the world building drove me nuts. But hey we can’t all like the same things.
Great video! I get really frustrated when the author tells the reader over and over that the main character is a certain way but all of the on page scenes contradict that characterization. I read a book recently where this character was supposedly very tough and able to fight well. Unfortunately, during the 4 or 5 fight scenes she had her @ss handed to her every time but then she tells another character she can take care of herself and doesn't need protection. Ummmmm.....sure you can. It was so unsatisfying.
Do you think having a Bindery imprint has changed your membership base (vs your Patreon membership)? I'm wondering bc there are people that I watch and enjoy and consider supporting that don't necessarily have overlapping book tastes with me. For me, I would be more hesitant to join a Bindery imprint community if I am worried that I wouldn't vibe with the book. (And this is very much a neutral question coming from a place of curiosity. Just wondering what you've seen/felt so far!)
Great question! I don't think it has changed my membership base. I think the publishing part is a significant part of the Bindery thing, but it isn't all the benefit. For instance, I post bonus content that is not related to publishing. Even people who may not be interested in the book I chose have been having fun watching me go through the process. My members get access to my Discord and there is a lot of community and fun there as well. If anything, I am way more active on my Bindery than I was on my Patreon because I feel like there is better direction for me to follow, if that makes sense.
As always, even if I had a different rating, I appreciate all your critiques. I might weigh some of the pros slightly higher so they outweigh the cons, but everything you say is spot on
SPOILER ALERT. My biggest pet peeve is when characters are incompetent. In the One Dark Window, when all the main characters find out who the monster in the FL's head is, and nobody thinks to ask whether it knows where the last card is, I lost my shit. I thought the whole thing about the last card is that it hasn't been seen for hundreds of years, and that the last time it was, it was with the dead king who turns out to not really be dead and has been in the head of the FL all along. Well maybe he f*cking hid it!! ASK goddammit!! He's RIGHT THERE!!!! Turns out the author was just saving it for the last line of the book, like it's such a big reveal. She made every single one of her characters look like idiots with that. No I will not be reading the second book. I don't have a kink for incompetence.
I applaud you for making it all the way through One Dark Window, tbh. I got through 100 pages and DNFed because NOTHING had happened. So, it makes me feel vindicated to see the hype for it dying down a bit.
your description of annie bot reminds me a bit of klara and the sun by kazuo ishiguro, which i read recently and quite enjoyed. very much a soft sci-fi with robots that's focused on themes of autonomy and personhood. i'll have to check out annie bot sometime!
I don’t know why, I thought something was wrong with me but I thought one dark window was quite awful. I couldn’t finish it. My book club? They all loved it. Like.. they adored it. 5 stars for them. 1 star for me. 😭
12:30 Absolutely! Books released in the last few years need way more editing. I find multiple basic typos in even mainstream books (that's basic work for a copy editor), and lots of books of various genres would benefit from a book editor's suggestions for structure and clarity.
I'd like to see your take on The Mortal Fates books by J Bree. Only cos I rate them all between a 2-3 star but I still have read 3000+ pages of this series. IT is interesting to me in that it is the slowest of burns without much romance payoff, considering the genre and inferred audience. But I am mostly a pulp thriller and character study reader - so I'm enjoying the war strategising.
I 100% would rate Bride higher than One Dark Window. Bride, I at least had fun. One Dark Window was a bit "well I'm 40% of the way in, might as well finish it"
Have you read The Hierarchies by Ros Anderson? It is also about a bot who thinks she's a wife, but starts to realize that she is apparently disposable. (Gross simplification.)
Thank you for your honest review. I agreed with all your points. I'm about 80% through and, while I started off liking Diana, I didn't like Matthew and both of them as a couple. I try to be objective as a male reader, but it bugs me that these two barely know each other before deciding to go all in and become each other's everything. I was curious to see if there were any reviewers who had the same issues I did. So thanks. You are appreciated.
I agree with your take on Ali Hazelwood. I loved The Love Hypothesis and thought it was so fun to read and decided to pick up Love Theoretically a few days ago, since I head people also loved that one. I honestly, I did not enjoy Love Theoretically, I felt like this was so much more cringe and did not seem to blend as well as that in the Love Hypothesis. I did read TLH about 3 years ago so I know my reading taste has changed drastically since then so I believe it's just that she's not an author for me anymore. I probably will not be picking up anymore books from her.
I think you are so right about enjoying bride more if its your first foray into paranormal romance! I use the cawpile method of rating and therefore rated things like plot, characters, logic very low but I personally had so much enjoyment with it that it got a higher rating that maybe the quality merited 😆
I'd be curious to see you read and review the sequel to One Dark Window. I've seen (lately) a bunch of booktok discussing how they had low to middling thoughts on One Dark Window but Two Twisted Crowns was amazing
Color me skeptical, especially since part of my complaint was about the writing itself. At this point, I’m simply not curious enough myself to keep reading because everything in book one was so bland 😅
@mynameismarines lol I don't blame you. One Dark Window is on my fantasy bingo card for this year so I hope to get to it soon 🤞. But I am seeing more and more reviews come out lately saying it is mid to low tier so I'm a bit nervous now lol.
As someone who’s been reading for 20 + years, not every book will be for you. But i think this book is great. 🤷🏻♀️ then again I have a very big imagination so it’s easy for me to get into a book.
As someone who has been reading 30+ years there is a difference between a book not being for you and a book being bad, and I think this one is bad. Why wouldn’t it be for me? I read fantasy and romance widely. My imagination works fine. I think it was a badly written, plotted and characterized book with large plot holes and clunky dialogue that also didn’t represent its characters of color or its messaging about disability well. I’m happy you liked it, but it’s weird to reframe it as if something is wrong with me as a reader and not the book as a work open to interpretation.
I like this format. This type of formate gives way to a less structured style of review and also just a spontaniouos way of looking at books and be pleasently suprised. For me personally I'll probably pass One Dark Window and maybe Bride, but I am willing to try Checkmate by Ali Hazelwood mostly because I want to see how she handles the "Sports"/Chess torument aspect of the book. If she handles it well similar to March Came in Like a Lion, Hakaru No Go, or the one where you slap the cards of the poem out of the way (I'm aware all three of these are Manga and/or Anime), I that may be the one way I can enjoy her style of writting. Now I'm not going to garateed that you may like Checkmate either because it *is* actually written for YA and that just may make the reading experience even more tropey which may annoy you even more, or you may actually like it slightly better due to it being a YA and thus it changes the dyamic of writing with the story it's telling. But I think Checkmate is probably going to be the only Ali Hazelwood I'll read personally just to see. (Though I'm glad that it's probably only going to be the style of writting that may be the issue for me I have with it as it seems like they're pretty harmless books which is a nice change) Annie Bot I may pick up eventually after I actually knock down more of my TBR as I'm trying to avoid adding even MORE books to my TBR since my story graph is having a hard time loading when I'm scrolling through xD;;;; Now granted I don't think I'm in the 1000s yet but last I checked it was 130 something and I'm going to for now focus on my one Buddy Read (A Soul to Keep) and Finishing Bringer of the Scourge and then rotate in other books I have on my tbr and may already own. (Really enjoying A Soul to Keep btw. It's a Monster Romance that is actually having me enjoy the world building even when it's a slow burn there as there's 7 books thus far with the 7th book being written. Bringer of the Scourge is also a delight to read as I think I really needed something a little bit action pact and adventurous in a short book.) But yeah, Annie Bot I think I would probably enjoy a lot because I do enjoy when litearity is intertwined into other genres weather it be fantasy or sci-fi. I enjoyed Parinesi because of that and I felt like it elevated the fantastial elements of the story due to it.
I wanted to like Ali Hazelwood so so much but I find that she writes her FMCs to be really really...meh. Olive and I have a one sided beef. She's possibly the worst character I've ever had to read.
Loved the format. I was hoping you’d review Bride. As a long time urban fantasy and paranormal romance reader I was hopeful when I read Bride and couldn’t believe how much people liked it once I’d finished it. And yes that wash cloth scene has stayed with me. I think folks must not know the good stuff available in UF.
