readnext's reviews
586 reviews

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

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adventurous dark emotional funny informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Well, goddam it Donut, that was a lot of fun!

James by Percival Everett

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Little Fortified Stories by Barbara Black

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challenging dark emotional funny inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective relaxing sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

Describing these as very short was aptly done! It was easy to float in and out of this collection while reading other books. It’s my second time reading something by Black, and I won’t hesitate to read her future collections of stories.

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

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adventurous dark funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This review is heavily influenced by my complete adoration for the movie. It was hard to keep it out of my mind while reading the book for the first time ever, and I don’t think I was very successful.

The first %40 or so is similar to the movie, and I very much enjoyed that. Overall I didn’t mind the differences, and can understand why for the benefit of an adaptation you would need to make certain changes/ cut out characters/ simplify some storylines and go in a completely different direction with others. What I CANNOT stand for is how irritable I find Howl to be in the book. WHERE is my flamboyant Howl Jenkins Pendragon with a penchant for difficult spells? Where is my charmingly overly confident (but also rather vain) wizard? The same vibe just didn’t translate onto the page… did anyone else have this issue watching the movie first? Book Howl is extra whiny and predominantly focused on seducing women. I prefer how in the movie that is merely part of his rumoured wicked behaviour, and it is disproven as Sophie gets to know Howl and the castle. For me, this is one of those rare times when the movie outdoes the book.

He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan

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