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shmadsie's reviews
3217 reviews
An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
2.0
full disclosure: i received an arc of this a few years back at comic con.
so, this was... rough, unfortunately. spoilers ahead.
what worked:
— laia's friendships with cook and izzi, they were my favorite bit. that laia kept her promise and got izzi to safety was the most rewarding part of the book and that cook never really warmed to her while also warming to her is exactly the kind of soft-hearted surliness i like in my side characters
— elias and laia and the way their stories overlapped. their arcs were independent of each other, vital to the story, and each of their meetings helped push those stories along. it was really fun to see what would bring them together again and how their most recent meeting would help them
— laia's journey from a character without agency to one with a mastery of her own fate, and a desire to be the master of her own fate
— elias' struggle with morality and what that meant to him in an environment that prizes immorality
what didn't work:
— helene. oooo, i will admit, i was poised to hate her from jump solely because of what she represented, the One Girl™ who is strong enough and badass enough to hang out with the men, who is 'ew, a girl' any time she dares to show an emotion, who has no affinity for other women. she's a 'not like other girls' girl through and through and i scrapped her right off, and nothing in her character made me ever think i was wrong to. add in that she's just there to reinforce the idea that men and women can't be friends without one of them wanting to bang the other and, yeah, i'm out 500000000000000%
— keenan. like. why was he there? what was the point of him? aside from to be a side in a triangle that i did not care about. sana could've easily taken his place and that relationship between her and laia would have been so much more interesting, why was she so fucking sidelined right off? she could've been amazing????
— um, i knew you couldn't trust mazen. i knew you couldn't trust him from the first page he showed up on. the fact that laia went along with his schemes for so long when literally EVERYONE'S GUTS - keenan's, sana's and laia's - were going off about the guy? AND after elias told her he lied to her face? duhhhhokay
— the fact that so many of these kids were white????? it reeeeally ruined a lot of it for me, and that is on me but the cover art and the descriptions really had my mind placing the geography in a 'fantasy middle eastern setting' so reading about characters with blonde and red hair just constantly threw me out
— okay, so, all the stuff laia was supposed to be doing as "a spy." she literally overheard one conversation and had 95% of her answers. um. what. there was just no really 'spy' aspect to anything she was doing. there was just: let me overhear this one conversation and then ask izzi if she just knows the answer to this impossible question—AND THEN SHE DOES??????
— at some points, with the triangle and the best friend being secretly in love with main dude and 'but i can't love him woe' laments, it just got to be A LOT, like ya threw up on ya, honestly, and the cliche of it all was nearly eye-rolling
— you can't give me a hint of SUPERNATURAL BEASTIES LIKE GHULS AND EFRITS AND WIGHTS and then just be like, lol, just kidding they don't really effect anything or have any business being here. i'm sure (I MEAN, CRAP, I HOPE) that they'll be a bigger part in the sequels but for now it was just like: these had nothing to do with anything so why, that's all i want now and i have NOTHING to show for it
so, this was... rough, unfortunately. spoilers ahead.
what worked:
— laia's friendships with cook and izzi, they were my favorite bit. that laia kept her promise and got izzi to safety was the most rewarding part of the book and that cook never really warmed to her while also warming to her is exactly the kind of soft-hearted surliness i like in my side characters
— elias and laia and the way their stories overlapped. their arcs were independent of each other, vital to the story, and each of their meetings helped push those stories along. it was really fun to see what would bring them together again and how their most recent meeting would help them
— laia's journey from a character without agency to one with a mastery of her own fate, and a desire to be the master of her own fate
— elias' struggle with morality and what that meant to him in an environment that prizes immorality
what didn't work:
— helene. oooo, i will admit, i was poised to hate her from jump solely because of what she represented, the One Girl™ who is strong enough and badass enough to hang out with the men, who is 'ew, a girl' any time she dares to show an emotion, who has no affinity for other women. she's a 'not like other girls' girl through and through and i scrapped her right off, and nothing in her character made me ever think i was wrong to. add in that she's just there to reinforce the idea that men and women can't be friends without one of them wanting to bang the other and, yeah, i'm out 500000000000000%
— keenan. like. why was he there? what was the point of him? aside from to be a side in a triangle that i did not care about. sana could've easily taken his place and that relationship between her and laia would have been so much more interesting, why was she so fucking sidelined right off? she could've been amazing????
— um, i knew you couldn't trust mazen. i knew you couldn't trust him from the first page he showed up on. the fact that laia went along with his schemes for so long when literally EVERYONE'S GUTS - keenan's, sana's and laia's - were going off about the guy? AND after elias told her he lied to her face? duhhhhokay
— the fact that so many of these kids were white????? it reeeeally ruined a lot of it for me, and that is on me but the cover art and the descriptions really had my mind placing the geography in a 'fantasy middle eastern setting' so reading about characters with blonde and red hair just constantly threw me out
— okay, so, all the stuff laia was supposed to be doing as "a spy." she literally overheard one conversation and had 95% of her answers. um. what. there was just no really 'spy' aspect to anything she was doing. there was just: let me overhear this one conversation and then ask izzi if she just knows the answer to this impossible question—AND THEN SHE DOES??????
— at some points, with the triangle and the best friend being secretly in love with main dude and 'but i can't love him woe' laments, it just got to be A LOT, like ya threw up on ya, honestly, and the cliche of it all was nearly eye-rolling
— you can't give me a hint of SUPERNATURAL BEASTIES LIKE GHULS AND EFRITS AND WIGHTS and then just be like, lol, just kidding they don't really effect anything or have any business being here. i'm sure (I MEAN, CRAP, I HOPE) that they'll be a bigger part in the sequels but for now it was just like: these had nothing to do with anything so why, that's all i want now and i have NOTHING to show for it
Flying Lessons & Other Stories by Ellen Oh
5.0
I won this through a Goodreads giveaway.
This anthology was so good, so heart-warming and full of so much talent and vision, with different and distinct voices behind every story. I can't read enough like this and we can't make enough like this!
This anthology was so good, so heart-warming and full of so much talent and vision, with different and distinct voices behind every story. I can't read enough like this and we can't make enough like this!