Katyana > Recent Status Updates

After two brilliant books from this author, I'm wobbling on this one. The FMC is such a pathetic doormat that it is making me rage.

I know Anne Bishop leans into misogyny in her storytelling, but I always struggle with it. And this one opens with really sickening shit. I don't know if I have it in me... but I'll give it another little bit to see.

This is one of those books that is considered a pillar of sci-fi, and I've intended to read it for forever. FINALLY getting on it, but whew, the start is dense. I knew that though - I've been warned - and am determined to power through. I have heard from so many friends and family (my mom is my sci-fi buddy, and the source of my love for it) that it is more than paid off by the end.

Boy this has a brutal start. A woman falsely imprisoned by an evil chieftain, who has been brutally raped and broken by the guards. A fae offers her freedom but in return she has to give up vengeance. I would decline that offer, fuck you very much. I'm tabling this book. Maybe I'll come back to it another day.

There is a fundamental flaw in this book. This woman is flat broke, and works a government job she doesn't seem to enjoy, for a pathetic teeny salary. But her skills would get her a highly-paid non-gov job easily. Now she is being manipulated into a dangerous position that she doesn't want, at this job she doesn't like that pays poorly. Why doesn't she quit? It isn't believable.

I like the world building, even if it is a bit of a slog (typical for fantasy book 1), but I'm having a hard time with the characters. Aside from the FMC, they're all assholes. I'm not sure why she's putting up with all the bullshit, honestly, other than the fact that she's pretty damaged. But I need her to start calling people on their shit.

Ugh, the FMC is so annoying I just want to punch her. I can't even begin to imagine why the MMC is at all interested in her.

I am having the hardest time sticking with this. I think it's been too long since the last Alice book, so I'm struggling to remember the plot and some of the secondary characters. I keep popping out like "wait, why is she having dinner with Moses" or "was the previous necromancer encounter in a different book"?? I don't remember any of that.

This might not be for me... tabling it for now. Look, I like the grumpy/sunshine trope, but lately it feels like every book I read attempting it lands less grumpy/sunshine and more grumpy/blissful vapid TSTL. This one lost me really early on with the "tra la la, I'm going to go wandering through the forest of doom because I'm a brainless polyanna" thing.

Well, here we go. I fully expect to hate this, but my completionist heart can't stand not finishing after reading 11 of 12 books.

I haven't read this author before, so I have to ask: Are her characters always this melodramatic? I mean, this is a cool vampire world, but my goodness, the over-the-top melodrama and angst, it's a bit much.

There is a very fine line between "quirky" and "brainless". I'm not quite sure this FMC is landing on the right side of that line.

Are any of my friends checking out Storygraph? I've just started peeking at it - I'm katyanaish over there, if you want to friend me.

Heading to DNF. I just don't have it in me to read about a wilting violet FMC. I have no sympathy for a 26-ish chick with her own fortune - enough to outright buy a luxe apartment in a rich-people's skyscraper apartment building - to allow her utter garbage parents to dictate every detail of her life, down to even the clothes and shoes she wears. Bitch asked permission to buy her apartment, with her own money! GTFOH

I don't know why I'm still reading this. The writing is weirdly juvenile, as is the FMC. And the author keeps doing this odd thing where she skips ahead. Like, chapter ends with character fine, normal. Next chapter, character is a prisoner, injured. She just did it for the second time, and it is hugely disorienting and irritating as hell.

This book is fucking bullshit. If I weren't so close to the end I would DNF.

I'm not in love with this one. The FMC is a self-absorbed jerk who so far seems pretty dumb. Is this going to be the first book from this author that I dislike? 😮

This book feels like it is all Stockholm Syndrome. I don't understand her growing to care about people who kidnap her, lie to her (she won the wager and he reneged), threaten her life on a regular basis, and are disgusting hypocrites (the severed head ... she said "you do it too" and they didn't even deny it, just carried on being outraged like the hypocritical assholes they are). Stockholm Syndrome is the only way.

I don't honestly understand all the angst over the gargoyles. Tell the Elders it is none of their fucking business, period. Because back when creating brethren was banned, gargoyles weren't a separate species that had sworn allegiance to Emory in exchange for his protection. But now they have, and he owed them every effort to save their lives. That decision was his as their ruler, and not the business of the Elders.

This was an old favorite probably nearly 30 years ago. I haven't re-read it yet - I've re-read some old favorites from my teen years, and it just wrecked my memory of them because they didn't hold up at all (looking at you, Pern). That's not the case with this book - it is amazing, and I'm just enthralled. Laughing, ugly crying, totally riveted.

Pausing - just not feeling it. For 3 days I just find something else to do rather than pick up the book. It is partly the inconsistent characterizations imo. Carter is so gross with his casual misogyny at the start, but then he meets the FMC and becomes a confused-yet-earnest puppy, as if the manwhore pig was a lie. Olivia (FMC) is similar - a ballbuster who can't help panting after the known pig (a trope I loathe).

Pausing. It isn't that I don't like it - I've barely started. But I've read a long chain of UF recently, and the stories are starting to blur together in my brain. I need a palate cleanser before I come back to this.

Man, the melodrama is suffocating me, as these two angst like martyred saints about how they can never be together while they go on about soul-deep sorrow. They haven't even TRIED to find solutions. How deep is their connection, really, if neither of them is even willing to try?

Ugh. The problem with this book - which I am otherwise really enjoying - is the male love interest has been an absolute asshole from the moment we met him. And that problem just compounded with a detailed scene of him fucking some random hookup. Wtf, seriously? I now loathe him, congrats author.

Second chance romances rarely work for me, and this book is an excellent example of why. This dude broke up with her by telling her he loved her best friend and was marrying her. Did, in fact, marry her best friend. Seven years later, shows back up wanting her back. She's kissing him without even an explanation. Hurling herself at him. I seriously am swallowing down bile. How can anyone respect either of them?

So... Wtf. This book starts with her coming out of ABI prison after 9 months of being held there and treated like a lab rat. After saving everyone's asses at the end of the last book. It dropped my interest straight into the toilet. Her mom can fuck off, her dad can fuck off. All the ABI can fuck off, including Bishop and Sarina. And I don't even like Darby, for allowing it. She should raise her father and rain hell.

Bleh, I like this one a lot less than the previous. The two leads have the personality of 15 year olds, and their conversations are ridiculously repetitive.

This is really juvenile. FMC reads like a 15 year old, not a 22 year old. And she basically lets her mom run her life. I'm not sure I'm going to make it through this...

Man, the blurb does not make it clear that a core to this book is sex trafficking. I would not have picked it up, honestly. I don't have the emotional bandwidth for this right now.