Leilin > Recent Status Updates

"As usual, Arris had no idea what he was doing. His best hope was that wisdom would rush to his side for the sake of novelty, but until that moment arrived it was just him and the cacophony of his thoughts."

Roshani Chokshi is just such great fun to read, peppered with what always feels like effortless insight and sharp commentary.

"but from what I have gathered from my readings, mothers are tricky creatures. Imagine a being racked by the resentments of youth, embattled by societal claims upon its body and beset by an abundance of altruistic love. Even acts of affection might carry poison."

It's one of those books where I am both genuinely interested and never itching to get back to it - not sure why, maybe the short chapters with alternating POV combined with the slow, introspective nature of it. The writing is good but also not entirely natural and easy flowing for me (not in a bad way, just a matter of getting into a style) but I wonder if that doesn't compound with the above, too.

Ok, so this is moving - just glad we left the horny king era behind, I like him better as a tragic figure. [spoiler]Bisclavret marrying is hard to reconcile with his character so far, it's a bit jarring.

I quite like the "Other" chapters, they do a good job conveying the wolf's alien perception, tangled with the remnants of the man within.
In general, it's good writing, and the narrator gives it justice too

Not sure where we are going with this - can't really see much of a story for now: things are just unfolding perfectly smoothly and the king is very horny. I need stakes to come in, any time now.

I have barely even started the first chapter and already impressed by the writing as well as the author note explaining how the tale relates to medieval history - hopes for this are now high!!

Several friends here on GR have had a good experience with it, so I'm holding out hope: I'm far from hating it, but I'm also rather unattached to it so far.

Beautiful cover, over than for the fact it spoils the twist.

So far there's a lot of confusing strength with being stubborn and self-centered when it comes to the our FMC. It's annoying in itself and I'm having a hard time caring about her and her revenge quest as a result.

The writing is fine. There's a lot of explaining everything, making sure we get it, including the plot twist to come (it's going to drag this)

Annnd we have a femme fatale now, seriously...

It's starting to lose me a bit:
1) it's not very deep or insightful in its social commentary - maybe just cathartic in it's criticism? (likely made worse by the fact I'm coming to this after books that had a lot more to say)
2) it's stretching my suspension of disbelief (the kid, the Mize, the riot)
3) noir really shouldn't have to give off whiffs of patriarchal behavior to exist in contemporary or SF settings

Really love the protagonist's voice so far (and I don't mean the audiobook narrator, though this person is doing a tremendous job of it!)

Reading ebooks is really not working for me right now - switching to audio, and looking forward to see how this unfolds.

This is good so far, I just have it as an ebook and I am not using my e-reader much these days, so it's taking forever.

The author is local to me, so I'm all the more motivated to read it. I mean, not that it matters, but always nice to support your local young writers :)

I did not realize this was part of a series. Not that it needs to be, it's fairly standalone-like so far, but I am assuming it would give more context/depth + up the stakes (I mean, those are there either way, I'm just assuming they might feel even higher if I already knew well some of the characters). Either way, I am liking it!

(Picked this up after hearing the author talk at my local book festival!)

Ok, this is very unbelievable so far - there are a lot of ways the situation that is kickstarting the story could be ended, without much effort: it's a very weak conflict... Also anticipating that this is going to be somewhat anticlimactic: tone-wise, it just doesn't feel this is going to go dark, so I expect the protagonist to end up exonerated.

I think I'll just DNF it.

We're reaching the end and at this stage it's fair to say that I am resisting it by reading extremely slowly. Also, this is HEAVY and I can only take so much at once.

This is going to be the best book of my year.

If you see this and have not read it yet, just please do (read the Wikipedia page of the Marias massacre first - it's kind of assumed you are familiar with it, and the amplitude of what happened then).

Ok, it has music and sounds effect in very chapters. I dearly hate it!

It's not constant at least, so there's that, but it's so distracting, takes me out every time it comes up and makes hearing clearly the narrator (who's already not the most articulate out there) a lot harder. From the reviews, people seem to like it though... to each their own, I'd DNF if not for the fact I have nothing else to listen to rn.

Still amazing

"How is your heart, Three-Persons?" [...]
"It is weak, Good Stab, it is weak, but it is willing."
Then I said it as I must: "I listen."

Ok, apparently I'm reading this, because Alchemised is all over my GR thread and I wanted to know what was up with that.

There's something about fanfic that's so bingeable, and I think a lot of it as to do with the fact it takes a known base to tweak/build upon, so we skip a lot of the heavy lifting necessary to establish a full cast + worldbuilding.

Adding it all back again later for trad pub has to be clunky, no?

Are background ambience sounds the sprayed edges of audiobooks? Ugh, I really could do without all the garnishing, just give me the story and let it create its own ambience and visuals. I had to keep rewinding because I listen on my commute and I just couldn't distinctively hear the narrator well with that adding river sound in the back. I'm sure it's fine if you listen at home, I'm just being a grump ^^

I don't care whether I am barely 15% in, this is a work of art - Etsy transcribes the story of the priest who reports the story of Good-Stab. Not only do all 3 have distinct voices, but it is so well conveyed that to some extent you can tell subtle switches like maybe inaccurate reporting from the priest at times, or code-switching from Good-Stab when he gives his confession vs converses with the priest, and so on.

It's a ride... I have now switched sides as to who I want to succeed in their quest and fully expecting to switch a few more times ^^

Really liking this so far, and still as stumped as ever as to why the low ratings. The characterization is impeccable, the subtlety and care brought into this only serves to make Calla's pain all the more visceral and wrenching. I really like the oneiric quality of the prose and the absence of clear boundary between mundane, trauma and supernatural horror - all coalescing into a feverish flow that sweeps you along.

Listening to this one and the voice acting is impeccable. But to be fair the characterization is quite impeccable so far, so they're working with pretty great material. Now I'm left wondering why this has such low ratings - I mean, things can still go wrong, but it's off to a pretty great start.

The writing is functional and that's a page turner but this got so much hype that I was expecting a little more - if not with the writing, I still hope it pushes a bit further and beyond with the themes. We'll see. Still a good read even if it doesn't, I can do with a bit more of a popcorn horror for this once.

Ok, I finally found a stride with this but... I'm not very impressed actually.

There is a lot in this, but also surprisingly very little: entire galaxies, infinite parallel universes and even simulated worlds, but it's an exercise in garnishing. A lot of it is redundant in what it brings and serves no purpose for the plot, whose main ideas could have been leveraged with a lot less. It's imaginative, but to a fault.

Quite liking it so far - an example of a book using flashbacks smartly + I like the sibling dynamics. Flora is such an interesting protagonist, not to say she's not being stupid at times, but she's so in ways that make sense for her. Her anxiety is also well portrayed - I'm afraid the talk around it could become a bit repetitive now that we get it, but we get it because it's been characterized so well, so we'll see.

I don't know if that's because it's happening at unfamiliar scales (galaxies + parallel universes) or because of the particular way of interspersing descriptive elements (distilled slowly over several paragraphs, which means I often misimagined sth and feel compelled to backtrack) or just because I haven't read space opera with a lot of imagined nomenclature in a while and I'm rusty.... But this is taking me FOREVER

The writing is different and I need to get used to it - not a bad thing, I'm just tripping on it a bit more than average, I assume, because it uses French words (or adjacently French words) and I never know if that's local/dialect usage or purely invented vocabulary. I also needed to realize that this is not our world with added fantastical elements, but an entirely different one. Hoping it all helps the flow, now.

Ted Chiang is now one of my favorite authors - I absolutely love all of his stories. They start as a sort of thought experiment, asking "what if", with the "if" in question sprouting from concepts in science or religion, but then used to explore the human psyche in sharp and incisive ways that leave you ruminating on those ideas, and the many more sprouting in their wake, long after you close the book.