Category: Media

Pages: 404
Purchased from: Kobo

From the book’s description on the store page:

A primal biblical epic flung into the future, Goliath weaves together disparate narratives—a space-dweller looking at New Haven, Connecticut as a chance to reconnect with his spiraling lover; a group of laborers attempting to renew the promises of Earth’s crumbling cities; a journalist attempting to capture the violence of the streets; a marshal trying to solve a kidnapping—into a richly urgent mosaic about race, class, gentrification, and who is allowed to be the hero of any history.

This sounds like it will be quite the interesting read in theory but in practice I found the disparate narratives way too…disparate. I found it hard to keep track of all the narratives that the book has. I also found it hard to really connect and follow a character.

I don’t mind a book that has narrative from the perspectives of different characters but in this one there were too many to be manageable for me. This also made it hard for me to focus on the themes that the book is trying to tackle.

This felt more like a collection of short stories that got turned into a perspective switching book and as a result is not good at being either of those things.

Pages: 386
Purchased from: Kobo

Sometimes the main themes of the book are not always readily available at the surface but with this particular book, the theme is present all the right from page 1. That theme is anger, anger at the misogynist/sexist society depicted in the book.

The protagonist is angry all the time and its written in a very YA way…i.e in a straightforward way most of the way through. The emotions don’t start to get complicated until 3/4ths of the way through the book.

I am not really a YA enjoyer but I had a reasonably good time with this one. Definitely one of the best YA books I’ve read this week. The other one would be week 20’s We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal.

Pages: 522
Purchased from: Kobo

A mystery thriller with a side of trauma. This book was a very intense read in certain areas and definitely needs some trigger warnings for sexual assault and physical violence. That said, I enjoyed reading this quite a bit. I love the main character and the magical world that the author has created here. I’ve put the second book in my wishlist for later.

Pages: 448
Purchased from: Kobo

I’ll be honest, nothing about this book particularly stood out to me. I thought the characters and the setting was interesting but the plot itself wasn’t much to write home about and especially the romance plot wasn’t all that good which would have fine if it wasn’t one of the major selling points of the book.

Ah well, on to the next one!

Pages: 482
Purchased from: Kobo

Okay so, I finished this book in one five hour sitting on Monday. I haven’t finished a book in one sitting in years. This book is really good. Excellent characters, both alien and human with each alien species having very unique points of view and experiences.

Interactions between the Wayfarer’s characters which are the majority of this book’s contents are very well written and by the end of it I felt really connected with the characters. I may have cried a bit at multiple points in the book.

If you are a sci-fi fan, put this one in your queue, trust me you won’t regret it.