mspilesofpaper's reviews
871 reviews

As much as I like the author's merman books: this one was a miss for me.

- lots of spelling & grammar mistakes in the KU version
- the "all my sisters are working in a brothel, aren't actually related to each other and our father is the kind pimp" part was so weird and gives Sorcha also Mary Sue aspects because she's better than the others, so she doesn't have to whore herself out
- the pacing!!! first it drags on, then it is rushed and ends on a cliffhanger because it's a duology
- no idea how accurate the Irish representation in terms of religion/culture is but the author threw multiple time periods together, which made it very odd

I thought I would get a dark romantasy.

I got total nonsense that's painful to read. I don't think that it was every read by a beta reader (despite claims at the front). 

Beautiful cover though. Congrats to the artist for designing it.

Suffers the same fate as "A Crane Among Wolves" by the author: it is telling us everything but rarely showing us something.

As for the German translation: it is so stilted.

Iseul (17) has lived a sheltered, privileged life as a yangban aristocrat until the king executes her parents. She is forced to flee with her older sister (Suyeon) to the village where their grandmother lives. Here, she continues to act as if she lives still her previous life while her sister starts to do what is expected of them: to work. Until Suyeon becomes the king's latest victim and gets kidnapped by him. Here, the actual story starts as Iseul leaves her village to save her sister, and becomes entangled in the web of politics. She also meets Daehyun, the king's younger half-brother, who despises his brother and always walks the fine line between surviving and becoming his brother's next victim. Reluctantly, both join forces to beat their common enemy: the king. To successfully save her sister, and overthrow the king, Iseul has also to solve an ongoing murder mystery.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

A Crane Among Wolves is set in South Korea (Joseon, 1506) under the rule of King Yeonsan. It is a historical fiction, so the majority of figures existed and there was someone close enough that functioned as inspiration for the author. Due to this, it is a rather dark YA novel.

As for the plot: the idea for the plot was very alluring but it isn't well executed in my opinion. Everything is very conveniently solved and the murder mystery, which is a side aspect that the book's summary doesn't even mention, didn't leave me guessing. It was obvious who the "Nameless Flower" murderer was from the beginning as the author dealt with the hints rather heavy-handed. Aside from the murders, a lot of plot points were delayed until ~30% into the story, so the first part is extremely boring and I was questioning why I was reading this. Afterwards, the pacing became so fast that it felt rushed as there was no build-up to most points. Iseul rushes from scene to scene, which creates a very unconnected feeling.

The book is a dual POV story that alternates between Iseul (1st person) and Daehyun (3rd person), which became rather annoying. In addition, the author tells the reader everything. For example, it is regularly mentioned that Iseul has a fatherly relationship with Wosnik (a side character) but never shows anything of it. It is a similar issue for Iseul and Daehyun with their romance: everything is told but never shown, which left me very uncaring about all the characters and the romance.

Iseul is a brat. Her character development is minimal although I have to admit that she was an even worse brat in the first chapters. She is a spoilt, petulant and immature teenager who never listens to anyone, instead, she always rushes into situations where she gets into trouble. Towards the end, she became more tolerable but only barely. Daehyun is underdeveloped and one-dimensional. There's no depth to him besides being a self-sacrificial lamb who knows that he will likely die (either by his brother's hand or by someone else). I have no idea why these two fell for each other to the point that they promised each other to find them in the next lifetime. All side characters are equally underdeveloped and partly fulfil some stereotypical rules. E.g., the king is a tyrant but he is always portrayed as someone close to insanity. He felt like the villain in a comic/superhero movie. 

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 

TWs & CWs: rape (mentioned), sexual abuse, misogyny, kidnapping women and girls, sex trafficking, incest (mentioned), general violence, murder, animal cruelty, animal death, suicide (mentioned), infanticide (mentioned), psychological trauma, panic attacks, grief.

Trope(s): enemies to reluctant allies to lovers, forced proximity, slow burn, found family

Genre: YA Historical Fiction + Romance

Heat/Spice: 0 

A Master of Djinn is set in the same world as The Haunting of Tram Car 015 (which will be shortly mentioned in the book) and follows Agent Fatma on a big case: the murder of the British aristocrat and his guests. A murder that is more than it seems.

The story is set in an alternative Egypt although it plays only in Cairo and Giza. There are mentions and references to other countries and the overall world state (e.g., they are close to World War 1), and which supernatural beings exist in other countries (e.g., Fae in France, Goblins in Germany, beings from Slavic folklore in Russia). Cairo and Giza are extremely fleshed-out cities in this world and it was very easy to imagine how everything looks. No matter if it's the feeling on markets and in the streets, an underground nightclub, or a cemetery/tomb from Pharaoh times that became a ghetto, ... - the author excelled here. Just like the author did extremely well with incorporating various themes like colonialism/imperialism, corruption, police violence, gender in society, foreigners committing theft in colonies/ex-colonies, and poverty/the created distance within a society due to money/heritage.

I think my biggest issue is really that Fatma, our main character, is sometimes so incredibly stupid and fails to notice a lot of clues that would have led her to the real villain much earlier. Her new partner, Hadia, is the typical enthusiastic rookie but sometimes feels like a Mary Sue as well. Whenever she said "I have a cousin ...", I felt reminded of all these movies with Italian-American characters where Giovanni/Tony/... has an unlimited amount of cousins and gives off Mafia vibes. At times, I felt reminded of the old cop movies with the dynamic between Fatma and Hadia. It doesn't help that all the other agents, and the few named policemen, also fit into very stereotypical roles. Concerning Fatma's inability to notice hints at times: I found it rather easy to realise who the villain is because the author isn't very subtle with dropping hints. Yes, he enlarges the plot so much that it feels scattershot because a thousand side pieces pull away the focus from the main story, but I still found parts of it so predictable. It's still a good book to read, and it was fun, but I would have appreciated a tighter story and a more "oh damn, I wouldn't have guessed that!" feeling at the end. 

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for sending me an eArc.


A Song to Drown Rivers is my first book by the author and when I requested it, I was rather hyped for it as I used to have a hyperfixation period where I read everything about the Great Beauties of Ancient China, to which Xishi (Or Xi Shi as was her actual name) counted. So finding out that there's a retelling of the story had me hooked!

In the book, as in history, Xishi and another young woman were picked by Fanli to be trained before sending them as tributes to Wu's king Fuchai in the hope that the king would become so infatuated with her that he forgets to rule his kingdom. The biggest difference is the training period for Xishi and Zhengdang. While it took three years to train both to become concubines, Fanli only needed 10 weeks to train both for their roles: Xishi as a concubine and Zhengdang as her palace lady. That's certainly a fantasy to train two young women from a rural village into learned ladies who can bewitch every man.

My biggest issues with the book are:
1) The romance between Xishi and Fanli is so underdeveloped. They have a few scenes together but I don't think that they would be enough to establish any feelings. It might have been better to increase the training period from merely 10 weeks to at least 6 months to give the reader more scenes between both characters. Would have made the end more believable as well.

2) The pacing is so off. It starts rather slow and drags a bit before it suddenly picks up in speed enough to give the reader a moment of "finally". Unfortunately, it sags shortly afterwards with Xishi spending time in Fuchai's palace but nothing really happens there. Yes, she always talks about her acts of cunning behaviour but it's all off-page. Then, the minor climax happens and the rest is just rushed to reach the end in the allotted amount of pages. Despite the weird pacing, the entire book feels rushed and unfinished. There are a lot of things that the author hints at, which could have made for compelling points, but they would have needed more pages to be developed.

3) None of the characters raised any kind of interest in me for them. Xishi's defining traits are her beauty, her love for Fanli and sometimes her cunning (although pretty much everything is handed on a silver platter to her). Fanli is just ✨mysterious✨. Fuchai is a drunken, careless young man who is either cruel or a helpless boy. Zhengdang is driven by her need for vengeance. I would have expected more well-developed characters that make me care for them. Yes, the end is sad but my only thought was "it is finally over", which is never a good thing.


TL;DR: I wish that the book would have gotten 200 pages more, so the author could have developed the characters and the themes that would have made the novel good. Instead, it's a rushed historical fiction (I really don't know where the fantasy label stems from.) that fails to show the importance of Xishi as one of Ancient China's Great Beauties. If you want to gauge how important Xi Shi was actually for China: China has a rating system for their tourist attractions that goes from A to 5A. Xi Shi's hometown is a 4A tourist area and is also considered a cultural heritage site. It's the equivalent of the UNESCO world heritage sites in Western countries. 

A somewhat cosy murder mystery where a dog and a cat are the detectives. Despite the murders, it is rather light-hearted and quick to read. Not the greatest piece of literature in the world but it was fun to read and a nice break for my brain.

If you like books where the animal is the protagonist and the human is a side character, you will enjoy it. 

Taken by the Alien Next Door is Science Fiction Romance and the first of a series, which has three books so far.

To be honest: it is an utterly bland and generic SFR book. Yes, it is rather light-hearted at times (aside from the kidnapping and the fatphobic comments of the FMC by other men) but it is so generic.

✔️ kidnapping trope
✔️ humanoid alien that is conventionally attractive
✔️ lots of generic sex scenes
✔️ MMC and FMC have whimsical jobs that somehow make a lot of money (soap and candle making & whittling/woodwork)
✔️ male alien values and worships the FMC because his race has a 20:1 ratio for males/females
✔️ one-dimensional and wishy-washy characters

The kidnapping and the questionable consent (partly even the absence of it at all) in combination of the fatphobia is ... eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh. Seriously, it would have been better to write this as an overall cute, hallmark movie-esque book. It might have been stereotypical then but it wouldn't irk me so much with the dark elements of kidnapping, the dubious consent, the fatphobia, which got paired with the light-hearted elements. Even the comic-esque cover doesn't hint at the dark elements. The cuffs could have been part of a sex scene. 

Also, I don't know why we always have fatphobia in a novel where the FMC is a plus-size character. I don't want to read other male characters insulting the FMC or her own disturbed views on her body. I have reality for it, I don't need a romance novel doing it too. 

Voyage of the Damned was one of those books where I was worried if I would like it (or even finish it) because the first part is rough. I think it mostly stems from the unusual writing style/narrative because it's a very sarcastic first-person narrative but once I got used to it, it was enjoyable to read. It is a fantasy version of "Death on the Nile" with a queer underdog protagonist who doesn't even want to be there. 

It's a closed-door murder mystery set on a magical boat that sails towards a (magical) mountain to fulfil some ancient tradition. All passengers aside from Ganymedes (Dee) have a magical ability called Blessing. And while some are rather open about it, most keep their Blessing a secret, which suits Dee due to his lack of it. And while he doesn't even want to be there, and plans to antagonise the others so much that he will lose his title, he didn't expect the murder of ... well, anyone. To survive, he teams up with a 6-year-old girl and a sickly boy to solve the murders. As the book progresses, the bodies start to pile up and Dee uncovers secrets and has to deal with the topic of castes (often within castes), societal and familial expectations, grief for loved ones and prejudices.

The world-building is a high fantasy with urban fantasy influences (e.g., hot dog as a dish, modern chess, ...) and the magic system seems very wild at first but is explained later in the novel why the magic (the Blessings) seems to be so unsorted. The only thing that I would criticise about the world-building is the map and the very different climates in each region, e.g. a desert region is right next to an ice-cold region where mammoths live. (I'm very picky when it comes to such things though.) It doesn't influence the story though as it's more background information for the Blessed who rules/will rule over the region. Plus points for the queerness in the novel though. We have a non-binary character (their entire region is very non-binary coded with their own terms for parents etc), two bisexual characters and one gay character. There's also one character in a wheelchair and while it's revealed that people tend to underestimate the character, no one uses a slur towards them. All arguments and tensions stem from other issues.

I have to say though that I find the "adult fantasy" label inaccurate because it is very YA-coded. Yes, you have adult characters in the book but the overall writing and the behaviour of the MC is very YA-esque. Every death is mentioned but not in-depth as it would happen with an adult novel but more in a "he was stabbed 17 times"/"the wounds were deep" kind of way, which is very fitting for a YA too. (I wouldn't categorise it as a thriller either. It's a YA with a murder mystery and that's it. There's no suspension in it that's typical for thrillers.)

My main issue with the book is the fatphobia and the MC's relationship with food. The male MC is a plus-size character (always described with a soft tummy, thick thighs, ...) who is often discarded due to it or reduced to his size. As someone who is plus-size, it made me very uncomfortable at times and I'm an adult in my 30s. Also, Ganymedes' relationship with food is close to an eating disorder. Here, I'm unsure if the author did it on purpose or if it happened accidentally but in combination with the fatphobic comments, I found it troublesome. I find this very troublesome in combination with the YA-esque vibe of the book because it would have influenced me a lot as a teenager. Yes, I grew up in the 90s/early 00s when diet culture was rampant and Kate Moss' was hyped for her "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels", which deeply influenced my relationship with my body and with food, but books tended to be a safe place to leave reality for a while. I think if I had read this book as an older teenager who was struggling with body image and a healthy relationship with food, I would have just cried or felt even worse. Yes, Ganymedes knows that he's fat and accepts himself completely but he's so often reduced to his looks (especially when everyone else in the novel is tall and destroyed as beautiful) that it just ... hurts.