She’s the Fire Fae of Legend. He’s the Warlock Heir to the Throne of Winter. Maybrie Hawkins is the badass who dominates the Dark Court’s fight pits where fae and shifters battle for powers. The royals chant her name, like she’s a goddess instead of a lowly entertainer. Like all Casters, Kai needs the shared powers of a fae to do more than basic magic on his own. The strongest bonds are forged via love, and it’s time for him to find a match.
His sights are set on her. She’s not impressed. Maybrie doesn’t have time to be courted by the Prince of Winter. A rebellion is brewing, an uprising against the Casters. The dome of the Dark Court is the only thing protecting them from the frozen wasteland beyond, but the fae are done pandering to the Magicals in exchange for safety. And Brie doesn’t pander to anyone. Can Kai keep up?
Review:
I think I just wasn’t the right reader for this book. It’s mechanically fine and the narrator did a good job and I even liked the characters a lot (even Kai). However, I never could get over the fact that Maybrie and her people are enslaved by Kai and his people. Sure, Kai was hoping to give the fae more rights when he became king, but they didn’t have them yet and ‘more rights’ isn’t free. So, no matter how the author dressed it up (and she did), this is a romance between a woman who has been stolen from her people and enslaved by another and a member of the race who is enslaving her (the Prince of those people even). That’s a big FAT nope for me.
Also, the book is very Earth-like, with characters driving cars, wearing jeans, talking on cell phones, humans are even mentioned at one point. However, it’s either not Earth or a post-apocalyptic Earth, but none of the how or why of this is addressed. I felt that was a big detraction. I wondered about it the whole book. Similarly, we were introduced to Maybrie’s two best friends in the first chapter, but they never reemerge. I wondered what happened to them. It felt like another loose end.
All in all, not a bad New Adult book. But one that strayed into my personal No-Go Territory.
We spent Thanksgiving with my aunt and uncle in Tennessee. They have a lovely place outside the city—land, hot tub with a view, walking distance to the river, etc. Visiting them is always a little mind-blowing for me (in a good way).
From my house to theirs is a six hour drive. We stayed Thursday and Friday and then drove home last night (Saturday). That’s twelve hours in the car to read and then quite a bit of time while there.
You see, I love my family, but thanksgiving is always big and loud and chaotic. So much love in the air, but also just so many people. And I’m an introvert. I invariably get super overloaded and spend the day after Thanksgiving laying on the couch reading. It’s my way of being in my family’s presence, but allowing my introvert cells to recharge. The point is, you might not think such a short visit wouldn’t allow for much reading. But I read six books.
I’m going to review them all here, with the caveat that I took no notes and reading a book and then waiting to review it means I never remember quite as many details. For example, I do remember that one of these book needs further editing. But I don’t now remember which one, so I can’t mention it in the review. Similarly, some of the reviews might be on the short side. Pleasantly however, I liked them all. There have been years I couldn’t say that. Here we go.
I’m undecided about this book. Some things I really loved, but others I thought it pulled a bait-and-switch on the readers about, and it includes one of my BIGGEST PET PEVES. Let me address that first, since I probably won’t be able to concentrate until I get it out of the way.
One of my biggest pet peeves: When the male MC falls in love with the female MC because she talks back to him in a way no one else will. (Here it’s actually not any of the male MC that do this, but it’s someone super integral to the plot. So, I’m calling it same-same). My problem with this logic as it plays out here (and almost every time authors do this) is that people don’t talk back to this powerful individual because he’ll kill or punish them if they do. But he doesn’t kill or punish the female MC when she does this…because she’s special…because she does it? It’s circular. And presumes she’s special prior to the very thing she’s being singled out as special for. Arg. I hate this so much and Lilya is seriously mouthy to people she shouldn’t mouth off to and gets away with it. What’s worse is that she’s no where near as brave with other people, so it doesn’t even fit her personality in the rest of the book.
A positive, Salem. I loved Salem. Why didn’t we get more Salem? And why does poor Salem get so shafted? We have a heroine who will loom and yell at a king, but can’t tell a man who she longs for that she’s not disgusted by him? Three friends who will do anything for each other (including changing the whole structure of society), but neither of the other two will clear up the VERY OBVIOUS MISUNDERSTANDING to bring their best friend and love some happiness and end of distress?
The bait and switch: It’s a reverse harem. Two of the three men are handsy as heck. They sleep together and make out, etc. But there’s not a single sex scene in the whole book (even after months having passed after marriage). It sets up an erotic plot line and then doesn’t deliver any…at all.
For all that, I basically enjoyed it. I don’t know if I’d seek out the sequel for any reason except to see Salem finally get his happy ending. But I didn’t not enjoy it.
I surprised myself by liking this book a lot more than I expected. (Though I do love the cover.) I expected it to be a lot more YA than it was, which was a pleasant surprise, and I think I might move heaven and Earth for Beast and Shade. Oh my, they were both wonderful in their own way. (Though I have to admit that it was Shade’s desperation I loved about him and that’s just a little cruel of me.)
Gi-Gi was only a so-so heroine for me. I didn’t dislike like her by any stretch of the imagination, but I didn’t love her either. She seemed to make split second decisions and act on them without much thought. Some good (taking in Beast), some bad (hating Shade so extremely based on so little).
Also, I never fully understood the motivation of her brothers. Beyond being generically evil the reason for everything they did isn’t really explored very deeply. I was especially interested in the oldest brother’s motivation.
Lastly, I have to quibble with the cliche manner in which the only female villain (and only woman with any political cachet) is evil because she was denied a man. Anyone else ever wonder if there are no other motivation for female villains available or something? I’m so tired of always seeing this same one.
All in all however, I liked the book and would happily pick up the next one in the series.
This was wonderful and sweet. I liked how food tied into it so intricately and that it was the woman who took the initiative. I also loved that the two were so open to exploring and trying new things. However, I thought it was a stretch to go from I-couldn’t-possibly-kiss-you to pegging in less than a week. Despite that, the message of openness and willingness for those you love was one I appreciated. Not to mention Lerner just goes places that a lot of such authors don’t. All in all, a successful read for me.
I generally enjoyed this. I loved the caption’s sarcasm, Jaime’s sass, and Rylan’s ceaseless attempts to do the right thing. I did think the whole thing wrapped up a little quickly wondered if Rylan would really have been dishonorably discharged given the extenuating circumstances. Despite that I’ll be looking for book two.
I adored Channing in Changeless and I was too happy to see him get his happy ending here. I appreciated seeing him meet his match; and what a match Faith is. A always, Carriger carries it all off with humor and too much tea. I can’t wait for more.
I mostly enjoyed this. I liked the world Lanyon created, the characters, and the mystery plot. But I never felt the spark of the romance at all. I know the author tried to address how the two could meet, fall in love, buy a (and decorate) house, and plan a wedding (including planting a special made garden) in two weeks. But I couldn’t buy it. And that wasn’t the only thing. Several other things didn’t hold together for me. There’s a pretty big reveal at one point that I simply can’t believe that Cosmo didn’t see coming, for example. For all that, if I suspended my disbelief far enough I found it a cute little read.
There you have it, reviews of the six book I read on my 2019 Thanksgiving holiday. Honestly, it’s more physical reading than I’ve done in a while. I’ve been mainly listening to audio books, which I love. But I find it was like coming home to spend some time with my Kindle.
I haven’t done any reading for the last three days, not even audiobooks. The reason is that I was finally able to move my Calibre library, which is where I store all my ebooks, off of remote storage (where I had to access it by wi-fi) to my actual computer (where I can access it directly). This took some technological re-jigging for which I am forever and eternally grateful to my husband.
Working with Calibre when it was on the network server was slooooow. Adding, or deleting, or editing the metadata of a book was a five minute+ process, and if I had several books to upload (or whatever), it took eons. And the bigger the library got the slower the whole process became. The result was that I did very little with it, and as any data analyst will tell you, data that isn’t tended gets messy.
You might ask how I let this happen in the first place. And that’s what I’m here to discuss (as well as two further subjects that I’ll get to later.) In order to explain my Calibre problem (outside of just having an older computer), I have to go way back to my previous review policies.
Several years ago, when I started this blog, my review policies were genre specific about what I was willing to read. I quickly found that authors—desperate for reviews, rushed, overwhelmed, etc—almost never read the review policies of bloggers they query. I could (and did) say I don’t read short stories, Christian fiction or Young Adult titles and would get a slew of requests that said, “Would you be interested in reading/reviewing my Young Adult Christian short story?” Every time. I swear.
At the time, I responded to every email I got and I spent and inordinate amount of time responding to authors whose books didn’t meet even my most basic qualifications. Authors I shouldn’t have had requests from and shouldn’t be requiring my time to respond to. Eventually it started to irritate me. If an author is willing to ask me to read their 300 page book and write a 250-500+ word review of it, the least they can do is read and comply with my one page policies and procedures. Right? Apparently not.
And to be clear, we’re not talking a request a week or anything. We’re talking 10 a day, sometimes more. You put your email out there as willing to provide free reviews and open to self-published and Indie authors and you will get flooded with requests. Period.
Each and every one seemed to think they were special. “She doesn’t generally like Young Adult Christian short stories, but maybe she’ll like mine. Better send it to her just in case” seemed to be the thought process. (Or less flatteringly, the world, represented by this blogger, owes me. I sensed this in a lot of emails.) Authors, don’t do this. I won’t miraculously like your book outside my preferred genre. I won’t even read it. And I don’t owe you anything.
So, eventually I changed my policies. I gave up on trying to get authors to be courteous. I did this resentfully, I admit, but I did it. I decided that ebooks are free to send, so I’d just open the flood gates. I basically said, “Send me anything you want. I make no promises to read it. But I’ll pick a couple books a month from the pile to review.”
Even then, when I couldn’t make it any more mindless, authors didn’t read the policies. I know because I kept getting emails offering me books, with instructions to respond for my copy, when I specifically said, “just send it.” Plus, I pettily made the email in the first paragraph 2lazy2readP&P@sadieforsythe.com. The real email was farther down the page. I got tons of emails at the too lazy address.
And here’s how this relates to now. My process for dealing with these books was that I started an email folder that I put all the requests in and then once every couple weeks, I went through and added all the mobi/PDF files to Calibre and created an A2R (available to read) shelf on Goodreads.
This worked great in the beginning. Calibre was slow, but it was manageable. As time went on however, it got unwieldy and I started to feel overwhelmed. I didn’t even realize it at the time. I got on with getting on. But eventually I discovered that I’d been dumping all these books in Calibre and meticulously logging them on Goodreads, but I hadn’t gone and actually read one in a while.
At that point I closed myself to requests. I posted a notice saying that I was accepting no new titles and was going to concentrate on reading the ones I already had. (You know I still got requests regularly though, right? Mostly from what I think are publicists who had me on lists and sent me every book they represented. Never bothering to come back to the blog and check if I was still open. Bloggers are resources, not people, apparently. Yes, I’m bitter.)
I was better about reading the requested books for a while. But eventually scrolling through hundreds of books, most of which didn’t interest me (and some of which had some serious quality issues), soured and I drifted away. All those books still sat in Calibre and I still maintained my Goodreads shelf, but it was just detritus. This was all a slow, but real process.
This brings me to the present and my newly functional Calibre file. I just spent three days, three damn near full days reading the blurb of every single book in my review request pile (and often several reviews) and deciding what I might actually be willing to read and deleting the rest. I deleted something in the vicinity of 400 ebooks. I kept about 120, which is still too many.
You have to understand how hard it is for me to delete books. It’s not like a paperback that I can give away and believe that someone else might love. It’s just taking something that exists and making it not exist. I find this really difficult. This is part of why I kept all the books instead of just deleting uninteresting ones as they came in (which in retrospect would have been a much better path).
And lets also be honest about the fact that I’ve had some of these books for years. So, I can’t even really call them review requests. I think it’s safe to say no one is waiting for my review of them anymore. Regardless, they came to my by request and I have kept them. And now I have a manageable pile that I might actually read. If nothing else (and most importantly), I can look at them without feeling like I’m drowning. I can actually find titles I might be interested in, because they’re not buried in a thousand titles that I have no interest in.
As to my second agenda point, I thought it might be interesting to list some of the reasons I chose to delete books. The major one was that a book didn’t match my interest. That’s fine. No book is right for everyone and I inadvertently set up a system where I’d get a lot of books that didn’t suit me. I’d thought, statistically, I should receive a certain percentage that did. But honestly, that didn’t work out. The vast majority of what I received didn’t match my preferences at all
I started my first pass by deleting all the nonfiction I wasn’t interested in, which was all of it. If I’d been interested, I’d have read it already. There were a lot of books about war, especially WWII. I think one of the publicists I referred to above represents war related non-fiction writers. (Keep in mind even a casual glance at my blog will inform you I read almost all fiction.)
Then I went for all the memoirs, biographies, autobiographies and travelogues by people I’d never heard of. There was everything from continent hopping to a non-participatory purveyor of child pornography, drug addicts to French cuisine. Then I binned all the Middle Grade and most of the Young Adult (good lord, so many Young Adult books).
Then I whittled down all of the thrillers. I had a lot of thrillers. Especially thrillers set in England. There were tonnes of ex soldiers, wounded soldiers, Scotland yard and MI5 (and of course the American versions too). They all kick islamic ass and save the girl (sometimes that girl is all grown up, sometimes that girl is a child. But save her the synopsis suggested he would.) Again, I think I must have been on some publicists list. So many of the emails came from the same person, in the same format, and there were dozens of them.
After that it was just a matter of reading the blurb of each book and deciding what I would be interested in and what looked good enough to keep. And this is where the fuzzy decision-making came in. Below is a list of things I noticed that caused me to hit the delete button instead of the keep. And I know this might feel really negative, but keep in mind this is a post about what I didn’t like. There would be an equal number of things I did like if I was writing that post. But that post could be summed up as the opposite of this one.
So, here we go:
The cover. I don’t have to like the cover, but it has to be quality. I understand that when a book first comes out it might not have the best cover (especially since I often got early copies). But if the book has been out several years and the cover still looks like it’s done in crayon [you think I’m joking, but I’m not], then I’ll take that as indicative of the level of quality I can find inside.
If I can’t read the font on the cover, be it too fancy, too blocky, too faint, too dark, too shadowed, too anything else there was a good chance I’d delete it instead of try to find it more legible somewhere else.
The blurb. Just the blurb. I read SO MANY bad blurbs. But bad in different ways.
There has to BE a blurb. I don’t mean when Goodreads hasn’t imported it. That’s correctable. (In fact, I fixed this for several books during this culling process.) But some publishers/authors seem to prefer putting review quotes where the blurb should be. I’ve said this before, I don’t care who likes the book or how much, if I couldn’t easily discover what it’s about I deleted it.
If the blurb is 15 paragraphs long and details the entire storyline, I took this to infer that the author was incapable of brevity and deleted the book.
Contradictorily, if the blurb was two lines long and told me nothing informative I deleted it. The mystery really didn’t entice me to delve deeper.
If the blurb started out with ‘This book is about…’ I took it to mean the author wasn’t able to show, instead of tell, and assumed the book was equally as unsubtle. This is different from ending the blurb with something like, “The text explores the themes of X, Y and Z.” I could handle that. But just plopping the plot points on a platter like a dead fish was a no-go.
If I found grammar mistakes or typos in the blurb I deleted the book. This happened a disturbing number of times. I think people forget to proof their blurb along with the book.
(This one is 100% personal preference.) If the female lead was introduced as “young, beautiful X,” or “exotically beautiful,” or (as was especially common in the thrillers) “mysterious and sexy X,” I likely deleted the book. If being beautiful or sexy or attractive to the male lead was the characteristic the author thought most important to say about her (important enough to be mentioned in the brief blurb), then she likely wasn’t some one I care to read about. And/or that author isn’t one I can trust to write representative women.
Reviews. And there are several sub points here too.
If the book has been out several years and there are no reviews, I have no interest in being the first. I deleted the book.
If the book has universally poor reviews. I deleted the book.
If the book has too many suspect 5-star reviews I deleted the book. Suspect means:
Several reviews all on the same day and none on other days
Several reviews from accounts with no other reviews, etc.
Too high a percentage of reviews that don’t actually address the content of the book, just generalized praise.
If there was even one prominent review citing poor editing and formatting.
If several reviewers pointed out the book is a precipitous cliffhanger I deleted it.
Page length. This is subjective, but if the plot in the blurb doesn’t feel as if it could support the 600+ pages of text I passed it up. Or if it feels like too much to fit into the 115.
If I saw evidence that the author aggressively engaged a past reviewer or attacked someone over a negative review I not only deleted the book I bleached my kindle too.
If the author sent me so many emails that seeing the book made me feel harassed, I deleted the book.
Below are the books I chose to keep. I’ll not list all the titles, but you can see it’s manageable number and feels amazing to me.
There’s another point I want to make with all of this though. It’s not the reason I chose to write the post, but I don’t plan to miss the opportunity. It’s one I make a lot. Authors too often forget that there is a real person on the other end of the review request email. I have seen some real doozies in my time. Like the guy who just sent me a link to his book and said, “If you read mine, I might read yours.” I took a certain, “You know what, fuck off,” glee in deleting his book. I had similar feelings about the Christmas book with the Santa looking up at the big glowing cross. I have always maintained that I don’t enjoy Christian fiction. And have a certain amount of resentment when I receive overt ones.
But more than feeling taken advantage of, I think authors don’t understand that sending a reviewer a book also sends a certain amount of obligation. Please remember that it is a minor imposition. Even when invited to submit, you are still stepping into someone’s space with a request. It requires something of the recipient.
This post is too perfect an example. I spent nearly 3 full days dealing with ebooks that authors sent me. That is a lot of my time. I’ve recently opened myself back up to review requests in just the opposite way I used to be. I accept only physical and audio books and I only take one at a time. So, I’m back to responding to emails.
I recently sent this email to an author who requested a review from me.
Thank you for contacting me about reviewing your book. My policies state that I and current only accepting “physical and audio books in the Science Fiction, Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Romance and LGBTQ+ genres.” Your nonfiction/philosophical ebook fits none of those parameters.”
His response was basically a shrug. He essentially said, “Well, enjoy it anyway.” He did not care at all that he’d queried a reviewer that wouldn’t be interested in his title. And I assume it’s because he doesn’t think it matters. But 3 full days of re-ordering ebooks proves that it does! Please don’t just shrug at reviewers’ time. And that’s what he did. He basically told me he didn’t care that he’d wasted my time. Please don’t just ignore the fact that reviewers usually tell you up front what they wish to receive and, in doing so, what they wish not to receive. You are not the exception to the rule.
Yes, I historically exacerbated the situation with my open policies. And if I had less trouble deleting book it wouldn’t have been as much of an issue. But the “I’ll just send it anyway” attitude is what is driving a lot of reviewers away reviewing. (It’s why I’ve posted very few review requested reviews lately.) As is the lack of effort authors are willing to put into the exchange.
I got the above request on the same day that I got the email that was addressed to:
Dear Book Reviewer (Couldn’t find your name on your website).
My blog is called See Sadie Read. He emailed Reviews@SadieForsythe.com. How hard do you think he looked for my name, if he couldn’t find it? Do you think he read my policies if he couldn’t even find my name in the title of the blog? Maybe he did. But… Yet he’s comfortable asking for several hours of my time.
So, as I do once a year or so, I’m taking this opportunity to remind authors/publishers that what may be one email on your end might be the 50th on the receivers end. That ebook you think, “Oh, I’ll send it just in case,” or “I found an email, no need to read farther,” might be causing a log jam in that reviewer’s Calibre and contributing to their loss of love for the hobby as a whole. Don’t cut the corners. Read the policies. Comply with the procedures. Don’t send your book to a reviewer if it doesn’t match their preferred genres and/or format. Remember you are dealing with a person, a person who is probably doing what they’re doing out of generosity. Don’t bite the hand that’s offering you those coveted reviews that the market experts tell you your book will die if it doesn’t get 50 of. (We could discuss if this is actually true or not.)
To wrap all this up, I plan to spend another couple days in Calibre going through all the rest of my ebooks (the ones I’ve obsessively gathered all on my own). Tastes change over time and I don’t read things now that I did three years ago. In fact, I read a book recently by someone I considered a favorite a few years back and found it so problematic I wanted to cry. Anything I’ve read and rated one-star doesn’t need to be kept. Probably the argument that if I’ve read it and it isn’t a favorite I don’t need to keep it at all could be made. (But lets not go too far.) I love surrounding myself with books. But it’s time to pare the library down in the hopes that I can actually read instead of just collect the books I own.
Anyone else feel my pain in the book hoarding department?
