K.N. Salustro's Blog, page 16

Review – An Ember in the Ashes

[image error]I really enjoyed this book, almost surprisingly so. It has a few elements that I expected to turn me off, most notably the makings of not one but TWO love triangles (because why not make a love parallelogram when you can?) and a lot of threatened rape (really, it’s a lot). But I found that the character dynamics were so well done that the former did not bother me, and the arc of Laia was so strong that the latter didn’t detract from things for me.

Laia really does grow so much, going from a f...

Review – A Sky Unbroken

[image error]I picked this book up immediately after I finished The Clouded Sky. I can’t tell if that was a good idea or a bad one. On the one hand, I think I was a bit fatigued when I read this book, and probably would have benefited from a series break. On the other, the beginning could have been fairly disorienting since there’s very little recap, Skylar is in a drugged state, and Win suddenly shares half the narrative spotlight.

I can appreciate how different Win and Skylar’s voices sounded in the beg...

Review – The Clouded Sky

[image error]4 stars on goodreads, 3.5 in my mind

For the most part, I enjoyed this book much more than the first in the series. This second book is much heavier on the sci-fi and far lighter on the time travel, which I found I preferred. We get to see spaceships, Kemyatan society, the twisted fates of Earthlings taken off planet by Kemyans, and new technology. We also see a lot more depth to a lot of the characters, which I thought was great.

A character that surprised me was Jule. I loved learning more...

Review – A Murder is Announced

[image error]3 stars on Goodreads, 2.5 in my mind.

I have to say, I did not enjoy this book as much as I have the other Agatha Christie books I’ve read this far. That’s a small percentage but this one felt a bit different from the others in a way I didn’t fully enjoy.

The characters felt a bit flatter here than in the other books, and I was a bit dismayed that the main detective of the series doesn’t get as much narrative space in the book as I was hoping for. She’s a spunky, clever old lady, but she sits...

Review – Invincible

[image error]I did not enjoy this as much as I was hoping to. The blurb had a lot of promise and made me really excited for the book. A female office fighting to regain control of her ship from alien invaders? That sounded awesome!

Unfortunately, it took nearly half of the book for this plot to actually solidify. The first half was so much character and location jumping that my head started to spin. Addison, the aforementioned female officer, only appears in about three chapters out of the first twenty. T...

Review – Indexing: Reflections

[image error]I enjoyed this one a little less than the previous one, but I still think it’s a great series. I loved getting to know Sloane more, and seeing Demi come into her own as a member of the team. My problem was that things seemed to drag a bit in the first act, then pick up in the second, and then it was all very rushed in the last few chapters.

Villains were caught and overcome extremely quickly, and with such neat resolutions that you could put a pretty red bow on top and it wouldn’t be out of p...

Why So Many Men Hate the Last Jedi But Can’t Agree on Why

An interesting read that asks us to question whether ingrained sexism and racism has impacted our views of diverse, female-driven stories. At the very least, it’s good to examine our perceptions of things as we look at them with critical eyes. Criticism of this film and films like it aren’t inherently sexist / racist, but it is worth considering if the same criticisms would hold up for some people if the central characters in question were white and/or male.

Bitter Gertrude

Carrie Fisher an...

Year in Review – 2017

Ahhh, 2017. How to describe you?

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[image error]Source: https://twitter.com/shenanigansen [image error]Source: http://sarahcandersen.com/post/168857...

US interactions with pretty much any other country:

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And weirdly enough, a Google commercial:

Honestly, all I want to say at this point is, if you’re reading this, I hope your 2018 goes well. May you take those steps you promised yourself you’d take, even if they’re small ones. Keep fighting, keep resisting. Go vote. Speak up against what’s wrong. Keep an open mind...

2017 Reading Roundup

Whew, that was a lot of books to round up. But I surpassed my reading goal, even taking out the DNF books, which I’m very excited about. Hoping to read even more next year, ideally with some more diverse authors. Lets see how far I get into my To Read list!

I was on a big fantasy kick this year. I did return a bit to sci-fi by the end, but fantasy took the forefront. Had some ups and downs this year, but on the whole, I liked most of what I read, and fell in love with several books. If you mi...

Review – Zeroboxer

[image error]This book was really cool. Prizefighting isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when I think of science fiction, but Zeroboxer not only packs a wallop in its action scenes, it also explores genetic splicing and the social ramifications of it.

It’s not a flawless book. Personally, I thought that the relationship between zeroboxing (kickboxing in zero gravity) champ Carr and his “brandhelm” Risha was a bit too neat. Risha wasn’t as developed as I would have liked to have seen, and ends up bei...