Dev’s Comments (group member since Sep 09, 2017)

Dev’s comments from the Nothing But Reading Challenges group.

true, and i can't tell if it's like actually actively worse than the last one or if i'm just losing patience with it lol i was hoping i would be less annoyed because i sat it down for so long but it's kind of having the opposite effect

@Jess i kind of get what you mean (view spoiler)[about it being anti-climactic because on the one hand it totally is but on the other hand i do really like how toby is saved A LOT by other people in this book because it kind of shows that even though she TRIES to do everything all by herself it can't actually work that way. i will totally admit that she acts stupidly a lot in this one but again that's actually one of the reasons i like it because i find her to be an incredibly flawed person and i think that's relatable, although i can see how from a strictly narrative standpoint it can get very frustrating lol (hide spoiler)]

yeah i plan on reading book 4 from like sept 1-4 then starting the new one on the 5th probably, but if you can't start until the 3rd that's fine. i just figured it would be easiest if we keep it on a schedule of like 2 weeks for every book

i read chapters 9-11 today and ...honestly not a lot to say just because the plot is moving soooo slooooowly

one thing i will say that i find annoying is how the author keeps like ...giving characters ideas that are 'futuristic' in order to make them seem smarter i guess? like it happened before but in this second irene takes mary to some kind of palace to see the gardens and says that it would be better if it was a museum / art gallery and open to the public which i'm assuming is what the building is used for today since it wouldn't be a palace anymore but it's just like ...so unnecessary to me

should i ask for a buddy read for the next one for september 1st or do we want to make adjustments to the schedule?

i read up to about 32%, i hate that it doesn't have actual chapters lol

@Deanna i agree that there has to be something more going on re: Azazel and Alice and the key and everything, it's just not really adding up currently

@Lexi i had pretty much the exact same thought as soon as the dead girlfriend thing was brought up. i mean it's a decent enough story so far but it's incredibly standard for urban fantasy and the whole 'oh i have so much manpain because of my murdered girlfriend so now i'm gonna go on a grimdark macho killing rampage' thing is just so tired. so far i'm able to kind of look past that and just enjoy it at a superficial level but it's definitely toeing the line.

ok awesome!

The Black Parade by Kyoko M.
8/19/18
346 pages

for the graveyard on the cover for our preliminary tasks

crowley talking to his plants absolutely kills me. and like of COURSE he decided that he needed to threaten them instead of encourage them lol

the saturday section is SUPER long, like about half of the book, which i mean i understand why because that's when everything happens but also i like books to have more of an even structure if they are going to be like that, and the fact that there aren't really sub-chapters either kind of throws me off in this

i finished it last week i think and realized that i didn't actually have a lot to say about it other than 'i like it' lol but i'm still around so i'd like to hear your thoughts as you continue :)

@Michelle or Jenny - could one of you ask the mods if I can count The Adventure Zone: Balance as an audiobook? I think it should be okay because back with the fanfiction ruling they basically said that anything with a page on GR that fits the requirements is okay to be counted but I just wanted to make sure since it's technically a podcast not an audiobook [although it's listed as audiobook here]. But I just realized that I'm almost done with it and I started it mid-July so if they let me count it then it's about 82 hours so that would count as a 1000+ page book lol

i think i'm gonna start this tomorrow if anyone is still in

hey just a head's up, i'm planning on starting up on this again tomorrow

@Cathy re: the fetch thing (view spoiler)[i'm not exactly sure bc we haven't seen any other fetches in the series so far but i think generally how it works is like the fetch shows up to tell you that you're about to die and then it kind of just hangs out like in the general area but not necessarily WITH you and then it just dies when you die? i think it's kind of supposed be like a heads up / courtesy thing to 'important' people so they can get all their shit together before they die BUT of course ...toby being toby, she can't do anything like she's supposed to and ends up befriending her fetch and is also too stubborn to die like she's 'supposed' to lol. (hide spoiler)]

@Alanna i don't remember a lot about the pacing of the next couple of books so i can't comment on that but i felt like the first two had a fairly standard structure. i'll definitely keep it in mind as i continue forward though

apparently there are several x-men prose novels and we could use one featuring scott summers i guess. idk if anyone is really interested in x-men? i'm not too heavily into it but i might be able to read the Marjorie Liu one if we don't find anything else just bc I have liked other things she's written

[edit: also sue storm and stephen strange would work well but idk if there are any dr. strange or fantastic four novelizations]

haha i've been pretty good about only reading stuff that was already on my TBR and not just adding random things because they will fit tasks but yeah you definitely end up reading some things you weren't planning on

i'm falling a little bit behind because of tower teams but i've done 56 so far and hope to get to 90 by the end of the year. i'm definitely picking a lower number next year because it's been a bit much but i'm glad i'm doing it like this for this year since i'll have knocked off all my 2016 by the end of it

False Hearts by Laura Lam
8/18/18
366 pages

for the 'heart on cover' task for our our preliminary stuff

ok i read chapters 26 to the end today

i really like this one both because i feel like the high stakes make the characters grow a lot as people and also just the structure with all the nursery rhymes and poetry and stuff is all very ~atmospheric~ lol.

also like that we get to see more of lily, luna, and the luidaeg and also meet may because in the second book people just kept coming to help toby and they were all men and i was like 'i do not remember this series being such a sausage fest' lol so it's nice that there's more women taking a larger role in this one.

interested to see what everyone else thinks as they go along :)