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This is invaluable. You'll see other people with the same basic ideas and arguments Jamison has about mental illness, but I've never seen them expressed so well. As someone who's never experienced a serious mental illness, I've never felt like I understood mental illness so well.

The chronology could be a little more well-organized, but other than that, this is just fascinating. It's great to see the personal insights of someone with so much understanding of psychiatry.

This is really interesting. I'm so wrapped up in my modern understanding of mental illness, it's really interesting to see how it was approached 40 years ago. I'm liking this a lot.

I know I'm basically just repeating myself, but seriously, there is absolutely nothing to draw me in and make me interested in this book. How is it possible that someone who made the fascinating and original world of the Touchstone series could also create something so bland and generic as this?

This is pretty interesting so far. The writing isn't great, but it isn't bad either.

This is terrible, full-stop. The artwork looks like shit, the way narration is copied from the short story is even more intrusive and awkward than usual, and to begin with, this was a mediocre story based around an unfunny joke.

Maybe I'm just not being open-minded enough. There's nothing wrong with the story exactly, it's just completely uninteresting to me. There's nothing that hooks me in, no particular reason for me to root for Soren or care about anything that's going on.

The Mummy's Hand by Kim Newman: 3/5
This was a nice little Sherlock Holmes pastiche, but it just wasn't all that memorable. The protagonist wasn't very interesting, nor was the mystery. Still, Newman nailed the tone in this one, so that's something.

The Mummy's Hand by Kim Newman: 3/5
This was a nice little Sherlock Holmes pastiche, but it just wasn't all that memorable. The protagonist wasn't very interesting, nor was the mystery. Still, Newman nailed the tone in this one, so that's something.

The Mummy's Hand by Kim Newman: 3/5
This was a nice little Sherlock Holmes pastiche, but it just wasn't all that memorable. The protagonist wasn't very interesting, nor was the mystery. Still, Newman nailed the tone in this one, so that's something.

Our Lady of Death by Peter Tremayne: 2/5
This was just really boring. It opens with an overly-long infodump, and the actual story is completely unmemorable. I honestly can't even think of anything else to say about it.

Seven Stars Prologue: In Egypt's Land by Kim Newman: 3/5
This one is okay, I guess. As the title says, it's a prologue, and as such, the ideas here don't feel fully explored, presumably to be further fleshed out in later entries. The prose is pretty good and there are some interesting ideas, but this isn't particularly memorable in its own right, or even intriguing for what's to follow.

This feels kind of like reading the holy text of a religion I'm not a part of. Or like when I had to sing Christian songs in chorus in 7th grade. Why do people still read this?

I like some of the exchanges between Dionysius and the king-dude. (Greek names are hard, and I don't have the book off hand.) Still not really sure why this is so well-remembered, but it's enjoyable enough.

So far, this is literally nothing but variations on, "Dionysus is great." I assume that's not enough to sustain a whole play, but seriously, there's basically nothing else so far.

I don't tend to like Stephen Jones anthologies, and there are a lot of reasons for that, but I think one of the biggest ones is these tedious as hell introductions. If I wanted a dry summation of every major work of supernatural detective fiction, I would read a nonfiction book about it.

The biggest problem with Host's books is always how overly-complicated they are, and I'm honestly just waiting to see how long that takes to come into effect. Already, I can see the seeds of it taking shape.

This is better than the last few books have been. Tate isn't that compelling of a character, but she's interesting enough, and the story is really creative.

I'm starting to think I'm just not a big fan of Andrea K. Host's work outside of her YA sci-fi. Maybe it's just too early in the book, but I have absolutely zero interest in this story. Fantasy usually doesn't interest me very much, and this is no exception.

A big part of the problem with this book is that Lucas is too flawless and perfect. It makes him a bad match for Jacqueline, who's kind of selfish and dense - I honestly don't know what he sees in her.

Man, has Host's prose always been this purple? This looks like a semi-interesting premise for a novel, but... seriously, I remember Host's writing being way better than this, even in her books I didn't like. Not a great first impression.

I honestly cannot express how uninteresting I find this book. Everything here about rape and romance is stuff I've read already, in better books.

While I'm not enjoying this book, I can definitely see why Crewe decided to write it, what she was going for. The twist was very good, and there are some great thematic ideas here. With a couple re-writes to focus the themes and make Sky a more compelling character, this could've easily been on par with Fallen World. The fact that this book was released only 8 months after Crewe's last book definitely shows here.

This is 50% college romance, 50% rape PSA, and 100% doesn't work. It's incoherent, and everything just feels inauthentic - Jacqueline is kind of a well-developed character, but she and Lucas are both generic enough to be from a Lifetime movie. I have no idea why anybody would want to read this, unless they've never read a book about rape before.

I think this book is a good example of why I generally don't like time-traveling stories - there are ALWAYS leaps in logic to make it work. Specifically, the reason that Sky could sense the shifts is just lazy and ridiculous, and most of the rules of how time traveling works are hard to follow.

I'm not sure if I can articulate exactly why this feels like such a cobbled-together mess to me. All the elements sort of work together, but somehow, the romance and the rape storyline feel very separate. This isn't so much overcoming trauma through romance as doing those two things separately.

I guess the ethical dilemmas explored here are mildly interesting. I feel like they might be more interesting if Win was telling the story, or if it was actually set in his society, but what we get isn't bad.

I can't tell if this is actually bad, or if I'm just supremely unimpressed by romantic drama. I mean, some parts are definitely bad (it makes zero sense that Kennedy would want Jacqueline to be there for Thanksgiving or that she'd say yes; Benji is the kind of gay character who can only be written by straight people), but is this bad at the core, or is this just not my genre?

The fact that I didn't see this romance coming at all, even though it should make perfect sense, speaks to how flat of a protagonist Sky is. I'm honestly shocked that an author as good as Megan Crewe can write something this dull - this is seriously disappointing.

I will now quote a line out of context to make you think this book has a lesbian sex scene:

"My mouth agape, I sat, speechless, while she shoved her black skirt down over her hips."

(I don't know what else to say about this book, 90% of this is just boring romantic drama.)