All Systems Red, a reread review

Yes, you’re right, I did indeed reread All Systems Red in the same year I originally read it! (see my first review here) But after picking up Artificial Condition during a reading slump I knew I had to go back and re-enjoy this novella!

After my reread I can confirm this is one of my all time favourite books! I laugh out loud while reading it seeing Murderbot attempting to deal with these humans wanting to emote with them. And the plot itself is the perfect vessel to frustrate Murderbot progressively through the story!

If this is your first exposure to Murderbot, I feel like you should know that they’re a SecurityUnit (AI) that has gained control over its governor module so it’s no longer controlled by its owning company. But despite it’s name, Murderbot doesn’t want to kill humans. It just wants to be left alone to watch soap operas all day! But instead the human’s that it’s been tasked as security to are stupid and need protecting.

For my second read I on CAWPILE I gave: Characters: 10, Atmosphere: 10, Writing: 10, Plot: 10, Intrigue: 10, Logic: 9, and Enjoyment: 10 which gives a massive 9.86 average which is obviously a 5* read!

I adore this series so much and I’m so excited to catch up with the books that are already out!!

Skulduggery Pleasant – a review

It’s finally time. I’m finally reviewing Skulduggery Pleasant!! This is a series that I have read and reread since I was around 14 and that I’ve been rereading this year as part of the Dead Famous Readalong which has been so much fun! We follow a young girl, 12 years of age, who’s uncle has recently passed away. At his funeral she meets a very weird man. Later on she discovers that he is a detective. A living skeleton detective. That Ireland is filled with magic. And that the world is a lot stranger than it seems.

This is a very dark middle grade read, and one that I have adored from the very first page. We get violence and magic and mystery and all sorts of weirdness that continues throughout the series. This is a hard one for me to review because of how many books there are in the series in total. I don’t want to give any spoilers so I’m hesitant to give even the slightest of details.

What I can say that if you’re worried about starting this very long series, it’s actually split into trilogies. You could read the first one and leave it at that. Or you can read just the first trilogy (which I originally did…. cause the rest of the books weren’t out!). And the trilogies continue through the series so that can be an easier method of making your way through.

If you’re actually the intended age range for middle grade (unlike my 24 year old self) I would warn that this is a book on the darker side. As in I often am surprised at how violent and dark this gets. If you’re like younger me and that sentence made you excited and wanting to read it even more? Go for it! Otherwise this might be one to miss. For older readers though, unless you really cannot handle death and violence you should really enjoy this series.

It also has Irish wit, which is reasonably similar to the British variety, so that’s a lot of fun to have the dry humour throughout mixed with the utter absurdity of the magical “reality”. This is a surprisingly hard book to review, the whole series is (and given I’m rereading them all please pray for future me) as all of the cool points are best found out by yourself! Even those that aren’t spoilers are just that much more fun to read for the first time and I don’t want to be the one to take that away from you!

So all I will say is that if you like action, wit, magic, and dark books. Pick this one up. No matter how old you are (unless you’re under 9, there’s a wee sticker on the back that says 9+. Always pay attention to stickers….. mostly always…. sometimes). This series is an absolute blast and I will forever love my mother for gifting me these books! (this reason only, of course).

Highlight here for trigger warnings: one swear word, mild violence, gun shooting and an implied instance of torture, death, magic

For my CAWPILE ratings I gave:

Characters: 10

Atmosphere: 9

Writing: 9

Plot: 9

Intrigue: 10

Logic: 9

Enjoyment: 9

For an overall 9.29 rating which of course comes out at a 5* read! Did we expect anything else? I gave it a five star when I first read the book and a five star every reread since!

The Dawn Chorus – a review

Book 3.5 in The Bone Season series by Samantha Shannon, I picked this up after reading The Song Rising and The Pale Dreamer as it was the last unread book left before I picked up The Mask Falling!

Coming in at 92 pages it was just a short read, but wow did I love it!

Of course with this being so far through a series I can’t say all that much. What I can say is that this covers the transitional gap between books 3 and 4, and it does so really well. You don’t need to read it before you continue on with the series, but for big fans it adds an extra dimension to the world and the characters that I really appreciated.

Whilst there is some discussion of larger overall events, this novella is really focused on the relationship between two main characters. Due to events they spend a lot of time together and seeing this develop through the novella was so much fun to read, and for once Samantha Shannon wasn’t torturing her characters! A mini between book break for us all!

For my CAWPILE rating I gave:

• characters: 10
• atmosphere: 9
• writing: 9
• plot: 9
• intrigue: 9
• logic: 10
• enjoyment: 9

Which totalled at 9.29, a solid 5* read that I really enjoyed!

Highlight here to see trigger warnings: abuse, PTSD, torture, trauma

I really recommend picking up this little novella if you like The Bone Season series. In English it’s only available in ebook format, so that’s how I read it. But I believe there’s a little paperback version that’s published in Polish! This is such a wonderful little slot of time with our faves and a nice rest between two heartbreaking books!

The Singing – a review

Finally! My review of the 4th and final book in the Pellinor series!! It’s taken me a loooong while to get around to writing this (I read the damn thing in December!) so let’s get into it!

In the first two books of this series we follow Maerad’s pov, and then for book three we follow Hem. In this last book we follow the both of them, with the pov changing every few chapters. Similarly to what I said in my review about The Crow, when I previously re-read these books I skipped out on Hem’s sections a lot. They just didn’t call to me when I was younger and I just wanted to get into Maerad’s story! This time around, of course, that was completely different and I revelled in Hem’s story! Because it had been so long since I had read his sections it was wonderful to see what was essentially a new pov in the story for me. It added so much dimension to the tale and really brings the whole book together.

To keep this as spoiler free as possible, the only explanation I will give for this book is that the two are coming together after time apart, the book follows their journey towards each other and also their journey once their are together which is the end point of the entire series. (right look I know that’s vague but do you want spoilers? No! Go check out the first 3 books and come back!)

The continuous development of the new characters we met with Hem in his story, as well as returning to characters we hadn’t seen since the first book, really rounded out this world and made it feel real. I am so emotionally invested within this world that every battle and every fight is tense, even though I know the outcome! Visiting old friends again is a wonderful way to round out the series and to suggest a direction of events for after what is shown in the books, and I think Croggon does this really well to a point where certain events are suggested but she leaves it open enough for you to come to your own conclusions.

As always the “academic” sections at the beginning and the end of this book are fantastic. I adore all that they add to the world without bogging down the text itself, and the context that they give you to read this tale within.

Is anyone surprised that I loved this reread? No! Now I just need to re-read the prequel and to finally get my butt in gear and read the eBook novella’s that came out a while ago!

The Riddle by Alison Croggon – A Review

Continuing on with my reread of the series which inspired my bookish handle, I moved on to The Riddle! Starting where we left off at the end of The Gift, the journey through Edil-Amarandh by Maerad and Cadvan continues and we get to see more of this world and more about these two characters.

This book focuses even more heavily on Maerad than the first, and we learn a lot about her and through her we learn a lot about the world she is travelling through. On her trek to find out more information, carrying little more than her lyre, a sword and some sustenance, we follow the young Bard throughout Edil-Amarandh and into realms we haven’t explored in this world before.

I hesitate about going into any depth on any of these topics because they would most likely be spoilers for book one and maybe even for this book. So instead everything here will be vague and I hope you can forgive me. We travel to so many different places within this book, exploring a wide variety of cultures across the world and finding similarities and so many differences through Maerad’s still naïve eyes. I adored learning more about different cities and locations, and seeing how this magical system interlinks with the “normal” folk in different areas and how various schools interact with the light.

There is a lot more focus on Maerad in this book, and the story revolves around her alone. This means that we get to see her grow and develop a lot in her emotions as she is subject to trials and tribulations, as well as love and loss. Throughout this we learn more about not only Maerad as a person, but also about her special powers that set her apart within this world. How these work, where they may have come from, and how she can best harness them.

For me this is unfortunately a 4 star read rather than 5. I did find that the story was lacking slightly. Once again this is difficult to explain without spoilers, but I’ll struggle through! There’s a plot line with someone powerful, but I found personally that I couldn’t believe in their strength, both physical and emotional. There just wasn’t enough built up around it. My memory had this aspect of the book lasting longer but it was over within a relatively short number of pages and I do think that this was a mistake. In order to be fully impactful it needed more depth to it.

My second and final issue which cause the book to drop a star is that in places it seemed kind of… unnecessary. Don’t get me wrong, I adore these books so much. But there’s a lot of meandering that doesn’t feel entirely fruitful and I feel like this book could’ve been edited down to remove those portions. And if a certain wordcount was wanted to keep it in line with the other 3 books in the series then adding in POV from Cadvan would’ve been really constructive to the story and I feel like it would’ve made the book much faster paced and much more enjoyable.

As it is, I still adore this series and what this book brings to it. There are so many specifics within this book that are some of my favourites throughout the series as a whole and I’m so excited to get to the last two books!

Bedlam: a scene of uproar and confusion, an apt title

The 12th book in the Skulduggery Pleasant series, an awkward one to talk about! This is going to be a spoiler free review, for the whole series as well as this individual book, just in case people who’ve read none or some of the previous books want to read this. I gave this book 5* unsurprisingly and really loved it.

For those uninitiated, the Skulduggery Pleasant series starts off following a tweenager called Stephanie after her Uncles funeral, a skeleton detective called Skulduggery Pleasant and revolves around magic in Ireland, hidden from the mortals. It’s an 8-12 book (Middle Grade for my North American audience), but is surprisingly violent so don’t expect it to be wishy-washy just cause it’s aimed at kids.

Book #9 was the end of the first part of this series, with a cover and tone change from then onwards. In book #10 we come back after Stephanie has been away for a few years (the least spoilery way I could write it!) and the series continues on from there. Now we’re up to book #12.

As always, this was a fast paced, high action, banter filled read that was a pleasure to pick up. We hop around various different viewpoints in order to best see all of the action and in each one of them Landy’s humour shines through, which is really a standout feature of this series. This book probably had one of the least amounts of Skulduggery featured, as well as having a very fast paced and multi-faceted action plot, so as far as I can tell from the less excited reviews on Goodreads these may be reasons that the latest book isn’t your favourite. But personally I was still highly invested, still enjoying myself and still highly anticipating reading the newly released Seasons of War!

If you’ve never read a Skulduggery Pleasant book I really do recommend giving them a go! I’ve never listened to the audiobooks myself but they’re narrated by an Irishman, lending authenticity to those unused to the accent, and you can listen to the whole first audiobook for free here!! (at least at the time of writing) so do you really have an excuse not to give this series a go?