skylacine's reviews
1011 reviews

 

 Overall I guess this is decent but I'd be lying if I said I enjoyed myself reading it. I really didn't vibe with the prose, making me want to put down the book often. I also didn't get particularly attached to any of the characters and because of this none of the supposed-to-be-emotional beats really hit me. The author would also often get distracted from Tarka and just start describing the surroundings and animals (mostly birds) around the otters rather than sticking with our protagonist, which was rather annoying.

I just kinda found this one to be mostly dull and boring and it didn't connect with me at all. I hesitate to call it bad, but it's just not for me. Will not be writing a proper long blog review for this one. 

Bullet review:

+ Some of the characters were functional.
+ The scene between Cassius and the homeless man was very heartwarming and bittersweet.
+ Good themes and messages of animal conservation and protection.
- Most of the characters are rather one-note and not very interesting, this includes Cassius himself. 
- Special shoutout to Rags, Cass' girlfriend, who is legit a non-character and is barely even in the book. She's just there to be his mate and nothing else.
- Some of the characters make very illogical and counterintuitive decisions that are never properly justified by the book.

Why does the evil zoo director want to organize a public bloodbath despite obviously knowing he'll get in trouble with animal rights activists and the law? Never explained. Why is the experienced zookeeper's first instinct to keep Cassius as his pet and not to bring him to a good, repeatable zoo or sanctuary which is far more logical? Never explained

- I don't like how this book portrays everyone who is against Cassius being kept as a pet as rather one-note and bad. Some of them do make valid points; raising a wolf as a pet ISN'T a good idea especially when nobody is alerted to the fact that Cassius is a wolf. But instead or presenting this as a nuanced issue the book pretty much shows Frank as being in the right and those against him as being in the wrong, despite some raising valid concerns about keeping a wild animal as a pet and the town's safety because of it.

Full review at: https://skybookcorner.blogspot.com/2024/11/book-review-cassius-wolf-finding-home.html

Overall a solid non-fiction book about coyotes. It delves into various aspect regarding them (how they live and hunt, social structure, hunting, mythology, human-coyote relationships) and also has a lot of pretty full-color photos to boot. Some of the information might be dated as this is an older book (I don't know enough about coyotes to be able tot tell), but overall I do recommend this one.

Bullet review:

+An overall interesting cast of characters. I like Felix and he had a solid arc as our protagonist. Streak, Moonshadow and Thor were also enjoyable and Thunder was by far my favorite character, he's probably the most interesting of the bunch.
+Decently paced, and whenever it felt like the story could be growing a bit same-y or stale it would jump POVs to a different character to prevent this from happening.
+A simple but effective plot.
-Fang, the main villain, is not a very interesting character ay all. He's very much the stereotypical "evil one-dimensional villain who wants to take over/wipe out the packs" type of character you see in a lot of wolf xenofictions.
-Some mistakes like typos, even if only a few.
-There's a few instances of the book using terminology which wolves would have no idea of which was rather distracting, since we're reading through a wolf's POV for most of the book.

Full review at: https://skybookcorner.blogspot.com/2024/10/book-review-howling-throne-by-aa.html

Bullet review:

+ Lovely, realistic, rounded and well-developed characters. Particularly Ylva was well-handled.
+ A realistic setting, author clearly did his research.
+ Good utilization of the character of Geri.
+ Some devastating emotional beats.
+ Doesn't spoon-feed its audience, things aren't always what they seem and new truths and twists are often revealed, keeping the reader hooked from start to finish.
- The character of Freki (the wolf pup) wasn't utilized very well and was just kind of there. He didn't have a lot of personality and agency and wasn't even in the book for that long. 

Full review at: https://skybookcorner.blogspot.com/2024/10/book-review-she-wolf-by-dan-smith.html

People seem to really like this one. Really? This book? I'm not seeing what you're seeing.

Bullet review:
+Despite my gripes (below), the writing did somehow manage to keep me invested in the story. Was it good? No, if you ask me, but at least I wasn't constantly mentally tuning out.
+I guess the deer and Fodder-wing were the only characters in this I didn't downright hate.
-This book is just. Not very pleasant to read. An uncomfortable amount of time is dedicated to animal killing/hunting or just general mistreatment. Even stuff like Jody and Fodder-wing keeping animals as pets, even if well intentioned, I can't root for since wild animals or exotics as pets are not something that should be encouraged. I kept hoping somehow they would put these poor animals into sanctuaries or something, instead of keeping them as glorified pets. Wild animals deserve to be respected as they are, wild, and seeing them forced into these captive situations, especially when their mothers are killed so the kids can be taken, just made me sad. 
-I genuinely hated 90% of the cast in this book. Penny, Jody, Ora, the Forresters (except Fodder-wing, I guess), pretty much everyone here sucks. I have rarely read a book where I cared so little about both the main and supporting cast. None of these people respect animals, Ora was complaining all the time, Jody and Penny are A-holes who abandon their wife/mother to go bear hunting during (yay, more animal cruelty) on Christmas Eve, Penny and Ora force their son to kill his beloved pet, the Forresters beat up a guy because he likes a certain girl. What a cast of assholes. The only reason Fodder-wing was mildly bearable was because at least he was somewhat nice to the animals (even if he kept them as pets) and then he

died early on

before he could get any worse. 
-Of course this  book wouldn't be complete without the good ol' sexism, racism and ableism. 
-The book is quite frankly, boring. It's a lot of these jerks just hanging around on a farm or in the forest doing shit. Mostly relating to crops or hunting animals. I hated to see so much animal cruelty, and the crops were genuinely boring as hell. And, again, I genuinely couldn't care less if any of these assholes died from starvation due to bad crops because none of these characters are likable.

And the only mildly tolerable ones die

-Flag, the titular deer, does not even have a personality. He feels like a plot point for the characters to deal with, but he has no personality or traits to him. He's just...a deer. Could be any random deer. Nothing sets him apart (aside from him being tame but again, could be any tame deer. Not Flag specifically). I also thought his bond with Jody felt forced and "because plot" and not because of any genuinely meaningful connection.

The reason this has 1.5 stars and not one is because there are books I think are genuinely terrible and worse than this one, but don't let that mean that this is anything remotely good.

Bullet review:

+An imaginative story with a whimsical, childlike feel to it and a lot of atmosphere. It truly feels like this is being told to us by a child.
+A lot of good character development for our two leads. They're lovely characters with each their own flaws and pros. They truly do feel like two lost children trying to make sense of their unfortunate situation.
+Other characters like Lissa are also nice.
+The final resolution was handled rather well, even if "satisfying" isn't how I would describe it.
-Despite me liking the other characters, they're barely in the story. 90% of this book is just the twins on their journey, which while good also starts to feel a bit same-y after a while.

Full review at: https://skybookcorner.blogspot.com/2024/09/book-review-foxlight-by-katya-balen.html

Bullet review:
+A pretty solid cast of flawed and interesting characters. Freja and Lucas are my favorites.
+Love the character relationships.
+The world-building is rather solid and has a lot of potential for hypothetical future installments.
-World is pretty black-and-white with very little nuance to the antagonists.
-Main villain could've been utilized more effectively by letting the reader get to know him more beforehand.
-Quite a few mistakes such as typos and punctuation issues.

Full review at: https://skybookcorner.blogspot.com/2024/09/book-review-regicide-saints-of-firnus.html