torts's reviews
1703 reviews

A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon

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adventurous dark tense
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

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adventurous dark informative mysterious sad
  • Loveable characters? No

3.0

very matter-of-fact, often to the point of seeming didactic or like reading philosophical lectures with heavy science and math references
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

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adventurous dark emotional funny
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.75

The Tea Dragon Tapestry by K. O'Neill

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective

5.0

maybe kind of almost made me cry.... reminded me of Kiki's Delivery Service in how it addressed a changing relationship to your art/passions, but with an extension of those ideas to apply more to different phases of life (and aging/settling more generally)
Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

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adventurous funny mysterious
  • Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

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adventurous emotional funny informative lighthearted mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 14%.
the whole he-thinks-she-died-but-somehow-she-lived thing felt too...tropey? poorly explained (in a way that was meant to be mysterious, i'm sure, but it just felt like a narrative gotcha to say she was dead, switch to his perspective to convey how thoroughly he'd run away and isolated himself from the people who could've let him know she hadn't truly died or came back after the initial cry over her death, and then switch back to hers with no explanation of how she Lazarused)... also the random switches to spanish felt awkward and clunky, not like they were being used for worldbuilding or prosity as they could've (should've?) been
The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna

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emotional funny hopeful lighthearted
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

The Scholomance...but cozy(!?). With a protagonist in her thirties, dealing with (slightly less deadly) magic school antics that still have resonance with actual issues of colonialism and tell a story about finding/creating safety in a world where it is dangerous to be different, and where being magical means attracting negative attention, and where being vulnerable and falling in love is basically equivalent to risking your life.

Bonus: This brown-skinned protagonist raised in (white) British culture was written by a non-white author. And when she is tasked with caring for three girls of color she rejects the call (from the white found-family members) to teach them how to Be People of Color. (I thought Novik did a great job in the Scholomance series, but I had seen the white author writing a brown prota onist as a criticism and do think it's worth giving attention to non-white authors writing about the particular feelings of outsiderness and othering and tokenization that Novik kind of skirted around.)
Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler

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https://electricliterature.com/now-more-than-ever-we-wish-we-had-these-lost-octavia-butler-novels/
The Boy on the Bridge by M.R. Carey

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adventurous hopeful
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0