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a publié une critique de Saints of Storm and Sorrow par Gabriella Buba (Stormbringer Saga, #1)

Gabriella Buba: Saints of Storm and Sorrow (2024, Titan Books Limited)

In this an enthralling Filipino-inspired epic fantasy, a nun concealing a goddess-given gift is unwillingly …

Saints of Storm and Sorrow

I don’t hate you. I hate that I don’t have better answers to all that’s wrong in my city. The only choices shouldn’t be bloody vengeance or doing nothing. I hate that the Codicíans’ ‘gift’ of empire is generations of trauma.

Overall, I think I'm a bit mixed on this book. I was most intrigued in the messy middle, where all of the characters are caught between competing and interesting tensions. It felt impossible for any character to do right by another while being caught in such structural traps. The focus of the book also (surprisingly?) felt firmly on these relationships between people who care about each other, and the messed up ways that colonialism warps their love.

I also quite enjoyed a character whose magic is tied to her emotions, and so she quite literally has to repress her anger and sadness in order to survive and hide.

It's …

a publié une critique de Saints of Storm and Sorrow par Gabriella Buba (Stormbringer Saga, #1)

Gabriella Buba: Saints of Storm and Sorrow (2024, Titan Books Limited)

In this an enthralling Filipino-inspired epic fantasy, a nun concealing a goddess-given gift is unwillingly …

Saints of Storm and Sorrow

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a commenté Saints of Storm and Sorrow par Gabriella Buba (Stormbringer Saga, #1)

Gabriella Buba: Saints of Storm and Sorrow (2024, Titan Books Limited)

In this an enthralling Filipino-inspired epic fantasy, a nun concealing a goddess-given gift is unwillingly …

a publié une critique de The Ministry of Time par Kaliane Bradley

Kaliane Bradley: The Ministry of Time (Hardcover, 2024, Simon & Schuster)

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and …

The Ministry of Time

I really enjoyed The Ministry of Time.

I was frustrated with the protagonist for big chunks of the book for not realizing obvious things. The author repeatedly tried to defend this with "I bet you're thinking 'I would have realized this right away', but" and in a world where I know time travel exists, I absolutely would!

However, the writing is very good, and it kept me engaged. The combination of themes around time travel, colonialism, and refugee life really worked, and I feel like it allowed them to be explored from different angles.

I'm kind of let down by the inconclusiveness of the ending, but on the other hand they avoided most of the cliché time travel tropes, so overall I guess it balances out.

#SFFBookClub

a publié une critique de The Ministry of Time par Kaliane Bradley

Kaliane Bradley: The Ministry of Time (Hardcover, 2024, Simon & Schuster)

In the near future, a civil servant is offered the salary of her dreams and …

The Ministry of Time

Overall, I love this novel's ideas but the genres it mixes together work against each other rather than being stronger for the combination.

(also please name your protagonist, it's so awkward, thank you)

I found the writing here to be surprisingly funny and engaging. The dialogue between the protagonist and Graham continually made me laugh, and the book is peppered with delightful drive-by analogies like "he looked oddly formal, as if he was the sole person in serif font" or "I lay in my own body like a wretched sandbank".

The strongest part of the book to me (and the part that I found the most engaging) was the relationship and dialogue between the protagonist and Graham. A 19th century sailor is a great foil for modern London life; however, it also does a good job of making both the protagonist and Graham real, fallible characters who each make incorrect …

a publié une critique de Time's Agent par Brenda Peynado

Brenda Peynado: Time's Agent (2024, Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom)

Pocket World–a geographically small, hidden offshoot of our own reality, sped up or slowed down …

Time's Agent

This book was a potential book for the #SFFBookClub poll for a while, but I ended up reading anyway because it looked intriguing.

As a reader, it seems like a novella is a hard length to hit; it's hard to have the space for both pacing and sufficient worldbuilding, and it's also hard to have enough runway for the resolution to resonate and feel satisfying. The short of it is that I feel like this novella nailed it for me.

The worldbuilding here is brutal. The book kicks off with idyllic introduction of Raquel working for the Global Institute for the Scientific and Humanistic Study of Pocket Worlds. Pocket worlds are small offshoots of reality, much smaller than our own universe--maybe the size of a meadow or a room or a bag even--and they can run at different time rates to our own universe.

After the protagonist Raquel falls into …