awanderingweasel's reviews
243 reviews

Reading the Leaves: An Intuitive Guide to the Ancient Art and Modern Magic of Tea Leaf Divination by Leanne Marrama, Sandra Mariah Wright

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informative fast-paced

3.0

Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata

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dark reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata was an interesting read, but it ultimately did not impress me a lot. For the most part, I found the stories to be too short, making it hard to develop a real attachment to the narrative and the characters. With that being said, the first story, "A First-Rate Material", and the titular story, "Life Ceremony", were good, and I think that they go hand in hand. I almost would have preferred seeing a short story collection from Murata that exclusively explores unconventional ways of upcycling human bodies post-mortem. The first story was, again, a bit too short for my taste, and I found that it ended abruptly -- like many other stories in this book. Had the tension between the engaged party been drawn out a big longer and the stakes raised, I don't doubt that it would have been a 5-star read. "Life Ceremony", on the other hand, was really really good. I enjoyed learning about the relationship between the characters and the lore behind life ceremonies, and I thought that the story arc was well-executed with a satisfying ending. In my head, these two stories would work wonderfully as Black Mirror episodes.

Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Press for providing me with an ARC of this book! All opinions are my own.

Di tutte le ricchezze by Stefano Benni

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funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal

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adventurous mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

I found out that A Tempest of Tea was coming out a few weeks before its publication date, and upon being presented with the keywords “vampires”, “heist”, and “tea”, I immediately requested the e-book from my library. Then, I spent the waiting period perusing Hafsah Faizal’s TikTok to find out more about the book. She described it as “Peaky Blinders meets a dash of King Arthur with vampires and a heist”, which to me sounded pretty unusual and interesting. I was suddenly very curious as to how she managed to fit all these themes together in a coherent way. Spoiler: she did not.

My entire reading experience of A Tempest of Tea consisted of dragging myself through the long and boring parts, but mostly of thinking over and over “this book is a marketing ploy.” At its very core, the story is eerily similar to Six of Crows with a bunch of appealing elements sprinkled on top: vampires (they mostly hang out in the background) and King Arthur (Arthie, the main character, has a pistol named Calibore, whose backstory mirrors that of Excalibur). Arthie and her brother Jin run a tea shop called Spindrift, like the American brand, which made me think the whole time that they were sipping on fruity sparkling water – but maybe that’s on me. The thing about the tea shop is that other than serving as an excuse for Arthie and Jin to plan a heist, and as a place where vampires hang out afterhours, it does not come up throughout the story that much.

Overall, the book felt “tropey”, and the tropes stood out too much for me to ignore them even if I was enjoying the narrative – which I wasn’t. I struggled to connect with such underdeveloped characters, and once I realized the parallels with Six of Crows, I couldn’t help thinking about how much those characters meant to me and how I was on the edge of my seat for fear that something would happen to them. In this book, the stakes are almost as high, but my attachment to the characters was lacking. Even the relationships between the characters feel fabricated. Attraction and romance do not naturally develop; rather, characters are slotted into romantic arcs, it seems, to fit an imaginary requirement. On a technical level, there was too much exposition and not enough action, which hurts a narrative where action is supposed to drive the story forward. As a direct result, pacing was off. Most of the brief chapters preceding the heist could have been summarized with a “And thus, they waited.” Instead, the reader has to sit through a handful of variations of that same sentence. At that point of the book, I was desperate for something, anything, to happen.

It genuinely upsets me when a book with so much potential does not become a favorite of mine due to poor execution. Almost everything I have commented upon could be fixed with revisions and a second draft. This is a feeling I have about many recent releases, and it frustrates me to see that publishers think they can keep presenting readers with books that still need lots of editing.

Garlic & the Vampire by Bree Paulsen

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adventurous emotional inspiring lighthearted fast-paced