Published: 14th November 2017
Source: Netgalley/Illumicrate
Genre: Sci-fi, Mystery, Thriller, Heist, Little Bit Of Everything
My Rating:
Jazz Bashara is a criminal.
Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent.
Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down. But pulling off the impossible is just the start of Jazz's problems, as she learns that she's stepped square into a conspiracy for control of Artemis itself - and that now, her only chance at survival lies in a gambit even more unlikely than the first.
Artemis is one of those must read books for me after how much I adored The Martian I knew that reading it was inevitable. I was so excited to get approved on Netgalley and then put off reading for reasons unknown so as soon as I guessed it was coming in my Illumicrate (because I am a genius detective) I knew that I’d wait and read my shiny new physical copy. I am so glad I have a copy because I enjoyed this book immensely. I didn’t want to stop reading and it hooked me in even though I wasn’t sure what type of direction it was going in. I loved the mystery/thriller/heist sort of book that was a mix of all things and I loved that all of the characters were pretty damn smart. After reading a couple of reviews, though, I have realised a glaring flaw in this book, it slut shames and has characters which folks with either like or hate.
Let’s begin with the good, I was gripped by this book. One of my biggest complaints in The Martian is that the science was too hard and too frequent and those chunks of writing bored me, I didn’t have that in this one. Instead, the story was more fast paced and you just sort of roll with it. Is there science and technical explanations? Yeah, but it’s not overwhelming and they aren’t anywhere near as long so I could handle it. This book dives right in with a heist which moves into a mystery which goes into another heist and never did I find myself getting bored or not following the story, instead I was there for every page.
You also get a totally kickass MC in the form of Jazz. She has essentially grown up on Artemis, the only town on the Moon and she has developed her own smuggling business on the moon. As soon as you meet her it’s immediately obvious she is smart, and although many claim she wasted her potential I really loved that she wasn’t striving to take over the world but instead followed her own path and had a wide path of interests. She won’t be for everyone, I know I had a few gripes apart her character, but she is easy to like and I was invested in her story from the get go.
I liked that the folks on the Moon, especially those who lived there, were smart and experts in their chosen fields, not idiots who are there to move the story along. Often when you have a smart MC the characters around them get dumbed down but that wasn’t the case, instead they are just as smart and the MC in fact relies upon their expertise to help her solve a mystery or plan a heist or two. I can’t say whether or not what the characters say is accurate because I know nothing about science or economics or welding but it sounded pretty good at least.
Now, like I said, there were gripes to be had. I loved how Jazz was so freaking smart and that she was smart but still made mistakes (you guys who’ve read it will know the big booboo I’m thinking of) but I kind of felt like it was never fleshed out why she was so smart. Like, it seemed like she had this really good memory but with no explanation I found it a little crazy how she seemed to be able to read up on something and then just knew about it. I was close to rolling my eyes because she was a little too good. And then there was the fact that it was mentioned she was good looking as well, which is totally cool, but it almost seemed like she was a Mary Sue. It wasn’t quite that bad but I did have a couple of ‘seriously’ moments. I also found it weird how a couple of times she did something which a character deemed sexy or she herself was self aware of her sexiness. I know there are moments people can deem someone as sexy and sometimes you can do something intentionally but it was when she was doing something normal and it was just a little weird.
That kind of leads into the other problem of this book, there is slut shaming. I kind of noticed whilst reading but was distracted by the main plot when I was reading but after reading this review over at Smart Bitches I have to say there was slut shaming and it’s not cool. Jazz was a sexually active woman and no more promiscuous than any other person so it’s weird people made such a thing out of that when other characters actions were way more questionable (I’m looking at you Dale). I just didn’t feel comfortable with the whole part of the book where Jazz is continually demeaned or has rubbing from others for who she’s slept with, totally not cool.
Basically, this book is good in one sense. It’s fun and easy to read and totally a great sci-fi romp that I will happily read again. On the other hand, it needed some work doing on the characters and it definitely needed some better female representation. Don’t get me wrong, there were some brilliant women in this book, but why did Jazz have to be slut shamed and good at like everything? These things bothered me, and definitely affected my opinion on the book as I pondered it the day after finishing.
Have you read Artemis? Do you agree with my assessment of the book? And what’s your favourite fun sci-fi read?
As you may have noticed (because I remind you every Sunday) I have been a little absent around the blogosphere of late. Both on my blog but also visiting other folks and it sucks because I never feel like I can have a chat as it takes an age for me ever to see or respond to anything. I’ve been feeling bad about it but it’s one of those things. Real life and other interests have just plain old got in the way so I haven’t been blogging. I love blogging, I’ve been doing so for three years now and it’s seriously the best hobby… expect for reading of course.
I want to keep you informed about why I’m not around. Some reasons you guys will know if you read my Sunday posts, and some things you’ll just be surprised at because it’s not just me having real life getting in the way, I also have other interests!
I am not going to keep apologising for not being around because we all get busy but I want to share what’s keeping me distracted of late and you guys can feel free to do the same because we all have lives, I don’t think any of us are full time bloggers so we shouldn’t feel bad for having other plans.
My Nan
As anyone who reads my Sunday posts will know, we have moved my nan into a care home recently. It was a tough (and expensive) decision to make but she has been needing to move for a good long while and this was the best decision we could make. It was a touch and go process over whether we could get her in the home and we are still concerned she isn’t settling in but it was something which needed to happen. now she is in the home we must start the lengthy process of trying to sell the home she has lived in for forty years and it’s heart-breaking. She loves that house, she raised her children there (my dad and uncle) and that is the only home I have ever known her have. I get sad just thinking of selling it so as you can imagine that’s been emotionally draining and I just haven’t always had the mental will power to blog with all of that going on. That has been the most depressing reason why I haven’t been blogging as much and so I thought I’d put that out there first. There are other more fun reasons.
Seeing Friends
Guys, I know I don’t mention social outings and stuff all that much on the blog and I never name friends from my real life just because they haven’t signed up for me broadcasting their life on here, not like me who made the decision. But I have actual real live friends and I have been seeing a few of them a lot more recently and I’ve loved it. Some I see often and have just not seen in a while as they live down south, others I lost touch with and am now seeing and reconnecting with and it’s rocked. I saw once girl I’ve not seen in ten years and we spoke like we hung out just a few weeks ago. I saw another I have seen in about a year and laughed hysterically with for a night like we hung out just the other day. It’s been a great time for seeing friends and I’ve had the best time but it has meant I’ve not been sat in front of a computer screen. I’d apologise but I’m not even sorry, I love that real life friends are the reason for me neglecting online friends for once.
Sims
Look, I adore the Sims and I fully blame the Tumblrs I follow who are sims based and Kristen for my renewed love for Sims. It’s an addictive game and I love it. I sadly lost my supernatural themed neighbourhood I was going to grow and explore when my old laptop kicked the bucket but I am now deciding to have a very OTT neighbourhood filled with dramatic things like affairs, family feuds and some full on soap like drama. I am looking forward to it because if you can’t give a family grief on the Sims where can you do it? I am thinking people sleeping with the maid and a womaniser who everyone hates. i also want a grumpy old woman to live somewhere. It will be epic so let’s hope I don’t get bored before I finish the neighbourhood.
Final Fantasy IX
I don’t know if you guys know this about me but I actually really love playing video games. Like, I know I play The Sims but that’s a game everyone plays. I do actually play proper games as well and the one taking up most of my time of late is Final Fantasy IX. They released it on PS4 and it looks like it’s a straight port from Steam from what I’ve seen but I don’t care, it’s awesome and addictive and was one of my favourite RPGs growing up. I definitely think it helped grow my love for fantasy as well. It is just as good as I remember it being when I was 11 and I am so glad I got a copy on my PS4. It will suck up many hours of my day and I don’t care. It does mean I’m reading less, though.
Snow
The final reason for my absence is pretty simple. It snowed here in the UK and I am full on distracted by the white powdery stuff outside my window. It began snowing on Friday where I live and it was distracting for me then because I wasn’t sure I was going to get home from work and so my motivation to blog was low. Then it really snowed on Sunday, my prime blogging day, and once more I didn’t have the motivation to blog as I was stressing about getting to work Monday. I can’t drive and the buses were all cancelled Sunday so I worried i wouldn’t make it to the office. The temperatures have also plummeted now the snow has settled so the is the risk of ice. As pretty as the snow is it totally stressed me out when it came to work and it meant I was completely distracted writing blog posts. I haven’t typed a single word and it was only writing this Monday night I’ve managed to get anything finished. I had all these grand blogging plans for the weekend and a few flakes of snow threw that idea out of the window.
***
Basically, real life has worked hard to keep me distracted lately. My mind hasn’t been totally on blogging and reading whilst it sucks I’m okay with it. It’s Christmas and I have interests outside reading and blogging. I won’t apologise for not being around and I don’t know why we insist on doing so. Real life happens and it’s totally okay for us to do other things. It’s always nice to hear what other folks have been getting up to when they’ve not been about on their blog much, though. I am trying to post a couple of times a week because sometimes writing words on a screen are the best way for me to unwind but that hasn’t always been the case in the past couple of weeks.
What keeps you distracted from blogging? Any real life things interrupting your plans or is it just me? And why do we insist on apologising when real life gets in the way like we’re at fault in some way?
Guys, I keep meaning to make time for blogging and real life has really been getting in the way. Anyone who stops by regularly will have been confused as to why i only posted one this week. I have busy lately and not had chance to sit in front of my laptop and write a post and that’s frustrated me but at least I have a little time now to sit down and write out my weekly post, even if it’s the only post I get up each week.
What have I been doing this week since I’ve not been blogging? Well, I’ve been getting all adither over getting Taylor Swift tickets, me and my friends have planning where to stay and everything next year. It’s at Wembley so it’ll be the first time I’ve been into London in a very long time so that will be a fun day in June for me. I am very excited. And the time I spent planning was also spent seeing friends. I saw one friend I haven’t seen in like a year and we had a great time, I was in hysterics. It’s so good knowing you haven’t seen someone for a year adn you can still have a great time together.
One really exciting thing which happened this week is that it snowed! We don’t get stuff like snow too often here in the UK and so when we all saw snow forecast everyone at work was rolling their eyes and joking there’ll be a sprinkling on the pavement and the world will come to a standstill. It was a little more than a sprinkling, I think we were meant to get a few centimetres and it will hilarious at work on Friday. I mean, it’s good people got in considering I left the house and there was nothing and an hour later at work it was white out. I saw a lot of wheel spinning and a few cars spinning out. It was all scary but it was an entertaining morning of work.
What I’ve Been Reading
I haven’t been reading anything new this week. I am actually fed up of A Court of Wings and Ruin. Not because it’s bad (although it’s far too long) but because I’ve been reading this series for two weeks now and so I think I’ll put it on hold for a little while. I might focus on a couple of ARCs and then come back to it.
New To Me
One new book for me this week. And that books is also a freebie at that. I had this on my radar before and I’d seen a couple of folks read it so I’m going to see if it’s any good. If not, at least I didn’t pay any money for it.
I can’t be too smug about not getting new books, though, as I did get three new ARCs in the past couple of weeks. I am excited for each in their own way but I am definitely having a resolution for next year about not requesting too many ARCs. This will be helped by the change in location rules Netgalley have snuck in. I may get approved for a few less romances but we shall see. And then there are those publishers sticking with wishlist only items which ugh. It’s a thing, I’m mostly ok with it.
That’s my week, yay for snow and fingers crossed that my reading will pick up shortly. Anyone finished their Christmas shopping yet? If so, please tell me your secrets.
Published: 30th May 2017
Source: Bought
Genre: Contemporary, Young Adult, Romance
My Rating:
Her story is a phenomenon. Her life is a disaster.
In the real world, Eliza Mirk is shy, weird, and friendless. Online, she’s LadyConstellation, the anonymous creator of the wildly popular webcomic Monstrous Sea. Eliza can’t imagine enjoying the real world as much as she loves the online one, and she has no desire to try.
Then Wallace Warland, Monstrous Sea’s biggest fanfiction writer, transfers to her school. Wallace thinks Eliza is just another fan, and as he draws her out of her shell, she begins to wonder if a life offline might be worthwhile.
But when Eliza’s secret is accidentally shared with the world, everything she’s built—her story, her relationship with Wallace, and even her sanity—begins to fall apart.
Eliza and her Monsters was a book I was so excited for when I learnt what it was about. I had been waiting ages for it to be released and I saw the reviews roll in and new it was a perfect book for me. I bought it a few months ago and then for no apparent reason allowed it to gather dust on my shelf and didn’t pick it up. I then did the same after reviewing. I knew I wanted to tell you all about it but couldn’t figure out how and once more my review gathered digital dust. Finally, I am ready to put into good words what makes this book great.
This book is another which focuses heavily on the community people can find online and the joy of being part of online fandom. It takes a different angle to it than Fangirl or Geekerella did but at it’s heart this book is about fandom and about fitting in and I loved it for that alone. Eliza created her very own fandom by creating a webcomic. Sharing her work online and somehow creating a huge community which adores the work she does. Her family and those in her everyday life aren’t fully aware of what she does but there are those online who adore what she does and she has those who care for her online, friends, something she doesn’t have in her real life, especially not at school.
Eliza is drifting through her senior year counting down until she graduates and she can go to college, where she is told it is better. That is until she meets Wallace Warland, a new kid at her school who likes the webcomic she writes and who in fact is part of that fandom, one of the best fanfic writers for it in fact. She struggles with telling him because how do you even tell someone like that? Along with the struggle of revealing who she is to her new friend she is struggling with her own social anxiety as she comes out of her shell.
I won’t reveal more about the story but it’s safe to say that it was done so brilliantly. I related so well with Eliza. Whilst the internet wasn’t as good as it was now as a teen I spent a ridiculous amount online, I still do. It reminded me a lot of Fngirl, like I said, and writing this review is making me want to reread Fangirl, but this is a little different and it explores different things but the comparisons are easy to make. I didn’t have Eliza’s struggles of her parents not understanding her, though. I did get dragged away from my computer but that was more because dial up was a thing and someone needed to use the phone. Or because I was on the family computer for five hours and my brother needed to do his homework. They never forced me to be something I wasn’t.
Whilst there is a romance in this book, I found really it’s more about Eliza discovering who she was and what she wanted in life. And also learning to let others in around her. Eliza believes that people expect certain things from her and she terrified of not meeting expectations. She puts so much pressure on herself which is totally unnecessary and throughout the book it is about her growing and learning her own limits and defining her own limits. This is a brilliant book about anxiety and the affect it can have. It is about learning your limits and admitting help is needed. It is beautiful and wonderful and absolutely one of my favourites.
I will never be objective about this book because it was just utterly perfect to me but I loved it and I don't know why more people haven't spoken about it. How has this not been everywhere or am I just out of touch with YA?
Have you read this? Did you love it as much as me? And can you recommend any good books like this one which you totally connect with?
How crazy is it that it’s December? Have we all got an advent calendar? I have two because I’m greedy… also because I got one for home and then we got given free one at work. I can complain about many parts of my job but the freebie advent calendar is not one of those things. I am totally weirded out that it’s December already because this year has passed far faster than expected… which isn’t a bad thing when you think of some of the shit which has gone down this year.
Anyway, what have I been up to this week? I had a chilled start to the week, I had a couple of days off and did a little TV watching, reading and general chilling and I loved it. Then I went back to work and that was the same as usual, not much to report on that front.
It has gotten crazy cold over the past few days here. I was not ready. I still need to buy boots which are work appropriate so my toes don’t drop off. And I need some more cardigans and cosy jumpers so I can layer up. And I seriously need to get a new coat since my zip is broken on mine. So yeah, a whole lot of winter shopping needs to be done now because of this stupid cold weather, but then I get into work and it’s like a tropical climate walking through the doors. It leaves me very confused as to how I should dress.
Annoyingly I have been struck down with a cold after my few days off of work. I completely blame my friend, she didn’t warn me she had the lurgy before we travelled down for the wedding last week and so her germs infected me on the car journey. I have told her already she should be ashamed of her malicious attack. Shockingly she just rolled her eyes at me.
What I’ve Been Reading
It’s another slow reading week but I am reading a series and some of these books have a lot of pages. I had previously vowed to abandon all hope on Sarah J Maas books because I have seen so many bad reviews for them after I fell behind. I had the first and second book in The Court of Thorns and Roses series sat on my shelf, though. I had already spoiled myself and was looking for some easy reading Sunday and so I picked up A Court of Thorns and Roses. It was just as slow to start as I remembered but it was as addictive as I remembered once it got going. The same thing happened with A Court of Mist and Fury. It was slow going and could have been edited a little so it wasn’t so long but I was there for Feyre and her romantic drama. And then I started A Court of Wings and Ruin and it’s slow going but the cliffhanger of the second book made me pick up the third.
I have to say, I had way more success getting into these books when I ignored the usual YA categorising which goes on with it and enjoyed it as a fantasy romance series instead. It’s making me think about categorising books and genre categories and I can feel a discussion post brewing from that.
New To Me
So, I shopped and I am totally cool with that. I may not always be brilliant at reading books but I am awesome at getting them. I obviously got the third book in the series I’m reading, and Amazon was doing a 3 for £10 offer so I figured why not? I have been meaning to get Goldenhand for a good long while and when I saw Letters to the Lost I just had to, I enjoyed that book a whole lot when I read it at the start of the year. And then there were my Illumicrate books, I totally knew that Artemis was coming and I cannot wait to start that and I also got a physical ARC of The City of Brass which is out in the UK in January so I cannot wait to read this… I mean I already have an e-ARC of it but I want to read it so bad (Danya, Nick, come on guys, this should happen, right?). And then a few ebooks were purchased as well. Basically, I have spending problems before Christmas. I keep using books and purchases for myself as rewards for doing other stuff. Yes, I do use a reward system on myself, and what?
What have you been up to this week? Any awesome reads, or have you gone back to a book you’d previously written off like me? And am I the only person who uses a reward system on themself?
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