Tag: sci-fi

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August Review

IndiaReadsALot3 Comments
  • Author: Claire North
  • Series: Standalone
  • Genre: Sci-fi/Historical
  • No of pages: 405
  • Date read: 05.04.19 – 11.04.19
  • Rating: 4 stars
  • Challenge: ONTD April Theme “Time Travel”

I have been needing a book like this for so long!

This is my current favourite of 2019!

I read this book for the ONTD book of the month of April. The theme for April was time-travel and I was curious about what I was going to read and saw this book which had been sitting on my TBR for so long and thought, this is the moment!

Overall, Harry is a really intriguing character! We see him over 15 lifetimes and we learn more and more about him as each life passes. We know what makes him tick, what makes him laugh, what makes him cry and he feels like someone you know and understands like a friend as we watch him go on this journey. I really enjoyed his POV.

One of my favourites thing about the plot was the flipping between the current over-arching narrative working alongside the little peeks into important moments in Harry’s other lives. We will have a major plot point occur and followed up by an insight into his childhood from his 4th life and we learn about his relationship with his father. I think the pacing works well, switching between moments of high adrenaline and then moments of calm. I think this kind of narrative is also important to Harry’s character development.

I loved the Cronus Club and all the characters you meet because of the Cronus Club. Especially, all the jokes that members and other Kalacharka make regarding their immortality and constantly going through new cycles of life. I loved the jokes of not wanting to go through puberty again. The Cronus Club as a franchise was really intriguing, I loved learning how they worked and how they communicated with the future and the past.

North’s writing to me was really enjoyable. Her writing sucked me into the point where I couldn’t put the book down. I just wanted to keep on reading!

One thing I would say is there is a lot of science jargon and philosophical debate that is held between two characters of very high intelligence and those scenes would just go way over my head and came across quite dull as I couldn’t understand half of what they said. Chapters would be dedicated to these scientific debates and I got bored of those chapters quite quickly.

To me this was a slow burn of a book, I was always really enjoying it but I never had a moment of a sucker-punch WOW moment. It just grew on me slowly and when I finished it I just sat there and thought that was such a good book! This book was consistent, apart from the science debates, I loved every moment of this book and enjoyed picking back up everytime!

The Power Review

IndiaReadsALot2 Comments
  • Author: Naomi Alderman
  • Series: Standalone
  • Genre: Sci-fi/Feminism
  • No. of pages: 341
  • Dates read: 19.03.19 – 24.03.19
  • Rating: 4.5 stars

I have never read a book like this before! I don’t read much science fiction but I was quite intrigued by the synopsis.

There numerous trigger warnings in this book, so please be careful if you ever decide to pick it up. I don’t mention the triggers in my review but this is my warning for triggers such as:
Rape, Sexual Assualt, Violence and Torture

POSITIVES

I loved the whole concept in general of women having this dormant power and women becoming this unstoppable force and rising up from oppression. I was also interested to see which way Naomi would go with this story. Would she go down the route of “society was changed for the better because women were now in charge” or would she go down the route of “society collapses from the rise in power.” I was very happy with the road she took.

I loved all the characters in the stories both good or evil or in-between. I felt each character introduced a new perspective to this changing world and all actions were justified in their minds as their knee-jerk reaction to these sudden changes.

I really enjoyed the multiple POV’s, I think for us to fully understand the worldwide/societal change this new phenomenon brought, we had to see it from varying characters in different parts of the world. All 4 POV’s represented certain parts of society and through them, we see how those parts responded.

Tunde was the media. Margot was the politics. Allie was the religion. Roxy was the organised crime.

I don’t normally like this dystopian novels as I get bored quite quickly but what I liked about this book is we actually witness all the small changes that lead to the quickly forming dystopian society. We are not introduced to the story halfway through like we are with books such as the “The Hunger Games” where the dystopian setting was established years ago but at the very beginning and we watch everything unravel.

The language switch was intriguing. A lot of words and phrases were used to describe men and their horrible situation, especially by the end of the book, that normally gets associated with women or references something that women go through every day and I thought it was interesting to see that switch. In which these things were being said about men instead of women. It was a weird experience to read it!

NEGATIVES

While I really enjoyed the book, I didn’t care for the ending. It didn’t pack a punch for me. A lot is left unsaid. We don’t know what happens to the characters we have invested our time into which was quite disappointing for me. I had to go to a forum on Goodreads to fully understand the ending, which when explained to me sounded really cool but I didn’t care for the execution.

Overall, I started losing momentum about 3/4 of the way through the book. If it had been a bit shorter I probably would have enjoyed the ending more than I did.

The next book I will be reviewing is an ARC I received in their December 2018 Fairyloot box. I will be reading The Storm Crow by Kalyn Josephson.