Everneath is basically the lorem ipsum of generic YA 2010s para-ro

☆☆☆☆☆
(0 stars)(as empty as this book)

What I’m trying to imply is that Everneath is generic. It might as well have been assembled by an AI and then edited down into simple, technically cohesive sentences. It is sort of like a bad writer’s idea of middle grade fiction in terms of writing quality yet composed of YA tropes from the era. Much like the bad boy ‘love interest’, Everneath is lifeless and devoid of personality.

It’s one of those books I think I’ll have little to say, even though I’ve (finally) started highlighting excerpts to help make my reviews more fun. So you can witness the bad writing, and… uh… normally I’d make some joking reference to an insane thing in this book, but there isn’t much of anything. Already my mind is deleting it and I read it over the course of less than twenty four hours.

A Dark and Hollow Star is trying so hard and just not succeeding

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
(2.5 stars)

And here I thought I’d be reading a fun book I’d like to get out of my reading slump. I’m turning in this review of an ARC on the final day, because I had to hold myself hostage to finish my reading today or it’d never get done.

One of the hardest kinds of books for me to review is the earnest kind, the modern book that I can so easily see myself in another timeline being way too into. The kind of book that feels more like someone’s OCs on their tumblr art blog, or their DND campaign party. A Dark and Hollow Star, cursed be that stupidly generic YA title, falls heavily into the latter example despite it being an urban fantasy fae book. To an unsettling meta degree in fact, when abruptly near the end of the book the main character literally gets a magical d20.

It is apparent this book cares a lot for its characters and world, their quips and the lore upon lore upon added lore the reader is given. It is apparent the author cares about lgbt+ characters considering there’s no straight people. There’s plenty of fine things born from that passion, to some kinda funny jokes and interesting ideas, but Dark Hollow Star suffers everywhere else. It’s too long, too meandering, with excessive information dumping throughout the story and genuinely was a slog to read through until the last 50 pages. POV characters don’t meet up until more than halfway through the 500 page tome, and half of them are simply uninteresting. Much of the plot, too, is driven by sudden convenience and random encounters, leading to an ending that feels like it has not built to anything at all and with nothing satisfying having happened besides a kiss.

It’s nice to see genuine excitement for the world of the fae, but I can’t recommend such a somehow boring tome, you know? There’s not even a lot of funny jokes I can make here, except the part where I’m going to point out racism, and that’s not funny really, it’s just sad.

Books on my para-ro YA to-read purely ranked by cover

I have been hit by a metaphorical something or another, hence the delay on new content. Here’s something that’s like, a preview of what I plan to hit next.

Song of the Night is a slop of yaoi desperately wishing to be more

☆☆☆☆☆

0 stars

This book is officially the SECOND worst book I’ve ever read (thanks Tridea’s Children!), but honestly that’s a barely. I feel like I’ve just been stamping my brain through a meat grinder trying to read it. I don’t even remember how I found this. Perhaps like Tridea’s Children it manifested in my home, and it is just my yearly destiny to test my faith in indie publishing by reading a catastrophe such as this.

What is this book? Well, it’s every yaoi you ever saw online circa 2010, but it was published in 2019. I use yaoi very deliberately, as that is what this book is: it’s not gay romance, it’s not lgbt, it’s bad yaoi where everyone has too large hands and anime chins. It’s a romance around the small, fragile, feminine, pale (So So Pale) beauty of a young ‘boy’ and a strong ‘man’. Yes, it’s one of those MANxBOY (DON’T LIKE:DON’T READ)(LEMON/LIME WARNING XD) stories. I can’t fable how this exists in the modern age, in a physical book I can hold in my own hands.