Horse Talk Reviews

In the Lives of Puppets by T.J. Klune My rating: 5 of 5 stars Anticpated Publication Date: April 25, 2023 5 stars because holy crap, y'all If you go into this expecting a funny little book because it's a Pinocchio re-telling but with robots including a talking Roomba with anxiety you will definitely get that but you will also get an epic, emotional, and wonderful story about humanity, loneliness, forgiveness, and love. Like what the crap I don't know how it happened but it is a real journey. All the characters are fully developed and complex, even the robot vacuum. Or maybe especially the robot vacuum. There were lines which made me laugh and then a few pages later it was deep thoughts and emotions. I appreciated the levity because otherwise it would be Too Much. As it is, I will probably be thinking about these characters for a while. I should have expected a book about robots to do this to me since this is the same author who thought ...

Ocean's Echo by Everina Maxwell My rating: 4 of 5 stars Expected publication: November 1 2022 Tennal shut his eyes and tried to read the universe. I was really excited to read this standalone sequel to Winters Orbit, and I'm glad to say it measured up! And another beautiful cover. Of course, my review writing energy today is absolute trash, but here's thoughts anyway: I really loved how distinct all the characters were. Not only did Tennal and Surit have complementary and individual personalities, but the secondary characters (and even tertiary/background ones!) had a solid sense of personality. No neglecting character depth in this book! They all expected Tennal to be cooperative. It wasn’t as if he had a choice. A shame that he’d never been cooperative in his life. I enjoyed seeing Surit and Tennal slowly start to trust and work together. They kind of just gradually slipped into it, very naturally, and it was a lovely theme. That's another general thing...

  Pack of Lies by Charlie Adhara Expected Publication Date: August 30, 2022  ARC Difficulty:  We received ARC copies of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are our own.   Erratic's review : 5 stars Pack of Lies hit every beat of mystery storytelling I expect from Charlie Adhara through the new character of Julien, an actor being thrown into the world of wolves, and Eli, a wolf from Adhara's previous series who has a dark past and special wolf shifting abilities. The use of dual point of view made the book even better as we finally got to see the wolf side. Don't get me wrong, I usually love a single point of view but since everyone was lying all the time having an understanding of both characters strengthened the narrative. The setting of Maudit Falls, North Carolina gave me deja vu while reading because it brought me right back to the setting in Wolf in Sheep's Clothing and into this world of wolves. The struggling ski lodge ...

A Taste of Gold and Iron   by   Alexandra Rowland Expected publication: August 30th 2022 erratic's review:  4 of 5 stars I went into this book with very little idea what it was about and absolutely no expectations. All I knew is it was a gay SFF something or other with a beautiful book cover and I think this helped me enjoy it. Kinda like when I watch a movie without watching any previews or reading any reviews or looking up the plot summary on Wikipedia or seeing mean tweets about it filled with spoilers. Clear eyes, full heart, can't lose. Or something. What A Taste of Gold and Iron delivers is a slow burn meandering romantic fantasy novel with undercurrents of political intrigue and magic. It dumps you right into the world without explaining anything (something fairly common with Science Fiction and Fantasy) but I got the hang of everything by the second chapter. I would have appreciated a tiny bit more explanation but the book was simplistic and shallow enough it ulti...

The Barony Bet by Kai Butler My rating: 3 of 5 stars Horse rating: 0 of 5 horses I'm a sucker for pining/unrequited best friends to lovers, so I had to try this. Plus a fake relationship. Catnip! Unfortunately this still felt shallow to me. I never quite felt all the pining/emotions that Asta had for Deva, and the turnaround/realization Deva had was too simple for me. Or too easy? Not enough emotion!! More feels!!! That's what I'm after with this trope combo. There were a few times it got close but overall, not really. This had a slow start, setting up a lot of the world and character background, and only really got started at around 30%. The writing I thought was a little awkward as well, I think in its attempts to maintain a historical sort of feel it ended up being stilted. Overall, it was an enjoyable read, fairly surface but neither great nor terrible. The Barony Bet on Amazon   View all my reviews

Like Silk Breathing by Camille Duplessis My rating: 5 of 5 stars 5 stars Content Warnings my ARC didn't have: attempted suicide, depression, death, grief, alcoholism, cheating (kissing only), fade to black, point of view chapters from two side characters This was a lovely little seaside jaunt of a book. It had some heavy themes but they seemed to be more accepted as something that simply was instead of a Big Dramatic Thing. The subtlety magical world building made me want a deeper dive into the lore of witches and selkies and witch hunters. The two main characters were also lovely and the slowburn relationship was nicely developed. It's just a nicely packaged simple little story. I wasn't expecting much and it gave me a lot even without Theo ever shifting into a selkie on page. (I am still disappointed we don't get to see Theo as a selkie!) Anyway, the emotional depth in the book is like looking into a tide pool: small but complex. Hi...

Deus Ex Mechanic by Ryann Fletcher My rating: 3 of 5 stars Horse rating: 🐴🐴 of five horses Violet nodded in approval. "Theft is a good first step to piracy," This has First Book energy for sure, but I like where it's heading. I enjoyed the plotline - the Coalition vs pirates, rebels, defections, etc. It was well plotted, the only sticky point is getting between those more smoothly (hence, first book energy). I liked the characters a lot, they were given creative backstories and motivations. They also had very real struggles - Captain Violet has to struggle with PTSD after some events. I also liked all of the casual rep and acceptance on the ship. Be whoever you are, whoever you want. It was very sweet. "You aren't weak for experiencing trauma, or anxiety, or anything else. Your strength lies in how much you care for this crew, and in how you pick up and keep moving. Your strength shows with every decision you make, and that's why this crew fo...

Machine Metal Magic by Hanna Dare My rating: 3 of 5 stars Horse rating: 🐴🐴 of five horses “So who’s this?” The captain spread his arms. “Our salvation.” “Our salvation looks like he could use a sandwich,” Mags said. A generally entertaining and easy sci-fi read.  Jaime was a great main character - he felt fully developed and had his own history and motivations that worked well within the scenes. Rylan...less so. I'm not sure what happened here, but he felt very two dimensional to me. I never felt like he was a complete character, he was more of an outline of a character. Noble, a bit of a blockhead, idk. Faintly sketched. Rylan being sort of empty made it hard to buy into any romance/emotional connection between the two. I wasn't quite sure what Jaime saw in Rylan, so their eventual love stuff fell flat for me. Which is unfortunate, because Jaime deserves nice things ok I liked a lot of the secondary characters too! The crew was well done, the captain was especially h...

Moth by Lily Mayne My rating: 4 of 5 stars "But when I looked at Moth, I could never decide if I wanted to strangle him or start tearing off his clothes. He was infuriatingly attractive. His face was like a work of art—almost too perfect to be real. Definitely too perfect to be human. Didn’t stop me wanting to punch it, though." I'm glad I got peer-pressured into reading this, even though I didn't love Soul Eater and haven't read books 2-3-4. I would say Book 1 is necessary reading to get the whole dystopian context, but jumping straight into book 5 from there is very possible! Most of the issues I had with book 1 were related to pacing issues and how the romantic tension fizzled out too quickly after what I thought was a strong start. My expectations of something darker and more... monstrous probably played into my disappointment too, but this time I knew what I was going into when I started Moth. Moth is also very different character than Wyn, as a half-monster...

    Entanglement by Cass Lennox My rating: 4 of 5 stars   Expected publication: May 2nd, 2022     They had each other, and that was more than enough. This book was a short yet complex sci-fi novel with a secondary romance. Very much a sci-fi first novel. The story started slow because of the world building and took a while to pick up. However, once I finally adjusted to the world in Entanglement the story became much more compelling and unraveled itself along the way. As I said, the romance is secondary to the main sci-fi action plot, but it was very sweet and there were underlying hints about how much the two main characters cared about each other throughout the story. While there was a complete narrative arc and it was interesting it still felt like a prequel to a larger universe and many of the ideas could have used more exploration. The idea of entanglement, modified humans vs regular humans, and the romance all felt like they were just beginning! I sti...

Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell My rating: 4 of 5 stars Horse rating: 0 of 5 horses I really enjoyed this! It was much heavier on the sci-fi and mystery plot, with mild Dune vibes to boot. It had a very sweet romance to round it out as well. I loved seeing Kiem and Jainan come together and learn to trust each other. Both of them independently as characters were so adorable, and had great depth. Kiem with his gregarious people-person self, and Jainan with his more restrained, highly technical background. I really enjoyed how they worked together to play to their strengths, even accidentally (like at Hraven Base) - those were some of the cutest moments. Outside of all the other cute moments. It is a slower, more subtle growing together romance, with fade to black - I think it worked perfectly for balancing emotional connection with the much larger political intrigue and such. The world building was done so well. All of the tech and elements and world details were worked in seamles...