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4.00 I'm starting to have a real love-hate relationship with novellas - especially Tor hardcovers with a protective cover like this one or the Murderbot series. Even when the books are very good - like this one - it feels quite like a scam to pay 20 € for your copy. I realise that almost half the problem is shipping and handling, but there really should be a better way of selling novellas than sticking the paltry 160 to 180 pages between even more expensive covers.

With that out of the way, be aware that while this is a lesbian Western story, it's also alternate history or at least alternate future, which is a plus for me, but your mileage may vary. It certainly adds to the alienation the reader feels and Sarah Gailey sure manages to paint a jarring picture that is neither quite The Handmaid's Tale nor A Canticle for Leibowitz, but shares some similarities with both titles. I really liked the way she paints the characters and the story is also quite a believable coming-of-age tale in a dystopia. However, the ending felt a little rushed and the characters felt like they didn't have quite enough space to manoeuvre in. The last quarter of the book, while not bad, does not quite hold up to the buid-up that comes beforehand. Still and interesting and engaging read if you don't mind the price per word.

4.25 Not quite as good as the last volume, but still pretty damn good. The only real complaint I have is that the reader sees the solution quite a bit before Murderbot does. It's interesting to see Murderbot interact with a bunch of people it doesn't really like much, but can't just ignore or fight. The old crew are there only at the margins and it's nice to see Murderbot being capable of something between cold distance and (not-so-)secret caring.

In general I am not so happy about going back to novella-length. It's closer to Exit Strategy than All Systems Red and while I didn't get the "why's-the-book-over-already?" feeling, I still think it could have benefitted from another twenty or thirty pages with an additional twist or at least more interaction between the characters appearing later in the narrative. It was still quite satisfying, but I read it one chapter at a time, so your mileage may vary there. Also there's the price for a physical copy...

3.25 I really wanted to love this book and there are certainly many ingenious parts and good ideas (loved the mice familiars) in there, but the beginning and the end are a bit suboptimal. In the beginning it does take quite a to pick up steam and though we do learn more about the school and the way it looks and works the pacing was too slow for me. There's a lot more worldbuilding in general, but somehow the world outside still felt kind of hollow to me - even more so than the Scholomance in the first novel.

The first big plot twist was quite satisfying and the plan they embark on is crazy, but not wholly unjustifiable. It does strain the suspense of disbelief, though. But while the first book was about friendship and being annoyed at your friends, this one does have to have a love story and it's predictable and slightly sickening like the final plot twist. Why do all books that focus on a boy and a girl have to go this way? If El had been Elrond and not Galadriel the majority of readers would have been surprised, but this way around it couldn't apparently go any other way. It was one of my greatest disappointments with Naomi Novik so far. Not that I loved the relationship in Uprooted, but at least it wasn't so stylised into romance above all else.

The whole story is still interesting enough to make me want to read the final part, but I do hope there will be more about Liu, Aadhiya, Chloe, Liesel and so on and not more focus on the mostly colourless boys. Though to be fair, there are also a lot of girls that come seemingly out of the woodwork. I guess that's a problem with c0ndensing a busy school year into less than 400 hundred large-print pages.

4.5 This is the book for all of those who - like me - complained over the length of the novellas if nothing else. It is not quite as good as the four preceding novellas taken together, but it sure is a tight little narrative with just the right amount plot and character development. Pacing is a little uneven, though I did like help.files where murderbot gets to tell us about life on Preservation. I also think there may have a been a tad little too many new characters, though I see why they needed to be there. It just gets a little difficult doing all those different voices for reading to my SO (what? you say I don't need to do that? preposterous!) The plot is also not completely surprising in every regard, but it is satisfyingly logical and I would regard it a bit as a Whodunit. What was done very nicely is all the emotional development, not only of AIs, but also the human characters.

Still one of the best books I've read this year.

4.25 A very good YA superheroine narrative that manages to convey a lot of teenage angst, which is - for once - well-founded. Starting sounding a little like trans wish fulfilment, the April Daniels quickly puts an end to that notion and instead dives into a story that's at the same both very American and very queer. The main characters - unfortunately there are only three apart from Danny and her parents - are well-thought out, though the two villains are a little over the top, both the TERF and actual super villain - not that this isn't in keeping with the genre.

I'm struggling a bit to give it five stars. If I was still growing up, I would probably have loved this to bits, but it's a little short on the fitting in socially. The focus is on family and "caping". School is glossed over - except for one quite ugly incident. However, both the supers narrative and the family story both hold up very well - the former with some twists you wouldn't have expected and the latter with a lot of disappointed hopes.

Definitely an important novel for trans teens to identify with - if only it could have been fifty pages longer...

4.25 Takes a while to get into and you should be okay with lots of gore, lymph, fat and of course bone (and boning jokes). There are a tad too many characters for my taste, but the main ones are very well-developed. The world-building is good, but sparse. It's really structured around being the first volume of a tetralogy. Gideon might not be the most relatable protagonist with her weird upbringing, but her wisecracks are generally not annoying and the conceit for making her shut up for the middle part of the book is quite nice.

In general, it's great to see some lesbian respresentation that doesn't drift much into the physical. The way the characters feel about each other actually does make sense for the horrible death-universe they grow up in. It's probably not for those just looking for a more upbeat read, but it's also not quite as horrible as you might think.

General warning: most of the characters are in their teens and the book does not spare them from the violence.