What.A.Novelty

PhD student, fantasy book lover, classic lit enthusiast 🌲 Also on booksta as what.a.novelty ✨

773 points

0% overlap

My Taste

The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)

Reading...

Post from the Pagebound Club forum

What.A.Novelty

Palate Cleanser Authors

Do you have any palate cleanser authors for between books or for after a not-so-great read?

I always read an Atwood or an Ishiguro after a kind of sucky read but I am now almost done with both of these authors’ works so am looking for new “safe” authors!

What.A.Novelty started reading...

Life Before Man

Margaret Atwood

Imprisoned by walls of their own construction, here are three people, each in midlife, in midcrisis, forced to make choices--after the rules have changed. Elizabeth, with her controlled sensuality, her suppressed rage, is married to the wrong man. She has just lost her latest lover to suicide. Nate, her gentle, indecisive husband, is planning to leave her for Lesje, a perennial innocent who prefers dinosaurs to men. Hanging over them all is the ghost of Elizabeth's dead lover...and the dizzying threat of three lives careening inevitably toward the same climax.

What.A.Novelty wrote a review...

What.A.Novelty

Jan 28, 2026

0.5

Enjoyment: 0.5Quality: 0.5Characters: 0.5Plot: 0.5

I posted quite a few times in the forums while reading this, so going to keep this short. This was honestly awful. So many plot inconsistencies, choppy writing, inconsistent magic system, irredeemable characters (no morally grey here), juvenile writing, icky religious inserts, etc etc. I will never read anything by this author again. If this hadn’t been the GSFF pick I would have dnf’ed this (and I have only ever dnf’ed one other book literally in my life). The cover is stunning but the book is trash.

What.A.Novelty finished a book

Dawn of the Firebird

Sarah Mughal Rana

For fans of The Poppy War, She Who Became the Sun and The Will of the Many, a breathtaking fantasy novel about the daughter of an overthrown emperor from an exciting new voice Khamilla Zahr-zad’s life has been built on a foundation of violence and vengeance. Every home she’s known has been destroyed by war. As the daughter of an emperor’s clan, she spent her childhood training to maintain his throne. But when her clansmen are assassinated by another rival empire, plans change. With her heavenly magic of nur, Khamilla is a weapon even enemies would wield—especially those in the magical, scholarly city of Za’skar. Hiding her identity, Khamilla joins the enemy’s army school full of jinn, magic and martial arts, risking it all to topple her adversaries, avenge her clan and reclaim their throne. To survive, she studies under cutthroat mystic monks and battles in a series of contests to outmaneuver her fellow soldiers. She must win at all costs, even if it means embracing the darkness lurking inside her. But the more she excels, the more she is faced with history that contradicts her father’s teachings. With a war brewing among the kingdoms and a new twisted magic overtaking the land, Khamilla is torn between two impossible vengeance or salvation.

What.A.Novelty commented on a post

bratty-b

Thoughts from 6% (page 27)

1 like and I won’t give up reading the book right now. Someone tell me I HAVE to give it 100 pages before I DNF it PLSSS

Post from the Dawn of the Firebird forum

What.A.Novelty

Thoughts from 78% (page 360)

spoilers

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What.A.Novelty commented on a post

leftovergarlicbread

Thoughts from 24%

As interesting as the world builing is here i am having a really hard time with the INTENSE religious overtones. I'm not a fan of it. It also keeps taking me out of the story with how heavy handed it feels

Post from the Dawn of the Firebird forum

What.A.Novelty

Thoughts from 46% (page 213)

spoilers

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What.A.Novelty commented on a post

Thirs

Question from 13% (page 62)

spoilers

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Post from the Dawn of the Firebird forum

What.A.Novelty

Thoughts from 37% (page 170)

I feel like literally everyone is this is a villain. Not in a morally grey way, but in an actually just bad person kind of way. I’m literally not rooting for anyone. I’m not quite sure what the author was going for with this (I don’t think she meant to make everyone so unlikeable but they really, really are). There hasn’t been a single character with a redeeming quality so far. They all just suck.

What.A.Novelty commented on a post from the Pagebound Club forum

LucyVanPelt

It's way too early for me to ask this, but do reviews get less attention than other updates?

Hi all,

I've fallen in deep hyperfocus with PB and while I've been here a whole minute and a half, there's something nagging me so I'll try to be brave and ask the question. (tried to find if this has been discussed many times over, please feel free to direct me to the right place.)

So I've been browsing here like the madwoman that I am, barely remembering to eat. My pov is coming from someone who loves reading and writing reviews. And I do totally get PB is far more than just that, and I'm thrilled about that.

When I browse reviews of books I barely see any likes, let alone comments. Two books I came across today had 20+reviews both and neither of them had a single like. Even for more established users. (for a newbie this is of course totally understandable, it all takes time). However I find this a bit of a shame because I have already read some absolutely gorgeous thoughtful reviews from say weeks ago with zero activity. Is it not a culture of here?

Then I checked the same books' Post page. Oooh, full of stuff! "I'm at 20%" gets lots of likes, quotes, quick updates.

So now, the aspiring detective that I am, get it. Because here we collect points, we get them more through Posts. Point value with Review and Post appears to be the same though 🤔

If you are still reading, you're a true reader I tell 'ya, here take my 5 points.

Please share any thoughts you might have on this? I'm an honorary member of the Confidently Incorrect Club, so I'm sure I've missed something.

If you like to write reviews, please also come and say hi.

Your friend, Lucy (today NOT crabby)

What.A.Novelty TBR'd a book

The Adventures of Casanova

Giacomo Casanova

‘I was all my life the victim of my senses; I have delighted in going astray and I have constantly lived in error… My follies are the follies of youth. You will see that I laugh at them, and if you are kind you will laugh at them with me’ Giacomo Casanova – soldier, preacher, gambler and quintessential scoundrel – tore a swathe across the courts and capitals of 18th-century Europe. Using a bible, a rope of knotted blankets and a dish of macaroni he escaped the clutches of the Venetian inquisition – the only man to do so. He matched wits with Voltaire in word-play as thrilling as a fencing match. And when finally defeated in the battle for the heart of teenage strumpet La Charpillon, he ended up in Bow Street Magistrates Court. Frances Wilson has selected Casanova’s most formative and brilliant adventures, each a triumph of story-telling and redolent with his exuberant wit and charm. Accompanied by over two dozen 18th-century paintings, here are the highlights of one of the most entertaining autobiographies ever written.

What.A.Novelty started reading...

Dawn of the Firebird

Sarah Mughal Rana

What.A.Novelty left a rating...

What.A.Novelty

Jan 24, 2026

4.0

Enjoyment: 4.0Quality: 4.5Characters: 3.5Plot: 4.0

🔎

🕵️‍♂️

🌏

What.A.Novelty finished a book

When We Were Orphans

Kazuo Ishiguro

The maze of human memory--the ways in which we accommodate and alter it, deceive and deliver ourselves with it--is territory that Kazuo Ishiguro has made his own. In his previous novels, he has explored this inner world and its manifestations in the lives of his characters with rare inventiveness and subtlety, shrewd humor and insight. In When We Were Orphans, his first novel in five years, he returns to this terrain in a brilliantly realized story that illuminates the power of one's past to determine the present. Christopher Banks, an English boy born in early-twentieth-century Shanghai, is orphaned at age nine when his mother and father both vanish under suspicious circumstances. Sent to live in England, he grows up to become a renowned detective and, more than twenty years later, returns to Shanghai, where the Sino-Japanese War is raging, to solve the mystery of the disappearances. The story is straightforward. Its telling is remarkable. Christopher's voice is controlled, detailed, and detached, its precision unsurprising in someone who has devoted his life to the examination of details and the rigors of objective thought. But within the layers of his narrative is slowly revealed what he can't, or won't, see: that his memory, despite what he wants to believe, is not unaffected by his childhood tragedies; that his powers of perception, the heralded clarity of his vision, can be blinding as well as enlightening; and that the simplest desires--a child's for his parents, a man's for understanding--may give rise to the most complicated truths. A masterful combination of narrative control and soaring imagination, When We Were Orphans is Kazuo Ishiguro at his best.

What.A.Novelty commented on a post

shesbooked_

Thoughts from 52%

Writing? Beautiful Magic? … just people doing stuff somehow? 💀

What.A.Novelty started reading...

When We Were Orphans

Kazuo Ishiguro

What.A.Novelty wrote a review...

What.A.Novelty

Jan 22, 2026

1.0

Enjoyment: 1.0Quality: 0.5Characters: 0.5Plot: 0.5

Great concept, garbage execution. The dialogue in this is ROUGH. The characters are constantly saying cliche things that make no sense. The book is riddled with typos, misspellings of character names, and other errors. Needed a serious edit.

What.A.Novelty finished a book

Graceless Heart

Isabel Ibañez

A lush, atmospheric and achingly magical standalone adult fantasy romance set in Renaissance Italy from a #1 New York Times bestselling author.In 15th-century Volterra, sculptress Ravenna Maffei enters a competition hosted by a secretive, immortal family who offer an invaluable boon to the victor. Desperate to win so she can save her brother, Ravenna reveals a rare magical talent-a dangerous act in a city where magic is forbidden. Her revelation makes her a target, and she is kidnapped by the Luni family and taken to Florence, a city of breathtaking beauty and cutthroat ambition.There, Ravenna is forced into an impossible task where failure means certain death at the hands of Saturnino dei Luni, the family's enigmatic and merciless heir. But under his cold reserve hides a vulnerability that draws her closer than she ever intended.Meanwhile, Ravenna's forbidden magic does not go unnoticed. The Pope, waging war against Florence, the Medici, and magic itself, has his own interest in her abilities, seeing her as a potential weapon in his ruthless campaign.As alliances shift and war brews on the horizon, Ravenna must navigate the treacherous line between survival and betrayal, between love and duty. With time running out and her every move watched, the choices she makes will determine the fate of not just her own life, but the fragile balance of magic and power that could unravel Florence itself.

What.A.Novelty commented on a post

What.A.Novelty

Edited

Thoughts from 68% (page 320)

Girlypop, you don’t bow at someone else’s performance, you clap. These are the types of errors I would expect from an AI generated book. Definitely wondering how Ibanez has ever managed to get published.

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