Elzburg Reviews

Tokyo Ghoul: Void by Sui Ishida My rating: 4 of 5 stars Compared to the first Tokyo Ghoul light-novel-spin-off-short-story-collection , Void was… Boring. All of the stories were all pretty consistently mellow. There were parts of different stories that had action, but it was definitely an overall low-key collection. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, but I did find myself enjoying this book less than I enjoyed the first one. The first story is told from Kotaro Amon’s perspective, and I was really excited to read a story about him and the CCG. Sadly it ended up not really being much of a compelling read due to it being quite slow. This was the longest story of the collection, but I feel like it could have been condensed to move the story along faster. Though I do understand if it was written in this way on purpose in order to create tension or suspense, since I'm pretty sure this story was meant to read as some type of mystery thril...

黒子のバスケ ―Replace― [Kuroko no Basuke -Replace-] by Tadatoshi Fujimaki My rating: 2 of 5 stars Okay so first of all: Prior to reading this I did not know that this is not a novel, but in fact a collection of five short stories (written in prose). So that caught me by surprise, but now you've been warned. I'll review each story separately here. ("Game" in the titles mean chapters.) The First Game: Teikou Middle School's Eventful After School ★★★★★ I very thoroughly enjoyed this first chapter. It's about the Generation of Miracles way back in their middle school days when they had yet to earn that title for themselves. This is what I thought the whole book was going to be about, but unfortunately that was not the case. Nonetheless it is always so great to see the GoM in their sweet innocent days. It follows one of the kids' afternoons from the perspective of Momoi. It was a very nice read from my perspective as a Momoi x Ku...

Tokyo Ghoul: Days by Sui Ishida My rating: 5 of 5 stars Due to my prior foray into the world of spin-off light novels not being a very enjoyable one, I was extremely wary going into this. Luckily, I didn’t have to be! This book was absolutely fantastic. I think what didn't work for me with Kuroko no Basuke -Replace- (the previous light novel I’ve read) was that it seemed a bit pointless. It might as well have been a collection of five fanfictions, because they didn't really actually add anything to the existing story, provide new insight, or anything like that. That definitely compromised my enjoyment of it, but it was even worse because it wasn't like the stories were at least also entertaining or enjoyable on their own (with the exception being the first story). Days on the other hand provided insight into the lives of the other characters that we weren't able to see due to the main story focusing on Kaneki and his troubles so muc...

東京喰種トーキョーグール Oneshot [Tokyo Guru Oneshot] by Sui Ishida My rating: 3 of 5 stars As someone who is reading this series right now, it was very interesting seeing the Tokyo Ghoul origin, and seeing what was ultimately revised once it became serialized. I find myself wondering exactly what prompted Sui Ishida to change the things he did. I feel like I can't really say much else about this without talking about spoilers, so come back once you've read this 30-ish page one-shot! (view spoiler) [So, in this one-shot Kaneki was originally a ghoul all along. That was interesting. I also liked how he and Touka somehow didn't know that they were both ghouls, so that reveal was fun to see. Reminded me of School of Ghoul . It was also kind of weird to end a one-shot on a bit of a cliff hanger, but I think that was the Anteiku boss, right? (hide spoiler) ] This review is a mess, I don't know what to say. I just read this because I've been readi...

Hamlet by William Shakespeare My rating: 5 of 5 stars Out of the two other Shakespeare plays I've read (Romeo & Juliet and Macbeth) this is definitely my favourite. I really like how even the "antagonists" are not completely evil. It shows how people have many sides and no one is just "evil". Multi-dimensional characters, yesss. I also liked how packed it is with memorable quotes. This is the play with the "To be or not to be, that is the question" line. I never understood this was referencing death until someone told me, even after reading it, whoops. I really liked the "conscience makes cowards of us all" quote, because it's so relatable to me. A lot of times I want to do something but then I think about it too much and end up talking myself out of it, which sucks. Also just in general Hamlet is a lot like me. (All images edited by me for a school project.) View all my reviews

School of Ghoul by Sui Ishida My rating: 3 of 5 stars A really short fast read for Tokyo Ghoul fans. I read the fan-translation by Talalanlalan on tumblr. The pages that made me giggle were pages 1, 8, 13, and 15. I feel like Ishida could have done more with the whole "everyone are ghouls but they're all trying to hide it from each other" concept, because that was the funniest part of the whole thing. Overall enjoyable. Click to read all of my Tokyo Ghoul Reviews : Tokyo Ghoul One-shot School of Ghoul View all my reviews

I Am Number Four: The Lost Files: Rebel Allies by Pittacus Lore My rating: 5 of 5 stars 10 out of 10. What else is there to say? If you like the Lorien Legacies then you'll like all of the novellas. In some cases the novellas have been so good they give the main series a really close run for their money. I love these, they never disappoint. I wrote a crap-ton of Reading Notes while I was reading this, so feel free to have a peak at them below this review. They might be a bit spoilery even though I marked the really spoilery ones, just a heads up. All of my Lorien Legacies Reviews: Book 5 Book 6 Book 7 Lost Files #4-6 Lost Files #7-9 Lost Files #10-12 View all my reviews

Jared's Quest: An Unfortunate Fairy Tale Short Story by Chanda Hahn My rating: 5 of 5 stars Oh my god this was sooo great. I really want to give this five stars just because it was soo sooo soo soooooo enjoyable but let’s face it, this is NOT on the same level as like, Catcher in the Rye or some other REAL five star book. So I’ll give it 4.5/5 stars. I’ve read my good share of companion novellas. What really sucks is when the novella doesn’t seem necessary (Cough, Four , cough, Fairest ). Even if it’s enjoyable I just can’t fully enjoy it if it doesn’t actually add something to the main story or give me a substantial amount of information. But hey guess what? Jared’s Quest was not only an awesome read, but it also dishes out a butt-ton of information! This really is a must read for lovers of the Unfortunate Fairytale series. I definitely think you must read this at least after reading Reign and NO SOONER (even though it’s set between books 1 ...

King #1 by Joshua Hale Fialkov My rating: 4 of 5 stars Wow that was fantastic. I loved it. I want the next issue... now!!! King is about a future earth where everything that could have gone wrong with the world, did. Our main character, whose name is King, is the last human left on earth though that's not to say he's the last creature. In this first installment we see what earth has come to, and we see King... go places? See here's the thing that wasn't so good. It was kind of hard to tell what was going on sometimes. The big thing though, was the dialect. There were so many new words, and it was quite confusing. It really retracted from the storytelling. What made up for not knowing what-the-heck they're talking about was... The drop dead gorgeous ART!!! Every single page and every drawing could be it's own painting, that's how good it was. You thought the art in Saga was good? The art in King chews up and spits the art...

Let's Eat Ramen and Other Doujinshi Short Stories by Nagumo My rating: 3 of 5 stars 2.5 stars Let’s Eat Ramen and Other Doujinshi Short Stories consisted of 4 stories: Let’s Eat Ramen (three parts), Plastic Blue, Urameshiiya, and You Make Me Dizzy (two parts). Let’s Eat Ramen: ★★☆☆☆ It’s a story about a girl who likes to eat ramen. I guess it’s unique in that I’ve never read anything about as simple a topic as this before. It definitely wasn’t bad, but it’s hard to really like something with such little substance. It did succeed in giving me a craving for ramen at least. The art was okay, but it made all the characters look really young, which clashed with the big boobs and the one ass-shot. Plastic Blue: ★★☆☆☆ This was definitely the story I liked the least. It was an extremely unoriginal, simple story, so much so that by just telling you the basics of what it was about, I would be saying the whole story. I didn’t hate it, but there wasn’t re...

Fairest by Marissa Meyer My rating: 3 of 5 stars Jesus Christ I don't know what to think. This was a rreaallly quick read, but I don't really know if it was all that nessissary. We pretty much got Levana's entire life story here, which was cool, but I don't feel we really learned much crucial information. Here's what we learned: (view spoiler) [1. The reason Levana is so crazy is because her brain is literally DAMAGED! Her sister, Canary, used to secretly use her Lunar Gift on Levana when she was young, and doing this can cause mental damage to children! 2. The reason Levana is so self cautious because half of her body got burnt in a fire when she was six years old. Canary was the one who pushed her in. 3. The rumors about Levana wanting to kill Selene are true... I can't remember if this was already fact or not. (hide spoiler) ] So yeah... that's all I can remember. Honestly, the 3 bonus chapters of WINTER were more usefu...

Four: A Divergent Collection by Veronica Roth My rating: 4 of 5 stars The only reason I even bothered to read this was because it was 50% off, just gonna throw that out there. I feel it’s safe to say the ending of the series left me pretty unsatisfied. After finishing Allegiant, I just felt like I really didn’t care for the series that much anymore. Though I don’t know how true those feelings really were, because it was all my friends and I talked about at lunch, and I got tickets to the movie the day it came out and watched it gleefully with said friends. Anyway, starting this little bind-up, I felt really detached to the whole world and uninterested in visiting our ‘dear’ old friend Four again. But I soon got into it, and it was actually pretty interesting to see Four’s backstory. Though my favourite part of the whole thing was probably the last ‘special feature scene’ where we saw the magnificence that is drunken Four, through his own perspective...

Secret Histories by Pittacus Lore My rating: 5 of 5 stars This was a really important book for me. This collection is a wondrous one, and it's the collection that introduced Adamus Sutekh, also known as the (second) best character in the series. I read this way back in the day when it first came out and I dived straight into it, not knowing what the stories were going to be about. Once I read the first one and I realised that it was from the perspective of Mogadorian children, I thought it was very interesting. I ended up enjoying this short quite a bit. But because of how it ended, I deduced that the story was a one-shot because I assumed that Adam was dead. Accepting this as fact, I continued reading. I finished the second story. I flipped to the start of the third, and I kid you not, once I realised that the story was narrated by Adam, now knowing that he's NOT dead, I bursted into tears and I for some reason instinctively bit the book. Th...