Pokopia Review

At time of writing this, it's been two weeks since Pokemon: Pokopia came out and I am definitely hooked. Seriously, all of my time not spent at work, eating, sleeping, or going to the Dallas Arboretum with my Boyfriend is spent playing Pokopia.

This game is so, so much fun. It's so cute. I love it to death. It satisfies my Pokemon, puzzling, and creative itches all at once. I've never really been a fan of battling in Pokemon, despite the fact that's pretty much the entire franchise base. Pokopia is a lovely change from all that. You can collect them all (well, 300 of them, apparently) without having to train them to do anything. They just get to vibe and be adorable in their little environments. You get to build them houses... all of this at your own pace, too, which is nice. Pokopia is really just vibes.

 I also really like the music, for the most part. Again, it's just vibes. The music isn't jarring, but rather quite peaceful... until Rotom comes in and makes things a little crazy. But then, you can collect CDs in the game and make Rotom play something more peaceful. 

If I had once complaint, it's the lack of a unified storage system. I really quite hate having to jump between "realms" to get stuff I need. The item stacking only goes up to 99 and I have approximately... oh, 20 stacks of Volcanic Ash alone from Rocky Ridges. The lack of storage labeling also sucks. Gotta open every box to find what I'm looking for and I probably have the same item in a couple different boxes because I forgot it was in another box to begin with. Just... the storage system needs work/an update.

Being a Day Two or Three player (my game arrived late), I have been taking part in the month-long Hoppip event. It's alright... I, like some other players I've seen, honestly think it's lasted too long. It's not really that big a deal. Just one more thing to collect from the Dream Islands we're looting. But hey, I guess I'll just find a place to have a field of dandelions.

I really don't have anything insightful to say about Pokopia as a game. I'm not a big "gamer," so a lot of the technicalities are lost on me. It's been a while since I was so locked into something like this.

It's also been pretty fantastic seeing what the community has been doing with their Pokopia games. The community's so creative with their builds. Pokopia is one of the most endlessly customizable games I've ever played (having completely missed out on Animal Crossing and Minecraft). I can only aspire to those levels of greatness. I'll just be over here with my simple gardens and building re-builds.

And Now... More Cute

Double DNFs

Welp, I had a pair of DNFs happen in the last week or so. Figured I'd go ahead and share my short reviews of them because why not.

 

What Abigail Did That Summer by Ben Aaronovitch


I was honestly just very, very bored with this one. I also didn't appreciate the footnotes explaining modern slang terms Abigail uses. Either don't use them at all or trust your readers to figure out what they mean on their own.

Tea & Alchemy by Sharon Lynn Fisher

Largely alright, but certain plot similarities to Twilight kept jumping out and taking me completely out of the story. That’s not to say the plot is actually following the Twilight model, just… ya know, I saw the bits and am nope-ing out.

Hit List by Laurell K. Hamilton

The reread review of the book I almost DNF'd due to Olaf being present. We begin this Hit List reread review with some chunks directly out of my notes (mostly because I don't want to rewrite the quote out).

It’s hopefully not an omen (it was) that my first note is about stupid, fucking Olaf. “Edward wanted me to encourage the attraction, because it was the closest to healthy Olaf had ever been around a woman, but we both agreed that the line between being Olaf’s serial killer girlfriend as we killed vampires together and triggering his own serial killer needs toward me, was probably a thin one.” This is gross and ya’ll just need to fucking kill the man. I don’t care how good he is at killing vampires. This is not safe in any sense and you just need to yeet Olaf off the damn planet. No. Fuck off with this.

Okay, seriously, the entire plot of this book grinds to a screeching, Olaf-shaped halt when this man is “on screen.” Edward and Anita have a literal phone conversation ✨in front of him✨ about his frigging dating habits/wants. Seriously? Ugh. No. Stop.

(End note chunk)

Olaf is clearly my main issue with Hit List. The rest of the book is mainly fine. I don’t exactly like the whole “come show me your power before I deal with you because I don't believe everything everyone else says about your metaphysical prowess” tiger bull-crap, but I’ll take it over Olaf. The action is good. I quite enjoyed the forest fight and the ending fight. I will say, too, this is not the first time nor the last where Anita has to be physically kidnapped to actually move the plot forward. So, that’s a thing I noticed this time around.

I had a note about Karlton and how she was essentially fridged. I didn’t and don’t think it’s a great look to do that to a Black woman. I had, at time of note-taking, forgotten that Karlton does show up later in the book. Her testing positive for lycanthropy does, however, set the stage for Marshals under the Preternatural Branch to be able to continue their work despite being lycanthropes, which is good overall, I think. Not super great from the Olaf standpoint of it all, but, apparently we can’t just kill him so… yeah. Also set up, not because of Karlton, is the deputizing thing. This is helpful in allowing Anita to bring along her bodyguards and "food" in the future, as well as having other characters "on-screen" more. Yay.

If you cut out the big chunks of Olaf (which I would very much like to do), Hit List is a fairly solid entry. It's always nice when the vampire hunting comes back into the picture as more than a blip or backstory.

Favorite Lines

"Then they must have already found it, because everyone looks for home in someone." - Ethan Flynn

"If you live through the disaster you still need to get groceries, do laundry. That's one of the hardest things to understand when you first get involved in violence. That once it's over the world goes on, and you have to go along with it." - Anita Blake

Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch

There is a slight spoiler for something reveal mid-book. Just a bit of a warning.

I definitely liked this one a lot more than Broken Homes. The lore especially was right up my alley. I also like Beverly Brook more than I ever did Lesley. That is not to say Lesley is a bad character, I’m just less fond of her. *shrug* But anyway, Foxglove Summer fully introduces the Fae in what I think is a rather classic but brilliant way. Although fairyland itself doesn’t have so much “screen time,” it lived up to my expectations of what we might get.

Changeling lore is usually pretty fun. Being the veteran of fantasy and mythology that I am, I clocked it pretty much from the start, or at least, upon the return of Hannah and “Nicole.” I didn’t anticipate the “Derek” of it all, but that was a nice little twist.

I think I also preferred the group of police from Leominster over the London group. They seemed much more chill and open about the whole Folly business. I’m appreciative of open-mindedness around weird things you demonstratively know are happening, rather than immediately going down the “don’t ask/don’t tell” route.

So yeah, Foxglove Summer was quite enjoyable. Good world building. Solid entry. 

Bullet by Laurell K. Hamilton

I am really feeling quite "meh" about Bullet. There's a lot that happens in the span of not a very long time, but a good chunk of it is "off-screen" orgy and the rest is pace-killing therapy speak. Makes the whole thing just very odd. It is, however, weirdly more memorable in places than a lot of the series has been for me up until this point.

I definitely remember the beginning of this one. Anita hanging out with kids for a hot minute definitely stuck in the brain-pan. I did not remember the bit with Monica and honestly… Anita’s right to despise her still. Ma’am, trauma is trauma, no matter who or what activity is involved. Also, Monica, Cynric is 17. 17. A literal child. Fuck you, Monica. This part wasn't even plot-impacting at all, but boy did it make me angry in the moment.

While not the beginning to Asher being a jealous butthead, this is the beginning of it in force. He definitely has his reasons, and I'm not saying they're bad reasons, but it's also quite annoying from here on out... assuming I'm remembering correctly, of course.

I’m sorry, what was that about “against our laws” to steal Human Servants away from each other? Anita’s been tossed around like a fuckin hot potato in the Human Servant category pretty much since the beginning. She’s mostly Jean-Claude’s, but also Belle’s and Marmee Noir’s at the moment, technically. So what’s the ruling on that shit? This is definitely one of those moments where you can see the world-building still happening, but also cracked a bit.

Okay, this is the book where my liking of Max happened. I feel the need to mention this because in Skin Trade I was very confused about when that happened. Honestly, Bibiana, Max, and Auggie are more likable over the phone in this book than they were in their initial appearances.

A big part of the problem with Haven is that he is a classic example of toxic masculinity. He can’t share, can’t square Anita’s “masculine” qualities, and can’t seem to change despite having the knowledge that he clearly needs to. This is rather talked to death with the Anita/Haven scene and the later scene after spoilery stuff happens. I think having this sort of, probably more common than a lot of us would like to admit, representation is good on the one hand, because it is so ingrained and now being reinforced in the younger generation. On the other hand, the fact that Haven is never able to move past it doesn't bode well for those being represented. If any of that makes sense... Haven's whole personality lands in the "thanks, I hate it and I hate it hanging around" category.

The way Bullet goes from crisis, crisis, crisis to slice-of-life is weird. It feels very strange. Definitely more true-to-life than a good chunk of the other books, but it just feels strange. I do think I figured it out, though. This is where Hamilton started putting more therapy stuff into the books. The entire crisis plot grinds to a halt so we can talk about the feelings involved in the situation rather than just forging ahead with the crisis at hand. That’s why it feels strange: it’s an element that wasn’t exactly there before and now it’s here in force. It’s not bad, exactly, just… strange, especially as far into the book as it is.

Which then brings us to the end. I very much remembered the end as being more bad-ass than I ended up thinking it was this time. I feel like Bullet ground itself to a halt and then never really picked the momentum back up. I'm not mad there wasn't some sort of large-scale battle or something at the end, but the calling of tigers thing just didn't land this time around. Like, yay, they did it! But also... okay... and now what? I don't know. I wasn't enthused and am not really enthused about picking up the next one.

Memorable Moments

Okay so, this section I'm tacking on here because I talked a little about remembering stuff from this book, but didn't get to touch on all of it in my review.

- The beginning with Anita and Matthew. Very memorable, very cute.

- Valentina. I do not at all remember what, if anything, ultimately ends up happening with Valentina. I did remember Anita, Nicky, and Damien finding her on the computer and how creep-tastic that was, though.

- Reba definitely seemed more badass on my first read-through and I remembered her, but I did not remember much else about that bit.

 

In Other News

I finished my MetalGarurumon Project over on Ovipets. Took me a little over a year to finish. I also did the body tattoo for them. Free-handed while looking at a MetalGarurumon reference. Ovipets sadly doesn't have robot genes.

Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch

I was honestly rather bored with Broken Homes. Considered DNFing it at one point. There was just a whole lotta nothin’ happening for a good long while in it and… yeah.

I definitely thought the wizard staff making bit was going to be longer and more interesting than it was. The architectural stuff was much longer and more boring. Even what happened with it at the end felt very anticlimactic.

Surprise, there were and are more magic users that Nightingale is/was aware of. Of course there are. This is the most unsurprising surprise. Random people and the Russian Night Witches, who’re no relation to the actual Night Witches. Speaking of, I did actually like Varvara. She was part of the more interesting bits of the story.

The Spring Fair was blah. I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but it was a load of nothing. I Did like seeing Beverly again for a minute. It feels like her inclusion is set up for her being more involved in later books.

Speaking of later books… Lesley. I don’t think I can actually say much without spoilers, but… her actions were understandable, I’ll say that much.

So yeah… I wasn’t really a fan of Broken Homes. Hoping the next one is better.

Favorite Conversation

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Lesley?” I asked. 

     “I think so, Peter,” she said. “But how are we going to get the pony up here?” - Peter Grant & Lesley May

Flirt by Laurell K. Hamilton

2026 Reread Review

I really, really enjoyed Flirt. The fast pacing and short length made a lovely change from Skin Trade, which just seemed to go on and on. I think the laser focus on Anita and one thing going on, rather than having to deal with 12 characters at once plus politics really helped here. Anita got to be very much herself and focused on just getting herself out of the situation.

I was really happy to have Nicky introduced. He's such a staple of the later half of the series it actually felt kind of weird for him not to be around. He also seemed really young here. Nathaniel actually making the puppy/kitten reference about Nicky did not help with that impression. It feels weird but also right, if that makes sense. My reread brain is mixing "current" and future Nicky, I guess.

I actually quite like Jacob. I did not remember him at all, but I think he's solid. I am ambivalent about Ellen. Rather ambivalent about their employer... not overly surprised at which of the two choices it turned out to be, honestly. I feel like the second choice would have been too on-the-nose given their too-obvious-ness.

So yeah, Flirt was really good and reinvigorated my drive to get through this Anita Blake reread. Yay! 

Favorite Line

"They're people, not extra tires in case of emergency." - Anita Blake