Ash

This wasn't a novel as much as it was a bunch of plot points barely fleshed out beyond a bulleted list. I can't imagine the translation helped, but even so…

I enjoyed the philosophical twist. I didn't enjoy the heavy-handed treatment, or the amount of disbelief needing to be suspended. The home stretch was a bit of a mess but it was amusing enough.

I read the first two and completely forgot to go back for the third until a decade later. It's not without its flaws but it was fun and easy and boo capitalism etc. Classic Scalzi.

A bit saccharine for me, but was a cosy M/M and I enjoyed reading.

Yeah the boys

This is about what you'd expect. It's humorous, but that's not enough to carry an absurd plotline that doesn't go anywhere. It started at three stars, but ended up as one after finishing it. I don't think this needed to exist.

This is about what you'd expect. It's humorous, bit that's not enough to carry an absurd plotline that doesn't seem to go anywhere. I couldn't.

It was just fun. Cute sci-fi. Nothing like what I expected.

Honestly I didn't get past the first chapter. It's a writing style I'm not a fan of: everything's in passive voice and there's no rhyme or humour to it. Stylistically very Boomer Writing An All Staff Email, I don't dig it.

Interesting premise, but the story felt flat. There was no buildup, no tension, no real consequence. It felt a bit like a comedy of errors without the comedy. Kinda bleak.

The premise is basically what if the universe is a computer with speculative execution bugs. If you understand that sentence, it's probably going to be irritatingly slow and repetitive for you.

I liked the idea but I felt it was poorly written. They were sentences that literally did not make sense. A bunch of exposition I ended up just skimmimg over. A narrative that didn't really gel with me, and a bunch of points where I was just confused what was happening.

It's a fun idea, the concepts are interesting, the relationships could have been something, but it just didn't go anywhere because everything was so black and white. The stakes didn't feel like stakes because the protagonists are too competent and everything solved by magic. And none of the plot points seemed to amount for anything? The car bombs? The conjuring of food? The magic system? It was all just a sidebar to the actual plot, which didn't go anywhere. I dunno, I wanted to like it but I think the reviews were about right.

All the space opera and world building and dramatic reveals the first one utterly lacked.

This was fine enough, but very long and the council library only let me have it for a week at a time so I had to cram it in. The end was satisfying if a little straightforward, but overall it did tend to drag. I think I'm just not into a period piece.