Chris
I did not know what I was getting into with this book beyond it being “weird lit”, but it delivered. The character development is superb, where each one has shades of grey. The plot is weird, which is good! Weird stuff happens! At times the weird stuff is absurdist even, which might be a turn off for some but I loved it. While some of the elaborate plans end up feeling slightly too convenient at times, the book does a good job of setting up satisfying natural conclusions to different conflicts. Dark and deeply affecting.
I’m not sure if I’m as much of a fan of the longer form Murderbot but I still enjoy reading about it and Art and their adventures, and this book is no different.
I found the plot to be a bit overly complex, but with a series like Murderbot the fun is with it as a character and less about plot details so it’s easy to forgive the extra fluff. Will continue to read the series and excited for the upcoming TV show!
Frustrating. Each character takes every opportunity to chew scenery, to say the corniest possible line whenever possible. The characters and the world lack any sense of internal consistency. The people arrived 2 millennia ago, or even further back, who knows. The captain who promises “all of us go or none of us go” also murders someone who gets in her way and feels no remorse. The characters behaviors bend to fit the needs of each particular scene, swinging wildly depending on whatever drama the author wanted to present next. Decidedly not for me.
A solid 3, maybe 3.5. An interesting premise and Marrs knows how to keep your pages turning, with plenty of cliffhanger chapters and exciting reveals as you go. Unfortunately, those same reveals eventually become a bit too soap opera-y for my liking, limiting my enjoyment and feel like the book ends with a sputter. Would likely make a great tv series though!
A fleeting glimpse of possibilities that doesn't overstay its welcome. Chambers paints worlds of what hope could create and then fills them with characters who love like us, who wonder like we do, who find themselves wrestling with our same big questions. Journeying with the characters is a salve, a mug of hot tea, a hug that goes on longer than you thought you needed.
While it starts as a solid popcorn movie scifi story, even with the stereotypical characters, by about the midpoint the wheels come off and it truly feels like the author is flying by the seat of their pants. Characters are suddenly not what you'd expect, the plot shifts completely, and the book winds down to a bit of a whimper.
Chambers is always able to craft a story that feels like a warm mug of tea and a blanket wrapped over your shoulders. And this book might be her crowning achievement, at least in that aspect. Hopeful, optimistic, funny, and smart, a book for everyone who doesn't know what they're doing but hoping they're headed in the right direction.
Devastating and beautiful, it is incredible that Baldwin was able to get this published in the 1950s. An intense and vulnerable examination of sexuality, masculinity, and how damn confusing and confounding life can be when you're young! A book everyone should read in their late teens or early twenties as they try to figure out themselves, their relationships, and their place in the world.
Ryka Aoki put together a beautiful portrait of being a trans girl in the Asian community of Southern California. The science fiction aspects play second fiddle (heh) to an intimate look at a young girl trying to find her place in the world and her passion for the violin, shared with a woman who made a deal with a demon.
The book gave me a newfound appreciation for the violin and, as someone who is “cishet” but doesn't entirely know what that means, for what it might be like to grow up as a trans person. It is ultimately a tender, touching, and soulful story of hope.
I am right now trying to decompress from finishing this book. Emotionally, it is like Cormac McCarthy's The Road. It is bleak and harrowing and there is a tension that underlines every moment.
But it is also an intimate journey with a naive stranger, who sees the world and its people differently than we do, and in that difference there is courage and curiosity and determination.
Ultimately this is a book that gnaws at something in the very core of us and leaves us somewhat raw, ready to grow back better.
I think this is more of a 3.5 stars. An interesting concept of a future where anyone left in Lagos has to survive in a single gargantuan tower, but I think I would have appreciated more meat on the bones. Some of the depth goes unexplored and the characters feel too shallow, but it's a quick and curious read nonetheless.
Less carefree than The Blacktongue Thief, but no less gripping. Buehlman is able to depict brutal and tragic circumstances without it ever feeling cheap or maudlin. And even through it all things still feel hopeful and worth fighting for. That balance is no small feat and I can't wait for more from this world.
An interesting sort of romcom with a neurodiverse main character with a penchant for Greek mythology. Really well done overall but a bit too long. I would have liked things trimmed down by a hundred pages or so.
I listened to the audiobook and the narrator was so good she deserves her own mention. Kristin Atherton's reading of the book was superb and gets 5 stars just on its own. I could listen to the main character's boss for hours he's so perfectly done.
An interesting concept marred by a bored and lifeless execution.
Putting aside the grotesque use of depression and suicide as superficial plot devices, fixed by simply, I don't know, not being bummed (???), the book just fails at ever being interesting.
Imagine the most dense main character who makes virtually no choices of her own, who does almost nothing to move the plot forward, and who seems as bland and incurious as possible. Then imagine that person telling you a story. That's this book. Nora is a dreadfully boring character who doesn't choose anything. All of the characters around her are 2D cardboard cutouts for her to talk to whenever she needs this one or that one. They lack any complexity.
Everything that happens to Nora (and EVERYTHING only happens TO her, never because of her), is riddled with cliche. The book never surprises you. As soon as a situation is presented, you will know the outcome because it is a series of cliche vignettes.
Lastly, the writing TELLS you everything every step of the way. Nothing is shown. It is perfectly fitting given who Nora is, but it is exceptionally boring to read.
I am totally okay with junk food books, with guilty pleasures, with popcorn. But this was none of that. It is only junk, no pleasure, and instead of popcorn tastes more like a slice of week old bread.
This is overall a good meditation on how we work best. A lot more Jewel than I expected, and sometimes the book feels more like a collection of survivorship bias anecdotes than practical studies or applications, but throughout it remains a good reminder to slow down, because that's how we work best.
Particularly depressing in our modern age was discovering that hunter gatherers worked fewer hours than we do now. I guess they hadn't yet discovered the blessings of capitalism.
I'd give it 3.5 stars. This is a great dad book since it's about WWII and Gladwell has that classic dad book style anyway, but the book doesn't back up Gladwell's thesis. It's full of interesting vignettes and anecdotes that are fascinating to discover, but much of Gladwell's premise that the concept of precision bombing as a way to prevent larger casualties hasn't panned out in reality.
Gladwell essentially argues that carpet bombing may have won WWII, but obviously that was because of the existence of the precision bombs of today. It ends up being a weak thread to connect the strong individual stories within.
