Jonathan
Sometimes, an author says "okay everyone, here is a regular fantasy world. You’ve seen it before but I changed a couple small things. Anyway, here is a 14 book series set in this world." Sometimes, an author (Hiron Ennes) says "okay everyone, here is one of the weirdest, most unique worlds you’ve ever read. You get 400 pages." Cruel. This book is special. It is so unique. Where to begin. The world, the atmosphere, the feeling of this book is just so strange and wonderful and horrible and unique. An ancient city carved into a giant tree stump. The grimy undercity is made up of the literal roots of the stump. There are vermin infesting the place. Vermin that can emit toxins to bend light, or make people behave a certain way, or to be blind to anything other than beauty. The city is obsessed with theater, opera, and drama. These dramas are written and play out on stage while simultaneously being the real time politics of the place and people. Even at the end of the book I am unsure how this works. The roots are named in a very whimsical fashion after the names of these plays and operas. There are even different schools of art styles as they apply to these stage plays. There is SO MUCH rich stuff here, yet so much stuff left intentionally vague or up to the imagination. I have so many questions. I want more books in this world. It is just so lush and strange and wonderful. And the prose is just wonderful and beautiful.
There were some aspects of this that reminded me in a weird way of *Repo! The Genetic Opera* while also being totally different. The vibes. The people in lifelong debt to the upper crust of eccentric, theatrical bastards as the opera plays out below them, and to them.
Now, the story. In the past, when I read books that confused the hell out of me, I would get so confused that I lost interest (see Gideon & Nona the Ninth, and Witch King). I am so happy to report that this book confused the hell out of me, but it only pulled me in deeper. I was confused but so enthralled. This book did for me what Gideon does for a lot of people, I think. I was confused, trying to figure it out. Seeing a tangle of strings, trying to figure out what goes where. It isn’t until a certain point in the book that the ends of the strings get pulled and you see the elaborate knot they’ve created. You see it is all the same string. Wonderful. Joyous. This is a book where you have to trust the process and wait for it to all come together, because it does so wonderfully. But while you wait for this, you can just spend time in one of the most unique places I’ve read in a while.
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
3.75/5⭐
First off, and if nothing else, this book is very unique and doesn't really feel like anything I've really read. Between the strange world and snarky writing.
As far as that writing, I can totally see how it would be cringey and annoying to some, but i personally enjoyed it.
I enjoyed the story and the ending is NOT what i expected but I was very pleasantly surprised by it.
I had some issues though. Mainly the confusion I felt as a reader throughout. I've been told this is part of the experience but at certain times it took me out of it.
And the worldbuilding. I was left wanting more. Early in i wondered if the worldbuilding was thin or incomplete. Certain parts were held back for strategic reveals later on (very well done) but I still don't feel it fully fleshed out. Hopefully the later books correct this.
Anyway. Had issues with it but it was a very fun read with a unique feel and characters and I'll definitely read the rest of the series.
4.5/5⭐
Another pleasant surprise.
This book is written with a certain lightheartedness that i found very enjoyable from page one. The plot was fast paced and intriguing with pretty decent characters and some very interesting concepts that allowed for some fun discussions in the book that I enjoyed a lot. At one point I worried the female characters felt a bit one-sided but this turned out to be mostly not true.
The end didn't go where I expected but I was happy with it. I'll end up reading the 2nd book some time this year and I'm now very excited for the movie.
*2.75
That was an experience
Started this off by seeing VanderMeer speak last year on a promotional tour for this book. He read an excerpt and I'd been rather excited.
The book is split in 3 parts.
Part 1:
Amazing cosmic horror in a florida swamp. At this point Absolution was on track to be my favorite Southern Reach book. 5/5
Part 2: (the longest part)
Pretty good, standard, par for the course. Felt a lot like the other 3 books in the series. 4/5
Part 3:
I completely lose my immersion in the story due to writing choices and then the book just falls on its face.
2/5
I really want to like this book more but the pacing was just not right. Book 1 established some clear goals and things that need to be done. In particular, 3 objects that need to be obtained. I expected book 2 to continue this very clear direction forward. Instead, this whole book ended up being all of your characters traveling, traveling, and traveling more. Things would happen to them in their travels, and these things were interesting and engaging, but most of it felt like it had very little impact on where the story needed to go. For how long and slow this book is, it feels like very, very little was accomplished.
I feel conflicted.
Overall 3.75/5
The quality and charm of the writing itself is easily 5/5, and it is a very, very unique read if nothing else.
The plot is SLOW, and for a huge chunk of the book, there isn't a clear plot moving forward. For the first two thirds of the book, I did not care about this as I was just so charmed and transported by the writing. But after a certain point, I could feel my patience wearing thin as the charm wore off, and I found myself less excited to read and just hoping the plot would pick up soon. Overall, I still enjoyed it. It was disappointing in some areas, but in other areas, it exceeded my expectations.
The fact that this is a debut novel still hurts my brain. So ambitious and unique!
This book was just fun.
It felt extremely binge-able and I just flew through it.
I was a little confused at times about how the systems/worldbuilding work exactly, but I'm sure that will all make more sense as I progress through the series and get more familiar with it.
I would like for it to have a little bit more focus on building the characters, but again, this first book is so short and there are 12 books so I'm sure that will come in time. This is an entirely new genre for me and I would say it isn't my normal cup of tea, but I'm interested in seeing how the series moves forward.
So torn on this one between 4 and 5 stars.
Easy 5 stars in terms of what it delivered. The plot, characters, twists, and emotional gut punches were fully here and this is true epic fantasy.
But, the writing just feels off at times. More juvenile sometimes, and at several points just very very clumsy and heavy handed...
But ultimately my sheer enjoyment and hype will push this to be 5 stars.
The amount of scientific detail in this book is staggering, and I loved that aspect of it, but the story elements were frustrating. Each time I'd get invested in a character and/or situation and think
“oh okay, the rest of the novel will be about this”
Then BOOM – time jump, skipping over large sections of things I wanted to read about...
This is such a tricky one to rate. The bulk of the book, I loved. Some stories were better than other, the soldier's being the weakest, but overall I was still riveted. The Priest's Tale in particular was INCREDIBLE and I would have been happy to read a full length novel of just that story. Religious sci-fi horror with a very Clive Barker ending.
But I can't bring myself to give it 5 stars because of the ending, or lack thereof. But hey, I'll be moving on to the sequel(s) soon.
As an actual book: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
As pure hilarious entertainment: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Very entertaining, especially shortly after reading Fourth Wing, and realizing in some ways (and I realise the scale and scope of this story is much smaller) the writing is of a higher quality than Fourth Wing. Specifically, the characters being fleshed out, emotional, understandable, and, well, not idiotic.
Just the fact that I'm giving this book a higher rating than Fourth Wing is hilarious, as I fully expected this to be god-awful, and it actually wasn't.
