Jurjen
I knew I wasn't gonna like this book within 30 pages.
The book is mostly uncompelling and kinda boring for the first 70%, and then the last section feels very offputting, unhinged, and incoherent. There's a few scenes that interest me, either when a character is emotionally attached or when there's dialogue, but both are sparse. The latter especially hurts my enjoyment as I'm a big dialogue reader. I can only listen to an emotionally disattached and boring character, describe a benign and placid environment as actually being super spooky for reasons they don't understand in endless internal monologue for so much.
I don't really get why this series is so much about the CIA being incompetent fucking weirdos, with the scifi elements being underemphasised big time in a lot of this book. I'm not against telling a story about CIA-politicking, but I don't think it's executed well.
There's a new POV introduced in the last 30% of the book, and the character's internal monologue nearly made me DNF the book. Holy fuck it was nearly impossible to read.
Vandermeer seems thoroughly impressed by that little swamp south of Tallahassee. I've been there, it's not that impressive!
In hindsight, I rated b1-3 too highly on goodwill because I like the series conceptually, just not its execution. This is a 3 star (but like, an inch away from 3, a 3 feels generous) and the other 3 books are 4 stars, though they should have probably been 3 stars as well I reckon. I just tend to rate things fairly highly (and a 7/10 is a 4 star by how I do it), but I have my limits, and I am trying to be a bit more strict this year.
I will end on a positive note, there were 3 or 4 chapters where the characters were indeed very emotionally attached and engaging, and suddenly it was very enjoyable to read. But that happened not more than 3 or 4 times.
I knew I wasn't gonna like this book within 30 pages.
The book is mostly uncompelling and kinda boring for the first 70%, and then the last section feels very offputting, unhinged, and incoherent. There's a few scenes that interest me, either when a character is emotionally attached or when there's dialogue, but both are sparse. The latter especially hurts my enjoyment as I'm a big dialogue reader. I can only listen to an emotionally disattached and boring character, describe a benign and placid environment as actually being super spooky for reasons they don't understand in endless internal monologue for so much.
I don't really get why this series is so much about the CIA being incompetent fucking weirdos, with the scifi elements being underemphasised big time in a lot of this book. I'm not against telling a story about CIA-politicking, but I don't think it's executed well.
There's a new POV introduced in the last 30% of the book, and the character's internal monologue nearly made me DNF the book. Holy fuck it was nearly impossible to read.
Vandermeer seems thoroughly impressed by that little swamp south of Tallahassee. I've been there, it's not that impressive!
In hindsight, I rated b1-3 too highly on goodwill because I like the series conceptually, just not its execution. This is a 3 star (but like, an inch away from 3, a 3 feels generous) and the other 3 books are 4 stars, though they should have probably been 3 stars as well I reckon. I just tend to rate things fairly highly (and a 7/10 is a 4 star by how I do it), but I have my limits, and I am trying to be a bit more strict this year.
I will end on a positive note, there were 3 or 4 chapters where the characters were indeed very emotionally attached and engaging, and suddenly it was very enjoyable to read. But that happened not more than 3 or 4 times.