Jurjen
After having read Shroud earlier this year, this is my second Tchaikovsky book, and I'm really digging his scifi stuff!
The premise of the story is pretty unique. Two characters experience the same conflict together, but one from a scifi angle whereas the other experiences it from a fantasy angle. One man's anthropologist is another man's wise wizard. The way the book plays around with language and the difficulties of communication (a favourite trope of mine, and judging by this and Shroud, something the author is also really into) between people who essentially speak 15th and 21st century English was done in a really cool way.
As with Shroud, this def has me committed to reading more of Tchaikovsky's standalone scifi series, though I'm sure I'll read his sff/f series as well.
And I suppose it is fitting that I happen to be writing this review at 12:07.
The first time you have to face the loss of your loved ones is one of the more fundamental moments that will shape who you are as a person going forward. And I think that how you learn to move on, not just with yourself and your own feelings, but also with everyone else that faced that same loss, are lessons you will carry with you forever.
Same as Conor, I was 13 when learning that lesson. When it seemed clear that my grandpa was going to pass away that evening after being hospitalised out of nowhere, I remember sitting on a chair in the waiting room in the hospital looking at my shoe. It had a zipper that stuck out. For three hours, I sat in that chair, looking at my shoe, twisting that zipper in circles.
I got to see my grandpa later that night, and because of the state he was in, it wasn't able to be a goodbye. I consider myself incredibly fortunate that he did live through that night, and that I got to see him a few days later, and got to share a few more moments with him in a lucid state. I remember the fatalism I felt in those weeks, the weight it made me carry with me, and not knowing how to release my emotions. A Monster Calls was a book 13 year old me should have read, though I am glad I did so now.
It should come as no surprise that this book was pretty great. Guy Gavriel Kay won my heart with Lord of Emperors, and although I don't expect that he'll be able to top that experience with any of his other works, I do expect to come away from his books feeling a whole range of emotions. As happened with Al-Rassan.
Perhaps ironically, my problem with much of this book-between ~page 150 and ~500, was that although the quality of writing and character work was excellent, I wasn't bought in fully emotionally. But with the ending, GGK pulled me all the way in. The melodrama, melancholy and moroseness that this man is able to invoke is unparalleled in the genre.
Once you understand that GGK writes in a pretty stylised way that brushes on the fairytale-esque, it all starts to click. After Tigana I thought that was my main point against him, but now I see it as a feature. Without the more stylised elements, I don't know if this story could have worked. You gotta be here for the melodrama, and if you're not, you best stay away.
I think Al-Rassan followed similar story and character beats to Tigana and The Sarantine Mosaic, and I expect many more of his books will do the same. I'm here for it.
My thoughts on this one are a bit conflicted. I think what made L&L so great was how truly earnest it felt, and for much of this prequel, I felt like it was missing that. A bit too derivative, a bit too safe. Perhaps now that the series had its specific audience, this book was written with the audience in mind, rather than the phenom of L&L where people didn't know that this is what they wanted to read at that very specific point in time during COVID.
But I think the last 10% of the book did a pretty good job at conveying an earnest message that I believe Baldree wanted to tell. I think overall this is a lot weaker than L&L, but yea the ending did work pretty well, and made me pretty excited for b3 next month.
Blood Over Bright Haven is my favourite new pickup that I have read in the past year and a half, and it deserves all the hype it gets.
I tried writing a list of all the elements that made the book work so well, but that would undermine *why* the book is so good. Every element that makes this book great relies on another. The character work is enabled by the themes of the story, and the way the plot progresses naturally. Sciona's personality and character development was able to succeed because Wang put in the work of harmonising Sciona's personal struggle with a wider array of struggles present in Tiran. Without that, her arc would collapse. The philosophical underpinnings between the peoples in the story weren't just hollow, and existed to justify a few directions the plot had to go towards–as it so often does–but was consistently fundamental to character interactions through the entire book.
It is rare to say that a book in which you predicted almost all major plot developments accurately could still surprise and flounder you, and that it was enthralling from the first page to the last. But that is exactly what Blood Over Bright Haven did to me. It took me in its grasp, and never let go.
Just like book 1, I have my qualms, but overall, I enjoyed it a fair bit. The central hook of the story is the power progression, and Wight is able to do that in pretty creative and intriguing ways.
Throughout this book, I kept thinking of how anime it felt, for better and for worse. It's a medium I’m mixed about. The premise is usually held back by its execution. Perhaps it is a bit unfair to portray this series as such, as I'm aware Wight was developing his craft, but you can feel that the writing is a bit rough around the edges. The plot progression feels janky at times, and the characters other than the main ones feel a bit thin (eithan was fun though, i like that archetype), but that's to be expected from one of the earlier books of a self-publishing author.
P excited to see where this series is gonna go.
Once I read Piranesi last year, it instantly became one of my all time favourite books, so starting Susanna Clarke's first novel, my expectations were incredibly high, and my thoughts on JS&MN should be seen in that light. Despite liking this book a fair bit, these sky-high expectations were not fully met.
Jonathan Strange can almost be described as a series of vignettes, rather than a more regularly structured novel. Although each individual vignette was beautifully written, atmospheric and vivid, much like Piranesi was, each chapter did not feel like it was doing much to build on top of the previous, making progress a bit lethargic. I don't dislike slow-moving plots, but as a whole, I wasn't incredibly engaged for much of this read, especially in the middle.
Fortunately, the book did stick its landing, and the final 150 pages were the best parts. Much like Piranesi–whose ending is one of my favourite all time endings to any book–the last chapter of Jonathan Strange did not disappoint.
Within these good but meandering 1000 pages, there's an incredible 500-page story. I understand why Clarke preferred it this way (probably to the chagrin of her editor), as she clearly loved the setting of early-19th century England, but I don't think it made the book as good as it could have been.
I thoroughly enjoyed this from start to finish, and the story concluded in a very satisfying way!
I have varying degrees of problems with Sanderson's last entries in his two premiere series (The Lost Metal and Wind and Truth), though much in the same vein as the earlier secret project novels, Sanderson shows that he excels at medium-stake standalone stories with a smaller scope. The elements of mystery and exploration were a lot of fun, and this is the sort of stuff that I'd love to continue seeing from him. I do think I will like Mistborn Era 3 and Stormlight arc 2 a lot, but books like these are kind of a glue that makes the Cosmere feel whole. With more and more books set further ahead in the cosmere timeline, I do slightly worry that Sanderson will have trouble managing all these different timelines, though I think he can pull it off.
Emberdark followed the Sanderson formula of story structure that by now should be familiar to the audience, and the character arcs were at time a bit predictable, but nonetheless, well crafted.
I ended up enjoying this one a fair amount! It started a bit rough, as the world Wight built felt a bit too thin to me (the society he describes shouldn't really be able to subsist lol), meaning that the plot felt somewhat vacuous. But I realised Harrison Ford's wise words: “Kid, it ain't that kinda movie.”
What surprised me was the meta-narrarive going on behind the scenes, which ended up being my favourite part of the book. I didn't really know what Cradle was about before starting, so that caught me off-guard, but yeah, Wight was able to incorporate it in the world in a pretty intriguing way.
I don't think the character work was particularly inspiring, and the story draws on some of the fantasy clichés of the 2000s/2010s (every story needs special classes/identity groups harry potter/hunger games/percy jackson/divergence style), but they're not particularly important. Overall, it's pretty satisfying watching the protagonist grow in power, which I suppose is what this series is all about. The middle 50% is better than the first and last 25%, but with everyone saying the series gets much better past b1, i'm pretty excited for the second book!
4 stars feels a bit on the generous side, i'd say it's about a 7/10 3.5 stars, but I round up.
My thoughts about The Mad Ship are pretty much in line with my thoughts about Ship of Magic. There's so many things Hobb does so consistently well with all her books. Immersion into the drama, intense character moments, and really multifaceted characters. Between the POVs it's hard to pick favourites. Most improved is definitely Malta, I enjoyed her arc. Wintrow felt like he got somewhat more of a backseat (he was probs my fav in b1), but his stuff was still mostly good. The Bingtown politics and character interactions between brashen, althea, amber and ronica were just generally very strong.
As for pacing, b1 had an insane first 200 pages and was super fast paced, and then much of the rest of the book was a fair bit slower. The Mad ship had a bit of a slow start, but got going in the middle and didn't really stop. I reckon that I prefer the latter, though the start of the series' narrative in those first 200 pages is still probs my fav stuff in the series/ROTE as a whole so far (with possible exception of the end of AQ).
What this book does differently to b1 is that quite a lot of the mysteries got resolved, and it was definitely satisfying. They felt well foreshadowed and made sense, but they weren't overly obvious. Also really enjoyed how they shed some light on the mysteries of Farseer that we hadn't got answers to then.
Basically the same rating as B1, and I don't expect B3 to be any different. Liveship Traders probably isn't gonna be in my top 5 all time favourite series (although it's in my top 10 now), but it might be the most consistently good one.
After the show being unexpectedly disappointing, I'm glad to get back to the books. The tone of this story, with Kevin R Free giving Murderbot its voice is just really special. I probably do like Rogue Protocol a little less than the first two as it's a bit more action focused with fewer character moments, but Miki is great, and it probably had the strongest ending of the three.
Coming into the book, I was somewhat put off by the thesis of the book (that these 5 WW2 leaders were driven by specific, idiosyncratic strategy that they developed in the lead-up to WW2 earlier in their lives, especially WW2) but by the end, I was somewhat bought in, more than I expected to be. The narrative history of the book was consistently engaging, and a fun read. You can tell that O'Brien is deeply intrigued by the Air-Sea element of WW2, and those parts of the book were the best, and O'Brien's writing on Churchill and Roosevelt's strategy the most interesting.
This book makes it incredibly clear that any chances of a German victory of any kind were utterly shattered by late-41, and a total victory impossible as early as mid-40. Also learnt a fair bit about WW1 naval strategy. Definitely interesting stuff.
I liked this book a fair bit, though I had my qualms. I came into it with really high expectations, and maybe that was unfair to the debut novel of an author, but I'm still excited to continue the series as it's clearly got a lot of potential.
Palmer was very ambitious in what she set out to do with this book, in its worldbuilding, plotting, and philosophy, and I think she's mostly hit the target. Being in “this” 25th century Earth was enjoyable, as I want to learn more about it. My only problem with the worldbuilding is that, as a result of all the world leaders knowing and interacting with the protagonist, it does feel small at times. We never really get to experience the massive institutions and bureaucracies that are described, as the relevant decisions are made in private amongst a few individuals–that doesn't feel right.
My main problem was that the way this story is told by the narrative voice annoyed me at times. The story's narrator is incredibly self-indulgent, and that combined with the 18th century-isms (which I didn't think added much), sometimes made me roll my eyes. Having the world elite be exactly like right wing conspiracy theorists describe them (did we need incest?) + with some Eyes Wide Shut sprinkled on top was also a choice. The 18th century brothel stuff was kind of a wash for me.
But as I said, there's potential here, and I definitely want to find out what happens next.
This book absolutely rocks and is my favourite of the series yet.
Its narrative is a lot tighter and more straightforward, and I think it is that which allows Erikson's tremendous writing skills to come to its own right, even more so than with DHG and MoI (which I loved too). The dialogue, setting, plot, complex character dynamics, side-characters, and generally how distinctive the characters feel, the emotional beats–he did a fantastic job. Perhaps the book not hit quite the same highs as the Chain of Dogs or the Siege of Capustan, but the average quality of the writing is much more consistent, making it a more consistently engaging read. That probably explains why I took about a month for b2-4 individually, and only 2 weeks for this.
Tehol and Bugg were hyped coming into this book, and man, did they not disappoint. So so funny, and tonally, their sections felt like a Discworld book at times, as crazy as that sounds considering this is a Malazan book. Tehol is very Locke-Lamora coded (the other way around as this book is older, I suppose), and Tehol and Bugg hit that Locke and Jean dynamic itch. They're my absolute favs.
I didn't care much about Trull that much in HoC, but I am definitely invested now. Just generally excited to dive into more Malazan, which is probably the biggest compliment I can give to this book, as I felt that i needed a long break between all previous books (I started this series over 4 years ago lol).
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 got exactly, exactly what I wanted from this book. A bunch of really interesting vignettes of a world fighting back against the apocalypse. Militarily, culturally, politically–societally. The two book's biggest strengths are how much Brooks thought about the military infrastructure it would require to defeat a zombie apocalypse, as well as how the book was framed through the interviews. The former is clearly what Brooks found most interesting and was well read in. The latter he just executed very well and elevated the already strong material.
The book's biggest weakness is the sometimes overreliance of stereotypes (the Japanese otaku kid), as well as the really stupid politics plot points (a full right of return to Israel at the start of a zombie apocalypse a few years after camp david and taba? Come on now.) that was I guess kind of the 00s Iraq war zeitgeist (Colin Powell veneration and all).
But this book is just filled with so much interesting shit. Illegal organ transplants being core to the spread of the virus, all of North Korea going AWOL in their tunnels, the slow crawl across America, the weapons they'd use, the Russian decimations. This is what I hoped this book would be about, and it's exactly what I got!
Also big ups to Howard Dean for his comeuppance. He really did come for all 50 states in the end, HOOOOOOOYAAAA indeed mr president
And just like that, I am up to date with Dungeon Crawler Carl! Within 5 months time as well, that's record speed for me.
I'm really happy to say that this is my favourite dcc yet. The most important reason why is because of how well Dinniman executed the story's growing scope. Quite early on, in b2, I realised that he was going in that direction, making the story about much more than what was going on in the Dungeon, and I was curious if he was gonna pull it off. He didn't have to go this way, because of how good the story premise is, but he nailed it. It adds such an interesting dimension to the story.
Beyond that, I thought the humour, the character work and the pacing just worked super well in this book. This dungeon's “thing” might have also been the best one yet. I'm curious to see if we're getting into power scaling issues, but I have faith in Dinniman to get the lit-rpg elements right.
Honestly, not super sure what exactly happened in the last chapter, but I'm excited to find out. Gonna be weird having to wait for the next book like everyone else.
I came into reading this with pretty low expectations, as I had never seen the appeal to One Piece much but wanted to see what the hype was about, and I guess those expectations were met. It was fairly fun, and probably something that'd be dear to me in a cosy way had I read/watched this as a 12 year old, but it was mostly a fairly shallow introduction to a Shonen story.
What was pretty interesting was seeing how One Piece influenced a lot of other Shonen stories. The introduction chapter where Luffy calls the pirate he looks up to a coward for not fighting back was definitely an inspiration to Eren calling Hannes a drunken coward early on in AoT. P nifty.
I'll probably read some more volumes of this moving forward (partially cus they're very quick and easily digestible reads), but I'm not particularly committed to it.
I picked this book up because I've always wanted to try a Chaikovsky, and the blurb looked very appealing to me. I love stories featuring alien contact, exploring alien flora and fauna, and a fish out of water survival story. This book was able to execute on all of those. I only wish we got more of my fav trope of all, establishing communication with aliens, but that was largely not part of the story by intent. If you like Andy Weir's The Martian and Project Hail Mary but would like it a bit grittier, definitely consider Shroud.
Pacing, plotting, character work and dialogue was all quite solid, and Chaikovsky did a great job at crafting another planet, exploring how its environment and evolutionary biological developments. Oh and the ending is absolutely amazing. Great way to end the story in a way that resonates so well with the story's themes.
My next read of his will probably be The Tyrant Philosophers series, but I'm also def interested in getting to more of his scifi.
It is completely unsurprising that I loved this book. Joe Abercrombie is unmatched in giving a diverse set of characters distinct voices within 50 pages, and this might be his best effort at that. This book is absolutely not hampered by not having the likes of Logen or Glokta in it, or it not being set in the First Law world.
I'm largely a dialogue reader, and Abercrombie's is matched in the genre by very few, that, combined with how fun the characters are to be around, makes just listening to the characters talk regardless of what they do a blast. It's hard picking a favourite character out of the group, which is a testament to how good a job Joe did. That said, the heart of this story is in Sunny and Alex' relationship, so probably them two.
Abercrombie isn't known for caring a lot about worldbuilding, but I found this alt-history 14th~ century Europe that had the Carthaginians unify Europe rather than the Romans, a lot of fun to exist in. Christianity took a divergence with having a female shepard who died on the wheel as a Jesus figure, Troy survived and became the premiere city in Europe rather than Constantinople, oh and human-devouring Elves are an existential threat to humanity, alongside magicians, werewolves and vampires roaming around. Neat stuff.
I think the plot might have relied on extended action setpieces a bit too much, and it dragged a bit near the middle. Of the 4, one, alongside maybe 50 pages, could have been cut, but I didn't find it a big deal. The ending, as I've come to expect from Joe, was a banger, and very heartfelt. The last 6 pages also got me super excited for the sequel! Beckert seems like a lot of fun. Curious to see where the story of the Devils is going.
Also curious to see if this story is consistently staying less cynical than the First Law.
And just like that, within about 5 months, that's 6 Dungeon Crawler Carl books down, and just 1 more left until I'm up to date. Usually I take 3~ month breaks between books of a series, but yeah not so much for DCC. It's a testament to how much fun they are.
As for DCC6, this one ranks pretty middle-in-the-pack. I reckon the variance between the good and the less interesting is the biggest in any of these books yet. The gimmick of this dungeon just wasn't super appealing to me, and the design of the level as a whole wasn't very inspiring. The fight scenes ended up being a little too much glup shitto stuff.
What I did like a lot was all the politicking going on behind the scenes. This is def the first DCC book where I enjoyed the non-dungeon scenes more than the dungeon ones. That ending especially, DCC7 is shaping up to be super exciting.
As with all DCC books, it was a good time. Mostly funny, although the humour is sometimes hit or miss, the lit-rpg elements are super fun, and Dinniman is really creating with his action sequences. Had a lot of heart too. Basically, this book was mostly like all other DCC books.
I intended to start this book about a year ago. Oops. Really glad that I did eventually pick it up, because. surprise surprise, Robin Hobb wrote another fantastic book. Her ability to immerse you into the story, and get you so thoroughly attached to a new set of characters is really impressive.
The big difference between Liveship and Farseer is that we follow around multiple POV characters rather than just the one, and Hobb pulled it off very well. There wasn't a single POV character who I wasn't interested in reading about, none of them where I sighed when their name appeared (Bran and Sam in asoiaf... sorry guys yall suck).
The first 200-250 pages or so stood out to me the most. The drama was crafted really well, and I was super invested and engaged. I don't think the rest of the book quite hit those highs, but it remained at a very high level as I've come to expect from Hobb.
I'm still a little bit iffy about how Hobb approaches her antagonists. Royal Assassin had what I called the Thanos-problem, where the antagonist was completely unstoppable because of bullshit fucking reasons, and the narrative was twisted in such a way to favour the antagonist and disfavour the protagonists in a way that logically did not hold up very well to me. It annoyed me tremendously, and it made me understand why some of the people call Hobb's character writing torture-porn. The first couple hundred pages had me fearing that Kyle Haven was gonna be just like that. In a way it kinda is and kinda isn't–the narrative still disproportionately fucks over the well-meaning protagonists all the time in a way that sometimes feel tiring, but Kyle is definitely written a lot better than Regal.
Overall I'd rank this book about on par with Assassin's Apprentice, and a little behind Assassin's Quest.
Kyle, what a complete cunt you are.