Kyle Erickson
This man is quickly climbing up my list of favorite authors. Not the way most of my favorite authors do, by releasing a book I devour and make part of my personality, but by the workman's approach: Adrian Tchaikovsky just writes a lot of things, and they're all different and they're all really good (we will forget about Shards of Earth for now- that could have been my fault haha)
Now, Guns of the Dawn. Guns is a standalone Flintlock fantasy about one of my new favorite heroines, Emily Marshwic. Guns is commonly pitched as “Sharpe meets Jane Austen”, and that seems very apt. The first third of this book seems very Jane Austen-esque, and reads like a period drama. But when a king is assassinated, and war goes poorly, noblewoman Emily is conscripted to join the army and must learn how to fight. I really enjoyed Emily, and the second half of this book continuously gets better and better. The ending was fantastic. While I've known many veteran fantasy fans that love this book, I also think it would be a great intro to adult fantasy. I will say though to those that are unaware, this is very low magic. You could almost remove the magic entirely and have the same story.
9/10
Green Bone Saga is heating up!!
I loved Jade War. It is a much more ambitious book than Jade City, but the things it pulls off are very impressive. The tension is kept at a high simmer throughout the entire thing and the key events had me very invested! One of my favorite aspects of Jade War is how it deals with cultural assimilation and cultural identity and opens the world up more than we'd gotten previously. It also delves so much more into all our of main characters and they all feel very well developed and like real people. The sibling relationships continue to be a huge standout of this series.
I also appreciate that Fonda Lee uses action sequences with purpose. Nothing wrong with lots of action in a book, but Lee chooses her moment, and you always feel the stakes of every single action sequence, and understand exactly why they're happening. Fonda Lee is becoming one of my favorite authors already!
I gave Jade War a slightly lower rating than Jade City, although I think with time I may like it a bit more. There was a plot thread I thought was finished up too easily and that detracted a tad from my overall feelings.
9.5/10
I cannot wait to get to Jade Legacy this month.
Well this was a waste of my life.
This is the first book I've read where I have actively wished that the multiverse was real. Because I would like to meet a version of me that read this book at the exact same time but by myself and without a discord buddy read where nearly everyone disliked or was meh on it. Then again, I'd also like to meet a version of me that just didn't read this book and read something better. Or hey, a universe where Brian Staveley wrote a good book. That'd be the ideal one.
Okay, enough with the multiverse stuff. But it should be obvious by now that this book and I didn't get along. This was a buddy read as part of Library of Allenxandria's channel read, and I was, without a doubt, influenced by the people who started before me and had negative things to say. I accept that. This book, under different circumstances, could possibly have rung a three or even, dare I say it, a 3.5 star out of my generous soul.
But it is not this day. This day we fight.
I could list all the things I didn't like, but it'd be easier to list the things I did: the fact that there was a military branch that rode giant birds was pretty metal. And the fight scenes were decent. There were a couple semi-interesting secondary characters. But Staveley's internal logic for this world almost never holds up, there were plot holes everywhere. The way he treats female characters is male gaze personified, the most interesting POV is an afterthought, the twists were very easy to call, the plot does the less interesting option almost always. The main characters are relentless tortured by their teachers to show how BRUTAL the world is, how BAD ASS they need to be to survive, and then when they survive, they are BRUTALIZED again because that's what it takes to be TOUGH. Also over half of this book is essentially training that should have been montage'd. That's what montages are for!
As a last ditch effort, I skipped 9 chapters of this book...and felt like I missed nothing.
The more I talk about this, the less I like it. I'm glad this is over.
3.5/10
Dang, this book was really, really good. It reminded me of Farseer meets Dune meets Gladiator (I see the Name of the Wind comparison thrown around too, I get what people mean, but the prose reminds me more of Hobb than Rothfuss) but is also it's own thing. I love when a book is able to wear its influences on its sleeves but manage to be unique.
“Romans in space” is pretty much all the sell I needed here, but the gist of Sun Eater is that Hadrian Marlowe is writing a chronicle of his life and the decisions he made. Hadrian is notorious around the galaxy for blowing up a sun to end a war with another species. How did it happen? Why did it happen? Is Hadrian a monster? That's the setup that Hadrian wants to explore as he tells you his tale, although this book doesn't get to any sun eating and instead a story about a young noble who flees his home planet and is forced to use subterfuge, fighting skills, and political acumen to survive.
There were no parts of this book that I wasn't captivated by, and that was mainly due to Ruocchio's prose. It's hard to describe. It is certainly dramatic (as Hadrian is, by admission, over-dramatic) but it is also poetic and philosophical. It reads incredibly smoothly. The way Ruocchio ends chapters is always fantastic, with Hadrian reflecting on the events in the chapter or teasing events to come. The prose in this book was a joy. But the plot and the characters were also well done, and some of the supporting cast were really interesting, something hard to pull off sometimes in first person retrospective.
The only reason this doesn't get full marks from me is because this felt a lot like a book one, and there is a lot of, not necessarily meandering, but “sections” of the story that don't feel like one complete whole. My feelings on this remind me of Assassin's Apprentice where I really liked everything about it but it doesn't quite feel like a five star read. Can't wait to continue!!
8.5/10
6.5/10
This book was well written and did a good job showing how illegal immigrants have a rough time, and immigrants in general. It was great to see America through the eyes of a young child who had no concept of western culture when she arrived. Like most memoirs in this vein, the book is a lesson in empathy: try to put yourself in someone else's shoes, especially when they are very different from you. It's a skill we can all work on, and I find memoirs like this great as a reminder to not slack on extending grace and kindness to people, as well as to see the world through the eyes of someone with vastly different life experiences. As someone who also grew up very poor, some of the poverty sections felt very relatable to me, even if Wang was even poorer than I was.
The reason it's not a higher rating from me is that it's a pretty short book, that ends when she is still very young and quite abruptly. I don't think the story was over yet, but evidently the author disagrees. Also, some of the stuff she chose to focus on was just not captivating. Too Large of portions of this book are taken up with her trying to train a cat, going shopping, or some other mundane activity. Hell, there are 4-5 “I went to the bathroom” stories in here. I just think it could have been told a bit tighter, or expanded the length of time it covered. If I was to write a book strictly about my childhood, there would also be huge gaps and I may be inspired to fill space with random things I remembered; but it wouldn't be better for it.
I still think this is worth reading, though. I'm glad I read it and I would recommend it to others.
DNF @ 63%
I don't care about anything happening in this book at all. The characters don't interest me and the plot certainly doesn't interest me. However, Abraham's prose is great, and I will certainly read other stuff from him. In fact, I may try this book again at another time when I am more in the mood for something like this. But it wasn't vibing with me at all, I've already essentially forgotten it as I'm writing this review, and so pressing on until the end seems like a bad time.
Oh man, this one was a bit of a struggle. I've heard if people don't like this one, it's usually because of the lack of Rand. But that was a feature, not a bug, for me. Bland could be his Rand self off screen just fine. But the stuff we did get had a lot that didn't work for me. The Aiel are super interesting, and I'm glad Mat and Perrin got some much needed development, but that's my major positives here.
The inter-gender relationships in this series are beginning to really bother me. The yada-yada of action/important scenes after long chapters of nothing happening was disappointing. I fundamentally don't believe any of these characters act like friends at any point and either Jordan didn't have friends or he had bad friends because I'm not willing to pretend these people are actually friends at this point.
The ending of all three books up to this point has been exactly the same, to a laughable level. All the villains of this series are chumps that are built up to be frightening and then as soon as they see a main character, they slip on a banana peel or something and are immediately dispatched.
Finally, the character of Faile is the worst and made it hard for me to enjoy anything happening in the second half.
The first two books of WoT I enjoyed, and I'm told the series reached new levels in book 4, so I will definitely be continuing. There was a lot of character development and world-building in this one (Jordan's continued highlight is worldbuilding) and I think in retrospect, I could appreciate what it does for the long term.
5.5/10
For a lot of people, this is one of Gaiman's best. I kept putting it off for no real reason, despite Gaiman being one of my favorite authors. I finally listened to the audiobook, and oh man.
First, an aside. I listen to Tim Ferris's podcast, and that man has been hyping the audiobook for this for eons. Since the dawn of time. And I should have listened to him because it definitely is one of the best audiobooks experiences I've had. The cast is phenomenal and really heighten an already fantastic story.
But onto the Graveyard Book. This is ostensibly a retelling of the Jungle Book, but I would have never picked up on that. This book follows a boy named Nobody Owens (“Bod”) who grows up in a graveyard after his family is killed and is being taken care of by a “spirit” (or is he?) named Silas. Think Harry Potter but if Hagrid was instead a ghost. Bod learns some Skillz that only ghosts n ghoulies can usually learn, and he is generally happy, but wants to learn about the rest of the non-Graveyard world, and find out what happened to his family.
The book is short, so I'll leave it at that. This is Gaiman at his best, he really shines with short books about children discovering magical worlds/realms. Ocean at the End of the Lane and Coraline were both fantastic as well. Ocean may have edged this one out a bit for me, but I'd have to reread to be sure. Definitely in my top three Gaiman along with American Gods.
9.5/10
Thanks Netgalley and publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!
I really enjoyed this new book by Todd Rose. I've listened to Rose on some podcasts and generally appreciated his insights so I was keen on trying one of his written works. I think this is a great distillation of cognitive biases and tricks we play on ourselves that affect the way we think. Rose does a great job of highlighting how collective illusions harm us individually and as a society, and the pitfalls that come with not speaking up when you think differently than the crowd. I would definitely recommend this both to people who have no prior knowledge of cognitive science as well as those that do (although those that are already well versed will not find much new here, maybe just packaged in a way that they may find meaningful.)
DNF @ 65%.
I think I ruined this book for myself. The ARC I received (thanks, Netgalley!) was formatted very poorly and would do a paragraph break mid sentence constantly. I had to crawl my way through the beginning of the book, and it was very hard to get invested. Then I got an audiobook copy from my library, and instead of restarting, just picked up where I left off. My general apathy to that point combined with the sheer amount of worldbuilding this book does left me confused what was going on half the time, and I kept having to rewind it to catch up. When I got to 65% in and realized I didn't care about anybody or anything going on, I knew it was time to hang it up. Because of that, I can't really say this book is bad. But I also can't recommend it, because I did listen to it and was continuously apathetic about the entire experience. It genuinely seemed like the entire first half is just people telling you a whole bunch of things that happened and people who exist and places to go and creatures there are. Also, why are there SO many named spaceships?? This entire book feels like those Blackwater chapters in A Clash of Kings where Davos is noticing every single ship in the navy and telling you their names and crews, only instead of them then all bursting into flames one by one, these ships just continue to exist, having the audacity to continue having names I'm supposed to remember.
I could see myself giving this book another try someday. The other stuff I've read by Tchaikovsky has been a hit. But I'd rather stop now instead of forcing myself to continue and guaranteeing that I'd dislike it.
DNF. Maybe not forever, but certainly for awhile.
I made it halfway through this before I realized there was not a single story, not a single moment, not a single anything that interested me or made me feel anything at all. Complete apathy.
Maybe the second half has better stories, but I'm trying to get better at not slogging through stuff that isn't working for me.
This book was not what expected. Although to be fair, it is marketed very poorly. “Lesbian necromancers in space”, they say. Lesbians, yes. Necromancers, technically. Space...not so much. And moreso, it's what that pithy phrase leaves out that does the book a disservice.
Gideon the Ninth, while hard to categorize, is part gothic Madeline Miller, part Agatha Christie, part Hunger Games, with some sci-fi thrown in and dipped in a Tumblr filter. The book follows Gideon in service to perpetual frenemy Harrow, daughter of the Ninth House. Harrow and Gideon are summoned to participate in a competition where each of the other Houses send two companions in order to see who is most suitable to become a Lyctor, the most powerful servants to the Emperor. Harrow has her reasons for wanting to become a Lyctor, while Gideon is pulled along with this girl she ostensibly hates out of some underlying sense of loyalty, obligation, and her own goals.
I really enjoyed it. The character moments mostly landed for me, and the humor, while not always being a hit, was funny enough. This book made me laugh out loud more than once. I also thought the plot reveals were very well done, and I was constantly left guessing.
I do have two issues with the book though. The first is that Gideon is very passive. Most things happen TO Gideon and she just kinda accepts them.
My second problem is the names. Oh sweet lord, the names. Each character has two names and a house number, and Muir writes this book as if it is socially unacceptable to use the same name more than one time in a row. If there was some overaching logic as to which character refers to whom in what way...but I could find none. Character A would refer to Character B as X and then Y in the next sentence, and then Character C would refer to B as X and then their house number in the sentence after that. I hated this so much. It was like it was intentionally meant to be confusing in every scene. By the time I started figuring out everybody's names, the book was almost over.
But overall, I recommend giving this a try!
8.5/10
Thanks to Netgalley and Orbit for the copy in exchange for an honest review!
So, Engines of Empire.... super mixed feelings but overall an enjoyable start to a new series!. My biggest issue is that it felt like Ford was too afraid to let things breathe. I've read non-stop action books before but they usually feel a lot more confident, this felt like he was worried if he didn't throw a giant lizard or a betrayal or an explosion into every single chapter people would DNF. Some of the time, he would introduce a twist or an obstacle or kill a character and then the following chapter would bring entirely new circumstances so the previous thing was almost an irrelevant event meant to keep the plot “moving” at all times. Many aspects of the world are just introduced for a chapter or two and then never spoken about again- some of the early stuff I almost forgot was even introduced. A secondary aspect of this is that there were times where he let the reader know about a reveal or some juicy information immediately and I think the reading experience would have been better with a bit more delay to build the tension. The dialogue was never better than serviceable and was cliche at times. It felt like Ford took a lot of inspiration from ASOIAF for characters/plot but took all the wrong lessons from the back half of the show- he went for spectacle every time over substance. There's a character that is so clearly inspired by Jaime Lannister that it's almost funny.
But all that said, I was super entertained the whole time. I devoured the book quickly and set aside every other book to read it. The plots introduced were really cool and I greatly enjoyed learning more about the world, the multiple magic systems, the types of sentient creatures, and the technology in Torwyn, the main civilization we follow. The book follows four major POVs (with another POV joining later) and each of these four POVs are in the same family and go off on their separate adventures, like the Starks. I enjoyed every POV character which is a difficult feat, although my favorites were Fulren and Tyreta. The end of the book was a bit of a forced cliffhanger, but I enjoyed reading the climax immensely. I'm definitely going to read the second book. I just hope Ford can learn to trust his story.
I listened to this book primarily on audio and I have to say, the audiobook was fantastic! Each POV had a different narrator and all of them did a great job at performing the book, I was engaged the entire time. I think the narrator for Fulren was my favorite.
I'm gonna say 7.5/10
DNF @ 26%
Sometimes the premise of a book just vibes with you the wrong way. And the way this book talks about “The Plot” just drives me crazy. At one point, the has-been author who is teaching the student who comes up with The Plot thinks “even a person with no writing skills could not ruin a Plot like this” and talks about every single person he knows is going to read this Plot and it will be on Oprah and bestseller's lists and is a Plot that is absolutely revolutionary and has never been done before. EVEN his parents would read it, and they wouldn't read has-been author's books!! Obviously, we do not get to know “The Plot”, because then Korelitz would have to actually come up with this incredible plot. So it is left on the reader to suspend disbelief that, okay, this random narcissist who has never taken a writing workshop or tried writing at all, would come up with a Plot so spectacular that it'd be the best thing ever.
Unfortunately, I cannot suspend that disbelief. It's a short sighted way to view literature, and every book is more than its plot. There is no plot ever conceived of that could not be ruined by a poor writer. To reduce the complexity of the reading experience down to “The Plot” is ridiculous. It reminds me of Seth Rogen talking about plot vs story. The plot of Superbad is two guys trying to get laid at a party...the story is two guys who are going to miss each other after graduation. And maybe this book actually deals with a little more nuance later on....but considering I hate it already, I'll pass.
Finally, finally, finally....I have finished my first Abercrombie book!
People are always shocked I haven't read Abercrombie. ASOIAF is my fav series and I generally enjoy grimdark. So how could I miss out on Lord Grimdark himself??
Long ago, in a reader far far away, I finished ASOIAF in 2011 and was looking for something to fill the void. I may have acquired the First Law trilogy through sailing the high seas of piracy
Okay, book two of Wheel of Time... While I enjoyed it, I had some reservations with Eye of the World and the writing style was not my favorite. The writing style is still not my favorite but it did improve, maybe because Jordan got better and maybe because there were more things happening instead of letting us know about every village, every person in that village, the color of the trees in that village, the type of shoes most people in the village wear, the lunch that they...
Okay, okay. Anyway, The Great Hunt. The plot was much more engaging! The ending was really damn good. The characters were eh. Bland continues to be the most rand main character, and most of the characters I really liked in book 1 (Moiraine, Lan, Perrin) were barely in this one. Loial is great though, and I really liked Ingtar, Min, and Nynaeve in this one. The worldbuilding was really expanded and I'm excited to learn more about the world going forward!
8.5/10
I received an ARC for this in June. It took me an extremely long time to read and I ended up buying it on audio as a deal and finishing it that way. My biggest problem with it is that you absolutely should NOT read the summary of the book. Everything that is mentioned in the summary doesn't happen until 45% through the book and it just crushes momentum. I've seen other reviews say the same thing, so it's definitely not just me that was affected by this. It felt like the entire first 20% felt like it could have been reduced to a prologue or just been done through exposition.
I kept waiting for the actual story to begin. Even after the 45% mark, I never felt like the MC takes an active role in his own story. It's just things that happen to him. The battle/fight scenes were well done, but mostly this book just failed to make any impact on me. I'm reading Bloodsong next month and I'm pretty hopeful that it will be better! 5/10
EDIT: I am editing this rating to two stars so that Allen gets off my back, and increases the likelihood of him reading Jade War. Also, I gave this book 3/10, so after emotions have cooled, math prevails.
And so ends perhaps the most disappointing read of my life.
Four days later
I was hoping a little bit of time would make me find some positives as I come to grips with disappointment.
But here I am four days after finishing, and two months after starting, Fall of Babel, the final book in Josiah Bancroft's debut series, and I have precious little goodwill to give. This was my most disappointing read of the year, and perhaps ever. I loved the first three books but I wanted to set myself on fire while reading this.
Priming in psychology is when a stimulus unconsciously changes the way you react to something. For example, if you are in a room with smelly garbage, you will be more conservative. If you see a red bench while eating candy, the next time you see a red bench, you may want candy. Stuff like that.
I bring up priming because I think my biggest issue with this book is that it started with 170 page flashback that could have been 50 or, ideally, zero pages. I can't emphasis how little I think this flashback added to the book. And I think it primed me to be uncharitable towards everything else.
Because this is book 4. I know this series is going to be weird. I know the characters are going to be weirdly poetic in situations when they shouldn't. I know there are going to be weird cyborg people. I know there's going to be plot elements that come out of nowhere and that ringdoms are going to be introduced that are too weird to exist. So why did I hate all of it this time?
I don't know. But I really did. I have no positives for this book besides Byron. The two villains set up in the last book become cardboard cut outs in this one and end up vastly unsatisfying. Senlin, our MC, is barely around. His quest to find his wife resolves in the worst way possible. Time travel is introduced in a series that it doesn't fit in. There are 50 fight scenes that are boring and add nothing. An important character is killed off screen for reasons? And nothing comes of it. The ringdoms all act stupid. The characters barely act like themselves and service whatever Bizarro plot is necessarily (the characters were my favorite aspect of the series, so this really bothers me). The ending is terrible in all respects. It is just so unsatisfying and weird and out of nowhere. I can handle lack of total resolution, but not a bunch of random shit that feels unearned. I hate this book.
3/10
“Organizations all over the world see bias as a villain. They are right. They do not see Noise that way. They should. In many areas, the current level of Noise is far too high. It is imposing high costs and producing terrible unfairness. What we have catalogued here is the tip of the iceberg. Laws should do much more to reduce those costs and combat that unfairness.”
Cognitive psychology is a major field of interest to me. If you don't know Daniel Kahneman, he is an absolute titan in the psychology field, after having written Thinking Fast and Slow, a book that has been referenced across and influenced many different fields. This was his follow up book, along with two co-authors: Oliver Sibony and Cass Sunstein.
This book examines the phenomenon of Noise and how it affects our judgment. Sources of noise are essentially anything that can impact a person's judgment- lack of sleep, stomach pain, a breakup, or miniscule things you may not even be aware of like being nutrient deficiency. Noise can even be the simple fact that we may treat people who subtly remind us of a sibling in a manner that's different than we would otherwise. Noise impacts the way we make decisions, but it also causes us to be inconsistent in the way we make decisions. The book focuses a fair amount on judges, as they are commonly studied in cases like this, and judges will frequently hand out different sentences across time that are inconsistent with themselves and each other.
Noise also delves into the wisdom of crowds effect, where the aggregate judgment of a group is most likely to be nearly correct, but that individual judgments are usually more wrong. There's lots of little tidbits like this, and the science is far from settled.
The goal we should strive for in society is a reduction of noise. Police, lawyers, politicians, judges, doctors, and many more are all making judgment calls that are rife with noise and ideally, we should be finding ways to limit this.
This was hard to rate as a lot of the info was not new to me, but was presented in new ways. The book is not dense and does a really good job for people new to the subject!
8/10