Kyle Erickson

Wow, what a good book. A third of the way in I was skeptical, because as beautifully written as it was (a trademark for Backman), I am not a hockey person and detest “hockey culture”, growing up in a relatively small town in Canada, the entire thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I shouldn't have worried. Once the central event happens, you understand what this book is trying to do and from there, everything is a rollercoaster of emotions.

After having trouble with both this and Anxious people initially, and then loving both of them, I now understand that Backman has my full confidence to tell the story he's trying to tell in, in a way only Backman can do. I'm gonna have to read all of his books.

Maybe I binged this series too quickly? Maybe I'm burnt out on Murderbot? I dunno, man. But this one was the worst of the novellas for me. Or I should say, least compelling. I did like the murder mystery aspect of it, it felt different, but something just felt missing. As much as Murderbot is obviously the core of this series, I think Wells maybe needs to spend some time in the next installment really giving Murderbot some compelling side characters. I do not give a damn about anybody that isn't Murderbot, and that's a problem.

I did like the shorter nature of this one, in contrast to Network Effect, which felt very bloated. I'm curious to see where Martha Wells takes the story, maybe by the time the next one comes out, I will be fully on board the Murderbot train once again.

My expectations for a prequel to a book I thought was just okay? Extremely low.

But man, this was such an improvement.

Part of it may have been that I listened on audio this time and the narrator was really good. But part of it is that THUG seemed very overhyped to me. It felt like every character was cardboard and meant to perform the specific function that Thomas wanted to talk about, and the dialogue was just clunky. It felt like because the subject matter is so good, people overlooked those things more than I did. Or who knows, maybe I was just in a grouchy mood when I read it.

Either way, I expected Concrete Rose to be more of the same. Good premise, has something to say, not a great book. But Thomas's dialogue and characterization has improved so much in this book. Maverick is a great character and everything that happens in this book feels powerful and necessary. I really enjoyed it, and I hope more people read it.

Jesus, Backman can write. He can get right up inside you with the perfect words and manipulate you into feeling exactly what he wants. That bastard.

This book is almost extraordinary. It's almost remarkable. It's almost...

But not quite.

The middle third of this book was a STRUGGLE for me. I almost DNF'd despite really liking the first few chapters. The characters, especially to begin with, are just nonsensical caricatures of people that get in the way of Backman's point that we're all just in it together, trying our best. The psychologist scenes were groanworthy. Why can nobody besides The Sopranos and Hannibal write good psychologists?! Too many things were just unbelievably stupid. All the dialogue the characters were saying felt forced and something that people wouldn't say. When someone points a gun at a man, he is more worried about making a bid on an apartment than on the gun...absolutely not. Such a struggle.

And yet...

At a certain point, the characters click a bit, you understand what Backman is doing, and it all finally works. The ending is great. The message is great. THE WRITING IS GREAT.

I just hope Backman actually talks to a psychologist before writing another one.

I was really excited to read the first full length Murderbot, but sadly this didn't do it for me.

I love the character of Murderbot, and being inside its head is always a treat. But everything else about this one just didn't seem up to par. The plot was boring and overly detailed for a pretty bare bones set up. The human characters were mostly all interchangeable and not interesting. The interactions with ART were nice, but even then, not nearly as good as ART's last appearance.

This one also felt like it had the most technical jargon. Which is theoretically fine, it's sci-fi. But the worldbuilding in Murderbot is so scant to begin with, that the jargon just feels like meaningless jargon. I don't need 50 buzzwords about tech and bots and drones that don't add to the story.

This review makes me sad. I wanted to like it! Everyone else seems to! But I just kept losing interest. Murderbot also seemed a bit more childish in this one compared to the last two or so novellas. I just don't think this one needed the page count that it got.

Ah, well. On to Fugitive Telemony! Maybe Murderbot is destined to be a novella series, for me.

Another enjoyable entry for this series. I made the mistake of reading out of order, so some of the plot was spoiled for me, but the central mystery was still enjoyable. I'm a sucker for all things Crassus and Spartacus, so even though the rebellion is happening off-page, the political aspect of the effect on Rome was also enjoyable.

Eye-opening. Enlightening. Incredibly well researched. The Sacklers are insanely wealthy and play a large part in America's opioid crisis. This book is consistently engaging and revelatory, without a doubt my favorite non-fiction read this year so far.

Recently, the Sacklers were in a court, and the judge cut through their stream of bullshit to say, “Watching you testify makes my blood boil. I can't fathom there is another family in America more evil than yours.”

A must-read in my book.

This book is probably a 4 star overall but I'm bumping it up to five stars because I absolutely love the concept and the last few chapters were very good. A pretty funny take on the D&D/adventuring type story, it also had a surprising amount of heart in it. The characters and plot were initially the weakest aspects of this story, I didn't feel invested in either until probably the last third. But overall a light, enjoyable, and charming book that I'm excited to read the sequel for!

At 61%, it is time for me to unfortunately part ways with this book that I tried SO HARD to like. I usually give DNF a one star but I'm gonna give this one a two star because I don't think it's a bad book or a poorly written book, but damn, did I not care for it.

At 60% in, I do not care about anything happening. The main characters, barring one, are all uninteresting. The story is light- in a desperate attempt to continue reading, I did the ultimate book sinner move and skipped four chapters and tried to get to more “interesting” stuff. I didn't feel like I missed anything from those chapters! The magic system was very boring and confusing to me too. I'm unsure if I was skimming at the wrong time and just missed some information about the magic, but every single time magic was used, my eyes starting glazing over because it was described in a way that just didn't seem fascinating. I just had absolutely no desire to continue onto another page, and there are other things to read.

What I did like:
- The worldbuilding is good. I feel like the most amount of time was spent here. Maybe now that the first book has done the leg work, book two will be better. If this series starts getting rave reviews, perhaps I'll return to it.
-the exposure to African culture was interesting. Even some of the language for stuff made it very immersive.
-it was very well written. It wasn't overwritten, and there were almost no clunky phrasings that I saw. Okungbowa is definitely a good writer and I will be interested in other things from him.
-That cover! Daaaaamn

Things I was neutral on, but was strange?
-Halfway through the book, the MC says he's never seen someone with short hair before. Do bald people not exist in this world? Or is no hair not considered “short hair”, and thus, everyone who DOES have hair has long hair?
-Four times in this book someone is described as young and they are middle age. This is just super strange to me. A woman is described as “a young woman” at 37, and a man is described “still quite young, only 40 or so summers,” Unless people live a drastically longer life in this world, 37-40 is a nearly middle age person and it paints a different image entirely as to what a “young person” is. I don't think any 20-30 year olds even appear in this book? It's hard to know, because of things like this.

Maybe in a few weeks I'll power myself through the last 39% and be amazed but for now, I'm sorry we had to part like this, Son of the Storm.

Thanks to NerGalley and the publisher for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

What a strange, esoteric little book. This was very imaginative, and a riff on the Alice in Wonderland/ Narnia style of books (both get mentioned in the text) but with a more mature theme/plot. My frequent problems with novellas arises here, I would have rathered this just be fleshed out more in a full book instead of a series of novellas. I also have never read a book with an asexual lead character before, something I didn't realize until it was mentioned, so I'm glad to see that getting some much needed representation in fiction.

I'll definitely be continuing on with this. It reminds me a lot of Neil Gaiman's The Ocean At the End of the Lane, which is amazing, even though both books are incredibly different. They have a similiar feel to me.

This was a reread and I loved it all over again the second time. This book is so essential to people and I have gifted it or recommended it to many since I first read it last year. It is a horrifying book, though, because of just how awful our sleep culture is right now. This book went up by 2k or so ratings just in the 9 days it took me to reread it, so I'm glad it's still being read by many. Together we can fix our horrible sleep culture!

This is a nice little pop psychology book about four categories of people- Upholders, Questioners, Obligers and Rebels. I'm definitely a questioner which made me question the validity of the entire book right away, something the author completely called in her chapter about Questioners, haha.

I do assume that there is some validity to this, because I fit a Questioner to a T, and I was able to put quite a few people I know neatly into these categories. But I also have a lot of Obliger tendencies. And the author gives you LITERALLY NOTHING in the way of science. No studies, no stats, nothing. Just, “everyone is one of these, trust me!”. I don't really trust you.

But nonetheless, this short book is pretty insightful about how to deal with each category of person and how each combination works together. Like anything, it's obviously not exhaustive, and sometimes her suggestions won't work. But it's worth reading and I'm sure I will keep some of her suggestions/points in mind while talking to people who are obviously not Questioners like myself.

Wrapping up Sharpe's prequel India trilogy, and it did a very good job being engaging throughout and wrapping up the plots from the previous two books. It's worth noting that the female characters in this series (so far) are unbelievably bland and interchangeable and only exist so Sharpe can save them. Adventure novels, yada yada, but it could still be done better.

This book is a four star and not a five star because of how obviously it's a prequel, though. What is with authors making prequels and then saying to themselves, “hey, this character doesn't exist later on, so they must die?” it's unimaginative and predictable. And using Hakeswell as the villain for all three of these novels was a mistake, ESPECIALLY with how each time, Sharpe leaves him to be killed by some animal and then, inexplicably, the animals don't kill him. THREE BOOKS IN A ROW, BERNARD?! Unbelievable.

Onto Sharpe's next adventure, though. These books are consistently good adventure stories and I hope to like them better once it's more obvious that Cornwell was writing more organically.

This was a good overview of the Roman Empire. My only complaint is that there is SO much going on in the Empire that it should have been longer, most topics got extremely brief mentions. If you just want a general idea of this period, not a bad choice at all.

This one is kinda touchy to review, so right off the bat, I want to point out that I did like aspects of this book and think it will have value to a lot of people. It was quite short though, and so the things that didn't work for me detracted more because it was a larger part of a short book. Some of the things that didn't mesh with me are just entirely because of me, not the author, so others will likely not have issues with those parts. A few things the author wrote I did have problems with, however.

What I didn't like, because of me:
-I've read a fair amount of books on the black experience already, so a lot of her personal experiences are repetitive. This is obviously not her fault at all, but the relevatory factors of “oh wow, I can't believe she was treated that way” was just not there. Because a large part of this book was relaying those experiences, a part of me was just like, “yep, not surprised” over and over.
-My big blind spot in terms of “things I care about” is the Christian Church. This is entirely on me. Whenever people talk about their church experiences, my eyes glaze over. A lot of this book dealt with her interactions with church, so inherently I was less enthused.


Things I didn't like, related to the author's writings:
- Over generalization of white people. This one is tough, and inb4 people tell me to read White Fragility, that wasn't the problem. The vast majority of what she said I agree with. And she DID sometimes use qualifiers like “white people usually” or “most white people”. I don't feel attacked or defensive. I just think her point would be better made if she didn't resort to weird levels of generalizations. “White people want to turn everything into a debate, and black people don't usually have the time or energy to educate them”. I understand and agree that the main point here is “don't expect black people to educate you on what you're doing wrong”. I can only imagine the levels of exhaustion it would bring to have all the white people around you trying to debate racism. But the people she's describing are just doing asshole things, not white things. I love debating about lots of things, and am one of those people who thinks discourse is the way forward for most issues, but I also recognize most people are usually NOT in the mood for a debate, especially a debate thrust upon them. Not just about race, about anything. So when I want to debate about something, I take social cues and back off if the other person isn't receptive. I don't think that makes me special; it just makes me considerate of how other people are feeling. People who don't do this are being asses, or self-centered, or oblivious, or obnoxious, but not “white”.
That's just one example, because it's near the end of the book. Another time, she mentions how white murderers are treated like people who made a mistake and black drug dealers are treated like sub human. I agree that black criminals are treated abhorrently, but I'm just not sure where she's getting that white murderers are not also villainized. I'll chalk this one up to different life experiences.
-At the beginning of the book, she talks about how upset people get when they expect her to be a white man based on her name. But then she gave a bunch of examples where people were just mildly confused. Names are signifiers, that's just the way names work. There's no law saying you have to follow them, but names do give certain expectations. If she was still discriminated against because of her name, that'd be one thing. But I would absolutely be unsure if I had a meeting with someone named Austin, and a black woman was sitting in the lobby. I would also be confused if I had a meeting with a person named Fatima and it was a white man, or if I had a meeting with a person named Sangmin and it was a white woman. But then I would adjust after a brief moment of confusion? This was SUCH a weird thing to start your book on, it makes her seem like she has a chip on her shoulder about something really asinine.

But that was a lot of writing that makes it seem like I really disliked this book, and I didn't. The things she discusses are absolutely things that people need to hear, and I particularly liked the parts about her dealing with cousin being in jail, as well her experiences in school with good and bad teachers, and also about “nice white people”, because man, do I know a lot of those, and I'm sure I've been one at some point in my life too. I just can't believe so many people come up to her and look to her for absolution for their racist pasts. I would lose it. But I guess that's the point, isn't it? She can't lose it. She has to deal with it, simply because white people can't manage their own guilt.

2.5/5 stars, but I probably would have given a higher rating if I had read it a few years ago.

Didn't review this my first time through, so might as well do it now. If you like Mike Duncan and/or Roman history, this is likely to be something you enjoy. Duncan has such a good voice for teaching history, I don't know why, but it's just the perfect delivery system to hear facts about history.

This book focuses on the stuff that happens before all the stuff you know about happens. Reading about the Caesar/Cicero/Pompey/Mark Antony era of Rome can get exhausting, just because it has been covered SO much. I had already known the very basic, bare bones facts about some of the time period covered here, but Duncan went into enough detail that even on the second read through, I learned new things.

Man, this book is horrifying. I can't believe this isn't talked about more.

The scope and goal of this book and just the sheer amount I learned would ordinarily make it a 5 star read. While I'm very glad I read it though, the lack of available material really makes itself known.

The middle of this book is a hardcore snooze, and I feel like the middle third could have been summarized in like 10 pages. It was basically an entire biography of a random person who went to the Congo, did or saw horrible things, and then left, over and over. I understand giving some historical context to the people who make up this story (I do think it's necessary), but 10 pages of backstory for every person whose contribution to the narrative usually amounts to “and then they saw bad things, and they were horrified, and then they left and thought about the bad things they saw” is just not an interesting or economical usage of pages.

But the first and last third are really good and very informative. This atrocity needs to be more well known, and I hope we continue to discover more information about it and talk about it in a public light.

The Hasidic community is trippin', man.

This is a pretty great memoir and I learned a lot. The first half was a little boring though. I don't think this is necessarily the fault of the author, just that she was younger during those years and had less concrete memories to work from. It also ends very abruptly and doesn't really offer a lot of perspective of what happens after she leaves. I think the book should have been written a bit later? But then, she needed the book deal so I dunno.

The ways the Hasidic community repress women and also the men in their communities is atrocious. I'm glad Feldman got out.

Right off the bat here- I think using “thought-cage” as a word for “head” is genius. This should become more of a thing. I'm curious if Gwynne just thought of this himself or if it's a documented thing people have used.

But regarding the book itself, wow. People have been telling me about John Gwynne books for years, and although I own a copy of Malice, I haven't taken the plunge. But the cover of this book was gorgeous, a lot of reviewers I follow gave it a very high rating, and it's the first of a Norse inspired fantasy. What's not to love?

We follow three characters who are all very interesting. Orka is a mother who has also spent a lot of time in shield walls and wants to protect her family. Varg is an idiot who joins up with the Bloodsworn, a group of badass mercenary Vikings. Okay, maybe ‘idiot' isn't in Varg's official character description, but the man is one. But yet, you feel for him and understand his goals. He is an entry into this new world in a way that Orka is not. He just also always makes dumb decisions. He is called Varg No-Sense for a reason!

Elvar was a bit of a longer play here. Her first chapters were kinda listless and I just wanted to get back to Varg and Orka. Elvar is a member of a different group of badass mercenary vikings, and she's trying to earn her battle-fame. But once you learn more about her backstory, everything here clicks. Her character and relationships are such a big part of this book.

Another thing I want to point out here that I haven't seen other people do. There are a LOT of supporting/minor characters, and almost every single one's character description is “badass warrior” or “mysterious witch”. This seems like a criticism, and I do hope that Gwynne takes the opportunity to include different types of characters going forward, but what I want to highlight here is how much this doesn't matter. Gwynne displays a Martin-esque tendancy to flavor smaller characters with just enough personality that even though their page count is low, you still have a sense of who they are. The camaraderie in the Bloodsworn and the Battlegrim are the backbone of this series. The Shadow of the Gods is about loyalty and brotherhood and about choosing your own family. This wouldn't work nearly as well if every member of the badass viking groups just seemed similiar. But there were many whose fates I cared about -Svik, Einar, Rokia, Agnar, Glornir, Soren, Torvik, Sulich, Biorr. GREND. Why has nobody mentioned how fantastic Grend is!?

There's not too much else I can say here except this book is fantastic, and like everyone tells me, the battle scenes are gripping and intense. My only real criticism is that I definitely want more than a trilogy from this world. Is that a criticism, Mr. Gwynne? You decide.

Listening to this as an audiobook was an ABZURD idea! ABZOLUTELY ABZURD!

For real though. I enjoyed 12 Rules a fair bit, but all of Peterson's more irritating qualities are fully on display in this one - hyperbolic language (primordial! chaos! Hell!), Long tangents/explanations in the middle of a chapter that make me genuinely forget what the “rule” is for this chapter, and tons of bible analysis that is completely unnecessary and totally boring. That said, I listened to this on audio, and read 12 Rules with my eyes, which means I didn't have Peterson's ABZURD style being delivered in his own ABZURD voice. I think I probably would have enjoyed it more if I read it, I may do that at some point in the future. But as audio, I was constantly drawn in by how dramatic he was making whatever example and then the actual point would sail on past me.

Mostly, this book just felt unnecessary. I have no doubt it will help some people, but it felt half baked. I'm unsure if it's because Peterson kept almost dying last year and just wanted to put it out, or if it's because the entire thing is a cash grab, or some sort of combination of both.

The most amusing aspect of the entire thing is how much controversy there was over the publishing of an extraordinarily benign book.

This book is exactly what you want. It's the podcast in a longer form. Personally, the spontaneous dynamic of Josh and Chuck interjecting during each other's parts in the podcast is better than them reading their individual sections of the book here. But the stuff they chose here was mostly interesting and the humor was still intact. There were a couple misses for me, though, in terms of stuff they chose I didn't think warranted a chapter in a book over an episode of the podcast. Still an enjoyable read.

This series gets better with every book. I almost gave this one my first five star rating, because the plot was great and the worldbuilding aspects really kicked into higher gear, and my major issue with the series (Lindon) made SOME strides towards actually being more dynamic than a cardboard box. For the first time in maybe the whole series, he makes a decision that is not motivated by “what will make me more powerful the fastest?”. That's major progress. Still not enough for the central character, though.

So maybe now he's graduated from cardboard box to cardboard cut-out of a person? Like one of those things you see in the mall, just a cut-out of a guy named Lindon pointing at himself, with a text bubble like, “I wanted to get more powerful, just like you!” outside of a GNC, or something.

Excited to start the next one. As usual, Eithan is the best character of this series by a long shot. Yerin and Orthos were great too. And the new addition, Mercy, seems poised to go interesting places in the future.

My brain wants to give this four stars and my heart wants to give it three stars. Or is it the other way around? I'm not sure. I'm going to be nice because I loved Dark Matter and am inclined to view the problems in a more favorable light towards Mr. Crouch and the no doubt intense amount of work writing this book must have been.

Here's the thing with time travel stories. They can be amazing, they can be outright trash, and they can be everything in between. I love time travel. But there are different styles of time travel stories. There are “multiple timelines”, there are “everything in the past already happened, you always went to the past and can't change anything”, and there is “when you change stuff, everything in the present is different in ways you can't predict.” I like each of these styles, and they can each explore different themes and questions.

Minor spoilers going forward. Nothing too spoilery.

This book is a unique (from my experience) combination of 1 and 3. And the first half of this book is electrifying. The second half I had increasing problems with. It is very repetitive, but this isn't my big problem. My big problem is that Crouch is so interested in his ideas and exploring memory (all super cool, the ideas are definitely the highlight of this book) that he doesn't stop to think through plot holes and logic gaps and just like, how choices work.

Here is a minor example- the main character's entire motivation is to help Alzheimer's patients because her mom has it. Every single thing in this book steps from her wanting to get her mom healthy. And in every time traveling adventure, her mom gets Alzheimer's. This woman is a scientist and obviously has access to research. Yet in no iteration does she try to intervene in her mom's life to prevent her from getting Alzheimer's. It's possible she would get it anyway, but we know lots of risk factors for Alzheimer's- diet, sleep, exercise. This is literally not even mentioned as something worth trying. I could not get past this!! If I had decades of foreknowledge that my mom was for sure going to get Alzheimer's in year X, I would be intervening constantly. Buying brain foods, forcing my mom to go on walks with me, etc. Maybe she still gets Alzheimer's, but maybe I totally stop this from happening. HOW IS THIS NOT EVEN BROUGHT UP?!? I can't believe it. Does Blake Crouch just not know you can take preventative measures for Alzheimer's?

One other example I have to be more vague about due to spoilers is, there is a particular nation's government response that is very negative, and it causes lots of problems for the main characters and also the world. And these governments keep making the same mistakes, over and over again, despite each time having more access to more information. Maybe my brain puts problems together differently, but I don't believe this problem would keep arising. I can't be more specific, but it is such a plot-centric problem and I was just hating having to read it over and over because it felt like Crouch was saying “I need X to happen”, and disregarding how people would act in the situation.

The very end is fine. As I write this review, I probably should have given it three stars. But the concept is so interesting! This book is so readable! I read it in less than a day. The characters are good! It really makes you think! I love books about memory! It's just...such a crash and burn in that second half.

Series really kicked it up a notch here. The worst part continues to be the actual main character, but he's fine. Just fine. This series lives and breathes with its supporting characters, world, and plot. Eithan is quickly becoming one of my favorite characters ever. So fascinating, he elevates every single scene he is in.

The ending of this one was very good. I was expecting the book to end with the duel it was setting up since the end of the last one, but it doesn't, and I appreciate the unorthodox story structure here. The end comes rather unexpectedly (if you're not looking at how many pages are left) and with plot twists you probably wouldn't expect. It took me a week or two to start Blackflame after the second book, but I started Skysworn immediately after finishing this time, so it did a good job hooking me.

4.5/5 stars, because I can't justify to myself giving 5 stars to a book whose main character I could literally remove from the story and replace with a cardboard box and not care about the difference.

I've read several books on memory before, but I was excited to read this from Lisa Genova, who has the appropriate background in neuroscience, but also the background of writing science well. I believe this is the fourth book on memory I've read, and as such, there is quite a bit of repetition that I've heard before- so if the science of memory is an ongoing interest of yours, be aware of that. But even so, the difference here is just how well Genova illustrates examples and fully engages you with the subject. There were definitely things I “learned” from previous books that were now “encoded” (see, Lisa, I learned!) into my memory much better because of this book.

As far I've read, this is the current definitive version of memory science you should read, if you are looking for a brief, readable overview of how memory and forgetting works. If you want the nitty gritty science, hey, grab one of those textbooks. But if you want to learn a good deal about this subject in a short amount of time, pick up this book!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the free copy in exchange for an honest review.