Kyle Erickson

This novella was absolutely fine. It is just...Alien, but with murderbot, kinda? Nothing about it was bad, and I enjoyed my time with it...but it really needed something to make it stick out more. As it is, it's just too similiar to Alien.

Really conflicted on this one. Aspects of this book are done very well but I don't think I jived with Clavell's writing style too well. It's hard for me to say because I read it over three months and alternated physical, audio, and immersion reading, and over that course of time my interest ebbed and flowed quite a bit. I do think this is a book I would like to revisit down the road and just devote a week or so to reading it straight through. It's very much about the cultural conflict and I think being immersed in it would work much better for me.

But as it is currently, I just think this book is too long. And I love long books. Almost all of my favorite books are 900+ pages and I have never been intimidated by the length of a book. But Shogun just felt endlessly and so much of it was circular conversations and in depth discussions that could easily have been trimmed down for the sake of some sort of momentum. There is not a moment in this book where I felt I could not stop reading it, which for a marathon book can be an issue. It's very dialogue heavy which I normally love, but so much of the dialogue is very repetitive and features characters speaking in broken language so the dialogue is not particularly fun or witty or interesting half the time. There are specific word choices that seem to pepper every single page, like “neh” or “so sorry”.

I also don't think people threatened to commit seppuku as much as Shogun would suggest. Shogun makes it seem like samurai would wake up, have breakfast, offer to commit seppuku for not enjoying breakfast enough, and then be on with their day. It felt like a bastardization of a ceremony that modern people obviously find strange and so Clavell focused on it more than is necessary. The actual documented amount of attempts or offers of seppuku is not that many.

Also the narrative structure of the book is kinda weird. There's not really a climax. There is a portion where more exciting events happen and then we deal with the fall out of those events, but it doesn't feel like the natural end of the book and then the epilogue, in the last few paragraphs is like “oh yeah and then this conflict happened this way”. It reminds me of long Stephen King books where I imagine he looks up from a marathon of writing, sees what his page count is at now, and decides he needs to end in the next few pages.

This review is coming off more negativity than intended considering I'm giving it 7/10. The thing is, I found the book consistently good. There aren't any places I feel are bad or clunky and I was always interested. I just didn't feel interested ENOUGH for how long I had to be reading it. It's like I would have rathered if there was a 200 page slog somewhere in here but another 200 page section that was absolutely amazing. I didn't get any of that...it was consistently “good” but at no point crossed the line into “awh yeah, this is what I'm here for” and that's disappointing to me.

7/10

Finally trudged my way through all the fighting and running and made it to the end. Truth and courage.

I've never done a most disappointing series list but consider this the top of that list. I don't think Wrath is the worst of the series, I just think it was the boiling point for all my annoyances in this series and it got to the point where it became a hate read where I didn't care about anything that happened because I thought almost everything happening was stupid. The inner monologues in this series are atrocious, especially in battle. They take me out of it every time. They are like little cartoon thought bubbles that pop up and tell us every asinine thought a character has. Someone tried to stab a character? You won't be stabbing me today, thinks character. Character lunges with sword. I will stab you, thinks character. It's absurd.

This book has nearly 130 chapters and most of them are extremely short and I didn't like this at all. The whole series has too many POVs personally because a whole host of them didn't bring anything of value by being a POV. A lot of them didn't have character arcs or anything in particular to do or witness besides killing whatever people are stopping them from running in whatever direction they happen to be running to or from. This series clearly takes a lot of inspiration from things such as ASOIAF but let's think about that. Tywin Lannister. Sandor Clegane. Cersei Lannister, for the first three books. Littlefinger. These characters are all richly defined and they don't get two page POVs every 50 pages just to remind us that they hate some of the other characters. I think Gwynne could have done more with less by just letting us be in people's POVs for longer instead of the constant whiplash.

The fighting is extremely repetitive. This is a major criticism I have of this series, perhaps my chief complaint. I read four large books and I can tell you a handful of cool, specific moments that stick out because most scenes are exactly the same. Shield wall, yelling, characters mowing down red shirts because despite these red shirts being giants or ancient creatures of lore or literal demigods, it doesn't matter because our characters are teenagers who have tried really hard to pass the trial in their little village or whatever so they are now expert killers of anything that comes near them. Anything except, of course, a named character who is evil. Beware a named evil character. That evil character will slime their way out of every trap and every situation and kill 103 supporting characters by stabbing them in the back WHEN THEY DONT EXPECT IT, BECAUSE WHO WOULD EXPECT THE EVIL GUY TO BE SLIMY, even if these evil guys are canonically less strong than demigods, none of this matters. We must be constantly reminded of the evil, by constant backstabs. If I took a shot for every time a character surprise stabs another character in the back in this series, I would be drunk enough to like this book.

But back to the repetitiveness. This is the most repetitive series of all time. It is truly revolutionary in how repetitive it is. There is absolutely no reason this should have been four books. Explain to me in graph form the exact things that happened in these four books that required four books. Cut out 75% of the unnecessary battles and you could have a fantastic duology or a good trilogy. Because it's not like I don't like action scenes, I just want them to mean something. They should be progressing the story somehow. There are endless skirmishes that just don't matter in these books. I will say, Wrath's climactic battle is pretty good. But by that point I didn't care, and a bunch of characters were doing dumb, movie star shit that belongs in Fast and the Furious movies, so I kept rolling my eyes. I kept expecting Vin Diesel to run over some demigods and giants with a car and then say, “I don't have friends. I have truth and courage” or some shit.


Speaking of the giants, what use is introducing giants as a major part of your series when all they are is just slightly bigger men and women who get killed just as easily as regular people (if you're being killed by a Main Character, because they have Main Character Power-Ups, of course) and are just all gruff, angry large folk. Might as well have just been Vikings, or lumberjacks, or Vin Diesel clones.

I didn't realize I had this much pent up rage about this. It feels unfair to unload all of this on Wrath but dammit, it's named Wrath so it shall feel my wrath.

Also the beginning of this book has the worst fake-out nonsense of all time. I genuinely cannot believe people are okay with this blatant emotional manipulation.

3/10

Really enjoyed this book, a ragtag group of soldiers storming France during the start of the hundred years war. The main group reminded me of the First Law Northmen and I enjoyed their dynamic. The action scenes were great; particularly the opening scene which is clearly inspired by the opening of Saving Private Ryan; and the final battle which was really exciting.

I do think that the book needed more. It felt bare bones in terms of character, plot, and descriptions. Lovejoy and a couple others of the Dogs were more well defined, but with their being 10 Essex Dogs, some of them are just...there. And the rest of the English army are all pretty bland. I will definitely read the sequel though!

This book is even better the second time. The first time I spent the first half being like, “why is this man so mean?” and this time I spent the first half being like, “why is everyone so mean to this man?”.

With a reread I feel confident calling this one of my favorite books. Just thinking about it gets me emotional. Also, JK Simmons narration was excellent, I'm not sure why it's so hard to track down.

Really enjoyed this sequel. I have to admit, for the first 20% or so, the words “cash grab” floated across my mind, as it felt like the story was trying to bend over backwards to exist. But once the narrative actually started, and the first contact storyline that was teased in Mickey7 is fully explored, I was hooked! I loved the interactions with the colonists and the alien lifeforms. I think this storyline made me like this book even more than the first one.

Also, the audiobook was excellent! Highly recommend listening to this book if possible.

Humanity is buck wild

A level up from Red Rising in every single way. Such a bombastic book with so many incredible scenes. A few things I didn't like as much prevented this from being a full five star read but I totally get why people love this series now.

9/10

Idk how this is a book ostensibly about what great friends these two are and the power of friendship and yada yada when these are two of the most toxic, least friendly individuals I've ever read about. Aspects of this book were really good but the two main characters were so consistently poor at communicating and just the general concept of what a friend is, but we keep getting told how important their friendship is and how they have a bond for the ages and I just absolutely don't agree. So that soured me somewhat. Very toxic portrayal of friendship from the ground up.

I also didn't like how the author had every single character talk about life as if it's a game or the things they've learned from games just because they're gamers. I'm a gamer and I have lived my whole life around gamers and at no point has any of them waxed pontific about how the decisions they make in life are vaguely game like or that you can start over in a game but you can't in life and there are save points in games but there's no save points in life and yada yada. It would be fine if this was one character's viewpoint but it's everyone, always, even in life or death situations. Just very on the nose.

But this book did get genuine emotion out of me several times and had me close to tears at one point. The writing is very good and I think I would have liked the portrayal of the main characters more if we weren't constantly told how important they were to each other, because the character voices and personalities, in isolation, were well done.

I read this back in February and forgot to post a review! Oops!!

This book opens with a famous duel from the era and it was extremely well done. The action, in general, is gripping and exciting, and Wu's prose is a bit more polished here without losing the everyman feel. Liao Hua is a great Protagonist and I enjoyed that in this one, he was a bit older so more capable of making his own decisions. Wu is actually writing two Liao Hua's here- narrator Hua, who is an old man, and young Hua, when the thrust of the story takes place- and I think the differences between the two are well done. The novel has a firm sense of time and place; I always felt like I was in Ancient China, which is very important to me.

I did struggle with some things in this book that made me like it a bit less than book one. I think for the most part, these are me specific and are largely tied into my own feelings about the Three Kingdoms era. The first thing is a major change to Xiahou Dun, most people will not care about this...but it was the only cool thing about Xiahou Dun and it just made me sad it was changed. Secondly, Yu Jin is my favorite person in this time period, and he's portrayed as a malicious drill sergeant here (in the afterword, Wu cited Full Metal Jacket, which I had thought of while reading, so he did nail the feeling he was going for) and I admit to just personally not liking that direction.

The last issue I had was that the central relationship here is between Cao Cao and Liao Hua, and while Cao Cao is portrayed very well here, the relationship he has with Liao Hua never fully makes sense to me and he treats Hua inconsistently. Things like semi-adopting him, then forbidding him from fighting in battle at all, and shortly afterwards, putting him on the front lines.

The pacing for this novel was good, it had to cover a lot of ground and did it very well. There is also a new group of characters that form around Liao Hua as his squad of soldiers, and I liked the banter between these characters.

Excited to continue on!

7.5/10

Did I love it? Did I hate it? Was it meh? Who knows! I will be revealing my thoughts live with my friend Benghis Kahn, fellow previous-and-perhaps-continual Staveley hater, this week. Tune in next time on Dragon Ball Z!

6.5/10

This book really felt endless to me, considering it is basically an episode of Fantasy Law & Order. Elements of it I loved - the magic is some of the coolest I've seen, the many different elements of it and the magical creatures in this book are awesome, and the main character, religion and the villain were well done. I didn't love the timeline switching but that could have just been an audio problem for me. But mostly I felt like the book could have been trimmed, the main plot did not need as much time as it was given and my attention kept waning. I found the resolution to the whole thing not as interesting as the time I spent with it was worth. I will read the second one, though.

7/10

Interesting setting (Egyptian) and plot background (women's suffrage), with interesting characters that suffers a bit from cliche or basic dialogue in more complex situations, and a subpar magic system. The magic system is quite literally ATLA. Not inspired by...it is exactly the same, to the point that there is a conversation in this book about bloodbending (“bloodweaving”) that is almost identical to the conversation Katara has with that old lady in ATLA. It was so frustratingly similiar I docked half a star. Rookie mistake.

But otherwise, a lot to like here. All three of the main characters felt distinct and despite setting up an obvious love triangle, actually veered away from it and did interesting things. If the author improves in the sequel, it could be very good.

Not sure what I feel about this one yet, but once again Tchaikovsky is unique and interesting. The first half of this I found somewhat dull as it felt like it took forever to get to the actual story. I was tempted to DNF and then everything clicked and I loved the last third. It helped me appreciate the setup in the first half more but I still think it could have been done a bit more efficiently.

This novella examines portal fantasy and the effect of fiction on us, and is definitely in conversation with Narnia and Tolkien (both of which are name dropped several times), but I also found it remiscent of Winnie the Pooh, if Christopher Robin had abandoned 100-Acre Wood and left Pooh and the others to fend for themselves. It also reminded me quite a bit of Stephen King, both in some of the plot reveals but also in the dialogue.

Tchaikovsky continues to impress me, even with the things I like less.

7/10 I think?

This three star rating is on me. This book is written very well, probably the best of the three so far. There were recurring chapters that gave lore info that was so good! Unfortunately I rushed into this too quickly after Harrow and my brain just refused to puzzle this novel out and the result was I kept zoning out and therefore didn't care about most of the big reveals. I looked at a summary of the novel and there were whole chunks I missed or didn't understand. Ultimately, I should have given myself a break after Harrow. But I will reread these books before Alecto comes out and now that I know what's happening, I think the reread will go much smoother.

Introverts should read this.
Extroverts should read this.
Ambiverts should read this.

Lots of great information here about how people are different and require different things, and how allowing those people to meet their needs in a way suitable to them will benefit everyone. Extroverts really do love running rampant around everyone else, haha.

This book also convinced me I'm probably more towards the introvert side of things. I'm definitely in the Ambivert range, but I hit almost every marker for introversion too.

This book is wasted potential.

The setting is so cool, but instead of getting to explore a city where you can be turned into your actual greatest nightmare, most of this book is about a will-they-wont-they with a vampire. The book being as short as it was does it no favors, and while the main character is kindof annoying, I did trend towards liking her, if she was given more time to develop or do something other than worry about being a coward and think about a vampire or her dead sister.

There's also a mystery plot to this book, which...the answer to is largely not given clues for, so its impossible to guess, which makes mysteries not fun. The main character's trauma over her dead sister feels very surface level (“my sister became a giant spider, so now I am A COWARD BECAUSE MY SISTER DIED”) and I think her growth in this book felt unearned. Because, again, she spent most of the time talking to a spooky (but hot?) vampire.

If this was a book one in a larger series I would be okay with this hyper focused plot. Like if the author was planning a Dresden-type series with this. But it's the first in a duology. And I just....find this concept so interesting, and am very sad it's being used as a tool to be mediocre.

This book is excellent and should be more wildly read, by everybody. You don't have to agree on the solutions (and I certainly disagree with Reeves on a couple) but it's hard to disagree on the problem and this book will get your mind working. Reeves breaks down the issues that are facing men in the present and future (and by extension, women...did you know we all live in the same world?!) without getting bogged down in political ideology (Reeves does a great job at explaining why X viewpoint from one side is good, why Y is hurtful, and then does the same thing for the other side) and without neglecting or just paying lip service to the feminist movement. The way we learn and get better as a society is by acknowledging problems and working towards solutions, and I think this book makes a compelling case.

Really enjoyed this follow up to Justice of Kings! Helena, Vonvalt, and co get even deeper characterization and the political situation and magic is greatly expanded here. The magic is insane...very eldritch horror style, and some of it was genuinely frightening.

The middle of this book deals with a sub plot that made my interest wane, but Swan makes this plot matter for the end and the last third of this book is explosive and addicting. The villain in this series is such a great one, even if he is pretty one note. Just a guy you love to hate.

I will say though, my least favorite part of this series continues to be anything romance related. Several bizarre choices are made here that I wish weren't. And I think Vonvalt and Helena's characters sometimes suffered from lack of communication, which is especially frustrating because in book one they communicated well. Still, these were minor issues for me.

9/10

I can't rate this book, because by enjoyment it's like a negative two out of 10. It's the mathematical opposite of enjoyment. Unenjoyment.

But I also can't give a book one star that does exactly what it sets out to do and is written very well. McCarthy wanted to explore the absolute depths of depravity humanity is capable of and make the reader uncomfortable and he did that. So 100%, Cormac. You completed the assignment. I'm never reading this again.

My first experience with Malazan was a success!

I think a lot comes with balanced expectations with Gardens of the Moon. I felt prepared and because of that, I was never lost and the characters and magic and worldbuilding never felt too much for me. There were a lot of great characters that I found very interesting, particularly Tattersail, Whiskeyjack, Anomander Rake, and Paran. Erikson is better with characters than I expected; the characterization is just more subtle than some authors.


I think if I had picked this book up knowing nothing about it, it would have felt like there were a lot of deux ex machina and ill-defined magic, but knowing how fleshed out everything is with time, this didn't bother me.

There were no storylines I didn't really like, and other than a few confusing lines in the climax, I was totally on board with figuring things out as I went.

9/10 and I'm excited to see where Deadhouse Gates takes me!

This book is one of the most unique, challenging books I've ever read. There is really nothing like it. People said it was confusing and it absolutely is the most confusing thing I've ever laid eyes on. About 70% in, things start making sense and it does put a lot of it into context. The last third is very good. However, there are little things about Muir's writing that just kinda grind on me.

Firstly is the way she uses names. Every other line switches names and it's highly unnatural and takes me out of it every time. The same character will refer to the same person as John, God, Teacher, Emperor, and King Undying in the same chapter in their own head or in dialogue with no rhyme or reason as to when or why. This gets even worse with the House representatives, because sometimes someone will refer to them by their first name, sometimes by their last name, and then sometimes by their house number, again with no reason. It's not that I can't figure out who they're referring to, it's that I shouldn't have to, and I don't believe people do this. You might call someone a different name, but you won't make a game out of changing it every time.
(Okay, that bothers me more than it should. I know)

Otherwise, my other problem is that the writing trends into melodrama during big moments and a little bit less would go further for me, personally. I also think that, while the reveals were very good, there is definitely a way to have made this story have the same reveals and be like 25% less confusing than it was. At a certain point, you are getting off on making things confusing, and I think we passed that point in this book.

Also this book was funnier than Gideon the Ninth but without trying to be as funny (or seeming to), so that was a win.

Pretty excited to read Nona the Ninth, after a break

This book's plot and characters were kinda flat to me, like a very basic experience with both of them. But I really liked Le Guin's prose at times, and the worldbuilding is really cool. I hear Tombs of Atuan is much better, so I'm curious to see where I'll land with that one.

The core of this story was interesting, but some of the execution was lacking. For starters, Picture in the Sand starts with a frame narrative that I hated. College graduate Alex has been indoctrinated into a terrorist cell and he is emailing his grandfather about how his family will never find him. His grandfather had randomly suspected this might be a problem way back when Alex was younger and decided to write his life story -which he has never told anybody, even his son, Alex's father- and just kept on the off chance it would one day be relevant exactly to Alex's life. Sure.

I don't love this, but to get a story going, sure. But what I really didn't like is every single email from Alex throughout this story. What a one note, unrealistic, mouthpiece of a “character”. So Alex's grandfather emails him the file for the book, and every few pages, Alex stops reading to email his grandpa again about what he's read so far. It's THE DUMBEST EMAILS. I would have much rathered little interludes where Alex just thinks about what he's read before, but his emails are the worst part of this book. It'll be like:
actual story “so I met a girl, and she was beautiful.”
-email “wait, so this is grandma? I totally understand why you think you wanted to tell me this, but I am still not coming back, you'll never see me again, take care of yourself, I'll still read more when I have time though.
~three more pages take place, another email ~

I'm exaggerating but it's hard to explain just how jarring and ridiculous I found these emails. And the past-Grandfather story is supposed to be teaching Alex lessons, and so we get emails about his life too, and...it's just a very unnuanced portrayal of why people join terrorist groups. It's basically “white rich people are bad...wait, maybe they aren't ~all~ bad?!”

Anyway, onto the actual meat of the story. It was decent. It revolves around a film shoot in Egypt from the film Ten Commandments, Grandpa Ali is hired to work on the film and has dreams of being a successful actor. He sees Yul Brenner and Charles Heston and all these big movie stars and is swept away in the magic. But his brother recruits him into a terrorist sect that wants to use the spotlight of the big film to do something to make a statement. Ali feels drawn to his brother's cause, but doesn't want to make trouble. The crux of this story is good, although I think this section of the book could have used another ~50~ pages, because the book was pretty short. The ending of the book was okay, but I was left wanting a bit more from it all.

I switched between audio and physical and the audiobook was very good. I probably would have DNF'd otherwise.

This book is excellent and is my new go-to recommendation for this subject. It's not that I learned much from it; I actually maybe learned nothing? Or very little. But I treat books like these like mental pushups, keeping myself sharp on the various biases and things humans do to trick themselves into thinking they're rational beings and I think this one does an absolutely great job at keeping everything very simple for the reader, giving multiple examples that are very clear, without going overboard on repeating information. It also covers quite a lot of ground and talks about a lot of the most important experiments in cognitive science and what we can extrapolate from them and even some things that we can't.

If this book was required reading in school, the world would be a better place.