Kyle Erickson
Music + neuroscience + memoir? This book was made for me.
I read this incredibly slowly because the author recommends certain songs for you to listen to as examples to learn more about listener profiles and various aspects of music, and it would always distract me by making me want to listen to more music. But this was great. I learned so much in every chapter. Since starting it, I have listened to music differently. I do think the subtitle of the book is very misleading though; the book doesn't go into “what your music taste says about you” at all. It tells you a lot of interesting information about how to figure out your own music taste and what makes you fall in love with a song. There's also just a lot of cool things about how listening to music works in general.
9/10 because some of the ancedotes and random things the author included were either unnecessary or repetitive.
This book is like a mix between IT and Revival by Stephen King, and NOS4A2 by Joe Hill. The problem is, those books are great, and this book is just not as good at doing any of those things as well as the books it reminded me of.
Black Mouth follows a group of people who have to confront some evil they encountered previously when they were children. Sounds familiar, right? This part of the book was well done. The buildup between what happened in their childhood, when they encountered a magician in the forest, and what is happening when they are older was interesting. Malfi is particularly good at setting up a creepy atmosphere, and I think the dialogue in this book was better than average. Some of the horror imagery or the psychological issues the characters were dealing with was well done.
The problem here is that most of the characters are pretty bland. I just finished and I don't think I could tell you much about any of them besides the narrator, Jamie, and his brother, Dennis. I also thought the climax of the book just descended into silliness once we started getting “answers”, another similarity to IT.
Malfi tries to introduce a secondary antagonist that has ties to the same evil thing that the main group has, and I think this was the least effective part of the book. This character feels so lazy - we get access to his thoughts and he refers to the female lead as “the lesbian” every single time, okay we get it, he's homophobic. But let's hammer it in a bit more, he can start calling her a bitch every second sentence. Nuance! Also the perspective shifts of the book don't make sense. Most of it is told in first person perspective from Jamie, and then it switches to third person perspective for this character. But the book is later confirmed to be Jamie telling the story after the fact, so...what?
Overall, I think the book just suffered from constantly reminding me of better books.
All killer no filler.
This is absolutely one of the most epic books imaginable. I can think of very little I have read on the same scale, and almost nothing that had me at the same emotional stakes. There's so much stuff in this book that it's absurd. I don't understand how there can still be so many more books left in this series. Battle Ground had me jumping out of my chair seconds before it had me sobbing, only to have me shaking in fear for what would happen next, followed by making me laugh out loud, and then cheer again...at one point I was in my car waiting at a train crossing and frantically texting Dresden fans about the crazy shit that was happening. It was truly a rollercoaster. Dresden really paid off; this is in my top five books of all time.
Now I have to wait....?
This book was really good, about how we go through grief and heal at our own pace. I really liked the epistolary format here, and Luke Kirby should narrate most things.This one definitely reminded me of Silver Lining Playbook in vibe and writing style. I did call almost the whole ending really early on, which for something playing information so close to the chest, I wish was more of a surprise. Still a really good novel.
This is Mate's best book yet! I think having his son as a co-author really helped, because I thought the writing was more evocative and clear than his other books. Myth of Normal goes way further into many subjects that Mate has talked about before, as well as some new topics. There are chapters on pregnancy and prenatal development, politics, race, class, and gender; social media, depression - and a bunch of other salient topics that are all intertwined in how people interact with the world and deal with trauma/are traumatized. This will definitely be a book I re-read and I will recommend it widely!
“I said, ‘It doesnt do what we all thought it would. It doesn't fix anything.” What a sobering thought for a 26 year old who only ever wanted fame and had just realized that fame hadn't filled the holes at all. What had filled the holes was vodka. I don't think he believed me - I still don't think he believes me. I think you actually have to have all your dreams come true to realize they're the wrong dreams.”
I was struggling to rate this as four or five stars, so it comes down at a 4.5 or 9/10. This was a very honest, introspective memoir about addiction and fame and how the things you thought you wanted might not be what you actually wanted. I also thought Perry was hilarious, but I knew that already (especially in the audiobook, with his usual cadence). The stuff he went through with addiction is portrayed quite vividly, and Perry does not come out looking good for most of it. But he really does engage with his behavior and the depths of his addiction. At one point, he says he had a dichotomy where he didn't want to die, but wouldn't stop doing drugs even if he knew that dose might kill him. He just couldn't stop.
I don't think our society treats addiction the way it should, and I really don't like when people get all self righteous about celebrities who have addiction issues. Being rich doesn't suddenly make your demons go away or fix your self worth.
I think this memoir is a lesson in empathy for the struggle many go through, and how fame is not the boon we necessarily assume it is.
I did wish for more stuff on Friends, but eh. Also - those Keanu Reeves jokes were WEIRD, man. Not sure what he was thinking there.
Reread leading up to the Lost Metal - I actually think I liked this a bit less on reread. Apart from the final 20%, the only part of this book I really liked were the larger Cosmere connections and some of the character development. Ironically my reread of Era 2 has actually made me ~less~ excited for The Lost Metal, which I wouldn't have expected. I am excited for the conclusion, and I know Sanderson is great at endings, but I won't be too upset to see the end of this Era.
Original Review:
Mistborn Era 2 is very hard for me to rate. The plot is just so much less interesting to me than anything else Sanderson does. Halfway through this book, I still did not care at all about any plot happenings. The second half of this book, though, was much better. Reminded me a lot of Indiana Jones and the reveals were pretty damn good.
But what Era 2 is good at is characters. The character of Steris is just so good. She really shines so much more in this book. Marasi and Wayne are also super interesting characters to read about, and MeLaan is great too. And the slow-burn courtships that happen in this series are genuinely well done; some of my favorite romances and I'm not a big romance person.
I think I enjoyed Shadows of Self the best out of Era 2 so far, but I am now very excited for The Lost Metal!
This book was mildly entertaining, but if you've read Confess, unless you absolutely love Judas Priest or Rob Halford, there's not much reason to pick this one up. It's separated into distinct categories like “Lawyers” and “managers” and “drummers” and “playing shows” and are some random musings on each subject by Halford. I didn't dislike it, but I also didn't consider it time particularly well spent.
Preface: I will never review a book with this particular circumstance ever again. I will not be brief. Without a doubt, I am biased with this book. What circumstance, you ask? Well, Baptiste Pinson Wu happened to write a novel set during the Three Kingdoms era, following minor character Liao Hua as he retroactively narrates his life story, starting with his illustrious boyhood as a Yellow Turban as the beginning of a ten book series...which sounds pretty similar to what I've been working on for years, which is a TK ten book series following Liao Hua as he retroactively narrates his life story, starting with his illustrious boyhood...
Okay, you see why I am biased. To be clear, I'm biased positively -though it needs not be said, this is obviously just coincidence, if a shocking one. Honestly, I'm just happy someone else decided to finish all the dang research and actually get the book done. I wanted to write it myself because I was confident in how good of an idea it was - Three Kingdoms is one of the coolest eras of history, relatively unknown to western audiences, with a text format nonexistent except for the original dry Romance of the Three Kingdoms (which I unabashedly love, but is not very accessible to the average audience), Liao Hua is the perfect main character - rogue backstory, survives to the very end of the Three Kingdoms era, is a devout follower of the most famous figure of this era, and his youth is vague enough that you can do almost anything with him - he's the Forest Gump of third century China.
So I was absolutely beside myself when I learned about Yellow Sky Revolt, and preordered it instantly. I heard that Wu was inspired by the Saxon Stories by Bernard Cornwell and modelled Liao Hua after Uhtred (son of Uhtred), which, to make coincidences even grander, is the exact character I was also basing my Liao Hua on. Get out of my brain, Baptiste! (Okay, one final coincidence- I swear most of the book is different from mine, but we both also have extremely minor character Cheng Yuanzhi play a father figure to young Liao Hua. Okay, “Baptiste is a dirty rotten mind thief” section of this review is over). All is to say, this book was working at a five star, absolute banger level from page one. There was almost no way I wasn't going to at least really like it. It feels like it was written for me. However, it is a debut novel and it definitely has some things it could improve. So I will try to be balanced: There are things that totally worked for me that I can see not working for someone else, but on the flip side, I've spent so long thinking about this book (and beyond that: this era, which I have been enamored with for 23 years) that there are things I think may be the less interesting way to go, but that's only due to my closeness to the material.
Regardless, the highlight is this - This book is good, and it deserves more attention. The research is extremely well done, and it felt very much like Three Kingdoms Era China to me, which is the highest compliment I can give it.
So, YSR starts with a frame narrative - think of a mixture between Cornwell's Warlord Chronicles, in which the main character Derfal is telling his life journey to someone who wants to know “the real story” (in this case, it's Chen Shou - the man we have to thank that we largely know any of this), combined with Uhtred's sense of worldweariness and snark that the world he was fighting for has been lost and he's the last one left that remembers it (okay so this is Derfal too, but trust me, Liao feels more like Uhtred). Liao Hua thinks way back to 184 AD, when he was 7 years old and the Yellow Turban Rebellion began, which was the spark that would lead to a hundred years of civil war.
Here is the first thing that I'm unsure where my feelings truly lie - it's just barely possible for Liao Hua to have been in his early teens during this time, which would give him the ability to make more active choices during these formative years. As it stands, the entire novel takes place when Hua is very young, and because of that, it's a LOT of older characters telling him what's happening, telling him where to go, telling him what to do, telling him what's going to happen...there's a lot of telling. For what it's worth, knowing the history and where this book ends, I think he will be much more active in upcoming books. But it could definitely hamper someone's reading experience, depending on the person (but I shall point out that the excellent Assassin's Apprentice has Fitz as a six year old for most of it, so anything is possible). Hua, named Dun at this point in his life, lives in a small village near Wan as his “Uncle Cheng” (CHENG YUANZHI GET HYPED Y'ALL HE APPEARS ON ONE PAGE OF ROTK BUT HIS NAME IS COOL OKAY) begins to get him interested in The Way, which is a rebellious sect led by Zhang Jue.
One thing Wu excels at is the little stuff. The way the common folk view these big events or interact with the government, the way poverty impacts a community, religious faith, and interactions with the officials all felt like I was reading ROTK but more casual-like. He's also really good at character voice - I had a consistent view of Hua throughout, both as the narrator and as child Dun. I think the prose does veer a bit into phrasing that feels too modern sometimes though, particularly with insults. I can't recall the exact words, but there were several turns of phrases while insulting someone where the language used was jarring. But overall, the prose is straightforward and flows well, and for a debut novel, I was impressed.
This book is separated into two halves. The first half deals with Hua on the march with the Yellow Turbans, and the second half shifts almost completely, and I won't spoil the situation exactly, but its a bold strategy that is used to bring in several important TK characters as youths, before they go on to influence events. I had mixed feelings on this choice. On the one hand, I loved all the cameos and one in particular is going to have such a great payoff in like, book 8 or something. I also think having Forest Gump-I mean Liao Hua- meet all these important people early will make for a better story later on. On the other hand, it felt like the balance here was a little tilted in favor of people who were already familiar with TK. This section is littered with cameos that are almost intended to be like, “hey, remember Xu Chu? HE'S FAT” and I don't know how well this works as the second half of a debut novel, because the book has no real climax.
In fact, Wu had a clear destination in mind to end the book with, and there was a lot of relevant stuff happening far away from Hua before that could happen, so the end of this book has several pages of “and then this guy we've never met before did this thing to this other guy we've never met, which resulted in this third guy doing a thing...” and I don't know the right solve for this, except to somehow make Hua more directly involved or find out on a slower time frame, so I get that there's a lot of info-dumping that needs to happen. But it felt clunky. And I admit I have no understanding of how a newbie to TK would react to all the names in this book. Like, I don't think Lu Zhi, Zhu Jun, and Huangfu Song needed to be named at all. I think all three are cool, and I loved hearing about them, even for a moment. But they are name-dropped and then dismissed, never to return (most likely). I'm sure Wu is putting them in to be as accurate as possible and to please fans, but the analytical side of me wonders what the balance is between only introducing characters who have a narrative purpose and doing winks to a (probably large) chunk of your audience. He does try to signpost when a character will be important later, but I think this could be handled a bit smoother. Or, hell, maybe Lu Zhi is Wu's favorite TK character and he was determined to fit him in somewhere, and I absolutely understand that.
One last negative I have to mention is the lack of female characters. There are maybe four female named characters in this book, and three of them are very one-note, and the last one is slightly less one-note. This is a hard problem, but not an insurmountable one. I spent a lot of time myself figuring out how to integrate female characters into the narrative more prominently, and I hope Wu does too. Hua has plenty of time to meet compelling ladies. This didn't affect my reading experience at all, but I do know it would affect others', so I have to mention it.
This might be the longest review I've ever done, and I could definitely keep going, talking about each aspect of this book. I'm just so excited it exists, and so happy to have read it. This first book mostly steers clear of the really big Three Kingdoms figures- besides a couple. Cao Cao is around in all his glory, as are the three brothers and Sun Jian. I really like how Wu is able to spin certain characters from their ‘normal' depictions. Xiahou Dun in particular. I'm very hyped to continue to read and praise this series as Wu releases each of the following novels. However if Yu Jin and Zhang Liao don't get large roles, I'm going to get upset.
To finish up, an awesome debut historical fiction set in an era you should absolutely know more about, so buy this book and then read it and then say, “wow, Three Kingdoms is cool” to which I will say, “you're damn right it is.”
9/10
This memoir is strange in that it is pretty brief on all things about Felton's life, but it will be unexpectedly poignant out of nowhere. His chapter about his friendship with Emma Watson is genuinely moving. The stories about Alan Rickman, Richard Harris, and Robbie Coltrane are amusing and bittersweet. The chapter about him being seduced by the dark side of the force (read: Hollywood) and getting an intervention was very good. I just wish the book was a bit longer; it always gives me a bit of whiplash when people zoom from one big event to another. Not every memoir needs to be 500 pages but this one feels extra brief.
7/10
This book is set in Ireland in the 10th century and is based on Irish mythology/folklore and it was really good! We followed two perspectives, Gormflaith and Fodla, who are different types of magic users that keep themselves hidden from the general population and from each other. Gormflaith has married a king and is very deep into the politics of the region after that king dies and she tries to make his son king of Dublin, whereas Fodla is a healer and keeps herself more low profile, but has been tasked by her leader to infiltrate the inner circle of King Brian Boru, a historical renowned king of Ireland. The historical stuff felt very well done, and these two main characters and their supporting cast were interesting, particularly Gormflaith's. Gormflaith has to use all her political wiles as well as her previous relationships and potentiality for a new marriage in order to manipulate as many people as she can into helping her son become the uncontested king of Dublin. She's kinda like a magical, competent Cersei and I loved following this character., even if she is difficult to root for.
It was kinda fun to imagine this series as a pseudo-sequel to the Last Kingdom series by Bernard Cornwell, just because they take place like a century later and Uhtred the Bold (the person Cornwell is an ancestor of, who gave him the idea to do his Uhtred) makes a small appearance in this book. TLK being my favorite historical fiction series, the similar vibes from Children of Gods was a welcome one for me. It's not a very action heavy book, as it primarily follows the political maneuvering of the kings of Ireland through Gormflaith and Fodla's interactions, with the secondary plot thread of the magical groups trying to stay hidden from each other, but the ending is really awesome and has some good battles scenes. The magic is sparely handled in this book, almost nonexistent, but it feels like it will be used much more in the following books.
On a personal level, this is the first book I've read with dual first person perspectives, and I never really got used to it, which detracted from my enjoyment. While the chapters are named with each POV character, I just had a hard time fully orientating myself as to whose perspective I was in because I'm used to first person POVs being all one character. The writing of each character felt the same to me, so maybe with more differentiation it would have been easier. This was particularly an issue if I had to stop reading in the middle of a chapter, when I picked up the book I would struggle to remember who I was reading about until context clues came in. Other people may not have this issue.
I also thought Fodla was just kindof annoying. Her character is very passive and basically does what other people tell her for most of the book, and when she does have opinions and her own agency, it's just so emotion based that I was constantly frustrated with her (this is probably intentional, but it made her hard for me to care about). She also hated mortal men to a degree I found frustrating. She is very old, several hundred years I think, and while she has obviously been heavily propagandized by her leader, she has presumably interacted with men occasionally and seems likely to have developed some form of nuance or insight about them. But every time a man does anything, she thinks “MEN CAN'T BE TRUSTED” or when a man is nice she's like “He's nice now, BUT EVENTUALLY HE'LL DO BAD THINGS” and it was somewhat exhausting. So I definitely preferred Gormflaith's perspective, even if I think the storyline happening in Fodla's chapters is also very interesting.
My final negative for this book is that it uses the word Viking incorrectly, which I hate with my whole heart. It's probably an intentional choice for readership, but the rest of the historical stuff seems so good, to casually call everyone Vikings all the time and say things like “That's the VIking way” just takes me out of the story and perpetuates a phraseology that I wish people would stop doing, so for that I had to take off a full point. Sorry, I'm pedantic, it can't be helped.
But with that said, I really enjoyed reading this book and the above problems are gripes. I would recommend this to anybody who likes historical fiction, especially for people who like the Viking Age but want some more female representation at the center, this is absolutely going to be a hit.
8/10
The plot of this book is great, the characters are great, and the climax is so much fun (and then annoying), but this book is just too damn long. My attention really started to wane around the 70% mark. The Dark Tower connections were a lot of fun and I'm a little confused why people don't commonly mention this book as one of King's fantasy novels because it fully is. It's not a horror book, it's fantasy.
The ending of this book does a thing that I hate a lot, that King has done before, that I can't get into because of spoilers, but most people will not be bothered by this because it's incredibly specific to me. Definitely recommend this one, should be more well known among King fans.
Do NOT listen to the audiobook. Just don't do it. Listen to anything else instead. Listen to traffic outside. Listen to the sounds of your stomach when you're hungry. Listen to your neighbors singing karaoke. Anything, besides this book. I didn't particularly love Eli Wallach's narration (very quiet and unemotive) but what really makes this a bad audiobook experience is the sound effects. Sweet lord, it is atrocious. There are no words to adequately convey how much I wanted to drive my car into a ravine every time I heard these damn noises. Think of a cat howling when you step on its tail, mixed with nails on a chalk board, a Nine Inch Nails song outro, and a person screaming from underwater and you have a vague approximation of the jarring noise this audiobook made every 11 minutes. I hate it.
Kingdoms of Death continues Sun Eater's streak of being absolutely bananas. This whole book is pretty depressing and is not going to be a happy read. There is also a shorter section and a longer section in the middle I found pretty boring at the time but the things they lead to are very important, so I forgave that. The stuff that everyone talks about in this book is so emotional and well written; Sun Eater has not made me emotional before this, but I was fighting tears for the entire last chunk of this book. It's not so much what is happening, but how it is being written about. I was put through the ringer and exhausted after marathoning the second half of this book in a night.
I will say a legitimate criticism I have of this book is just the overwhelming amount of fake language stuff in it. The previous books all had some of this and it never bothered me. But large portions of dialogue in this book are written in a made up language and then immediately translated to the reader. Just...say Hadrian translated it, and leave me out of this.
9/10
DNF at 70%, but I started skimming at like 40%
I don't have any problems with this book, I think it could work well for a lot of people. Early Jamestown colony dealing with a monster and early contact with the indigenous peoples, plus the MCs dealing with bigotry from the colony. It's a good set up.
But I just could not force myself to care about anything going on, or wanting to continue at all. The writing style is very minimal and I kept being confused about where we were in space and time (because there are intermittent flashbacks) not necessarily because the book itself was unclear, but because the way it was written made it easy to miss these details.
Holy shit this book is so good.
I think I like it more overall than Changes, but Changes has a much more emotionally affecting ending, and that's what really drives it home for me. So this is slightly below Changes.
But man, Skin Game is so fun and chock full of fantastic character moments and cool, fist pumping scenes. Dresden Files is a wild, wild ride.
This book is improved by reread due to the brilliant audio performance of Andy Serkis. Complete top tier audiobook. This book is much funnier to me when it's being read to me. Also the songs, jiminy cricket the songs, they were good! I have spent my entire life skipping songs in books but low and behold they were great this time.
SMAAAAAAAAAAUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
10/10
6 books. 5,343 pages. Skipped. Didn't google. Didn't ask a friend anything. Read entirely in secret this month and loved every minute of it. This book is straight gasoline from beginning to end. There's a part near the very end that brought tears to my eyes. Every storyline was great and I enjoyed seeing how everyone was different (but also so...the same) since book 5. This has renewed my enthusiasm for Wheel of Time and I will finish the series before perhaps going back and reading some of the previous books that people say are really good.
The reread continues, to much hype. The Pale Horseman is not as good as book 1, but only barely. The main thing for me is just that Uhtred is at his most unlikeable, out of probably the whole series, in this one, and many of the best characters only get brief appearances. There's an entire plotline in this that the show cut out, that I totally forgot about
This reread is mostly going to continue to remind me what a travesty it was that the show butchered my man Steapa. What a great character. Pyrlig, too, but not as much as Steapa.
9.5/10
7/10
This book was suitably frightening, and the author did an excellent job narrating. There was several times I had to stop listening at night because I was getting creeped out.
I don't have a well defined reason why this isn't higher rated except that the air went out the tires for me somewhere around the 70% mark. I just started getting pretty bored and wanting it to be done. I think the book could have used a bit more focus- it wasn't long, but it felt like it got repetitive and they spent a bit too long dilly dallying around instead of facing the reality of the situation (which I know is part of the point - it just got tiresome). But the stuff the book did well, it did very well. I think it had some of the creepiest scenes I've ever read.