adds
This was a 3.5 review worth rounding up. It would have been higher but one character was so annoying I actually wanted them to be eaten or slapped.All around interesting and solid dinosaur scifi thriller with a decent attempt at science. At 45% of the way through I had to stop and rewatch the movie, which is incidentally about where the book starts to differ quite a bit. It's probably sacrilegious but I think the movie was better. I could rewatch the movie over and over; once was enough for the book.The acknowledgements mention [a:Robert T. Bakker 68286 Robert T. Bakker https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1303492859p2/68286.jpg]. I recommend checking out his book [b:Raptor Red 117710 Raptor Red Robert T. Bakker https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1533437168s/117710.jpg 986300].
I totally forgot why I marked this with my catch-all disability shelf and had to look up if I'd made a shelving error. I didn't, as revealed in the prologue. I'll mark my reminder to myself with a spoiler in case anyone reading this hasn't seen the show and wants to go into this book cold. Simon's speech development was delayed and he had a stutter he worked to overcome.
Maybe I need a new guilty-pleasure shelf because I think I liked this more than I should have. Or maybe so-bad-it's-good. It's steamy, or the new phrase spicy, and so is the show.
DNF 2.2% I'm cringing that I already know this won't be for me.
I went into this thinking it would be a bit like Waterworld, but with nonstop rain. It's not. There seems to be plenty of land left. An older guy and a teenage girl manage to go from land to land almost every day in a run-down canoe. Why don't they have a better boat? Everything's wet and soggy but there's still enough wood to make fires. How is this possible?
We aren't going to get enough science to satisfy my requirements to keep reading. I can't suspend my belief so much as to tolerate that she just doesn't care enough to ask or try to figure out what happened to the world to make it rain constantly. She doesn't even seem to care about the one person she's relying on in life.
I've got such a jumble in my head about this book and I can't really put it in any decent order. So I'm just going to wordvomit a little bit.
If the Mad Max, Terminator, Matrix movies, and Waterworld (without the water) had a baby it would be this.
I need this to be its own movie. Maybe a miniseries because there's a lot going on here.
Holy shit I love good robot scifi.
Why hasn't a Goodreads librarian changed the synopsis to show that Brittle thinks of herself as a female robot?
Would robots really care about gender once humans are extinct? Was it just programming and voiceboxes that had them holding onto gender? I know Cargill tried to explain this but I still think robots might have thrown off human genders. It's a social construct they have no need for. Humans are people but robots are persons so why not a distinct robot pronoun?
I wonder if there's going to be a sequel to this. It wasn't a cliffhanger but it was still pretty open ended. What happened to Brittle was cool. What happened to Mercer was not cool. If there's a sequel we'd better see him again.
DNF 26%
I spent most of my time frowning while reading this. Too many questions of “why?” or extreme skepticism. The vibe of this is social commentary, but the message isn't clear.
Also, the characters suck. I hate Cal and I hate Frida even more. If anyone shouldn't have survived whatever the hell happened it's her. Cal I could see actually making it with some struggle.
I was hoping I'd be one of the few who liked this, but I'm not. I can understand the low-ish votes and semi-negative reviews.
DNF 28%
Omg get over your hangups and just sleep with the guy already you angry girl.
I'm assuming the plot is the playboy reforms himself to fix the broken girl so they can fall in love. I'm more interested in playboy's sister. She seems super sweet and I bet there's something going on with her. But I'm not so interested that this is holding my attention.
DNF at 38%
The premise of a sexually-transmitted plague is pretty interesting and the writing was fairly good. I just couldn't figure out what this book was trying to be. Is it a zombie book? Maybe. Is it erotica? Definitely not so far. Is it horror or thriller? There were a couple scenes of tension, one of them pretty unnerving, but the rest of the time I just wasn't feeling it much.
I honestly got tired of everyone asking the main character what's going on, like she's supposed to know. She doesn't know anything either! Stop hounding her just because she leaves to go check on a friend or overhears something you all somehow slept right through.
There was no connecting with the main character either. In fact, I kind of disliked all the characters except for her brother-in-law. Everyone's either a stereotypical asshole, slut, or having a quarter life crisis. What a mess. I'm just going to hope they all die in the plague while the brother-in-law saves his wife and two kids and gets out of small town hell.
If you're going to refer to a man's penis as a “tool” during one of the many sex scenes, or mention him ejaculating pretty much straight into her “womb”, at least go all out and give readers the super-drama of her winding up pregnant. What a missed opportunity.
To me this book is straight up rape. If you're kidnapped, blackmailed, guilted, or coerced into any kind of sex act it's rape. It's ok though, the big bad motorcycle gang member with a huge dick is super hot so that makes it all alright. eyeroll
I'm surprised this book is rated so highly. Why???
I got to about 19% of the way in and realized I don't need to read this. The author even says not everything is 100% factual and I don't need to read a book that possibly sensationalizes Trump or anyone around him. These people are evil all on their own. There's no reason to exaggerate except to possibly cause a stir and make more money.
DNF at 27% because I lost interest due to the somewhat dated writing style. I bet the story really picks up right after where I left off too. That'd serve me right. But I'd already picked up other books holding my attention more so I'm setting this aside. Not going to rate this though. It's not a bad read. I just didn't click with it the way I wanted to.
DNF at 19%, but I was really done at 10%. I'd skimmed to see if it got any better.Ok, Sylvia Day took [b:Fifty Shades of Grey 10818853 Fifty Shades of Grey (Fifty Shades, #1) E.L. James https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1385207843s/10818853.jpg 15732562] and rewrote it. That's cool. All sorts of reviews rave that it's way better written than Fifty Shades, and I guess it is. Sort of.This is obviously erotica. Awesome. I'm totally here for the smut. The thing is is I need a decent story and characters. There will be no swooning from me when all I want to do is repeatedly throat punch the lead male character, Gideon Cross. This man is a lecherous boss in a position of power who will use and abuse his power because he thinks he's entitled to... well, everything. There's nothing sexy about sexual assault, which is what was continuously happening. No really does mean no. It doesn't matter what her body is telling you, pal.Cross said nothing until the car was on its way down; then he pushed the call button again and asked, “ Are you sleeping with anyone?”Um WHAT??? This is one of the first dialogue interactions they have and this is what he says? And when Eva asks him why the heck he's asking her:“Because I want to fuck you, Eva. I need to know what's standing in my way, if anything.”She tells him maybe she's not interested and from then on out no matter how many times she says no or pulls away he's trying to grope or kiss her. Just because the readers hear Eva's thoughts about how she finds Cross attractive her words and actions don't always show that. She's torn. But for all he knows she's not really fully interested. But he's not listening.It turns out Cross owns the building Eva lives in. Of course he does. But Eva finds out and is rightfully horrified. His reaction?“I accessed information you voluntarily made available to me.”“Not to you! Not for what you used it for! That has to violate some kind of privacy law.” I stared at him, more confused than ever. “Why would you do that?”He had the grace to look disgruntled at least. “So I can figure you out, damn it.”My skin crawled. Not only is Eva's livelihood in his hands, but so is her living situation. He's now pretty much completely able to cut her off and isolate her if he chooses. Or at least coerce. If you cajole someone into consent it's not really consent.The writing may be better than Fifty Shades of Grey in certain ways, but the story is just as abusive and disgusting and is nothing to emulate.Eva, run. Leave everything and run.
DNF at 47%. I just do not care a tinker's damn what happens to these characters. I'm not invested in them at all. I want to be, but I can't because this book is like Swiss cheese there are so many plot holes. It's too distracting.
There would be no plausible reason to have a war over reproductive rights. Wars are fought over money. Strip away all the crap and it always comes down to money in some way. If you want me to believe otherwise about this war then there needs to be sufficiently explained world building. Otherwise, who's making the money off of kids being unwound? Half way into a book it should be laid out how the hell we've gotten to where the story starts so things start to make sense. I still have no idea why the world is this way and I'm finding nothing worth keeping me reading to maybe find out if Shusterman ever sufficiently develops anything. How did we get from Roe v. Wade to unwinding kids in what seems to be just a few decades or less?
People don't want to be forced to keep random ass babies dropped on their doorstep. Society would shift in response to storking laws to say the least. The middle class communities portrayed would probably develop neighborhoods with security cameras and a guard watching them so someone can't plop a baby down at someone's door without getting caught. We already have gated communities where guards patrol on golf carts. But security isn't stepped up in the future in seemingly well-off areas? What kind of America IS this? I can't accept that this is just the way it is, and I think there would be large swaths of people who would never accept this either.
I can't accept that killing off teenagers to use them as transplant fodder is fine with both the pro-choice and anti-choice side of the abortion debate. The book uses the term “pro-life” to try to excuse chopping people up for their parts because the parts never really die, but I'm using the accurate real world wording. The premise of Unwind is interesting. It could be a poignant discussion while still being entertaining, but the reasoning for it is absolute bullshit, and again, there's not enough world building or even decent characters to explain how society has broken down so much. People just go about their normal lives the same way we do today. The suburban American dream nuclear family is happily having kids, until they decide to off them for being difficult teenagers. Just, WTF IS THIS HEARTLESS SHIT?!
