Nadine K
God dammit, Tatsuki Fujimoto has been good at manga since age 17...
Every single story is fantastic and different but also so similar. It's absolutely fascinating to have a compilation of your work from your younger years and we as readers can really see his progress. His comments ok his past work are also great. How lucky it is to have that kind of relationship with your past.
In his closing words he talked about how he wrote when he felt powerless and helpless and that helped me pinpoint what exactly it is I love about his stories. While they are all in helpless situations the characters themselves try so hard to stay away from becoming bleak. There is a balance of humor that he strikes so well within the fatalism.
I'd say this man is a manga genius.
I LOVE Bradbury's writing so much. He is one of my all time faves and this book is no exception. Something about how he writes is so deeply personal to me. Have you ever read the words of someone who saw the world through eyes so similar to your own?
One summer a young boy comes to the startling joyous realisation that he is alive. That same summer he also comes to the shocking terrible realisation that he will one day die. This book is the concentration of the mighty highs and lows of this one summer in Green Town and many of it's inhabitants. A series of interconnected short stories that make an effort to make a fleeting season eternal.
Everyone talks about how important it is to romanticise your life, if you wanna do it right learn from Ray Bradbury.
Stunning.
I can't believe I only have 1 book left before theses characters' stories are done for me. I refuse to acknowledge that any further at the moment.
I'm so beyond elated that Fitz has finally been recognised and yet I'm so fucking worried about what will happen to them all because I have become undeniably and irreversibly attached to every single character in this wider series.
That is to say, I am not ready to leave Realm of the Elderlings. Simply, no other fantasy series will ever compare.
I was initially apprehensive about reading this considering that the top liked review was a one star, but it seemed to keep calling out to me.
Needless to say, I loved it. It was beautiful.
A story about a story that lasts lifetimes and all the people it touched. How it effected their lives, and how their lives, in turn, helped it (and each other) endure.
“What's so beautiful about a fool is that a fool never knows when to give up.”
Humans are not good or evil but a secret third thing (stupid).
The foolish perseverance of humanity and how our legacy as a species lies securely in the stories that we keep alive.
It even managed to somehow catch me offguard with a fairly common twist! (A testament to how engrossed I was in the writing.)
Moral is: Don't let other people's reviews discourage you from reading a book. Not all stories are for everyone, you learn along the way though which stories are for you.
Beautiful and masterfully done, very effective too.
A story told through poems isn't something I usually go for but for this particular story it just works.
I actually initially listened to the audiobook version of this and didn't even realise they were written in poem (I did note how poetic the writing was and how beautifully each line was crafted). The audiobook (read by the author himself) came with an interview at the end with Jason Reynolds in which he explained why he wrote it all in poems. This made me go back and read the whole thing in its written form.
Reading the poems and listening to them provide 2 very different experiences but I think both are worth doing. If you have the chance to do both I highly recommend it as it really creates a rounded experience of the text, themes, and tones.
It's not groundbreaking, it didn't blow my mind, it didn't make my heart ache or my eyes tear up, but I enjoyed it.
Far from King's best work, I'm sure (though I've only ever read one other). It scratched the same itch in my brain that reading Shounen Manga does.
There was a lot of bullshittery towards the end (both teenage boy bullshittery and less than stellar writing bullshittery) but overall, I had a lot of fun.
It was very fun :)
I had a rocky start with this book. It took me a while to warm up to it because I felt like the way the way the world was revealed to the readers wasn't as elegant or masterful as others I've read but once I became familiar with the worlds vocabulary, culture, and lore, it became immediately much more enjoyable. The characters were great, the world (after everything clicked for me) was so unique and different from the other fantasy worlds I've visited.
I also realize now that I'm a sucker for nautical fantasy. I love ships, and pirates, and dragons which is why this along with Robin Hobb's Ships of Magic and the Red Ships under Red Skies installment of the Lock Lamora series will be my go-tos for rereads.
Really excited to read the next one!
4.5 stars
What people often get wrong about sci-fi is that its never about the robots and rocket ships and AI. Though they are a common motif, thematically sci-fi has always been an examination of humanity.
Foundation is a perfect testament to this idea. It's scope is large and ambitious spanning multiple ideas, most notably faith (not necessarily religious but to authority), fatalism, and human nature.
It's a thorough examination of the changing of times and the passing on of power and it's impact on the landscape of human society.
But it's not without its missing pieces. For example, the lack of representation of women let alone any other minority is a giant oversight. It's nice to believe a field such as psychohistory can accurately predict events so far into the future, however I can't help but feel it's has large blindspots that would work against it in the real world. Still, it is an effective piece of fiction and I'm not going to hold realism against it.
Overall thoroughly enjoyable, pretty fun, definitely will read the next in the series.
It was dense, bleak, and many parts of it were unpleasant to read. I know for a fact that it would've been much harder to stomach had it been a movie (especially some bits in the beginning). But somehow this uncomfortable dark story also pulled off being charming and even funny.
There were despicable characters who were genuinely hard to read but there were also characters I loved and rooted for, including a fantastic romance that made me pray for a happy ending.
I was holding my breath for what felt like the entire time I was reading. A very gripping read, for sure.
