Beattz

This was a blast. I had a great time. Steven Pacey's narration was impeccable. It was funny, it had action, there were real consequences. Each character was unique, had deep backstories and growth throughout. It was neat how Abercrombie would shuffle the party around at different times to see how each would interact with and learn from the others. For a longer book, this never felt stale to me, which is important. No wasted words/time. Based on the ending, I'm not really sure what to expect from the sequel, but I know it's going to be great.

This is my favorite Murderbot to date. I had a fantastic time. Being with ART again was such a treat, and now I'm looking forward to the next one even more!
I read this out of order based on a recommendation, bc book 6 happens chronologically before book 5. However, I think that was a mistake. The this book may have come after that in time, but not in character progression. Book 6 was hard for me bc it felt like there were leaps in Murderbot's personality that I was completely unprepared to take. But if I had read this first, those wouldn't have been leaps, just lil hops.

This read kind of like a crazy Arthurian fever dream. Grossman seems to have a penchant for writing MMCs that you want to throttle regularly. (Quentin will forever be my fav character that I love to loathe.) I think my experience was hampered by the audio- the VA’s female voices were either indistinguishable, or, I swear, he actually just plugged his nose for one of them.

This is the second Witcher book I've read. I know there's debate about what the reading order is, and it seems I've landed on chronological. If I hadn't watched the first couple of seasons of the show, I think it would have been a lot harder to follow. We're introduced to characters without backstory, and I assume that would make sense if one was reading them in publication order. It's also got a nonlinear timeline, so there's some other mental gymnastics required there.

I've never really understood the complaint of fantasy novels using "real world" curses and things like that, but for some reason, the ones in this book stuck out like a sore thumb to me. It knocked me out of the story more than once. Also, the way the author describes female anatomy was boorish and immature.

Other than that, it's an imaginative collection of short stories with lots of monsters and fights. I'll definitely read the next one, so I can see the difference with that and the collections I've read so far.

This was interesting. I've never read a book within a book about a book before.

The format of the layers was really intriguing and kept me hooked. That and each chapter was 10 mins or less (according to that little line on the bottom of my kindle).

Within the book, the story was referred to as a “reverse locked door mystery” and that’s as good of a description as I can give it. The plot worked well, but would have benefited from at least one more character to widen the pool of suspects a bit more.