Elizabeth
Obviously you will not be reading Rhythm of War with without having read the preceding three thousand-ish pages in the series.
I feel like Sanderson's writing craft has finally caught up to his giant ideas. With every plot twist there was a feeling of “Oh! Ah”, as you cast your mind back to every hint dropped in your path. The discussion and depiction of mental illness was nuanced (from my POV, I do not claim to represent any brain except my own).
Ultimately, not a disappointing installment in a series I already greatly enjoy, raising as many questions as were answered, and now I'll wait another two (three) years for the next.
There's far more to dig into with this story. It'll needs more than one reading. I wouldn't have expected anything less from Clarke, to be honest.
On the surface, there's a mystery to unravel, but it's more than that.
Having only just finished it (and without spoilers), to me it's a story of surviving, of reconciling the different people you are throughout your life. Personally, I read it as a metaphor for incorporating things that suddenly change - whatever that might be: mental or physical health, parenthood, grief (to name only a few sudden changes) - into who you see yourself as. It's a solitary journey.
I actually really enjoyed it, and given enough time to digest, I'll probably find more layers.
Well I thought I really liked the first book in the series, but it turns out I was here for the human girl / damaged immortal boy thirst. Chakraborty put less of that and more story in this one.
I mean, it's a good story and if you liked the first one, do continue. Characters evolve and grow and they're far more interesting. But it still won't be for you if you liked the first one for the YA romance trope.
This was a delightful surprise: I picked it up because it sounded like a SF I could manage (I'm trying to up my SF reading this year), and instead I found a novel detailing the emergence of a society and a culture with a historian as protagonist.
You know I'm all about history and religion in my SFF.
I absolutely loved my time with Portia and Bianca and Fabian, and although the deus ex machina of the conclusion bugged a little, it was absolutely set up and believable in the context of the story.
I'm leaving my original thoughts here but, on reread, this book is not great. Not terrible, but I've levelled up in my expectations as a reader and my expectations of Sanderson; Sanderson, in return, has levelled up as a writer. I had another read in preparation for [b:Rhythm of War 17250966 Rhythm of War (The Stormlight Archive, #4) Brandon Sanderson https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1587089436l/17250966.SY75.jpg 23840265] and to see what I could see about that universe, which crosses over into Warbreaker.If you do pick it up, try and persevere through the first third. It does resolve itself in the end, but the beginning is really quite average.original review:So we'll get this out of the way first: Nightsong is the sword given to Szeth, right?I am loving everything Sanderson has set in his Cosmere universe, this book included. The similar-but-not-ness of the magic systems in each world is nice. This is the story of two sisters (and some villans and gods), as a stand-alone I think it hit the right notes. Certainly, action started happening before the 75% mark, which was a nice change in pacing from the books I've previously read by Sanderson.Vivenna really annoyed me the whole way through, but with good reason. She doesn't all of a sudden lose her privileged-princess upbringing when she rides off to save her little sister, or when the shit hits the fan, and then even when it does her level of naivety is both completely irritating and completely keeping character right through to the end.Again, the theology really drew me in, and I'm wondering if this is a Thing in this universe, or if Sanderson does it in all his books? And, now that I've read Internet Spoilers and realised that characters are crossing worlds (and series), I'm going to have to re-read the Stormlight Archive.
An absolutely excellent academic overview of the history and historiography of witch beliefs, placed in a world context. Highly recommend if you have an interest, particularly in early modern European witch beliefs, and have a passing knowledge of the history and historiography. (Although it's not required, you'd get more from Hutton's critique of the developments and trends in witchcraft historiography if you knew the works of [a:Richard Kieckhefer 184604 Richard Kieckhefer https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png], [a:Carlo Ginzburg 40230 Carlo Ginzburg https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1392573232p2/40230.jpg], [a:Norman Cohn 53186 Norman Cohn https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png], [a:Robin Briggs 41776 Robin Briggs https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], [a:Lyndal Roper 223364 Lyndal Roper https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/f_50x66-6a03a5c12233c941481992b82eea8d23.png], to name just a few titans.)
I am...underwhelmed. I liked the world; I loved the linguistics. I feel like 462 pages later I still don't know who any of these people are or why I should spend time with them.
I'm not a fan of fish-out-of-water stories, which I can't hold against the book (it's me, not you), but I am a fan of mystery and this one was only half solved (it's you, not me).
It ticks another book club/hugo read off the list, but I won't read the rest of this series.
This was a comfortingly cozy read. A mystery to solve, a betrayal to suffer, a romance to swoon into, all wrapped in a delightful cover of magic. Hints of [b:The Watchmaker of Filigree Street 22929563 The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, #1) Natasha Pulley https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1418113344l/22929563.SY75.jpg 42499104], so if you liked that you'll probably like this one, but I enjoyed this one so much more.I started out listening to this one, but the narration was terrible. Read it, if you can.
Hits all the beats I expect in YA: young person of unknown (to them) origins destined for Something related to those origins; person from that Something life comes along to enlighten young person; together they team up and Things Happen But Not The Way They Thought They Would; totes romance.
Plus you know I love religion in my genre fic.
My notes read: “P&P&Dragons!”, but really this is the Jane Austin-esque mannerpunk of [b:Sense and Sensibility 14935 Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1397245675l/14935.SY75.jpg 2809709] rather than [b:Pride and Prejudice 1885 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1320399351l/1885.SY75.jpg 3060926]. And the time is deliciously Victorian than Regency. And, of course, the ladies to be married off are dragons.That aside, this is a lovely book. I loved the intricate dragon society – as much if not more intricate than the actual upper-class English society that actually existed – and the utter unconcern with death that forms part of it. Victorian death culture is fascinating, and in dragon society where it's expected you will eat your elders (and your weakling young), death is treated in a way that extends the Victorian fascination and acceptance of it. (I recently published a paper on death culture so it particularly stands out for me).Walton gently and lovingly pokes fun at Austin in a way that will amuse Austin readers. The chapter titles count the number of proposals, confessions, and deaths. I listened to the audio version so I can't exactly recall the titles but they were along the lines of A Second Proposal or A Fourth Proposal and a Second Confession, or A Second Deathbed. Finally, the narrator confesses they have lost the count, which was perhaps the most amusing part of the story.The young sisters to be married off (and you know they will be married off, that's how it works) have perhaps the least agency in the book, but I forgive their wallflowerness simply because it is in the style of Austin. I probably shouldn't, because I don't forgive other fantasy books the things that annoy me simply because “that's what actually happened” in the time period in which they are based, but, eh.Also, because I am into that sort of thing, the side-story of underground heresy was particularly of interest to me, although if you have no interest in Church and Reformation history it won't make any difference to your appreciation of the story.If you're into mannerpunk and Austin, I completely recommend this.
Obviously I put this on hold at my library because of the controversy surrounding Pascoe earlier this year and the general culture wars over this book since its release. I listened to the audio version, so I can't evaluate things like if it has citations, or the quality of Pascoe's sources.
I had no issue with the book itself, although it greatly annoyed me when Pascoe used the same word twice in a sentence (I can't think of any without the text to refer to, but sentences like “the area was peopled with people from...”). He did stray into romanticising the Indigenous ‘way of life' towards the end.
Overall, it doesn't suck. I can't see anything controversial in here. Pascoe continually highlights that more research into Australia's Indigenous history needs to be funded and he is not wrong.
However, I can absolutely urge authors to put aside some money and pay a professional to narrate their monograph, if they aren't practised performers.
Muir sure invested in a thesaurus, didn't she?
Such hype around this book, which rarely bodes well. A decent, if overwhelmingly teen-angsty, beginning, but then the plot went walkabout without me until about half-way through (which is where our protagonist stops being a total ball of angst and instead becomes a tolerable teenager). Ultimately the story wound up into a tidy lead-in to the sequel, which I have no interest in reading. HOWEVER, how amazing is it to see a same-gender attracted character and her sexual orientation have exactly zero bearing on the story?
I listened to the audio version, which had superb narration by Moira Quirk, and I would recommend it highly if you're ok with being super confused as to who every one is for a good long while.
My kidling picked this up, after a bookstore recommended it for 12-15 year olds, and the cover is pretty so I had a crack at it too.
It is actually pretty meaty for something aimed at the Y in YA (and I do think it sits in the 12+ range), and I enjoyed this particular re-telling of Young Person whisked away from their unhappy home life to discover a bigger world and their place within it.
I'm happy to leave this story as a stand-alone; I'm not in the mood for the next entry, Young Person apprentices to Crotchety Master.
This is deliciously what I want Naomi Novik's folklore tales to be, and I suspect the superiority of this one is the novella length. Not trying to stretch it out into a novel-length work made it a folklore-y (with the old-school, mean, fae, not the Disney kind) and romance-y and teasingly just-right-but-almost-not-enough story. Not without flaws: Mum was extremely deus ex machina, but satisfying all the same.
Wow I did not enjoy this, and now that I've logged into Goodreads to review it and can see it won a bajillion awards, I am confused.
It's the writing style that bugs me most of all; it's all clunky. Exposition, character development, worldbuilding, fight scenes, dialogue.
Points for not being a white psuedo-medieval psuedo-Europe setting, which is why I picked up the book in the first place, but I only finished it because I'd paid full price for it.
I put this on my TBR purely because I enjoyed the whimsy of the title. A perfectly serviceable read that built slowly-but-steadily but I feel like the author made me promises she didn't deliver on, details of which I have handily listed in point form in the following spoiler tags.
What was the point of Grace? As a foil for Thaniel to question his loyalty? He never doubted Mori for very long, no matter who questioned him.Why did she have to infodump about how ether worked if it didn't relate to any other part of the story in any way?Why did Matsumoto hate Mori? It was nice of Pulley to give Grace a friend/love interest but since she served so little purpose, he served even less.
Well. I was yawningly bored until the very last chapter which made me stay up past my bedtime and reminded me this is a fairytale. Without the hype, I think it is an ok book, not fantastic. But, without the hype I wouldn't have picked it up in the first place, having not particularly enjoyed [b:Uprooted 22544764 Uprooted Naomi Novik https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1550135418s/22544764.jpg 41876730] either.OTOH, having studied medieval fairy lore and trope, medieval Judaism, and medieval history, this book ticks all the right boxes.
A lot of the reviews of this are along the lines of Chalion, but not. That's exactly what this book is. It is closer to [b:Paladin of Souls 61904 Paladin of Souls (Chalion, #2) Lois McMaster Bujold https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1388350884s/61904.jpg 819610] than [b:The Curse of Chalion 61886 The Curse of Chalion (Chalion, #1) Lois McMaster Bujold https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1322571773s/61886.jpg 1129349] in feel, focusing more on theology than politics, and the meshing of old tribal theology with the Quintarian gods. Of course there's also a bit of romance chucked in for good measure and a happily ever after (mostly). Of the three it is my least favourite, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a good read in it's own right - especially if you enjoyed the previous Chalion books.
Highly recommend following [b:The Calculating Stars 33080122 The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut, #1) Mary Robinette Kowal https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1539850192s/33080122.jpg 53735352] with this one, because not only is it a stronger outing, it's also the resolution to a story that ended up being split into two books.
I wasn't feeling this until about half-way through, but that's par for the course with me and Sanderson. Definitely in the middle ground for YA - teen goes to school and in the process overcomes past demons and grows up, but without the requisite romance which was SO REFRESHING. I will definitely be comfortable with my almost-teen reader reading this one.