Farhan
This book was so, so very disappointing. Like I'm actually mad at how disappointing it is. All these great plot lines the author set up in the previous books, and then 90% of this book is about the MCs sudden decision to become a cowboy? Even though that plot choice had me go HUH at the beginning of the book, I was like ok I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. But no, the first 700 pages of this book are essentially irrelevant to the overarching plot and SO unnecessary. IF this book was a middle book, I'd get it, it would be fine as an intermediary read. But no..this was the last book. This was supposed to be epic. This was supposed to be a satisfying conclusion. And yet while the last 100 pages finally got back to actual plot, it was so random in context and made no sense, and had zero buildup from the whole rest of the book, so it was anticlimactic. The final battle was just eh and happens really quickly, not at all satisfying and honestly undeserving of the characters. The only reason I'm not rating this lower is because it was still an alright book, just not a finale. Seriously Chris, how do you drop the ball this hard :( I don't think I've ever been this disappointed by the last book in a series before.
The style of this book is a little strange with no quotes or chapters and really long “sentences,” and I don't know if the author being quirky (or is it just lazy) really adds to the book. I guess it does kind of lend itself to a stream of consciousness typa writing but sometimes I need to breathe! The story itself is a pretty intriguing concept, there is some kind of “blind pandemic” with people suddenly going blind while one character retains the ability to see. It's interesting how much of a superpower a basic sense becomes when no one else has it. At times the story got um very very uncomfortable (why do the twins keep subjecting the book club to this!!) but it has lord of the flies vibes in terms of how humanity deconstructs faced with something so devastating to our standard of living and I think it was a probably realistic depiction of that deconstruction.
I didn't like how it's never explained where the blind plague came from or how it suddenly got cured?? . Like I want to know WHY and I hate when authors place characters in real world settings with some kind of fantastical/sciency twist only to use it as a plot device to examine human nature... Although I guess it could be claimed this book doesn't take place in our world since there are no names of anything at all in the book.
Overall I would say it's a good read but I would never read it again nor actively recommend it to someone else.
I did not actually read this book 10 times, but it being a webnovel there's only been one official published book, so for the sake of my reading challenge I'm accounting for the other 2.5m words as 10 books going off of the only released book being 250k.
On the novel itself, it's a decent, above average LitRPG and had its moments, but also moments 5o chapters long where I'm like ugh get on with it.
I feel kinda bad for giving this book this rating because most everyone speaks very highly of it, but I was actually so bored reading the majority of this book. I almost feel like there's something wrong with me as a fantasy fan because I think this is perhaps the first major fantasy series I have such a differing opinion from what's commonly held..but yeah this story didn't do it for me. There were only a couple characters that interested me, Felisin (who sucks but that's what made her interesting), Mappo/Icarium, and Kalam. Everything else I was a little eh on. I enjoyed the first book more than I did this one when it's usually the other way around from what I've read. I'll still read the third book since it's supposedly the best or near best in the series, and probably still read all the books just so I can say I did.
This was a short read and I think it suffers for it. Doesn't really give any one thing the time it deserves. I thought it had interesting prose though, and also like its answer to simulation theory. So what!! I don't really get what I was supposed to have gotten out of the novel because if there's like a message here, I missed it. The commentary on COVID was kind of interesting but also didn't fully connect for me.
Great read and imo this a series that has the potential to compete with Cradle, but who starts a book with a prologue that doesn't even happen until after the events of the book? Aka an epilogue...that was a ??? choice. If you're going start with a flashforward to some surprising event, and then flashback like what happens in TV shows, at least actually resolve the flashforward in the book :/
Just like the last book, this one is riddled with plot holes and narrative inconsistencies. I think my biggest issue is that a lot of the major plot drama is driven out of sheer human incompetence, and I just don't think humanity is as incompetent as the caricature of it portrayed in this book. Also the main character of the book is maybe its weakest character in more meanings than one. Her biggest relevance to the story is being the sole person to make a decision where if she makes the wrong one, all of humanity will die. Literally fate of the world kind of stuff. And she makes the wrong decision... TWICE. And it's supposed to be out of “love” so her decisions are supposed to be “okay”. But no, the real world doesn't work like that... And for the record the second time she has to make the decision, it did in fact lead to complete annihilation of humans in the solar system, so she's basically responsible for the genocide of the human race?
Anyways given all that, this book I still rate at 4 stars because I guess its not really the point of the novel, it was still a very gripping read, and has really interesting science fiction concepts.
I would still recommend the series as a whole for anyone interested in sci-fi for its interesting concepts and world, and all the books are page turners. I just think the literature gets lost in the spectacle.
Ok I thought really hard about upping this to 4 stars, but I fear I was not able to convince myself. This book is overall slower than the first, and has less hard science ideas, but its major problem is its massive, massive plot holes. I'm going to give a broad overview of the plot hole based on the information of the summary of this book to limit spoilers, but slight spoilers for the previous novel follow.
1. Since only human thoughts are safe, the Wallfacer project is erected. Luo Ji has a strategy the Trisolarans want to kill him for, and he knows this. Yet he does not tell anyone his strategy just like the other Wallfacers. Yet in his case, it makes NO sense to keep the strategy hidden, because the Trisolarans already know what it is (which is in contrast to how they don't know the strategies of the other Wallfacers), and want to kill him so no one else knows. In which case, the logical conclusion would be to explain the strategy publicly so that it could definitely be made use of. And yet this does not happen...which was extremely frustrating to see.
2. The strategy itself isn't even that complex. How no one else thought of it in the timespan of this book which is almost two centuries boggles me. I myself figured it out before its spelled out for the readers. Heck, it's not even his idea because he gets it from someone else. It's a strategy even a normal person could think of! So how does literally no one else on this planet of billions of people over two centuries think of it!! Even when he does something that makes the strategy obvious no one makes the connection. I feel like this is the case of the author trying to make the hero successful by making all of humanity stupid.
Those plot holes were just ughh because they don't have to do with the science but the narrative and really lowered my opinion of the book. I did like how it ended though and think Luo Ji does at last do something not any normal person could, and it was still an interesting read.
Edit after reading more reviews: These book has more plot holes than I even thought of. But if you're willing to overlook it it's still a good read.
I tend to really like well written ensembles and I think this book qualifies. I was expecting more from it though, all these ideas of what the twist could be, but it's actually a fairly simple answer. But now that I think about what kind of story the author intended to write, it makes sense. It's a modern day tragedy, so kinda cool actually.
At long last caught up with the preeminent Urban Fantasy series, The Dresden Files. I love reading about worlds and characters as they change and become something more, and the world of DF from Book 1 to 17 has gone through so much. The stakes in this novel were the highest they've ever been, and felt like an Endgame for this series, bringing back almost every character throughout the series for a huge large scale battle against a Titan (that can't be a coincidence right.. this book did come out after Endgame...). I don't like reading actions scenes a lot though and this book more than any before it is just a super long action scene so it lost a star because I was just flipping through the beginning waiting for it to get to the good stuff, but the latter half was pretty epic once it got there. I would love to see where Harry could possibly go from here, fingers crossed Butcher doesn't go the way of Martin and Rothfuss like it feels like he might.
Lol this book man...a prime example of why James Patterson is a hack.
First of all, the plot is completely ripped from the Black Widow movie. A girl is taken from her real family as an infant to a school in Russia where she and other kids are trained to be killer assassins, but eventually she escapes, however she also eventually decides to return to the school to end it for good and free the kids still training there, and to do this she needs the help of her superhumanly strong friend.
Like?? How blatant can you be...
Admittedly I did take some liberties with the superhuman friend part, which is probably the biggest area of difference from the movie. She kidnaps this college nerd professor who she then somehow trains into being a literal Superman in 6 months. Huge suspension of disbelief required on that.. Its hand waved a little by saying his great grandfather had some experiment done to him so his genes are like exceptional or something. And his great grandfather's names? Clark and Cal, LOLL. Still trying to decide if this was superman fanfiction, captain america fanfiction, or black widow fanfiction.
Anyways with disbelief fully suspended it was still a generally fun read because I'm a sucker for comic bookesque stories so there's that.
Overall, I thought this was a fantastic read. The part of the book that strikes out to me the most is the fantastic world building in this novel, it's really cool to read about a culture entirely based on living in/around a tree, and clear the authors have put a lot of thought into it and the lore of the world. It's a very unique setting. The story I don't think is groundbreaking as a whole, but there were twists I didn't see coming, and it was a fun time. Character interactions, action scenes are all excellent, and the novel is generally very well written. I especially liked the interactions between the main character and the demon in his body, very reminiscent of Venom. The ending of the book was satisfying and unexpected, and I'm excited to see where the story goes from here.
My one major gripe with this novel is that it's marketed as progression fantasy, and feel free to disagree, but this is NOT progression fantasy. I would even hesitate to call it progression fantasy adjacent but I could see an argument made for it. It's just regular fantasy, and damn good one at that, but progression is not part of it. The magic system has been designed in a way that there could be a progression focus in latter books, but it's really not there in this one. I will say though, I think progression fantasy fans would still like the novel.
I have now finished this trilogy and as whole it was just okay. The first book was definitely the best, had a lot of interesting ideas and good execution. The second book was just so boring and didn't have any of the magic of the first in both senses. This book was kind of a return to form of the first book, but it had no real climax?? Or the climax is super anticlimactic because I was just like oh wait it's done? I think Jessica is an interesting character with her background but at times I feel like it was definitely obvious a dude wrote this series. Also Damian is interesting too, if you forget about how he is basically a serial stalker and murderer yet Jessica is just like whatever he's pretty #nice to me. In this book I liked how he was used a lot more than the last book, because in the last book whenever Jessica was a damsel in distress he would literally come save her like Batman. Why can't she save herself?? This book didn't have that problem though so yay. Anyways I like the ideas in this series but would not really recommend it to anyone, the Theo Cray series is more interesting.
This is like a 3.5 because I enjoyed a lot about the book, was really satisfying to see Theo and Jessica working together after their respective series have ended. Except Jessica who is supposed to be a genius in her own right is nerfed and Theo does like all the thinking...So that was disappointing. Also another really anticlimactic ending..this author just does not know how to write them!! I really liked the character interactions though so not a terrible read, and I'll continue with the next one.
