Ian

A lot of the same problems from the first book (gary stu ass main character, very little side character development that didn’t come from the stock fantasy trope bin) amplified three times over. You can only read about how Viz is stronger, tougher, blah blah blah so many times before it all just runs together. Still gripping on a page by page basis (for the most part) but I really hope the third book takes a breath or two.

He literally murders the leadership of *his entire world* and it gets brushed past. He watches his best friend die - again! - but our stone hero continues grinding forward, to uhhh meet up with the Big Bad he thought was going to destroy the entire world. Also he gets to see his entire family (and best friend) again yay! Death is meaningless!

it was a dark, cold day. they went on the cold road. the ate cold food from a cold can. they coldly froze in the cold night before the cold got even colder. the cold boy cried "why is it so cold". the cold man stared into the cold ash silently. also it was cold

extremely basic character development, and peter is basically a wooden board with IBS (that was quite a reveal). I would have appreciated being beat over the head with less “the obviously evil guy is evil” and musings about famous philosophers/ authors /etc and more character development. It never quite comes together unfortunately but was still sometimes engaging to read, flashbacks aside

an addicting page turner but boy it's really one celever concept stuffed to the brim with every other fantasy trope ever written. Protagonist is good at everything and has almost no flaws. Most other characters are barely described. I really wish it took a minute to breathe at some point and remembered that our protagonist is a normal human being and not superman.

The pacing of the Ravenor books was... odd. A lot of plot threads come together in the end but most get wrapped up in like five pages total.

Some good parts but weirdly obsessed with elon musk and class instagram meme-tier class politics analysis

this definitely has middle child syndrome and is bogged down by the prose more than the first

this was spectacular i wish catholics were real

someone get this man an editor PLEASE

I would give this a 3.5 if I could. excels at being a page turner and has some great ideas but reads like it pushed through a stock fantasy extrusion machine and the dialogue lever was set to clunky and repetitive. it reads almost like a ya novel

this is allegedly a book for adults but if you told me this is YA I'd believe you.

followed brian on twitter and was excited to read this but ended up really struggling to finish it - history unfortunately was pretty repetitive!

ya needs to come with a warning label. i clearly need to do more research before reading

a nice general overview of the 2007 crisis but a bit all over the place and has a bizarre section that blames liberalism for the 90s crime spike

begins and ends with an interesting premise

very interesting but very academic

man this really just kept going

I can't believe this handmaids tale: girlboss edition got good reviews

predictable, schlocky, and obviously not written by s gay guy. but once I started reading it I couldn't put it down so three stars.

fascinating subject matter but the writing style was more academic than I was used to from Graebers other books and it made it a slog to get through at times.

Generic dystopia/ya tropes mashed together and expanded to novel length with a stab at gender politics that doesn't really work. not expecting subtlety in scifi like this but it feels like the intended message smothered whatever compelling story was there, especially at the end.

Wtf i love romance novels now

what the fuck

When he said he still was open to a job at NBC at the end I almost screamed.

Dumb as hell