Daniel Vanzin
This book is one of those 101 on how to write. The scenes are immersive, described through the use of multiple senses. The characters are brought to life with plenty of details and introspective dialogs. They are fully fleshed out, with unique personalities, narrated in an accessible language.
The exposition is perfectly paced. The plot evolves evenly throughout the book. It is interesting enough and it makes sense. The characters make sense. The villain is somewhat of a cliché, the ‘well meaning but cruel bad guy' and so are some of the characters, but that doesn't diminish the quality of the story.
The setting captures perfectly the spirit of the beginning of 20th century. It blends magic organically into the world, without being something over the top or downplayed. Major events in history of mankind are slightly changed to take into account the discovery of magic. Hitler for instance was a powerful necromancer, that used the resurrected bodies of his soldiers to keep fighting until their bones are shattered to dust. Tesla was an exceptional ‘cog', a super scientist of sorts, individuals who excel in a field of knowledge. So was Browning, the famous firearms designer, who is also an important character of the book.
Magic by the way is also explained in a very sensible manner, even rational I would say. Most of the magical people have just some minor magical affinity, with only a few developing their powers to a significant amount.
The reason I don't rate this book higher is that the plot in not exceptional/aligned enough to my interests. It is somewhat tame in most aspects (weird, fantastic, intellectual), so much that I would recommend this book to ‘normal' readers. Normal being somewhat averse to fantasy.
What follows is a minor criticism in the grand scheme of things:
- Your enemy is the most powerful human being that ever lived. He is immortal, you tried bombs, electrocution, fire, drowning, decapitation with the sharpest magically enhanced blade. Nothing worked. He haven't even got a scratch, gasped or dropped a sweat. This guy then gets a hold of the most powerful weapon ever created. It is world reaching ray that can destroy the entire US East coast with one single use, seconds after it is activated. He is about to use it for that very same purpose, and following that, he will threat the rest of the world into submission.- One guy has an idea to defeat him. But in order for him to execute his plan he must break an oath of never disobeying his superiors. He goes even further, he kills one of them. But his plan is a success. The enemy is dead, right at the last second where the US would be vaporized. Millions would have died.- You find about about his plan. Well, because he told you. You then decide he is a traitor and kills him as a reward. Never mind that by doing so, you act as judge and executioner. You also just violated the same oath he has taken, which also somewhat includes "don't execute other members of the order whenever you see fit'.- Now, I would call that a very stupid logic reasoning, most people would call it justice. That's besides the point. It is OK for stories to have such divisive characters performing actions that makes us question about its ethics and argue among ourselves. What it is NOT OK is for it to have NO CONSEQUENCE WHATSOEVER! Did any of the characters asked if killing one to save many is the right thing to do? What about cold blooded killing the culprit for said murder?
- This was a lost opportunity for plot and character developing.
The book is about a girl who got pregnant, fled home, met a monster hunter, kills the monster by luck and as such is held as someone of importance. There is a strong hint of a romance between the two of them.
Don't remember exactly what I didn't like. The writing is OK but the plot just seemed too boring.
Read 2:36 / 12:00 22%
A collection of interrelated short stories with a Lovecraftian feel. Not my genre, but an OK book. Overall the stories had just a little hint of the weird and very little of the horror. Not all have the same quality.
I liked the first and last one the most. I did not like the end though. First, it was a happy ending. Lovecraft stories shouldn't have a happy ending. They should convey hopelessness and despair when you realized you're faced with forces beyond your comprehension and despite of all your efforts, the best thing you can do is go mad in order to cope with them.
The second thing was the fate of Braithwhite. It was appropriate but undeserving I think. Undeserving because despite his manipulative demeanor, he was the only white person that treated the black characters as human beings. Not only that, he highly favored them, giving them protection, money and even putting his services as wizard available in order to improve their lives. Appropriate because the main characters were simple, God fearing, poor, country folk. They resented Mr. Braithwhite because he was white, rich and dealing with 'satanic forces'. More importantly, they couldn't see that he was doing his best to keep them safe, and it was other people that wanted to see them harmed. He had no choice but to force himself into their lives.
Late review, don't quite remember. Started off with an action scene, but that can be overlooked. The main character is an asshole, that never goes well unless you make up with other positive point in the novel.
He is something of the best marksman in the country, one of the most intelligent people, one of the best fighters, and still he just wants a desk job with nothing to do.
The prose was fine right until he time the history fell into known and disliked cliches, then I stopped reading:
- the hero likes a girls who likes another guy. The hero dislikes the guy and tries to show the girl her boyfriend is a jerk and she would be better of with him.
- in the meantime, the hot stripper likes the hero. He will likely use the situation to make the girl he likes jealous. I didn't quite read this, but I'm pretty sure where this was going.
- the hero antagonizes the girl's boyfriend, who seems like a pretty good guy, but starts acting like an asshole as well when confronted. But since the hero is bigger, stronger, more intelligent, better fighter, better marksman, has a bigger dick... what exactly are we suppose to empathize with here?
The story showed potential. An international organization of monster hunters, founded over a century ago. There is conflict with the FBI's division of monster hunters, there is legislation in the way, a mysterious TPK (total party kill) among them a few years ago.
Read 3:40 / 23:31 16%
Like The Road, but not of the same quality. I just don't like this kind of bleak post-apocalyptic future, where every paragraph describes some kind of hardship the people are suffering from. Slavers, lack of water, food, mistrust of others, lost of family, etc.
Fans of The Road might actually like this, the writing seemed of high quality.
read 1:10 / 18:19 6%
Another boy wonder goes to wizard school kind of book. I did not like Harry Potter, The Magicians and many others of this ilk.
But its not only the vast amount of wasted time describing the daily life of a college student, sprinkled with some fantasy elements just for color, that I find unbearable. The story and characters overall are weak, but it was the cliches that hit me the most. In particular, I stopped reading the moment one of the male students was asked by a teacher to challenge another student for combat class. He could pick anyone he wanted. He picked a small girl that looked very defenseless. She beated the crap out of him.
read 4:32 / 21:58 21%
Takes a long time to present a plot, there is waaaaaayyyyy to much character development. Something in the following lines:
‘And Raithe found out the man who killed his father. The sun was bright, and he remembered when he was a child of a sunny day like this. He went out to play with his friends, John and Anne. But not Joseph. Oh no, he did not like Joseph. They played until... [skip 3 pages for the plot to continue]'
My complaint is the same as Wheel of Time. The whole book in 3 pages would be an bellow average book in this case though. I tried to give this a chance because I like this style of story.
Other things that bothered me was the stereotyped villain and hero. The hero is faced with world annihilation, and he is the only one capable to save it. But he doesn't want to, because he doesn't believe in fate, don't like violence, and would rather go to a quiet place to start a family and teach his son better. Well, I hate to break it to him but, ‘a quit place' is still inside the world.
The villain is the typical ‘I'm more powerful then everybody else, so they should bend to my will. I will kill anyone who disagrees with me'.
Read 11:02/16:55 65%
Things I like about this series of books, which maintain the same level of quality:
- The protagonist has two extremely hot werewolves in love with her. Yet it is not a romance. Forget anything like Twilight.
- These werewolves are among the top 5 most powerful of they're kind. Yet it is not an action or even heavy fantasy book.
- Mercy is witty and relatable. She has some supernatural powers, but she is very weak. She uses her intelligence (not the focus though, not that kind of book) and her personality to solve problems.
- When trouble arises, she doesn't hold on to details to herself. THIS IS A HUGE DEAL! I hate plots that revolve around characters withholding vital parts of the problem. If everybody would just speak up their mind, things would get done.
For instance, every now and them she blurts out a synthesis of the plot so far to some other character, like her cop friend or her powerful werewolf neighbor. If things goes wrong, she won't be accused of something she did not do, because she is truthful and upfront about everything. Also her friends know just when/how much they should be worried about her in any given situation.
Found out who the murderer is? Don't keep it to yourself because you're not sure, don't want to worry others or anything like that.
Just an ordinary unimaginative fantasy tale. The twist is that it focus on the economy of the typical RPG adventure. Adventurers must have a permit from the Guild in order to operate as heroes, they gain rank based on the amount of quests they perform, loot is carefully divided with the help of an arbiter.
Read 1:18 / 11:46 11%
The author knows how to use modern writing techniques to engage the reader. Accessible language, lots of dialog involving the main character, giving voice to his inner thoughts, just enough info on the supporting characters.
He takes his time to describe the scenes, and the exposition is slow, but the quality of his narrative is solid. Too bad the book lacks s properly paced plot.
The book is not about a great evil to be defeated, exciting adventures, swords and sorcery. No, this book is about the life of a young boy in a low/no magic fantasy world. The first part of the book (~6h) is about his “life until now”, we get to meet his friends, the town he lives in and who he is as a person. Then something bad happens and he moves to the big city, where he seeks training in a marshal's academy (4h+).
And that's all that happens in nearly 10h of reading. I stopped reading when it began clear that there is absolutely nothing I care about learning about the daily life of a student learning how to fight, about laws, different languages, girls, making friends...
I suspect a abridged version, 10-15 times smaller would make an interesting read. This books lacks the brevity and intelligence of Ender's Game and while resembles The Wheel of Time in structure (both are really slow paced), it's overarching plot is much more mundane.
9:40 / 61:52 16%
What? Just 13min of reading? This book is unbearingly boring! Another case where the twist makes no difference.
I'll force myself to write something about what I read:
” A group of adventurers die in a tavern due to unintentional self poisoning. While looting their corpses, the tavern patrons find out a scroll requesting their presence before the king. Since the king apparently a mad, suspicious SOB that would likely destroy the whole village if these adventurers weren't to show up, the patrons decide to take their place. The thing is the adventurers were 1st level PCs (Player Characters), while the patrons are just 0 level NPCs (Non-Player Characters). in order to save their village, they decide to risk their lives gaining levels by killing monsters in order to attend the king and perform whatever high risk quest he is to give them.”
Read 0:13 / 7:51 3%
I was hoping to abandon this book on the account of Young Adult genre, but other readers have questioned this classification, so I gave it a try.
I couldn't get past the author's prose style. As usual, no attempt to create empathy for the main character, no plot presented, boring introduction. I didn't care for the “life in Mars” scenario. Can't bring myself to be more specific.
Read 0:35/16:12 4%
If you like satire, are fond of your teenager years geeking out with you're friends over a game of Dungeons and Dragons, and have a low bar for overly clever and interesting prose/plot/characters, this book may be for you.
I'll make this a general review for the whole series (books I-IV).
First of, my 2 stars. I read all the 4 books, and I'm looking forward the 5th one. So this might not be the best of book series, but it is consistent, and I obviously like it enough to keep reading it.
The thing about satire books is that the payoff is constantly being delivered. You don't have to wait for a few chapters to decide to stop reading the book because the plot isn't going anywhere, or you didn't like the characters or some arbitrary turn of events you did not think it should have happened. Every few sentences you get a punch line that makes you chuckle, or close to it. That plus the premise of the books is enough for me to keep reading the series.
And the premise is a group of Caverns and Creatures players (C&C to avoid copyright issues with D&D) are transported against they're will into the world of the game they are playing. They desperately try to find a way out and to stay out of trouble, because everything that happens in the fantasy world has real consequences for them.
A low charisma character really makes you consider your decision to use charisma as a dump attribute. Cooper, the half-orc barbarian, is constantly farting and shitting himself. He also cannot read, and is very gullible. In the real world, low charisma and intelligence are a real disadvantage.
Tim, the halfling rogue is way too short for his tastes. Dave, the cleric dwarf, is uncomfortable with his heavy armor. Julian, the elf sorcerer, is pleased with his ability to cast spells and makes good use of high charisma diplomatic skills. Katheryn, a half-elf Druid, has mixed feeling due to her innate aversion to forests and mosquitoes. And Chad is a bard, a lute playing, song singing, useless bard.
Death is permanent. Well, sort of. You can pay a priest to resurrect a deceased friend, but that costs a lot more then low level characters are able to pay. For that reason, all the adventurers trapped in this world (yes, there are more then one group that suffered the same fate) avoid exploring and consequently, don't get any experience required to obtain new levels.
Pain is real. Killing is real. Farts are real! Nothing is what your average player expects of an RPG adventure. But no matter how injured you are, if you are not dead you can be cured through a healing spell, which makes you feel good again. Actually waaaaayyyy too good, R rated good.
The author makes use of a few of tropes that should be familiar to any D&D player. If you want to get stronger, kill monsters. When leveling up you suddenly feel improved, out of nowhere.
I did not find anything exceptional about the premise: a young woman with super powers is enlisted to be trained in the super villains league. If the ‘villains' here is suppose to be a twist, it is of no consequence. The villains have more rules and codes of moral conduct then the average do gooder hero. I found that to be a bit cringy, but overlookable.
Therefore, this is just a story of people with super powers and how they organize into a league of individuals with the same interest. The book deals with recruiting, training and rules to follow. Other than that, there is a handful of small stories about different super powered humans (and aliens, and AIs).
The mains characters, writing and dialogues are just OK, but the main plot is slowly exposed or non-existent. This is the killer for me. I suspect this books acts as an introduction to the other, possible more interesting, ones.
Read 6:02/26:58 22%
This is book about philosophy. I like philosophy. Therefore, I like this book.
The majority of the text could have been extracted into a proper ‘Introduction to the History of Philosophy' book. It is well written, it covers a large span of time in a short amount of space, and as such, it is bound to make generalizations and possible a few mischaracterizations in order to get a make a point.
I would like to empathize that I would never recommend a history book on a field of study as the first point of entry for anyone interested in that particular field. Also, because of the variety of topics covered, it is hard for everyone like every part of the book. There are some philosophers and even periods of history that I have no interest, still I had to endure a few pages dedicated to the topic.
That said, some people might, and have, made of this a successful first contact with philosophy.
By the way, the author favors a christian view in some parts of the history of philosophy, that might upset a few readers.
The fiction part of the book is passable. Intriguing at first but less so from the middle to the end.
I wanted to see what GRRM could write besides Game of Thones, since I felt that book was lacking in the plot/epicness department. Wild Cards is a collection of stories by different authors, so that did not help me.
Fevre Dream is a book about steam boats in 1857 America. Martin certainly gave a lot of though and made a thorough research into the subject. So if you like steam boats and 19th century Louisiana slavery issues, this might be the book for you.
Captain Marsh is by the way very well fleshed out, precisely what I expected from Martin.
Read 2:38/13:48 19&
The book is very technical. It describes how a world of two dimensions would be like. The concept is very interesting, but it just don't lend to an engaging fiction reading. Also not at all for audio listening as it requires a good deal of thinking about what was said and seeing the pictures to help you understand it.
Read 46/3:29 22%
A collection of short stories taking place just after WWII in a world where an alien virus have killed or given superpowers to a great number of people. Some were left deformed and forced to live as outcasts to society.
The first story is about Jetboy, a young man who as the best pilot of his time. The story had air fights with WW2 planes, and focused on the drama of this post war hero that doesn't understand the world he came home to and doesn't car for his reputation. It was REALLY boring. No superpowers here.
The second story was about a teenager boy who got a different superpower every time he slept. It was almost interesting, but it had no exceptional elements to it. He had a family he needed to support, so he begin to steal things with his powers. He met a friend who help him to use his powers to get better loot. He wanted to attend to his sister wedding , but he was having a hard time containing his body to mutating again into a new super human. The end.
Just after I started the 3rd story I began to consider how much more of this I was willing to endure. I can stand a slow start if I expect thing to get better, but since this is a collection of short stories, there was bound to have more bad ones and some good ones. I wasn't willing to trudge trough this.
Read 3:20 / 18:59 : 18%
This book contains 507 chapters. The writing style is a complete turn off (it was originally published in 1485), although I really like the Arthur mythos, and as far as I read, it seemed to be doing a good job telling it.
Some paraphrasing to give and idea:
Chapter 1: on how Arthur was born and Merlin contrived a situation to become his guardian
King Uther Pendragon wanted to bed his defiant baron's wife in order to teach him a lesson and because she was very beautiful. So he asked Merlin for his help. Merlin agreed to help him in exchange for his first born son. Uther agreed, bedded Igraine, and gave Arthur to Merlin. (1 page)
Chapter 2: on how Arthur became king and a curious sword on the stone
When Uther died, all the barons started fighting for the throne. Merlin have decreed that whoever was able to remove the sword from the stone would become King. Arthur managed to remove thew word and became King. (2 pages)
Chapter 3...
(Carlyle Okey translation)
Abandon hope all ye who try to read this. Well, this is poetry. If you want a novel try somewhere else. Easier then Shakespeare, but still I can't audio-listen to this and enjoy a good plot.
This book should be read slowly, with a lot of side notes, and after a careful decision of the translation.
Read 1:15 / 13:18: 9%