Kurt

DNF at 60%. I enjoyed the first book because it was full of discovery and building and creating. It was interesting to watch the MC chart his course in a new world, create new inventions and find success in his new environment.

This book has far less of that and instead we get politicking, weddings and a bunch of emotional soul searching in a slow and plodding manner. I forced myself to get to the 60% mark in the hopes of things picking up again, but I finally gave up.

I can see why others might enjoy this book, but it's a solid miss for me.

This book is solid, if you're willing to look past the initial setup. It's translated Russian LitRPG and carries much of the trademarks of that genre - things will feel a bit off about character interactions, especially and there are also a few translation errors as well. (noted in my highlights section)

That said, it's a fun, fast-paced book with lots of action and a reasonable system in place. It's not going to win a bunch of awards, but I certainly found it to be an enjoyable read.

I made a mistake by not researching the author before picking up this recommendation. I can see why a lot of people love the book - the author writes some truly gifted prose and, if you like getting lost in language, then this book might be for you.

However, the author is also (apparently) of the belief that you should never take one paragraph to describe something when three will do instead. Also, the prose, while beautiful, is very dense (something the author is known for and something I should have realized before picking up the book). As a consequence, I found myself reading and re-reading sentences and entire paragraphs to look beyond the poetic language to figure out what actually was happening in the story.

This book will be great for people who prefer Literature-with-a-capital-L. For a knuckle dragger like myself, however, I found it to be a slog.

Received this as part of Amazon's first reads program. The author clearly has some sort of cybersecurity background or training as the tradecraft in the book was pretty solid.

That said, it was a bit less action and a bit more preaching/moralizing than I personally prefer. The author really wanted to draw out the pros and cons of AGI but it felt a bit tedious at times.

Still, if that sounds interesting to you, give it a read. It's otherwise well-written and relatively short.

DNF at 30%. This is one of those books that the author hopes you'll describe as “whimsical” or “offbeat”. In many ways, it's similar to A Man Called Ove, but Ove pulls it off better, imo.

This one just felt a bit too forced, too manufactured. I gave up when the elephant was introduced, completely out of nowhere.

I'm sure some people will enjoy this book. I'm just not one of them.