Laith
I quite enjoyed Sabella, even if I haven’t read enough in the genres it plays with to truly appreciate it. Fully titled Sabella, or The Blood Stone, this is a mashup of SF horror, interplanetary romance, and a little southern gothic added for flavour. Despite being lost on me, by all accounts the genre commentary is masterfully done. I still found this to be Tanith Lee at her best: direct, illustrative, dark, and intense.
The titular Sabella is a woman living alone on the prairies of Nova Mars with only wolves for company. She’s pale, allergic to sunlight, irresistible to men, and possessed by an insatiable lust for blood. She’s a vampire — and not just any vampire, a space vampire (woooo). Lured off-planet by the promise of an inheritance, Sabella is drawn into a plot that seeks to expose her and lead her to her doom.
This is a short read, and yet there’s so much to love. Tanith Lee has been a consistent favourite of mine when it comes to world building, and I adore the universe of Sabella — it’s a fresh take on Barsoom and the world of Edgar Rice Burroughs, wearing its influences on its sleeve while still being wholly original.
I’ll admit that, like many other readers, the ending is where this lost me. Vampires have never tickled my palate, and even space vampires aren’t enough of a twist to separate me from my prejudice. There’s clearly something being said here about sexuality — Sabella’s vampirism arrives with puberty, her feeding is rendered as inseparable from sex itself, and the dominant-submissive shape the ending romance takes feels like the logical endpoint of that thread rather than a swerve into kink for its own sake. I can’t fully untangle what Lee is arguing about desire and power through that lens, and I don’t think the book hands you a tidy answer either, but the throughline from “vampire” to “adolescent sexual awakening” to “submission” is too consistent to be incidental. I just won’t pretend to have cracked it.
Tanith Lee keeps it interesting despite my aversion to the subject, and honestly, with the exception of Blindsight, I can’t think of a vampire book I’ve enjoyed more than this. For fans of planetary romance novels, this is sure to grab you to the very end.
P.S. As mentioned above, there’s some required reading to truly unlock this book. The Northwest Smith series was highlighted in the recommendation I was given as a distinct influence this novel seems to be in conversation with.
I quite enjoyed Sabella, even if I haven’t read enough in the genres it plays with to truly appreciate it. Fully titled Sabella, or The Blood Stone, this is a mashup of SF horror, interplanetary romance, and a little southern gothic added for flavour. Despite being lost on me, by all accounts the genre commentary is masterfully done. I still found this to be Tanith Lee at her best: direct, illustrative, dark, and intense.
The titular Sabella is a woman living alone on the prairies of Nova Mars with only wolves for company. She’s pale, allergic to sunlight, irresistible to men, and possessed by an insatiable lust for blood. She’s a vampire — and not just any vampire, a space vampire (woooo). Lured off-planet by the promise of an inheritance, Sabella is drawn into a plot that seeks to expose her and lead her to her doom.
This is a short read, and yet there’s so much to love. Tanith Lee has been a consistent favourite of mine when it comes to world building, and I adore the universe of Sabella — it’s a fresh take on Barsoom and the world of Edgar Rice Burroughs, wearing its influences on its sleeve while still being wholly original.
I’ll admit that, like many other readers, the ending is where this lost me. Vampires have never tickled my palate, and even space vampires aren’t enough of a twist to separate me from my prejudice. There’s clearly something being said here about sexuality — Sabella’s vampirism arrives with puberty, her feeding is rendered as inseparable from sex itself, and the dominant-submissive shape the ending romance takes feels like the logical endpoint of that thread rather than a swerve into kink for its own sake. I can’t fully untangle what Lee is arguing about desire and power through that lens, and I don’t think the book hands you a tidy answer either, but the throughline from “vampire” to “adolescent sexual awakening” to “submission” is too consistent to be incidental. I just won’t pretend to have cracked it.
Tanith Lee keeps it interesting despite my aversion to the subject, and honestly, with the exception of Blindsight, I can’t think of a vampire book I’ve enjoyed more than this. For fans of planetary romance novels, this is sure to grab you to the very end.
P.S. As mentioned above, there’s some required reading to truly unlock this book. The Northwest Smith series was highlighted in the recommendation I was given as a distinct influence this novel seems to be in conversation with.
Added to listFull Reviewswith 162 books.
It’s a sign of the times that this book has lost its charm, the entire premise is worn so thin by reality that it robs the novel of nearly all its nuance. I have to agree with other reviewers: you cannot read this book in 2026 and not read John Self as a proto-Trump, or a proto-Weinstein.
John Self is a lustful reprobate who treats New York as his brothel and playground, a collection of massage parlours, bars, and fast food joints. The only things that get his blood pumping are the thought of more money and more pornography; he spends all his time trapped in drunken excess, a slave to both. Told from his own perspective, though, he’s something to be worshiped, one of the haves — his obvious flaws meant to reveal the rot at the heart of society, to say look what your money has bought. He’s even self-aware of his own detestability, his mind occasionally turning toward the realization that’s obvious to the reader from page one — this is no way to live — only to turn away from that fleeting clarity and dull his senses with more, more, more. I can tell this ugliness is deliberate: the ugliness of the character, the ugliness of the prose itself, the suppression of conscience with drink and sex, all in service of illustrating what happens when money drives a society, when greed is good. Written in 1985, I’m sure this was a sharp piece of social commentary. The trouble is we now live in a world where the John Selfs of fiction were proven right.
What really dates the book, though, isn’t just that its warnings came true — it’s that its central observation about money was already old news in 1985. The idea that wealth and luxury are a panacea, that enough money buys you out of being human, was a tired cliché well before Amis got to it; what was supposed to carry the novel is the way it’s illustrated, the texture of being trapped inside that delusion. And that’s exactly where the book loses me. Spending three hundred pages inside John Self’s head isn’t illuminating, it’s just unpleasant in precisely the way you’d expect going in. His moments of self-awareness are so fleeting and so incomplete that they read less like insight and more like Amis checking a box, and there’s no real pleasure or surprise in inhabiting a psyche that announces its own rot this loudly and does so little with the admission. As Self puts it of his own kind: “You never let us in, not really… We’re here to stay.” Fine — but I already knew that going in, and the book doesn’t seem to know much more than I did.
That sounds like I’m faulting Amis for being right, and maybe to a degree I am. Maybe it’s millennial angst, the constant low hum of wondering whether my life is a joke to these people. But I was genuinely put off by the hands-in-the-air resignation with which the narrative treats the problem. The ultimate message seems to be: I’m just calling balls and strikes here, maybe people should read more, maybe that’ll fix it. Yet another one of society’s problems quietly handed off to the next generation. Maybe it’s the prose too — Amis is trying entirely too hard, pitching this squarely at the literati, exactly the audience already inoculated against the problems of money. I don’t believe for a second that the people who needed this book ever read it. I can say that with some confidence having just watched a for-profit cage fight staged on the White House lawn (Happy 80th T-Bone).
The book’s full title is Money: A Suicide Note, a subtitle that almost never survives into conversation about it, and it’s a shame, because it’s doing real work. On the surface it’s about John Self’s identity collapsing once he learns who his father is and loses his fortune — his own suicide note, of sorts. But it’s just as much about the slower suicide of his lifestyle, and beyond that, the slower suicide of a society organized entirely around the pursuit of money. That’s the genuinely prescient part of the book, and it’s a shame the title rarely makes it past the cover (if it ever made the cover), because it’s a sharper piece of commentary than the three hundred pages of John Self’s psyche that follow it.
It’s a sign of the times that this book has lost its charm, the entire premise is worn so thin by reality that it robs the novel of nearly all its nuance. I have to agree with other reviewers: you cannot read this book in 2026 and not read John Self as a proto-Trump, or a proto-Weinstein.
John Self is a lustful reprobate who treats New York as his brothel and playground, a collection of massage parlours, bars, and fast food joints. The only things that get his blood pumping are the thought of more money and more pornography; he spends all his time trapped in drunken excess, a slave to both. Told from his own perspective, though, he’s something to be worshiped, one of the haves — his obvious flaws meant to reveal the rot at the heart of society, to say look what your money has bought. He’s even self-aware of his own detestability, his mind occasionally turning toward the realization that’s obvious to the reader from page one — this is no way to live — only to turn away from that fleeting clarity and dull his senses with more, more, more. I can tell this ugliness is deliberate: the ugliness of the character, the ugliness of the prose itself, the suppression of conscience with drink and sex, all in service of illustrating what happens when money drives a society, when greed is good. Written in 1985, I’m sure this was a sharp piece of social commentary. The trouble is we now live in a world where the John Selfs of fiction were proven right.
What really dates the book, though, isn’t just that its warnings came true — it’s that its central observation about money was already old news in 1985. The idea that wealth and luxury are a panacea, that enough money buys you out of being human, was a tired cliché well before Amis got to it; what was supposed to carry the novel is the way it’s illustrated, the texture of being trapped inside that delusion. And that’s exactly where the book loses me. Spending three hundred pages inside John Self’s head isn’t illuminating, it’s just unpleasant in precisely the way you’d expect going in. His moments of self-awareness are so fleeting and so incomplete that they read less like insight and more like Amis checking a box, and there’s no real pleasure or surprise in inhabiting a psyche that announces its own rot this loudly and does so little with the admission. As Self puts it of his own kind: “You never let us in, not really… We’re here to stay.” Fine — but I already knew that going in, and the book doesn’t seem to know much more than I did.
That sounds like I’m faulting Amis for being right, and maybe to a degree I am. Maybe it’s millennial angst, the constant low hum of wondering whether my life is a joke to these people. But I was genuinely put off by the hands-in-the-air resignation with which the narrative treats the problem. The ultimate message seems to be: I’m just calling balls and strikes here, maybe people should read more, maybe that’ll fix it. Yet another one of society’s problems quietly handed off to the next generation. Maybe it’s the prose too — Amis is trying entirely too hard, pitching this squarely at the literati, exactly the audience already inoculated against the problems of money. I don’t believe for a second that the people who needed this book ever read it. I can say that with some confidence having just watched a for-profit cage fight staged on the White House lawn (Happy 80th T-Bone).
The book’s full title is Money: A Suicide Note, a subtitle that almost never survives into conversation about it, and it’s a shame, because it’s doing real work. On the surface it’s about John Self’s identity collapsing once he learns who his father is and loses his fortune — his own suicide note, of sorts. But it’s just as much about the slower suicide of his lifestyle, and beyond that, the slower suicide of a society organized entirely around the pursuit of money. That’s the genuinely prescient part of the book, and it’s a shame the title rarely makes it past the cover (if it ever made the cover), because it’s a sharper piece of commentary than the three hundred pages of John Self’s psyche that follow it.
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A fair amount of books we call classics are real stuffy, boring reads — written for a different audience, they don't hit the same for a modern reader. You know the type, the ones you only half-assedly read for class. That was my impression of Crime and Punishment, and so my copy sat fearfully unread on my bookshelf for years. Until now. Contrary to my expectations, this is not one of those books — it's a genuine joy to read, closer to modern literature than its stuffy contemporaries.
Dostoevsky's own history looms large over this book. In 1849 he was arrested for involvement with a group of radical intellectuals and sentenced to death by Tsar Nicholas I — a sentence carried out right up to the point where he stood before the firing squad, before being commuted at the last moment to hard labor in Siberia. By the time of his release years later, Russia was undergoing a period of liberal reform, with relaxing censorship fueling a burgeoning literary scene. It's against this backdrop that Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment, while sinking into immense debt thanks to a gambling addiction — and the destitute conditions Raskolnikov suffers throughout the novel feel unmistakably drawn from this period of his life.
Every scene, every character, the city of Petersburg; it's all brought completely to life. The prose sings, the dialogue is deliciously dramatic, and the inner turmoil of the main character is rendered in the most gripping detail. This is a psychological thriller, and I don't just mean that it arguably established the genre — I mean it's so damn good in execution, in getting across the feeling of a murderer's guilt and paranoia, in watching him ever so slowly unravel.
The plot is deceptively simple: rather than a who-dun-it, this is a why-he-dun-it. The book opens on the destitute student Raskolnikov contemplating something terrible. Unable to pay for his education and thoroughly depressed, he has spent months locked away in his filthy closet of a bedroom entertaining dark thoughts; he's decided to murder and rob a local pawnbroker. Not quite in his right mind, and incensed by news of his sister Dunya's engagement to a dubious lawyer, he waits till dark, borrows an axe, and quietly sets about his gruesome business. What follows is nothing less than psychological torture, as the fires of Raskolnikov's guilt are stoked by illness, madness, and paranoia.
The ideology that incites Raskolnikov to his crime is just as important as the crime itself. He's convinced himself of a theory: that certain crimes are justifiable in service of the goals of extraordinary men, that humanity is split into two classes: mere mortals, and a Napoleonic class to whom ordinary morals and laws don't apply. It's a dreadfully half-baked utilitarianism, and Dostoevsky's commentary on the egoism of the Russian radicals of his time. There's a striking echo here of the arguments later made by C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man — the idea that rationalist thought reduces man to a mere product of physics and biology, and the warning against suppressing Christian compassion in favour of a nihilistic elite entrusted with the future. Raskolnikov believes himself one of these elites. But he is shocked, confused, and crushed by the guilt and horror he feels once confronted with the actual consequences of his deed, and it's this collapse — and his eventual absolution through Sonya and her faith — that gives the novel its real shape.
Raskolnikov is an asshole to basically everyone, all book long — and yet, seemingly despite himself, there's a whole host of characters who love and care for him. The rest of the cast is brilliant, and several completely transform the narrative in their respective moments. My favorite has to be the outwardly affable Inspector Porfiry; he absolutely steals the show, his innocuous, bumbling dialogue barely concealing a hunter's gaze, every seemingly innocent question oozing with suspicion and double meaning. Then there's Razumikhin, ever the upbeat and loyal friend — the golden retriever of the cast — his efforts to help unwittingly provoking Raskolnikov exactly as Porfiry intends. And finally Sonya, the self-sacrificing and compassionate daughter of a drunkard, whose shame in her profession and quiet moral strength become the catalyst for Raskolnikov's eventual confession.
There are people who insist you need to puzzle this book apart, to break it into its constituent symbols and philosophy, to really think on it. They should just try reading the story, because it's an awesome piece of writing, sure to captivate on its own terms. Part of what makes it so readable today is a stylistic innovation that was genuinely ahead of its time: Dostoevsky's fusion of third-person omniscient narration with the stream of consciousness of his characters. Contemporary readers were used to more linear, orderly narrative techniques, but this blurring of narrator and the inner thoughts of the protagonist is exactly what makes Raskolnikov's psyche feel so immediate to a modern reader. His stream of consciousness, the not-quite-first-person perspective, projects a vivid scene — an amazing drama of a man coming to terms with the crime he has committed. You peer into his psyche, come to know him, and watch his internal justifications crumble in the face of madness-inducing guilt. Just as you come to understand his mania, you also understand his weariness, the toll his guilt takes on mind and body. But you never lose yourself entirely in Raskolnikov; the scene stays grounded, the supporting characters animated and just as richly imagined as he is.
Crime and Punishment is proof that the classroom impression of a book and the book itself are often two entirely different things. I went into this recalling homework, and what I got was a genuinely gripping psychological thriller, one that happens to have also basically invented the genre. There's a tendency to assume that "classic" means "good for you" rather than "good", that anything assigned in school must be a chore to be endured rather than enjoyed. Sometimes that's true. But sometimes a book is a classic because it's genuinely that good, and reading it on your own terms, decades after it was forced on you (or you faked your way through it), is when it finally gets the chance to prove that. Being the grandfather of the genre doesn't make this book worse than the latest Stephen King novel — if anything, it's a testament to just how well it holds up that so much of what followed is still chasing what Dostoevsky pulled off here first.
P.S.The translation I read was the Pevear and Volokhonsky edition, which is significantly better than the older Garnett translation and worth seeking out. If you don't love the constant repetition of Russian names and patronymics, there's also the Katz edition, which is more modernised and localised to American English. Both are great — read Katz if you want something less Russian, and Volokhonsky if you want something as true to the original as you can get in English.
A fair amount of books we call classics are real stuffy, boring reads — written for a different audience, they don't hit the same for a modern reader. You know the type, the ones you only half-assedly read for class. That was my impression of Crime and Punishment, and so my copy sat fearfully unread on my bookshelf for years. Until now. Contrary to my expectations, this is not one of those books — it's a genuine joy to read, closer to modern literature than its stuffy contemporaries.
Dostoevsky's own history looms large over this book. In 1849 he was arrested for involvement with a group of radical intellectuals and sentenced to death by Tsar Nicholas I — a sentence carried out right up to the point where he stood before the firing squad, before being commuted at the last moment to hard labor in Siberia. By the time of his release years later, Russia was undergoing a period of liberal reform, with relaxing censorship fueling a burgeoning literary scene. It's against this backdrop that Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment, while sinking into immense debt thanks to a gambling addiction — and the destitute conditions Raskolnikov suffers throughout the novel feel unmistakably drawn from this period of his life.
Every scene, every character, the city of Petersburg; it's all brought completely to life. The prose sings, the dialogue is deliciously dramatic, and the inner turmoil of the main character is rendered in the most gripping detail. This is a psychological thriller, and I don't just mean that it arguably established the genre — I mean it's so damn good in execution, in getting across the feeling of a murderer's guilt and paranoia, in watching him ever so slowly unravel.
The plot is deceptively simple: rather than a who-dun-it, this is a why-he-dun-it. The book opens on the destitute student Raskolnikov contemplating something terrible. Unable to pay for his education and thoroughly depressed, he has spent months locked away in his filthy closet of a bedroom entertaining dark thoughts; he's decided to murder and rob a local pawnbroker. Not quite in his right mind, and incensed by news of his sister Dunya's engagement to a dubious lawyer, he waits till dark, borrows an axe, and quietly sets about his gruesome business. What follows is nothing less than psychological torture, as the fires of Raskolnikov's guilt are stoked by illness, madness, and paranoia.
The ideology that incites Raskolnikov to his crime is just as important as the crime itself. He's convinced himself of a theory: that certain crimes are justifiable in service of the goals of extraordinary men, that humanity is split into two classes: mere mortals, and a Napoleonic class to whom ordinary morals and laws don't apply. It's a dreadfully half-baked utilitarianism, and Dostoevsky's commentary on the egoism of the Russian radicals of his time. There's a striking echo here of the arguments later made by C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man — the idea that rationalist thought reduces man to a mere product of physics and biology, and the warning against suppressing Christian compassion in favour of a nihilistic elite entrusted with the future. Raskolnikov believes himself one of these elites. But he is shocked, confused, and crushed by the guilt and horror he feels once confronted with the actual consequences of his deed, and it's this collapse — and his eventual absolution through Sonya and her faith — that gives the novel its real shape.
Raskolnikov is an asshole to basically everyone, all book long — and yet, seemingly despite himself, there's a whole host of characters who love and care for him. The rest of the cast is brilliant, and several completely transform the narrative in their respective moments. My favorite has to be the outwardly affable Inspector Porfiry; he absolutely steals the show, his innocuous, bumbling dialogue barely concealing a hunter's gaze, every seemingly innocent question oozing with suspicion and double meaning. Then there's Razumikhin, ever the upbeat and loyal friend — the golden retriever of the cast — his efforts to help unwittingly provoking Raskolnikov exactly as Porfiry intends. And finally Sonya, the self-sacrificing and compassionate daughter of a drunkard, whose shame in her profession and quiet moral strength become the catalyst for Raskolnikov's eventual confession.
There are people who insist you need to puzzle this book apart, to break it into its constituent symbols and philosophy, to really think on it. They should just try reading the story, because it's an awesome piece of writing, sure to captivate on its own terms. Part of what makes it so readable today is a stylistic innovation that was genuinely ahead of its time: Dostoevsky's fusion of third-person omniscient narration with the stream of consciousness of his characters. Contemporary readers were used to more linear, orderly narrative techniques, but this blurring of narrator and the inner thoughts of the protagonist is exactly what makes Raskolnikov's psyche feel so immediate to a modern reader. His stream of consciousness, the not-quite-first-person perspective, projects a vivid scene — an amazing drama of a man coming to terms with the crime he has committed. You peer into his psyche, come to know him, and watch his internal justifications crumble in the face of madness-inducing guilt. Just as you come to understand his mania, you also understand his weariness, the toll his guilt takes on mind and body. But you never lose yourself entirely in Raskolnikov; the scene stays grounded, the supporting characters animated and just as richly imagined as he is.
Crime and Punishment is proof that the classroom impression of a book and the book itself are often two entirely different things. I went into this recalling homework, and what I got was a genuinely gripping psychological thriller, one that happens to have also basically invented the genre. There's a tendency to assume that "classic" means "good for you" rather than "good", that anything assigned in school must be a chore to be endured rather than enjoyed. Sometimes that's true. But sometimes a book is a classic because it's genuinely that good, and reading it on your own terms, decades after it was forced on you (or you faked your way through it), is when it finally gets the chance to prove that. Being the grandfather of the genre doesn't make this book worse than the latest Stephen King novel — if anything, it's a testament to just how well it holds up that so much of what followed is still chasing what Dostoevsky pulled off here first.
P.S.The translation I read was the Pevear and Volokhonsky edition, which is significantly better than the older Garnett translation and worth seeking out. If you don't love the constant repetition of Russian names and patronymics, there's also the Katz edition, which is more modernised and localised to American English. Both are great — read Katz if you want something less Russian, and Volokhonsky if you want something as true to the original as you can get in English.
Updated a reading goal:
Read 36 books in 2026
Progress so far: 18 / 36 50%
Added to listFull Reviewswith 161 books.
Don't you love it when a sequel comes out swinging for the fences? No middle book syndrome, not a single weak chapter, paragraph, or sentence in the whole thing. Before They Are Hanged is everything that I loved from The Blade Itself taken to the next level.
Before They Are Hanged picks up just after the events of Book 1 and wastes no time in catching us up with our protagonists starting with Glokta. Where the last book had many scattered perspectives as our cast was assembled, Before They Are Hanged settles on bouncing between three parties; Glokta in the South, West and Threetree's gang in the North, and our main party of Logen, Ferro, Jezal, and Bayaz in the west.
I don't want to get too specific on plot; each party is accomplishing a unique task and their stories are largely independent. Logen has joined Bayaz on his quest into the Old Empire seeking a forbidden power. West is fighting the Union's war in the North against King Bethod. Most interesting of all, Glokta is now the superior of Dagoska and tasked with rooting out corruption while organizing the city's defenses in advance of a war with the Gurkish. All your favorites from the last book are finally in a position to begin their adventures and boy is it entertaining. As I mentioned with the last book, there isn't anything exceedingly unique as far as the premise goes, what The Fist Law series is really about is injecting nuance and cynicism into traditional tropes. So despite the trite premise, the plot proves to be exceedingly engaging.
As far as the theme goes this book is consistent with The Blade Itself, we've got a focus on the harsh realities of war and violence right at the forefront of it all. There is a persistent thread concerning the settling of scores, of reaping what you've sown, those concepts being echoed between the different storylines in both their narratives and in the prose itself. I think it's needless to say that Joe Abercrombie is a master of character writing and dialogue, but I will say that as a consequence of reading this series a lot of the recall I associate with traditional fantasy has been overwritten with old logan ninefingers and his motley crew. There are catchphrases, I totally forgot to mention that last review; personally I liked them, They fit in great and these books tend to be hilarious when appropriate.
More than anything I think I love the vibe of this series the most. It really benefits from the classic setting and story; it's dark and atmospheric and not always but now and again the story slips into a nostalgic almost a tabletop campaign-y vibe. I think I can safely say that I am hooked and I'll probably read the next series in this larger world/universe. I also can't believe that there hasn't been an adaptation of this yet!? The dialogue is so good that it sometimes feels like I am reading a screenplay for an hour of premier television. We've all wanted more Game of Throne-ish content, here's something that's arguably better!
Don't you love it when a sequel comes out swinging for the fences? No middle book syndrome, not a single weak chapter, paragraph, or sentence in the whole thing. Before They Are Hanged is everything that I loved from The Blade Itself taken to the next level.
Before They Are Hanged picks up just after the events of Book 1 and wastes no time in catching us up with our protagonists starting with Glokta. Where the last book had many scattered perspectives as our cast was assembled, Before They Are Hanged settles on bouncing between three parties; Glokta in the South, West and Threetree's gang in the North, and our main party of Logen, Ferro, Jezal, and Bayaz in the west.
I don't want to get too specific on plot; each party is accomplishing a unique task and their stories are largely independent. Logen has joined Bayaz on his quest into the Old Empire seeking a forbidden power. West is fighting the Union's war in the North against King Bethod. Most interesting of all, Glokta is now the superior of Dagoska and tasked with rooting out corruption while organizing the city's defenses in advance of a war with the Gurkish. All your favorites from the last book are finally in a position to begin their adventures and boy is it entertaining. As I mentioned with the last book, there isn't anything exceedingly unique as far as the premise goes, what The Fist Law series is really about is injecting nuance and cynicism into traditional tropes. So despite the trite premise, the plot proves to be exceedingly engaging.
As far as the theme goes this book is consistent with The Blade Itself, we've got a focus on the harsh realities of war and violence right at the forefront of it all. There is a persistent thread concerning the settling of scores, of reaping what you've sown, those concepts being echoed between the different storylines in both their narratives and in the prose itself. I think it's needless to say that Joe Abercrombie is a master of character writing and dialogue, but I will say that as a consequence of reading this series a lot of the recall I associate with traditional fantasy has been overwritten with old logan ninefingers and his motley crew. There are catchphrases, I totally forgot to mention that last review; personally I liked them, They fit in great and these books tend to be hilarious when appropriate.
More than anything I think I love the vibe of this series the most. It really benefits from the classic setting and story; it's dark and atmospheric and not always but now and again the story slips into a nostalgic almost a tabletop campaign-y vibe. I think I can safely say that I am hooked and I'll probably read the next series in this larger world/universe. I also can't believe that there hasn't been an adaptation of this yet!? The dialogue is so good that it sometimes feels like I am reading a screenplay for an hour of premier television. We've all wanted more Game of Throne-ish content, here's something that's arguably better!
I think I'm a Becky Chambers fan. I've only read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet so maybe that's premature but I really liked that book, and spoiler: I loved this book. This is a spoonful of sugar, a warm cup of something on a perfect fall day; and I read this at the perfect time, peak spooky season, the leaves have turned and it is nice and cool and rainy. What a cozy and comfy vibe.
I feel like expounding on how cozy this is might actually undercut some of the coziness and I would hate to take the full blast away from anyone. Just trust me when I say the cozy element of this book is there and it is perfectly done, and if that's what you want to key in on: it's in there go read it.
I also don't want to give too much of the actual plot away so I'll be extremely reductive. A Tea Monk named Dex and a robot named Mosscap go on a hike and have a cup of tea in the woods. What really stands out about this book is the world-building. This world has lore and it rocks, it's a utopia where humanity frees the sentient robots and gives them half their world. It's like Terminator but with tea-1000s. The joy is in exploring a world and culture so foreign as to allow that kind of outcome, what the people are like, what the robots are like. It's hopeful.
It's actually more than hopeful, this book is an optimistic supernova ball of sunshine of a science fiction story. If it were just perfectly executed cozy it might not rate super high with me, but it's such a breath of fresh air. Not only for me as a reader but for the SF genre. It could just be the books that I have been choosing to read - not to complain about some excellent books- but it seems like anything that is popular and well-reviewed tends to be dark/hard/violent. I love it when I run across a book that scratches that SF itch in a different way.
I have caught myself thinking about TLWSA a fair few times and for much the same reasons. I think this book will stick with me in much the same way. While these are two very different stories, I think it's proved that Becky Chambers can write some absolutely lovable characters. Dex and Mosscap are kind and thoughtful and are so good to each other in a way that not only subverts SF convention but fills you with warmth.
I did have one gripe, and I did debate docking a point for it. This book is a little short, and the way it ends absolutely demands a continuation. While there is a complete story told here, I feel like maybe this didn't need to get split into two books. Part 1 and Part 2 as a thing of economy. But then again, this did come out in a pandemic year so the content demand probably had something to do with it.
This won't crack my favorites list on its own, so the sequel better rip.
TL;DR: A Tea Monk named Dex and a robot named Mosscap go on a hike and have a cup of tea in the woods.
PS: 2021 really had some great books
I think I'm a Becky Chambers fan. I've only read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet so maybe that's premature but I really liked that book, and spoiler: I loved this book. This is a spoonful of sugar, a warm cup of something on a perfect fall day; and I read this at the perfect time, peak spooky season, the leaves have turned and it is nice and cool and rainy. What a cozy and comfy vibe.
I feel like expounding on how cozy this is might actually undercut some of the coziness and I would hate to take the full blast away from anyone. Just trust me when I say the cozy element of this book is there and it is perfectly done, and if that's what you want to key in on: it's in there go read it.
I also don't want to give too much of the actual plot away so I'll be extremely reductive. A Tea Monk named Dex and a robot named Mosscap go on a hike and have a cup of tea in the woods. What really stands out about this book is the world-building. This world has lore and it rocks, it's a utopia where humanity frees the sentient robots and gives them half their world. It's like Terminator but with tea-1000s. The joy is in exploring a world and culture so foreign as to allow that kind of outcome, what the people are like, what the robots are like. It's hopeful.
It's actually more than hopeful, this book is an optimistic supernova ball of sunshine of a science fiction story. If it were just perfectly executed cozy it might not rate super high with me, but it's such a breath of fresh air. Not only for me as a reader but for the SF genre. It could just be the books that I have been choosing to read - not to complain about some excellent books- but it seems like anything that is popular and well-reviewed tends to be dark/hard/violent. I love it when I run across a book that scratches that SF itch in a different way.
I have caught myself thinking about TLWSA a fair few times and for much the same reasons. I think this book will stick with me in much the same way. While these are two very different stories, I think it's proved that Becky Chambers can write some absolutely lovable characters. Dex and Mosscap are kind and thoughtful and are so good to each other in a way that not only subverts SF convention but fills you with warmth.
I did have one gripe, and I did debate docking a point for it. This book is a little short, and the way it ends absolutely demands a continuation. While there is a complete story told here, I feel like maybe this didn't need to get split into two books. Part 1 and Part 2 as a thing of economy. But then again, this did come out in a pandemic year so the content demand probably had something to do with it.
This won't crack my favorites list on its own, so the sequel better rip.
TL;DR: A Tea Monk named Dex and a robot named Mosscap go on a hike and have a cup of tea in the woods.
PS: 2021 really had some great books
I assume anyone clicking on a review for Book 6 of a series isn't exactly looking for reasons to read on. That's especially true here, Book 5 skipped past the “hanger” part of cliffhanger and threw us off the cliff altogether. But if you're the type of reader who needs positive confirmation or reinforcement or whatever, here it is: Ruocchio has saved the series climax for book 6 out of 7, this is the height, the pinnacle for this type of story, you must read on. I'm assuming that everyone else who clicked on this wants to know my thoughts about the series and where I think this is going, you too must read on.What I actually want to talk about is the series as a whole, because while I stand by my previous review of The Empire of Silence, I didn't totally grasp what I was reading that early into the series. I accused Book 1 of being strongly King killer/Red Rising/Dune influenced, and that threw me off of the scent. I was expecting grand action, betrayal, and galactic politics; all of that stuff is in there, and it plays a fairly important role in the story and the plotting, it's just not what the series is about. Buried under all of those prominent nods and story features, I was shocked to discover a kernel of [b:The Book of the New Sun 968868 The Book of the New Sun Gene Wolfe https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388595738l/968868.SX50.jpg 6965668]. It wasn't clear at the outset, but if this series is a derivation of any singular story, it has to be Gene Wolfe's Christ-inspired masterpiece. Is that a bit like saying, “Oh, I love [Insert Contemporary Fantasy Series], but buried under all of that new stuff it's LOTR to the core”? Sure it is, and I understand the concept of a foundational work influencing everything that comes after it just as surely as I consider TBNS a foundational work in its own right. But TBNS has been slower to penetrate into contemporary lit; this series is just the first example I can now point to as evidence for that claim. Before anyone gets carried away and takes this as me saying that Chris Ruocchio is a copycat hack, first shut up, second TBNS isn't dealing in a wholly original premise either. Obviously. It's all memetics at a certain point, but Sun Eater, just as surely as TBNS and LOTR, is built on the monomyth. The Heroes Journey, we meet again. I'm not going to give an in-depth lecture on the monomyth, anyone who has taken an English class will get the general idea; Departure, Initiation, and Return. You can get really screwy, breaking it down into 17 steps, but I've always focused on this point: You can break most stories into this three part structure. Myths, Fiction, even religion. Most especially religion; the literary concept is often introduced within the context of the rebirth of Christ. What I'm trying to not so subtly say is that the Christ allegory isn't missed on me here in Sun Eater, as it wasn't in TBNS or in LOTR. It's just so much more obvious here, and it's on purpose. In TBNS the critical question of the series is what happens at the end of creation? What happens when we die? This book is where we start to see Roucchio's answers, and they are cut extremely close to those that Gene Wolfe offered up.That's kind of my ultimate takeaway on the series so far, it's a Christ allegory, and it's in the penultimate act, so I'm trying to true reserve judgement until the conclusion. Maybe this is what happens when you read Gene Wolfe, you start to see him in everything even remotely close, but as we approach the end of the series I get a strong sense that we are converging with Roucchio's inspirations. Whether this series can differentiate itself meaningfully from TBNS remains to be seen; I would argue everything we've gotten so far is more than enough for this series to stand on its own merits regardless. But I would feel a little cheated if the ending arrives at the same moral conclusions. PS and TLDR: As the series has gone on, it's gotten more and more philosophical, and we are arriving at the point where the philosophy really matters. Even if book 7 ends up a rehash of Urth of the New Sun (and the bible), this is still going to be one of the best SF series I've ever read. Even if Sun Eater only manages to be a re-encapsulation of TBNS by its conclusion, it's still a slam dunk to me because someone has finally translated Gene Wolfe into something truly page turning and accessible.
I assume anyone clicking on a review for Book 6 of a series isn't exactly looking for reasons to read on. That's especially true here, Book 5 skipped past the “hanger” part of cliffhanger and threw us off the cliff altogether. But if you're the type of reader who needs positive confirmation or reinforcement or whatever, here it is: Ruocchio has saved the series climax for book 6 out of 7, this is the height, the pinnacle for this type of story, you must read on. I'm assuming that everyone else who clicked on this wants to know my thoughts about the series and where I think this is going, you too must read on.What I actually want to talk about is the series as a whole, because while I stand by my previous review of The Empire of Silence, I didn't totally grasp what I was reading that early into the series. I accused Book 1 of being strongly King killer/Red Rising/Dune influenced, and that threw me off of the scent. I was expecting grand action, betrayal, and galactic politics; all of that stuff is in there, and it plays a fairly important role in the story and the plotting, it's just not what the series is about. Buried under all of those prominent nods and story features, I was shocked to discover a kernel of [b:The Book of the New Sun 968868 The Book of the New Sun Gene Wolfe https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388595738l/968868.SX50.jpg 6965668]. It wasn't clear at the outset, but if this series is a derivation of any singular story, it has to be Gene Wolfe's Christ-inspired masterpiece. Is that a bit like saying, “Oh, I love [Insert Contemporary Fantasy Series], but buried under all of that new stuff it's LOTR to the core”? Sure it is, and I understand the concept of a foundational work influencing everything that comes after it just as surely as I consider TBNS a foundational work in its own right. But TBNS has been slower to penetrate into contemporary lit; this series is just the first example I can now point to as evidence for that claim. Before anyone gets carried away and takes this as me saying that Chris Ruocchio is a copycat hack, first shut up, second TBNS isn't dealing in a wholly original premise either. Obviously. It's all memetics at a certain point, but Sun Eater, just as surely as TBNS and LOTR, is built on the monomyth. The Heroes Journey, we meet again. I'm not going to give an in-depth lecture on the monomyth, anyone who has taken an English class will get the general idea; Departure, Initiation, and Return. You can get really screwy, breaking it down into 17 steps, but I've always focused on this point: You can break most stories into this three part structure. Myths, Fiction, even religion. Most especially religion; the literary concept is often introduced within the context of the rebirth of Christ. What I'm trying to not so subtly say is that the Christ allegory isn't missed on me here in Sun Eater, as it wasn't in TBNS or in LOTR. It's just so much more obvious here, and it's on purpose. In TBNS the critical question of the series is what happens at the end of creation? What happens when we die? This book is where we start to see Roucchio's answers, and they are cut extremely close to those that Gene Wolfe offered up.That's kind of my ultimate takeaway on the series so far, it's a Christ allegory, and it's in the penultimate act, so I'm trying to true reserve judgement until the conclusion. Maybe this is what happens when you read Gene Wolfe, you start to see him in everything even remotely close, but as we approach the end of the series I get a strong sense that we are converging with Roucchio's inspirations. Whether this series can differentiate itself meaningfully from TBNS remains to be seen; I would argue everything we've gotten so far is more than enough for this series to stand on its own merits regardless. But I would feel a little cheated if the ending arrives at the same moral conclusions. PS and TLDR: As the series has gone on, it's gotten more and more philosophical, and we are arriving at the point where the philosophy really matters. Even if book 7 ends up a rehash of Urth of the New Sun (and the bible), this is still going to be one of the best SF series I've ever read. Even if Sun Eater only manages to be a re-encapsulation of TBNS by its conclusion, it's still a slam dunk to me because someone has finally translated Gene Wolfe into something truly page turning and accessible.
I assume anyone clicking on a review for Book 6 of a series isn't exactly looking for reasons to read on. That's especially true here, Book 5 skipped past the “hanger” part of cliffhanger and threw us off the cliff altogether. But if you're the type of reader who needs positive confirmation or reinforcement or whatever, here it is: Ruocchio has saved the series climax for book 6 out of 7, this is the height, the pinnacle for this type of story, you must read on. I'm assuming that everyone else who clicked on this wants to know my thoughts about the series and where I think this is going, you too must read on.What I actually want to talk about is the series as a whole, because while I stand by my previous review of The Empire of Silence, I didn't totally grasp what I was reading that early into the series. I accused Book 1 of being strongly King killer/Red Rising/Dune influenced, and that threw me off of the scent. I was expecting grand action, betrayal, and galactic politics; all of that stuff is in there, and it plays a fairly important role in the story and the plotting, it's just not what the series is about. Buried under all of those prominent nods and story features, I was shocked to discover a kernel of [b:The Book of the New Sun 968868 The Book of the New Sun Gene Wolfe https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388595738l/968868.SX50.jpg 6965668]. It wasn't clear at the outset, but if this series is a derivation of any singular story, it has to be Gene Wolfe's Christ-inspired masterpiece. Is that a bit like saying, “Oh, I love [Insert Contemporary Fantasy Series], but buried under all of that new stuff it's LOTR to the core”? Sure it is, and I understand the concept of a foundational work influencing everything that comes after it just as surely as I consider TBNS a foundational work in its own right. But TBNS has been slower to penetrate into contemporary lit; this series is just the first example I can now point to as evidence for that claim. Before anyone gets carried away and takes this as me saying that Chris Ruocchio is a copycat hack, first shut up, second TBNS isn't dealing in a wholly original premise either. Obviously. It's all memetics at a certain point, but Sun Eater, just as surely as TBNS and LOTR, is built on the monomyth. The Heroes Journey, we meet again. I'm not going to give an in-depth lecture on the monomyth, anyone who has taken an English class will get the general idea; Departure, Initiation, and Return. You can get really screwy, breaking it down into 17 steps, but I've always focused on this point: You can break most stories into this three part structure. Myths, Fiction, even religion. Most especially religion; the literary concept is often introduced within the context of the rebirth of Christ. What I'm trying to not so subtly say is that the Christ allegory isn't missed on me here in Sun Eater, as it wasn't in TBNS or in LOTR. It's just so much more obvious here, and it's on purpose. In TBNS the critical question of the series is what happens at the end of creation? What happens when we die? This book is where we start to see Roucchio's answers, and they are cut extremely close to those that Gene Wolfe offered up.That's kind of my ultimate takeaway on the series so far, it's a Christ allegory, and it's in the penultimate act, so I'm trying to true reserve judgement until the conclusion. Maybe this is what happens when you read Gene Wolfe, you start to see him in everything even remotely close, but as we approach the end of the series I get a strong sense that we are converging with Roucchio's inspirations. Whether this series can differentiate itself meaningfully from TBNS remains to be seen; I would argue everything we've gotten so far is more than enough for this series to stand on its own merits regardless. But I would feel a little cheated if the ending arrives at the same moral conclusions. PS and TLDR: As the series has gone on, it's gotten more and more philosophical, and we are arriving at the point where the philosophy really matters. Even if book 7 ends up a rehash of Urth of the New Sun (and the bible), this is still going to be one of the best SF series I've ever read. Even if Sun Eater only manages to be a re-encapsulation of TBNS by its conclusion, it's still a slam dunk to me because someone has finally translated Gene Wolfe into something truly page turning and accessible.
I assume anyone clicking on a review for Book 6 of a series isn't exactly looking for reasons to read on. That's especially true here, Book 5 skipped past the “hanger” part of cliffhanger and threw us off the cliff altogether. But if you're the type of reader who needs positive confirmation or reinforcement or whatever, here it is: Ruocchio has saved the series climax for book 6 out of 7, this is the height, the pinnacle for this type of story, you must read on. I'm assuming that everyone else who clicked on this wants to know my thoughts about the series and where I think this is going, you too must read on.What I actually want to talk about is the series as a whole, because while I stand by my previous review of The Empire of Silence, I didn't totally grasp what I was reading that early into the series. I accused Book 1 of being strongly King killer/Red Rising/Dune influenced, and that threw me off of the scent. I was expecting grand action, betrayal, and galactic politics; all of that stuff is in there, and it plays a fairly important role in the story and the plotting, it's just not what the series is about. Buried under all of those prominent nods and story features, I was shocked to discover a kernel of [b:The Book of the New Sun 968868 The Book of the New Sun Gene Wolfe https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388595738l/968868.SX50.jpg 6965668]. It wasn't clear at the outset, but if this series is a derivation of any singular story, it has to be Gene Wolfe's Christ-inspired masterpiece. Is that a bit like saying, “Oh, I love [Insert Contemporary Fantasy Series], but buried under all of that new stuff it's LOTR to the core”? Sure it is, and I understand the concept of a foundational work influencing everything that comes after it just as surely as I consider TBNS a foundational work in its own right. But TBNS has been slower to penetrate into contemporary lit; this series is just the first example I can now point to as evidence for that claim. Before anyone gets carried away and takes this as me saying that Chris Ruocchio is a copycat hack, first shut up, second TBNS isn't dealing in a wholly original premise either. Obviously. It's all memetics at a certain point, but Sun Eater, just as surely as TBNS and LOTR, is built on the monomyth. The Heroes Journey, we meet again. I'm not going to give an in-depth lecture on the monomyth, anyone who has taken an English class will get the general idea; Departure, Initiation, and Return. You can get really screwy, breaking it down into 17 steps, but I've always focused on this point: You can break most stories into this three part structure. Myths, Fiction, even religion. Most especially religion; the literary concept is often introduced within the context of the rebirth of Christ. What I'm trying to not so subtly say is that the Christ allegory isn't missed on me here in Sun Eater, as it wasn't in TBNS or in LOTR. It's just so much more obvious here, and it's on purpose. In TBNS the critical question of the series is what happens at the end of creation? What happens when we die? This book is where we start to see Roucchio's answers, and they are cut extremely close to those that Gene Wolfe offered up.That's kind of my ultimate takeaway on the series so far, it's a Christ allegory, and it's in the penultimate act, so I'm trying to true reserve judgement until the conclusion. Maybe this is what happens when you read Gene Wolfe, you start to see him in everything even remotely close, but as we approach the end of the series I get a strong sense that we are converging with Roucchio's inspirations. Whether this series can differentiate itself meaningfully from TBNS remains to be seen; I would argue everything we've gotten so far is more than enough for this series to stand on its own merits regardless. But I would feel a little cheated if the ending arrives at the same moral conclusions. PS and TLDR: As the series has gone on, it's gotten more and more philosophical, and we are arriving at the point where the philosophy really matters. Even if book 7 ends up a rehash of Urth of the New Sun (and the bible), this is still going to be one of the best SF series I've ever read. Even if Sun Eater only manages to be a re-encapsulation of TBNS by its conclusion, it's still a slam dunk to me because someone has finally translated Gene Wolfe into something truly page turning and accessible.
Not much of a review in me for this one. This series keeps impressing me, I have this worry that this will get so out there that it basically devolves into the book version of two and half men, fart jokes and pop culture references, but Dinniman keeps this show on rails and keeps it interesting to boot. Can't wait for the next one.
Not much of a review in me for this one. This series keeps impressing me, I have this worry that this will get so out there that it basically devolves into the book version of two and half men, fart jokes and pop culture references, but Dinniman keeps this show on rails and keeps it interesting to boot. Can't wait for the next one.
I don't want to review the 6th book in a killer series; if you're planning to read this, then you're obviously not new to DCC and you don't need my opinion to get you to read it. Seeing as how this is the latest entry, this review seems like a good place to comment on the series to this point. I have had such a blast with Carl, I don't think I've read anything as consistently fun (and funny) as this is since Hitchhiker's Guide.
Maybe I'm just a sucker for the absurd and the insane, I loved The Library at Mount Char and I might be the only person I know that has seen (and loved) HBO's Doom Patrol. I cannot seem to help myself when a plot is nonsensical enough to turn everything on its head at a moments notice; I can't help but to watch with rapt attention and laugh myself hoarse.
The longer the series has gone on, the further the developments have tacked towards outright insanity. It's a tough line to toe, you want it lighthearted and insane, but you also don't want that stuff to undercut the character work and the serious moments. Carl is perfection when it comes to that balance. There's never a moment in these books where something crazy isn't happening or just about to happen, and despite the terrible consequences that tend to follow each event, Dinniman manages to keep it light without deflating the tension. A huge part of the fun is seeing how the latest arrangement of the dominoes will collapse, whether it's a 20-story tall pair of butt cheeks or a Hydra formed out of everyone you ever loved.
All of that said, this latest entry is shaking up the formula. The further into the dungeon Carl and Co. venture, the more "galactic" the story gets, the stronger the overworld's plot begins to factor into the core story. The story telling has evolved past "Carl fights a giant ball of pigs mid-orgy and celebrates his survival" to "Carl dissects the alien statute governing child actors with his lawyer while smushing the feral slugs that are growing out of his elbow." The serious content that's hiding behind the game show facade is starting to become more and more prominent. If this book is any indication, I think that we are due to see Carl escape the confines of the crawl sometime soon.
Despite the increasing volume of serious content that is making its way to the fore, this is a comedy, and it'll always be important to keep your funny bone engaged as you read. Even with the multitude of lives on the line, it bears repeating that the fates are balanced on the shoulders of a barefoot dude in his underwear, a talking cat, and their magically sentient sex doll head. On the subject, Samantha is far and away my favorite character to be introduced so far. She's the embodiment of the kind of work that this story is; absurd but undeniably charming.
I challenge you to find another title that comes remotely close to the absurdity of this without immediately reducing itself to mere parody. I'll wait.
I don't want to review the 6th book in a killer series; if you're planning to read this, then you're obviously not new to DCC and you don't need my opinion to get you to read it. Seeing as how this is the latest entry, this review seems like a good place to comment on the series to this point. I have had such a blast with Carl, I don't think I've read anything as consistently fun (and funny) as this is since Hitchhiker's Guide.
Maybe I'm just a sucker for the absurd and the insane, I loved The Library at Mount Char and I might be the only person I know that has seen (and loved) HBO's Doom Patrol. I cannot seem to help myself when a plot is nonsensical enough to turn everything on its head at a moments notice; I can't help but to watch with rapt attention and laugh myself hoarse.
The longer the series has gone on, the further the developments have tacked towards outright insanity. It's a tough line to toe, you want it lighthearted and insane, but you also don't want that stuff to undercut the character work and the serious moments. Carl is perfection when it comes to that balance. There's never a moment in these books where something crazy isn't happening or just about to happen, and despite the terrible consequences that tend to follow each event, Dinniman manages to keep it light without deflating the tension. A huge part of the fun is seeing how the latest arrangement of the dominoes will collapse, whether it's a 20-story tall pair of butt cheeks or a Hydra formed out of everyone you ever loved.
All of that said, this latest entry is shaking up the formula. The further into the dungeon Carl and Co. venture, the more "galactic" the story gets, the stronger the overworld's plot begins to factor into the core story. The story telling has evolved past "Carl fights a giant ball of pigs mid-orgy and celebrates his survival" to "Carl dissects the alien statute governing child actors with his lawyer while smushing the feral slugs that are growing out of his elbow." The serious content that's hiding behind the game show facade is starting to become more and more prominent. If this book is any indication, I think that we are due to see Carl escape the confines of the crawl sometime soon.
Despite the increasing volume of serious content that is making its way to the fore, this is a comedy, and it'll always be important to keep your funny bone engaged as you read. Even with the multitude of lives on the line, it bears repeating that the fates are balanced on the shoulders of a barefoot dude in his underwear, a talking cat, and their magically sentient sex doll head. On the subject, Samantha is far and away my favorite character to be introduced so far. She's the embodiment of the kind of work that this story is; absurd but undeniably charming.
I challenge you to find another title that comes remotely close to the absurdity of this without immediately reducing itself to mere parody. I'll wait.