Jak
I generally like Scalzi's stuff, but this one felt a little weak. It's a fun concept but I was disappointed he didn't explore more of the physics side of it, only having certain characters exposit minor details occasionally. The story's really more concerned with how society as a whole responds to such an inexplicable event, but the way Scalzi chose to portray that was by constantly shifting around between the perspectives of a huge, disparate cast of lightly-drawn characters. A few of them are returned to, but it felt like most of the chapters were one-off's, giving the book this oddly disconnected feel, with most of the story being conveyed by unrelated vignettes (e.g. "here's how this random college student is emotionally dealing with this situation...and now, here's how this this random Hollywood executive is dealing with the situation...and now, here's how..." etc etc). The ending felt pretty weak, with a major (potentially apocalyptic) problem being introduced and then abruptly resolved without any explanation. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this one unless you're a Scalzi superfan or are just looking for some mindless, fun, "what if" style romp.
I've been tangentially aware of WH40k and knew the basics of the setting, but I had heard that this book was a good intro point into the novels (of which there are many). I enjoyed it, overall. The prose was positively ultraviolet, but it did a good job of setting the mood for the setting and putting you in the mind of someone steeped in that culture (very gothic and grimdark). It was a little distracting, at times, though...I had to keep on looking up various obscure words to figure out what the hell was being described. The plot was decent, if simple. It's interesting to see how the Space Marines are portrayed.
Picked this up based on the strength of recommendations I had seen for it in various places. I'm normally not into non-fiction, and I don't know if I've ever read a biography before, but this was pretty interesting. Very long, however; this book is DENSE. I was hooked, though, and kept reading to see how this person, who rose so high and accumulated so much influence, eventually fell from power. I'm a little interested in checking out the author's biography on LBJ, which is also supposed to be very good, but it's also a multi-volume affair, and this Moses one took so long to finish...not eager to jump into another dense tome like that, at least not anytime soon.
Got this based on various positive things I heard about it. Was a bit weird to get a copy of...he's a self-published author, and he's not on Amazon, so I ended up getting it through the Google Play store and reading the ebook version on the iOS book app, not Kindle. Interesting read, definitely, though pretty difficult to understand what's happening a lot of the time, owing to the author's constant use of outdated terminology and lack of context provided for any of the more fantastical elements. Not to mention various character interactions described through layered metaphors rather than straightforward prose. But still, an interesting take on military sci-fi, or rather, "military fantasy". Ending was a little weak, I felt, but it packed in a lot of world-building and somewhat-explanation for certain things.
Contains spoilers
Had gotten this a while back through a Kickstarter that Simon Stålenhag had done for this project. Been meaning to read it for a while but kept on forgetting. Finally sat down to read. Despite the length, I finished it pretty quickly; it's mostly art/imagery, and the narrative story is actually very short. The art, of course, was great, though the story was relatively simple. I wish more had been fleshed out with the backstory and setting, as it was super interesting but very lightly touched on. All in all, pretty solid. I liked how the thing with the boy wasn't, like, "oh aliens took him over and made him do it", it was just simple revenge for an awful act. Although it DOES lean a bit too hard on "trauma makes you crazy", such as the scenes with him creepily typing into a DOS prompt.
Took a bit to get into this one, twice-over. I wasn't thrilled with the characters in the first bit, but grew to like them as the plot accelerated and got more interesting. There were bits of story that I didn't care for, like how certain details or events just happened off-screen and were relayed afterward. But overall the first story arc resolved somewhat satisfyingly. The second part, set 5k years later, also took a bit to get into, but steadily got more interesting. I feel it ended a bit too soon, right as things were getting interesting?
Contains spoilers
Bought this from a local bookstore in Colorado Springs when we were visiting some friends, along with a copy of the first book (The Traitor Baru Cormorant). I wanted to get the physical copies of the books so I could more easily flip to the map in the front few pages (it sucks trying to look at the map in ebook format), and also to support the author. The book itself is pretty good, in terms of being a follow-up to the first, with more hopping around a bit more in terms of the POV characters and writing style. I really liked how certain connections weren't shoved in your face, so I felt clever figuring them out on my own (e.g. Calcanish was actually Hesychast). However, the ending was slightly disappointing, since it felt like so many plot threads were brought up during the book and none of them really get resolved aside from "Baru finally finds the Cancrioth". Hopefully a lot of this is resolved in the next book, but still, it was a bit of a letdown when I got to the end and realized how few things were actually settled.
My friend Ian gifted this to me a while back (Xmas 2022) but I only just now started it. Didn't realize it was originally published in 1985, and this is a 20yr re-release edition. Even then, this edition is itself nearly 20 years old. Was a bit of a hard read, even though it was fairly short. I kept on putting it down for weeks or months at a time, then would pick it back up and read another couple of chapters. I disagreed with large swaths of the book, but found other parts interesting or oddly prescient of the current media landscape. All in all I'd say this was a very thought-provoking book, though most of the time the thoughts it provoked were ones of disagreement.
Blew through this one. I think I enjoyed it a bit more than the first one. Maybe because the character is more established? Or maybe because society has degenerated more, so the setting is more interesting? The only thing that was "meh" was the ending, i.e. the resolution with the husband and wife. Still, I want to read the next one eventually.
Been meaning to get back to this one. I had started reading it years ago and put it down for some reason. I forgot I already owned it and had actually borrowed the ebook version until I realized it was already in my kindle app. Pretty decent. Took a bit for me to get hooked, and the ending was kinda meh, but I liked a lot of the ideas about multiple bodies and being divided amongst yourself.
Saw a few people recommending this online. The concept sounded interesting to me so I tried it out. Mostly enjoyed it, though I was a little leery of the pro-cop perspective. The main character seems like a stodgy boy scout. In the end, the crime/mystery hooks sunk in and I had to finish it to see how everything resolved. I think I'll check out the sequels to see how they are and what ends up happening with the apocalypse.
Had this one on my "to read" list for a while, finally checked it out. Definitely hooked me early on, but was sort of a slow burn at first, accelerating toward an amazing conclusion. Absolutely blew my mind, I was entranced at the end. Kinda kicking myself for missing all the signs of the twist, but even still, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Looking forward to what the other books in the series will bring. Great world building, great characters, great everything.
Still a pretty decent series. The introduction of another bot character was sorta interesting, though I wish they did more with them. Also starting to notice that sometimes the depiction of the action scenes can be lacking. It's not very well described, and I find that I have to do a lot of heavy-lifting, imagination-wise, because the narrative doesn't go into much detail about the spacing or geography of the scene. Oh well. Hope the story starts progressing more of the meta-narrative, so it's not just little isolated adventures that don't mean much on their own.
Second book in this series, I'm really digging it. Another super short read, I think I probably only took a few hours altogether to finish. I'm liking how the main character is evolving over time, and their interiority/psychology is interesting. I'm curious to see where it goes in future books. Also curious to see what happens with the "ART" character or the unnamed sexbot that the main character frees at the end.
Started reading then put it down for a while because it didn't hook me. Realized the loan period was about to expire so I picked it up again, and it actually got interesting. Totally lost steam again toward the end, and ultimately didn't finish because I misjudged the loan expiration date and it locked me out before I could finish the last 50 or so pages. However, I'm not all that motivated to go read them. Book could've ended absolutely PERFECTLY at a specific point, and I wish it did, but then it just...kept going. Really soured me on it. This was a perfectly good tale about artificial intelligence wrapped in a mediocre (and preachy) cautionary tale about generation ships.
Read this before, decided to read it again on a whim. It's always fascinating to read about the Culture and how a civilization like it may work. Only criticism of this particular article is it's a little rambling and meandering, but that's a little to be expected, as supposedly this was posted in a newsgroup (early messageboard) in the 90's, so it wasn't written with the intention of being a serious publication or anything.
This book was really intriguing and I was hooked early on. Long, but in some ways I wish it was longer. Cool mix of low-tech society in a high-tech setting, with political intrigue. Later becomes more actiony, at which point it starts to break down a little. The conclusion sorta soured me a bit. Various people die in understated ways, and it ends very abruptly, right at the climax of the action, with only a vague epilogue to suggest that the heroes efforts were successful. Overall, though, a very good read.
Started off a little slow but steadily got more interesting. The accelerating timeframe for each section was neat at first but eventually made the action and character changes seem a little disengaged. It still felt pretty slow at times. The characters were bland and mostly seem to be put in various situations purely so some of them can awkwardly exposit. After a baffling climax, the book just sorta ends with a million-year-hence coda that was overly trite.
Difficult read, very frustrating. Felt deliberately confusing at times. The book is purely just a transcript between two characters, with zero punctuation in McCarthy's usual style. While this can work for his other books, where there's actual narration, in a book that's purely just back-and-forth dialogue, it made it extremely easy to get mixed up with who was talking. I honestly didn't understand why he chose to do it this way. As a stylistic choice, it doesn't make any sense; there's a note at the very beginning explaining that this is a transcript of various voice recordings from interviews between a doctor and a patient, but in real life, even transcripts have various notes about non-spoken audio elements in the recording. This had none of that, it was PURELY dialogue, with various things like tone or 'off-screen' actions (like someone breaking down and crying) having to be inferred from extremely vague context clues. Also, I'm pretty sure the copy I was reading might've had a typo, in the sense that a certain piece of dialogue didn't have a line break in the proper spot, so it completely threw me for a loop about who-was-saying-what. Upon finishing, I also read some stuff that made it seem like I'm missing out by not reading the other companion novel, but with how frustrating this was to read, I don't have any desire to do so any time soon. Overall felt like a chore to read. However, I did enjoy some of the sections of dialogue, especially the bits about the nature of madness, and the various implications about the doctor's personal life that aren't directly stated.
I was already familiar with a lot of the stories in this book, just from exposure from the Witcher games and the Netflix show, but I still really enjoyed reading them, as the book goes into much more detail about certain things. Honestly, I think I like this version of Geralt, as a character, a lot more than the other versions. The writing was a bit odd, at times, which I assume was from the translation, but otherwise the prose was enjoyable.
Cool concept and world-building, if slight. Maybe too much lampshading and meta-humor (they literally mention "lampshading" at one point). Only other complaint is that it was textbook Scalzi, character-wise; everyone is a quippy jerk with a heart of gold. Plotting felt a bit too pat, as well. The gimmick of the main character's gender never being specified or referred to by any other character felt...well, like a gimmick that didn't really add anything. But aside from all that, it was pretty enjoyable.