John

(Very much spoilers cause all I talk about is the ending)

Really good book but 4 stars because the author didn't stick the landing at the end. And because this book is prudish about sex despite being proffered as an example of an LGBTQ+ book by my local bookstore.

Muir's command of writing is good but less so of scene and especially worldbuilding. It's like she thought we'd be impatient with anything extended, or she hadn't come up with it yet. Or maybe none of it will matter since the characters will all have Lycter-level godpowers going forward and much of what's said here will be irrelevant.

The ending felt fresh and unexpected despite my reservations. I have a feeling a lot of that will be undone at some point, but, still, a GOOD undying necromancer Emperor? Okay, let's see how this one goes

The more I think about it, the more holes I poke. It was fine! The pace was great! The ending was rather good and rather bad at the same time! I'll give the benefit of the doubt.

This book is pure sugar. Like playing Call of Duty but more historical. Uhtred is a real life badass. What an actual person with actual legends about them might have been like. And he's also an arrogant, prideful young man. He makes no apologies and destroys his enemies. He fights for himself, his friends, and his name—and nothing else. No cause, no reflection from the viewpoint of modern morality. It feels great.

Only 4 stars because the writing is extremely straightforward. Really it should be a 4.5. The book accomplishes everything it wants to do and no more. It doesn't reach for anything and often ‘tells.' But you know what? That's fine. The Last Kingdom is an epic adventure without those things. It doesn't need to be changed one bit. I just feel weird giving it a perfect score.

I read it on audiobook without the endnotes, so I guess I pissed everyone off. Truth is, I'm too lazy to get my entertainment in any form that isn't force-fed to me. What, you say mimicking the broken pattern of human thought is one of the points? Please. Make me. (or make me, please?) DFW makes a case against it, but he still acknowledges that we do CHOOSE between pressing the brain-stimulating lever and not. ig.

I read a lot of his short works before Infinite Jest, and I'm glad I did. Many of the short ones show an idea related to someone else, or to the real world (in his nonfiction) and rendered in even more intelligible English. Infinite Jest touches on basically everything he'd ever written about, but filtered through Himself, like, at least three times.

Sometimes when I read novels from the 50s or so, they seem really short and self-contained. A prime example of the novel format. Laser-focused, trimmed of all the fat. This book is like that in the sense that it's self-contained (self-absorbed, too). But of course it's extremely long. Everything DFW ever chose to talk about and nothing more. But everything done at A level without fail. Not A+, not A-. It's odd to read a 1000+ page book and feel like it's been wrapped up nicely.

4 stars because DFW never got to write about the (mature) internet age, and I don't know of any artist who can treat the internet as well as DFW did to television. And because I don't have the emotional firepower to believe what he says at the deepest level.

I don't agree that this work is a “masterpiece of tone”—but it is damn close to it. I only give it 4 stars because I was left feeling I wanted something.. grander. A bigger message. It didn't wow me in the way that I expect 5 stars books to. But maybe I'm being naive, because it does utterly succeed at its smaller scope.

My favorite thing about this book is that it focuses on elderly people and I recognize how few stories we tell (and even fewer I consume) are about them. There should be more and this is a good starting place for sure.

Very meh