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| 0316532665
| 9780316532662
| 0316532665
| 3.65
| 3,511
| Apr 05, 2018
| Feb 18, 2020
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it was ok
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The word that comes to mind is 'muddy'. This book felt very much like it would be dynamic and enjoyable, after a few more editing passes. Right now, th The word that comes to mind is 'muddy'. This book felt very much like it would be dynamic and enjoyable, after a few more editing passes. Right now, the plot spends far too much time meandering with the protagonist helplessly carried along by the current. It has the feel of a classic episodic quest, wherein every encounter along the way becomes vital to the resolution, except that it's not executed quite well enough and the conclusion comes off more as an attempt to retroactively justify all that wandering. I wondered, a little under half way through, if I was reading a NaNo novel that just hadn't gotten pared down. I wanted to like Queen Talyien, I really did. But damn, is it hard to like someone who displays so little competence and has so little drive! There were brief flashes where she actually did some problem-solving, and one moment when she set out on the road with a goal where I thought things might be looking up... but those moments ended and she was, each time, left once again powerless and aimless. (Several of these bouts of powerlessness included a threat of impending rape. I made myself a promise early in the book that if she ever actually was raped I'd just DNF it, which thankfully I did not have to do.) But seriously... I really struggled to root for her, and not - as the series title suggests - because she's a bitch. She's not, really, but she's also not much else. The essential conflict of her character sounds great in abstract: the struggle of balancing duty and self-determination, and her duty to her nation vs responsibilities closer to her heart. And yet, for almost half the book she's aimless, seeming utterly unmotivated - not planning to get back to her country, not investigating the assassination attempt that left her stranded, nothing. There's no sense of progress because there's no goal. The one really clear thing about Talyien is that she loves her husband, Rayyel, even though he abandoned her and their son. The more was revealed about him, I just could not fathom why. He's an obnoxious git when first introduced in flashbacks, and he gets worse. (view spoiler)[Their final conversation, in which he reveals that a) he left because Talyien slept with another man ONCE, WHILE RAYYEL WAS ALSO HAVING AN AFFAIR and b) he's 100% willing to kill their son if he's not the boy's genetic father, was infuriating. Seriously, this dude is a piece of shit. The fact that Talyien didn't really try to defend herself, didn't point out the hypocrisy, and didn't absolutely see red when he threatened the life of her child does not help with the above-mentioned 'her character has no goals'. (hide spoiler)] The one thing the creepy antagonist is not wrong about is that Rayyel absolutely is not worth it. By the end of this book, after around 500 pages, I think the plot might actually be heading somewhere with a sense of purpose... but at this point, I don't care anymore about anyone in it. There weren't even any side characters of particular note - except for the one that felt almost designed for mass appeal, complete with self-sacrificing backstory and a bit of 'crook with a heart of gold', but after he conveniently appeared one too many times I stopped caring about him as a character and started resenting him as a deus ex machina. Not for me, the rest of this series. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Oct 10, 2020
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Mar 09, 2020
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Paperback
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| 1453863516
| 9781453863510
| 1453863516
| 3.71
| 83
| Oct 30, 2010
| Oct 30, 2010
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did not like it
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DNF at around 20%, I think? Maybe more, but I've already deleted it. I found this deep in the recesses of my Kindle and thought I'd give it a try to se DNF at around 20%, I think? Maybe more, but I've already deleted it. I found this deep in the recesses of my Kindle and thought I'd give it a try to see why I'd downloaded it. I still don't know, to be honest. There's a lot going on here, but not much of substance, and the writing tends towards info-dumping. Lots of very amateur spelling errors/misplaced homophones, too. Ultimately, I decided that this would be better as an object lesson to my completionist tendencies than a reading experience. ...more |
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0
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not set
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not set
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Mar 19, 2019
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Paperback
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| 0008272115
| 9780008272111
| 0008272115
| 3.86
| 80,018
| Jan 07, 2019
| Jan 10, 2019
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it was ok
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On the one hand: the concept of people's memories being bound into books and wiped from their own minds is fascinating. On the other hand, I only got t On the one hand: the concept of people's memories being bound into books and wiped from their own minds is fascinating. On the other hand, I only got to the interesting parts because of my own dogged determination to DNF only in the most extreme circumstances and, frankly, the first 150 pages of this book bored me out of my damn mind. If the 'sandwich test' is whether the reader finds the book too gripping to put it down to make a sandwich, the beginning of this book failed what I'll call the 'reverse sandwich test'... as in, I was actively looking for other things to do than read it. It took having four days off in a row and putting myself somewhere I had nothing to do but read it for me to actually power through that beginning and, even then, I don't remember much of it because very little actually happened. What did happen was this: I figured out the Big Twist. Between the flap copy and an unusual interaction between two characters, it wasn't too difficult... and then I spent another hundred pages or so waiting for the twist to take place. Reader, I nearly quit. And then the twist happened. And I finished the last 280-odd pages in one night. This is why I find this book difficult to review - once the plot stopped dawdling around in the background, it was engrossing and un-put-downable. Sandwich test? I didn't even get off the couch for fresh tea! That's about as much praise as I can give to any book. I'm not sure that makes it good, per se, and will fully acknowledge that some of what pulled me along is the same gawking tendency that leads drivers to slow down to look at a wreck on the highway, but it makes the book... something. Two stars, then, because it did somewhat reward my perseverance. No more, because it didn't really leave me with much - this book has a good high concept, but doesn't really use it to its full potential IMO, and in particular did not really explore the results of restoring bound memories or the way this magic system could be used to pass on anything positive. (There's a brief mention of 'deathbed bindings' but most of the bindings we see are focused on getting rid of unpleasant memories - but imagine if you could read a book of memories from a lost loved one and truly see through their eyes! That's a beautiful, wonderful thing that doesn't seem to exist in-world.) Also, content warnings for homophobia - including familial rejection which may hit people close to home - and discussion of/allusion to rape, as wealthy men wield bindings in this book like they use NDAs in our world. It gets nauseating. ...more |
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2
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not set
not set
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Jan 06, 2020
not set
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Jul 12, 2018
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Hardcover
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| 1626396132
| 9781626396135
| 1626396132
| 3.77
| 116
| May 17, 2016
| May 17, 2016
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did not like it
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I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. No outside considerations went into this review. I re I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. No outside considerations went into this review. I really, really wanted to enjoy this book, and not just because, as a queer woman, I feel bad on principle for knocking a lesbian romance story. The thing is, I also wanted to enjoy it because the synopsis promised an exciting, tension-filled adventure and that... just isn't what I got. The history between Claire and Sochi should be the heart of it all. The synopsis certainly promises something dynamic between them - a cat-and-mouse game, or a race to the treasure, or bitterness slowly becoming reconciliation. In actuality, though, they don't even see each other for over half the book, and it takes them several more chapters to exchange words; when they do, despite each woman being bitter about the break-up for her own reasons, there's hardly any recrimination. After half a book of build-up, the way they rebuild their relationship is laughably easy. (view spoiler)[Notably, this is because their break-up was engineered by a man angling for Claire's job who wanted her out of Peru - a twist which is incredibly easy to predict after seeing the break-up from both women's points of view. Not... that there's really any reflection on what he did, what kind of a betrayal that is of Claire, his supposed friend. He also never faces consequences; the closest to confrontation between him and Claire/Sochi is over the phone, as he's leaving the country. It's all resolved in the most boring, passive manner possible. (hide spoiler)] I understand the desire to write about relationships between women that aren't angsty, truly. But the danger there for an author is that the relationship ends up falling flat instead. Claire and Sochi have no major ideological disagreements, or really arguments of any kind; the one time one of them gets angry at the other, it's illogical, manufactured to delay their relationship within the book. They are not, as the synopsis, suggests, on different sides of the conflict over looting Peruvian artifacts; everything is misunderstandings, easily resolved and forgiven. There's no negotiation, no tension, no battle of head over heart. The non-romantic plot is much the same: slow in pace, without much draw or a sense of stakes. The antagonist is almost cartoonish - he literally refers to his machinations as his "Plan of Ultimate Retribution". (view spoiler)[This plan, by the way, seems to have already been set in motion by the time he's defeated, but there's absolutely zero mention of whether or not it actually destroyed the Peruvian economy as intended. This seems like something worth addressing? (hide spoiler)] The treasure hunt relies almost entirely on Claire's supernatural visions, not her actual skill - I'm not an archaeologist, but I was left with the feeling that she hadn't really displayed the skills of her profession at all in the book. Everything she needs is (eventually) handed to her. Overall - perhaps the problem here is the misleading blurb, which promises a far more exciting story than what's actually inside. A resounding disappointment. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 20, 2016
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Jul 2016
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Jun 20, 2016
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Paperback
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| 1477823832
| 9781477823835
| 1477823832
| 3.69
| 87,050
| Sep 01, 2014
| Sep 01, 2014
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it was ok
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I feel kind of guilty for rating this book low, as shortly after I finished it one of the first things I did was recommend it to a friend who loved it
I feel kind of guilty for rating this book low, as shortly after I finished it one of the first things I did was recommend it to a friend who loved it, but... my hopes were high after Followed By Frost, and The Paper Magician just didn't measure up to Holmberg's later work. To me, it felt like a mishmash of Howl's Moving Castle and Shades of Milk and Honey - one of which I adore and one of which drove me up the wall. Like those two books, it has an interesting system of magic and some neat worldbuilding; like them, it features a romance between a young, magically talented woman and an older, more experienced male magician. What distinguishes Howl's Moving Castle from the other two, as I recall, is its irreverent tone. Diana Wynne Jones is a deft hand at genre-savvy humor (see The Tough Guide to Fantasyland) and it makes the fairy-tale oddness of the story work. Kowal and Holmberg are both telling stories with a more serious tone - but they're also telling stories which are centered around romance, and in both cases it was the romance where I felt the books really fell flat. The Paper Magician's greatest weakness is that there's very little time spent establishing Ceony's relationship with Emery Thane; there's certainly not enough depth given to it to justify the extraordinary lengths Ceony goes to later for his sake. (It doesn't help that her attraction to him is hinted at repeatedly by the way she hates his cartoonishly evil ex - yes, I get that this happens, but I'm sick and tired of nasty, shallow female rivalry being the trope of choice to show unacknowledged feeeeeeelings~ from Our Heroine.) Conceptually, the... context in which most of the book takes place is an interesting idea. In execution, I found it frustrating, as it dragged the focus of the story away from Ceony and placed it squarely on Thane. Even when he was behaving poorly (to say the least), Ceony barely reflects on it - his behavior is attributed to the aforementioned evil ex, and not really examined. I'm grateful that I did read Followed by Frost first, because I feel like that was a much better showcase of what Holmberg can do - moral complexity, slow character and relationship development, better pacing. She's one that I'll watch, but I think I can safely pass up the rest of this trilogy and just pay attention to her later work. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Mar 25, 2016
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Dec 31, 2015
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1933718552
| 9781933718552
| 1933718552
| 3.99
| 25,800
| Oct 14, 2011
| Oct 11, 2011
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did not like it
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Edit: Downgrading my review to 1 star because, on reflection, I really disliked the gratuitous nature of violence in this book. Note that this is not
Edit: Downgrading my review to 1 star because, on reflection, I really disliked the gratuitous nature of violence in this book. Note that this is not an objection to the inclusion of violence, but to the fact that it often had only the most minimal narrative impact, in moving Alex and Darla from one point to the next. One of the clearest examples of this is the break-in that occurs at the beginning of the book, when Alex is sheltering with his neighbors, which ends with one of those neighbors shooting two of the three attackers. The purpose of this event, in addition to shock/horror, seems mostly to be getting Alex out of the house, but the impact on characterization is minimal. Throughout the book, violence gets a cursory mention after it occurs, but seems to have no long-term implications (except the idea that Alex has 'become an adult' partly due to it) or psychological impacts. This is clearly a writing choice, conscious or unconscious, resulting from presenting all of the book's aggressors as cartoonishly shallow villains. Those three looters could have included someone Alex or his neighbors knew or recognized, to drive home a point about how trauma and crisis had changed people; instead, they are (in short order literally) faceless menaces. It's all so shallow your feet barely get wet. Disclaimer: I read this book with the specific intent of boosting my NetGalley statistics. My access to it on NetGalley has long since expired, so obviously that had no impact on my rating or review, but I feel like I should explain why I picked it up. So: it was that, and it was morbid curiosity only permitted by having forgotten why I took it off my to-read shelf in the first place. A lot of people love this book and this series, which I'm sure is great for them. Personally, it's not my jam; it never has been since I read the synopsis, but with all those rave reviews I thought... why not? Why not give it a chance and see if Mike Mullin's writing can get me past his premise? The writing is the reason I nearly gave up in the first three chapters. Had I not been reading this with the specific intent of giving it a chance, I would have just walked away there, because the beginning of this book is - to put it nicely - clearly amateur. There's an agonizingly detailed infodump on Alex's life, in which the reader is thoroughly informed that he does taekwondo and subjected to an honest-to-god description of grinding in Warcraft. The amazing thing about this is that as the book progresses, the prose does get considerably better; I can only conclude that the beginning of the narrative was... entirely skipped in the editing/polishing process, that any of this stuff made it in. (With the exception of the taekwondo, which the reader hears about at length for the rest of the book, none of this even serves as a Chekov's Gun.) The other big factor here, which underlies some of my other problems with the book as a whole, is quite simply its premise. I'll give Mullin his due: he's clearly done a lot of research into what a Yellowstone eruption would look like and how it would impact the world. Where it falls apart for me is even earlier than that, though, because the idea of the suddenness with which it happens in this book is beyond my ability to suspend disbelief. I can't do it. There's no way I can look at it and either say "Yes, that makes sense," or "That makes no sense, but I'll ignore it for the sake of the story". And here's why: the suddenness of the eruption is the driving factor behind Mullin's projections of human behavior. Everything else about the book falls out because the eruption was sudden. The sense of crisis, the fear of food shortage, the speed at which people turn to violence - it's all founded in the idea of this abrupt change in the world, unpredictable and unavoidable, in the face of which some people band together and others go on a rampage. But because the premise is implausible, the crisis feels manufactured - just as Alex's oh-so-convenient habit of passing out hungry on the doorstep of someone generous feels manufactured. There was a constant feeling of artificiality tugging at my mind as I read - a problem of particular magnitude in, say, some of the scenes of extreme violence. When everything feels manufactured, the volcano comes to look like an excuse for the desolation and violence of the landscape (from a writing perspective), not the cause. I would like to put forward the idea that a similar story could have been written in which the eruption was predicted and an evacuation at least begun (though for shock and drama, the volcano could still erupt before Alex gets out). It'd raise some interesting questions: How do you prepare for a volcanic eruption on this scale? Does the US even have the infrastructure? Would we see, as we did in post-Katrina evacuations, a race/class stratification of who gets out first, who gets helped? Who chooses to stay? And how does it reshape people's reactions if they had believed they would escape, and instead find themselves trapped? There's a fantastic essay I can't track down about The Walking Dead as a fantasy, that essentially by stripping away society the story strips away limitations on its characters. TWD's heroes are all extraordinary, this essay argues, because they may well be the last of the human race. Their every action has great import, and their survival (at any cost) is paramount. This book falls into that same trap, particularly near the end: "During the trip, I was free. In Cedar Falls or here, I'm just somebody's kid. In between, I was Alex. I decided where I slept and when, who I talked to and who I avoided. Sure, the ash and psychotic killers weren't fun, but I've only been here one day, and already I miss that feeling of freedom, of being my own man." The worst part of this is that the fantasy of post-apocalyptic freedom from society is, here, overriding the fact that Alex and Darla should be carrying some deep, deep, complicated trauma, which they never show any sign of. Plausibility falls by the wayside: the book in a nutshell. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Dec 15, 2015
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Dec 19, 2015
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0441757227
| 9780441757220
| 0441757227
| 3.57
| 946
| Jun 01, 1991
| Jan 01, 1991
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it was ok
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I gave this book a shot on the word of an Alaskan friend who's a fan of Stabenow's work - though I think she likes the mysteries, not this stuff. Mayb
I gave this book a shot on the word of an Alaskan friend who's a fan of Stabenow's work - though I think she likes the mysteries, not this stuff. Maybe those are better. I certainly hope so, because this book just wavers back and forth between 'mediocre' and 'terrible', and even for a first novel it strikes me as weak. The one strength of the novel - despite Stabenow's introduction explaining that she was worried most about getting it wrong - is actually the scientific research that went into it; even when I couldn't follow it all, and even though it was often dished out in infodumps, it was clear that she'd put a lot of time and energy into getting the tech right, or at least logical. It is also abundantly clear that she didn't want to leave much of that out of the reader's sight - hence the infodumps. This book's primary writing flaw is one of 'too much of a good thing': in this case, straightforwardness. Too many infodumps on tech or people; characters who are similarly straightforward and uncomplicated, as nuanced as cardboard cutouts. Stabenow makes an effort to have a diverse cast, which is nice, but it goes little further than food/accent/looks. There is little sense of 'culture' to this book except for Star's - which is, of course, the secular Alaskan Libertarian-ness with which she (and at a guess, Stabenow) was raised. Then there's the 'romance'. Honestly, this is also a problem with Star's character - in that the 'romance' arc undercuts her characterization at critical points. For someone brusque, professional, in control and strict, she never chastises her love interest (who is also her employee) for his forward behavior when they've only known each other for days. He brazenly flirts with her and touches her, and she barely even responds, let alone point out how unprofessional his behavior is. Whether it's welcome is one thing - Star's character as it's established doesn't seem to be one that would permit this guy's behavior, and yet she does. In fact, she tolerates his repeated violations of her rules and orders, and even praises him for some of them. His behavior, to her, is above reproach. To me, as a reader, it was completely out of line. He picked her up and shook her when she criticized him for making a rash decision. What the fuck? (view spoiler)[and that's not even getting into Star letting a 10 year-old come with her into a war zone and then letting same 10 year-old go gallivanting off with a previously unknown alien race without even telling her parents first, and then utterly failing to be sympathetic to the loss those parents feel afterwards. Did I mention the 10 year-old is Star's niece? (hide spoiler)] I'm guessing by the fact that this book 'sank without a trace' according to the author bio (what a terrible decision to include that in end of the book in question) that this isn't representative of Stabenow's entire body of work, but damn if it doesn't make me less inclined to find out any time soon. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 24, 2015
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Jan 24, 2015
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Paperback
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| B00EFBE1R8
| 4.05
| 19
| Aug 08, 2013
| Aug 08, 2013
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it was ok
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This book doesn't know what it is. Is it a story about a woman dealing with the idea that her entire family, and indeed her entire society, has been w
This book doesn't know what it is. Is it a story about a woman dealing with the idea that her entire family, and indeed her entire society, has been wiped out by a nuclear holocaust? Is it a story about a man trying to make up for past misdeeds and right wrongs against him? Is it about the two of them coming together? Or is it just the opening sally to a larger series spanning multiple planets? WHO EVEN KNOWS? The biggest absence I felt in this book was, distinctly, Annie's reaction to the idea of everything she knew having been destroyed. Oh, sure, she cried herself to sleep sometimes (a lot, to the point where the phrase got annoying - and while I'm at it, so did the word 'sneer'), but there was never really any investigation of her emotions. The deepest insight we got into her reaction was at the beginning of the book, when she's still on Earth and packing to leave the city; but once she reaches Tahldia, she seems to throw herself into her new world and its conflicts without much thought for what she's just gone through. It doesn't even read like denial, either, because she does think of it briefly from time to time, but never in a way that conveys pain, shock, disbelief, or really any emotional response. As for Tahldia, which quickly overtook everything reminiscent of Earth: all I can really say is 'meh'. It's framed as something Annie adapts for an RPG, and it pretty much reads like standard RPG fare. There's elves, dwarves, dragons, gryphons, demons, mages, and human kingdoms - even magic crystals! The only concept that felt more creative was the idea of warlocks, which a) wasn't explored very thoroughly, likely because this was obviously set up for a sequel and b) wound up, when more information was revealed, being extremely overpowered. What I will say in this book's favor is this: it's an easy read, and fairly engaging. I made it through the whole thing, and if it had been longer (and it probably would have been more satisfying if so) I'd have certainly read more. However, since finishing it I've had a chance to look back, and I don't think I care enough to pick up a sequel. This was a one-time-only thing. ...more |
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1
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not set
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Dec 22, 2014
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Jan 05, 2015
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Kindle Edition
| ||||||||||||||||
| 0593072693
| 9780593072691
| 0593072693
| 3.99
| 96,485
| Jul 08, 2014
| Jul 17, 2014
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liked it
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I've spent about half the day trying to figure out what to say about this book, and I'm still not sure. Everyone on my feed rapidly fell into either '
I've spent about half the day trying to figure out what to say about this book, and I'm still not sure. Everyone on my feed rapidly fell into either 'loved it' or 'hated it', but I find myself in this awkward in-between state. There were a lot of things in this book that frustrated me, a lot of first-author flaws... but there was a lot that was compelling, interesting, and well-developed too. So: a nice, middling three stars it is. There is one factor which I think significantly impacted my reading of this book compared to others', and that's that I knew the background of the setting going in. Honestly, that was the most intriguing aspect of the book for me - the idea of a post-modern society somehow interacting with magical things and reverting to an earlier state of a society has a lot of potential. Knowing that - expecting it - meant that I was hunting for references to our present day as Easter Eggs, rather than being thrown out of the story by their unexpected inclusion. I will grant, though, that especially going in aware of what the Crossing was, I was disappointed that very little was revealed in the actual book. What I knew going in was basically what I knew coming out. There's obviously a lot more here to tell (and several hints dropped that discovering more will be part of Kelsea's story). As for the plot... this is where a lot of my internal conflict comes in. This book clearly has the pacing of a first novel: there's a huge chunk of it in which goals are vague, information is withheld from Kelsea (and by extension, from the reader), and it feels like very little progress is being made. In the broader context of a series this makes sense, but it makes the reading experience early on somewhat frustrating. Once goals and antagonists are more clearly defined the pacing picks up significantly, but this doesn't happen until the last third or so of the book, at which point the story gets significantly stronger. Information being withheld from Kelsea is a component of a larger problem, and by far the thing that I found most frustrating: the constant disrespect of people around her, especially her own guard, for Kelsea herself. I find myself of two minds here, too: on the one hand, there are some possible reasons for their behavior and some narrative reasoning behind the choice; on the other hand, it is frustrating to read both because Kelsea is the reader's window onto the story, and because she is being established by the chapter-heading epigraphs as a legendary figure. It's difficult to reconcile this idea of 'The Glynn Queen' posited by these quotes with the girl whose own guards refuse to tell her about recent events in the kingdom she's about to rule. (view spoiler)[This is a huge part of why I never grew attached to Lazarus/Mace: he repeatedly and flatly told Kelsea that he would not obey her authority, even long after she started to gain the respect of others. Moreover, his arguments were often completely illogical - what does it mean for someone to claim 'being a Queen's Guard' to his Queen as a reason he won't obey her orders? He also often directly impedes her development/assumption of her authority by cutting her feet out from under her, as when he confiscated her uncle's belongings and then, when Kelsea objected to her name being used while she was unconscious: "Still, it's my name. Maybe you could wait for me to wake up next time." Mace doesn't allow her control, unless he already has the situation in line to limit her options and/or do whatever he wanted in the first place. She tries to take authority and responsibility for actions done in her name, and he cows her back into 'place'. This is, moreover, repeated - especially notable when he refuses to tell her about 'details' in how the Guard defends her life, with the strong implication that this involves killing people. There's an argument to be made here that this is part of a character arc for both Mace and Kelsea - that he is in the process of learning to respect her and that, until her show at the pass at the end, she hasn't 'earned' that respect. However, this still requires Mace to be incredibly resistant to growth, which doesn't exactly make him easy to like. (hide spoiler)] The other aspect of this is that withholding information can have dramatic effect, but it can also backfire when the reader feels like the information has no good in-world reason to be withheld, but is simply done for dramatic effect. Such was the case here, especially for the early portions of the book. It makes no sense for Kelsea to be uninformed about the state of her kingdom... except to preserve for the reader the shock factor of their arrival in New London. I feel like I should address the aspects of Kelsea's personality that many readers found frustrating, but honestly there's little I can say. I was bothered by a lot of them as well (especially her fixation on appearances), but... by the end of the book, I feel that she's grown and matured so significantly that I can no longer hold that against her. In light of that final segment of the book, it seems more and more likely that her more frustrating character traits are intentional in order to give her room for growth. The sequel is where this will play out, but I remain optimistic. Kelsea's politics, though - that bothered me. Not for what they were, as I agreed with her ideologically, but for how out of place they felt in the setting and the problems she faces. She had a political cast I've seen a lot from people in our age group on Tumblr, which was jarring in this context. One thing that will, I think, draw YA readers to this book: there's no love triangle for once! There are, in fact, no clear love interests at all. (view spoiler)[Personally, I'm rooting for Pen - there were some subtle tender gestures near the end that made me think he might be having ~feeeeeelings~. The obvious choice is the Fetch, but a) he's basically a magic zombie and b) I find it hard to root for a potential LI whose first conversation with the protagonist included him saying she was too unattractive for him to have raped her. His smile widened. "But you needn't worry, girl. You're too plain for my tastes." Nah, no thanks. (hide spoiler)] The lack of romance subplot really improves the book as a whole: it keeps the focus on Kelsea and external conflicts, and it makes a nice break from the formulaic norm of much YA. Would I recommend it? I'm honestly not sure. For a lot of people, clearly, this has been a frustrating and unpleasant reading experience; for others it's been wonderful. I can see where both sides are coming from, and I don't think this is a book that could ever be blanket-recced. For people who are on the fence: I suggest waiting until reviews start coming for the sequel. The first book has potential; the sequel is where we'll see how well Johansen builds on it. I'm looking forward to doing so. ...more |
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1
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not set
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Feb 24, 2015
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Jul 11, 2014
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Hardcover
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| 140278404X
| 9781402784040
| 140278404X
| 4.30
| 41,029
| Jun 07, 2011
| Jun 07, 2011
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did not like it
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Edit: 9/27/2014 Retroactively reducing my ratings for these books because when I first read them I did not notice the racism/cultural appropriation. (I Edit: 9/27/2014 Retroactively reducing my ratings for these books because when I first read them I did not notice the racism/cultural appropriation. (I thought I'd take a leaf out of Jillian's book and load up with tags. I love the way her shelves are basically a miniature review before you even reach the text.) Okay, Colleen Houck, you win. I am actually glad I read this book. There, I admit it. After the torturous struggle that was the first one, I persevered into this because I already owned it and to my surprise, I enjoyed myself. I still won't read the third because I've heard the drama gets even worse and really, my delicate system cannot handle that shit. But props, Ms. Houck. You've won me over. When you start your next series, I will be waiting, because I think you actually have what it takes to be a good writer. I'm not sure you are one yet, but you can be. Keep working. There are a lot of things here that I liked. The pacing is still kind of shit, but at least it's slightly improved. The writing is technically a lot more readable. In Tiger's Curse I would occasionally hit pages so bad that I could not finish them and had to set the book aside for the day. There were none of them here. Oh, and Kelsey is actually turning into kind of a badass, which was a pleasant surprise. No more of this given-a-divine-weapon-but-it's-really-for-the-guy nonsense. She is blowing shit up and shooting down giant metal birds and yeah, that was FUN. As for Ren and Kishan - their rivalry and all the mushy bullshit with Ren was annoying as hell and gave me major MAJOR Twilight flashbacks, but Kishan's development was about 90% good here and I like him considerably more now than I did before when he was just kind of a creeper. Now, bad things: needless drama. Strange pacing (chapters spent on Kelsey juggling three boyfriends because... because I have no fucking idea why she didn't just dump at least one of them who she was obviously not interested in - but then the whole central event of the big quest goes by in one chapter despite it consisting of four separate 'tests'). 10% sloppy Kishan characterization, in the bit where all his guilt about his past is basically erased by magical ravens who grant him the understanding he needed to forgive himself. Kelsey, despite blowing shit up all the time, still not being able to stand up to people and just speak her mind (though credit where credit is due - she may grow into this over time and it could be part of an arc). Kelsey-without-Ren sounding so much like New-Moon-Bella that I could honestly see Bella saying and thinking and doing the same things, and that is not a compliment. The use of the phrase 'alligator tears' - that means fake, Ms. Houck, not large. Absurd glorification of Ren's appearance. Unnecessary and sloppy 'look at me I did my research' infodumps that have nothing to do with the story. Kishan continually kissing Kelsey when she can't resist him and generally being an ass way too often until he finally grows up a bit more at the end. The villain, Lokesh ("Lokesh had the conniving persona of Emperor Palpatine mixed with the sadistic cruelty of Hannibal Lecter. He craved power at any price, like Lord Voldemort, and he displayed the pitiless brutality of Ming the Merciless who, like him, had killed his own daughter." Are you KIDDING me? Does it get more over the top?). The way the climactic rescue scene was confusing and hard to follow and explained afterwards for no good reason. The descriptions of obscene wealth in a country plagued by poverty. Looking at that, it seems like the bad far outweighs the good, but here's the thing: the bad were mostly small things, things I have faith that Houck can improve in as an author. Now, while I will not be continuing with this series (Jillian gave the third book two stars and it was her glowing review of the first that convinced me to make them a priority in the first place) I'm content with having read it to this point. Net gain, I think. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 06, 2012
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Jan 12, 2012
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Jan 06, 2012
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Hardcover
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| 0007174969
| 9780007174966
| 0007174969
| 3.78
| 6,705
| Mar 21, 2012
| May 15, 2012
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liked it
|
The first time anyone recommended a Garth Nix book to me, I was in sixth grade. Due to a misunderstanding about its subject, I didn't read Sabriel unt
The first time anyone recommended a Garth Nix book to me, I was in sixth grade. Due to a misunderstanding about its subject, I didn't read Sabriel until a year later - and immediately fell in love with the characters and the worldbuilding, and devoured the rest of the series as fast as possible. Since then, though I haven't read all of his works, he's become one of the authors to whom I have a great loyalty. It is therefore safe to say - if not an understatement - that I had high expectations going into this book. It was... not bad. From a debut author, or even many other established writers, it'd even be good! But from Garth Nix? I expected more. That's not to say that this is a bad book, or a boring read - it's neither. I sped through it, propelled both by Nix's prose and the mysteries of the plot. I enjoyed the worldbuilding, as usual; there's a real sense of expansiveness here, the vastness of space and the weight of age. By and large, the characters are interesting and nuanced. So why three stars? First, and less important, is Raine. From the dustjacket description, she's presented as if she'll be a major character - but she doesn't even show up until over halfway through the book, and her relationship with Khmeri is surprisingly without depth. (This turns out to be a big problem as this relationship is supposed to be a large part of why he makes some dramatic decisions near the end of the book - something that's rather hard to buy into given how little pagetime she/their relationship actually has.) It's also strange to me to see such a shallowly written female character from Garth Nix. Obviously a secondary character is harder to characterize than a primary protagonist like Lirael and Sabriel, but Suzy Blue of Keys to the Kingdom is just as secondary as Raine and feels much more vivid and interesting. The second, and more critical aspect that caused me to knock off stars here, is pacing. The dust jacket makes it sound like Khmeri's 'secret mission' is the inciting incident - in fact, the book is half autobiography of his early life. Now, this can easily be laid at the feet of the marketing department, but the disappointing ending cannot. The book has a long build-up and an abrupt resolution, a particularly frustrating combination. (view spoiler)[This isn't helped by the fact that the resolution doesn't feel like it actually resolves the main problem, IE the corruption of the Empire as an entity or the untenability of its structure. This thing's going to collapse in a few generations, and then most of the common people will be completely screwed over - but the readers are supposed to be content because Khmeri will live out his life like a normal person? It seems to me that he could have done a lot more good had he kept his Princely abilities and gifts - could have done something to protect people in the long term, instead of ensuring just his own happiness. (hide spoiler)] There were a lot of little details that I liked - the inclusion of female Princes (referred to by the same title, also a nice touch) and the implication of queer couples (okay maybe that was me reading too much into things but I can hope). There were also some little details that made me cringe - most notably everything to do with the courtesans. (view spoiler)[though thankfully Khmeri realized it would be a very bad idea to treat Raine the way he treated them. still, that was creepy as hell even briefly mentioned. (hide spoiler)] All in all it was just a... resoundingly average book for me. I'm a lot more disappointed with it than I would normally be with that feeling because it's Nix, but it wasn't a particularly terrible reading experience - it just didn't meet my expectations for his work. ...more |
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1
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not set
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Jul 2013
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Nov 08, 2011
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Hardcover
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| 4.18
| 1,745,036
| Aug 07, 2012
| Aug 07, 2012
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did not like it
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Welp, this Popular YA Series sure isn't for me. And when I say 'isn't for me' I mean 'sometimes I was reading this and it was so painfully, agonizingl
Welp, this Popular YA Series sure isn't for me. And when I say 'isn't for me' I mean 'sometimes I was reading this and it was so painfully, agonizingly mediocre that I forgot why I expend the effort to read anything'. At least bad books are identifiable as outliers; this was just... bland. It was like taking a big bite of cardboard and chewing and chewing until you felt like you were going to be eating cardboard forever and what was the POINT anyway. The thing that drives me craziest, though, is that there's a good story here. It's just not Celaena's. 1. Characters Celaena Sardothien (not her real name) is our protagonist and principal viewpoint character. She's eighteen years old, of which the last one was spent in a hard labor camp, and somehow at the age of seventeen became the most renowned assassin in the land. This is an assertion that makes me leery of her as a character, because quite frankly that's not how expertise works, especially with regards to something that requires a great variety of skills. Early on in the book I was optimistic that she would demonstrate these skills and/or reveal more about her training, and that her status as 'Adarlan's Assassin' would make sense. This was not to be. More on the lack of Celaena being proficient later. There was one other quality that was established quickly and made me care for her far less than I might have: girl hate, with a side of hypocrisy. "I hate women like that. They're so desperate for the attention of men that they'd willingly betray and harm members of their own sex." Now, character flaws are a good thing! AND YET. In a book where there are precisely three female characters who get pagetime, and where one of them is largely cast as a shallow social climber (and hosts of other court ladies get written off as such), this stops being Celaena's character flaw and starts being a book flaw. It's not Celaena who treats women as untrustworthy and shallow, it's the text. Moreover, she doesn't show signs of growing out of it: she comes to trust Nehemia, but that doesn't change her mind regarding other women. Making an exception for one person isn't character growth. Also, the specific dislike directed towards girls with power of their own just makes me gag. But surely Celaena has other character traits beyond internalized misogyny and an unfounded reputation! She... likes books! This does literally nothing for her character and frankly, I'm sick and tired of authors just shoehorning 'bookishness' in without depth. She has conversations with Dorian and Chaol about books, which to my eternal frustration are skipped over. We barely even get titles! Do they discuss philosophy - the morality of killing in different circumstances, perhaps? What about history, or scholarly debates on the fall of different empires? Hell, even a conversation about bawdy romance novels would have fleshed out all the characters involved more than 'he named a few title and the conversation stretched on for hours'. It's all window dressing. This is page time which could have been spent on the book's plot. And speaking of things that are told rather than shown: Celaena's motivations. What are they, anyway? Initially her thoughts are all about escape, generally through violent means. Freedom is the goal that she's willing to kill for, either in the actual escape attempt or as the King's Champion... but when it's offered to her practically on a silver platter, she refuses it. This despite the fact that other competitors for the title of Champion are being systematically disemboweled. AND SPEAKING OF THAT. "Just know that there's not a moment that goes by when I don't wonder what it will be like to kill for him - the man who destroyed everything that I loved!" She's the main POV character. Before this line, she thinks about this in passing maybe two or three times. If this is supposed to be her internal conflict, why did the audience never get to actually see it? The two male points of the love triangle - because of course there's a love triangle - are the Crown Prince, Dorian, and the Captain of the Guard, Chaol. Of the two, I have less to say about Chaol: he was bland and didn't really develop (except developing feeeeeeeeeeeeeelings for Celaena), but he wasn't well the utter mess that Dorian was. Both dudes are clearly here to fall in love with Celaena more than anything else, so that's a problem from the start, but dang, Dorian, what the hell. How is this guy alive, actually; I'm genuinely curious. He's the son and heir of a hated tyrant, which makes him a very logical target for assassins and rebels, and yet he brushes off a man being killed and disemboweled as 'probably just a drunken brawl'. Twice. He says this twice. This is someone who is literally too stupid to survive in his position. Unfortunately he doesn't realize this, because we get this gem: "I'm not married because I can't stomach the idea of marrying a woman inferior to me in mind and spirit. It would mean the death of my soul." See. The thing about this. Is that Dorian never actually interacts voluntarily with any women other than Celaena, Nehemia, and his mother. I'm not surprised he considers the court women 'inferior in mind and spirit', because he doesn't fucking bother to talk to them. (By the way, see above re: this book has a woman problem.) He doesn't try to see them as people at all, though it's strongly implied he may just sleep with them anyway. And about that. Dorian is apparently incapable of understanding boundaries. There is an absolutely agonizing scene, which I suspect is meant to be cute/funny, when Celaena is dealing with menstrual cramps and he intrudes on her. She repeatedly tells him to go away, in no uncertain terms, and his response? Is to insist that she's not really in pain and is doing it for attention, and that this ploy will end with them sleeping together. This is, at best, the behavior of a selfish child who doesn't understand that other human beings have needs. At worst, it's the behavior of a man who doesn't listen to a woman's 'no'. That the woman in this case could supposedly kill him doesn't matter; if he doesn't listen to her words, he doesn't respect her. And if he doesn't respect her, they're not a healthy couple at all. There is, however, one SHINING LIGHT in the darkness of this pathetic cast, and that is Princess Nehemia. My kingdom, if I had one, for this to be rewritten as her story. She is demonstrably clever, cunning, acerbic, and brave; she's collaborating with rebels against the very man whose castle she's inside, and she knows far, far more than she's telling. Nehemia has a cause, Nehemia has motivations, and scenes with her in them were by far the best of the book. Her introduction, in which she and Celaena made fun of the glass castle in a language no one else knew, was honestly Celaena's best scene. Unfortunately, I already know Book 2 spoilers. (view spoiler)[And I am FURIOUS. Kill off the black princess because of a man's grudge? And not even a grudge against her, but against the main character? What is she, Celaena's accessory? She can't be a pet, because the fucking dog gets to live longer. Bad enough that she dies in the second book, but so much worse that it doesn't actually have anything to do with her. She's championing a goddamn insurgency, for goodness sake; surely there are other people who want her dead for herself! There's such a long tradition of characters of color existing only to serve white characters/white character arcs - a tradition, by the way, into which Nehemia sadly falls in the first book, what with spending her time behind the scenes using forbidden magic to keep the white girl alive - that killing her off to punish Celaena is just the arsenic cherry on top of the frosted shitcake. Especially because she should have carried the story in the first place. (hide spoiler)] And then there's Kaltain. Who... despite the way she was initially cast, as a shallow social climber, actually wound up my second favorite character. Again, we see a person with goals, but also with a pretty serious weakness (view spoiler)[in the form of opiate addiction, which I was not expecting (hide spoiler)]. She's a girl with simple, self-interested goals - she wants the protection of rank, which I actually found pretty sympathetic. She's also getting played by much scarier people, which is why I could never actually hate her. Kaltain wants safety, and doesn't understand the risk surrounding her because she pursues her goal too single-mindedly. That's interesting to me. Other characters include the EEEEEVIL King, his unpleasant and sexually forward hench-duke, and the hench-duke's champion who is creatively named... Cain. That one was real subtle. But honestly, while there was a moment which might have hinted at depth in Cain, none of them moved beyond shallow characterization. As well rubber-stamp their foreheads with 'BAD' and go on. 2. Plot What plot. No, I'm serious: the actual plot didn't show its face until 47% of the way through the Kindle book (and given that that includes a preview of the sequel, it's even further through the actual book). Before that we get a Hunger Games-esque Champion competition which is glossed over more often than not. This is all there is to string narrative tension on for half the book (okay, except for the murders, but Chaol is the only one who gets worked up about that). Moreover, Celaena has been instructed to pretend to be mediocre, so even the few tests we do see rarely have any tension. They're just endless "she could have kicked everyone's asses, but didn't" which, hoo boy, doesn't do anything for that whole problem where Celaena's skills are all talk, no action. The lack of tension around the competition is linked to something else that I found frustrating, which was the way that Celaena's time at the prison camp was handled. Or rather... not. Not handled. At all. Aside from one cliche nightmare sequence and a bit of glancing at slaves and feeling sympathy, Celaena shows no signs of having being forced to work hard labor for a year. Given that this is a place where people apparently don't tend to survive a few months, is it unreasonable to expect that she show some evidence of the trauma she's been in? Again: the reader is inside her head for most of the book, but we never see how Endovier changed her. She is, apparently, as cocksure and confident as she was before her arrest. Now, I understand the desire to have a protagonist who can dish out some smack-talk, but there's an easy way to solve this: have that confidence be a projection, and let Celaena's inner perspective show the impacts of what she's gone through. It'd make her a lot more complex as a character, and really color her interactions with the other members of the cast. And since her consolation prize if she loses the competition is to go back to the labor camp, it'd give the tests a lot more weight, especially early on when she's in poorer physical shape and therefore at more risk of losing. The actual plot is... interesting. Unsurprisingly, it would have benefited from being introduced earlier, in no small part because it completely reshapes the worldbuilding as the reader understands it. This makes some things more forgivable ((view spoiler)[for instance, the clear Mary/Jesus parallels at the Christmas-analogue, and the fact that the goddess of the hunt is called, I SHIT YOU NOT, DEANNA. (hide spoiler)]), but is also an abrupt change to drop that far into the story and difficult to reconcile. When everything comes to a head, it's an avalanche, and unfortunately one which actually back-seats Celaena herself. Without spoilers: she would not have survived the end of this book without the direct and powerful intervention of several other people. This could be a statement about the power of friendship, except that Celaena hasn't done jack shit for the rest of the book, so it ends up just being another instance of her not accomplishing things everyone in the book has insisted she's capable of. 3. Miscellaneous I'm running out of characters here so let's wrap this up with some bullet points: - The fixation on Celaena's physical appearance is painful to read. There's an entire paragraph at the beginning about what color her eyes are. I'm only grateful they're not described as 'shining orbs'. - I haven't studied that much fencing, but even I know that the fencing in this book is bad. You don't hold blades against one another, you retreat and disengage, especially if you're physically smaller. And the phrase 'deflected the blow and parried' may be an editing error, but it made me cringe. Parrying is deflecting the blow. - I don't believe for a second that Nehemia needed to be shown basic fencing footwork by Dorian, and I'm surprised Celaena did. - Yeah, yeah, magic has been 'gone from the land' for a while. But Celaena believes in it enough to respect the magic forest they ride through from Endovier, so why doesn't she ever even consider that the murders in the palace are also supernatural until it smacks her in the face? - Everyone remarks on this but: Celaena adjusts her door hinges so they creak loudly. AND THEN DORIAN AND CHAOL SNEAK UP ON HER REPEATEDLY. The first time is right after we're told no one would be able to sneak up on her. Dorian pulls this off drunk at another instance. Chaol once winces at the creaking noise, but manages to approach Celaena with her still asleep - she wakes up at his footsteps, but not at her own noise trap. Honestly. What kind of assassin is this girl? Because the picture I'm getting is not of a competent one. - Some gross, awkwardly thrown in fetishization of virginity: He was fairly certain she was a virgin, but did Dorian know it? It probably made him more interested. That sound you're hearing is me gagging in the background. Add to this that she has a ~tragic lost lover and her talking about him is made into bonding between her and Dorian and. ugh. The romance in this book is so painful to me. - Professional assassin never once considers that a bag of candy left in her rooms might be poisoned. Professional assassin stuffs her face without knowing where the food came from. Professional assassin is lucky she got betrayed to the king instead of just flat-out killed before this book started. (view spoiler)[- She goes from 0 to 60 in suspecting Nehemia of murder without even thinking it through. Really, Celaena, they're killing competitors - who stands to gain from the competition? Not Nehemia. (hide spoiler)] And finally: "I name you Elentiya, 'Spirit That Could Not Be Broken'." [image] 4. The Takeaway This was, to say the least, not my cup of tea. Butttttt a lot of the ways in which it was weak are things I know to be amateur writer problems. Consensus among reviews I've read seems to be that the second book is much better, which is promising. However, because of the spoiler I already know for that book, I have less than zero interest in reading it, or the rest of the series. I may give Maas another chance in the future. If so, though, it'll only be after she's wrapped up this series and I've read reviews assessing how she did wrapping up the entire narrative. (This means no A Court of Thorns and Roses for me.) If the consensus on the end of this series is good and her next project sounds interesting, it'll be worth my time. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jul 10, 2015
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Jan 07, 2011
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Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||||
| 0976422603
| 9780976422600
| 0976422603
| 3.66
| 2,811
| Apr 11, 2005
| Jan 01, 2005
|
liked it
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This is one of those books that I downloaded several years ago when I first got my Kindle, which then languished there as I persisted in just... not u
This is one of those books that I downloaded several years ago when I first got my Kindle, which then languished there as I persisted in just... not using it, and which I come to now with little memory of what interested me at the time. At a guess - it was free or cheap in the Fantasy Ebooks section. That's a lot of what motivated me at the time. As gambles go, this was... a decent one. The thing is that this book is fairly straightforward and predictable for most of its length, right up until the cut-off cliffhanger ending which is building towards a series that... may never be finished, if the lack of movement since 2009 is any indication. I'm not going to give away any spoilers, but I will say that most of the major plot twists are evident from a great distance. To Robert Fanney's credit, though, as the story hits its stride this becomes less and less of a problem. Undeniably, this book could have used more rounds of revision and polish (and maturation), but what he's attempting to do with the characters of Luthiel and the Vyrl is well-intentioned and shows great promise. I particularly liked the way Luthiel's identity and sense of self-worth was handled, as in the following: "She has so much more to lose than I." Essentially, her internal conflict comes from not believing that she has value, and what makes her a particularly admirable character is that she is dead-set on using whatever she has to offer to help others she cares about. While it's not always handled gracefully in writing ('show, don't tell' is a maxim I'm particularly fond of for emotional states, and which this book could use more of), it comes through strongly and makes her likeable to read about and root for. The worldbuilding is... there are seeds of interesting ideas (the mists of the Vale changing those too long exposed to them, for instance) but much of it feels derivative, close cousin to every other fantasy elf world, with all the elements that have become commonplace thanks to Tolkien imitators and D&D-style tabletop games. (forest-dwelling elves? giant spiders? isolationist wizards? werewolves, and a powerful group of enemies that could easily be Ringwraiths but that they speak? check, check, check, check, and check.) There's another step away that needs to be taken to make this setting stand out, and it's not there yet. After reaching the end of the book, I thought I might want to continue the series, but as I was unable to track down news of anything more recent than 2009, it's probably not worth the effort. I do think Fanney has the framework of ideas/execution to become a more polished writer, but that may not be where his life has taken him in the time since writing the first two books of this series. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Aug 26, 2015
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Jan 05, 2011
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1599901684
| 9781599901688
| 1599901684
| 3.44
| 6,238
| Mar 04, 2014
| Mar 04, 2014
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did not like it
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Like many people who picked up this book, I love Shannon Hale's other work. Her Bayern series, in particular, does a fabulous job of blending fairy ta
Like many people who picked up this book, I love Shannon Hale's other work. Her Bayern series, in particular, does a fabulous job of blending fairy tales with complexity and realism (which is to say, people who live through the kind of traumatic stuff that happens in fairy tales actually have to deal with trauma and recovery). I'll hold Enna Burning up as an example of splendid characterization any day. I'd seen the bad reviews of this - I knew it was probably going to let it down. But I love Shannon Hale, dammit, so I checked it out anyway. And this... this is not the Shannon Hale I know and love. Other reviewers have pointed out that she had five books out in 2014, so that could well be a factor; this certainly does read as dashed off and under-polished, and that kind of deadline pressure would definitely contribute. The sense that I had, though, was that the biggest problem Dangerous had was how far it was from Hale's other work. Where her prior successes have been fairy tale adaptations and fantasy, this is an original sci-fi concept. Where her characters have been courtly and medieval, here she's dealing with modern teens. And where many of her most interesting conflicts have been internal, here most of the conflict is external. It left me with the feeling that she was trying to branch out, but not really willing to let go of the conventions of her previous books. (Case in point: writing a character who swears a ludicrous amount, and then compounding the absurdity of it by replacing his curses with 'bleep'. In the text. I wish I was kidding.) The fact is that to make this genre shift you have to jump with both feet, not just stick your toe in a little bit. This was the sticking the toe in thing. What comes out is a chaotic mess. There is, quite frankly, way too much going on in this plot - between three and four antagonists at any given time; mysteries that are dropped and picked up again with little rhyme or reason; bursts of vaguely described action interspersed with time-skips of weeks or months. The supporting cast are a collection of cardboard cutouts with sketchy defining traits, none of whom get much chance to develop or reveal depth. The only character aside from Maisie who gets a lot of focal time is Wilder, and let's be real here: the boy's a tool. Even when he comes clean about everything, he's still a tool. Even before all the action and drama, he's a tool. ("Besides the foxy Latina on my right," really??? Really? This is supposed to be a love interest? and then later - "I can't help myself..." as they're making out and he reaches for her pants. Yeah, real gem of a boy here. (view spoiler)[And of course, he also gassed her family home, nearly killing her parents. There's that little thing, which apparently??? is forgivable??? What the hell is going on here? (hide spoiler)]) There's just... there's really nothing to recommend this book, in the end. The pacing is bad, chapters too short and cutting off oddly. The characters are flat and dull. The concepts could have been interesting had they been thoroughly explored, but by the time the alien technology is explained the book is almost over. New plots and conflicts duck in and out with no rhyme or reason, and then are magically resolved at the end with even less logic. Character death or injury means nothing, because the characters had no real weight to them. A resounding disappointment. I can only hope Hale's Princess Academy sequels are more up to her usual standard of quality, and that this was an aberration. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 10, 2016
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Oct 03, 2010
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0345461622
| 9780345461629
| 0345461622
| 4.23
| 50,896
| Mar 02, 2004
| Mar 02, 2005
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liked it
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This book (and its sequel) were Christmas gifts I got from my dad, who'd listened to them as audiobooks on his commute to work. Much as I love my dad,
This book (and its sequel) were Christmas gifts I got from my dad, who'd listened to them as audiobooks on his commute to work. Much as I love my dad, he's not quite as picky about media as I am, so I kind of knew going in that there would be parts of this that bothered me. And because the description of the book makes it clear that it's hard SF, it was pretty likely what those parts would be: Hard SF, in my experience, tends to be bad at everything that soft SF does well: character psychology, gender, variations in social structure; in short, the human side of the human/technology pairing. At the end of the day, that's why I prefer reading soft SF. After all, what technology will be 'futuristic' changes rapidly nowadays, but how human society adjusts to different social pressures isn't time-limited. Hard SF has an expiration ate, and relies on not having met it to be innovative. To my surprise and then disappointment, this book does have some 'soft' elements - but none of them are really explored to their full potential. People are living hundreds of years thanks to regenerative procedures! They back their memories up technologically and can even be restored from death! Criminals will literally erase the crimes they commit from their memories so their brains can't be searched! A vast network of worlds connected by wormholes! And with all of this Hamilton does... virtually nothing. The society of the Commonwealth is American capitalism writ large across the stars, complete with dynastic families and conniving between politicians and corporations. Very little has changed or developed in the hundreds of years of its existence; if anything, the same old systems have become more entrenched. Sexism, homophobia, transphobia; they're all alive and well (though some, I suspect, more because Hamilton didn't bother to think about them than anything else). Poverty and unequal access to healthcare and resources remain facts of life. Corporate heads may literally have private planets and live young and healthy forever, but there are still people too poor to buy more than one lifetime. This is a society whose progress hasn't actually made it better - just bigger and more and more top-weighted. One of the back cover quotes claims this is a story of a 'perfect future under threat' - and to that I say, if this is the best we can do as a species, what's even the point? Now, there is a possibility that this stasis is deliberate; that Hamilton is trying to make a point that infinite lifespans lead to a resistance of change - except for the fact that several of his lead characters are exactly the type of plutocrat whose grip on this society seems to be holding it still. (That they're also exactly the kind of old, jaded male characters I can't stand doesn't help my personal opinion.) This leads me to think that he just didn't consider what he was writing into this culture which... saddens me, honestly? Science fiction is the realm of ideas and hope, and it's always disappointing to me when authors simply reproduce their current political reality in a supposedly futuristic world. As for the way gender is handled in this book, well... unsurprising given that it is hard SF, but it's still frustrating to read almost a thousand pages in which every single woman, regardless of age or role or interest, is at some point treated like a sexual object; in which the only queer women who appear are exploitative and someone jokingly asks why one of them doesn't get gender reassignment surgery; in which male characters are explicitly noted to have harems whose only narrative function is as arm candy; in which women hold a proportionally tiny amount of power or rank, even when they're described as competent; and where competent women are regarded with scorn by male POV characters and, on one memorable instance, by an AI who technically shouldn't be gendered at all, but joins in to call a female politician a 'ballbuster'. I was a little bit frustrated, as you might be able to tell. The thing is, though, that my dad was sort of right: the ideas in the book are interesting and the actual conflict, when it arises, is properly horrifying. (the plot synopsis on the back of my trade paperback copy is completely wrong in literally every way, but we'll set that aside.) By the last hundred pages or so I did actually find myself intrigued, and as I was telling a friend, I feel like this would make a good TV miniseries. That said, it was a long slog to get to those interesting parts. Between the pacing and the omnipresent run-on sentences, this book clearly didn't get edited thoroughly enough. We'll see how the second book goes, I guess... Edit: I forgot to mention Tochee. Tochee is the best character in this book by a mile. Though (view spoiler)[I am interested in the triad that seems to be forming of Paula, Mellanie, and Justine out to hunt the Starflyer. That has potential. (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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May 03, 2015
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Jun 11, 2015
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Mar 25, 2010
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Hardcover
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| 0061956996
| 9780061956997
| 0061956996
| 3.52
| 6,655
| Jul 14, 2009
| Apr 27, 2010
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liked it
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Reread as part of my ongoing shelf audit. Verdict: I liked it, but as I somehow forgot I'd ever read it before until I went to write this review, I do
Reread as part of my ongoing shelf audit. Verdict: I liked it, but as I somehow forgot I'd ever read it before until I went to write this review, I don't think it's a keeper. Original 2014 review: I'm... sort of conflicted on this book. Not because I don't know how I feel about it - I quite liked it! - but because I feel like I shouldn't have enjoyed it as much as I did. In a lot of ways, this book felt like it was still rough around the edges, which I usually find distracting while reading but here... it just didn't bother me much at all. The only thing that really bugged me was a lack of development in one of the most important relationships, particularly as the conclusion rested on it. I suspect a big part of what kept me engaged and enjoying this book was that the concepts, if tritely named (I got really tired of seeing the word 'shifter' capitalized) are really interesting. In particular, the idea of an immortal inhuman creature bound to serve humans trying to sort out their loyalties had a lot of potential, and while the plot wasn't focused on that, Cypess did touch on it several times in a way I found very intriguing. I'd have loved to see it explored more - if there's ever another book set in Samorna exploring the Shifter to a greater degree I'll definitely pick it up. Isabel, the protagonist, was also a great draw - she was a fascinating mix of competent and confused, and her struggle to define herself in the absence of her own memories was compelling and well-written. While I agree with other reviewers that the resolution of that question came too quickly for any of the characters (or the reader) to react to it, for the majority of the book I really liked how it was handled. I'm not sure if I would recommend this book, as I feel its appeal to me came largely from interest in the concept and a desire for something light to read - but I guess, if that's what you're looking for too, then this would be a good pick. (and personally - while I haven't read Nightspell yet, I expect it to be much more solid; a lot of the under-development in Mistwood struck me as the result of Cypess being a new writer, and I'm betting she'll get much better as her career goes on.) 2022 update: The above pretty much holds true, especially the part about wishing the book focused more on the concept of the Shifter than it did. There's a romantic subplot which felt underdeveloped and unnecessary, though to Cypess's credit it's actually not as all-consuming as romance in many of this book's YA contemporaries tended to be, and I appreciate the choice of a somewhat nuanced resolution. I was surprised to realize how completely I'd forgotten this book, including the major twist/reveal at the end, which... still felt rushed. I wish that information had come to light sooner so that it could have more thoroughly informed characters' choices and motivations. There are some interesting moral quandaries in this book which don't really get explored as fully as they could have been, and I think that spending more page time with those questions would have made the story as a whole more emotionally compelling. ...more |
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2
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not set
not set
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Jul 07, 2022
Dec 19, 2014
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Feb 11, 2010
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Hardcover
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| 9781741758627
| 1741758629
| 3.88
| 28,743
| Oct 14, 2014
| Oct 14, 2014
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liked it
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First of all, let me get this out of the way: everyone calling Clariel - the character - names can shut the hell up. I'm pissed as hell at the number
First of all, let me get this out of the way: everyone calling Clariel - the character - names can shut the hell up. I'm pissed as hell at the number of people writing her off as a bitch, whiny, self-centered, etc., especially when that's the extent of their critique of the book. It smells of misogyny and it needs to stop. Now, as for the book... I've been waiting for this book for a long time - pretty much since I read the original trilogy and first came across rumors that this was in the works. It had a high standard to meet, as the Abhorsen books are some of the best YA I've ever read. The thing is, from the time the first few chapters came out as a sampler, I've had an inkling that this wasn't going to match its predecessors. And, sadly, I was right. I came out of this book with the strong impression that I'd read an early draft, not a finished product. It has a lot of the hallmarks of an under-revised work: too many characters who wind up too under-used, uneven pacing, blocky infodumps, awkward and jarring switches out of the third-person-limited POV. Even on a sentence level it felt in need of editing: there were far too many "Clariel felt x because y" type lines, which with another pass could have been smoothed out into something much less amateur. Top that off with the fact that the book ends before the most interesting and novel part of Clariel's story and well, this wasn't at all what I've been waiting for. It felt like Nix had been writing himself back into the Old Kingdom as an exercise (he's not written in it for 10 years, after all) and somehow that freewrite got bound and published. The thing that makes this all the more frustrating is that there is a lot of potential here. Clariel herself holds most of it: she's a berserker, she's got an aptitude for necromancy, and we all know she's destined to be Chlorr of the Mask in Lirael/Abhorsen - her story could be either a fascinating story of villainous descent or a tragedy of losing a sense of self, or both. (Also, she's canonically asexual and aromantic, which makes her dear to me in particular.) Then there's the world - we've actually never seen a fully functional Old Kingdom; even in Lirael and Abhorsen it's still being rebuilt, and in Sabriel it's the nation-wide equivalent of a ghost town. Nix had a distinct opportunity here to explore what an entire country filled with necromancers, Clayr, and Charter Mages would look like... and he wrote pretty much all three of those groups out of it. The only necromancers we see are the Abhorsens, none of whom actually go into Death (not even ONE antagonistic necromancer? anywhere?); the Clayr don't really show up at all, and Charter Magic is out of fashion in the society, so doesn't play a part. (furthermore, Clariel doesn't have a strong aptitude for the Charter, so even though she's supposedly learning it the reader never really gets to see it used.) Ancelstierre plays no role in this story at all, which is... understandable but regrettable. The land beyond the Rift has the potential to be involved, but isn't. All this leaves the Old Kingdom feeling a great deal more generic than it does in the original trilogy, and instead of the sense of coming back to a fantasy world I loved, I wound up with the sense that a bait-and-switch had been performed. I wanted to enjoy this book, really I did - but all the things that I enjoyed about the original trilogy were absent. My hopes are still up for the promised post-Abhorsen fifth volume, especially as it's less likely to have the 'writing onesself into the world' feeling that this did by dint of coming soon (hopefully) after Clariel. And hey - maybe Nix will get back into the swing of things and someday we'll get a sequel to this book, or a prequel about some of the fascinating history it mentioned (lady pirates on the Ratterlin? Mistress Ader as Abhorsen? I'd love more on both). I still want more from this world and from Nix as an author; it just happens that this didn't hit the mark at all. A couple of final notes/quibbles under the cut: (view spoiler)[- Aunt Lemmin and the princess were both criminally under-used/over-mentioned. Honestly, by the end I expected them to be the same person - since otherwise there wouldn't really be enough time to develop two and I anticipated both being involved in the end. Aaaaaand then they both wound up offscreen. - The villainous plot? Really didn't have enough stakes to it at all. I mean, this is a prequel by in-world chronology, but in publication it's directly following the book that ended with BINDING ORANNIS. And all we get here is a vague background attempt to break the Charter? Really? - gotta say though, I still love the complete lack of gender roles in this world. Ladies are everywhere and doing everything and that's great. - there was a brief mention Clariel almost hugging Belatiel to "let out some feeling that she had long suppressed" which really bothered me; see above re: her being really firmly defined as aro-ace. That line came off as a half-assed retraction of that orientation, and felt a little like a betrayal. - no seriously I want to know what's beyond the Rift NIX SEQUEL PLEASE (hide spoiler)] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Nov 06, 2014
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Apr 22, 2009
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0553588486
| 9780553588484
| 0553588486
| 4.44
| 2,556,869
| Aug 06, 1996
| Aug 2005
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did not like it
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Ten years and five hundred comments later and men still think I care if they disagree with me. WARNING: If you enjoyed this book, even a little bit, yo Ten years and five hundred comments later and men still think I care if they disagree with me. WARNING: If you enjoyed this book, even a little bit, you may not want to read this review. It will probably make you angry. Heaven knows that the book made me furious, and I intend to turn every bit of that wrath back on it. Instead, I suggest you read karen's review, Brigid's review, Joyzi's review, or any other of the gushing four and five-star reviews here. If video reviews are more your style, I suggest Melina Pendulum's vlog about this book. Realistically, I know a lot of you are not going to listen, which is why the edit is here. At least it will slow you down a little. EDIT: adding one more thing because, despite the warning and the redirect links I kindly provided, I have indeed gotten the kind of sexist bullshit comments I anticipated. Before you launch into the usual defense, therefore, I give you this: "Alternatively, some fans may find it tempting to argue “Well this media is a realistic portrayal of societies like X, Y, Z”. But when you say that sexism and racism and heterosexism and cissexism have to be in the narrative or the story won’t be realistic, what you are saying is that we humans literally cannot recognise ourselves without systemic prejudice, nor can we connect to characters who are not unrepentant bigots. Um, yikes. YIKES, you guys. And even if you think that’s true (which scares the hell out of me), I don’t see you arguing for an accurate portrayal of everything in your fiction all the time. For example, most people seem fine without accurate portrayal of what personal hygiene was really like in 1300 CE in their medieval fantasy media. (Newsflash: realistically, Robb Stark and Jon Snow rarely bathed or brushed their teeth or hair). In real life, people have to go to the bathroom. In movies and books, they don’t show that very much, because it’s boring and gross. Well, guess what: bigotry is also boring and gross. But everyone is just dying to keep that in the script." Source. Here's the scoop on this review. For a book that I hate, I usually write a lot. After suffering for several hundred pages, I have pleeeenty of things to say. I've never hated a book that was quite as long as this one quite as much as I do, so I've had to alter my review so that I can say everything I want to without going over the character limit. The first part is an unorganized rant. I marked pages with particularly annoying quotes on them; for these rants, I broke the book into segments of 100 pages and wrote up quotes and responses for each segment into separate blog posts. These are all linked below. The second part will be a more organized rant masquerading as a review. MAKE NO MISTAKE: THIS IS A 'HATER' REVIEW. IF ANYTHING WAS GOING TO CAUSE ME TO SPONTANEOUSLY DEVELOP THE ABILITY TO BREATHE FIRE, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN THIS BOOK. Part 1: Pages 1-100 Pages 101-200 Pages 201-300 Pages 301-400 Pages 401-500 Pages 501-600 Pages 601-700 Pages 701-807 Part 2: There are books I don't like. There are books I loathe. And then... there's this book, which did its level best to drive me to drinking. [image] and I don't even like alcohol. I wanted to like this. I wanted it to be as excellent as so many people insist it is. There are some books that I went into expecting them to be horrible, but this isn't one of them. Oh, my hopes were high here - it was recommended by a plethora of great authors, including the guys of Writing Excuses, who I absolutely love. Reviewers who I greatly respect rated it four and five stars and wrote at length about how awesome it was. Other people praised the book as "the greatest achievement of the fantasy genre so far" and Martin as "the greatest fantasy writer of all time". It's those last two that are most important, I think, because I love the fantasy genre - always have, and hopefully always will. Fantasy is what got me into reading (well, Harry Potter, specifically) and it's been one of my mainstays for as long as I can remember. I bought this book in large part because it was so often touted as, if not always the greatest achievement of the genre, one of the major works of fantasy published in our time. Having recently read several works by Brandon Sanderson, all of which were innovative, highly readable, and deeply philosophical, I was excited to see what Martin (by all reports an even better writer than Sanderson) could do. I expected my mind to be blown, repeatedly, and to be faced with the challenge of writing a review for a book so staggeringly brilliant that I could hardly think straight after finishing it. That is far, far, far from what I got. First of all, this book is definitely not what I think of when I hear the word 'fantasy'. It's certainly far from my definition of 'high fantasy'. Now, I realize that my definition of 'high fantasy', which includes pervasive magic, unusual creatures, and a setting that is vividly far from the real world, is not the definition you'll find if you look the term up online. I also don't care. Seeing as the critical definition appears to characterize high fantasy solely by the fact that it doesn't take place on our Earth, and as this definition is written as if high fantasy and sword-and-sorcery are mutually exclusive, I'm inclined to conclude that whoever wrote said definition is pretty damn stupid and carry on with my own outlines of what makes fantasy high, low, urban, epic, or any other subcategory or combination thereof. That said - this book? High fantasy? Not as far as I'm concerned. It is, to say the least, distinctly lacking in the requisite elements of the fantastic. [image] Is it possible that Martin is going for a 'the magic comes back' subplot over the course of the series? Definitely. Do I give two shits about the rest of the series? NOPE. This book comes off as a pathetic attempt at fantasy by someone who doesn't really care about the genre, or doesn't know much about it. It mostly struck me more as an alternate universe War of the Roses fanfiction, with some hints of magic thrown in in a halfassed attempt to give it a place on the genre fiction shelves of bookstores. You can explain to me over and over how Martin intended to make his world 'gritty' and 'realistic' and I will tell you over and over that that shouldn't matter: that it is possible to have a fantasy which is gritty, realistic, and also utterly fantastical. It's even possible to do it without losing the particular areas where Martin seemed to be trying for gritty realism: since he chose to make all of his characters of the nobility anyhow, he wouldn't have had to worry about overglorifying the lives of the peasantry, as one might with a more economically diverse cast. Now, I'm willing to give Martin the benefit of the doubt a little bit on the possibility of the 'magic comes back' thing, because there did seem to be elements here that could become fantastical if fully explained later. The problem, of course, is that they're tossed out without background, let alone proper explanation, and so feel jarring and out of place - not a coherent part of the world, but bits tossed in to be linked together later. Right now... all they managed to do was trip me up, throw me ass-over-teakettle out of the story, and leave me blinking at the page in confusion and not a little bit of frustration. (And yeah, maybe part of why I'm so sore about this is that, like I said, I started this book not long after reading some Sanderson, and Sanderson is basically the king of seamless, fantastical, elegant worldbuilding, so pretty much anyone looks bad in comparison, but still.) If I had to assign this book to a genre, I'd call it 'low fantasy', because as far as I'm concerned it was running too low on the qualities that make fantasy what it is. It's about as much fantasy as fanfiction that translates characters to the modern day is - namely, basically mundane with a miniscule twist. The characters of this book also stand out... and not in a good way. [image] There are a lot of them - eight POVs and plenty more on the side - and not a single one of them is likeable. They all had the potential to be, which makes it worse. Bran, the Stark boy who learns too much and is crippled as a result, could have an interesting arc if it weren't so slow and drawn-out. The hints of genuine pathos-inducing story are definitely there. They're also present in the chapters focused on Catelyn, who is the closest Martin gets to a truly nuanced character. Ned Stark, Catelyn's husband, is supposed to be the noble one - too bad his 'nobility' comes off as stupidity instead. Jon Snow, Ned's bastard child, is a truly stereotypical fantasy character: the super special 'outcast' who is nonetheless generally loved except by those the narration makes a point to show as bigoted and cruel, who never really has to work either for physical skills or personal growth, and who gets gifted by the narrative with an absurd number of SUPER UNIQUE TRAPPINGS, including an albino wolf (really, Martin, REALLY? Are you secretly a fourteen year-old girl writing horrendous anime fanfic or something? Answer: no, and the comparison is insulting to fourteen year-old girls.) and a bastard sword that was a family heirloom of a noble house not his own. Arya is by far the most entertaining of the Starks, but only because she fulfills all sorts of rebellious-noble-girl-learns-to-fight tropes that I'm quite fond of. Sansa's chapters made me set the book down for days on end; she is beyond a shadow of a doubt the most insipid, annoying, airheaded character I have ever read and she has not a single whisper of a redeeming quality. Tyrion Lannister is what Jon Snow could have become without the heapings of Gary Stu in his youth: a bitter middle-aged man with father issues who turns to sex and crudity as his only defense; somewhat akin to Catelyn, he had the potential to be interesting and nuanced if his behavior hadn't been played dead straight. And there's one more: Daenerys Targaryen. Oh, Dany, Dany, Dany. I could write a dissertation on Dany and everything that went wrong with her story - but I don't have that kind of time. For those of you not familiar with this most epic of George R.R. Martin's characterization and plot failures, here is a summary: (oh and spoilers, but I honestly can't be bothered to tag it.) When we first meet her, Dany is thirteen years ond and about to be sold (effectively) into marriage with Khal Drogo, a warlord of the Dothraki people, by her abusive and not-a-little-bit-crazy brother, Viserys. Viserys has convinced himself that Drogo will help him take back 'his' kingdom - this being the Seven Kingdoms where the rest of the book takes place - hence the whole 'selling his sister to be To which my primary objections are: 1. The blinding obviousness of the ending 2. The fact that this single plotline - this single POV among eight - is so far distant from and so barely related to the others 3. The fact that Dany being raped is never treated as what it is, and that the relationship between her and Drogo is portrayed as love. [image] The first two are self-explanatory; the third, of course, is the big thorny problem. Now, I can sort of understand the perspective which argues that Dany is taking control of her sexuality - she comes to enjoy sex and even to initiate and control it at times. However, SHE IS AT NO POINT OLDER THAN FOURTEEN. There's a reason that such a concept as an 'age of consent' exists - there is an age at which teenagers are genuinely immature and probably shouldn't be making life-changing decisions like, say, things that could get them pregnant. Now, I understand that in the medieval times like those that this book is based on, girls were getting married and having children a lot earlier, and that people in general were more mature at an early age. However, Dany shows none of that maturity until after she's been with Drogo for weeks - if not months. When she's married to him, she is if anything unusually innocent for her age. It's a little hard for me to accept the idea that she's taking control of her sexuality when she's so young and clueless that her first sexual experience is a choice only inasmuch as she chooses not to fight back. Not fighting back, by the way, doesn't mean it's not rape, particularly in the situation that Dany is in (vastly younger than Drogo, vastly weaker, browbeaten by her abusive brother and told over and over that her obligation is to do whatever her husband wants). Nor are her later sexual experiences ones of choice; in fact, it is explicitly stated that even when she had horrible saddle sores and could barely walk, she was expected to be available for sex and treated as such. If anything, her eventual enjoyment of it seems more like a psychological block put up as a survival tactic than genuine pleasure in the act or love for Drogo. Yet, despite the fact that this situation is obviously, beyond a shadow of a doubt, rape, it's never addressed in-text. If anything, it's portrayed as a positive experience for Dany, one that makes her stronger and enables her to stand up for herself. [image] Stupid me; I thought that the cancerous expansion of rape-as-love was limited to abusive jackass love interests in YA paranormal romances; clearly, I was wrong. It's everywhere, people. We are all completely fucking doomed. Which brings me to one of the other major frustrations I had with this book: the sex. Ummm... what to say? I thought reading some of the V'lane bits of Darkfever while sitting next to my mother on the plane was uncomfortable; to my utter shock, that was nothing compared to reading the sex scenes of this book alone. No worry about someone looking over my shoulder and reading about MacKayla Lane getting hot and bothered - and yet even more awkward. Why? Well, as one reviewer put it (and I wish I could remember who to give them credit), they're written kind of as if they're these tremendous mythic events. I cringe at the very thought of quoting them, but to give you a little idea of what they're like... (worst romance sex scenes you've ever read) - (bizarre flowerly euphemisms) + (gratuitous use of the word 'manhood')*(general strange reverence for penises above and beyond the norm) + (incidences of incest) = Game of Thrones sex scene. In general: AWKWARD. [image] (Just to be sure you feel my pain.) This book felt male-oriented in a way that is so painfully forced that it made me distinctly uncomfortable. I don't mean that women can't enjoy it - obviously, as all the reviews I linked back at the top demonstrate, they can and they do. I mean that the book itself felt as if it were written for the most stereotypical male audience imaginable. As Tatiana described it, it reads like a soap opera for men. Because MEN want lots of violence, sex, swearing by female genitalia, and paper-thin motivations, right? Which is exactly what Martin dishes up. [image] and so is the book he's produced. I thought at around the halfway point that I'd finish the book and be able to watch the HBO show to get the rest of the series without suffering through more awkwardly described sex scenes (not to mention the rest of it). By the time I finished, though, I had developed such a virulent hatred for this book, its author, and everything related to either of the above that I start grinding my teeth just reading praise for it. Watching the show would be vastly to my detriment - mostly because neither my hand nor my bank account would do well after I put my fist through the screen of my laptop. In conclusion/summary: [image] [image] [image] [image] Oh, and to the diehard defenders of this series, like those who were plaguing Keely's review, who like to tell people who disagree with them that GRRM is the greatest writer of ALL TIME and that the female characters presented herein are feminist (or, to use an exact quote, that "GRRM has written some of the most independent, self-reliant heroines ever to grace the fantasy genre. It's more than half the reason he's so beloved. His female characters disdain male attention, are always smarter, faster, deadlier, and braver than any of their male counterparts. Kinda like feminists with swords" which is complete and utter bullshit), I have only one thing to say: [image] THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 21, 2011
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Nov 10, 2011
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Feb 04, 2009
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Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 141690607X
| 9781416906070
| 141690607X
| 4.02
| 7,796
| Aug 30, 2005
| May 23, 2006
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liked it
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This book has been on my to-read list for so long that I've forgotten why it was there, but that's alright: it turned out to be charmingly creepy, and
This book has been on my to-read list for so long that I've forgotten why it was there, but that's alright: it turned out to be charmingly creepy, and not nearly as juvenile as I'd expected. In a lot of ways, this is similar to Catherine Valente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, in that both are stories about young girls sucked into dangerous magical realms. May Bird finds herself in the afterlife, which has its own complicated social structure and politics, but all she wants is to get back home. There's an interesting thing going on here with the way Anderson shows her as alienated on Earth (from everyone, including her mother) and her slow building of bonds with other characters in the Other After. In the way of many tales set at this point in a character's life, the plot seems to be partly a way to address and overcome May's insecurities. The book's biggest flaw is its pacing. It takes quite a while for May to actually wind up in the Ever After, and once she's there she makes a choice that the plot... basically can't allow her to succeed in. While the climax of the book still has plenty of tension to its name, the journey to reach it was somewhat frustrating, as the outcome is basically a given in light of other plot elements. That's... very vague, but the takeaway is that the middle of this book dragged quite a lot. Obligatory cat mention - the cat in this book is excellent, and honestly the tensest part of the narrative for me was waiting for May and Somber Kitty's reunion. When it happened, it was not only properly emotional, but also a very tidy use of a Chekov's Gun, so great by several different qualifications. I'm not into the story enough to track down the sequels, but if you want a book for a creative and slightly morbid teenager/preteen, give this a shot. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Feb 16, 2016
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Nov 05, 2008
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0765305550
| 9780765305558
| 0765305550
| 3.89
| 2,872
| Mar 2003
| Mar 01, 2003
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liked it
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I always hesitate when I check the series page for a duology or trilogy and see that it's been re-issued in an omnibus. In some cases (like N.K. Jemis
I always hesitate when I check the series page for a duology or trilogy and see that it's been re-issued in an omnibus. In some cases (like N.K. Jemisin's Inheritance trilogy, which I own in omnibus) this means nothing; in others, it means that the publisher is correcting in a second edition a mistake made with the first, and that the story really isn't complete until you've read all the separately published parts. This is one of those second cases. If you walk away from this review having learned nothing else about this book, know this: the story is not complete, and indeed only one minor and late-starting subplot is resolved at all. This book centers around a secret which is not yet revealed and a battle not yet fought, and all my questions were left unanswered when I closed the cover. That said: it's a good read. It's Westerfeld, so of course it is - even though this isn't a genre or style I was used to reading from him, he still thoroughly met my expectations. Speaking of genre/style, I find myself somewhat at a loss in determining whether this is hard or soft science fiction. I supposed I'd call it soft, despite the lovingly described technical elements (remotely piloted craft the size of sand grains, four different types of artificial gravity, computer-brain interfaces that use all the senses to represent data through technological synesthesia) because at its core, this book is about the conflict of ideologies. Technology is important as an element of the worldbuilding, and to ground those ideologies in differences of physical culture, but at the end of the day it's about how people live their lives, what they prioritize, and how they view existence. There are quite a few factions (Westerfeld does a tidy job with describing a complex political system, as well), but the most important groups are these: the Emperor and orthodoxy of the Risen Empire, who view death as an enemy they have conquered and can live on after their natural end thanks to a symbiant; the Rix cultists, who have integrated their body with technology and view themselves as nothing more than agents working to create sentient AIs out of planetary computer networks; and those within the Empire who are 'pink', meaning they prioritize the living over the dead and believe in living out a natural lifespan. All three groups have vastly different attitudes towards the value of individual human lives (with some variation depending on the class of the humans involved) and that drives the goals they seek and how they pursue them. I love a good rumination on the nature of humanity, so this is right up my alley. I've put a library hold on the second book, and I fully expect that if it is as stylistically and thematically solid as this one and actually resolves the plot, it'll rate higher than 3 stars. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Nov 17, 2015
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Oct 01, 2008
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Hardcover
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