Blue

🎵 Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me. 🎵

I was doing a marathon of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and when I got to On Stranger Tides, I was surprised to learn that it was based on a book--<i>this</i> book.

I actually haven’t heard of this novel, even though it’s a classic and winner of multiple awards. It’s inspired more than Pirates of the Caribbean; the classic point-and-click games from Lucasfilm, Monkey Island, were also inspired by Tim Powers’ fantasy story (according to Wikipedia, at least). After learning about this, I wanted to read it first before watching the movie. I didn’t know what to expect, to be honest. The only thing I knew about the story inside was what the official blurb told me. A complete blind dive into this book.

It was a delight through and through!

I was expecting a fun and solid adventure, and that's what I got! I didn't expect to be so enthralled with the adventure and even with the characters. I mean, some parts even got me a little emotional, and I was so surprised when it happened. It was a case of where I didn't even see it coming. I was listening to the story on the audiobook, nodding along and thinking "yes, this is all quite interesting. This is pretty fun to listen to." I wasn't expecting to get as emotionally invested as I did. Until the very last seconds of the book, I was on the edge of my seat and listening intently, begging and hoping that Jack and Beth would make it out okay.

The story has a great progression; it started as what you'd expect for a typical sea-faring excursion and then ramped it up with fantastical elements. I saw the skeleton pirate on the front of the first edition cover and was intrigued. When the heck does that come into play in this book, which seems like a jaunty old tale of a crew of misfits sailing the seven seas? And then when it did start happening...how exhilarating! The atmosphere, the tension, it all made for excellent listening. This book has all the great aspects of a good adventure story: action, thrills, a helping of magic, and a dash of romance.

I very much respect Powers' prose, too. His imagery was excellent; even listening to it painted such vivid pictures for me. The scene in the jungle...I won't say any more, but one of my favorite parts of the story. Incredibly chilling, creeped me out at certain points.

I have a huge soft spot for anything with a touch of whimsy in it, and On Stranger Tides is no exception. My favorite part is that there are a couple of points in the story that are borderline ridiculous, but because Powers still gives them weight, they don't come off as contrived or something made for simply a throwaway gag. There's a part with some puppet strings and an old magician...once again, I will not spoil it. But if you know, you know. It was equal parts hilarious and exciting.

Overall, the book is the hallmark of a classic adventure. I can see why it's been seen as a significant source of inspiration. "Fun" describes this book perfectly, in my opinion. If I have any complaints, it's that I do wish we learned a bit more about Elizabeth Hurwood, to get the same kind of devotion towards her that Jack does. There are things to admire about her, but in a book where a lot of characters get the chance to open up about their backgrounds, Beth was conspicuously blank to me. Admittedly, there are things in this book that I think haven't aged well. Some of the descriptors of the black characters in the book were a little weird. They're not outwardly malicious, and I would hesitate to say outright racist. With a little acknowledgment and introspection, it doesn't detract too much. Perhaps you could make the argument that because this book is set in the 1700s, it reflects the attitudes of the people during those days. And honestly, none of the black characters from what I remember are outright slaves and tend to be treated as equals to everyone else (if made fun of, but once again, they're not the only ones). One of these black characters I found to be a compelling character in his own right, and for a book set in the 1700s, I think that's neat!

Honestly, my biggest complaint comes from the audiobook reading of it. It was mostly fine, but some of the voices that the narrator did were very grating. Sure, it was immersive, but having to hear a screechy falsetto or hearing him anytime Shanks spoke wasn't a pleasant listening experience.

But a very, very fun book. Now, I'm a little sad. I feel like I made a mistake reading this book before watching the corresponding Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I'm sure I'll like the book much more and the movie much less.

Hmm...

So, I have a lot of mixed feelings about the book that I'm not really sure how to write out. I knew before reading this that Dan Brown and The Davinci Code was pretty controversial. It dealt with some pretty heavy subjects, like religion. I, myself, am not religious so I consider myself pretty ignorant in matters like this. Because of that, I kind of avoided the book and Dan Brown for the longest time because I wasn't sure if I would really get it. But, after a while, I decided to just go ahead and read it. Maybe a lot of things would fly over my head or wouldn't affect me, but it would be an interesting read to say the least.

My final thoughts on it were eventually this: It's an entertaining read at the least, but you have to sort of “turn off your brain” if you want to enjoy it. I'm sorry if that doesn't make much sense, I'll try to explain it down below.

I knew that Dan Brown tended to be very “liberal” about interpretations on historical events religious matters, so I read with that in mind. There are different things that Dan Brown changes around about history and other similar subjects. Some of these are pretty hard to suspend disbelief for...so it's something that's very hard to work around (I personally just pretended this all was happening in some parallel universe, haha). I don't know if this means that this novel is very poorly written or if Brown just took a lot of artistic licenses, but that's a hurdle I had to overcome in reading this book.

Another thing that Brown does in his writing is that he jumps around a lot from different characters and events. I know that this is supposed to be showing the entire story through different perspectives, but I sometimes feel that it really contributed nothing or was just a waste of space. It also felt jarring at times. Sometimes it would feel there was no focus, and other times it felt like it was cutting off a good action sequence.

Also, there were some things that just seemed...implausible to me. I mean, this entire books kind of relies on you having to suspend your disbelief and having to accept some unorthodox interpretations and whatnot, but it got too unbelievable to me at some times. Like, there are countless researchers and scientists studying these topics, and Robert Langdon was the only guy who could figure these puzzles out? There are quite a few other examples, but they're spoilery so I won't get into them. I'll just say this: some scenes were making me scratch my head.

I don't know if this was just me or not, but did anyone else feel like Vetra could have been completely taken out and the novel wouldn't have really lost anything of substance? I feel like she just fulfills the “Sexy Foreign Love Interest Trope”. I don't know, it might just be me. The romance itself was poorly written, and I cared very little for it.

There is a whole theme about science vs. religion, which I know is a pretty powerful debate, but the theme didn't really resonate with me, so I can't comment on it. I'm sure people that are more knowledgeable with the subject can comment on this.

One of the biggest issues I had with the book was Brown's writing itself. I can usually overlook bad prose if the story / characters are good, but this wasn't the case here. The writing was pretty choppy to me and not paced really well. There are some weird descriptions here and there and it sometimes felt like a juvenile trying to write more advanced.

But, with everything said and done? I still found it entertaining. It wasn't a boring book at all. I got some enjoyment out of reading it, if just for the fact that it was a mediocre thriller that was able to hold my attention until the end. I've read a lot of books that are so bad or so boring that I wasn't able to finish it. Angels & Demons didn't fall in either of those categories. It's just a fun book with some action that's decent to read. Yes, you have to overcome many hurdles to get some pleasure out of reading this book, but it wasn't absolutely terrible. This might be because I don't know a whole lot about the controversy surrounding Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code. But if you can suspend your disbelief far enough (and I mean REALLY far) and have a tolerance for mediocre writing...it's not terrible.

And like I said, if you just pretend this book takes place in some alternate universe, it makes it a lot easier.

NOTE: This review contains no spoilers of the resolution of the book's crime. It does contain some very vague details about the end, I'll make sure to mark it.

I'm someone who has never read Agatha Christie, and only knew of her books and their content purely from cultural osmosis. I wouldn't even really consider myself much of a mystery aficionado. I've read a few here and there. I decided to read Murder on the Orient Express more out of curiosity than anything. I wanted a simple but still engaging read, and I wanted to check out this mystery classic for myself. So, I say this as someone who is coming in blind and ignorant, this was a very engaging read. I was surprised at how hooked I was, and how invested I was into the story. Now I can see why people hail Christie as such a staple of the series, and this makes me excited to read more books of hers.

Onto the book itself, there's one thing I want to reccommend to people who were in a similar boat as me and haven't read much of Christie: GO INTO THIS BOOK BLIND. I ruined the potential experience of reading “And Then There Were None” by her as well since my overly curious self decided it was a good idea to read the Wikipedia spoiler. This one I decided to do that, and it made a huge difference. Be very cautious when you even type this book into a search engine, because just the previews of the search results could potentially spoil it. Not knowing who the real perpetrator is and going along with the clues as the story progresses is what makes these books so good.

I really admired the coziness of this book. It made for a nice and comforting read. I feel it's a more recent trend of mystery books to have everything to evolve into a conspiracy or there to be an absolutely huge, story-shattering plot twist. Not that these are necessarily bad things, but there's something nice about reading a straight-forward mystery that stays within its confines. The crime takes place in one location (on a train) and has a concise and steady cast throughout the entire story. It's well-contained, and made it easier for me to follow along as well.

This is really one of those mysteries where you can't help but follow along as well. With the way it's written, the way the crime is laid out, and the way the characters and cast are handled, I actually started to mentally take my own notes and think about who I suspected the strongest. Of course, more clues get discovered and then your suspicions start to change...I especially appreciate how Poirot and his colleagues go over the case and details near the end. It's like a way to make a final guess before the final reveal. Seeing the reveal after reading through the entire crime and how it transpired was actually something of an experience. It's nice to feel how engaged I can get with this story!

Some minor hang-ups/complaints that I have: There's a ton of French, and I'm someone who struggles a lot with that language. If you're like me, it'd be good to have a translator open or something like that. Another thing is that this book was written in 1934, and as to be expected, it dates itself. It has a lot of casual racial stereotyping.

(Note: I talk about the ending here, but only vague details and nothing that spoils the story.)

I think the biggest shock for me was how abrupt the ending was. It ends pretty much right after the final reveal. I actually went to double-check to make sure if it was an edition thing or if my personal copy was just like that. I'm really surprised there was no epilogue, no kind of follow-up? Especially since I felt there would've been so much to explore and more closure after everything transpired. I've read in other places that since the crime was over and solved, there's no need to know any more than that. I disagree personally. While the biggest question of “whodunnit?” had been answered, there were a lot more smaller questions I had pop up about the aftermath. It gave me a slight feeling of dissatisfaction, but I guess it's mitigated by solving the crime.

(Done with ending discussion)

I can see why this book has pretty much cemented itself in Western culture. It's crazy to reflect on how this entire book is a trope that gets used in so many different pieces of media. How many times do you see the scenario of “crime happens on a small contained space (like a train) and everyone is a suspect who gets interviewed”? If you're new to mystery or want to check out a classic, I recommend “Murder on the Orient Express.” Even though it's the tenth in a series, you won't miss out on any kind of necessary previous information.

(4.5 out of 5 stars)

My time with this book started out interesting. I was first introduced to this book in a speculative fiction class I took in college, where we had to read it quickly, so I carved out large chunks of time to power through this book in a few days. My initial thoughts on the book were not super great, overall a “meh” experience. The setting was very interesting, but I didn't find any of the characters or conflicts compelling when I first read it. To me, it seemed more like Stephenson had simply made a glittery playground for his named creations to play around with.

It wasn't until later in the year, when we began re-reading sections and discussing it more thoroughly that I started to form an interest in it. After the class, instead of returning it, I kept it so I could re-read it again. It's amazing how different of an opinion you can have after re-reading a book. It makes me wonder what happened before that made my brain click different this time.

The world-building is definitely unique and makes for a very compelling setting. It takes place in a future where nanotechnology has become integrated into all aspects of life. Limitless resources are now available to the general public. You would think that this would cause the Earth to become a utopia, with everyone finally having free access to everything that they could ever need. The truth, in reality, is that there is still poverty and also rampant pollution. Society has stratified itself into “claves” based on different things (communism, religion, etc.), and those without claves are known as “thetes” are the most vulnerable of citizens.

It's not only in the technology that the world has changed. Different cultures and territories have since been created too. Neo-Victorian culture has since become popular and widespread, and China has multiple new territories, some of them still parts of China and others becoming more independent from the mainland culture.

The world-building is very fulfilled, and exotic while still being grounded, and easy to make comparisons to our current society and how it might progress to this point. The conflict of this story is compelling and rich; Stephenson dives into many questions that he explores through this new near-future Earth. It's not just about technology, but also the question of a stratified society, classism, and western values vs. eastern values. All of these conflicts make the world-building even richer. Citizens in the world do not deal with just one issue that eclipses the entire story (“the big bad empire is coming to conquer us”, “war is bad and we should feel bad”).

The characters are equally diverse and intriguing. There are many of them that get focused on in this novel. Usually, I'm wary of books that jump around to multiple viewpoints. I find myself either really liking it or really hating it. I'm happy to say this book falls in the former category. Most of the characters are legitimately interesting to read about, and they're all used to further the world-building and major conflicts that are explored in this story. Watching step-by-step the process that Nell develops through being taught by the Primer while simultaneously seeing Hackworth come to terms with the consequences of his actions when he illegally copied the Primer for his own daughter was exciting to read. Even the beginning chapter with Bud, a character who is only in a single chapter, set the tone for the story and still managed to be an intriguing character to read about.

Now, onto the cons...

This one, I will admit, is more subjective. I am very much the kind of person who is very hard to please with loose ends. Yes, I've heard all of the arguments supporting them. Real life is full of loose ends. You don't always get answers. You're not owed answers. I agree...but it doesn't make it any easier for me to accept. I at least like to have enough to where I feel like I can be wondering in a satisfied manner. Miranda's storyline, without any spoilers, ends so abruptly to me that I wonder what the point of the ending is when the beginning is so fascinating.

And the ending, as is the case in many books, leaves a lot to be desired for me. Every time I come up to it, I leave with the same disappointing feeling of “That's it. The book's ended, and there's nothing more.” Endings are probably the hardest thing to do in anything, whether it be in books or essays, or movies, so I try not to be too hard on them. I'm not the kind of person who believes that an ending should ruin an entire experience. After all, it's about the journey, not the destination. I think it's because I like this book so much that I wish there was a more satisfying end to me.

All in all, I really enjoy this book and it's one of my favorites. It's honestly made me more interested in Stephenson's other book and ignited a greater desire to read more science fiction books like this. Less “space travel” and more “what's happening on Earth 100 years in the future.” I've got a few more Stephenson books on my reading list now!

A short, simple, and informal review from a casual reader

Wow. Amazing book, and I loved it! I have never read anything so original and refreshing. The world-building in this book is like nothing I've ever seen. I can't even begin to tell you how unique it is. There is nothing like the world of Bas-Lag. It's a mixture of original and compelling ideas, in its own category of hard fantasy, bordering on surreal. It's a dark kind of whimsical world...it gave me sort of twisted Alice in Wonderland vibes, in a way. The species, the city, the creatures, the culture...fantastic. It's a unique form of steampunk...I almost want to call it grimepunk. This book is absolutely brimming with some of the most creative concepts I've ever come across, and it's definitely my favorite part of the book.

Onto the prose, Mieville's imagery is superb. There is a kind of griminess and grittiness in New Crobuzon that feels so tangible. I swear, I could smell the rancid odor of the city and feel the dirt underneath my fingernails. It's probably one of the most vivid reading experiences I have ever known. The way Mieville writes is almost poetic in a way, maybe a bit too purple but it really feels like some sort of dream. Every single one of the five senses is touched upon in his descriptions.

I had heard that there were some horrific elements in this book, not quite a horror novel but definitely horror aspects. I can agree. Some parts of this book are very unsettling, other parts are filled with dread. I'm not usually a horror reader, but I was able to enjoy the still enjoy it. Some parts got extremely intense, but in conjunction with everything else, it was a thrilling ride.

Onto my criticisms. !!!Spoilers ahead!!!

As with all long books, some parts feel a bit meandering. There are tiny plot points in the book that I feel were nothing more than fluff. It wasn't too bad, since it did give a chance to explore more aspects of the city, which I loved. But do be warned this is a pretty long book with branching plot threads.

I thin my biggest gripe with the book overall is the ending. Endings are probably the hardest thing to get down in a book. Even the great Stephen King himself is a victim of subpar endings to great stories. Perdido Street Station is no exception to me. The ending felt very unsatisfying. Call me old-fashioned, but I like endings that have a payoff. Whether it's a sad ending or a happy ending, I want to at least feel like the journey was worth it at the end. I've read that Mieville did this on purpose to show that protagonists don't always win, or that things don't always end up wrapped up in satisfying ends. I agree with the first part, but with the second part...I'm not sure I really agree with that. My argument is that...it's a book. It's a self-contained narrative written for an audience. If I end the book with a “huh, that's it?” it makes me more frustrated than anything. Especially since, considering for the particular characters and narrative in this book, it's not like they're continued in another book in the series. It just peters out. I guess Mieville is making a statement that just doesn't jive with me.

All in all, an excellent book and one of my favorites. One of my most memorable reads and a world that I've fallen in love with. I will end this review by declaring that New Crobuzon would be a great setting for a mini comic-book series or a graphic novel!

(Warning: Some slight spoilers ahead!)

As a lover of dragons and fantasy, this book immediately caught my interest. I pretty much love anything fantasy-related. The only problem is that fantasy can be a pretty “cut-copy” kind of genre. A lot of authors stick to the same general layout when they write the world and characters for their books. It seems to always be the same: The magical elves, the mountain dwarves, and the mortal humans. Dragons are usually the big-bad monsters or the wise-good reptiles. So, when I picked up this book, I was a little cautious. I wasn't sure if it would end up being just another samey fantasy book or a hidden gem. But I was still eager to try it out. In the end, even if I don't particularly like it, I still get some enjoyment just because I like reading about faraway fantasy lands filled with magic and magical creatures.

So, is this book one of those hidden gems? No, not really. After reading it, I can sum up my overall feelings with a big “meh”.

I thought it was really cool to have the dragon as a main character, though I feel the potential was wasted. Hearing the small tid-bits of dragon culture and lives was pretty interesting. I think the book should have been more focused on that. Maybe going more into the history of the different dragons and their culture and languages. The history of the world was nice, but nothing was was super unique or memorable. I guess for me, there were tiny pieces of interesting parts of history. For example, I thought the concept of having the dragon living and being raised by wolves was very interesting! Overall though, the book just isn't that captivating. It gets so boring at times, honestly. Nothing really caught my attention or really inspired me to keep going. The dragon's journey wasn't that harrowing or compelling. It's not like where Frodo has to take the One Ring to Mount Doom or the entire world will plunge into an era of chaos. Nothing feels frantic or energetic. Sometimes, it just feels that “this dragon is going here and here just because he wants to.”

I think that maybe if the journey had more feeling or had more at stake, it would be more inspiring to read on about. The beginning pieces are there, but they need to be emphasized a bit more. If Auron was the last of his kind and had to find the fabled DragonLand (or something similar to that), then it should feel like that. Auron should be thinking about how he holds the key to his species survival! Or if it had a more “fish out of water” type of feel. Auron could be a dragon that knows next-to-nothing about the world below and is forced to retreat after a giant dragon war or something like that. He has to survive in environments he has never seen before and interact with creatures he didn't know existed in order to get back to the dragon lands. As I said before, it starts out trying to give this kind of feel, but it falls short. As it is now, it's just...eh. Kind of boring.

Also, it doesn't really help that Auron isn't a very interesting character in my opinion. Having a dragon (who was partially raised by wolves) sounds like it would make for a great narrating voice! Instead, I feel that if you took Auron out and plopped in a human, elf, dwarf, etc., it wouldn't have much of an impact. Having Auron make observations in a more dragon-perspective from his culture and up-bringing would have made it more interesting to read about. Also, Auron didn't feel like he made any huge character developments. He is traveling through a world entirely new to him, and it doesn't seem to have had any effect on him at all.

With all that said, there were some parts of the book I really did like. As I said before, showing the lifestyle of dragons and some of their culture was something I enjoyed reading a lot. I personally liked the explanation that the reason dragons hoard treasure such as jewels and coins (having to eat to them in order to make their scales hard). That was an interesting twist! There were a few moments in the book that I liked and wished were expanded upon or had more of an impact on Auron / the story (such as living with wolves).

Dragon Champion isn't a bad book in my opinion, just one that's...okay. I still went through it and didn't mind it too much, but it fell short. It is a book with some interesting bits to it. If you like fantasy (and dragons!) books, I would still recommend that you at least take a peek at it and see if you like it. If you can get past the flaws and enjoy it, it's not a bad book at all and can be an enjoyable read.

You know it was a good book when, as the last page turns, you are smiling.

Obligatory Movie Tangent: I had watched the Studio Ghibli animated film a very long time ago, so I couldn't really remember it while I was reading. So, reading the book was like a new experience. I then watched the movie again afterwards to compare the two. One thing that really struck me at the end was how different the book is from the movie. I will say, if you are reading one or watching the other, you do not have to worry about spoiling the experience. They're almost like two different interpretations of the same concepts...I actually really enjoy when a book and movie are different like that. I think it's a bit boring to adapt the book exactly as-is when making a movie, and I respect when a director takes liberties to try and give the movie an identity of its own.

Onto the book:

The book is wonderfully whimsical and refreshingly original. The characters are so fun to read about; the dialogue is witty and humorous, and each of the characters has their own quirks about them that make them very engaging. It doesn't take long to endear to each of the characters in their own special way. Sophie, as an old woman, is cantankerous without being too mean and quite clever. Howl was a great surprise; I actually much prefer him in the book versus the movie. He is the perfect match of coolness and childishness. He feels so human in this way, dressing up in beautiful suits while complaining about Sophie trying to clean his room. This was a book where I greatly enjoyed the whole cast of characters, including Michael and Calcifer.

I admit I can be cautious when I read older fantasy books. As much as I love fantasy, there's no denying that you can see the same trope throughout countless books and things don't age well. It was a pleasant surprise to see how original this book was. I didn't run into the same character tropes or predictable plot developments. This is not a story where you could easily slap the outline onto something else; the premise, the characters, and the execution were delightfully one-of-a-kind. For example, I completely expected Calcifer to have a plot twist of secretly being an evil demon while maintaining a falsehood of being friendly. I mean, isn't that one of the oldest tricks in the book? The obviously “evil” character in the cast (in this case, the fire demon) secretly pretending to be an ally until during the book's climax, revealing himself to be the villain. Jones completely subverted my expectations!

This book just has delight written all over it. There's no grimdark fantasy here or any heavy quest. It's about a group of magical people in a quirky world, dealing with problems both mundane and magical. I find those to be some of the best books of all. We don't need an epic 1000 page quest to get some merit out of fantasy literature. The characters are fun to read about, the world is fun to read about, and it's hard not to smile as you turn the pages.

Honestly, my only complaint is the ending part of the book. The pacing seemed to crank up by 1000x speed in the last two chapters and things were resolved so quickly, it was quite jarring after such a long and gradual journey of build-up. The climax of the book, the falling action, and the resolution really happen all in the last two chapters...but the ending does not dictate the journey, and it didn't dampen my enjoyment of everything leading up to it.

All in all, a wonderful and delightful book. I haven't read something that cheered me up this much in a while. If you are a jaded adult reader that is struggling to find wonder in books like you used to as a child, take heart from someone similar - it is still possible to be charmed.

Audibook Review: I listened to this book via audiobook. The audiobook was narrated by Jenny Sterlin, and was excellent. Sterlin is a great narrator, putting emotion into her words without it being overly exaggerated and comical. It really did give the feeling of having the story told to you by a master storyteller. Her voice is very soothing, smooth, easy to listen to and perfectly fitting for the atmosphere of the story. My only complaint is that her voice for Calcifer could be a little grating (but still fitting for his character, considering he's a fire demon) and her accent for Howl seemed to occasionally be off from time to time. These are minor complaints all-in-all, and listening to the audiobook was a fantastic experience.

3.75/5

Please note this book covers some very triggering topics, including but not limited to LGBTQ+ discrimination, sexual assault, rape, abuse, and conversion therapy.

This is more of an expression of my thoughts than an actual review.

This is definitely not the kind of book that I usually read. I read it on a whim; it was part of a fiction sampler I was reading, and I kept becoming curious about what happened next.

I feel like I mostly suffer from not being the kind of person who usually reads these kinds of books? It's a coming-of-age story about a boy struggling with his sexuality and feminity in 1990s India, where LGBTQ+ behavior is outlawed. It details the main character growing up with their family, going through boarding school, joining the circus, and falling in love with another man. I don't consider this plot outline too much of a spoiler, because for these kinds of books, these kinds of settings are only a small portion of the story. The real meat of the story is the trials and tribulations of the main character, his emotional trauma, and his journey throughout. There are a lot of events in the book that seem more symbolic than anything else.

This is an emotionally heavy book, and some parts affected me heavily, especially regarding his family relationships. There were a few parts that I skimmed when I began to get bored of it when it seemed too repetitive with what the conflict was. But the parts that got me hooked (will not say due to spoilers) kept me going. This wasn't a book I wanted to put down or considered leaving unfinished when I got to the parts that hooked me and kept my interest. And I feel like a book that has me thinking about it and considering it after I've finished and put it down has done a good job of making an impression on me.

The reason it's not a full 4 stars is mostly due to some repetitive parts where I was losing some of my interest. Some of the narrative threads felt like they wandered a bit to me with not a lot of connection, almost like a train of thought that kind of goes on without being reigned in. It wasn't a steady ride throughout my reading of it; I had highs and lows as I was going through it. But it's an emotionally devastating book, equal parts tragic and beautiful, and I'm glad I took the random chance to read it.

4.5/5 rating, rounded down.

I've had this on my TBR list for a long time, but it unfortunately kept getting buried by other books. I finally took some time to read it.

What a ride!

Enjoying this book is the same way you might enjoy something like a rigorous hike. This isn't an easy, fun read. This isn't a story of some wacky aliens and a human who tries to be friends with them. Dawn by Octavia E. Butler is a deep, intriguing, and unsettling read. The story discusses the nature of consent, reproductive agency, gender roles, community and identity, human nature, eugenics, and the ethics of assimilation. But Butler doesn't answer any questions about any of these subjects in her book. She explores them.

The premise is as follows: Lillith Ayapo is a human woman who lived on Earth right up until its destruction by nuclear war. But she did not die. Instead, she was saved alongside a handful of humanity by aliens known as the Oankali. The Oankali are a spacefaring race with three sexes: male, female, and ooloi. All three are needed for reproduction, and their social structure is shaped by the presence of these three sexes. The question quickly emerges: why did the Oankali rescue the humans? Out of the kindness of their hearts? As it turns out, the Oankali do want something from the humans: they want to breed with the humans and exchange genetic information.

There's so much to unwrap to this story. It would take so much time to discuss and go through every subject that I mentioned before! So, to keep it concise and spoiler-free, I will say that one of my absolute favorite things about this book is the depth in which Butler crafts each ethical issue. Obviously, most of us look at our current human history and say the following basic statements without much hesitation: colonization is bad, eugenics is bad, and consent is good. In Dawn, the same scenarios are presented but in a much more ambiguous way. Butler doesn't portray any parties in the book as the “good guys” or the “bad guys.” There are many layers to every issue presented in the book, nothing is presented as shallow. There's no spoon-feeding of one-dimensional issues and villains.

Lillith too, is the same way. I've seen so many debates on her actions, how ethical they are, what would be the right thing to do in her shoes. But the way I see it...is there a right answer to this whole scenario? There's a very poignant issue of power balance between the humans and Oankali, one that Lillith finds herself right in the middle of. How much agency does she truly have in the role she's picked to play?

The questions of assimilation and consent in this novel are built so they do not have easy answers and everyone will take away their individual thoughts. The book is, essentially, your springboard. One of my favorite things is going online and seeing people have such widespread opinions on the morality of the Oankali and the situation the humans find themselves in.

The world and situation itself are interesting to read. It's a unique exploration of two common subjects in speculative fiction–the destruction of Earth and first contact. The way Butler describes the visceral reaction of Lillith to the Oankali is vivid. The aliens themselves have a touch of body horror to them in how, well, alien they are to us. The way they talk, the way they approach interaction with humans...it's a fascinating deep-dive without becoming a boring information dump. The stark, alien world that Butler creates for us makes the experience for the humans even more impressionable to me. I was feeling the same sense of awe and fear that the main characters felt.

There are scenes that were uncomfortable to read, that gave me uneasy knots in my stomach. But they only added to the experience of this story. It is a horrifying situation that the humans find themselves in, and things transpire that are shocking to read. Some of my all-time favorite fantasy and science fiction stories are the ones we can use as a reflection of our state of being.

The ending was quite abrupt to me, but honestly, I feel like that's my main complaint with 99% of the books I read. But I get it, the story moves forward. There's more to read about and see how things progress.

All in all, a very fascinating book. Honestly, the reason why I'm rounding down the rating instead of rounding it up to a 5 is that this is not a book that I will probably go back and re-read frequently. But you know what? This is definitely a novel that will stick with me.

Just a casual review of some of my thoughts. Explicit spoilers are discussed within.

I thought the setting was very interesting to read about. The city of Toronto in the near-future, abandoned and transformed into a giant slum that suffers from homelessness, poverty, and intense gang violence throughout. I don't think it's quite as sci-fi as the book emphasizes it to be, but still intriguing to see read about daily life for the citizens and how it's shaped the new emerging culture within.

I was especially intrigued by the indigenous Caribbean elements of mysticism throughout. The mystical aspects of the book with the grounded reality of Toronto was a contrast that I thought was really intriguing and added to my enjoyment of the book's setting. A lot of the main cast speaks in Caribbean dialect as well (I'm not sure if pidgin or creole? I get the terms mixed up a lot). It was kind of hard to read at first, but I grew into it as the story progressed. It made it feel authentic, and I'm glad the author decided to use the natural way these people speak. It made it feel much more atmospheric.

Ti-Jeanne was a frustrating character to read about for most of the book. I know the story deals with her maturing, so it might just be me. For much of the beginning of the book, it really does feel like Ti-Jeanne was a childish woman, almost like a hormonal/rash teenager stuck in a woman's body. I think for me, the effect seemed heightened because she was raising a child. It was one of those dramatic irony sort of things, where you see Ti-Jeanne refusing to listen to her grandmother, but you know in the pit of your stomach that Gros-Jeanne is right, and you feel like something is bad is going to happen...which it does. I know it's a classic story of a younger person not listening to an authority figure, realizing their mistake, and then trying to fix it. I also know it's a realistic struggle of what single mothers trapped in poverty go through, and I wouldn't want any of that changed to be “nicer”. So, for me, I feel like this is something completely subjective and something that I'm being a bit too hard on. I had to remind myself of this when I kept getting frustrated with Ti-Jeanne.

But I will say this: I think it's the ending that made me the angriest. I personally couldn't believe that Tony was framed as someone who was a “redeemable” character. He's, by far, the character I hated the most in this book. Even more than Rudy. Ti-Jeanne's attachment to him despite his manipulation and superficial motivations was understandable, even if it didn't make it less frustrating to read about. That happens to people in real life, so I 100% understood. But I just couldn't believe that the narrative painted Tony as someone worthy of forgiveness? Not going to lie, I was expecting Tony to die at some point in the story. I was hoping he would die. A lot of the conflict that Ti-Jeanne has to go through is because of Tony. He's the one that manipulates her (and I don't feel like I'm exaggerating here; I feel like Tony legitimately emotionally manipulated Ti-Jeanne by acting like he cared about her and playing on her feelings to hide his true intentions.) He kills her grandmother, the one person in Ti-Jeanne's life who cared for her and loved her, and then tries to kill Ti-Jeanne herself! All for selfish reasons, to save himself, with no regards to Ti-Jeanne and her baby.

And in the end? Tony comes and apologizes to Ti-Jeanne and tries to pay his respects to Gros-Jeanne.

In this situation, I would hope to God that Ti-Jeanne would yell at Tony and tell him to never come near her or her grandmother's grave ever again, if not outright attack him. But no, because he “wants to do penance,” Ti-Jeanne lets him pay his respects. At least she seems to be done with him, relationship-wise? She moves on from him. Which is a breath of relief, but I'd hope to everything holy that Ti-Jeanne would break up with a man who killed a beloved family member and then tried to kill her.

The thing that gets me is how the book frames it as he should be forgiven. Now, I could very slightly accept it if Ti-Jeanne still pined for him after everything he had done (emphasis on slightly). After all, that's human nature. Sometimes, we can't help but hold onto to the feelings we have for people, especially if we feel like they're our first love or there was some special connection with them, like Ti-Jeanne has with Tony. But it's the fact that the book itself tried to frame it as Tony being a redeemable person who should be forgiven is ridiculous. A character at the end named Jenny convinces Ti-Jeanne to let Tony pay his respects to Gros-Jeanne. Baby, Ti-Jeanne's child who Tony is the biological father of, had a habit of always crying around Tony, as if he knew he was trouble. At the end, he stops crying around Tony, as if he “forgives” his father or something like that. The narrative itself frames Tony as a person worthy of forgiveness. To my recollection, he doesn't do a single thing worthy of being forgiven. In my opinion, I don't know what Tony could've done to make himself redeemable other than killing Rudy himself and maybe dying afterwards. I will be 100% honest, when I read that ending, I put the book down for a while because I was kind of pissed. Don't tell me that a crap person should be forgiven. You had better show me, and make it worthy, because I find murdering a family member to be a very hard thing to easily forgive.

But that's probably just me, and tells a lot about the kind of person I am in real life.

This book has a great premise, an interesting setting, and a really great exploration of indigenous mysticism and magical realism. But it's bogged down by some frustrations with the characters and narrative framing. Some of this is subjective on my end, and some of it hampers my enjoyment of the book. I'd rate it 3.5/5, maybe closer to 3.

3.5/5______I'm not a horror person, so I wouldn't say this is the kind of book I usually read. I was intrigued by Grady Hendrix, though. I had heard copious amounts of praise for his books, and the premise of his books sounded interesting to me, even though I am not really into the genre. Even as someone who doesn't watch horror, however, I am familiar with the tropes and really famous movies, which grabbed my attention.So, how do I feel about the book after finally reading?It was...a decent book. Between “okay” and “good.” Here's a breakdown of what I think, no spoilers:What I Liked+ Really cool premise. The setup is really neat: a group of final girls based on famous real-world horror slashers have to deal with the aftermath of the slayings, surviving and witnessing horrible atrocities done to their loved ones. But what happens after the credits roll? How would a “final girl” from all of those famous movies go on throughout the rest of their life being a “final girl”? All while the story acts as a deconstruction and commentary on the final girl trope in general? That sounds amazing to me.+ I enjoyed the brisk writing. Maybe it helped that I was reading [b:Galilee 52639 Galilee Clive Barker https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1468740561l/52639.SY75.jpg 3009813] by Clive Barker at the same time as this book (yes, I'm one of those weirdos who reads multiple books at the same time), and it was nice to read something where the prose was more casual and interpersonal, but not in a way that felt juvenile to me. It was short, snappy, and full of personality.+ This is sort of a double-edged sword, but the fast pace made this a vigorous read. And despite my issues with it, it was gripping in its own way, and I found myself reading on to see what would happen next.+ Lynette, the main character, does genuinely feel like a flawed person struggling with trauma. I appreciate how Hendrix explores the ways that her trauma affected her while still making her make genuine mistakes and bad calls. It makes for an interesting character.+ The fake-out for the plot twist was pretty good, I totally fell for it.+ While this book didn't scare me, there were actual parts that were pretty tense and had me on edge. These are probably my favorite parts of the book and the ones that had me gripped the most.+ If you're interested in horror but don't want to read anything too hardcore or upsetting, this is a great book to read. There are moments of violence and descriptions of gore, but they did not push me into the “discomfort and want to put this down” zone. It wasn't overly detailed or made me sick. And I really appreciate that there are books like that!Now, onto the cons...- This book felt like a case of “really cool premise, lackluster execution.”- The characters all dealing with their trauma in different ways is something that probably needed more time to flesh out because, in the end, it didn't feel very immersive.- The meta-commentary for the book, as cool of a concept as it was, very much felt a little too on-the-nose. It broke the immersion. In a deconstruction, we're supposed to believe that these things actually happened to these girls, because the whole point of deconstruction is to analyze the workings of a commonly accepted trope and analyze how it would actually be played out in real life. But when the commentary is too obvious and too trite, it lessens the impact of it and we're left with a bunch of characters talking about the obvious without us being invested in it. There's an extended scene with a character called Chrissy that illustrates this perfectly, in my opinion. I can't take your “analysis” seriously when I'm rolling my eyes at the poorly written dialogue.- Adding to the last point, the commentary of the books should have been better integrated into the story itself. It's too often an occurrence where the prose stops in the middle of the story to have a tangent talking about the final girl trope, or a whole scene with ridiculous, unrealistic dialogue that felt like a teenager wrote it because they don't have enough knowledge to write dialogue that would actually sounds like it would theoretically come from an actual person. - The in-betweens of the chapters, with the essay blurbs and interviews with the victims, ultimately don't add much. It should have been focused more on the phenomena in-universe of over-zealous horror fans. It's just another example of the meta-commentary not blending well with the story.- While I did appreciate the fake-out of the plot twist (see the pros above), the actual plot twist itself made little sense and the setup was not convincing. We don't spend enough on the motivation that when it does come out, I was just mostly thinking “Huh?” and “Who would through this to do that?”- There are other plot points that I feel like were poorly fleshed out (that I can't really go into because of spoilers) or were glossed over. I feel like the book would have really benefitted from either cutting down the focus to just Lynette and fleshing her out more, or adding an extra 200 pages to flesh out all of the final girls.All in all, even though I don't think this is a great book, I still got some enjoyment from reading it. And for what it's worth, I'm more interested in Grady Hendrix's other novels after partaking in this one.

3.5/5

This was another book that unfortunately falls in the “cool premise, mediocre execution” for me, although there were times when it peaked to fall into the “borderline good” stage, hence the extra half-star.

My biggest problem was just the exposition dumps. There was so much exposition to slog through.

In my opinion, Novik has made a legitimately fascinating world, on paper at least. I love the idea of Harry Potter but deconstructed and showed how legitimately deadly a world like that would be to magical children. There were times when maybe Novik toed the line of ridiculousness a bit too much, but I didn't mind too much. If anything, it almost added to the dark humor of the book. Harry Potter is an idealized magical world (at least in the early books), Scholomance is the exact opposite and is borderline grimdark.

Unfortunately, Novik's strategy of worldbuilding is to have El, the narrator and main character of the book, grace us with exposition dumps. Paragraphs and paragraphs of exposition dumps. I loved the world but hated reading about it. Scenes would stop because a character would introduce a new aspect to the world, some kind of new creature or rule of the magic system, and then El would have to stop and explain it to the reader in full, pace-halting detail. When it feels like the story has to grind to a halt and half a chapter is dedicated to exposition, it's no longer engaging to me. It's tedious. Really, I feel like that's the main issue I had with the book. Weave the exposition into the story in a less heavy-handed way, and I feel like this would easily be a 4 star book for me.

Galadriel (El for short) was annoying at first, but I actually warmed up to her by the time the book ended. She gave me petulant child vibes. She puts on a front of being rude to everyone. She's snarling at Orion constantly, she snaps at her classmates. She thinks about how she can blast Orion into a bloody pulp, how she can level the school with her magical powers, how she can take on Orion in a fight, but never actually does. A lot of her thoughts, especially in her interactions with Orion, boil down to “I wanted to [insert physical hostile action here] to Orion, but ended up not doing it.” While I maybe thought her development and the character arc she goes through might have been a bit sudden and it would have been nice to have the seeds of it sowed earlier, it was still a nice character arc to see develop.

I don't know if any character outside of Galadriel and Orion in last act of the book were really all that engaging, but they weren't overly dull or tedious to read about. Novik didn't fall into the usual boarding school tropes that are in so many other books. She could have given us the same exact character tropes we see in boarding school books: the fish-out-of-water main character, the good-without-question allies of the main character, the obligatory mean bully, shallow love interest put on a pedestal. It's a breath of fresh air, and I commend Novik for it.

Also, confession: Part of me thought Orion and El was cute. Yeah, it's the kind of silly where it's like “El is constantly rude to Orion and in real life, this would be a toxic relationship” but...I don't know, man. It's a romance trope guilty pleasure of mine.

So, do I want to read the rest of the series? Maybe Novik got out all of the exposition dumps in the first book and it'll make the other ones better for me to read.

I'll be real. If I do read the rest of the series, it'll just be to see where El and Orion end up. I hope they kiss again.

This is one of those classic pieces of literature that has been dissected, discussed, and reviewed, almost since time immemorial, so I can't really add anything of substance to it. I'll just put down my quick thoughts.

This is my favorite book of Kafka's, and I really like Kafka. One of my favorite things to read and explore in a book is the intersection of the absurd and completely mundane, two conflicting aspects of reality, and seeing how people try to wrangle with them existing in the same spot.

You woke up as a giant insect one day? Yeah, well, people still gotta work and pay their rent. You're just going to have to chill under the couch and eat rotten vegetables while your family tries to wonder how they're going to feed themselves without your paycheck. Even as a giant insect, you're still trying to get out the door and tell your boss you can't make it into work.

It speaks to some kind of existential aspect to all of us that I love exploring. Because...it is kind of absurd, isn't it? The fact that even through the most surreal nightmare, we still have the compulsion to continue the daily grind. I've absolutely had nightmares that were crazy and bizarre, like finding out I had no mouth or my arms had been replaced with knives, but I was still trying to wake my mom up and so she can drive me to school. Isn't that so uniquely absurd in how human it is? Humans might be the only creature that will wake up as a giant bug and have their main priority be, “I still have to catch the train to go to work.”

Maybe it's because I'm a disgruntled millennial that this work kind of speaks to me; the sheer incredulous nature of it all, of knowing that just because you woke up as a giant insect one day, it doesn't mean your crushing obligations of daily life magically go away. To me, that's where the fascination and beauty(?) of Kafka's writing comes into play: The intersection of nightmarish surrealism with nightmarish mundane life, two different kinds of horror.

I'd be really interested to see how different generations react to this story. I'd be especially interested to see who sympathizes more with the family versus who sympathizes more with Gregor? While I sympathized with both parties, I definitely found myself feeling almost heartbroken for Gregor in the story.

So, if you're a nerd for classic literature like me, you'll probably like this book.

Some parts of this review are more subjective, and I just want to warn about that. Also spoilers are discussed, but it's not detail-heavy.

I thought the world pre-dystopia was interesting, though on the generic side. It isn't anything that i haven't seen before. Genetically modified animals, rampant consumerism centered around vanity, massive and unethical corporations, people fully giving into vices such as lust and gluttony, a world made up of 1% elites and 99% poverty-stricken masses...But I guess sometimes things don't have to be super interesting or mind-bending to still be engaging to read about. But there were some really interesting parts, parts that I wish were expanded upon more. Without going too much into detail, the relationship between the Crakers and Snowman was something I wish we got more of. Their interactions were always kind of fascinating for me to read. The sub-story of progressing through society through the eyes of a character growing up in it was also a neat way to explore it.

The prose...I'm mixed on. I was also reading The Handmaid's Tale by the same author (though I'm not far into it) and for some reason, it just feels so much more weighty in Oryx and Crake, and not in a really good connotation. I really appreciate how poetic Atwood can get in her writing. It's beautiful and almost musical in some places. In other places, it's so bothersome to work through. It's a jumble of complicated words and sentence structure and lots of word play. I don't know, maybe if I was in a different mood while reading this, I'd feel different about it. This is pretty subjective, and it's probably based on my own shortcomings. It's strange because in the few pages I've read of the Handmaid's Tale, it seems to be executed so much better? The prose there seems to have that same poetic quality without making it feel like I have to decipher a paragraph. This was especially evident in Crake's dialogue. Oh god, it was a struggle not to just skim through all his dialogue. I'm glad that not everyone talked like him, I don't know if I'd be able to get through the book if that were the case.

I'll be honest and say I have mixed feelings about the “two stories/timelines going on at once” method of writing. It really all depends on the execution. I've read books that do really great with it, and it offers a way of unraveling mysteries in a gripping way as you progress through the story. On the other hand, it becomes a jumble of stories that not very coherent and hard to keep up with. This book was in the middle of the two. There's the initial fascination and wonder of wondering how Snowman and the world got into the current predicament, and the anticipation of seeing Jimmy go through the world and wondering at one point do they coalesce. At the same time...wow, did Atwood screw it up with changing tenses and random sparse interjections that come off as jarring. It felt sloppy in a way, and she kind of ruined what could've been an otherwise engrossing set-up to reveal the story.

(spoilers ahead)

For the characters...the only remotely interesting one was Snowman, and I was really only interested in his change to Snowman and his interactions with the Crakers and how that shaped his identity (of which we get little of). I cared little for Jimmy. Crake was only interesting in his goals and not in the character in himself, and Oryx...she was just implemented so weird. She hardly felt like a character at all, more like a last minute addition. She's alluded to as a symbol throughout much of the story and there's a gigantic build-up to her eventually being introduced into the story, and when she is introduced...it was weird. Most of her inclusion was just through her backstory, and I have no clue what that was supposed to add to the story, since it didn't really add anything at all. It was almost like a big tangent, like Atwood made up this character and had trouble fitting her into the story, and just shoved her in there because she didn't want to waste time. It would've worked so much better if Oryx had a bigger impact earlier on, so she didn't feel like a disappointing “pay off.” Or maybe just stay as a symbol instead of feeling like she was shoved in to justify the giant childhood sex slave story that Atwood felt she had to put in the middle of the book.

Also, I note that the official summary calls this story a “love story.” Uh...did I miss that? Where does it become a love story? You mean when Oryx pointlessly starts narrating her life story to Jimmy to emphasize that child porn is bad (or not even that, since Oryx apparently isn't all that broken up at being sold as a child and being forced into doing child porn)? You mean the two pages that say “Crake loved Oryx (though we're never really shown or have it elaborated on) but Jimmy starts to sleep with her” and then the book ends about 30 pages later? That's an “unforgettable love story?” Really?

All in all, it was a book with redeeming qualities that kept me reading through the end, but was bogged down by its flaws that keep me from confidently saying it's a great book. I guess I could say it's a good book? For me, it hovers in that in-between area of “ok” and “good.”

But there is one thing I want to say in this review: The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson kept on popping up in my head at certain times when I read this. They have some similarities but they're totally different books, I think it was just in the speculative fiction nature of them both and how they touch upon some similar themes at times? I feel like the prose in the two books are near opposites, and they both have a habit of jumping around different places, though Atwood's book focuses more on different times and Stephenson focuses more on different characters. I prefer The Diamond Age to Oryx and Crake so...I don't know, if you found this book disappointing, try that one, I guess. A weird note to end a review on, but it would've bothered me if I didn't say it.

2.5 stars, rounded down.

Be warned, this is a long review.

I was so hyped for this book. First off, that book cover design is gorgeous. Secondly, the premise immediately caught my attention. A tale about slavery and colonization...but from the view of one of the natives herself; a would-be slave taking advantage of the little bit of extra privilege she has. It's an incredibly nuanced topic and one that you hardly see covered in books like this, I feel. In stories like this, there's always two distinct groups: the colonized and the colonizers. The foreigners and the natives. While still an effective setup for conflict, you hardly ever get into the more complicated layers of narratives like this. What about the levels of privilege within the marginalized group?

It's fascinating to me because it's strongly rooted in human history and human nature itself. Just research about colorism, where black individuals are treated differently based on the many different shades of their skin despite all being recognized as black. Or even look at the division that occurs within a group of people who you presume to be the same. Think of women who bring down other women who don't meet their standard of acceptability. Think of people who live in poverty who dislike others that are in poverty, who they perceive as below them. The LGBTQ+ individuals who express biphobia or transphobia. Hell, I know people like this in real life. I've met immigrants who hated other immigrants for being the “bad kind” and not doing it “right.” People like this exist all the time in real life, and I was excited to read about this topic in a story such as this and to have it explored.

Even the magic present in this story was completely up my alley. I love stories with a fantastical element, and I don't think it makes it any less “realistic” or true to life. It can be a perfect reflective commentary on real life as we know it.

I was expecting a captivating story exploring marginalization among the marginalized, the differing levels of privilege within a group. That's not what I got. Was I too hyped for it? Maybe, but I think it came down to my most hated and yet common foe...great concept, poor execution.

For starters, Sigourney is a baffling character. I really don't know what the author wanted our impression of her to be. I first thought, based on Sigourney's whole character journey–infiltrating the kongelig colonizers and then killing them off one by one to be crowned ruler and exact revenge–made her out to be a clever, scheming woman. In some instances, this is showcased, by her influencing others with the powers of her kraft (her special ability, which is to read the minds of people and manipulate them). But other times, her decision-making was confusing. She'd make choices that made absolutely no logical sense, she'd confide in people who she had no reason to, put her trust in people who non-subtly want to kill her, and generally make decisions that almost felt like she was doing things at random and hoping they would work. Her actions would have no consistent logic. At first, I thought that maybe the author was trying to do some kind of twist with Sigourney, like that all the plotting in the world doesn't mean you're prepared to go toe-to-toe with merciless and cunning rulers. But I never got that vibe from the story, and even if that was the case, Sigourney can literally read minds. If you've been given a crutch that huge and still can't read the obvious signs from people, that's just poor writing. We'll get back to the kraft thing a bit later.

70% of the novel, Sigourney is a passive protagonist and disappointing to read about. Which is a shame, because she started so strong. Without diving into spoilers, she uses her kraft in a deadly way early on in the story to kickstart an event that plays to her advantage. That was exciting to read about. And then Sigourney just...doesn't do anything like that again in the book. Most of the story dragged on with Sigourney reacting to things instead of doing anything. Now, that's not always a bad thing in a story. An interesting story can be told with a reactive character, but the thing is...Sigourney isn't supposed to be passive. In her internal monologue, she reminds herself and the reader over and over again that she's here for a reason, that she needs to take an active part so she can be crowned ruler, gotta do stuff to accomplish her goals. And then she just...doesn't. And on the occasion she would do something, it wouldn't advance her goals. At first, I thought maybe it was a part of some clever 4D chess game she was playing, where some seemingly unconnected action would actually spiral into something that furthered her goals. There were a few times when she would do something that gave the illusion of her being an active character, but what would happen is that she would do something (usually showing something to someone else), the other character(s) would react, then Sigourney would go back to her cottage to continue...drinking tea and taking baths. At one point, even a character in the story points this out to Sigourney and asks her why she's taking her sweet-ass time getting her revenge plan in motion.

But I could tolerate these shortcomings better if at least the writing was good. The book didn't even have that going for it. The prose wasn't too bad, and in some ways, I did enjoy it. Some of the descriptions were visceral to read: early on, Sigourney reads the mind of one old woman and we get a graphic, tragic passage of the horrible treatment she went through (and of course, all inspired by real-life torments inflicted on slaves at one point). It was gut-wrenching to read and powerful. But repetition...dear God, the repetition. It's an effective tool when used properly. Keyword being properly here. How this book was written, you could make a drinking game out of it. How many pages before Sigourney uses the phrase “dark skin, wide nose, and full lips” to describe someone? How long until Sigourney once again harps that she respects Marieke's privacy and won't read her mind? I didn't have a problem with her repeated monologues about feeling shame about how her fellow islanders hated her, because it was a huge part of her character arc.

Major spoilers below and trigger warning:
This brings me to a specific instance about Sigourney's weirdly illogical characterization...A huge part of her internal monologue is her agonizing over how she's "forced" to keep slaves in order to keep what little power she has over the kongelig and how she has to sometimes have them whipped and even executed to not suffer herself. It's a very, very compelling conflict and one of the better parts of the book. She is seen hesitating and being eaten up by grief when she has to treat one of her slaves this way. But if this is the case...then why, oh, why...does she attempt to **rape** one of her slaves? And this isn't an instance of being forced to do this to keep her station like the other instances are. This is a private occurrence when she's alone in her cottage, and something just...compels her to want to force her slave to have sex with her?? There's no explanation for this and it makes no sense with the rest of her internal conflict.Please don't try and tell "well she didn't go through with it" or "but she felt really bad about it" or anything like that. Attempted rape is attempted rape. She also attempts to use her position of power as his owner to get him to submit. I'm not trying to make an argument about Sigourney being likable or not, that has nothing to do with it (and I think it's clear that Sigourney's not supposed to be likable, and that's totally fine). The problem is that this action has absolutely no logical basis in her motivations and character arc.My last complaint: the kraft. A very cool but poorly utilized aspect of the book's worldbuilding. Some people have magical abilities, and islanders are typically punished for having them. I liked the detail about it being used against the islanders as another tool for their oppression, but...you run into a common pitfall when you write abilities such as these: why don't the characters use them more to their advantage? Some of the kraft manifest as very powerful, very useful abilities: the ability to make someone always tell the truth, the ability to read minds and memories, etc. It can't be because the kongelig don't want to kill each other, they all very plainly want to kill each other for the chance to be crowned ruler of the islands. It can't be fear of punishment, since there doesn't really seem to be much punishment over other kongelig killing each other (only when it's a slave doing the killing is when it's instant death). In Sigourney's case, she has the ability to read minds, one of the most powerful magical abilities you can get. Granted, it's shown that people can sense when her kraft is being used on them, but still, that seems like something odd to leave to go to waste. Her kraft can even make it easier to kill people, which is her *goal*. Usually, when Sigourney uses her kraft, it's so the book can info-dump about the pasts of characters and their feelings. It feels like waste.But let me finish this review off with things I enjoyed: the reveal at the end was not one I saw coming. I guess there could be some complaint that ties into my earlier "it made no logical sense and came out of nowhere" points I raised, but I do give kudos for legitimately throwing me off guard and giving an actual compelling reason for it to happen. The worldbuilding was clearly inspired by real-life history, and I appreciated how it was a reflection of actual historical eras. I do appreciate how there are one or two Fjern that are not completely heartless and are given some redeeming qualities, it makes it feel more real than if it was written as "the obviously bad guys versus the obviously good guys." And I always praise a book that doesn't bore me and motivates me enough to keep reading to the end. This book was that, and I don't remember any parts reading where I was bored.Overall, I'm not happy to report that this book, after spending so long on my to-read list, ended up being a disappointment.

Hovering around a 3.75-4 stars for me.

I listened to the entirety of this audiobook while driving for work. This was another one I went into without reading anything about it except for the blurb. I am stealing and reusing one of my own descriptors that I made in my review of The Last Days of New Paris, but I feel like it describes what I felt when listening to this book as well. I felt this story wasn't as much of a narrative as much as it was an experience.

Going into the book, here is what I knew: two time-traveling agents working for different organizations wage war on each other throughout time. Though the two are enemies, they eventually fall in love. That's all the context I had, and it colored what I was expecting. I thought it would be a more traditional plot-driven book since that tends to be the trend with science fiction books. This wasn't it at all. In fact, it even led me to be a little disappointed at first.

It took me a while to get into the feel of the book. I feel like the main focus of it is the language. The letters written by Red and Blue (and even the prose itself to an extent) are filled with some of the most lyrical, abstract, and poetic writing I've ever heard. Metaphors, similies and craftsmanship with the English language fill their letters, like they are both composing music or sonnets. After getting used to this playing and building of language, I started to click with the book and immerse myself in it more. I believe listening to the book versus reading it might have helped with that. It helped the flow of the words feel more natural. It's very unique in that I can't think of another novel I've read that has this same kind of priority on language. There have been others that I've read that felt more like experiences, perhaps in the setting or by just exploring something, but this is the first I've read where the prose itself is what the reader is meant to immerse themselves the most in.

The setting also takes a setting seen in many different media--time traveling--and gives it a unique spin. In fact, I'd say this story is almost borderline weird fiction with how surreal it can get. The main characters are humans, but they stretch the definition of it by all of their enhancements, all to help them better fight their time-traveling war. The way they pass letters onto each other is... unconventional, to say the least. I don't want to say more because I think reading about them is part of the experience of reading this.

It's hard to talk about the characters because their development is not focused on very much. I can't really criticize the relationship not feeling like a natural progression or the two having chemistry because it's hard to quantify those things when all of their interactions are done through these letters filled to the brim with purple prose. But I was surprised, at the end, to find myself invested in their relationship and hoping that everything worked out. Maybe it was the dramatic, creative ways they communicated with one another? While I didn't feel there was much under the surface (even with the backstories they revealed about themselves, I'm the kind of person who feels more impacted when the characters have things happen to them as opposed to them talking of things that have happened to them in the past and seeing the aftermath), this isn't the kind of story that comes across as having that be a priority. I think when an author (or authors) write stories a certain way to make it clear what purpose they have in writing it, it's easier for me to not be so bothered by the lackluster aspects of it.

My biggest complaint? I've already gone over how beautiful and poetic the writing can be, especially in the letters that Blue and Red write to one another. I think sometimes it gets to be a bit too...much. Obviously, this isn't a case where you expect their letters to sound natural and like something most people would write. It's part of the experience, like I said above. But, in all honesty? Even with that in mind, sometimes it gets to be a little ridiculous at points. I guess it's a lucky thing that I listened to this through an audiobook because it means I can't reference it to paste quotes. Otherwise, this review would be filled with the most ridiculous ones. Holding coins under your tongue? An entire paragraph describing eating blueberry pancakes and honey in the most flowery, purple prose imaginable? A dramatic description of a character being locked in a glass coffin with no "necrophilic prince?" I'll be honest, I think even the most delicate and beautiful writing can't really cover up the silliness of such things, and only works to highlight it even more. That's the main reason why I hesitate to give it a full four stars so readily.

But despite the initially bumpy ride, things smoothed out as time went on, and I found myself enjoying it. If you're looking for a traditional story, I don't think this will do it for you. If you're okay with experiencing a story through its writing and take joy just in the act of listening to poetic prose, you will enjoy this. I recommend the audiobook. The narrators do a great job with their respective parts, and it helps better to let the words flow over you.

Listened via audiobook.

I enjoyed this book a lot! I loved the alternate history premise with a fantastical twist and the main character's hard wit. It was an engaging read that kept me relatively hooked. Ignore my read dates, I started the book and then got distracted, but I sat down and began to listen to it regularly.

Lizbeth Rose is a gunnie, a gun-for-hire mercenary living in an alternate history version of the United States, where parts of the country are territory for other countries. After completing a job that went haywire, Lizbeth goes home to find two Russian wizards–called “grigoris”–who hire her for a dangerous job. They travel across the territories of North America, looking for something very particular. I won't spoil past that, because part of the book's engagement was hearing things unravel and they went along.

I was legitimately very interested in this alternate version of the United States. The addition of magic was an intriguing twist. There's no explanation for the magic, though, so if you are coming in expecting a detailed magic system, you'll be disappointed. I wasn't at all bothered by it. The main character herself felt like someone who wasn't too invested in magic, so it made it feel authentic to her perspective. It's a relatively fast-paced book with great action and tense scenes. Lizbeth herself is a fun character to read about. She's no-nonsense, clever, and tough. My favorite thing about Lizbeth? She's the perfect example of a character who actually is badass. She doesn't need to tell the audience and try to convince them. It's painted clear as day with her actions, and I respect that so much. She doesn't undergo any significant character development during the story, but there wasn't a point in the book where she felt stale to me.

My main criticism of the book is that Lizbeth's narration could get a little too dry and could bog down the scenes with all of her clipped sentences, though that might be just how it felt with the audiobook narrator. There's a few scenes/developments in character relationships that felt like they came out of nowhere and it gave me a bit of whiplash.

All in all, a solid book and one that I enjoyed.

Note: This story was listened to in audiobook form. I'll add a separate small review for just the audiobook at the end.

Content warnings: War crimes, sexual assault/rape, violence, self harm
Spoilers discussed in detail within this review

Warning, long review up ahead.

It's fun to write a review for a book if you love it or you hate it. For a book that's simply just disappointing, there's not that same kind of enjoyment.

This is one of those reviews.

As a person of East Asian descent, I was very excited to read this book. Mainstream fantasy has so often been defined by all the same European (mostly Western European) derived culture and history. But from the real world, the inspiration of even the wildest of stories, there is so much more than West Europe (and the USA, I'd like to add). Whenever I see fantastical and/or speculative fiction that derives from something else, I always get excited. As someone who is East Asian, seeing a book inspired by a significant event from that region got me hyped to read this.

I've recently gotten into audiobooks while working my job, and so I got this audiobook and couldn't wait to hear an exciting saga to liven up my work day. At about 1/3 of the way in, it was already becoming a struggle to finish it. It was only through sheer willpower that I got through the entire audiobook. I found myself making faces at what I was hearing through my earbuds.

I was under the impression that this book would be a sprawling and dense, maturely written saga. The first section of the book sounded like a teen sitcom. I don't want to sound disrespectful to YA fiction as a whole and the people who read them, but I mean to say that this was not the dense and complex writing I was hoping for, but when I heard about this book having rich characters and dramatic conflicts, I was not expecting your typical public school drama with one-note stereotypes.

Let me back up a little. The very first section of the book, with Rin escaping her foster family to go to the prestigious school of Sinegard, was very gripping. Already, I was invested in this character's determination to rise above the poverty she had endured to an entirely new setting with a new culture. And then the school section of the story began and I was severely underwhelmed. I'm not joking when I say you could take out the names and setting details and put just the dialogue in your typical late '90s early 2000s teen drama sitcom, and nothing would seem out of place. All of the usual cliches are there. Now, I understand cliches are present in every story, but usually people try to offset them a little with an original twist or add some kind of interesting catch to them that makes them at least somewhat entertaining to read and less shallow. There is none of that here. Literally, every character in this beginning section of the book is a cardboard cutout of a trope. This was the deep characterization and writing that people had been raving about?

Rin's the new girl who nobody likes because she's different and a little better than her peers. She's got the typical nerdy best friend/sidekick. The bully who literally exists just to be utterly irredeemable with no other qualities. The preppy pretty girl. Yes, there is a goddamn prep girl character in this war saga novel. There is nothing else to them, no motivations or deeper explorations of who they are other than the archetypes. It's frustrating because there are instances where you could delve deeper into the character, showcase them as why they are the way they are. Oh, the bully is the war lord's son? How might that affect him into being a bully? But no, he's just there to beat up Rin and be the bad guy.

Everyone is defined as being either “good” or “bad” depending on if they are an ally of Rin or not. Rin's nerdy friend, the professor who sympathizes with her, and her original tutor? Basically all good guys, nothing more. The bully, the prep girl, the teacher who hates Rin? All of them are unequivocal jerks because of course only a jerk could be mean and not like our main character. The only mildly interesting character in this part of the book is Jiang, because he's kind of weird and had a potentially interesting backstory. But even then, “weird teacher who kind of vibes with the main character because said main character is an outcast” isn't something that's really rare.

And then comes the second portion of the book, that focuses on the invasion and the characters being thrust into the war.

The whiplash I felt from the extreme tone shift was nearly physical, it was so bad.

I have never read a book with a more inconsistent tone between the two halves of the book. It felt like Kuang had written two entirely different books, one a typical YA coming-of-age school drama book, and the other book a gritty and grimdark war novel, and then decided to arbitrarily put them under the same cover. I was actually staring open-mouthed at my phone at some parts in disbelief that this was still the same story. We suddenly go from teenage school drama to extreme violence. The enemy forces invade, and Rin is now at the front lines with her new magical training. There are no more prep girls or bullies to deal with. Now, we start dealing with massive war atrocities. Despicable war crimes, children being murdered in the fight and people viciously killed and mutilated. Corpses littering the streets, women being violently raped and brutalized.

What in the hell? What kind of shift is this? I'm not saying that the beginning of the book was all peachy clean. There are clear references to self-harm, marital rape, drug abuse, and violence. But the leap from minor details to full-blown descriptions and focus on violence is such a tonal shock. I'm not saying it's impossible to do this, or that it's a bad idea. Ender's Game started out as a kid's academy that deals with child soldiers and the real consequences of war put onto a young, developing kid. Harry Potter is a coming-of-age story that notably grows darker and more intense as the books go on. The difference between these two books and The Poppy War is that the tonal shift is handled leagues better, a more gradual and natural shift. We know the stakes in the beginning of Ender's Game see how they are revealed and delved into deeper as the story goes on, and even then, it's not like we get pages of graphic descriptions of women and children being brutalized. Harry Potter was a gradual change that happened over years and dealt very organically with the changes in psychology and circumstances during a war.

Kuang does not handle the shift with the same finesse. Characters who were once one-note archetypes are now suddenly fighting in a brutal war and subject to intense brutality themselves. Shallow characters are not sufficiently developed in an organic way, and suddenly we're watching them change in the midst of a war. And to think this is only book one of a trilogy...this kind of transition would have been better spread out across all three of those books!

While the story and characters were agonizing, that's not to say that I didn't enjoy aspects of this book. The world-building, being based on Chinese history, was very interesting to read and I enjoyed the setting very much. Seeing the history of past wars being talked about was actually interesting, if a little infodump-esque. Even the dropping of real world names and historical figures (Sun Tzu being the most noticeable) didn't bother me that much because I see it happen all the time in Western-derived stories. To me, it's very little different from a Eurocentric fantasy story having extremely obvious stand-ins for real-world ethnicities, nations, and religions (or in some cases, just flat out having a Christian-esque God in a fantasy world). I think we're more used to it in Eurocentric stories and tend to excuse it there more. If anything, it made Kuang's world seem more like an alternate history kind of setting to me than straight-up fantasy.

Among those who are critical of the book like me, I'm actually opposite of the major opinion and think Rin became more interesting as the book went on. She started out as a pretty common character trope of wanting to be better and rising above her position, being the new girl at school that nobody likes, and then suddenly finding she really is special through her magical powers. Watching her become more hardened and making ethically reprehensible choices as the story went on made her a much more intriguing character to me. I am utterly fascinated by characters like that, and I think it's much more realistic. Imagine being a vulnerable child, orphaned by a horrible war and raised by abusive people, knowing very little of love and nurturing and living in poverty. Now imagine being a young teenager (Rin seems to be about 14-15 in the beginning of the book and ages to around 17-18? when the war starts) and being ostracized by your peers, pushed beyond your limits, singled out with very few friends on your side. And now you have some kind of mystical power that proves you are superior in some way to your peers and are trusted with power over others.

You're not going to magically become a good guy who saves the day and always does the right thing, especially in a fantasy world where there is no such thing as “the right thing.” Not to say that typical good hero stories are bad. I love them very much and cherish them. But I cherish character stories like Rin's in a different way, because they give such a raw and powerful outlook on a vulnerable person being put in a position of power. The part where she commits genocide on an entire ethnic population and now has aspirations to take over much more...that kind of development is chilling. Is she likable? Not really. Is she a good person? God, no. But you don't need to be a good person or even likable to be a compelling character. It's probably the only good thing about the tonal shift, though this would have been much better developed more naturally over the course of three books than crammed into one.

I'm honestly torn over whether to continue the series or not. The final development of Rin are very intriguing, and I do want to see what more happens, if Rin falls further into being a despicable person or if she somehow tries to find a way to pay for her sins. But Kuang's writing is such a struggle to get through, and I don't know if the amazing setting and Rin's development will be enough to get me through the rest, especially with how long the stories are.

But I am considering buying a physical copy of this book and re-reading it. And that's because...

Audiobook Review

Okay, so it took me a while to get into audiobooks. I tend to zone out when trying to listen, and I'm very sensitive about sounds (I'm one of those highly sensitive people who physically cannot stand the sensation of ASMR into my ear, including whispering and certain kinds of noises). But after training myself up to it, I've been getting more into it and getting better at listening to stories. And it's such a great way to consume more books when you can't exactly read them, like at work.

So, this audiobook. My first impressions are that the narrator's voice is kind of whispery and soft, which ties into that whole ASMR thing. But that's 100% subjective and shouldn't at all be considered valid.

And then I continued listening.

Maybe my reaction to the story was partly influenced by the narration. She was so exaggerated in her reading of characters that it was almost laughable. It sounded like a parody. She sounded like she had to act out the characters to a class of children. I don't know how you can take this grimdark story seriously when she's lowering and making her voice sound gruff, or drawing out her words for older men in such a comical way. Her gasping and crying for Rin's emotional dialogue were so excessive. In some parts, I had to stifle my laughter at how unintentionally comedic she made the voices.

She gave Kitay, Rin's nerdy friend, something like...I don't even know how to describe it, like an urban, California surfer accent? It was the opposite of immersion. Probably the worst was Venka. I am not joking when I say she gave Venka a literal stereotypical prep girl accent. You know, the high-pitched, kind of Valley girl voice? I was half expecting Venka to say “And, like, you better not wear the same dress as me to, like, prom, okay girlfriend?” or something equally ridiculous. These voices sounded like imitations of something from a Disney teen sitcom from 2000 to 2005.

I don't know, maybe some people enjoy the extra acting in voices. It was too over-the-top and comedic for me, especially considering this is the same book where corpses are piled up and litter the streets after a brutal invasion. But again...tonal whiplash.

I think I've said more than enough, so I will end all of my rambling here. I will be on the lookout for more Asian-inspired fantasy. Hopefully, I will enjoy it more than this one. Perhaps there is improvement in the other books of this trilogy? I'll only find out if I read them, and I don't know how likely that will be.

"Worlds. The whole damn sky full of worlds. Places no one will ever see. Except me."

----------------

Discworld is perhaps one of the most highly acclaimed fantasy series ever written. All I've ever read about this book from other readers has been the highest praise. People constantly rank the books among their all-time favorites. As a longtime lover of fantasy, this of course meant I had to put it on my own list.

But for the longest time, I was so horribly intimidated to actually start reading Discworld.

I am always wary when I gain an interest in consuming any piece of media that is critically acclaimed on the level that Discworld is at because then your standards are set so infinitely high that it's almost an unfair advantage against it. There have been too many times in my life where I've ended up ultimately disappointed in something highly reviewed because reviews for it were glowing and it ended up falling short of my expectations. I mean, when people say something is "incredible," "amazing," or "perfect," it's hard not to go in expecting something to blow your mind. And to be fair, I know with certain pieces of my favorite media, I think of them in the same above-and-beyond terms that I'm sure would turn others off if they were to read it themselves. It's just a part of being passionate about something, but it does dull the experience of some things for someone like me who comes into it at a much later date.

Along with that consideration, Discworld is one of those series that people like to tell you not to start with the actual first book, and everybody has different recommendations on where to start. Full disclosure, this is one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to any piece of media. I hate the idea of starting in the middle of something. I like going in order. It just feels good and right to me. Not to mention, nothing frustrates me more than when I feel like I'm missing out on some piece of exposition because I skipped a couple of entries. Even if that isn't an issue, the idea that I could be missing out on the satisfaction of watching how things developed and seeing the natural progression of how both the story and even the authors themselves have changed throughout the series also bums me out. Not to mention...nine out of ten times when someone says "Don't worry, you don't need to see the other ones to understand what's going on," it's a flat-out lie. Experience is a merciless teacher, and this has been one of her lessons to me.

But, I still felt like I was missing out on something by not reading Discworld. It just sounds so...fun and filled with whimsy. Those tend to be my favorite stories. I carefully tempered my expectations; I've heard before that Color of Magic should be considered more of a prologue to the saga of Discworld. I was also intrigued by the fact that Color of Magic looked to be a shorter story with a more fun and casual experience meant for the reader. I feel like those kinds of fantasy stories aren't very popular nowadays.

I'm happy to say it was a very pleasant experience throughout, even with my expectations purposefully lowered!

Color of Magic introduces us to the world of Discworld: a very unique setting where the world is a flat disc balanced atop four giant elephants who are in turn balanced atop a giant turtle swimming throughout the vastness of the cosmos. Like I said, very unique. Within Discworld exists extraordinary locales with equally extraordinary people and their cultures, great and powerful magic of all sorts that is a part of the very fabric of reality itself, and zany characters. The basic premise as introduced in the beginning pages of the book is that a group of scholars want to find a way to lower themselves past the edge of the rim of the world to see what sex the giant turtle is.

...But the focus of the story is on a wizard named Rincewind. What does Rincewind desire in life? He just wants to live a safe, comfortable, normal existence with a respectable amount of coin. Very relatable, but Fate has other plans in store for the wizard. Rincewind runs afoul of a strange man named Twoflower. He likes to travel to different places and capture scenes straight from light with his odd camera box that dangles from his neck. An odd chest filled with odds and ends such as clothes follows him around on many pairs of legs, and he calls himself a word that is unfamiliar to those in Discworld...something called a tourist.

And thus begins their adventure in the magical, whimsical world.

This was a fun book to read. Quite a delightful experience! I loved the mix of flowery, poetic prose grounded with lots of humanistic humor throughout. The premise, as described above, is just so much fun. It almost reads like a Dungeons and Dragon campaign with a group of quirky, fun-to-read-about protagonists going through different encounters and meeting all sorts of zany characters. The humor is written so well into the story and characters. How the situations are described and how the characters react to them is hilariously done. The fact that you have this high fantasy setting but the main characters, Rincewind and Twoflower, react to them in completely different but equally hilarious ways was so fun to read about. In fact, I'd say that Color of Magic is borderline absurdist with how wacky the setting could get but so many of its inhabitants are just so blasé about the whole thing.

The worldbuilding is legitimately very unique and fascinating to read about. There's not another world out there like the one Sir Pratchett has crafted here. And while some of the setting does feel like a tool to highlight the humor of the writing in the contrast it has to its relatively grounded character reactions, it never felt like it crossed that line too much. It never got so ridiculous and the reactions to the settings never got so downplayed that the whole of Discworld feels like a joke. While the initial setup is ludicrous--I mean, it is a flat disc on top of a bunch of elephants on top of a giant turtle--the writing never loses the sense of awe and wonder in the world. There's still some weight to the setting and describing it. With humor, I find it's very easy to go too far in one direction and make everything silly and thus feel kind of pointless, but Discworld has the right amount of balanced seriousness to make things still significant. I loved reading about the reality-warping aspects of magic, the weirdness inherent in it, and the quirks it causes to the world. Discworld has some cool rainbows (or Rimbows, I suppose).

Rincewind and Twoflower have become some of my favorite fictional characters after reading this. Rincewind, despite being a literal wizard, is by far one of the most relatable protagonists I've ever read about. He's down-to-earth. He's got a pessimistic streak. He wants to get through another day without having a near-death experience. The dude is tired of adventuring. Twoflower is his opposite, the epitome of an ignorant tourist. But instead of taking photos with his flash on in Paris, he's doing it in a place where there are literal dragons, trolls, and dryads. He's optimism incarnate, never bothered by anything in life, and always eager to see the next dangerous thing because it's something he needs to take a photo of. The "pessimist versus optimist" dynamic is one of the most common in fiction, but here, it's entertaining and written well and without enough of its own unique quirks to make it stand out with its own identity. They're the perfect kinds of characters you want to put through all sorts of crazy scenarios just to see how they'll react and get out of it.

One thing that gets me about Color of Magic is that it's perfectly balanced in how it executes the premise. It's humorous without being too lighthearted and thus losing any actual weight the story has. The prose switches from beautifully poetic to quipped in a very natural way that doesn't feel jarring. So many times, I see where an author has gone too much on one side and the book loses its effectiveness.

But now that I've done its praises, it's time to go onto what I didn't quite like about the book...Rincewind and Twoflower are the only characters that are really of any significance. Others get introduced that I kept thinking would have some kind of relevance to the story since they take a bit of the spotlight during portions of the book, but then it turns out to not be the case. I guess it is like a Dungeons and Dragons campaign in that way. You'll have temporary party members who look like they're gearing up to be of some value before the DM decides that it's time to move on and whisks the players away.

I don't consider this a spoiler since it happens at the beginning of the book: a meta-feature that occurs within the first few chapters is that there's a random footnote that acts as an add-on to the narrative going on. This happens once in the book to my recollection and just seemed...odd? Where everything else is so well-balanced and crafted, this one felt like a strange outlier to me. Perhaps it's supposed to be some kind of foreshadowing in future books, but I am one of those readers who really does not like it when books feel too much like extensions of each other. Each book in a series should feel self-contained enough that it's a solid piece of work when standing on its own merits. Some narrative tangents also felt too much like they meandered from the story and it left me a bit confused, but I guess it was an excuse to read more of Pratchett's excellent prose.

And then my usual complaint of "abrupt cliffhanger ending." I get it, it's part of a series and it is supposed to drive me to want to purchase the next book in the series (which honestly, I do want to). It's a case of me not liking books that feel like they end in the middle of something or very suddenly of out nowhere. I like books with a more natural-feeling ending. I guess that's just me, though.

If you are looking for a sprawling fantasy epic with story arcs and deep, involved character development, you've come to the wrong place. This is a short and sweet fun adventure in a unique setting with whimsy and wonder weaved into it. It was very refreshing to me for that reason...but also a very expertly crafted story and a fun adventure. I had a good time reading this book, and I do want to continue the series. I don't regret starting here instead of jumping ahead like a lot of people suggest. All-in-all, lots of fun to be had and I look forward to diving deeper into Discworld!

Final note: Rincewind is a bloke who'd I love to have a pint with.

Well, I finally have time to write about this book.

My rating of this book is closer to 3.5, maybe 3.75 at certain points (particularly the end).

I am honestly kind of surprised at how I felt about this book at the end. I've heard so many good things about The Murderbot Diaries. I mean, it won an award. That's something to be impressed by. I was hyped and ready to read this book and got excited when I rented the audiobook from my library. And then at the end, I was left with this weird feeling of shock.

This is definitely not a bad book. It's a good one! But I think my problem is that my expectations were too high and it didn't quite reach the levels I was expecting based on all the praises I've heard of it.

My main problem is with the narration and characters. Murderbot is a very intriguing character, at least at first. A robotic construct (the book describes it as a mixture of organic and robotic, so I always imagined it to be some kind of cyborg android type thing) that has disabled its governer module that controls its actions and thoughts. But instead of doing what you might expect and having the robot go on some kind of liberating adventure or taking revenge on its human oppressors, it simply pretends it is still under control while secretly watching TV shows and movies. I was hooked on that premise alone.

The problem is that Murderbot's narration is so detached and dry from everything. For a robot that's pretending to not be free-willed, Murderbot is surprisingly boring. The book is told from a first-person perspective from Murderbot's point-of-view, but because of Murderbot's nonchalant attitude towards almost everything that happens in the book, nothing feels like it has weight and as consequence, I started feeling detached from the story. Murderbot simply does what it needs to do while occasionally thinking “wow this is weird/i wish i was watching TV now.” Even in certain high-stakes situations, it feels like there's no emotion behind it. Murderbot will assess the situation and then dryly recount what it did or said. There's no emotion, very little turmoil, or internal conflict in the narration.

As for the other characters...what can be said about them? They feel more like props or one-time characters in a sitcom. I can't even begin to tell you anything interesting about them other than their names. There's no change or significant development with the characters, everyone feels like a static role because there was a quota to fill on the amount of people needed in this story. The only relatively interesting one is Dr. Mensah.

Even when the main conflict starts to ramp up and we get a piece of the rising action, other than a choice few parts that I liked, everything felt so...dull. It's a weird word to use, but it's the only one I can think of that fits the best. There's very little sense of weight or tension in the story because it's told in the most cut-and-dry narration and viewpoint possible. This book is like the equivalent of a funny, humorless acquaintance telling about a cool, exciting event that they witnessed but telling it in the most basest terms possible. Murderbot would see a unicorn pass by and say something like:

“A strange horned horse passed by, and then was gone. It was exceedingly strange, and I made a note to ask the humans about it back at the habitat. Maybe I could get movie-watching in during the walk back. I kept on traveling.”

Just...so dry and dull, with the occasional wit of “gee humans sure are weird” or “man what a crazy situation, am i right reader wink wink” thrown in.

Of course, there were some really good parts in here that were written in a way I genuinely liked, and I was invested in those scenes. I thought the instances where Murderbot struggled with interacting with the humans and the humans' reaction to it being less robot than they assumed to be fascinating. I wish so badly that was expanded upon. There were some later scenes that actually felt like they had legitimate emotion and some kind of investment in them by the characters and Murderbot (won't say more because of spoilers).

Also, without going too much into detail, I actually really liked the ending compared to the rest of the story, as weird as that is. We actually get some kind of change/development in Murderbot that felt meaningful due to what had happened to it. Dr. Mensah was also a pretty interesting character, based on her reaction to Murderbot and what she offered to it in the ending after the whole ordeal was over with.

All in all, this actually felt like a prologue to a bigger story. There's very little in the way of long-lasting or meaningful development in the characters, especially in Murderbot, with the exception of the very end. I've consistently heard that it's like a prologue to the rest of the series, and we track more of Murderbot's development as the books go on. Which is...eh to me. I kind of prefer my books to be a little bit more self-contained than that, but that's just me. I am tempted to read the rest of the series though since there was so much in terms of the premise that I loved about this book.

I guess in the end, you could say I was disappointed. I expected so much more in terms of character and plot, and was let-down. There's definitely parts that I really liked and that shone threw, but it's not as effective if it's bogged down by the more disappointing aspects and let-down potential. It's like someone describing the Titanic sinking as, “The boat sank. It was pretty sad. Definitely taught me to travel by air next time.”

I listened to this book via audiobook, and I rate the audiobook as great. It was the perfect narration to me; no distracting or exaggerated voices and accents. A nice even, tone throughout the whole narration. It was very nice to listen to in the background while driving or working on other things.

Maybe my rating for this is closer to 3.75/5.

There are two types of readers: those who research a book before they read it and those who go into it blind. Well, I guess some people read books and then read notes during it. Okay, maybe this note wasn't as strong as I thought it was to start on. My whole point is these are the decisions one can make when diving into The Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville.

I am familiar with Miéville from his novel, Perdido Street Station, which is one of my favorites. After getting through that one, I immediately looked up his bibliography to see what more of his works I could experience. I read the synopsis of this particular one and decided, heck yeah, I am going to read this one next. The surrealism and imagery of Miéville's prose were some of my favorite things in Perdido Street Station, so I was looking forward to it.

Reading this was certainly an...experience. One that I feel like I enjoyed for the most part.

The premise is already attention-grabbing. Paris has changed: after the detonation of a bomb with extraordinary powers, the city is overrun now. Nazis still occupy the city, but alongside them, artwork from surreal artists have been given life. Creatures of frightening imagination, referred to by manifs, beyond what true reality could ever host roam the streets amid the fighting. The landscape itself has changed to this beautiful and nightmarish surrealism. On top of that, demons from Hell have joined the fray. Yeah, it's a wild time.

The plot follows two storylines: one set in "present-day" with a soldier known as Thibault fighting against the Nazis and demons while surviving the odd manifs. He meets a woman named Sam, and he helps her on her journey to find a certain something for a book she's writing. The other timeline centers around a man named Jack Parson and focuses on how this dream-esque situation.

I can tell you right now that I don't have any knowledge of art and history that goes beyond the level of basic, which made reading this an interesting experience. I didn't do any research or look up any context notes before diving in. There are references up the wazoo, and I mean it. Unless you have a major in Surrealism Art and History, I feel like many of the references will fly straight over your head. That's at least how it happened to me. Countless names were dropped and I had no clue where I had no clue what its real-world equivalent was.

I will say, for many people, this will probably turn them off. If not that, then the poetic, flowery prose and purposefully obscured narrative will. This is a book I imagine will appeal only to a niche audience.

I guess I am in that audience.

Even if I didn't understand anything, the way that Miéville described it was beautiful. Where my lack of knowledge spanned, I used Miéville's descriptions to fill in the blanks and conjure up an image as much as I could. He would describe a manif to the reader in all its surreal glory, and I would have to try and understand what it looked like from my understanding, I feel like it did something to paint an even more vivid picture for me, as strange as that sounds. It gave me a workout for my imagination as I did my best to imagine what these things could even look like in real life if they were standing right before me.

Miéville's prose is poetic and beautiful, but hard to understand. He is the kind of author where you have to have a dictionary open next to you (thank god for Libby's define feature) to understand many of the words he throws out. He uses haunting imagery in such an evocative way. Describing surrealism is something that I imagine is very, very hard to do. How do you describe something that doesn't conform to any of our laws of physics, that goes beyond all the rules that we hold dear? It's an incredible feat to pull off, and I think Miéville does it well. He has just the right balance of grounded descriptions and dreamy imagery to put it all together. I'm still thinking about his line where he describes the moon in the sky. I think it's one of the more popular quotes in the book.

The plot itself? While it felt it meandered in the middle, I was hooked enough by the imagery and the description of this gutted, strange Paris that I didn't mind. It's equal amounts of experience and story, in my opinion. Like many books (I'm noting this seems to be a trend), it ramped up in the last 20-30% where stakes skyrocketed, and it really pushed me towards the end.

There is a final section in the book that I don't want to get too far into since it might be spoiler activity, but it's a very interesting whiplash and almost like a food-for-thought kind of deal going on with how it bookends the story. I'll be honest, my interest waned here...I came here for surreal imagery mixed with the mundane, one of my favorite contrasts to see in art, and that's where my interest mostly lies. But I don't want to say I didn't care for it or that I disliked it, as I think it's a valuable part of the overall content.

My biggest complaint: As much as I liked this book, I didn't rate it 4 stars and it falls short of Miéville's great Perdido Street Station because, even though I understand this was the vibe he was going for, the narrative at times felt too muddled from the story. I get it, in a story about surrealism, the prose should reflect that theme. And I think it does greatly in some ways! But in others, I feel like it made it harder for me to follow along. It made it that much harder to connect with the characters, but like I said, I think this is a book that's not trying to emphasize those parts. It really feels like it's mostly here to give a reader an experience of the world and how the people are affected by it, which I say it did pretty well. It's too bad, I just felt a little too detached from the story and characters themselves to feel any impact from them, which in turn, causes me the entire book to have less impact on me since they're aspects of the story too.

Even if I don't like it as much as Perdido Street Station. it was still a good book and I enjoyed it. I fall very much into the niche of who this book appeals to. I love surreal imagery, and I love it even more when it's placed into the space of the mundane, and we humans are left grappling with the paradoxical contrast. I feel like for many, this book is not going to hit the mark. But for those who vibe on the same wavelength as this novel, we got something out of it.

Hovering around 3.75-4 stars.

This was a book where my star rating went up the more as I read the book. It started as a pretty “meh” 3 out of 5, but the score had risen by the time I reached the end.

It had an intriguing premise: a mysterious, giant hand is uncovered by a young girl in her backyard. As the years go on, the journey to find the other parts of whatever enormous robotic body it belonged to unfolds, along with the mission to find out what exactly it is and what it does. But it wasn't just the premise that caught my interest: the format did as well. Instead of traditional narrative prose, the book is told in epistolary format. It uses the form of documents and transcripts, but mostly interviews between characters to tell the story. For me, the epistolary format is a bit of a mixed bag. It can be a very intriguing way to tell a story and give it a certain kind of tone/atmosphere...but it's a common shortcoming that due to their nature, epistolary novels often suffer from a very bad case of “telling, not showing.” I've read books in this format that were just exposition dump after exposition dump, and it gets to be a drag to read.

This one was a pretty engaging read. I was pretty invested in the plot. I wanted to read on as the characters worked to untangle the mystery of the giant robotic hand and see what would happen. Also, with the interview format, I found the characters decently captivating, and the author did a good job giving the main characters their voices and showcasing their personality through their words only, which I consider pretty hard to do since you can't use described action to show what these characters are like. Certain developments in the plot got me hooked enough to want to keep going and events happening to characters took me for a surprise.

I have some complaints with the book: it does sort of fall into the exposition dump from time to time, but it is by no means bad, in my viewpoint. It also suffers from a common epistolary problem in that sometimes, characters say things in supposed “interviews” that don't sound natural, since you're supposed to believe that the characters are saying this out loud in a conversation (I cannot imagine anyone saying with any kind of natural tone a sentence like “he had leathery-esque skin” out loud to someone else). A big plot complaint is, without any spoilers, how we get the “explanation” for the giant robot body parts. It seemed to come absolutely out of nowhere with no build-up, no foreshadowing, just dump a random exposition character in there.

On that last note...to be fair, this is the first in a trilogy of books, and it may be meant to be explored in the later books. The book ends on a cliffhanger, and a pretty intriguing one...

All in all, a pretty good book that's held back by some flaws, but an enjoyable read with a unique format!

I read one review of this book that said: “A very difficult read, but equally compelling.”

I have to agree.

I don't even know how I came across this book or how it ended up being checked out on my Libby app. I think it was a sample I compulsively downloaded, and then I couldn't stop reading it despite the tough subject matter.

It's hard for me to describe this book. I've heard it categorized as a thriller, which I think holds merit. It definitely has some thriller-esque properties to it. I feel like it's a book close in purpose to something like American Psycho (which I have never read but have heard about), where it's meant to act as a reflection of a dark part of society we don't want to acknowledge exists. It gave me the same kind of empty hedonistic pursuit. There's lots of drugs, sex, and partying in this book, but it's nothing glamorous. It's foul. Despite the difficult subject matter, the reason I kept going on was that I found the main conflict of the book between Kalu and Ahmed to be engaging enough to read on. The inner turmoil of the characters and how it reflected in their actions was intriguing to read.

I've read some people say that it sometimes feels like a laundry list of perversions in this book, which I have mixed feelings about. While I was reading, I never got any indication that the actions of the characters in the book were things to be celebrated. These were not characters you were supposed to admire. I admit, I get tired of hearing readers say that characters need to be “likable” or “relatable” to be good characters. It's something I strongly disagree with. Some of the most compelling books ever written feature the most unlikeable people ever to be crafted. These characters are not likable, in my opinion. Maybe some traits of them can be considered as such, and maybe they can be relatable, but for the most part, they aren't exactly heroes in a traditional sense. But their conflicts are still fascinating to read about because it's a reflection of the real world. People like this exist and make decisions like the ones these characters do in the book. Like I said before, it's simply a reflection of the real world.

The book does its best to wrap up everyone's conflict within one another so they're connected, and I feel it did with about 70% success rate. Aima's character arc seemed to have an unsatisfying and abrupt confusion. She was set up to seem like a major character, being the first character we are introduced to and have one-half of her conflict (her break-up with Kalu; not a spoiler since it's the very first chapter) act as a catalyst for the major event that drives a lot of the story. But it feels like right when her arc was getting ramped up, it dropped to focus on Kalu and Ahmed for 60% of the story before she comes back with a sudden conclusion. Focus in the latter half of the book felt like it was being put on other characters brought in late-game who suddenly felt like they commandeered the spotlight. In my opinion, the whole thing would have felt much less disjointed if the story perspectives were cut down to Aima, Kalu, and Ahmed, with the other characters being major secondary players.

Also, my usual complaint of the ending feeling very abrupt and unresolved. I feel like that's a complaint with 80% of the books that I read, so nothing to special there.

In the end, am I glad to have read this book? I mean, this is not the kind of book that brings you happiness. I feel like it has the same effect on me as Lolita by Vladimir Nobokov did. It was very hard to read, and it did not bring me any joy. This is not a book I read for enjoyment, but rather, for perspective. And despite the shortcomings in the book, I feel like perspective is always a valuable thing. Sometimes, we do need that mirror to be held up to our faces about the darker part of human living. I feel like Little Rot does a decent job of that.

Note: This book was read in audiobook format. There will be a smaller separate review for just the audiobook at the end.

—-

There are certain books where I think to myself that I'm either going to love it or I'm going to hate it. The Martian by Andy Weir was one of those books.

I remember the surge of popularity it had when it first came out and when the movie was released a few years later. It felt like one of those books everyone was checking out and picking up to read. I tend to be late to the party when it comes to popular books like that, but Andy Weir is an author I've had on my wishlist for a while. He comes up frequently in most recommended science fiction books, and as a science fiction lover, that caught my interest. It was especially interesting because, as opposed to space operas filled with exotic locations, this was a fairly grounded speculative fiction set in the near future with probable technology and still in our Solar System.

Needless to say, I was intrigued. So, I finally bit the dust and decided to get the audiobook. I have to admit that I kind of took my sweet time starting it despite marking it as having begun reading it, in case anyone is wondering why it took me almost a month to finish an ~11 hour audiobook. But once I actually started listening to it, I was hooked.

And I'm happy to say that I found myself in the “love it” camp by the time I finished this book.

It's definitely a different kind of science fiction book that I really hadn't read before. It's a mixture of a lot of different formats; part epistolary, part narrative, jumping around multiple characters, and chat dialogues peppered within. Instead of being disorienting, I actually really enjoyed it. It's one of the books where I wanted to know everyone's point of view because I was invested in all sides of the story. The way I was hooked into the conflict and dying to know what happened was a joy to experience. It really did feel like I was there in the book's setting, riding along with Mark as he tried to find his way home, or in the conference room as the higher-ups discussed how to get him home. It was also interesting to see this conflict explored from all angles: on one side, it's a harrowing adventure of a man trapped in an alien landscape. And then on the other side, it's a stressful rescue mission to save a marooned person against all the odds. And yet, it's also a bureaucratic tangle of leaders, scientists, and news outlets scrambling amongst themselves. Seeing it from all angles was a fascinating exploration of all the different characters and methods, but all united towards one goal: bring Mark home.

There are a lot of scientific explanations and jargon included in the book, but I found it fascinating to hear about in the same way it was fascinating to hear about the psuedo-science in Jurassic Park. As someone who knows very little about these kinds of things, hearing a breakdown of them as explained through Mark's witty and dry commentary was pretty funny.

One of my favorite things about the book's plot is how organically it seemed to grow. It goes from Mark being trapped on Mars alone, to suddenly being discovered, to a rescue mission being planned, and keeps growing from there. Problems would pop up, new developments in the conflict would arise, and it kept me pulled in. I can't tell you how invested I was in Mark's predicament, and how invested I was in cheering on the people who were trying to save him. I distinctly remember thinking to myself at one point in the book, “God, please, please let Mark get home.” It was like he was a real person that I was rooting for and desperately hoping would make it home.

I'm honestly surprised at how much I was rooting for Mark and how much I related with him. Mark is almost detached from his situation through his wit and dry humor. There are hardly any parts where Mark wallows and becomes emotional at his predicament (though in all honesty, any person who did that in his situation, I would completely sympathize with). He handles everything with determination, joke cracking, and level-headedness. I was worried that it would prevent me from really sympathizing with Mark's plight. After all, why feel sorry for someone if they seem to be not at all perturbed at the situation they're in? But the way it was written, it really did feel like it was simply a part of who he was, and it made me cheer for him all the more.

There are some valid criticisms of the book I want to address. One is Mark's aforementioned nature in this book. There are no parts where Mark has a mental breakdown or gets emotional, at least not overly so. This might alienate some people who can't get invested in his conflict when he keeps making jokes. I've also read some criticisms where people pointed out that when you have a character who doesn't feel overly threatened by their situation, it feels like they're no stakes. I personally didn't feel any of this while I was reading the book, but this is the way that the book is written.

So, if I love the book so much...why only four stars? As much as I liked how the jumping perspectives and formats were handled in this book, there was a single flashback (no spoilers) that was included. It's the only one in the entire book, and nowhere else does the story take a step back from the current conflict to peek into the past. To me, it felt jarring and disrupted the flow of watching the conflict naturally progress throughout its different stages. I didn't feel it was necessary, either. So, that took off half a star for me.

The other half is because something I really love in real life was insulted in the book, and I couldn't let it slide.

Concluding this giant review, this is a new favorite of mine. I have a few other books of Weir's in my wishlist, and this makes me all the more excited to read them. And you know what? Sometimes we just need an uplifting book during these times, when it seems like we are divided by every imagined parameter and we couldn't hate each other more as a species. It's nice to read a book filled with hope and optimism. It's nice to journey through a story where, for once, it seems like humans are capable of coming together; a problem where we all band together, despite our differences in method and beliefs, to save one of our fellow humans, for the simple and good reason that we value each other and will risk everything to save someone if we have to. That's a nice feeling.

————–

Audiobook review: It's probably ironic that I've been listening to more audiobooks, considering how sensitive I am to ASMR-esque noises and how I can't stand them. I'm happy to say that this audiobook was pretty good. From what I understand, this audiobook was recorded with two narrators, and I listened to the version by R.C. Bray. He was pretty good, in my opinion! I thought his voice and expression matched the tone of the book; kind of dry with a smart, quick wit. Nothing felt over-acted and for the most part, things felt naturally narrated. There were only a few parts where his narration caused my immersion to be broken.

On that subject...I have to talk about his accents. For the most part in audiobooks (and maybe even animated media), I don't mind someone faking an accent as long as they're accurately done. For the most part, R.C. Bray wasn't too bad. Kapoor's Hindi accent seemed accurate enough to me as someone who is not familiar with the language. The other ones weren't too jarring to me. One had a slight Mexican accent, one had an American East coast accent (I want to say it was Bronx or Brooklyn), and there was someone who spoke in African American Vernacular. Bray performed these well enough, but I have to say...as someone familiar with the language and having grown up in East Asian communities, his Chinese/Mandarin accents left a lot to be desired.

I'm pretty sensitive towards Asian accents, just because I've lived in Asian communities in America for almost all of my life. His accents for the Chinese characters erred too much on the inaccurate-derived-from-stereotypes side. I swear at a few points, it slipped a bit into the Hindi accent he used for Kapoor. It's more than possible I'm being too sensitive. I can't imagine this being an issue that many people are affected by. But as someone who's had to deal with Asians being very obviously voice-acted by people who have no clue about the language, it's something I naturally tune into.

The only other thing that stuck out to me (and this isn't necessarily on Bray) is the way that certain scenes turn into a repetitive pattern of “(character) said” over and over again.

But these are all slight complaints. The audiobook was enjoyable to listen to for the most part!

I've been to a government building thrice within two weeks, in which I have waited a total of seven hours. In those seven hours, I read this book. I am starting with this information since I feel it gives a bit of context to my review. I don't usually read books like this and this was shelved in my “maybe want to read” pile. I checked it out after seeing it was available since I'm currently waiting on hopes for three books I want to read. I wasn't sure if I was really going to read it, though. I would meander through the first couple of pages to see what was going on before I drifted off.

And then I was stuck waiting. With this particular building stuck in the middle of dead spot, so no WiFi. All I had was this book that has already been downloaded offline.

It's hard for me to make an objective review since this book just isn't really what I typically check out. I wanted to do something out of my comfort zone, and this sounded pretty interesting. A sort of “slice-of-life” book about a woman moving to the Philippines after an impending divorce and staying with her great aunt, who lives and aristocratic lifestyle. There is an undercurrent story of the main character, Christina (often called Ting) is trying to finish a book centered around the subject of an indigenous chef and his people who were taken in order to be part of a touring “human zoo.” Both of these things are the small bits of Ting's life that makes up the whole of her experience. The story is really an exploration of Filipino culture under a harsh presidential regime as seen through Ting's daily life; through her relationships, through the setting, and through Filipino history.

There's not really a driving plot force, which isn't what I'm used to. This is a heavily character-driven book, where we experience life alongside Ting. I didn't find it overly boring, though, like I do sometimes with these kinds of books. There were a couple of places where I began to skim, but never for too long. I wasn't skipping entire chapters or anything like that. My favorite parts of the book were the descriptions of the setting and the food. It really did feel like an authentic showing of Filipino culture. The passage I still remember in this book is the one about the flooded roads, where women took off their sandels in order to wade through the water. It just really stuck out to me, that imagery.

I find it hard to fault the book for the things I didn't like since a lot of it was really down to my own personal tastes. I do find the writing quirk of “characters have a conversation where neither really responds to the other and they just keep saying random, unrelated things” to be annoying regardless of genre. There were a lot of history exposition dumps, but I actually found them interesting to read so I didn't mind, but I do wonder if part of the motivation of writing this book was a chance for the author to flex their research that they've done rather then weave it seamlessly with the story.

My biggest complaint is really the ending. No spoilers, but the book really ramped up in the very last section and went into hyperdrive before ending extremely abruptly. It was one of those endings that gave me whiplash for how hard and fast it went. I really don't get the reasoning behind that. I suppose it was meant to be some kind of slow burn, which in retrospect, I can see and think wasn't too ineffective, but my least favorite endings are the abrupt ones.

That's pretty much all of my thoughts. Interesting book and even though it's different from what I usually read, I'm glad I took a chance and did. It was harsh, sometimes bleak, but the camaraderie of friends and family managed to shine through even the darkest of moments. That's an important lesson to take away.