Sterling Parker

I am not a huge consumer of modern trope-y fantasy literature, but I did cut my teeth on Sarah J Maas' entire bibliography at the end of last year, because my wife loves all of it.

Fans of ACOTAR (like my wife) will probably like this a lot. For me, it's solidly “so okay it's average”. That said, Bean's exhaustive review is also 100% correct in substance so I won't repeat it here, just to say go read that review.

My biggest gripe though, has to be one of the core conceits around the main character. Namely [early plot spoilers] why would you give us a main character who grew up in a savage amazonian realm where the people eat hearts and can grow flowers with blood and are tragically fated to kill anyone they fall in love with so they're basically badass wendigos with nature powers... and then have said main character affected by exactly none of those unique and cool and interesting factors? It's literary cowardice. We could have had so many cool logistical conflicts, but now it's all replaced by a few throwaway lines about pretending to have those conflicts. Pulling a stunt like this doesn't make the main character unique, it makes her generic. The eventual reveal ([major ending spoiler]"Oh she had powers all along it was just cloaked by the other powers she also had all along, but somehow none of the curses that go with those powers?!") reads more like post-hoc justification for a poor character design choice.

Anyway, not a terrible book. But certainly a flawed one, which is unfortunate because it could have been really interesting if it wasn't so intent on checking all the genre boxes.

I think I went into this book not knowing what to expect. I've finished it, and I'm still not quite sure what I read. It's one of those books that makes me either think I'm too shallow to get the point, or perhaps I get the point but I'm too jaded (or emotionally guarded) to feel it. Perhaps I actually expected too much or too less than what the book was willing to give, and in some form of ironic justice I'm inexplicably disappointed that I didn't get whatever I expected.

All I know is that this book moved me in some way. I cannot say what way it was. Maybe I need to read it again. Maybe it'll come to me in an hour or a day or a week. I'm not sure I want it to, because there's something incredibly powerful there. It's a little frightening.

I don't give five-star ratings often, and my reasons for this one may not be the same as everyone else's. This series isn't my typical fare, and unfortunately I can't say it's my favorite of all time...

BUT

Kingdom of Ash is an absolute beast of a book, capping off a wonderfully imaginative saga. I was invested in and captivated by every character and plot thread, even the ones that it seems many other readers weren't. Maas has a flair for translating grand sprawling fantasy to the page in epic and cinematic fashion, while not losing the intimacy and heartfelt emotion befitting a romantic drama. Every resolution is hard-earned and painful, yet ultimately fulfilling if bittersweet. This is surely a fitting end to an ambitious and lovingly-crafted series.

I have relatively few complaints about this series as a whole. I wish it delved deeper into the mysteries of the world instead of offering just tantalizing hints at what might lie below the surface. I wish some mid-level villains got some more page time, instead of mostly hordes of mooks to cut down on the quest for a big bad. I wish it hadn't happened quite so fast that rarely did the story have a chance to simmer before breathlessly rushing forward.

I greatly enjoyed my time with these books. I started them on a whim because my wife kept sharing memes I didn't get. Ended up getting way more engaged than I had planned to. I'm gonna finish ACOTAR next and then on to Crescent City. After a long dry spell of reading, these are kick-starting my desire to spend my afternoons with the printed page instead of a screen.

I might have a hard time calling myself a “fan”, but Maas has certainly made an appreciator out of a skeptic.

As I adored The Last Unicorn, I grabbed this book excitedly from my library as soon as I saw it, expecting another fantastical magical journey of wonder and tears. I didn't quite get what I was looking for, at least not until writing this review (which was originally slanted to the negative) since it's taken me until now to come to clarity regarding the themes. Incidentally, I'm a little proud of the fact I extracted said themes on my own without reading any analysis so far.

I get the feeling this book is largely influenced by Peter's frustration with both old age and the continued exploitation of his beloved Last Unicorn. While I won't go too far into details here, the allegory is heart-wrenchingly explicit. The use of strong profanity and the very graphic description of a mutilated dead cat were extremely jarring. Beagle's anger shows in bursts of graphic clarity, sundering the otherwise meandering, wistful prose that's quite aware it falls short of what it wants to be.

I'm torn on my opinion of this book. It didn't inspire the same sense of wonder and magic and fantasy that The Last Unicorn did. It's grounded and raw. It could have been suitable for children except for the moments noted above, as well as the relatively sudden (to me) consummation of a hitherto-platonic May-September relationship. Tonally it's out of whack and feels a bit unedited.

That said, I can't fault the author for it. This story is full of pain and yearning, and yet clear hope at the end. I wonder if finally at his late age, Beagle is free of the demons that haunt these pages. I'm looking forward to seeing what he writes next.

A fitting end to the Lunar Chronicles, all things considered.

BY way of criticism, this book is a lot longer and more complex than any of the others. More than once I felt the scope and number of threads weighing down the narrative. The unabashedly happy ending, while earned, is more than a little improbable and dare I say contrived. I feel like the depictions of future tech, geopolitics, and bloody combat are thin at best, requiring a fair suspension of disbelief (see below for my sidebar rant on guns)

Perhaps I wanted this series to be hard sci-fi for adults when realistically it's a space opera fairy tale for teens.

But it is an unabashed fairy tale after all, and the DNA of that genre flows well in the veins of this book. More-so than any of the others in my opinion. Where the expected callbacks to the source stories have at times been heavy-handed and clumsy (Particularly in Cinder), in this they seemed to “fit” better and didn't feel as obvious. Very minor spoiler, the literal poisoned apple was probably my favorite. It made perfect sense for Levana and was pulled off perfectly. The world-building finally gets a chance to shine; I liked the depiction of Luna as a alien society in so many ways (including the details required to make it work with the limited resources of the moon).

And while I complain about it above, the happy ending really is welcome. This series grew on me over time, and I'm glad the characters made it out okay. I would recommend this to anyone who likes YA sci-fantasy and isn't afraid of suspending disbelief a little.

——————

Rant spoilered because it's just me blowing off steam and doesn't have much bearing on the review as a whole.

The handling of guns in this series confounds me. It's idiotic. None of the characters use them in ways that make any sense. No one uses them from ranges closer than point-blank. Only once does someone snipe at a thaumaturge from a distant concealed position (you'd think this would be an obvious tactic considering how they and the queen routinely wander, smug and self assured, into wide-open killzones). Multiple times characters call their shots, giving Lunar opponents ample opportunity to counteract the bullet with mind control or a meatshield. The mechanics of the guns are inconsistent too; sometimes they seem to work like modern (semi)automatic firearms, other times they're more like 18th-century flintlocks. It's almost never clear whether a character is using a rifle, carbine, or pistol, even when that kind of detail should have a bearing on how they move and approach a situation.As a moderate gun nut, this kind of thing makes me twitch. Just once, I would have liked to see someone handle a firearm with anything approaching military efficiency. Considering how many characters explictly have that kind of training, it's mind-boggling that none of them make use of it. Honestly this series would have been better off without firearms entirely, because as-is they're barely more effective than slingshots, throwing knives, or squirtguns.

I haven't written many reviews here, but I feel this one is necessary to balance out the glut of “love it or hate it” I'm seeing here. More of the former than the latter, because in all honesty this is a perfectly serviceable book. It's functionally well-written, there aren't any glaring errors or problems, the author has a vision, and they execute it well. Unlike the numerous one-stars, overall I'd say I enjoyed it (as opposed to just tolerating it).

However, there seems to be a dearth of middle of the road reviews, which is more applicable to my experience. It's decent but not really my cup of tea. This is a middling, somewhat shallow approach to a good idea. It's a problem somewhat endemic to this kind of YA genre story. I couldn't really sink my teeth in, so to speak, and most of the book was rather heavy-handed with telling instead of showing, when a touch of subtlety would have gone miles to improve the experience.

A recurring sort of turn-off came from the repeated insistence on trying to impress the reader with “cool” technological stuff. The only thing I found well integrated was Cinder's lie detector, because it became an instinctual, human+ kind of function, unlike the focus on clinical countdowns and decimal-precison. If the focus of your story isn't on a character's stuggle to maintain their humanity (which, despite lip-service, this story is not), then cybernetics should serve to alter the character's abilities in a natural fashion, not overload them with terminal printouts and raw source code which would be pretty much useless to all of us.

I'm hoping things get a little better in the next books as the author gains some experience. Like it or not, I'm committed and curious to see where the story goes.

(cross-posted from my old Amazon review)

I first ran across this book at my local library when I was about 10 years old (twelve years ago, as of 2009). I'd just finished playing Colossal Cave, one of the first “text adventure” games, and I wanted to make my own. This book was just the drive my young brain needed to really start learning how to program.

It has several chapters on basic programming theory, with extensive yet readable code examples. It starts off with the general concept of adventure games, and gradually walks the reader through the creation of a short, yet intriguing game about a secret agent, complete with movement, items, rooms, characters, and special sequences. All is presented in an easy-to-understand manner that doesn't feel condescending.

At the end of the book, there is a huge appendix, listing all the code needed to create the game. It must be typed in by hand, but that's part of the charm of writing your own video game adventure. The source code was almost as helpful as the rest of the book, as I learned how to “read” the program and troubleshoot any errors. It can be compiled with nearly any BASIC compiler available free on the internet (I recommend Microsoft QuickBasic 7.1)

In short, I would recommend this book to anyone, young or old, who would like to start programming with a fun, if primitive language. The reading level is targeted to young teens (the game has some shooting and spy action), but can be understood by even a precocious ten-year-old like me, if they're motivated.

A fair bit more gore than I care for with my little ponies, and the writing is very amateur, but overall pretty good.

I think my biggest problem with the story is that Pinkie doesn't really take any active role in driving things forward. She finds some random but inexplicably important-seeming object placed in her path, heads off in a pseudo-random direction, and happens upon her next obstacle, which conveniently needs the random object she found earlier. I get that moon logic puzzles are a longstanding Silent Hill tradition, but usually you encounter the puzzle, figure out you need something, and then return to the puzzle with the objects/clues.

I did like the progressive discovery / unlocking of the (rather generically horrific) reason for the whole thing, although the last hallway scene kinda reeks of 11th-hour-let's-get-this-over-with infodump. The alternate endings were cool; it'd be fun if there was some kind of “choose your own adventure” edition that allows the reader to branch the story and get those endings organically. The unabashed referential retconning of Cupcakes was a nice touch too.

All in all, I probably won't be reading this again, but I'm glad I retrieved this fandom classic from where it's been languishing on my Read It Later list.

I started reading this book about 9:30 this morning. Intended to take an hour, ended up finally finishing it around 12:05.

I feel like crying. I just want to sit for the rest of the day and not do or say or think anything, but just cry a little. It's a feeling like you've been punched in the chest for no good reason except that you believed the world was an okay place but it's really not, and I could say a bunch of self-indulgent pretentious things here, but what good would it do?

I mean, I like reading things that make me feel, but I think I got a bit more than I bargained for here. And it's not like a fullness of feeling, it's like a sheer empty wasteland of feeling. It takes your feels out in the desert and guns them down in cold blood then comes back and kicks you in the teeth for having feels in the first place, how dare you.

I need to go hug some puppies or something. On a side note, the movie was an incredibly good adaptation.

Not sure what else to say. Just kinda feel like I've lost something I didn't even know I had.