Farhan

I did not actually read this book 10 times, but it being a webnovel there's only been one official published book, so for the sake of my reading challenge I'm accounting for the other 2.5m words as 10 books going off of the only released book being 250k.

On the novel itself, it's a decent, above average LitRPG and had its moments, but also moments 5o chapters long where I'm like ugh get on with it.

Ok I thought really hard about upping this to 4 stars, but I fear I was not able to convince myself. This book is overall slower than the first, and has less hard science ideas, but its major problem is its massive, massive plot holes. I'm going to give a broad overview of the plot hole based on the information of the summary of this book to limit spoilers, but slight spoilers for the previous novel follow.

1. Since only human thoughts are safe, the Wallfacer project is erected. Luo Ji has a strategy the Trisolarans want to kill him for, and he knows this. Yet he does not tell anyone his strategy just like the other Wallfacers. Yet in his case, it makes NO sense to keep the strategy hidden, because the Trisolarans already know what it is (which is in contrast to how they don't know the strategies of the other Wallfacers), and want to kill him so no one else knows. In which case, the logical conclusion would be to explain the strategy publicly so that it could definitely be made use of. And yet this does not happen...which was extremely frustrating to see.

2. The strategy itself isn't even that complex. How no one else thought of it in the timespan of this book which is almost two centuries boggles me. I myself figured it out before its spelled out for the readers. Heck, it's not even his idea because he gets it from someone else. It's a strategy even a normal person could think of! So how does literally no one else on this planet of billions of people over two centuries think of it!! Even when he does something that makes the strategy obvious no one makes the connection. I feel like this is the case of the author trying to make the hero successful by making all of humanity stupid.

Those plot holes were just ughh because they don't have to do with the science but the narrative and really lowered my opinion of the book. I did like how it ended though and think Luo Ji does at last do something not any normal person could, and it was still an interesting read.

Edit after reading more reviews: These book has more plot holes than I even thought of. But if you're willing to overlook it it's still a good read.

At long last caught up with the preeminent Urban Fantasy series, The Dresden Files. I love reading about worlds and characters as they change and become something more, and the world of DF from Book 1 to 17 has gone through so much. The stakes in this novel were the highest they've ever been, and felt like an Endgame for this series, bringing back almost every character throughout the series for a huge large scale battle against a Titan (that can't be a coincidence right.. this book did come out after Endgame...). I don't like reading actions scenes a lot though and this book more than any before it is just a super long action scene so it lost a star because I was just flipping through the beginning waiting for it to get to the good stuff, but the latter half was pretty epic once it got there. I would love to see where Harry could possibly go from here, fingers crossed Butcher doesn't go the way of Martin and Rothfuss like it feels like he might.

The style of this book is a little strange with no quotes or chapters and really long “sentences,” and I don't know if the author being quirky (or is it just lazy) really adds to the book. I guess it does kind of lend itself to a stream of consciousness typa writing but sometimes I need to breathe! The story itself is a pretty intriguing concept, there is some kind of “blind pandemic” with people suddenly going blind while one character retains the ability to see. It's interesting how much of a superpower a basic sense becomes when no one else has it. At times the story got um very very uncomfortable (why do the twins keep subjecting the book club to this!!) but it has lord of the flies vibes in terms of how humanity deconstructs faced with something so devastating to our standard of living and I think it was a probably realistic depiction of that deconstruction.

I didn't like how it's never explained where the blind plague came from or how it suddenly got cured?? . Like I want to know WHY and I hate when authors place characters in real world settings with some kind of fantastical/sciency twist only to use it as a plot device to examine human nature... Although I guess it could be claimed this book doesn't take place in our world since there are no names of anything at all in the book.

Overall I would say it's a good read but I would never read it again nor actively recommend it to someone else.

I almost never reread books but today I reread this one so I can binge the whole series when the final book comes out in a few days. Been awhile since I read this (almost exactly 3 years) so it was as engaging a read the second time. I love the character work done here because the Lee/Annie relationship is fascinating and what really drives the book for me. The writing has a maturity rarely seen in YA, and it's criminal this never got more popular.

Now to see if the rest of the series holds up!

This series was sooo good, this and Aurelian cycle are making me believe in the readability of YA fiction again. The characters are each unique in their own way, and the world building is fantastic. I found the finale was both heartbreaking and uplifting at times. I guess this would be called “prose” but I love how the author puts together sentences. The chapter First Place is going on my all time fav chapters list.

I feel like the author doesn't really understand the science behind his concepts or base it on something real, but the take on time trial was kinda novel. I wasn't a fan of one of the revelations at the end because it made me feel like I wasted my time reading this, but as I write this review I've just thought about how this revelation and ultimately the resolution at the end of the novel is very similar to what happens in the TV show Dark which I think is masterpiece. So I guess it's the journey that makes the difference and I didn't really find it as compelling as in Dark. The book is really well written though and has this haunting undertext woven through in descriptions of scenes. Overall I think within time travel media this book is probably solidly middle of the pack.

Also this blurb:

“I promise you have never read a story like this.” —Blake Crouch, New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter

I have now finished this trilogy and as whole it was just okay. The first book was definitely the best, had a lot of interesting ideas and good execution. The second book was just so boring and didn't have any of the magic of the first in both senses. This book was kind of a return to form of the first book, but it had no real climax?? Or the climax is super anticlimactic because I was just like oh wait it's done? I think Jessica is an interesting character with her background but at times I feel like it was definitely obvious a dude wrote this series. Also Damian is interesting too, if you forget about how he is basically a serial stalker and murderer yet Jessica is just like whatever he's pretty #nice to me. In this book I liked how he was used a lot more than the last book, because in the last book whenever Jessica was a damsel in distress he would literally come save her like Batman. Why can't she save herself?? This book didn't have that problem though so yay. Anyways I like the ideas in this series but would not really recommend it to anyone, the Theo Cray series is more interesting.

I tend to really like well written ensembles and I think this book qualifies. I was expecting more from it though, all these ideas of what the twist could be, but it's actually a fairly simple answer. But now that I think about what kind of story the author intended to write, it makes sense. It's a modern day tragedy, so kinda cool actually.