Farhan

I slightly regret this reread because I had very fond memories of this series that had made it remain my favorite all time series. Until now.. Idk it's a fine series, but unlike say the Greenbone saga it's no masterpiece. Plot wise it's very basic and I think the villain is not at all compelling. I do have a particular fondness for the characters though, and the world itself, so I will be reading Threads of Power.

It was a pretty good end to the series, but honestly practically nothing happens in this book except for that ending. The ending had a real feel good feeling to it but I still felt it was pretty predictable of course Adelina died, why can't an antihero just become a hero without makiing the greatest sacrifice?.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Edit after reading:

I have been waiting for a new Percy Jackson as long as I can remember I feel, and this one immediately returns you to the shenanigans of this world and Percy's unique narrative voice and does not disappoint. My only issue is that there are no stakes here and it's really just a peek back into Percy's life. It was also novella level short so I want more. I NEED more.

I loved this book, but I'm genuinely surprised it's as loved across the bookie world as it is. It is very academic, and honestly I feel like many people would find the majority of this book boring. I think for me it's a 5 star because of the amount of work R.F. Kuang put into realizing this work comes across so clearly, and I think it's incredibly unique for it.

My only gripe with this book is that the way it ends is a little obvious early on, with a very unsubtle checkhov's gun introduced. I guess I just like being surprised!! But in a way, it's obvious just from the title alone, so I can't really hold it against the book since the journey is what was important to conveying the message.

I think I can confidently say Babel is the most “work of passion” book I have ever read, and taking a dive into R.F Kuang's mind alone makes it worth it.

Great series ending to one of the og progression fantasy series. I think my only real complaint is that there were a lot of chapters with a non main character, completely new pov that don't serve to further the plot. Like a few chapters to just have “cool battle scenes” is fine but I felt like there was a significant number here when I just wanted to get back to the main story. I think everyone's arcs wrapped up well and all had their time to shine. Excited to see the gang again in a followup multiverse book.

I discovered the Infinite Timeline last year while looking for book series that mimic the MCU concept of shared universes. And I don't think I've found any that get as close as Robinson does. I gave them all between 3-4 stars, none of them are literary masterpieces, but they're all fun popcorn reads with wacky ideas. I doubt I would have read them all if not for the promise of the shared universe, and I think the crossover books do deliver on that promise. I think Singularity was a satisfying conclusion, bringing together all the characters across the other 12 books, and a 5 star read relative to the series. Almost every character feels like a different person to me so watching them interact in the final book is delightful, however I do think Robinsons character work across all his books is pretty surface level. All in all, I liked how it wrapped the shared universe up, although the defeat of the villain is kind of anti-climactic?

My other gripes are again the author brings up the Infinite Worlds theory, but fundamentally doesn't understand it. Infinite worlds does not mean every world exists!! And also the author writing himself into the book while I thought was kinda cringe bc really, self inserting yourself into your book...but it was actually handled in a kinda sweet way. My gripe there is that it made no sense like Will creates the universe but somehow the author self insert is writing it into being so like..I don't even know I'm confused just thinking about how it worked and honestly felt like the author was really hand wavey about it just to self insert into the book.

I don't really think I would recommend these books to someone unless they like shared universes or like B action movies (I very much doubt this gets a big screen adaptation because with how saturated the market is these would def flop as adaptations. And the plots are way closer to direct to dvd like movies). However, I will most likely read what Robinson writes in the future.

I thought the writing here was witty and whimsically clever, making it an easy and fun read. I really thought how this book was structured would make more sense by the end, yet it didn't. Cliff is the only character that gets a 1st person POV, which makes him read as the main character, but we also follow Gemma and Dorcie in 3rd person POVs in their attempts to murder their own employers. I thought somehow the POVs would connect in some clever way by the end, but it really was just that. So in that sense if Cliff is the MC, but we get chapters following unrelated plot lines, half of this book was just filler? Like I really wanted something to bring it together for me, but regardless I did enjoy reading this.

Lol this book man...a prime example of why James Patterson is a hack.

First of all, the plot is completely ripped from the Black Widow movie. A girl is taken from her real family as an infant to a school in Russia where she and other kids are trained to be killer assassins, but eventually she escapes, however she also eventually decides to return to the school to end it for good and free the kids still training there, and to do this she needs the help of her superhumanly strong friend.

Like?? How blatant can you be...

Admittedly I did take some liberties with the superhuman friend part, which is probably the biggest area of difference from the movie. She kidnaps this college nerd professor who she then somehow trains into being a literal Superman in 6 months. Huge suspension of disbelief required on that.. Its hand waved a little by saying his great grandfather had some experiment done to him so his genes are like exceptional or something. And his great grandfather's names? Clark and Cal, LOLL. Still trying to decide if this was superman fanfiction, captain america fanfiction, or black widow fanfiction.

Anyways with disbelief fully suspended it was still a generally fun read because I'm a sucker for comic bookesque stories so there's that.

What does it mean to be human?

That is that question at the heart of this novel. All of Blake Crouch's recent novels have just set my mind thinking after turning the last page, but I think none more so than Upgrade. Of Dark Matter and Recursion, Upgrade is the closest to our current reality which makes it the most relatable.

Upgrade is just a fun read and an easy page turner, because basically what you have is a more realistic and grounded take on Captain America, but Upgrade isn't defined by The Upgrade, it's defined by that question.

I think Crouch arrived at the correct answer to it, which made me love the ending of the book and the final solution. If only it were that easy in real life.

Wow. I can't believe after all this time this series is finally over. I think I can say that this was a very fitting end to the series. You can really see how the war is affecting them, especially John. The whole book was filled with John and the others being badass of course, but they really have to push themselves. It's easy to see their struggle to save the planet and stop the bad guy. Speaking of stopping the bad guy, I think the way it was done was beautifully ironic John uses healing to stop him . Honestly, I didn't have high expectations for this book because I thought the previous books kind of got progressively worser, but this one proved me wrong. I don't want to give anything else away actually one thing that kind of surprised me was that no one else dies except Setrakus and Mark but this book was an excellent ending and it will not disappoint.

This was a nice and meaty read, and I thoroughly enjoyed the journey. And that's really what this book is, a journey, as you follow Ari as he comes to be the man he is. Which doesn't happen quickly. Or even in this book. But I'm looking forward to the rest of the tale. I loved the world building here especially as someone it personally caters to. And it looks like R.R. Virdi might be the first author I personally meet, so excited for that :D

WOW! This was probably my favorite fantasy book since Jade Legacy. You can't really go wrong with the magic school trope, and it was a lot of fun here. The plot is intricately written as you can expect from Islington, but now all the characters are unique and compelling too, which makes The Will of the Many Islington's best book yet. The world building is fantastic, and the bonkers implication of the ending hints we've barely scratched the surface!!

This was a short read and I think it suffers for it. Doesn't really give any one thing the time it deserves. I thought it had interesting prose though, and also like its answer to simulation theory. So what!! I don't really get what I was supposed to have gotten out of the novel because if there's like a message here, I missed it. The commentary on COVID was kind of interesting but also didn't fully connect for me.

This book was so, so very disappointing. Like I'm actually mad at how disappointing it is. All these great plot lines the author set up in the previous books, and then 90% of this book is about the MCs sudden decision to become a cowboy? Even though that plot choice had me go HUH at the beginning of the book, I was like ok I'll give it the benefit of the doubt. But no, the first 700 pages of this book are essentially irrelevant to the overarching plot and SO unnecessary. IF this book was a middle book, I'd get it, it would be fine as an intermediary read. But no..this was the last book. This was supposed to be epic. This was supposed to be a satisfying conclusion. And yet while the last 100 pages finally got back to actual plot, it was so random in context and made no sense, and had zero buildup from the whole rest of the book, so it was anticlimactic. The final battle was just eh and happens really quickly, not at all satisfying and honestly undeserving of the characters. The only reason I'm not rating this lower is because it was still an alright book, just not a finale. Seriously Chris, how do you drop the ball this hard :( I don't think I've ever been this disappointed by the last book in a series before.

Overall I liked the story but it was sooo slow and the flashback chapters every few chapters didn't help with that. If I really think about it, not much actually happened in this book until the end? The main twist I think was painfully obvious and I found myself reading just to see when that shoe would drop. I also liked the atmosphere of this book, and think this might have worked better if it wasn't Urban Fantasy because all the references to real life things just took me out of the story (NFTs really??).

Regardless of all that complaining though, I don't regret reading the book and will likely read the sequel. Something about the way Holly Black writes just makes me get invested..