Jess
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Fun leads, fun romance, plot has some Weird politics going on. Voice was sometimes grating and often repetitive but it's ya so w/e it come with the genre
still not over the fact that these kids need therapy and it's really distracting that they seem to have no access to it at any point.
It almost lost me in the middle there (too dark, too hopeless, too obtuse. an obstinate main character who seemed to rebuff my every attempt at empathy), but the last few paragraphs are worth the price of admission imho. Anyone who was Too Online in Nov 2016 can see themselves reflected here.
A paradox of an argument! In order to make the case for de-centering white men and rethinking benchmarks of success, oluo must center white masculinity, examining white mens experiences and emotions in one breath, while making the case for a broader view in the next. Is this the book equivalent of ludonarrative dissonance? You tell me.
I'm not sure it landed with me, but I was already convinced of her end conclusions before I picked up the book so maybe I'm not best judge.
Extremely warm & cozy read, incredible characterization. Functionally zero conflict - which is the point I do get it, but still never felt like I was sinking my teeth into anything substantial.
so much of this book invokes similar feelings as Song of Achilles. This is the highest praise.
Examples:
-now i believe in love again
-i am emotionally compromised by the ending
-gay love can and will save us all
Aesthetically and tonally right up my alley, but it really just felt like an extended prologue rather than a full story in itself. Also the voice, while mostly charming today, probably is going to age like milk.
This book was...not good. And I'm gonna rant about it.
The sense of scale that the author is trying to build doesn't hold up to the slightest critical thought.
What should be huge cultural, political, and intellectual shifts in the world get glossed over, explained away with one or two sentences. (holy shit did I really wanna be in the room when Sabran spends - what was it - 2 weeks right? - convincing the council to break their MILLENNIA LONG embargo with another nation!!! Why didn't we get to see any of that??? Why do people say this is a political fantasy book but we rarely get to see any of the actual politics being made?) Shannon ignores valuable opportunities to meaningfully build the world and the culture - they get hand-waved in favor of spending time describing architecture and clothing with constant use of archaic 18th century language from England (it's worth noting here that only the “Western Europe” analog in this world gets this treatment. If the author had used archaic Chinese or Japanese words for her “Asia” stand-in, or, like, Arabic words for her “Africa” stand-in I wouldn't be nearly as critical, but of course she didn't :) The Euro-centricity is....uh, glaring)
Other people have gotten into this next point much more coherently than I will so I'll just say: It's very obvious that Shannon has strong opinions about motherhood, and they are probably universally bad takes. This book is feminist in that very specific “choice feminism” way that ignores history and context and intersectionality.
If you strip away names and places, 3 of the POV characters' inner monologues are indistinguishable (the only exception is Niclays, who is the only stand out character imho, and the only POV I regularly looked forward to getting back to. Love a coward POV <3)
There are multiple points where a literally earth-shattering truth is dropped on a character. One that destroys the very basis of their religion or political power. And a majority of the time they just kind of....shrug? Accept very quickly and move on b/c the plot has to keep moving, no time to wait up for a character to have an existential crisis or be in denial or grieve. When this /is/ addressed, it's all very “tell not show”. We'll get a line that says “[character x] is grappling with this new idea” or “[character y] is grieving for their friend” and then like, nothing else. Sabran specifically gets snapped out of what we're told is a multi week depressive episode by being talked to sternly for 3 minutes. Cue eye roll.
The magic also has no internal logic. This isn't always a bad thing, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to who has power and why. Dragons are powerful gods of the sea....except when they're kidnapped by pirates and then they're no more intimidating than a large caged predator. Magic done by humans seems to have very few limits with very few consequences, even for beginners.
This book managed to be dense without being even a little complex. Such a shame.
i like new weird
i like vibes-based writing
i liked borne well enough to pick this up
i do not like when one sentence has no connection to the next
i do not like when descriptions are so detached from a grounded reality that i cannot even guess at what information the author wants me to take away from any given scene
dnf'd after 2 chapters
As it stands, this is a story steeped in Mexican culture and religion with only one Mexican character (who dies early on, what a surprise). I wasn't motivated to like the main character or his daughter, and the antagonist was boring. The pacing was good, and the action was exciting, but I guess I was looking for something a little more emotionally and intellectually substantial. Honestly Stephen was my favourite part of the book and I was much more interested in him than the main plot. Good for reading on the train, but not much lasting power.
Stilted dialogue, cringy and pandering language. Dnf'd around 60% Also- why tf does the crime boss openly refer to herself as “the crime boss”? that's weird. suspension of disbelief was a struggle. High school me would have loved this. Alas.
This may have just caught me at a bad time since I'm on more of a literary kick atm. This would probably make for a good plane/beach read.
3.5 Stars
(Why do I only ever feel like writing reviews for books I give mixed ratings for)
The natural history, historiography, and behavioral ecology parts hooked me. Evocative, vibrant, and engaging. The memoir parts just...didn't do it for me. It's obvious Brusatte is passionate but I am just....not very interested in who he met at which conference, and how he came to work at which dig site. And because these different types of narrative are well integrated, it was hard to skim to the parts I was super interested in. Worth it for descriptions of T. rex hunts and High Key 20th Century Naturalist Drama(tm).
it felt like it was written with the sole goal of getting optioned for a netflix series. dnf at ~20%
i can tell by the way the author writes about nyc that he has never lived in nyc. dnf'ed @ 10%
Super fast paced and engaging even though I saw most of the twists coming and found the choppy, line break heavy style grating at times. Highly recommend as an airplane read.
dnf'd at 52%
I didn't get a good sense of the characters because the narrative jumped around so much. It's also quite grimdark without any reprieve which is just not really my scene. A few cool ideas, maybe I'll come back to it when I have a little more bandwidth and attention span.
Really astounding. Every single time I thought I understood what this book was about it took a hard left turn. First it was maybe about how parasocial interaction feeds toxic relationships, then it was about how people change (and how they don't) with their environment, then it was about how grief and technology intersect. Very briefly it was about ghosts. With the last 10% of the book I'm not even sure anymore if it can be said to be about one thing but I do know I want to talk about this book with anyone who will listen.
Witty and fun to read, a satisfying ending, . Really a great book, bogged down just a bit by the overarching (and overbearing) theme of “religion is bad and government based on religion is even worse”