Kireth
4/5
The last lines of The Fires of Heaven had me excited for the sixth chapter in the Wheel of Time series. Whilst the promise of more male channelers definitely delivers in Lord of Chaos, there's other glaring issues in pacing, gendered writing and repetition that I have unfortunately come to accept in these books.
Read my full review on Life of Karrot.
2.5/5
This was an underwhelming start to the long Wheel of Time series, although it holds promise for successive novels. For every great character moment, there was an equal number of frustrating choices, mostly stemming from an overbearing reliance on established tropes within the Fantasy genre.
Full review here on my website!
Short and highly fun! It's definitely fun to go back and see Kelsier before the events of the Mistborn trilogy, and despite its length the story gives insight to his inner struggles as he adopts the legendary image of the Survivor of Hathsin. The fluid magical action and writing style is an enjoyable return to the first Mistborn trilogy, and the setting carves out an unexplored town in the Western Dominance. Loved Gemmel and the other supporting characters as well (side note: there was a cool art preface).
Man, it is snowing in NYC and things are getting worse across America as Kronos ramps up his master plan to take out the Olympians. On re-read, this book stood out even more than the first time (probably because I was originally hurtling to get to the ending), but this book seriously ups the ante from The Sea of Monsters which, arguably and in retrospect, seemed to play things safely compared to the original Lightning Thief.
I loved how the Greek Gods were sprinkled in more frequently as well, lending weight to the oppressive theme running through the book that things are getting serious - with an emotional death to pack the punch (no spoilers, it was headlined in the prophecy). Placing Percy again as an outsider who is challenged by both Thalia and Zoe in terms of skill and experience is a really smart way to keep him from seeming overpowered, and Riordan really makes it clear that the girls aren't to be messed with. The character development across the board was so rich, in both the new characters and certain people established earlier in the series by either name or appearance. These were especially surprising, and added a lot of depth to both the series's themes of vain Gods, expendable Heroes and parenthood/family.
Nico and Blackjack were awesome and I can't wait to retread their stories in the sequels. The cliffhanger ending should have been as big as The Sea of Monsters, but Riordan ensures that the reader knows from here on, Percy is the star of the show.
3.5/5
Robert Stratton is an up-and-coming automaton developer in a world where scientists have discovered the Kabbalistic (ancient Jewish religious thinking in Hebrew language) names of objects, and animated automatons and health jewellery with them. The steampunk, pre-industrial English setting is a perfect backdrop as Stratton becomes involved in a secret society to prevent the extinction of the human race within the next few generations due to reproduction issues.
Following the recursive, almost programming-like relationship between ova name-injection and rapid large foetus growth, Stratton is blind to the motivations of others leading to moments of tense conflict. Clay sculptors, aristocrats and kabbalists assist him in seeing the letters needed to save humanity and continue personal, procreative agency.
Merged review:
3.5/5
Robert Stratton is an up-and-coming automaton developer in a world where scientists have discovered the Kabbalistic (ancient Jewish religious thinking in Hebrew language) names of objects, and animated automatons and health jewellery with them. The steampunk, pre-industrial English setting is a perfect backdrop as Stratton becomes involved in a secret society to prevent the extinction of the human race within the next few generations due to reproduction issues.
Following the recursive, almost programming-like relationship between ova name-injection and rapid large foetus growth, Stratton is blind to the motivations of others leading to moments of tense conflict. Clay sculptors, aristocrats and kabbalists assist him in seeing the letters needed to save humanity and continue personal, procreative agency.
4.5/5
A thought-provoking and dense collection of sci-fi short stories. As a brief note up-front, there is nothing explicitly tying these stories together - each tale stands alone in its own unique setting and with new characters. However, you can expect each story to feature strong internal consistency and distinct but open-ended social discussion, with a lesser focus on individual people.
Chiang's writing style at first seems to conform to hard sci-fi conventions, where a plot is driven by or has a new technological development (or novum) based in known science principles. It makes sense that Chiang has a computer science degree, but I was honestly surprised that he did not have an even more academic background. This is due to the in-depth explanations and ingenuous utilisations of often high-level scientific and mathematical concepts featured in all his stories. When the technology or concept seems to be mundane, the story takes over with some intriguing outcomes and effects on individuals explored.
This is also why I believe Chiang's writing often falls into the soft sci-fi classification as well, which explores societal aspects and human emotions in the foreground of an alternative world (or alterity). There are two stories especially in Story of Your Life and Others which are more fantastical than sci-fi (Tower of Babylon and Hell is the Absence of God), but all the stories in both his collections have some sort of social commentary being explored, with some more on the surface than others.
This is Chiang's strength, as he links deep scientific connections with philosophical discussions in often brain-breaking stories. As a reader, I was surprised at how much time I needed to complete his works. Not only are you meeting new characters and a unique setting, but you have to understand and then keep track of the technology's implications as well as the narrative - and this introductory phase is repeated for each story! This is not at all a knock on Chiang's writing style or the collection, but an acknowledgement that this cannot be approached with the same reading style as that of a typical novel.
I certainly enjoyed the mind-blowing aspect of his storytelling, and the diversity of ideas featured. From fables, world-views and existentialism to CIA action, agency and choice, each story was written slightly differently and distinct in its purpose. After completing the Exhalation collection I'll be moving on to some longer-form sci-fi (which removes the breaks mentioned above), but I whole-heartedly recommend even just a few of Chiang's stories to a curious sci-fi/ fantasy reader. If you do decide to read all of his works, it shouldn't be a time-consuming task but will likely require short breaks between stories so that you are able to absorb the narrative and social deliberation displayed.
4.5/5
I found this to be a beautiful tale of storytelling, atonement and science that is closer to magic. In something out of an Arabian tale, Fuwaad ibn Abbas encounters a merchant specialising in intricate metalworks but whose prized possession is a a Gate through time using wormholes in the fabric of space. One side allows his arm to travel seconds into the future, the other sends it backwards through time over the same period. The merchant than conveys three stories, which Abbas then conveys to “His Majesty” the caliph as he explains his story. However, the key concept across each fable is that both past and future cannot be changed.
A truly magnanimous tale of a wizard's humble beginnings and exploration of the world. Le Guin makes it clear that she knows how to craft the story of a hero's journey, and develop a massive fantastical world that has just enough explanation to tantalise the reader with it's history, lore and characters. Having only read Left Hand of Darkness before, I can see Le Guin's themes of balance, light and darkness, friendship and the natural world emerging - arguably done better here than in LHOD. All of this combined with her rich prose, fluid descriptions and imaginative takes on fantasy tropes make this a must-read novel for those interested in the genre and its beginnings.
Everything you'd want in a Lorien Legacies novella. Mark's initially off-putting narration quickly grows with his personality and increasingly dangerous experiences. The story itself goes off-road and cross-country in a true fugitive on the run style, with a surprising remote base location. The supporting cast include the enigmatic Guard from Aliens Anonymous, the return of Sarah and Bernie Kosar and some threating FBI/ mog villains. And to add icing to the cake, there are substantive and surprising connections to the mainline series that just feel right to reveal in a side novella like this.
Fast, fun read that includes significant moments but breezes through them in a way that makes it hard for me to care. In the context of the Marvel comics post War for the 9 realms, Loki is questioning who he is after becoming a hero and ruling Jotunheim alongside his brother Thor, King of Asgard. There's a lot of Avenger references, and we follow him generally avoiding his responsibilities and acting innocent whilst providing his snarky voiceover. The visuals were pretty decent, with a few odd drawings. Nightmare is also in this for some reason, and is dealt with in a pretty classical mythological-story style way, albeit modernised and Marvel-ised. There's also some major gods/ beings outside of time who are introduced to provide some meta-commentary alongside Loki, but it all doesn't really feel tied together in a satisfactory way - you can tell the writers were planting seeds for their unfortunately cancelled-after-one-run story.
Interesting Lost File from the perspective of the Mogadorians, showing the lifestyle of Adam and young Mogs in general. He has a difficult relationship with his family, but through some alien science is given a special link to Number One, learning from her memories and experiences. They form somewhat of a friendship, despite his contrasting upbringing and worldview, and she haunts him as Adamus encounters the Garde Two and Three. Whilst this takes the novel across the globe, it was really a brief and entertaining look at the first three Garde from key character Adam's perspective.
PREVIOUS: [b:Monstress, Vol. 3: Haven 37491890 Monstress, Vol. 3 Haven Marjorie M. Liu https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1531356957l/37491890.SY75.jpg 59101846]STORY: The Chosen returns to the more Maika-family-backstory centric style of Volume 2, this time with the introduction of her father as the bloodlines granting her the monster within start to make more sense. His subsequent formation of the tactically superior Blood Court to challenge the Baroness's union of the Dusk/ Dawn Courts, and the Cumea witches using Ancients through mask fragments pushes the human-arcanic conflict to the brink. Kippa and nekomancer Ren have their own sub-plots, with a twisting conclusion that sets up a conflict-heavy series ending in Volumes 5 and 6.ART & WRITING: Again, the artwork in this series is amazing. The writing was much easier to understand with the main players having been established, and the groups and their relationships to each other becoming more clear. The Blood Doctor himself is a classic seemingly-benevolent villain and there is great, if cliched, dialogue between himself and Maika. NEXT: [b:Monstress, Vol. 5: Warchild 52637764 Monstress, Vol. 5 Warchild Marjorie M. Liu https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1600742631l/52637764.SY75.jpg 78402003]
A great finale to a wonderful series. I appreciated that especially in this book, Percy had a clear personal journey with Nico, an expansion on how he had to get himself onto the quest in The Titan's Curse or was separated from the main group in The Battle of the Labyrinth. For me Percy's development was clear and purposeful in this story, uncomfortably trying to grow in power to match his enemies whilst accepting the strength in others and kinship. The logical placement of the Olympian Gods was nice to see as each had a clear objective, and the newly introduced Gods and Titans felt so appropriate to the themes of the story.
Riordan doesn't leave loose ends in this series either, every plot thread coming to fruition and certain characters and relationships being rewarded for their development with smart callbacks. This leads to a sense of satisfaction throughout the book, and unlike the previous entries this is basically one long battle/massive seige - but the series has earnt the right for this climax, making it feel like the only way Percy Jackson had ended.
But of course, Riordan leaves a tantalising cliffhanger for the sequel series...
4.5/5
Audaciously ambitious. Sanderson attempts to capture the essence of the soul and reveals the thinking of a thief, an honest man and an emperor. I loved the soul stamp magic system and this is so nice as a bite sized tale.
Undeniably influential. Dune blurs the lines between SF and Fantasy, in-turn making it everything I ever wanted out of a novel - there's personal family conflict, ecology and environmentalism, an enormous sense of scale between vehicles and planets, philosophy on leadership, ethics of biological science and a deep examination of religious and political individuals and power structures all centered around an expensive, time-melding drug. Once I had adjusted to it, I loved the writing style with Herbert giving the reader multiple perspectives and exploring different characters and places. Despite the sheer amount of stuff in this ~444 page book, the prose is succinct and purposeful which (thankfully for me) means you don't get pages of description, allowing you to fill the gaps yourself. Reading this in anticipation of the film was an awesome ride and now I can't wait to dive into the sequels, after a time gap to let me just absorb this masterpiece and let it have its own definition.
Originally posted at kirethwritesabout.com.
Sometimes you finish a book at 3am and need to just sit and absorb the ending. With a trip overseas fast approaching I decided to knuckle down and just blitz my way through the second half of this book, which honestly became difficult due to the density of events portrayed. However, upon reflection I believe Children of Dune was a much stronger (and depressing) novel than its predecessor that is unfortunately weighed down by the rush of plot points in the story's middle-to-end.
Read the rest of my review at my personal website in the link below.
Originally posted at kirethwritesabout.com.
Contains spoilers
“Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual."
This was by no means a bad book, and I give Dune Messiah credit for attempting to maintain its own identity, but perhaps it suffers from being a follow-up to the truly epic Dune.
Right off the bat I was intrigued at Herbert openly laying out the conspiracy against Emperor Paul, again giving readers multiple perspectives on both sides as individuals began to politically manoeuvre themselves amongst and against each other. This was in addition to a lot of discussion on philosophy, and pondering of leadership, governments and their costs. This was where I wish the book was actually longer, and made some more concrete statements or raised interesting discussions, as I instead watched the story go in an interesting but rather straight line.
"Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, dealt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of Time."
Moreover, the lengthy conversations and Herbert's third-person omniscient writing style that constantly changes character viewpoint sometimes made events difficult to follow, and I was left wondering what true outcomes were achieved in individual scenes. I did enjoy some of the descriptive sections, and the varying epigraphs worked well in terms of framing, but most of all I found myself rocked by the ending. Keenly moving on to Children of Dune soon!
Originally posted at kirethwritesabout.com.
Solid, if not spectacular, superhero story with a strong brown perspective that made me proud of representation! Kamala Khan and her teen friends/ family speak in such a realistic way for their backgrounds that I easily fell into this story, despite its rushed pace typical of the comic medium. There is definitely a strong homage here to the 80s Secret Wars Spider-man story in the way of Ms. Marvel's new suit, and the plot itself is a basic sci-fi story - hero gets caught on alien world which has conflicting factions (which makes for an interesting early twist) before having to provide their skillset to save them from a threat. The addition of the Khan family and intriguing characters like Cheb elevate the story's simplicity and the visual style is great for the comic, with a few interesting changes when characters are telling stories of the ‘Chosen One'.
Definitely the best CHERUB book yet. This is finally an entry in the series that focuses on one long mission, whilst developing the core cast of characters surrounding James, including Michael, Gabrielle and Bruce. The gang war premise is set up excitingly from the perspective of two agents deep in their mission at the start of the story, and the stakes are instantly real. The gang characters themselves are complex and the plot ties them together, Muchamore rarely losing his reader. There's also a funny cameo from another popular YA spy character. Probably the biggest strength of Mad Dogs was its moral ambiguity, with the plot not tying everything neatly together on a larger scale and James again facing questions of cruelty on-campus and this time within the mission. Left me thinking...
Attempts to place Superman in the modern age one piece of his supporting life at a time, first with the acquisition of the Daily Planet and then with the hook-up culture version of Lois Lane. Yes, Superman isn't that happy but in context it makes sense he isn't a smiling boy wonder anymore, and it is obviously where this story is trying to head towards. I thought having villains who are a) alien, b) know about Krypton and c) require a sense of intelligence to beat before just brute strength was really interesting and well executed, even if they seemed a bit rushed.
Overall, the story just didn't grab me in its setup and payoffs, but was a good self-contained first arc with good art.
Conflicted rating. The Institute opens with the adult male Tim, following his journey to a backwater American town for the first 30+ pages. Then the story cuts away to the equally intriguing (but in a different manner) story of 12 year-old genius Luke, who then becomes the novel's protagonist as he is taken to the eponymous Institute. Whilst their stories do collide in the novel's third act, I felt like much of this winding book amounted to not a lot - I'm not sure what King is saying politically about America (in particular Trump voters, and gun laws), and the Stranger Things sci-fi vibe was thrilling at parts but oh so very long. The description was rich, but I couldn't understand why Luke's intelligence was correlated to him being the one to “unleash hell” when there was such an interesting supporting cast - James Avery, Nick, Kalisha, Maureen - helping him. I definitely plan on reading more Stephen King novels, but perhaps this was pitched towards an older, or less SF-experienced audience.
The whole opening was brilliant - a slowburn approach to CHERUB, building Dante's life and family then reminding the readers of how agents are initiated on campus. It was a smart retrospective way to incorporate the character. Unfortunately, the book seems to drag as it goes on, with James, ‘John' and Laurens' infiltration of the biker gang becoming increasingly unexciting. The return of white-shirt McEwan was interesting, his character is dangerously fun and he is given something of an arc. The third act of the story really shines, with James lost in exciting chaos reminiscent of that in this entries predecessor ‘The General', and a renewed focus in Dante's revenge plot. Overall, although the agents are definitely growing older and behaving like it, there's a feeling that this book was holding itself back as we see its unexpected mission result.