Kochsalz

The actual book is good, the translation is not.

Ich habe nur die deutsche Übersetzung gelesen, kann aber mit Sicherheit sagen, dass das englische Original ein besseres Buch ist, auch wenn der Autor kein englischer Muttersprachler ist.
Die deutsche Version enthält mehr Fehler als manche Fanfiction. Dass/das wird regelmäßig vertauscht, Formatierung wechselt manchmal völlig willkürlich zu kursivschrift und zurück, Absätze sind teilweise seltsam gesetzt. Es werden zu viele anachronistische Anglizismen verwendet, die überhaupt nicht in das Setting passen (“Statement”, “Flashback”, etc.). Es wird häufiger betont dass Charaktere in verschiedenen Dialekten sprechen, im tatsächlichen Dialog wird das aber überhaupt nicht dargestellt, außer dass Figuren aus armen Verhältnissen “nix” statt “nichts” sagen.
Außerdem zahlreiche kleine Fehler wie falsche Zeitformen, ausgelassene Wörter, Tippfehler, die durch etwas mehr Sorgfalt vermeidbar gewesen wären.

[very mild Spoilers ahead]

There are many elements to Osten Ard that made me want to like this book, but they are ultimately overshadowed by the terrible cast of characters, first and foremost the protagonist. Simon is sexist (as is everyone else in this world), racist, naive, whiny, jealous, arrogant, and both annoying and boring all at the same time... there is not a single redeeming quality to this guy. Most of the other characters lack build up and development. The only interesting ones were Elias and Josua, but their difficult relationship as brothers doesn't get enough screentime to carry a story that is otherwise filled with (100% male) characters that merely serve a purpose in the plot. There is also an abundance of fantasy tropes and cliches (to be fair, things like “dragon slaying swords” and “very old forest” might not have been cliche when this series was written) that get old very fast.

The world of Osten Ard is fascinating and I wanted to know more about the twisted history behind all the events in this book, but how that world is shown and explained to the reader is done rather poorly. Simon asks questions, wise old man answers questions, gets fed up with him asking so many questions. Repeat this 20 times and you have the structure of information dumps you will find in this book.

I will not continue this series, despite all the great things I've heard about it.

800 pages in, it struck me that I could summarize everything that happened so far in about 2 sentences for each supblot and not miss much.

The series has always been rather slow-paced, with lots of philosophy, inner monologues, detailed descriptions of every other hill the characters encounter on their travels, and some lovely banter between loveable characters, but this one went too far for me. I skipped countless paragraphs of Kruppe's narration of the Darujhistan plot because they are so damn repetitive. After about 7000 pages in this series, every philosophical and moral stance on how the world is such a cruel place has been reiterated dozens of times. At this point, it just seems like Erikson needs an editor.

The Coral plot is so concerned with being mysterious (look, after 5 books, you get more of Anomander Rake! Aren't you excited to read his nonsensical musing about life? And there's a depressed mage, everyone loves some depression!) that it completely failed for me, even though Rake used to be one of my favorite characters.
Nimander's group wasn't interesting enough to make me care about any of them. They're all just different variations of edgy and traumatized.
Gruntle and Trull are kind of there, along for the ride, but felt a little... lesser than in previous books.

The Bridgeburners and Karsa kept me coming back to the book, featuring lots of likable characters and hilarious banter, and, in contrast to the other subplots, things actually happen, they are not just talked about. But they aren't enough to make the rest much enjoyable.

A complete letdown after the fantastic first book, Vita Nostra. There's still some of the uncomfortable magic weirdness that made Vita Nostra so good, but it is drowned in a terrible romance plot that never develops any chemistry between sasha and her sort-of-boyfriend. They barely interact at all, yet she is dedicated to making her entire life revolve around him for no discernable reason. The book sacrifices so much for this plot, and doesn't go anywhere with it.

Until about 75% of the book I was convinced that it's just meant to portray how far removed from normal human beings she has become, and that she's so desperate to retain some human connection to the point where she clings to literally the first guy she meets. That would have been a good idea with a boring execution.

But the book plays it straight until the end. I don't know what the authors wanted to say with this, what they wanted readers to feel, but I'm just disappointed.

1.5 stars.

A fantasy romance novel with lots of dragons where the setting has more inconsistencies and contradictions than I thought possible in a 500 page book, the main character's obsession with the love interest is completely deranged and one-dimensional, and the dragons are flatout boring. So it's a fail on all fronts.

Too. Many. Fight Scenes.

I already expected this book to be a low point of the series for me, and I pretty much got just that.

I frequently skip entire fight scenes and major parts of battles unless the author really manages to make them captivating and unpredictable. Unfortunately, Abercrombie is not one of those authors. His fantastic prose takes a step back to get closer to the action, but the individual combat scenes drag on for too long without interesting twists and turns. Accordingly, a book that consists of about 50% battles was a pain to get through for me.

The point that Abercrombie is trying to make about male ideals of heroism is a little too dull and gets explored to its fullest extent too early in the book to carry the rest, so the second third of the book lacks focus and coherence. Everyone's fighting, that's it. After the fantastic character work in his previous books, this seemed to me like an experiment that failed.

The setting is interesting and terrifying, and obviously that's why everyone reads this book. It's also the only good thing about it.

None of the characters are interesting as actual characters, it's just about the role they fulfill in the world. Marx is the only character with some sort of development, but it was too rushed and obvious.

I can't even properly describe the plot because there really isn't any. Maybe I am missing the point of the random things that happen throughout the book, but to me they didn't really string together into an actual narrative.

The info dump exposition at the beginning was well done as far as info dumps go, but it's still 40 pages of exposition being jammed down your throat.

Brave New World is still worth reading because of the harrowing dystopia, which has painfully many similarities to our real world society. But don't expect a gripping novel with a compelling narrative.

A story with a lot of potential is burried under unending descriptions of everyday mundanity and countless repetitions of the same thoughts in the characters' heads (they all seem to share one brain, both in how much they use of it and in the way they all think and behave exactly the same). The time travel setting doesn't actually make any sense, Oxford in 2060 seems to be on the technological level of the early 90s, and the way the characters stumble into their problems is so convoluted that it becomes impossible to keep up suspension of disbelief.

I'd give the book 3.5 stars if I could.

This new series by Jonathan Stroud has all the usual strengths you'd expect from his books: Lovable yet flawed characters, witty dialogue, and great pacing. It's perfectly suitable for teens/young adults/whatever you want to call them, yet doesn't talk down to the reader or shy away from darker topics and gruesome violence. In fact, at times this book seemed a lot more mature than Lockwood or Bartimaeus.

So why ‘only' 3.5?

The setting is intriguing in some aspects, but there are severe issues when worldbuilding and characters collide. What the characters know and how they interact with the post-apocalyptic world they travel through doesn't match their personal background. The two points of view - Scarlett and Albert - don't read any different when it comes to how they think about their surroundings, how much they know about the world and its history. Stroud uses a lot of metaphors that may make sense to the reader, but not to the character whose point of view you're reading. These sorts of breaks in POV quickly ruin my immersion and enjoyment of fantasy stories.

The plot felt like I was reading the same plot three times over: the main characters run from their pursuers until they are almost caught, then they escape and everyone gets knocked out only to wake up again a few miles downriver. It's enjoyable, but I was more along for the ride than actually curious where the plot was headed.

Last but not least, evil gloating. Why?

You can tell that all the trauma and depression in this book was poured into it by someone who knows what he's writing about. It's why the book was written, and why you should read it.
Unfortunately, the main plot feels like it only exists in service of the mental health issues, and keeps bending into whichever direction is required to make the main character's life miserable. This also includes multiple aspects of the worldbuilding and the magic system, which seem to work specifically in ways that let the story progress toward specific conflicts.
Most of the plans the main characters come up with are based on wild speculation, old folklore and things someone thinks they remember, yet all of that always turns out to be true, and barely any of it is ever brought up again.This made parts of the overarching plot hard to care about and twists feel a bit unearned.
The political parts were hit or miss, and would have worked a lot better if the political system didn't feel like it consists of about five people.

A character deals with heavy depression, trauma and drug addiction, built up in the last 3 books, by talking to another character for 5 minutes, and then everything is fine again.

Among the biggest ‘Nope's I have ever read, and the nail in the coffin for the series. The previous books in phase 2 already had quite a lot of issues, but this one manages to take all the good parts and ruin them.

I would like to personally thank Ali Hazelwood for confirming all my prejudices I had against ‘tiktok sensations', and sometimes even exceeding my worst expectations.

This book is going to trick you. You will enjoy it, you will (as usual) alternate between feeling bad for Fitz for all the bullshit the world throws at him and screaming at Fitz for what an idiot he is. You will treasure every name-drop of people from the first 6 books.

And then the book is done, without having delivered any plot whatsoever. But you will only notice this by the end, because you were along for the ride.

For a book that is advertised as “Machiavellian fantasy”, full of “lies, conspiracy, and assassination”, The Councillor features surprisingly little of that. I expected a lot more politics, more scheming, more uncertainty about who's playing what game. If that's what you're looking for (or an interesting magic system), look somewhere else.

The actual plot is very shallow, rarely delving into the details of the events that take place. There are multiple assassination attempts throughout the book, but not a single one of them leads to an actual investigation to find out who's behind it. Things just happen, leading to one surface-level clue, then they are discarded until that single clue becomes relevant again.

The book is more concerned with the main character's struggle between love interests, dealing with the loss of loved ones, drug addiction, and the growing interest in power. This is mostly done well, but does become repetitive.

According to the ‘about the author' section in the book, she is a poet, and it shows. The prose is great, but very flowery, which in some scenes seemed inappropriate.

Dune was vast in scope, explored lots of consequences of its deep worldbuilding, and felt like it took place in a larger world. It had characters whose motives you couldnt always understand but were at least curious about.

This sequel explicitly tells you what every character is trying to achieve after every piece of dialogue they speak, for every character in every dialogue scene. And there are barely any scenes that include more than people talking to each other. But I just couldn't bring myself to care about anything that is talked about. The whole plot about the conspiracy to take down Paul atreides is so... insubstantial that it could have been told in one or two chapters in the next book.

It could have been great, but the constant exposition made me not finish it. I don't pick up a book about ‘an-offer-you-can't-refuse' mobsters just to be spoon-fed information in every other paragraph. The worst offender is the dialogue, which is constantly interrupted to explain in detail what the characters are trying to achieve by saying those lines of dialogue. There's just no flow to the conversations whatsoever.

A scifi story that has nothing to say, blown up to about 900 pages to repeat the same things over and over and over again. Paolini does not trust you to follow anything without spoonfeeding you the explanation and reasoning behind every single action the characters take.
It starts out as relatively hard scifi with some aliens, but quickly deteriorates into a fantasy quest of good vs evil.

There are quite a few good character moments here and there, but the writing is so transparent that I never thought “hey, what a great moment with these characters”, but “hey, Paolini used writing trick number 26 again” instead.

Fantastic worldbuilding and a great setup for a series, but disappointing prose and a poor standalone plot. Writing was different in the 60s, and it shows in the somewhat bland characters, the role of women, and stilted dialogue.

Side note: The book deserves special praise for doing prophecies well, which I thought was impossible.

A great setting and two interesting main characters try to carry a lackluster plot and a crew of mostly forgettable side characters, but that's not enough. The book tries to build up several mysteries yet I wasn't intrigued by any of them.

The prose starts out great in the first few chapters, then becomes pretty bland. My version also had an excessive amount of typos and other small errors.

The weakest entry in the Age of Madness trilogy. The plot doesn't get going fast enough, and reaches closing-up-nine-books-at-once-territory before it can produce a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy.

The plot twists range from predictable to ludicrous.

As always with Abercrombie, the prose is exceptional.

The first woman to appear in this book, about 100 pages in, is referred to as ‘a female'.
Tells you all you need to know.

The book has quite some funny moments, but it is so similar in tone to Terry Pratchett, but not as good, that I feel like I'm better off reading Discworld than this.

I would like to give the book 5 stars for the interesting magic system and likable cast of characters, but the constant wikipedia-style info dumps and incredibly obvious foreshadowing kept ruining my experience.

It's like Harry potter except the students don't want to be at the school but are forced to go there, everything they learn is deliberately obscure and unsettling with a touch of lovecraft, it's more about reaching a state of being than learning wand-flicking and spells, the protagonist is 6 years older than harry potter (and a girl), and it's actually not like Harry potter at all.

A strong start to a new trilogy in the First Law Universe. All characters, both returning and new, are written with as much wit and attention to realism as you'd expect from Abercrombie. Especially the female characters, which were a huge point of criticism in the first trilogy, finally get their chance to shine in this world.
A few of the characters turn out to be rather uninteresting though, once you know what their arcs are about.

As usual with Joe Abercrombie, the tone of the prose is perfect - from hilariously contemptful descriptions to brutal displays of violence, he always finds the perfect way of phrasing it.

I would have never imagined that I would ever not finish a Joe Abercrombie book, but The Devils is that book.

His writing in the First Law series was what Marvel movies at some point tried to be, but never could: Funny where it doesn't hurt the plot or the characters, witty, sometimes a bit absurd, but, on the whole, always sincere, with very strong focus on the characters. The Devils is a Marvel movie, ripped straight out of a screenplay and forced into the shape of a novel. It's still a character-driven book, but with no substance or anything to say.

None of the characters take anything seriously. No matter what happens, the first reaction is always a witty oh-so-funny one-line remark to remind you how incredibly funny everyone is, and to assure you that you are never in danger of dealing with any sincerity or thoughtful themes. The setting pretends to be an alternate history pseudo-medieval europe with magic and demons and elves and werewolves, but has exactly zero similarities to actual medieval europe and is so absurd that it would have been much more believable if it was set in an original fantasy world. Everyone, no matter where they are from, speaks the same language. The plot is based around the schism of the church, yet religion is never taken seriously or portrayed as anything but a scam. Speaking of plot, it just exists to give the characters something to do and keep a carrot dangling in front of them.

I am already dreading the film adaptation for which the rights were sold right after the book's release.