Olga Yolgina
Sanderson is a gift that keeps on giving. Definitely didn't see it coming with the kandra in the end and now can't wait to see how Wax deals with all that in the next book.
First of all, it's a history of England - Scotland and Ireland are barely mentioned.
No continuity of the narration, more like a patchwork of events that the author deemed worthy to be described.
The War of Roses - mentioned in one sentence.
The One Hundred Years War - barely a paragraph.
Some kings are dwelled upon in (unnecessarily) great detail, others simply skipped, barely mentioned.
Overall - do not recommend.
I really enjoyed the book. All of it. The mixture of different cultures and legends and even ages, the characters that are easy to imagine and so lovable (even with all their flaws).
I'm happy that they got their almost happy end and looking forward to reading the second book.
Oh yes, all my highly intelligent predictions turned out to be wrong and it was fabulous )))
Was re-reading it for the Virtual Book Club and somehow this time my arachnophobia didn't get in the way, so I enjoyed the story much more this time round.
Still 4 stars though, because... Can't really put it into words. Just don't feel it to be a 5.
Will definitely continue with the trilogy now that it's completely out. How much do I want to know what shenanigans Helena and Portia are getting themselves into? Yes.
First of all, I loved the narration! Voice actors did their job perfectly. Not sure that I'd have enjoyed the story as much if it were an eye read. Sidebars were a great touch.
As for the story itself, I enjoyed following Amina's adventures, especially in the second half of the book, but it wasn't a wow-experience. Maybe I had too high expectations going into the book, maybe it's just because the whole naval-piraty theme doesn't resonate with me as much. There is nothing I feel the need to criticise, but at the same time 4 stars feels like the most I can give the book at this point. Maybe when the other two instalments come out and I binge read all three my opinion will change. I did like the setting up for the other books and look forward to finding out how the things turn out for the crew of Marawati.
Raksh. He's so amazingly bad and selfish (and mostly blind to the fact). I love how Shannon portrayed him in a way, that I can't completely hate and despise him. There's something about him that makes me want to see him reformed and reunited with his family, no matter how naive and simplistic it may sound. And oh I want to “see” his face when he finds out about his daughter.
Amina herself did not impress me at first. She was supposed to be some super legend pirate captain, but the way she told the story (not even the events she described) were in such a dissonance with all the hype around her. It was difficult for me to create an image of her in my head because of it. But after she got to the magic island, it all somehow clicked into place. She became the hero I expected her to be from the very beginning.
Not my cup of tea. Too dark, too bloody, too hopeless. At some points I wanted to scream at the obvious mistakes. But overall I just couldn't connect with any of the characters and was so disappointed at how Taya was just plainly used throughout the book. It was a long, painful journey from bad to worse. And not at a single point has she stopped to actually think. The whole book she runs from one fight to another, each one more bloody than the previous one, twice she's patched up after almost dying and in a few hors she's on the run again. Even with all the super cool tech, meat needs time to heal. Well, at least while one's alive.
What bugs me the most, it feels like she's never in control, there's always someone playing her. And even knowing that, she comes back for more.
And there are scanners on every corner and she's tracked almost all the time. But 5 minutes later she's brought from level 99 to 2 with none the wiser. Wait, she was brought like that twice. Both times she was barely breathing piece of meat. And no pings? No tracers? Hmmm...
And Jordan? She doesn't even feel like a good guy forced to do bad things for the greater good. She's just plain bad. Manipulative b**ch. It's been a while since I've been disgusted by a character so much.
Overall, very bad aftertaste after the book, I need something meaningful to cleanse my palette asap.
Oh, yes, and if you can't explain something, call it magic. Nothing of the origins of the powers and the conflict is explained, just some hints and breadcrumbs. Big words without any actual substance.
It would have been 4 stars if not for all the (multiple!) vodka stereotypes. For some reason they got under my skin and my resentment grew stronger with each mention. A genius Russian engineer and all we get to remember her by is that she wanted to die of heroin overdose and basically never went anywhere without ‘very strong' vodka. So furious!!! Want to splash a glass of said vodka in the author's face. Portraying Ilyukhina like that was absolutely uncalled for.
Reading this was a bit of a chore. Somehow Rowling's adult books fail to satisfy in almost imperceptible way.
The story was neatly woven, I had doubts about who actually did it till the last moment. Overall, a good mystery. But the way it was told. It baffled me at times. And again (the first time was when I tried to read Casual Vacancy, DNFd) I got the feeling that she's like a teenager that's got away from parents and found themselves in a company where they can swear and say nasty things. And they go at it with gusto. The same here. It feels like she's trying to compensate for years when she was limited by the age of her target audience and now, in her adult books, she sometimes makes “dirty” remarks and swears in a way that is very off putting for me.
A totally different kind of fantasy. Pre-industrial environment, characters from the previous books turned to lore and city/street names, all that makes the experience of reading this book like nothing I've read before.
Thankfully, this one turned out to be not as heart wrenching as The Giver. But it still had similar difficult questions raised.
Curious to find out how it all works out to be a part of a whole in the end. So far, haven't noticed any evident connection to The Giver.
A nice light reading with some twists in the plot. It was pleasant to escape to this idyllic world, even though it felt a bit unrealistic to my liking.
It could have been a solid 4-star read, especially due to the twists in the end.
But oh my freaking lord was it difficult to read! I understand the desire to cut on needles explanations and keep the mystery at some points. I do. At least I try to. I almost gave up a few times, and I probably would have if not for the VBC meeting on Saturday.
I would have really appreciated at least some information of basic notions like calendrical mechanics, invariant ice, composite writing, day-to-day belief parameters, calendrical rot and so on. It's like the author took common words, gave them some other meaning, but couldn't be bothered to give at least some points of reference, so that the readers would be able to understand what the hell is going on.
I felt like I went some 20 years back in time when I just started reading books in English and didn't understand about 15% of what was going on, so I had to guess from context or just ignore some parts. At tat time I at least had dictionary as an option. Here even Wiki site was useless, because it had little to none explanation and seemed long deserted.
Overall, instead of enjoying the book I felt annoyed and incompetent most of the time. Definitely not the kind of escapism that I'm looking for in my books. I'll need to be positively convinced to continue the series.
It was a solid 4-star read for me.
Even though there was little space for worldbuilding, it was neatly done.
I'm still on the fence about the ending. It felt a bit rushed and not entirely just for me. The way the new society was being organised is described basically in one sentence - that there was a council from different neigbourhoods. But who's to tell how they will use their newly acquired power and whether they not come up with something that's even worse than it was?
I liked the characters and the way they complimented each other. But I wasn't entirely convinced by how Lupe turned into a leader. I saw it kind of building when Mao fell to pieces a few times and she took control of the mission, but it feels to me that there were some steps missing between taking responsibility for a team and the whole humanity. I can't see her moving from being totally against the massacre to OK-ing sending kids into open space. I'd like to have seen her at least try to limit Aime-Li's revenge to those who actually deserved it.
The final battle felt a bit anti-climactic. All that building up for a few pages of not very convincing battle. Kind of spoiled the book for me.
Yes, it's epic and captivating, but doesn't hold up when I think about the characters. Didn't see much change in them. Didn't understand why Roos out of the blue went from hating Sabran and going to kill Ead to helping the and giving a crucial piece of information.
Somehow this ended up being just “Meh” for me. I didn't connect with the characters and all this “Oh you, poor traumatised thing, let us show you what true love and kindness is” felt somewhat phoney.
For some reason, I expected more going into the book. Maybe it's just my unreasonable expectations that didn't let me enjoy the story more.
The series overall is still holding me firm in its grip, but this particular book fell just a little bit flat for me.
It just felt like by this whole volume (how else would you call 1000+ pages?) Jordan was paving the way for something great coming (hopefully) in the next book, so there's no feeling of it being completed like the previous three were. I always knew that the story would go on, but the plot arc within a book used to have some kind of resolution, the story felt finished, tentacles to the next one were satisfactorily stretched out.
In this case, none of the three climaxes gave me such a vibe, it was more like “OK, this level was passed, welcome to the next level, here's your new quest”. Maybe it's because of the simple fact that there were three “smaller” climaxes, instead of one, where all the POVs converged. Most likely it was done on purpose, but for me personally, this way does not purport to starting the next book the second I finished the current one. So, most likely, I'll get back to the WOT some time next year.
I had some doubts about continuing the series after the first book, but my gosh I'm glad I did! It was quite a ride! The book turned out to be unputdownable and I'm already halfway through the Prologue of the next one.
I really enjoyed the way different parts of the story crisscrossed and came together in the end.
Getting to know the Ogier ways better was also very interesting and sometimes funny.
Selene was a mystery for me for quite some time and I wanted to scream at Rand for not noticing her manipulations. Men.
I didn't have any cosiness expectations going in, so the cutting and kidnapping stuff didn't really bother me and I was able to just enjoy and appreciate the story.
The first few chapters were a bit of a chore, but the footnotes and general information about the Faeries dumped on me made it interesting to read.
The romance plotline was clear to me after the first “Bloody Bambleby” thought, but it was so nicely done with all the mutual trolling, that I actually enjoyed it and found myself rooting for them by the end. I liked the proposal scene and how these events were involved in the second proposal and Em's kidnapping.
Poe is my favourite character in this book. I do hope his appearance in the second book won't be limited to just one or two short episodes. Curious about the trinket he gave to Emily.
The village and villagers was cool. All this Nordic “we either hate or love you” thing. I liked how both were earned - hate by being ignorant and blind to social norms (which also played a lot into Emily's character) and love by actually saving Lilja, Margret and Ari. But the fact that they were absolutely OK with saving her when she messed up didn't convince me much. I'd expect to see something like “I'm so angry with you right now, but I also love you, so I'm going to help”, rather than this unconditional forgiveness.
And yes, the need to save her. This whole part was my least favourite. It felt too much even for that world. And going to free the King after she chopped off her finger and freed herself from enchantment? Seriously? She's a mad scientist, but she's not stupid. At least she's not supposed to be. And “a seer told me I would one day be locked up by my own people, and only a mousy little scholar could get me out again” part was again too much. Bamleby's explanation that marrying her was the only reasonable way to pay her for freeing him had way more sense.
Is it me or do Faerie royalties in this world have a very deep sleep? The King was trapped while he was sleeping, Bambleby slept through not one, but two times when Emily went to do some crazy shit...
Bottom line, I still enjoyed the book very much. It's definitely in my top 10 this year. Looking forward to discussing it at VBC this Sunday.
JRRT is, of course, great and the world of Middle Earth is a pleasure to visit.
That said, I feel that the children's book style of narration is not something I can enjoy when reading for my pleasure and not for my kids. Some parts aimed at younger reader felt a bit tedious for me.
Still, I look forward to reading this book with my kids when they grow up a notch.
An epic story as it should be written. Was ‘cone of silence' Herbert's invention?
Utterly enjoyed both the story and the language it's written in.
Pretty good concise overview of the Medici history. Was a bit difficult to understand which Cosimi is which )))
Loved it.
I thoroughly enjoyed these legends and the way they are told (most of that was due to Martin Shaw's great narration, I think).
The only thing left unanswered - the origins of Hobbits. The creation of Elves, Dwarves and Men was described and explained and Hobbit were just hinted at in the last part of the book. I was very curious to find about Hobbots' orgins, as (as far as I remember) it's not explained in the later books.
I'm glad I finally got to reading The Silmarillion (I was going to for quite a while) and I'm going to continue to The Hobbit and LOTR now :)