Paul

This book really makes you see... or should I say sense... the world differently. I feel like I have an entirely new sense of awe regarding the world around me, and also has made me full of weird facts about animals (the best kinds of facts).

I highly recommend it. My only conceit is that it is VERY full of information, and I found if I read too much, my brain wouldn't be able to take it in. So I read it in chunks of one to two chapters at a time, and took breaks in between. I also never read for more than maybe half an hour at a time.

Pretty damn awesome. It's got serious Pacific Rim vibes, but much more culturally sophisticated, using Chinese mythological elements, and the main character - despite being based (very) loosely on a Chinese Empress - is unpredictable and fierce. The action is constant, and the end was VERY cool.

Put simply, it checked all my boxes for what makes a badass story. I think my only holdback from a 5 star review was that aside from being super-cool, I didn't get much out from it. The relationships in the story were pretty unique, and the cast was good, but character-wise, it felt more like watching a movie than getting to know them. And while it was very emotive, I noticed more than felt the emotions... Except the emotion of "oh damn, that was badass."

I'd say with about half the trilogies or series starters I read, I leave it at that whether I like it or not, but in this case, I am DEFINITELY reading the sequel. Sometimes you need a fast-paced action story with crazy twists, and this delivered that in spades.

A really strong, sound, and compassionate appeal to indigenize science and society. I found her arguments compelling, and I think almost ten years after this book came out, it has made a real impact in the academic community. Our health library has an Indigenous Health section, and studies integrating indigenous practice with the scientific method are being reported in top scientific journals. I agree that reframing our Western methods through a holistic, indigenous lens, with a focus on sustainability, and an openness towards appreciating the personhood of nonhuman beings is integral to fixing some of the mistakes we have been making.

Unfortunately, the economic goals of changing to a system of reciprocity is going nowhere, and I'm afraid her approach to those subjects was a little too bleeding -heart to have the same kind of impact.

I think that's why even though parts of this book inspiring, and I feel like I will approach the outside world with a new level of appreciation, I can't give this book too high of a review. I found the way she described nature and her own feelings as over-the-top, like she was trying to sell the appeal of being high on life, and while I think she held back on being too preachy, it still felt like overly dramatic. Did she really become paralyzed with existential angst while trying to buy a pen because she didn't know what to thank for it? I get the sentiment, but I feel like she oversold the point a bit.

I guess in the last few years, it's hard not to let cynicism trump optimism and appreciation.

D.O.D.O is one of my all-time favourite books, and one of the funniest and most charming books I read. I remember being sad when it ended (despite it being 800 pages) because there was SO much more room for this story to grow, and when I found out Galland was writing a sequel, I thought there was no way it could go wrong.

But long story short, the story went stale. The humour had almost completely disappeared, the formatting that was so unique in the first book had fallen into a boring pattern, the exciting technology was almost forgotten about, so that it became a standard time-travel story, and what bugged me most (though others might find this a perk) is that it got comfortable telling tales surrounding Shakespeare and DaVinci.

The last book was packed with super-interesting but under-represented historical stories, while not directly involving any critical historical figures. So for it to lean so hard into Shakespeare, it felt like the story had lost its way. When it hinted that DaVinci might make an appearance, I realized that this was not the story I was hoping to read, and put the book down.

While the last book was a smorgasbord of quirky history, crazy tech, snarky witches and hilarious situations, this book felt more like a lesson in classical Renaissance history. I was so disappointed, I still look at this book on my shelf and feel betrayed.

But if you want a time travel story where people hang with Shakespeare and romp around Renaissance Europe, go for it.

A stunning piece of literature.
Despite being a well-read lover of science fiction, I never got around to reading Bradbury before. I think because this was commonly known as a high school book, often compared to Orwell, and because I understood and read dystopian books inspired by F451, I figured I'd sufficiently absorbed the story through cultural osmosis, and didn't actually need to read the book.

I now realize that I have done myself a grave disservice for not reading this earlier. While I did indeed know what the jist of it would be, this book really proves that how a story is told can be just as important as the story itself. Bradbury elicits such powerful feelings around the steady changing of the protagonist's mind, that as a reader I felt like I could fully empathize with the whirlwind of emotions he was experiencing. And that ultimately makes all the difference.

One can always just say “yes, books are important, no we shouldn't let government or corporate interests tell us how to think or feel, and yes art and culture has value,” but these values that so many of us hold (Hello Goodreads audience) can sometimes be hard to articulate, because after all wouldn't it be easier to not worry about what's going on in our world, to not have to understand different perspectives. If we had nothing to disagree about, wouldn't that be lovely in a way?

Bradbury really confronts that dissonance, and not with reason so much as with emotion, and that's really what stunned me. Yes, culture is messy, learning is almost always unfairly distributed, and understanding others and disagreeing can all be hard, but what are we without this. Can one feel fulfilled? Or will we lose the very ability to articulate whether or not we're happy or why we feel what we feel?

I fear this book will never lose its relevance, but at least that means there's always a good excuse to read some truly top notch writing.

PS. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Tim Robbins, and he was absolutely spectacular! It was 5.5hrs and finished it in 4 days, so there's another plus: it's short, and good in paper or audio.

I put this aside after listening to 27% of it. It's not bad, by any means, but it's a classic swords and sorcery epic with warriors and lots of magic, and that's just not my thing. None of the characters are unique or interesting to me: a bookish young woman who won't take no for an answer, a royal who disagrees with the way things are done, a warrior who came up from nothing with an unstoppable will... They all felt very generic to me, as did the whole setup.

I also found the writing style to just be very focused on action; description is saved for magic and the world, and less so the people or dynamics within it. I wouldn't say Sanderson is a bad writer, by any means, but I also wouldn't call him a good writer. He's prolific though, and he knows how to please his audience.

I did enjoy some aspects of the adventure and magic stuff, but that's not enough for me to commit to 5000+ pages / 200+ hours of my attention.