Juraj
If you're Harlan's fan you'll enjoy this, especially if you like/don't mind his rants. Because there's a loooong one in this book. And it's well justified.
If you're a trekkie, don't even bother. You'll be butthurt - as is evident by the one and two star reviews - because Harlan exposes Roddenberry's lies and shows how the stuff was done behind the scenes.
Best sci-fi book I've ever read. The only thing that's better is Malazan Book of the Fallen but that one's a fantasy. Erikson and Herbert have a lot in common and while Herbert's writing isn't perfect and is very dry, it's full of philosophy and life lessons. Just hold on for the first chapters, then the writing truly improves.
A masterpiece every sci-fi fan should read.
Omnoho lepšie ako prvý diel. Jediné, čo by som vytkol je, že sa udalosti diali príliš rýchlo. Celý prípad vyriešený za dva a pol dňa? Ale no tak...
Praha a multikulti prostredie tomu jednoznačne pomohlo, v Štiavnici bola len hŕstka postáv a mnohé z nich boli viac-menej nevýrazné. O Pražskej šľachte to určite neplatí.
This book is composed of some truly interesting essays but at the same time there's a bunch of totally skippable ones. And, sadly, the skippable ones are way longer and make for majority of the book.
Essays desserving 5 stars:
A Hanging
Benefit of Clergy (Some Notes on Salvador Dali)
How the Poor Die
Notes on Nationalism
Why I Write
Essays you can totally skip or die of boredom:
Decline of the English Murder
Rudyard Kipling
Raffles and Miss Blandish
Charles Dickens
The Art of Donald McGill
As such I can't give more than three stars. It's still worth a read, though. Especially Notes on Nationalism. That subject is once again in public's eye.
Second read:
Pretty much the same. This is far from King's best novels. This is far from best novels, period. It's ok. Not terrible but at this day and age it doesn't stand out either.
Mark was ridiculous character, especially in the first few scenes.
The book is not scary nor thrilling. I guess in the same way The Exorcist (movie) is not scary today. Maybe people shat bricks 40 years ago but I certainly didn't now despite even going out of my way and reading most of it after dark. The Shining or Pet Sematary are orders of magnitude better and more thrilling.
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Original review:
The most over-hyped book I've ever read. It was pure boredom. The two short stories at the end are waaaay better. But they were originally part of short stories collections so I'm not including them in the rating.
It's a small miracle King was able to improve so much in the next book - The Shining.
M-O-O-N, that spells TOO DAMN LONG, GOD DAMMIT! Laws, yes! Everybody knows that.
Where to start? Characters? Story? Setting?
Characters are standard SK business, however at least half of them are just deus ex machinas that are, on top of it, sometimes even underutilized. 1 300 pages is way too many. I cared about some of the main characters, whether I loved them or hated them, but in the end I was just glad it was over.
Story is set in 1990 USA and we witness what seems to be the end of human race. A new flu virus is killing 99% of the population. And here comes the first WTF - the rest of the people (that is one 1%) has weird dreams about a man in black and an old woman. Randall Flagg, The Walkin' Dude as they call him, is embodiment of evil, Satan's spawn, the last magician of the rational thought.
Mother Abigail is herald of God. But not the god some of you may pray to before the bed. This is the Old Testament God, the jealous son of a bitch that requires human sacrifices and total obedience. He's still “the good guy” in this conflict, though.
People either go to Mother or to Randall. Depends on how good/evil and brave they are.
Personally, I was a bit dissapointed when I found out about this. Battle between good and evil is the basic fantasy trope but to make it this bluntly obvious and on top of that religious was kind of a lazy move. It allowed for some “miracles” = deus ex machinas to happen and overall degraded the story a little. I like complexity. When you put divine miracles like in this book before me I'll just yawn and wave them away with my hand. But maybe that's because I'm spoiled with Steven Erikson's take on divinity in Malazan Book of the Fallen.
The book is divided into three... well... books. You could call them acts, of course. The second WTF comes in here. The first two acts are long. That's a huge understatement, though. King knows how to write characters, that's his biggest talent. However, when the story just drags and drags and drags and drags and drags and drags and drags and drags and drags and drags... See what I mean? It gets annoying!
The first two acts have a total of 1060 pages out of 1325. When you get to the climax, “the final stand”, if you want me to be punny, it's more of a relief than anything else. Actually, it can't be anything else. Despite the fact that the moment is epic the way we get to it is still very underwhelming even if I ignore the thousand and some pages that led to it. And have I mentioned the fact that it was obvious from a thousand miles (pages) away?
As if that wasn't enough, the book continues another 50 pages! What a drag, dammit. I'm never reading it again. The characters were good, the setting was great, but the page count is insane without any comprehensible reason. The book suffered on behalf of its length and it's a god damn shame. If it was 700-800 pages long it would've been perfect novel, one of his best. But with it being 500 pages longer I can't recommend it. There are other, shorter, better works out there that deserve more attention that this one. Go read The Shinning.
P.S.: Have I mentioned that this is extended version? Yeah, he published “only” 1200 pages long book back in the 70's because technology wasn't there to handle bigger paperback. The hundred pages are a bonus from more recent era. Thank you very much...
P.S.S.: You might wonder why I read it if I didn't like it. Well... the truth is I liked it at the beginning and by the time I found out it's a never ending story I passed the half mark. So I figured I'd finish it to see the story to the end.
First two issues didn't awe me at all but after the things got moving, got tense, it was awesome. Artwork is amazing and the story is heartbreaking. At first I had no idea how they were gonna justify Logan not using his claws even against the worst of the worst but once he explained it it made sense. One of the best comic books out there, though I hoped they would explain Hulk's history a bit more.
Some people say it's impossible to make this to movie without Hulk. I disagree. I don't even think we need Logan's family in the movie. From the trailer it's obvious his family's gonna be Professor X and X-23.
Second read, this time without me training speed reading so I actually enjoyed the book a lot more. It has some very original ideas and following one AI that's at the same time a ship and (theoretically) hundreds of ancillaries (AIs in human bodies) is quite refreshing even when the idea is utilized only in the first third of the book. The rest basically follows one of those ancillaries, the last surviving one. The best thing about this concept was that some of the dialogues happen parallel to each other because the AI can be in many places at the same time. It's a gimmick but I like it a lot.
Characters are three dimensional, especially One Esk/Breq/the AI but of course the novel would hardly work without the main character having emotions despite being AI. World is also very interesting, a space empire that uses ancillaries to conquer worlds. It's a mix of Orwell's 1984 and Roman Empire with a pinch of Indian castes.
Empire of Radch uses its own language and has actually only one pronoun for both genders which makes things incredibly confusing until someone from outside of Radch mentions the genders of main characters “in different language” that uses pronouns. It's ballsy on paper but falls flat in execution. Especially when the AI has issues recognizing the gender even based on facial and body features. That is simply ridiculous! Makes me wonder how the doctors treat patients when they have only one pronoun but genders need different treatments in some cases. Why even go through the trouble and making it so unless it was to score some cookies with the woke feminist crowd. It's confusing for the reader and must be even more for people living in that world.
It would be 5 stars if the author made it less confusing - if Breq, as a super smart AI, was able to identify gender at least for us readers and if the ending didn't skip one or two weeks when Breq was unconscious and basically everything important happened then. It's lazy writing to push the story forward and when it nears the climax to knockout the main character through whose narration we see the world only to wake her up after everything is resolved.
I was told this was an extraordinary collection of short stories. The reviews here and the appraisal on the cover and inside the book all say so. But this book was instead a huge dissapointment.
This isn't a collection of horror stories. Mostly... There are some at the beginning but it's more of a collection of weird stories. Period.
Most of them aren't even that much interesting. I'd compare this book to King's Skeleton Crew - mostly a collection of writing exercises that somehow got at least 20 pages long.
Of course, there are some good stories here but if I don't count the first one “Best New Horror” I had to wait for them till the end of the book.
“The Widow's Breakfast” “The Last Breath” and “Bobby Conroy Comes Back From The Dead” are probably the best ones. But not because of their story but because of their characters. Joe Hill once again proves that if he wants to, he can create very relatable characters in both extraordinary and, as Bobby proves, also ordinary situations.
Most of the short stories weren't interesting and bored me, though.
P.S: If you're bigger insectophobic than me, feel free to skip “You Will Hear The Locusts Sing”. It's a horror version of Kafka's Metamorphosis and the toughest read I've ever experienced:)
A star down for long theatrical shakespearean sentences. But I know it cannot be helped since it's been written 200 years ago.
I think Mary and I would've been great friends. The way she speaks in this book and pours her inner thoughts and heart into it is very similar to mine. A great book that gave birth to science-fiction genre.
However, I've no idea how does Kindle count the pages. It's supposed to be 126 pages long but they're either the longest pages I've ever encountered or it counts two pages as one. Because this book is waaaaay longer than it seems.
I would welcome if author went even deeper and actually spent a chapter or two explaining the psychopathy and similar disorders in depth. For example the book mentions that psychopathy and sociopathy are the same disorder and psychologists are using the terms interchangeably. Why is that? If it's the same disorder why does it have two names?
What about the history? How were patients treated before Bob Hare's experiments? He mentions LSD trials but is that it? What about lobotomy and other crazy “treatments”. What about homosexuals? This book isn't only about psychopaths but about “mental disorders” in general, which sadly included, until recently, also homosexuals.
The book covers only the surface of “madness industry” while opening and spending the whole first chapter on completely unrelated “mystery”. Waste of time in my opinion. I'd welcome more facts and perhaps interviews.
However, it's still an awesome book that shows a bit of hidden truth. Psychopaths exist and they walk among us. After reading this book I'm pretty sure I know a few - normal people don't look at videos of beheadings and then talk about it as if it was the most fascinating thing in the world. You know who I'm talking about, doc.
Author also spends some time to explain the boom of diagnosing children with disorders while in reality they might just behave... like children do.
It truly is a must-read - well, unless there's a better book about it because from the writing I had a feeling Jon Ronson had no idea what he was doing most of the time. Professional journalist, huh...?
Still, the subject is too interesting to pass by.
This was... Surprisingly good! Could've been the best book in the series if there was more compelling plot but up until the end there was no suspense.
If it weren't for the lovely griffons this would have been bad. But at least something spoke to me.
Shame it took three authors and five novels to finally come up with an interesting setup. The handling of it was average at best but at least it was more original then previous novels in the series. And that's very sad considering the huge fantastic lore this world has.
the only way I'll read another DA novel, though, is if it'll be happening during the first blight and it'll be written by somebody like Brandon Sanderson. A renowned author from whom I expect only quality work.
This book started really promising but then it turned into a copy-paste of The Stolen Throne just with different but similar characters. The dumbest twist you can imagine at the end took away one more star. The sort of cliffhanger on the last page with Fellasan pissed me off the most, though. So poorly handled, oh my god!
Weekes either never saw how wood is chopped or he forgot to mention that knights in this universe use light sabers because the easiness they defeated the demonic trees is ridiculous.
Dammit, when Gaider finally improved to the point of his work being readable they decided to change the author. And it's almost as bad as Gaider's first book.
Just one book to go. Then I'm done with this series. Selling them asap. Why was I so dumb to buy them all in the first place. Wiki articles would do just fine...
This book has a recommendation from Conn Iggulden on its cover that says: “Excellent - on par with George R. R. Martin.”
NO, IT'S NOT!!! It has to be taken out of context or Iggulden is an idiot who never read any other fantasy. (Don't know the guy) This is relatively small story with one main character and while there are politics and violence, their presence is about the only thing the books have in common!
It's more like 3.5 but considering the improvement from the terrible Prince of Thorns it deserves 4 stars.
However, there were still things that irritated me. It feels like this whole trilogy should be just one 1000 pages long book and author or publisher decided that trilogy will make more money. For the vast majority of this book I wondered where will all of this lead.
There are two stories here. One on a wedding day 4 years after the events of Prince and one happening via flashbacks from those 4 years that fills the vast majority of the book. While reading the flashbacks I understood what was going on, but I didn't understand why should I care. It all comes together at the end but the ending is anticlimactic and I still don't see why I had to read 450 pages of almost pointless flashbacks when it could've been told on 100 pages.
I've got to say, though, that the writting really REAlly REALLY improved! Prince felt like a first draft of a young unskilled author but this time around everything was coherent and decently described.
On one hand I admit that it really didn't feel like Kelsier's story was done after the first book and I was kind of expecting some hints in later novels.
But this is it? This feels like a fan fiction written by the author himself! It completely reveals all the secrets about the Mistborn series and Scadriel in general. I would've prefered to be kept in the dark or at least to think that all of this was the work of Preservation and not Kelsier's.
The Cosmere connections I liked but gutting the original story and “revealing” that all those things Preservation supposedly had done were actually done by Kelsier broke all the magic and mysticism of the series.
I wanted to know more and if the story focused more on the elder ones (or whatever they're called), other travellers and the actual secrets of Cosmere I would've loved this novella. But it doesn't. Instead it focuses on the trilogy and reveals that every important act done to further the plot was actually done in secret by Kelsier and not by Preservation.
And so I can't accept it. I don't want to accept it because it ruins otherwise great and supremely original story and degrades it to the mediocre levels. Maybe I just pictured everything better in my head and this book shattered my image and now I can't accept the mediocrity of it.
However, I admit it got better towards the end but even that's mostly because Vin is probably my favourite female lead character.
Still, though, I wish I've never read this novella.
If Mistborn was a videogame, this novella would be infinite ammo and life cheats :/
3.75 - can't give more even though it's a huge improvement compared to previous two books. All characters were too two dimensional, though. And the Seeker was one dimensional, demon of rage incarnate without actually being a demon. TERRIBLE CHARACTER “DEVELOPMENT”!!! I guess beta readers told David he was too simple so he wrote some “backstory” into one of the last chapters. It doesn't help, though.
“Warning to lifestyle fascists everywhere. Don't read this or you'll go blind.”
One of the best novellas I've ever read. A beautiful mirror of our “wanna-be-healthy” and socially just society that really doesn't work and... well as is stated in the novella so many times... will lead to the end of civilization :D
The characters have great witty names too - king Necrotus the Nihile or Nauseo Sloven.
It's probably the best way to introduce Erikson to somebody because it's not as long as GotM but it still contains the best aspects of his writing. I laughed aloud several times, too. Definitely the best novella from the first three and it should've won some awards when it was released.
The message it contains is timeless and wraped up in a great and funny story.
Yoghurt!
It's exactly the same book as the first one.
Issues with world development got even worse. For example at the end of the first book Quirell got rid of Dumbledore who left for ministry of magic and it took him hours to get back. Now, suddenly, wizards can teleport instantly! And they even have two ways to do it!
And that's not all. Since when do wizards use megaphones? They don't even know how to use telephone but they can use megaphones? (McGonagall at quiditch) In the later books they use simple spell!
God dammit, Rowling didn't think through anything. She just writes whatever comes to her mind. So what if it doesn't make sense? Who the fuck cares. The first one was a hit, quickly gotta write sequels!
I admit the style of writing is good and the book was easy to read but that doesn't redeem the plot or mistakes she's done.