Daniel Williams

It started slowly, but by the time Stoner was married to Edith the book had its claws in me. I've never had such complicated feelings towards a character as I did for Edith. Also potentially one of the best endings I've ever read. Bitterly sad story, but also so beautiful.

Andrew Garfield/Cynthia Erick audiobook - Superb!

The best way I can think to describe this is a very impressively written book that was (for my taste) poorly written. The fact that he made up his own science system and could justify it was very cool, but then the book was him or (SPOILERS) his alien friend (and I did love Rocky) either explaining the science or making sarcastic comment. Grace was both a walking textbook and had the vocabulary of a wise cracking teenager. The prose was incredibly underwhelming. And while the science system was impressive, it was like reading a murder mystery without the author ever giving you clues as to how to actually solve it (unless you are also a super scientist). “Ope Ryland and Rocky are in another conundrum, guess I'll read four pages of a scientific explanation to see how they get out of it.” Again, incredibly impressive book and I am excited for the movie because I think the idea was very cool, but the execution as a novel was incredibly underwhelming at best for me.

The first book was a brilliant, complex and easy to follow all at the same time. This one was brilliant, complex, and introduced so many new concepts that it was difficult to follow at times. I was still enraptured, but the “science” or “facts” of the world didn't seem as well explained which was the focus of the book, which made it fairly frustrating at times.

This was beautifully written, gripping, and had stellar characters. With all that said, it was so overwhelmingly sad that I'm not sure how much I truly enjoyed it. Will have to reflect for a bit.