drews

I have heard so much good about this book and most of the praise is earned imho.

For me this book really reads as a allegory of our climb from the bottom to top and how most people just become complacent and deluded into our own world views and find ourselves stuck and really only a few have the drive and motivation to ascend to "better" lives

However not all is as it seems and this book also has a cynical world view of what it takes to survive and our main character Senlin must seek to overcome the challenges he meets to bring himself to a higher level and ultimately achieve his goal.

Senlin is a very optimistic character who is quick to trust and make friends, but not quick to learn from his mistakes and often has rose colored glasses, this both annoyed me and gave me hope that his optimism would win out in the end. But as he travels through the tower it seems that perhaps despite his best efforts the tower is still changing him, for better or worse remains to be seen.

This was a fun adventourist read with a unique concept and setting for the overall plot representing society on many levels. I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading the 2nd and 3rd books in this series

I have never seen the movie or read the book. Given my expierences with books that are supposed to be classics have been very hit and miss so was not honestly expecting much of this one.

Set in WW1 on the western front from the view point of a german solider. Fresh out of training at only 18 fighting in the trenches and his expierences there.

I overall enjoyed this book, but am not giving a 5 star review mainly because I honestly was not that interested in the main character personally as this could have just as easily been any other character in the book. What was really good for me was understanding the expierence of a soldier on the front lines.

However that being said the vivid descriptions of the expiernce, thoughts, feelings of what its like to be a soldier on the front lines really drew me into the story and gives a viceral sense of the horror of what these soldiers were going through.

overall a good read, enjoyable and worth the read

Overall a fun read that I really enjoyed mostly.

That being said this book gives too much of mistborn era 4 world info for my tastes as that series has not been written yet

There is also imho too much of cosmere connections in very not subtle ways which would have been better to be much more subtle vs the "ya these guys are from scadrial and this guy from roshar" kind of thing

However i really did like sixth of the dusk novella flashbacks being part of this book, which was great both for those who have read and not read that novella.

This is the 1st Tchaikovsky book I have read and I got to admit I am impressed. I have been wanting to read alot more scifi and very happy I picked this one up

This book takes place over period of several hundred yrs. Filled with the last remenant of humanity searching desperatley for a new home in the depths of space, alien monsters, ancient protective sattelites and mad scientists

Trying not to put any spoilers here but the ideas and concepts explored in this book are honestly quite facinating to read about and explore. What would highly evolved different type of life look like, how would they evolve and what would happen when they come in contact us.

How would a generation ship society evolve over hundreds of yrs, and growing factions and differing ideas on what needs to be done to survive knowing nothing is left but those who have been borned, lived and died in space.

My favorite Character would have to be Portia. Following her story of overcoming the challenges facing her people in their fight for survival I found myself anxious to get back to Portia's story. But honeslty everyones story line kept me hooked through the whole book.

The imagination of Tchaikovsky envisioning what the world would look like through the eyes of alien life but also in ways similar to life we find on earth was, imho, one of the best methods of story telling I have come across in scifi in a long time. Read the book and I hope you will understand.

This was and is I think one of my favorite reads of this yr and I know I will likely go back and re-read at some point in the future.

This is the 1st volume in a 3 volume set anthology of short science fiction stories. The Main reason I did not give it 5 stars is that some of the stories were just meh, ok vs stories I feel really deserve at hall of fame entry

That being said the 3 best stories in this book imho would be

1) Nightfall my Issac Asimov explores the question of how does a society deal with things complete alien to them, when a planet with multiple suns and 24/7 daylight, has a total eclipse plunging the world into total darkness, this happens only once every 2000 yrs. I love the concept of this story

2) Flowers for Algernon was great story about how society treats those different from us and what happens when we try to change the inherent nature of the individual. A man of low intellegence and mental capacity undergoes new treatment to enhance intellgence and the resulting new world he now has access to and resulting decline

and the 3rd story is

3) The Cold equations asks the reader to consider a moral and ethical dilmena. A young girl sto -away on a ship delivering life saving supplies to a colony on another world. Because of the added weight of this unexpected passenger the ship does not have enough fuel to deliver the supplies condeming the colonist to certain death, the law says stoaways must be spaced due to this reality, how does one choose to deliberalty send a young person to their death and look them in the eye as they do so vs saving colonist they have never met?

All in all however this is a good collection of scifi stories and a really enjoyable read

Of the schools of Dune books this I think is my fav, that being said its been a while since I read sisterhood of Dune

While this book does focus on the Mentats of dune, kind of there is alot of stuff going on around mentats in general. The spice trade, sisterhood and empire and the butlerian movement lead by halfmand torondo

If you are a Dune fan, then you already know how Gilbertus Albans the founder of the mentat school is. He is trying to balance by relgious fanatics on one side and anti relgious fanatatics on the other and how these 2 groups vying for power affect the mentat school

I have always been a fan of political games, treachory and fanatical extremisn in story telling and I felt that this book portrayed that well, not every aspect of the overall plot was needed in this book imho, paticularly around the freement recrutis of venkee enterprises, I feel like that could have been just something in the background rather than creating a narrative plot around the story

overall however a good read and decent edition to the dune universe

I love this book. Andy weir has a way of combing humor with life and death and hard scifi. this book had me laughing at so many places i maybe should not have been laughing at, and realyl in situations i would be terrified to find myself in perosnally

What happens when you combine star eating microscopic life with aliens and the eventual death of humanity, well this book is that story and was a fantastic read and highly recommended

I don't normally read msytery crime fiction etc... but decided to try this one out. I was pleasantly surprised that I liked it as much as I did, and it seems it is part larger oveall series.

This is at its heart a crime/murder mystery but we know from the start at leats who the accussed are. As the story gets established we soon come to realize the accussed may not be guilty of the crime they are accussed of but for them it is too late and its now up to their long lost daugther, Olivia to solve this decades old crime

Olivia is thrown into a world of papparazzi and mystery after learning who she is and that her parents are accused serial killers.

This story takes us through a unusal world of occult signs and superstition with characters of mysterious past in small town usa but a town that on the surface seems peaceful but underneath is filled with people with mysterious and in some cases dark pasts.

This book is not takes you down a path of intrigue and mystery that for me was really quite enjoyable, and pleasant surprise from my normal genre of reading.

However I would have liked to see more mystery in the investigation of the crimes, and more in depth occult connections within the overall plot. It would have been nice to explore the people of the town of cainsville more. overall 4/5 stars.

Its been a long time since I had read any Piers Anthony and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I was expecting just a meh ok scifi read but it turned out better than expected

I found the personification of death in this book was one of the best I have read, as our Primary character is forced to confront death as a person and himself

The way this story approached the questions of what is death, what makes a soul good or evil, the ideas of being born in sin, euthanasia etc.. was so enjoyable and well done

4/5 stars for me.

Thisi s the sequel to Caleb Carr book The Alieniest and to be honest I did not like it as much as the Alieniest

From almost the start we knew who the suspect was so this story was more of a process versus mystery not much different in that sense from the Alienist.

Personally I just found the whole court room drama thing kind of meh for the most part, and investigation methods were not exactly legal eithier lol,

not a whole lot to say but meh, the ending was just ok, and maybe its not being overly familiar with the time period but it was worth a read once, but that is about it.

I had heard mixed reviews on this and was pleasantly surprised as I have not read Eragon and have never really wanted to.

This is a scifi story if you couldnt tell by the title and coverl ol, the 1st one I believe Paolini has written and set in what has been termed the fractalverse.

What I liked: the tech in these books had a interesting twist on the idea of warp drive an use of cyrogenic sleep and human mind brain interfaces. So all your classic scifi tech from ship minds to bio implants.

The ship minds created a interesting and honestly fun character to interact with gregory the wallfish ship mind.

I did not find this book big on character development, this is not to say it had none, there certainly was some character development but i found that this was more a plot driven book which in and of itself is not a bad thing just my feelings on the how the book is written. i would say a 60/40 split between character development and plot with plot being 60%

The softblade xeno i really like how that brough our main character Kira, into there journey to becoming something truly unique and new. this being the trigger for the greater conflict within this story overall and also playing a key role in the ending leaving this open to more fractal verse books in the future which i would be open to reading.

This book really has a found family trope which TBH Is one of my favorite tropes and worked well in this story

What I didnt like, the soft blade seems too powerful in a few ways to, virtualling making its user/wearer/partner etc.. virtually invinceable which at some scenes felt that there is no way anyone could have survived that a re-write on said scenes to be more survivable or rather less unsurvivable imho would have made it better.

not sure how i feel about the idea of the aliens in this book communicating by scent, while its not impossible, and aliens certainly will and likely do communicate via means that would be foreign to us, for narrative purposes i feel like it would just work better for these aliens to have a spoken language, maybe a nitpick but i just think from a narrative perspective it just works better.

overall a good read and i look forward furture reads in the fractalverse

The 5th book in the Stormlight Archive, Wind and Truth is the final conclusion to the 1st arc in the Storm Light Archive was almost perfect, but dont get me wrong still a great read all around and one of the best books I have read in a long time!

This book picks up right after the events in Rhytym of War after Dalinar has set the terms of the final conflict between himself and Odium, 10 days and each side picking a champion.

This one is unique in that the interludes are much shorter and the book is divided into 10 days following each one of our characters on their journeys to the final desolation or end of the world as we know it

I loved the twist that were unexpected that helped bring alot of tension to the story in unexpected ways and each of our characters story lines were just so much fun to follow. The power of the gods, the battle between good and evil, I find it difficult to write a review without spoilers as there is so much I want to say but spoilers would be the result lol

Througout the book for cosmere fans you will notice many references to other cosmere books and worlds, from taldain, to scadrial, to warbreaker and elantris. Every easter egg so to speak makes me say hey i know that, or i recognize that and honestly I love seeing these connections between worlds.

the ending did a great job of both wrapping up this 1st arc but also setting this up well for the 2nd arc leaving me begging for more. So much has changed for Roshar, so much left unanswered, and can't help but feel there is so much more to come and cannot wait for the start of stormlight 6 which as i understand will have a 10 yr time jump from the end of this book.

This book did not get a full 5 stars as there were some parts that maybe did not work the best within the story

the biggest things being LGBTQ issues between 2 characters while I applaud sanderson for trying, and including this aspect within the story, I did not feel it fit well in the greater context of the story or was even a natural fit, but rather kind of a side cameo so to speak in a effort to include this within the story. In a way you could feel the nervousness and insecurity of the characters involved come across in the writing of feeling a bit forced to included this

The 2nd aspect that maybe did not work as well was the therapy side of things, this was not terrible to be honest, and overall I think sanderson has done a overall decent job in representing mental health issues within this series and represented that well tbh, but when approaching this from a therapy side did not work so well imho, while not terribly bad not great eithier. but at the same time the character who is trying to provide said therapy is also trying to figure it out as well, so maybe in that sense it does work.

Kaladin and szeths side quest I think could have been removed almost entirely and been a seperate novel on its own, which would have shorten this one to maybe a more reasonable size, at 1300+ pages this is a big and long read, but overall well worth it.

Dragonsteel Prime is a curiosity as the subtitle suggest . This book is not cosmere cannon but rather what i might call a 1st draft of ideal that would evolve to become cannon within the cosmere.

Many of the ideas in this book we find for those who are cosmere fans, have made there way into the Stormlight Archive such as the shattered plains, bridge crews and the start of what would become the magic systems of Roshar but still highly undeveloped.

This is not the full prime story of dragon steel but rather just the 1st book which when the cannon version is release I fully expect it to be very different as much of the elements within this book made there way into the stormlight

I did find some inconsistency in the story, specifically with horses, while its stated numerous times that the horses are too weak to carry people, there are also numerous times when someone has been riding a horse. for example. But also in some ways predictable, likely because I have previoulsy read the stormlight so already had an idea of how some things would work on the shattered plains or at least a general idea of what would happen to our main character Jerik

This prime version of Dragonsteel you can really start to get a feel for the ideas behind the magic systems that would eventually make it into other Cosmere books, primarly what I found was the start of lightweaving and soulcasting, however still just more of exploring how this would work, vs being a fully developed magic system.

If you are a fan of the cosmere, I think you would likely know who TOPAZ is, and he pays a key role in this story as he begins to explore his powers as well.

Overall it was a good read, but not on par with the cannon works of the cosmere, but that is also not expected in a prime version of the as of yet unfinsihed story.

Another gold entry into the Dune universe by Frank Herbert. As a friend of mine, Epic Talez once said, everthing Frank Herbert touches is gold

The more I re-read Dune the more I am convinced that Herbert was a philosopher at heart. This book is no different, combining the philisophical discussions of religions, gods, tyranny, and Letos golden path with action, intrigue and our heritage and roots.

This entry is set 3500+yrs after the events in children of Dune, and Arrakis, aka Dune has been terraformed into a a whole new world, with only a small area of desert left on the world. Leto is the God Emperor and a religious cult following has sprung up around him.

The ultimate test of what it is to be human and Letos ongoing struggle with his humanity and his ancestory and the godhood overtaking him. Such a good story.

sA Scanner Darkly is a tale of drug addiction and the damage it can do to one minds. A cop that has been affected by this split personality finds himself investigating himself without knowing it as part of a drug investigation

Philip K Dick certianly has a vivid imagination and tells a great story in a lot of ways. This one is no exception. I love his imagination of how the world will be at the timeperiod he sets his story in, early 1990s, although some of the tech described is a far cry from tech levels at that time its fun to see what he imagined it would be

That being said I found some of the writing in this story did not entirely hold my attention well for some of it, which TBH led to some confusion on what was going on, prob more because my mind was wandering at some points, overall a 3.5/5 stars so its not terrible, still a good read over if not a great read

Philip K Dick is considered to be among the classics of scifi, this book which is a collection of short stories was a fun, weird and strange read to put it mildy for some.

Some of these storeis such as the minority report are classics and well knowns, others not so much such as oh to be a blobel, the mold of yancy and service call, at least not stories i had heard of before.

From the strange to time travelling repair people to blobous alien human hybrids. one common theme in these stories the solar system and beyond has been colonized, although the timelines are way out of wack and at this point very near future, in the 2040s or earlier but wtih tech that is far advanced from anything we are likely to have in the next 20 or so yrs.

Philip K Dick has a twisted, weird imagination often set in some kind of dystopian futuristic world with stories tha make you go huh?

Good read all around

I read this book as part of a collection of classic tales of scifi and fantasy

Like so many of the classics its a adventure narrative but the writing is not that exciting to be honest. Its really a premise mean to illustrated and idea more than anything and explorying this ideal of what a all woman society would look like from a male perspective.

The 3 men seem to represent 3 differnt extreme's of masculity, from toxic masculinity to middle of the road to anytihng or her type men while it seem to push the idea that motherhood was the most sacred and be all end of all being a woman.

while sometimes seems to illustrated the ideas well it was not overall a great read, just medicore middle of the road at best. and not all the exciting TBH

The Book of Negroes is a historical fiction that tells the story of a 11yr old African Gril abducted from her home in Africa and shipped to America as a slave and follows her through several decades and relates her expierences

Meena's story is one of tragedy, terror and loss. Sold as slave and torn from her home and family In africa in the mid 1700s. This story is not for the faint of heart and contains many trigger warnings and deals wtih subject that as they say on TV warnings, offensive to some readers

I learned alot reading this book, including some history of Canada that I did not previous know and found myself google searching different places and evenst as they relate to the story within history. IE I did not previous know about the Race Riots in nova scotia in the late 1700s and Canada's (then a british colony not a independent nation) role in Slave trade.

Other things I learned were about Freetown Sierra Leone in Africa and how it came to be as part of tha abolistionist movement

I love when I can learn something new and this story driven by heartache, compassion and a character driven narrative I found I could not help but come to love and while I am mostly a fan of scifi and fanasy and this is historical fiction I do not hestiate to say this wll go down as one of the best reads of 2024

This was a different type of urban fantasy. A world set in a island nations wtih cities ruled by mafia families, powered by mystical Jade only found on the island nation of Kekon,

for sure a unique approach to urban fantasy at least different from the other urban fantasy I have read.

the characters overall I did not findmyself really being in love with but still enjoyed seeing how their stories played out, this book really sets up for the next few in the series which I will get to eventually lol, 60/40 split between plot vs character driven story, 60% plot 40% character i found

After reading the Handmaids Tale I wanted to read more Margarte Atwood. The premise of this book intrigued me.

This is a world that is post apocalyptic world after Genetic Enginerring companies have unleased a plague that destroys humanity.

This book has been described as a love story but I would not described as such. While our main character who goes by snowman does in fact have a love interest that is not really the point of the story as a whole.

Much of the book is backstory describing events that lead up to our main characters current place in the story so I found there was not alot of actual plot progression, but despite that the narrative was for me very compelling and a read that would just not let go leaving me anxious to get back to where I was in the story.

This book does contain trigger warnings for some highly controversial and senstive content relating to child sex slavery.

This is the 3rd book in the of Blood and Bone series by John Gwynne and I have to say this was a fantastic fast paced intense read

This whole series is just awesome, politics, religion, angels and demons, battle bears, warriors, giants, twisted demonic creatures and creations all fighting in a war for supremency.

This final book in the series does not stop with the action with just the right amount of down time between moments of intense action and great characters and just crazy fun all around.

This is the 2nd book in the His dark materials series. I don't have a whole lot to say about this one.

I will say a few things however, this book really has the feeling of a set up book for the final book in the series the amber spyglass, with the majority of the plot/story taking place around the sublte knife but not actually involving the knife itself if that makes any sense.

We do get more of the set up for the anti-theist or reglion angle of the story, which I personally am enjoying myself (granted some acknowledged bias due to personal expierence i admit)

over all 3.5/5 for me

I have read a few "classics" in my time and TBH I have found many of these older classics to be dry in the writing style with lack of good characters and often while great ideas, not told in a really entertaining way.

War of the worlds stands apart from that, and I would argue this book has the feel of a cosmic horror. The unexpected arrival of aliens in london and the world is at war. The devastation, terror and destruction is told in a way that keeps you reading wanting to know how the world survives and ultimates "wins" this war of the worlds

I really enjoyed this read and its a scifi classic I would highly reccomend for any scifi fan

Well damn, things are getting just a bit insane, wild ride, such a good read

JIm butcher never fails to impress with the world of Dresden Files. so much going on its just too hard to summarise lol. Vampires, Fairy realm and creatures, outsiders from time and space, and the mortal world stuck in the cross fire. so good

Everything about this series is just a wild ride, the characters, the action, the world building. Hands down Harry Dresden is my all time fav wizard and my fav urban fantasy series of all time. If you have not read the Dresden Files do so!!!!

Snuff by Terry Pratchett

Commader Vimes needs to take a vacation but as usual its not that simple

This book at its heart is a murder myster focusing around issues of racism and slavery. Its hard not to see the parrallells of the slave trade within this book, Just in this case its the Goblins who are viewed as something less than human and worthy of our respect. A Goblin is murdered and others are rounded up aboard ships to be sent off as slaves and Commander Vimes is on the case

Terry Pratchett is once again at the top of his game as he deals with these issues in his usual witty style. Sometimes all it takes is one good person to take a stand and force the world to see things differnetly and Commander Vimes is that man great book!