Dave
This is a good book, but not spectacular.
I read this after reading Mexican Gothic. I'm not really a person who sticks to a genre, so any genre differences aren't gonna bother me. This book, on it's own, is good. What shines through the most is the rich world crafted here, in fact, it felt like a lot of worldbuilding went into this book for just one novel.
A look at modern day Mexico, but with vampires as a real thing, and different kinds from different parts of the world was fascinating. While the characters are good, there are quite a few POV characters and some are stronger than others. Domingo and Atl passages prove to be useful while Rodrigo, Nick and Ana parts feel like they're there for plot motion alone.
None of those characters get enough life breathed into them beyond perhaps Nick to make them matter. There's a character death near the end that is supposed to have some impact that instead got me to verbalize a “What? Why?” You can at least track Moreno-Garcia's growth as a storyteller pretty well and see there's a ton of promise here that she builds off of in her later work.
Consider me conflicted about this book. In a lot of ways, it was strong throughout, but I felt like I was back in my early creative writing workshops where there will be a story that seems to want to say something, then falls apart at the denouement.
I loved the premise and the set up. There was power in what happened and led Nora to the Midnight Library, where she's met by her childhood librarian who embraced her during one of the most stressful moments of her life. She's forced to look through her “Book of Regrets” and then navigate alternative realities throughout the library, with each book a different life an alternative her was leading, or thusly, alternative lives she could lead if she chose to.
Like I said, the set up for this is fantastic and pulled me in. Yet somehow, over the span of the mid-section of the book, it was starting to lose me. Still a somewhat breezy read that went fast, something about it felt... trite?
Seeing what Nora could have been and her self-actualizations was great, but as the book wore on there was an increasing sense of something missing from her story. There wasn't a lot the author was saying about her trauma and lived experience beyond “well what if she wasn't depressed and worked harder? She could be ANYTHING!”
I'm not usually into non-fic, but Heather's tale of being stuck in Thailand during the COVID-19 pandemic while a burgeoning pro-democratic movement blossomed there weaves a great tale from Heather's experiences all framed around the failures of modern capitalism.
There's not many books, never mind non-fiction, that I pick up and read almost straight through, then feel immediately compelled to help the author however I can, but right here, that's one of those books.
There's a lot to say about this book.
The pacing can ebb and flow at times, from glacial and obsessed with staying in the muck of world building to flying by. Bas-Lag is full of strange characters and diverse races of people, with New Crobuzan a converging point for most of them.
There's a lot of metaphor mixed into this book, from beasts used to create recreational drugs that are uncontrollable monsters that feast on your dreams and leave you braindead to create their drug (and profit for whomever can control them) to the thuggish, fascist police force and government. It's evident that this book is deeply immersed in leftist theory, with there being analogs between the different forces of the Weaver, Construct Council and even fRemade with Jack Half-a-Prayer, and different leftist schools of thought, like Anarchism, Marxist-Leninism, Maoism and pure Marxism. Extraordinary events brings these forces together, but only temporarily.
The slake-moths are... the most terrifying fictional creation I've read since the Shrike from the Hyperion books.
The world is rich and the city is disgusting. I've read a lot of complaints about this book, about the prose being “purple” and the overuse of the word “ichor,” which is really funny. There's definitely places where the story drags but when everything worked it was brilliant and the sagging middle parts are forgotten.
I have a complicated relationship with Le Guin's books.
I very much love her accomplishments and contributions to science fiction, I love the concepts she tackles and I love a lot of the things she does in her books, but sometimes I find myself not completely taken in my her writing.
By the end of this book I loved it, but there were times in this short, short book where I was reading it out of obligation. I understood what she was doing in this book but it was difficult to find much of a connection to any of the characters. Again, I get what she was going for, but it didn't make for an enjoyable read because, well, I didn't care about the characters until near the end.
Frustrations aside, I've seen a lot of people come to the conclusion that this is a warning about playing god or being greedy. While I think there are parts of that to this, to say that's the point of the book seems to undercut a lot of the metaphor and allegory buried deep in there.
At the core is George Orr, a man who can “change reality” through his dreams, thus he needs to self-medicate to avoid changing the world. That world that George lives in doesn't sound too great. He's lonely, depressed, anxious and clearly unable to face the reality around him. Something like asking out the girl at the lawyer's office churns inside of him into the fantastical, as does his relationship with Dr. Haber.
As someone who's met someone and immediately created a fictional future with that person it makes sense. To George, he sees multiple realities with Heather, all while Dr. Haber is there, pulling the strings to make him do stuff he doesn't want to do. This begs the question: how much of the world George is seeing and how he's seeing it actually a construct of his anxiety and depression?
This is a book that worth reading, considering and really sitting down to think about, even if a lot of the set up in the first half can be laborious without an anchor character to center the reader.
This book was a slow, contemplative one with that Murakami sparkled added in.
Since it's, you know, three books, it's longer and the plot can feel like it's ebbing and flowing in odd ways because of that.
There are a lot of elements of this book that dip into what we already know. Hey, look, it's star-crossed lovers with the outside world preventing them from seeing each other. It's a book about a novelist! Very original! Ah yes, mentions of 1984 and a Communist cult, subtle!
This is very much a book about writing, if that makes sense. Tengo is a sad, lonely guy and writing fiction is his escape from reality. Much of what happens in the book is on a surrealist plane, inside of a world with two moons, little people with ominous, ill-explained powers, cocoons to grow ideas and people, and the idea of one's mind and essence split into two parts. There are perceivers and receivers.
Aomame is searching for Tengo, which means entering the world of his fiction, both of them lost inside of this surrealist world, although not everyone they speak with or encounter is seemingly aware of or inhabiting this parallel world as well. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't, it's sort of immaterial unless you yourself want to get lost in Cat Town.
The best novella in this series, by far.
If you cobble together the first, parts of the middle two and this third one you have a pretty great story with a compelling cast of characters.
It felt like the author had a good idea for the first one, wanted to do more but wasn't sure where to go yet. So we got the second installment, which was good, but didn't really do a ton for the story. The third one regained some focus and this one completed the story in a great way.
I'll definitely check out the novel in the series at some point.
I gotta admit, early into this I wasn't feeling it.
There's something about an introduction into a new sci-fi universe that can be daunting, if not downright grating. A lot of modern sci-fi can be really good but fail in the opening chapters of creating a setting/world/universe that the reader can feel and get a grasp on. A mental image.
This was definitely one of those cases. I continued to read out of obligation to the book and I was ultimately happy I did.
This was enjoyable and flew by. I'll definitely keep reading.
It really could end no other way. I gotta say, a lot of the reviews of this book made it sound like it was rife with problems, or that it mistreated characters or their motivations.
I don't see that at all. In fact, Sapkowski has been experimenting with form and narrative throughout the series and finally executed his vision with a deft hand. Some of his books suffer from strange time jumps, moving to new narrators or a new narrative style. This one did a lot of that but it kept its momentum.
He absolutely did right by his characters and found a way to weave the concepts he toyed with throughout without taking a cheap way out.
I'll preface this with a warning: I'm not a huge comic guy. I read a handful every year and am pretty selective.
The art is, in a word, astounding. Oozing with style and flair, this book has its own unique aesthetic that helps to flesh out the world.
I've seen complaints that there isn't enough story or whatever, but honestly, the art does a lot of the heavy lifting to establish the world and characters. That's probably the way it should be. No exposition dumps or anything like that.
The story isn't going to appeal to everyone, as you'll see from the reviews. This isn't the tale of our heroes saving the world; they already did all that and this is what happens after. This is what happens when, as the title implies, there's no one left to fight. What do heroes do when they aren't needed anymore?
They start families, try to be normal, try to integrate into the world that loves them but doesn't understand them. Or brood and contemplate these questions while unsure of what comes next.
I love stories like this and always will, so I'm always more receptive to authors looking to tell different stories from the norm. The shonen jump style and influences are clear, as well. So yeah.
Really loved this book. Mieville's take on a detective story was definitely interesting and brought something new to the table.
My only issue was the intentionally vague talk about Breach or how the cities worked early on. It detracted from the story and the mystery quite a bit because it was difficult to visualize or understand.
It can be an effective device and I understand why he did it, I just don't think it worked that well here.
Jemisin is one of the best voices in SFF today and this short story is just further proof of that.
You'll read reviews about it being “heavy-handed” only to see it's only heavy-handed to those who disagree with the story's theme.
The story takes on another layer when you consider who the story's publisher is and how this was all a direct criticism of late stage capitalism, greed, toxic masculinity and the inherent racism that comes with these things.
Bold. It's especially bold knowing how many people this story would upset.
This book was angling to be an all-timer with it's pacing and the genuine joy it brought with each passing page. The biggest problem with these books tends to be that they lose steam and, sure enough, this one did.
Ciri's story is great but the story being told from this many perspectives breaks up the narrative almost too much and slowed down the last act a lot.
This one was tough to nail down. At times briskly paced, other times downright glacial. I almost gave up on this book a number of times and put it aside to read others.
The Yennifer stuff was basically a large exposition and lore dump and I felt every second of it. The last chapter was very strong, though, tying everything together.
There are a lot of books out there marketed towards authors.
In part, because being an author means wearing not just a few but a seemingly infinite amount of hats.
Writing book blurbs is an entirely different set of skills from writing a novel and for a lot of us, the worst part of the whole ordeal. Robert's book takes a different approach than a lot of the other blurb books on the market. Instead of approaching blurbs from the perspective of an author with anecdotal evidence or their own research into copywriting, Robert was a copywriter who writes novels.
His insight can be revelatory or reaffirming, depending on your level of knowledge. He urges critical thinking and doing your own research, which is good.
My only qualms is that there perhaps were not enough solid examples of what good copywriting and good blurbs look like and he rejects taking an authoritative voice throughout the book. I understand the reasoning here, but at the same time, he's teaching copywriting and doing a pretty good job at it.
Love Craig's indie author series and everything he does with 20Books. This was a useful book and helpful especially to those of us writing in series. It'll be helpful to others as well, but a lot of the information is from Craig's experience writing as a scifi author.
There's no right or wrong way to price, but getting insight from someone with his level of success helps a lot.
Perhaps one of my favorite books that I've read in a very, very long time.
The characters are delightful in the same sort of way that peripheral characters are in Twin Peaks, where you just want to keep visiting with them and watching their strange lives unfold.
The tale of Willie and his father was compelling, but the obvious draw was the other characters and them joking around while trying to race away from that sense of dread that has been hanging over them for so long. They know the truth, deep down, they just don't want to face it yet.
The essential guide for running an email list.
When you promote your books you hear the following advice: run ads, write series and have an email list.
The problem here is that while good advice, each of those things require certain levels of investment and understanding. The email list and doing newsletters seems like the easiest thing, right? Well, when you start seeing your list ballooning up it seems cool. Hey, I've got hundreds more people on my list! Then you start sending and the unsubscribes grow, the open rate lowers, the click rate is a desolate hellscape.
What giveS?
Tammi's book helps to show that email lists aren't just for marketing, they're for building genuine fan bases and interacting with people instead of trying to sell them stuff. Everyone is trying to sell something these days, don't be that person.
