Dave
Man.
I grew up as the occasional anime viewer. I was a dork, but not a superdork, basically. About two years ago now a friend of mine recommended this series to me. Not only did he recommend it, but he insisted on me watching it. So I did. I'm not sure that even he knew the profound impact that it would have on me.
Fast forward to now and the novels that the series was based off of are finally being translated into English and released to the public. When I found that out I purchased this and devoured it as quickly as I could. I've been immersed in contemporary science fiction for the past two years now and I've mostly found myself in the land of malaise more than being excited about what's out there. Reading this was just a reminder of what great science fiction can really do to a reader.
While I'm already intimately aware of the story, characters and lore of LoGH, reading the novel was a treat. The narrative style and point of views featured throughout the novel added depth and interest to one of the deepest, most interesting series that I can think of. Since this was a translation it's difficult to really hyper-analyze the prose itself, although it was punchy and kept the tone that fans will recognize from the show. That means that the narrator keeps a rather dry, historical perspective on events, but when it shifts to the point of view of the characters everything felt weighty and substantive.
The way that this series handles a rather objective view or humanity, society, governmental systems and the whole concept of “good” or “bad” is really without peer. Yes, it's a series about war, but it shows both sides and endears the reader/viewer to characters on both sides of the story, instead of looking to say who is bad and good. The whole thing works because of just how strong these characters are, too.
This isn't an overly-complicated piece of literature when it comes to language or science, which tends to be what trends heavily for science fiction these days, but the story and the characters are just so marvelously done that it's impossible not to recommend this book. If somehow you haven't seen the series (which doesn't seem like a stretch), I implore you to check out this book.
I'm not particularly sure what to say about this book.
Leckie is a fine writer and this series was rich in its world building and concepts, but man, were there pacing issues galore. The first book started off at a slow crawl, but when it picked up it was fun to read. The second book sort of slowed down with time and this third one had one of the slowest opening first acts that I've seen in a while.
I'm all for setting the tone of a book and an author taking his/her/their time to get things rolling, but in a third (and final) book in a series, the scene has already been set, the players and their plans are already in motion. To be frank, I wasn't enjoying the book very much early on, which is saying a lot for a third book in a series where I'm already hooked into the plot and the characters. I put this book aside for about two months before returning to it.
The first book set up the world and the struggle between the Lord[s] of the Radach and Breq. The second book scaled things back to just one planet and its accompanying space station, debates over tea sets, birthrights and a look at how Radach society was so broken. It sort of feels like somewhere along the way Leckie changed her mind as to the scope of this story and became enamored with this planet/station and its inhabitants.
So this giant, sprawling empire drama is scaled back to just having one system that matters and magically everything just kind of happens there and the main focus moves on to the morality of artificial intelligence and humanity. Breq is, of course, essentially an unshackled AI, so it wasn't exactly a jarring transition, but that focus led to a lot of loose strands in the story that were never resolved.
People either seem contented with the rather subdued ending or upset at how the scope was scaled back so much. I didn't mind it and thought that it was clever enough, but that it really sort of came out of nowhere. Breq is an amazingly all-seeing, all-knowing AI-ship-in-a-human-body yet the reader sees very little of what goes on inside of her mind at times. This means that for some of the plot the reader will have a clear idea of what Breq is trying to accomplish, while at other times it's obfuscated for what appears to be the reason of keeping the reader in suspend. The reader is just to understand that Breq is great at everything and will just kinda figure stuff out without much insight or foresight.
That could be why the ending felt so sudden and convenient. As a reader I wanted insight into what was being planned, for tension to be created by what was happening, instead I was left in the dark and – SURPRISE – most of it didn't really matter. Weird AI cores that seemed integral to the plot? Who cares who left them there, what they were programmed for, why they were hidden and what the Lord of Radach had in store for them? Sigh.
Once this book got going it was easy to keep reading it, but man, did it take forever to get to that point. Leckie's writing style is clean and accessible, with some of the awkwardness of the first book no longer there (although I did chuckle at the return of “gestured” near the end of this book), making it a fun read once the initial slog of tea sets and tea and tea and tea are over from the first act. Overall, this was an enjoyable read and any complaint that I have is simply because I was expecting more and truly do believe that we'll see better from Leckie in the future.
I really enjoyed Old Man's War and saw people were kind of upset that this wasn't a continuation of John's story, instead focusing on other characters including Jane.
The focus this time out is on the Special Forces, who are basically the amalgamation of recruits that died before reaching their 75th birthday to enlist in the CDF officially. They start off as a blank slate and develop alongside their Special Forces mates which helps to turn them into the ultimate soldiers. The Special Forces were perhaps the part of the first book that had the most intrigue going for them so the departure to focus on this branch of the military was a welcome one.
The story is based around a rogue scientist defecting to ally three hostile alien races together against humanity who left behind a digital version of his consciousness, which is decided should be placed in a Special Forces clone of him. Of course, nothing ever goes according to plan and instead we end up with an abnormal Special Forces agent under Jane's command and a whole lot of secrets to uncover.
It's a fun read and did a great job of expounding on one of the most interesting characters from the first book in Jane while building up this whole universe and continuing its story.
I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought that I would initially. Maybe it was the ominous monolith that is the name SCALZI that permeates the world of sci-fi right now or the fact that the title and concept of a book about elderly people fighting sounded hilariously unappealing. Either of those, really.
It turned out to be a fun, quick read that sets up a pretty interesting future for humanity. There were minor grievances with the plotting but overall it was a fun book and definitely deserves the praise that it has received. I'm an idiot for not reading it sooner.
The best of this series yet. The Nux/Immortan comic was just a bit brief, each guy probably deserved their own comic. The Furiosa one was just, well, disappointing. Any good will that the movie had for empowering the female characters dissipated with a comic pretty much entirely about the wives being raped while Furiosa sat back and watched.
This one, though? It answered a LOT of the questions that everyone had about the timeline. Was Hardy's Max the original Max? Did the first three movies matter? The answer is “yes,” which is tremendous. Looking forward to the second installment.
I tend to fall victim to getting excited about books that I haven't read after I see gushing praise for them and this was one of those books.
Altered Carbon was pretty good, don't get me wrong, but I was expecting more out of it, which might be a bit unfair to the author. It was some pretty bleak noir, which I'm cool with, and the future that Morgan built that involved human consciousness being digitized and transferred between bodies was an interesting idea. Of course, it creates some problems as well and Morgan was able to handle those issues rather deftly, which I commend.
Something about the story and the characters fell a bit flat in the middle, everything there but just a bit subdued. I think it had a lot to do with the absolute glee and care that was put into the violent scenes about mid-way through the book that everything else afterwards felt flat in comparison. It was like you were shown just how good Morgan can be, then never lives up to that potential again until moving into the home stretch.
I really wanted to love Ancillary Sword, but sadly it just didn't click for me. It wasn't for lack of effort. In a way it was frustrating because Leckie's prose can be quite amazing at times.
The first book, Ancillary Justice, was universally beloved and won just about every scifi book award that there was to win. I understood what people saw in it, but there was so much in the book that frustrated me. Leckie showed her skills as a tremendous world builder (as everyone has noted), but sadly the characters were a bit lacking.
Leckie set out to fix that in the second book by having it mostly a long character study of Justice of Toren/Breq, the corpse AI that lost her ship that served as her central hub sentenced to a life in a human body. Her tale of vengeance led to a climatic face off in the first book and this one picked up directly after and at times it was hard to grasp where the plot was heading.
It wasn't due to depth or complication but instead because of the pacing and what the main focus of the book turned out to be. Leckie has proven to be a slow starter, in fact, I almost put down Ancillary Justice until I got to about the 40% mark when it picked up, with Ancillary Sword it probably didn't pick up until somewhere near the realm of 70%.
Her prose can be great, like I said, but at other times frustrating. Why is everyone gesturing? The word “gesture” appears in some form what feels like every page on both books and while I can understand that Breq is an AI who views things a bit differently, she seems to have a superior intellect and I'm sure can break down these gestures into more depth than just “she gestured agreement” and so forth.
Most of the book felt like something that most authors would have summed up briefly within a a few pages, a few chapters at most. Instead most of our time is spent with Breq seeing how the common people live. It was a valuable thing for the character to experience in her quest, undoubtedly, but the presentation and the events felt rather uninspired. There was also the fact that the reader was given no real insight as to what Breq was after throughout most of the journey.
There was similar insight missing from the first book early on, which made it such a slog to endure. I've seen a lot of people saying “well, I didn't understand it, but maybe I'm just smart enough.” Readers have to be unafraid to take authors to task on things like this. Ancillary Justice wasn't confusing because it flew over the readers' heads, but because there wasn't enough detail or insight into the characters to get the reader invested. This book was similar to that.
So if AJ was missing character development and had a fascinating plot, AS was missing the plot and saw a lot of character development. Hopefully Ancillary Mercy pieces it all together because I truly want to love these books and Leckie's writing, but there are just a few little things that make these books more of a chore than they should be.
Four books deep into the Expanse series and the ideas are all coming together and the depth of this universe is really starting to sink in. The duo known as James SA Corey have truly created something special in this series, although there were things about Cibola Burn that didn't quite click as well as the past books in the series.
The first thing is the characters that were introduced in this book were not exactly great. They weren't bad, but we've kind of reached a point where the readers are all so invested in Holden, Naomi, Amos and Alex that it's natural to want to see more of them.
Mix in the fact that there were characters introduced in the second and third books that deserve another spin (Chrisjen, Bobbie, Anna, etc.). From what we can tell, we'll probably get back into their heads in the fifth installment, which is cool, but in Cibola Burn in particular the characters really felt like they were there just to bring the reader to the crew of the Rocinante to keep them front and center.
Each character had their strengths, for sure. It was nice to get some time with Havelock considering that Miller is still floating around as a servant of the protomolecule, but Elvi and Basia had a glimmer of hope of being interesting but tended to fall a bit flat and served just to end up being links to the crew. This brings up a point that I've seen floating around that if they are going to simply create characters whose sole purpose is to help us keep tabs on the crew, why not just get inside of the crew?
It feels late to get POVs from Amos, Naomi and Alex, but Elvi and Basia were good characters that could have been a lot better if we didn't have to inhabit their thoughts. Murtry – our villain – border-lined on ridiculous at times in how dastardly and uncaring he was. While I understand that he's supposed to be a counterpoint to Holden, his motivations were so over-the-top and thin at times that he fell flat. A lot of that probably had to do with how fleshed out Melba was before or even the evil corporations we've had in the past.
RCE didn't feel like an evil monolith, which is good, but Murtry was almost trying to make them into one, which was weird.
The general premise was solid, because we saw what the protomolecule did to the worlds that it inhabited through the gates, hinting that Earth was destined to be one of these thousand worlds reachable by gate to be strip-mined for resources, but it never got that far due to the mysterious alien power that caused the creators of the protomolecule to shut down the gates. We also saw how ridiculous humanity can be in drawing lines in the sand as well as the challenges of humanity expanding to other worlds.
Of course, a lot of what happened in this book felt almost like it was jammed in there to make for a full length novel, with the weird side plots. I'm talking about killer slugs, blinding rain, natural disasters and ships falling out of orbit. They all demonstrated what could and probably will go wrong on these planets that are accessible via the gates, but we were approaching biblical plague levels of fatigue here.
Still absolutely a fun book and I'm looking forward to the rest, but probably the weakest of the bunch. They can't all be winners and I'm okay with that.
I very much enjoyed Leviathan Wakes, but found it to be a bit troubling at times. Mostly that Holden and Miller were just so close together as characters and while they may have had different beliefs, they were very similar characters no matter what.
Caliban's War addressed that issue and added in a whole slew of main characters that really brought something different to the table. We still got to follow Holden around while he tilted at windmills, but we saw events unfold from a few different points of view, which really added to the overall experience.
While the last book was exciting, this one was a lot harder to put down after I grew familiar with the cast of characters. There was, of course, a grand convergence between the main characters but it didn't feel forced, it felt welcome.
The story was well-crafted and I was legitimately excited to see what happened next when I got to the end of the book without feeling like anything was forced or ridiculous. Sure, there might not be a lot of “hard science” as to what exactly is going on, but that rarely gets in the way of enjoying the book.
Leviathan Wakes is a good book that could easily veer into being a really good book depending on how you look at it.
Goodreads doesn't do the half-star thing, so I'll say that I'm giving this 3 1/2 in heart, but four because three seems cruel. There were a ton of things that this book did right and left me feeling pretty good, while other parts were frustrating and a bit obnoxious.
Holden and Miller, our two protagonists, feel eerily similar throughout most of the book. In fact, at times it is hard to tell them apart other than their different ideals and world views. In the chapters where they were together I'd find myself wondering which character I was really reading because they felt so similar. Thankfully as the book wore on they really differentiated from each other, so that was somewhat forgivable.
I loved the premise and all, but I was pretty thrown off when “vomit zombies” entered the equation. I was ready to stop reading altogether if they were to throw away a great premise and solid characters for a space zombie book, but thankfully it was reined in and didn't lament too much on the walking undead. That's usually a sign of an (or in this case two) aware author.
Looking forward to reading further into the series.
There is a lot about The Martian to like and I understand why there are people who absolutely love this book, but at the same time there is a lot to strongly dislike and I understand the people who hate this book at the same time.
The book feels split up into two distinct sections; section one is nearly endless logs from the protagonist, Mark Watney, section two is more of his logs as well as a look at everyone else involved in the story. Needless to say, the first part is not a joy to read unless you are really into reading the logs of what feels like a YouTube parody account that leaves comments in the voice of a mock Redditor.
Mark Watney is what Wesley Crusher would be like if he was stranded on Mars and left for dead if Beverly Crusher had somehow worked MacGuyver's DNA into the birthing process. There is zero tension in what should be an incredibly tense situation due to how effortless everything is for Watney. Not enough food to last? No problem, Watney is an expert botanist who is able to take his own shit, soil he brought with him and convenient potatoes, mix it with Martian soil and have an indoor farm that can sustain him for almost two years. Need more water? He's also an expert chemist who can create it out of thin air and have enough to last as long as he needs. He could probably end world hunger in the snap of his fingers if he wanted to, he's just that damned good.Every problem is met with a nonchalant series of jokes and asides while Watney is able to utilize increasingly convenient items in his vicinity while he rags on the poor taste of his teammates as he goes through their possessions in search for entertainment. What's frustrating is that when it's convenient for the plot to move along this innate ability to solve every problem regardless of complexity disappears from Watney's possession and he's left helpless.The big issue that I have is that I'm forced to fill in blanks and assign reasons and events to flesh out these strange holes in the plot and character. He probably had a mental break, maybe he lost his will, maybe he wasn't in class on the day when they had you clean up an experiment after a disaster to see that something might be salvageable, etc. What little is given about Watney is downright unlikable most of the time, which can make the early parts of the book a slog to get through.Things pick up when other characters are introduced and things move from the journal-based style to a more normal style of prose. You don't really get much of a feel for any of the characters, not much description about their features, personalities or lives outside of saving Mark Watney, but then again, this whole book is just about Mark Watney, isn't it? We know that Lewis and her husband like Disco and the 70's, we know that Johannsen is an attractive, younger female and so forth, but we're never given much of a reason to care about them and it kind of feels like a shame.The brief glimpses that the reader gets into these ancillary characters shows the potential for a lot more interesting, likable and worthwhile characters, but instead they are just to serve Watney and his brilliance as set dressing. I know that I'm really kind of ripping into this right now, but there were some really great things in this book as well. After around 40% or so it was hard to put down due to how the plot just flowed. There was a good sense of tension built throughout and it was genuinely exciting to read at times. There was obviously a lot of effort and research put into this book, which I appreciated and the approach kept things from being overly dry when veering into the realm of the scientific. I also appreciate the attempt at doing something different, but honestly the execution was just lacking and hurt the book overall. I'm also well aware that I just found the lead character to be abrasive and awful, but that's just personal taste and you might love him and feel a deep, soulful connection to him. I can only imagine how good this book could have been if the same level of attention to detail was put into building up the characters more and helping to create some increasing tension throughout the book as opposed to only in the second half.
The Goldfinch is a very good book that achieved some very high accolades and has led to some pretty crazy debates about how lofty of a tome this truly is and how worthy it is of our praise.
I'll admit that I was a bit taken aback at just how popular The Goldfinch became, considering that Tartt's previous books, The Secret History and The Little Friend were very good, but never sparked such passionate debates in the literary world. I had enjoyed both The Secret History and The Little Friend enough to where I'd recommend them to a friend to read, but I'm not sure that I'd ever say that they were my favorite books.
The first few hundred pages of The Goldfinch are easy to get enamored with; Tartt paints a vivid picture of Theo's world and the tragedies that ensued and the language feels well-crafted and polished. I'm not sure what happens, but eventually that feeling begins to wear off and I found myself reading another Donna Tartt novel, which is absolutely not a bad thing. The narrative is rather straightforward and while well-crafted, there are times as the book moves on where it feels less special.
She is able to build this anxiety and fear over what will become of Theo early on, with him making mistakes as children his age are prone to do, which eventually leads to an adulthood that he was never properly prepared for. At times I was delighted at the attention to detail and awareness involved, like Theo's relationship with Boris being very subtly on that line between best friend and lover or how Theo's relationships with Mrs. Barbour and Hobie were special to him, but he was unable to ever find a way to express it.
Everything was building up to an interesting conclusion when the book kind of ran out of steam near the very end and coasted in to the finish on fumes. That's okay, it was still a very good book and very much worth your time. Stop complaining about the length and just enjoy the ride.
Man, where to even start with Dune?
Science fiction can be hit or miss, even the ones that everyone tend to love. I went into Dune with a knowledge of the plot, characters and everything else surrounding it expecting to kind of like it. I can't say enough good things about this book, though.
Paul Atreides is one of the most frustrating characters I can think of. You know what he's capable of, you know what he's walking into, you know what he wants to do, but you can feel things go off of the rails. The system is broken, there is no way for it to be fixed, yet Paul will start going on about his birthright and how he deserves to be the Duke.
You know that he's trying to work over the crowd, but something about it is eerie, like you are beginning to feel like he believes it. Even Gurney noted that Paul had seemingly lost his way and was lacking the compassion that his father was so well-known for. By the time I had finished the book I felt like I really didn't like Paul anymore and that he was headed down a dark path.
That was probably one of the most satisfied feelings that I've ever had with a book like this. The easy way would be for Paul to make all of the right choices, for Paul to cast aside the power and live his life with the Freman, leaving them in peace and harmony out of the reach of the Guild and the Imperium. Instead he chose to become a Messiah, for good or for bad.
You can feel bad for Paul, because he didn't choose that path, it was chosen for him. He was built for greatness and no one was able to contain him, but it was also what led him down this dark path. The best part is that Herbert doesn't outright say that it's a dark path. When I was reading this, I thought to myself, “is this supposed to be good? People actually want Paul to be this conquering hero?” It just made for Dune Messiah to be that much more interesting.
So I've just heard enough about it that I wanted to check it out, somewhat enamored by the idea of “lofty Stephen King.” The book even stays with him apologizing for it being so difficult to read!
It was definitely above your standard fare King horror book, for sure and conceptually deeper, but difficult? Nah. I find myself writing with a lot of Western motifs and had a few people mention this book to me. Glad I read it, but not sure I'll move forward considering people claim the rest are “easier reads.”
I want to read King doing more of this, flexing his literary muscle and challenging people.
How I came upon this book was under awful circumstances a few years ago, which might add to my complete and utter disdain for the book. Wait, maybe it was the plotting, characters and premise that caused that, I'm not sure. I was stuck in Chicago O'Hare a few years ago in a layover gone awry situation, forced on standby the next morning.
For some reason I decided that spending money on a hotel was completely out of the question, so I chose to spend the night in the terminal with nothing but my backpack as comfort. I had run out of reading material and this was well before the advent of smart phones, so my conundrum was to go into the airport bookstore and pick just about anything to keep me from going stir crazy or spend the entire night roaming the halls of the terminal and fighting off exhaustion.
Maybe it was the idea that it was “based upon” the Divine Comedy that made me think that somehow this could be interesting, but the reality was downright depressing. What it did accomplish is that it kept me warding off temporary insanity while the overnight staff vacuumed around me before I landed at home and left it for safe keeping in the nearest garbage can.
It's hard to really live up to the first Hyperion book, because, in a way, Hyperion was a nearly flawless book. Hyperion was chock full of stuff for lit nerds and scifi nerds alike, while establishing a few great characters that you found yourself caring about after thinking how much you couldn't stand them early on. The Fall of Hyperion picks up where Hyperion left off, but ditches the Canterbury Tales formatting for a multi-narrative style that jumps between first person for “John Keats” and third for everyone else.
Each character has their redeeming qualities as well as their downfalls, which is what helps to make these books so great, but I know I can't be the only one who was a bit disappointed by the ending. Maybe I'm just a sadist, but the fact that Simmons chose to “save” most of these characters was disappointing. It felt like he wanted to just continue on their stories forever. A good portion of the end of the book felt like him warping everything to ensure that everyone would be as happy as they could be.
Simmons remains a great writer with an incredible sense of plotting and characterization, I just think that he got too attached.
It's difficult to summarize or even explain why this book is so great, so I'm not going to go into painstaking detail, but instead just gush.
I expected very little from a book that I've heard people say is fantastic, but the cover and premise sounds hilarious and ridiculous, like a lot of dime store scifi novels that you see laying around. The reality here is that Dan Simmons is a truly fantastic writer who made something very special in Hyperion.
It has a lot of stuff that will appeal to hardcore scifi fans while making sure to have the story remain human enough to appeal to a broader audience. The Shrike is a fantastic take on the unrelenting evil, remaining mysterious throughout the tales we hear.
GRRM knows how to do a few things well; build characters that you care about, kill those characters and to drag unrelated characters into the mix to break up the tension. It creates a kind of jerky narrative at times that really feels like it was made for TV.
TYRION IS IN TROUBLE, HOW WILL HE EVER COPE?
Cut to commercial.
Jon Snow takes his glove off and clenches his sword hand.
It keeps you reading, at least.
There really isn't much to say about these books when you get this far. They are standard GRRM fare, and that is alright. If you are this far you've been roped in by the characters and want to know what'll happen to them. The only difference here is that the main characters it follows are some of the lesser characters or new ones. You won't find Jon Snow, Dany, Tyrion, Stannis, Davos, Bran or Theon. Instead the focus is on the recently likable Jaime Lannister, Cersei Lannister, Samwell, Sansa Stark, Araya Stark, Brienne and a few new characters.
GRRM essentially overwrote for the fourth book in the series, and instead of simply cutting it in half and leaving some cliffhangers, he chose to tell the stories of half of the characters, and the next edition is the other half of the characters. It is a giant pacing change from the previous two books, where everything kind of went to hell. This one is more the machinations of the non-warriors like Cersei and Jaime, the trials and tribulations of Samwell, Araya and Sansa as well as a few others. If you've come this far, you'll read this, it might just take you a while.
Probably the best in the series so far. I had started this before but stopped about halfway through when I grew tired of GRRM's tendency to simply use the death of one of his plentiful main characters to move the plot along. That being said, I did come back to this one and did enjoy the book, but simply needed time away from GRRM's world since reading the first two in quick succession and half of the third as such.
This was really a case of me picking up a book because of how highly it was spoken of and being mildly disappointed for all of the accolades it received. The pacing was deliberate and the language was very dry and felt more like a journalistic endeavor than that of fiction. It did pick up though, and was engrossing up until the end, where the finish was just confusing and felt like it should have ended 100 pages sooner.