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What a surprise! I'd heard good things about this book but wasn't expecting to enjoy it just as much as I did.
We follow Lin, the emperor's daughter, unraveling the truth of her lost memories. This empire is one of islands, and the emperor creates constructs (think Frankenstein's monster but with more animal parts) powered by bone shards collected from citizens. While it took a while for me to get into the swing of things with her storyline, I immediately loved Jovis, a smuggler searching for his lost wife, and Mephi, his.... cat-otter-frog thing companion, and would be perfectly happy to read a whole book of their (mis?)adventures. Other POV characters include Phalue, a governor's daughter, and Sand, a woman on an island with no recollection of how she got there. I was less interested in these plot lines but they took up less time and certainly have implications going forward.
Overall, very impressed at this debut and will be looking forward to the next instalment!
This series was a definite case of “I understand why people like it so much, it just wasn't for me.” Abercrombie is a talented writer, his characters are complex (if all bad people, I struggle when I have no one to root for) and the dark humour was very much appreciated, but I found the constant subversion of tropes in an attempt to be surprising wound up being just as predictable.
This was by far my most anticipated read of the year and probably my most anticipated read of the last three years since the last Stormlight book came out and it certainly lived up to expectations. Revelations abound and we're now headed full speed ahead for the ending of the first arc!
Main characters, with the exception of Kaladin (thank god he's my favourite), begin to switch out a little here. Not too much, but enough to be noticeable. Venli is a lead and her backstory, along with her sister's, makes up the spine of the book. Shallan shares much of her page-time with Adolin on a quest in Shadesmar but even she takes a backseat this time around. And despite Oathbringer being Dalinar's book, it is his wife Navani who gets the most attention in Rhythm of War, unlocking the secrets of Urithiru. This surprised me but I welcomed it greatly. My favourite aspect remains the focus on mental illness while unabashedly being some of the most creative crazy stuff in fantasy.
What can I say? I love Kaladin. I've never been so proud of a fake man. I love the world and the characters and finding the other references to the broader cosmere and then slapping my palm to my forehead whenever a reveal happens because it seems so OBVIOUS after the fact. I don't love waiting three years to find out what happens next but I suppose three years isn't that long compared to some series one could (but won't) mention.
An easy 5 stars from me. I can't wait to dig into this again!
My favourite thing V.E. Schwab has written so far I think! Lovely prose, lovely characters. Despite the concept, I did find it quite predictable so a few moments that were supposed to be a surprise did fall flat. Very much interested in seeing just how well this translates to film, especially because most of the enjoyment stems from Schwab's writing style itself.
Yaa Gyasi is the real deal, masterfully handling heavy topics like addiction, depression, grief and science vs religion. While it's narrower in scope than Homegoing (one of the most impressive debuts I've ever read) that really works in its favour: there's so much depth here! I really anticipated this book and it was worth the wait. 4.5
Different feelings depending on which part of the book we're talking about. This novel is split into two parts: the first third, “Breasts”, is one novella, while the sequel “Eggs” is the next two thirds of the book and takes place with the same set of characters ten years later. Kawakami explores multiple different facets of womanhood from the perspective of three characters: Natsuko, her older sister Makiko, and Makiko's preteen daughter Midoriko. The first novella was a really strong start, but during the second I found my mind wandering more at parts. All in all I did like this, and I am very much interested in reading more of Kawakami's writing. Her highest rated novel on here, ‘Heaven' is apparently looking at a 2021 release date in English! 3.5
R. F. Kuang has built something really interesting here. I was unsure at first; while I was enjoying myself, I couldn't help but feel as though I'd seen it all before somewhat. A young woman, Fang Runin but Rin for short, goes to a school, is the best of the students despite her poor background, and has special powers. There are eccentric teachers and good friends and bullies. It was done well, but very familiar, which of course there's nothing wrong with. But I couldn't help but feel like I was missing something.
Then the second half came along. Holy hell. It was like reading a totally different book. I've seen complaints that the tonal shift is jarring, but is that not the point? It's suddenly a warzone. It's just as much a shock to us as it is to Rin, and Kuang doesn't hold back. In these sections she draws heavily from the Second Sino-Japanese War, including fictional depictions of the Rape of Nanjing and the Battle of Shanghai. However, even as someone with only a passing familiarity with these events, it sometimes felt a little clumsy as if I was suddenly reading a history book, although never wasn't enough to pull me out of the story or cheapen any of the impact.
It's even more impressive on the realisation that Kuang was only 19 when she wrote it! Hopefully she has a long career ahead of her because this was a great debut.
Stunning! I only picked this up because it was 99p on sale, not having heard of it before, and was surprised to come on here and see it well and widely reviewed and so highly rated. Apparently I've been living under a rock.
Pachinko spans four generations of a Korean family living in Japan. It is huge in scope in that respect, but has a slice-of-life approach to detailing the goings-on of these characters and we truly get to see them at their best and worst. There isn't so much a plot as there is a story.
For a novel so big (mine said 500 pages!) it flew by surprisingly quickly. Highly recommended.
Very good. Fantastic world-building and a unique setting! However I found while the beginning was very strong I lost interest in the middle but that's more of a personal preference thing rather than an actual fault; I'm not really a fan of anything that involves showing a lot of fighting so Tau's training started to lose me. Tau as a character was also quite frustrating, although I believe that was intentional. It did manage to grab me again in the end and I'm looking forward to seeing where the story goes next! 3.5
I have a bad memory, which in the case of reading books actually turns out to be a good thing. I first read The Witcher when I was in college and now, about five years later, I barely remember anything of it other than that I found it really enjoyable. I did watch the Netflix show back in December, but found it disappointing and didn't finish the season.
That's what made me want to reread it, but also made me somewhat concerned. What if it wasn't as good as I thought?
Well, I didn't have anything to be worried about. This is an excellent collection of short stories. They roll along quickly, none of them are boring, standouts being The Lesser Evil, The Last Wish and The Witcher. There's plenty of dark humour, lots of fun references to well-known fairy-tales (a friend describes it as Shrek for adults, which isn't exactly inaccurate) and monsters galore. It's in this volume that you're introduced Geralt and the supporting cast of Yennefer and Dandelion and the bulk of it, and the sequel, essentially helps to illustrate the world before book three heads into the saga proper (I was surprised Ciri didn't show up, but that must be book two!).
All in all, I'm glad I reread this, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the books. A bad memory has its perks; I'm basically looking at this again for the first time!
(10/07/2020) So, the fourth Stormlight book is due, making this the fourth reread. I wasn't planning on starting so early (November is a long time away after all) but I'm so excited I couldn't help myself!
Unsurprisingly, it's still phenomenal. The characters are fantastically human, the world and worldbuilding immense and vivid. The writing, while relatively simple, gets the job done and although this is a relatively slow paced book it never once feels like it's stalling. There are four main point of view characters: Kaladin, a slave, Shallan, a scholar, Dalinar, a lord, and Adolin, Dalinar's son. I'm never disappointed turning to the next chapter and seeing which character I'm reading about next, which is more than can be said for other books in the genre. There are also brief interludes from the point of view of (seemingly random) characters which display cultures and events from all over, leaving the world feeling alive.
While I've seen some complain about the use of flashbacks, I strongly disagree. Maybe it's something to do with Kaladin being my favourite character in the series, but I love the way the things we learn through his flashbacks expand our understanding of his character and his response to present day events. And like I said, I'm biased. I love him to bits. The other POV characters are pretty great too, and I'm so glad the flashbacks continue into the next books focusing on a different character each time, but the fact we started with Kaladin definitely made me immediately invested.
This is everything I love about fantasy. The ultimate 1100 page doorstopper. And it blows me away on a reread knowing that it only gets better. Now I have to go and start book two right away and ignore the other 100s of books on my TBR list
I was hoping this would scratch my fantasy itch until the next Stormlight Archive book comes out. It didn't.
I think there's a reason this book has been so widely praised outside of fantasy circles, but inside barely caused a ripple. It wasn't bad, I'd just seen it all before and done much better. There's nothing wrong with re-treading well-known tropes but it was just done so blandly here. The characters were boring, and I found them relatively interchangeable. One aspect constantly praised is just how diverse this book is and on that front it's fantastic. It's refreshing. But unfortunately this feature alone does not necessarily make your story, or your characters, interesting. Maybe Shannon should have picked one or two point of view characters and developed them further, or kept them all and simply made this one novel a duology/trilogy. Maybe that way they would have felt a bit more dynamic, a bit less two-dimensional, and improved the pacing.
Nevertheless, I can see why people love it. Genuinely. But I rate books based on personal enjoyment and for better or worse I'm somewhat a fantasy snob at this point. It takes a lot of world-building and something new and truly spectacular to excite me. This didn't deliver that, and that's a shame. I really did want to love it.
I enjoyed this. It's very funny and very charming. Why only three stars? I just couldn't get attached to any of the characters. I don't know if it was to do with the writing style or the bouncing around from generation to generation, but I did read that this novel had been turned into a play in London and couldn't help but feel this would have ticked more boxes for me in that format due to the quirkiness of the characters and comedy.
(30/07/22) ‘Into this wild abyss, The womb of nature and perhaps her grave, Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire, But all these in their pregnant causes mixed Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight, Unless the almighty maker them ordain His dark materials to create more worlds, Into this wild abyss the wary fiend Stood on the brink of hell and looked a while, Pondering his voyage...' - John Milton, Paradise Lost
His Dark Materials is so enormously ambitious that even in some instances where Philip Pullman doesn't quite stick the landing, you have to give him credit for the attempt alone. Daemons are so deceptively simple but may be one of my favourite concepts in a novel ever. A retelling of The Fall/Paradise Lost weaving together threads of parallel universes, theology, philosophy and good old fashioned adventure. Magnificent
[Reread 14/01/24] “Well, I'm back.”
This is my favourite novel, and it has been for the last fifteen years. I love it deeply and there is likely nothing I can say that someone else hasn't already said more intelligently and articulately.
That being said, I would urge anyone who has finished this book and hasn't read Tolkien's poem ‘The Sea Bell' to give that a read too. It has the subtitle ‘Frodo's Dreme', which does the job of explaining exactly why you should; Frodo is so distant by the end of this book that getting this small glimpse into his headspace is so deeply sad. This novel is deeply sad!
There is a sense of grief at the core of this story that is never fully captured in any of its adaptations. But simultaneously, it's so bittersweet that I have lump in my throat and an ache in my chest by the time I turn the last page. Whole and hollow at the same time. Contradictory, maybe, but to me, it's never been a story so much about good vs evil as it is about hope and despair, intermingled.
So less a review and more of an observation I suppose. Again, read The Sea Bell. I love this book.
