Gavin

It was okay. I loved the native mythos and world building. And the main character was pretty cool.

I'm kinda disappointed by the ending. A lot of cool foreshadowing was kinda abandoned for a very confusing ending.
I also wasn't really a fan of the writing style. Things kept getting repeated.

It was a nice short read though. I wouldn't tell people to skip it or anything.

It started off a bit wordy and I was afraid it would be very descriptive and not much on story, but by the 2nd or 3rd chapter I was pretty hooked.

Its a pretty good book, just not a great book for me.

I really enjoyed the beginning of the book. I loved the characters and the development, and the issues. There is really nothing about the first half I didn't like. Admittedly I found the whole teenage love/lust stuff really hitting a bit too close to home, but I can imagine the author went through the same things.

Sadly the second half.. I didn't like how mean the main character got. How mean he was to other people. The whole "who turned me" mystery never felt like a mystery to the reader. All clues really lead one way, then near the end it was obvious you were lead astray.

The book turned out to be more of a thriller than a nice story than I would like (and I like thrillers).

I did enjoy the book, but I had a few issues that kept me from really enjoying it.

* The “robot girlfriend” was so so so so submissive. Every time she showed her submissive side I just went UGH.
* The pacing of the book killed me. It went on and on about the mundane details. You could feel it was building up to something, but it took forever to get there.
* Seemed like there was some sort of clothing fetish going on. Constantly listed out various new clothing that she had/wore.

I did like the premise though.

I just didn't find peoples reactions very believable.

If I suddenly had a girlfriend who did all the chores, cooked and picked up groceries, pretty much took care of everything, I think I'd be bored out of my mind. All it sounded like the guy did was watch a little more tv and read a litte bit more.

yea. As much as I liked it, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else :(

Simple review... I found it pretty odd at first. I didn't know what was going on. By the end it started to make sense.

Its really nothing like scalzi's normal writing. Its very serious. Kinda dark. Very short.

One of the most messed up books i've ever, and probably will ever read. This is the second time i've read this book. Both times I've thought it was messed up, and enjoyed it up until the ending. The ending was a bit on the weaker side compared to the entire book.

That being said, I'd still recommend it if you are not easily squeamish

Also, i'm still looking forward to the singularity.

Not the best book ever. I seem to be a sucker for damaged main characters. The book starts off saying the main character, Hanna, is bi-polar. I don't think it shares any relation to reality but it's an interesting plot hook to have weird stuff happen and not have Hanna finch.

Wasn't a top notch book by any means but I enjoyed it. I'd be curious to know what happens next, but as always, I kinda prefer the open endings.

Well this ended up being another read it one night book. After kaiju I was worried that my preferred style or his writing style had changed enough to not have that level of interest anymore, but just like get fuzzy, old man's war, agent to the stars, I just didn't stop reading.. then it was 3am and over.

It's a return to his very rapid back and forth dialog and snarky characters and I'm all here for it.

I think personally would have preferred a different ending, but enjoyed it none the less.

I loved the overall story, I did, I did. Louis and Speaker were awesome. Less so with the rest of the group. It had some amazing concepts. I actually read the foreword for book 2, and Niven mentions all the people that independently provided science(y) proofs to him.

That being said, I couldn't follow most of the story. The way things were written, combined with the way my brain works, I got lost a lot.

I'm kinda tempted to read the next book, but considering I kinda struggled to stay focused on this one, I will probably read something else and try book two in the future.

My library loan ran out at about 70% and I'm okay with it. I was struggling to keep going. The whole terraforming using modified “normal” systems was kinda neat, but all the characters and events felt flat and kinda boring.

I'm still getting used to authors using they as a singular in writing (I'm fine in casual convo but writing throws me off), but the inconsistentness of having characters sometimes share their pronouns and sometimes not was a little jarring.

As I said, just flat, there were so many characters even before the first time jump that I really didn't get invested in any, and nobody really got developed.

I'm sure it's a great story but I recommend passing.

It was interesting. The tone changed from the early book, not drastically, but enough. I still really enjoyed it, and there was still silly shenanigans, but as the author mentioned at the end, he changed, both due to covid, and family health issues.

I enjoyed it for different reasons I enjoyed the earlier books. And it does feel like a kinda satifying ending, but be warned, its not as silly.

Super quick read. Was interesting. Read it in like a day, kept coming back to it over and over again. Enjoyable simple read. I don't have much else to say.

My friend phoebe recommended this to me on friday as there was a .99 special for the ebook on amazon. I don't think I even got around to reading the synopsis, sorta just decided that since it was a recommendation and so cheap, why not. Especially after someone said Dresden (I have heard awesome things about the series, and loved the tv show)

I think this was my first urban fantasy novel. I found I couldn't put it down. I was 50% done before 24 hours was up. I finished the rest of the book today.

It had a lot of the god/heaven-hell mythology tied into it. Angels, Demons, Other things. I'm not really sure what to say about that, but I thought it was put together to form a good book. Even the minor characters seemed to enough depth to pull you in and like them (or hate them).

I've already picked up the next book and will get to it asap.

It was a fun book. I don't think its his best book, which to me is Androids Dream, Old Mans War, or Agent to the stars. But its a fun book.

It defiantly has a bit of a Cory Doctorow feel, with the random modern technology thrown in. Plex. Discord. NFC. Local Wifi. Etc. Not a bad thing, just not what I really expected so much.

The whole thing about the first person narrator having no gender at all was really interesting. A couple places felt off, like the character had a gender in the first draft, but only like two places. Using Jaime instead of a pronoun in some locations felt awkward, but rarely and easy to overlook.

I would absolutely recommend to other people, especially since I essentially read it in one day.

Its fine. It's not a bad book. It's not a good book, but it's a fun simple light weight read. And often that's what I want.

I had some trouble with the editing, some phrases or words that not only don't add anything, but are kinda jarring. Something like “he reminds me of Joe Biden. But without the hair sniffing”.

It is very clearly set in Seattle, and the author likes the city, but some of the name dropping was a little weird. Everyone else worked at made up companies, except one who worked at Amazon, and one at Starbucks. Again. Not bad just felt jarring.

Loved all the characters except for the main. I tolerated her to get more of the rest.

Had a few moments with “shouldn't a cop know that?” But I think that's more of a me problem rather than the books problem.

Overall I wouldn't tell anyone to avoid this book, and it may be exactly what you are looking for, but I think there's better books out there.

Pretty much the same formula as the martian. Positive things happen, then disaster, and smart person figures it out. But the story is different enough to be super enjoyable. I read this book in less than 24 hours, which I haven't done in a while. Its absolutely nothing deep, but is enjoyable, especially if you like the random science tidbits thrown in.

It was very interesting book. I absolutely loved the world building. On the literal side, there's so much interesting things going on in the world, and the whole story felt like just one thing going on. On the figurative side, the rules of the ghosts and dead, and the magic, are interesting twists.

The fact that I didn't know anything about Scotland, and the a bunch of the south african devices mentioned, I had to look it up. Apparently there's a Edinburgh in South Africa. I spent most of the book being sure but not sure where it was set. It was so much fun.

I loved the characters and the overall setting.
That being said, the writing style wasn't fully my style so i can't give it a full 5 stars.
I'm excited to see what happens next though.

I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected I would. Reading a sample from the library, I kinda expected it to be a fairly generic teen romance novel, maybe with a bit of urban fantasy thrown in. I was really surprised. The two main characters grow in a way I'd never expected teenagers to do. Most adults I know won't internalize anger, stop, listen, think, and grow. They really should though. Every main milestone prudence had, every win in her life, I teared up and was excited. I am still shocked how invested I was.

I was first introduced to Meyer's books with the Cinder series. I really enjoyed them and recommended them to my friends. As with those ones, she's able to take a little twist to the existing formula and turn it into something special.

I liked it. It was trippy and weird, and with so many characters I had to jump back to the first few pages a few times to look up people but I really enjoyed it. Helped me beat the heat wave this weekend.

I'm happy that I didn't really clue into what was going on most of the time. By the second half things started to fall into place, but nothing at the start was obvious blatent for shadowing.

Def recommend to others.

I think sandman slim was better, but this was still a good book. It kinda had that tv cop show feel to it, by the end you know who did it long before it was revealed.

I'm still going to read the next one.

Eh

It was okay. I had a lot of trouble with the writing. I found paragraphs had to be reread to make sense. Or maybe I'd lose my train of thought and have to jump back.

I've read better fairie / urban fantasy.

The closer I got to the end, the more I wanted to know how it ended so I could move onto another book. It was good enough to knot bail, but I also had trouble staying focused reading. I kept finding myself skimming paragraphs, reading only a couple words a page to get closer to the end. I want to see where it was going but at 85% it felt more like a chore than pleasure.
If characters got hurt, or bad things happened to them, I didn't seem to care. They seemed pretty flat. Even the main characters, who you spend a lot of time with, I felt nothing when bad things happened to them.

I wouldn't recommend it, but wouldn't stop anyone from checking it out.

—

And with that, the ending, I kinda feel disappointed.

I just gobbled this book up, read it over two nights, staying up much later than i should have. I thought the book was a lot better than Dark Matter. I wasn't a huge fan of the last few chapters of ending, but overall a fan of it.

Not quite what I expected with a synopsis involving black holes and alien biomes. It was an interesting read. I guess it's considered a short story. Definitely written by an engineer/scientist based on some of the word usages.

Was a short fine read.

tl;dr Enjoyed it, would receommend.

I can certainly see why its so popular. I wouldn't call it SciFi though. The initial premise might be, and it is forward/present looking, but thats as close to science fiction as it gets.

I really enjoyed this book. I picked it up from the library on a complete whim. It sounded cool, and I thought I remember the premise on netflix (I later did learn that yes, it is a series). I'm not normally a fan of the story split up characters point of view. It often feels disjointed. But honestly I don't think this book would have worked any other way. There's so many twists and unexpected turns, if it just focused on one character, or even worse one then the next, it wouldn't work, and wouldn't be suspenseful.

If anything I could have done with one less character, just so the rest got more fleshed out, but honestly I wouldn't want to nix any of them, I liked all of them.

I can't exactly remember why this book was on my to-read list. I think I saw it on one of the unshelved.com bookclub notes and thought it was a cool premise.

I really wasn't expecting how old fashioned it was.
It was apparently first published in 1970.

I still thought it was a very cute short story. Most of the characters had depth. I can actually related it to some of the few school memories I still have.

I don't think I know anyone I would recommend it to, but its an insight into young girls (which sounds a little creepy) that I wasn't expecting. I'm betting its pretty outdated though.