Daniel Vanzin
There is no way I can describe this book as something I would like reading. It is not very intellectual but also not exactly a love story, It is just a well written novel with a touch of fantasy. It develops something like the movie Crash, telling the story of a few unrelated characters that at some point in the book meet each other and then realize how their existence is interconnected. The characters are relatable and compelling.
The book deals mildly with some interesting existential questions, like can a man made Golem have a soul? Fall in love? Is destroying her the same as killing someone? It talks about the value of community, loyalty, human nature, religion, friendship, selfishness.
But above it all, the story keeps you interested from the beginning to the end. The peaces of the puzzle are well laid out and things make sense when they are revealed. There is no major plot twist and even the climax is very short.
So, to summarize the story, I just need to talk about the characters. This is just some of them. As this is spoiler free, just remember that all of them are somewhat connected:
- Chava, the Golem: obedient, intelligent and curious. Made out of clay to be the wife of a merchant, she soon finds herself without a master, and must discover what it means to be human. More specifically, an immigrant jew widow female in the beginning of the 20th century England.
- Ahmad, the Jinni: independent, arrogant and reckless. Trapped in a bottle for centuries, released in a distant time and place, forever trapped in a human body. Must also discover how to fit in with the rest of humanity.
- Shaalman: knowledge seeker, corrupted by power. Creator of the Golem. He plays a big role latter in the story.
- Rabbi Meyer: good and pious man, the educator of the Golem.
The plot did have some characters making stupid decisions, but it was in accord with their personality. What I found lacking though was the missed opportunity of more connections between the characters. Two examples:
- I was expecting Maryan to be the descendant of the the Bedouin girl who the Jinni first loved, and that's how she came into possession of his prison flask and also how she somehow knew there was something wrong with him.- Also, the spark Saleh "removed" from a Bedouin girl could have been the in her by the Jinni, and when they met, something different could have happened.
Complementing last book's review
- Bad dialogues
- Protagonist: Why can't I make this decision?
Whoever: Because you're afraid.
Protagonist: Oh yes, I am. Thanks. Now that I know I am afraid, I can overcome it and make good decisions again.
- Whiny main character
This broke the camels back. I can't stand the self doubt and depreciation anymore.
Read 0:46/09:46 8%
Just an under par book. No major offenses, but everything (character, plot, setting) is way too weak to be worth reading.
Major plot holes (how can you use a cellphone in the medieval age?) did not bother me as much as the rest.
The protagonist is given the power of a god (wizard) but he is too stupid to make anything useful out of it. He attracts the attention of the FBI, because he makes money out of thin air into his own account, and escapes to medieval England to avoid arrest. Because if you can change reality, this is the best course of action, of course.
If this was just a premise for the adventures of a man from the future in the past, I can take it. But it is not. When he arrives at the past, he finds another time traveler with the same powers as him that is willing to teach him how to become more powerful. This is as interesting as my nephew telling me about his day at school.
And that is the book. Dumb protagonist and uninteresting plot.
Read 3:23/10:14 33%
The author failed to create empathy for the characters, the world and the setting. The book starts, like many others, narrating the events of as story as if you already knew everything. There is no proper exposition, and when it does start, through the telling of each hero's individual story, I did not find it compelling.
Gorgon story was nice though.
Read 01:38/08:03 20%.
Late review, I already don't remember much about this book.
This is a very formulaic detective story with a sci-fi twist. I'm not much of a fan of detective stories, but this is competent and well written tale.
I didn't like much the robot bodies controlled by the mind, which is the whole sci-fi portion of the book. But again, it was a well written story. I was particularly bothered by the lack of contra arguments when the people that were forced to live like that decided to form a nation of their own and even preached that theirs were the preferred way of living. At no point it was mentioned how the poor were supposed to deal with this.
Barely readable, and only because it was a collection of short stories that I could listen to very sparsely.
The only redeemable story was the one with the Lich and the Dragons, and not because it was well written, but because it gives a taste of what kind of stores are possible to be told in the D&D world.
Not a perfect book, the characters are not very deep, but it has one of those good enough kind of stories. Military space fights are definitely not my cup of tea, but the tale is well written.
The dialog is kind of forced sometimes, the main character is too much of a text book paladin. “I will treat them as according to the Laws of War”. The author clearly makes an effort to make him look more human, but this is still a very politically correct kind of book.
So, it is the future, and everybody became stupid. After 100 years of war, there is no more veteran soldiers to pass around good fighting tactics. So they all just rush head on into battle, the kill them all and take no prisoners kind of brutality you would expect from an unruly mob. Also, the military has become a democracy, and commanding officers take a vote to decide on the fate of the fleet. Which is always to attack the enemy, despite the odds.
Then comes a hero from the past, a guy that has been idolatrized beyond measure by the contemporary citizens of the Alliance forces. He find himself surrounded by people who either sees him as a god or hate every single thing he do or say, seeing him as a menace to their plans... of dying charging mindlessly against the enemy.
I enjoyed the fight scenes because of the tactics employed and the kind of unique introduction of realism in the form of realistic distortion due to high speeds, and taking into account the time delay it takes to give orders to ships spread across the vastness of space.
Alright, the concept of a Dungeon Core is ridiculous. This is the second book that uses it and it is a complete disgrace.
This is another litRPG book that focuses on the computer/MMO aspect. ‘Farming' is a thing. If you're not familiarized with the concept, it consists of killing weaker monsters over and over again in order to gain more loot, sell it, gain levels, kill slightly stronger monsters, repeat.
The main character is the villain, and the author makes no effort to make him relatable.
read 0:30/13:19
Alright this is some of the worst things I have ever read. It is my 3rd book in the litRPG genre. I listened to nearly one hour of the book and I just couldn't believe how it fail to provide anything worth my interest.
The premise could have been interesting, perhaps. The protagonist is a dungeon, and it must self develop itself in order to feed its thirst. It does that by consuming things inside its domain. And the more it consumes, the bigger it gets, and more things can then be consumed.
Until where I stopped reading, the book is just a plain description of what is it like to be a dungeon. I would like to describe/paraphrase some of it here, but just the thought of it fills me with an immense feeling of boredom.
Read 0:54/12:32 7%
This review accurately describes my feelings towards this book. Read it, it is spoiler free: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1714173439?book_show_action=true&from_review_page=1
This book has a serious issue with causality. Things just happens, without any indication of what might have lead up to it. It also has no plot. Again, things just happen. There is no character development, they just do whatever.
I did like this book enough to give it 2 stars. It is very well written, prose wise, in spite off all its flaws. It is like if there is 5 traits an author have to master in order to write a good book, this one got 3 out of 5 in an acceptable level. She missed the class regarding the other ones.
What follows are some of the things I didn't like about the book that made it loose 1 star. I never expected to give it more than 3 anyway. Very few books earn that score on my ratings. Also, although there are some serious offenses, none of these reach my ‘must stop reading' meter, as it was the case with so many other books.
So, any semblance of a plot starts after 1/3 of the book. There is no single hint of what this book is about until then, other then time travel is involved. Here are some of the things that annoyed me mostly because they came completely out of the blue. The protagonist name is Max by the way, and she is a historian. Her antagonist name is Barclay and her love interest is Farrel.
- a blind date where the author decided that she had 3 female characters and 3 male characters, therefore, they should mate.- Max's boss says he is from the future, and that he loves her, and she shouldn't trust him. None of these facts makes any difference to the story.- after that revelation, Max has a new mission, to travel back to the Cretaceous period. Why this period? Why her? Because, history.- while on this assignment, her close colleague and friend of 5 years (5 years??) tries to rape her.- Max has a miscarriage and decided not to tell her lover. Two things (at least) stands out about this situation: 1) while telling her doctor about her lost fetus, she was overheard by everyone in the sick bay where she was being treated. Apparently, the walls are very thin and everyone hears everyone at every time. A big fuck you to doctor/patient confidentiality. - one of the persons being treated at the same time as her was Barkley. She hears that Max has no intention to tell anyone about the incident. So she tells Farrel about it, in order to hurt her. 2) when Farrel finds out about this, he has the most out of proportion reaction ever described. He accuses her of being a slut and an evil bitch. He then offers her to any man that wants to have her. Following that, one of the guards decide to take on that offer, and we have yet another attempt rape scene.- soon after that, Farrel says he is sorry. She says it is OK, because it was kind of her fault anyway.
As if the author then realized that she has to give some sort of explanation for the things that happens, some events are written in a most obvious way.
- when the crew is left to die in the Cretaceous period, Max says 'OK, now that we're back and safe, lets reorganize and go back with more fire power and rescue our friends'. Barkley says 'No they're dead'. Repeat this back and forth 4 times in a row. And Max still had no clue that she was lying. - In a rare case of plot/character development though, Max did had reasons to suspect her as she had already made the connection that in previous occasions where other historians have traveled to the past and were killed in suspicious situations, Barkley was the one that gave the dead members instructions that got them killed.- the character of the Muse keeps giving Max hints as to what she should do. Example: 'Max, do your laundry'. Repeated 3 times, then Max finds something in her laundry that saves the day.
Other things that bothered me:
- Out of place eroticism: there is maybe 5 sentences in the book that make it R rated.
- The most amazing discovery of the world, time travel, is in the hands of rednecks and teenager-behaving adults that constantly get into physical brawls with each other and gets hammered with beer. Because that is what some of the most brilliant minds of the world do.
- History is the most important thing in the world. If a precious book is about to take a bullet, you should throw yourself in front of it. You should even risk the lives of dozens of people and the whole time-travel initiative if the book is important enough.
- Historians are OBVIOUSLY the most suited people to travel in time. They receive some James Bond like intensive training and after a few weeks they're good to go.
- Ronan, another one of the antagonists, is always one step ahead of them. And nobody bothered to find out why.
- Max is a prominent historian, maybe one of the best in the country. After being fired from St. Marry, she finds no job, has no money and is about to die of starvation. She accepts the fact that she is about to die and does nothing about it.- History is alive. If you try to change it, it will try to kill you. In the end of the book there is kind of a way out of this. History is actually protected my a Muse, and she might be the one orchestrating these killings.- Ronan has a chance to kill max, but he is using a blaster, that takes time to charge. While it is charging, he is attacked and looses the opportunity.
So, I'm giving litRPG a chance. What I like about the RPG idea is the creativity aspect, how it can originate such fantastical histories with such little talent required.
The first book I read of this genre was Critical Failure, and I found it to be surprisingly funny, it showed great potential for other books in this category.
First of all, this book should be classified as litMMORPG. It is as if someone started playing WoW and then decided to write down everything that is happening. ‘Gained quest: kill wolves. You have 14 XP, 20 STR, 25 INT, ...'. This kind of text appears a lot and goes on for quite a while.
Well, the premise is kind of interesting. In a parallel dimension, a prison world full of god like demon creatures devise a plan to escape their cells. This plan relies on getting a massive amount of people to kind of agree to sell their souls to them. They decide that the fastest way to do this is through an online game, where there are so many people playing and for such a long time that they basically already gave their soul to the game. Also, nobody bothers to read EULAs, so when prompted, they accepted the deal in exchange for new areas to explore.
The story is too flat and dull however. I kept waiting to get something either funny or interesting to happen to keep my attention. While I'm still early on my journey through litRPG, I'm already thinking that satire was what I really liked about Critical Failure, and its not just any author/story that will do to get me interested in reading these kind of books.
Read 1:34/9:49 16%
I'm surprised how well rated this book is, but I guess people are just suckers for a good survival story, where someone persevere when everything seems doomed. For the fiction part of the book, you might as well watch the film, which faithfully represents the book.
What you get when reading the novel is... numbers. And a lot of them! I thing that 3/4 of the book is strictly about calculations, statistics, measurements, physics, chemistry, botany and what not. It is very technical stuff, although written in an accessible way. Think the TV series CSI. Most people have no clue what's going on when the expert meticulously explains what has happened, but hey can't stop watching it anyway.
It is not bad writing, just not compelling fiction. If I were to judge the 1/4 that does not relate to technical stuff, i would give this a 3 stars. This is sort of my kind of book really. I like technical stuff. But its just not what I am looking for when I'm reading for entertainment purposes.
The thing I like about the book is that it faithfully represents what would happen to a scientist when he is forced to survive in an improbable situation. Scientist are great people! They do not give up, they are intelligent, creative and logical thinking. the world is your oyster when you understand how the building blocks of reality work together to create anything.
A children's fable, suitable for adults as well. I would imagine this feels the same as Coraline.
I can't really say Neil Gaiman's books are bad, or that I don't like them. For one his prose is at the very least a bit compelling regardless of the story he is telling. Then his voice, he is the perfect narrator for his own stories.
That said, his stories are not usually my kind of stories. Like this one. It was just entertaining enough. I'm not into fables.
I will be writing my impressions of this book as I go along. I will classify the cliches that annoys me in a three point scale: minor, average and major. When too many cliches come together, or specially when paired with some others, they deserve a higher degree of dislike, but I will try to score them individually. Lets add a ‘+' sign to indicate that the cliche gets extra points when tied together with another one makes it worse.
First 25min
1) I heard about this book in a thread of suggestions for other books like Mercy Thompson. I picked it up with very low expectations. The fact that the protagonist is a sex goddess demoness gave me some hope, because it would be so terribly easy to make a cheesy, cliche filled young adult romance. I'm betting the author will surprise me.
2) Oh oh, I just started reading and a major red flag, one of my many hated cliches (major):
- “Protagonist girl gets harassed by bad guy. Authorities find out about the incident, the guy accuses the girl and she apologizes.”.
- This is the exactly opposite of what Mercy would do. She would describe in details the whole meeting with the guy, making it very clear she did nothing wrong.
As with any other thing that I dislike, it is all a matter of both degree and amount of exposure. If this turns out to be a minor part of the plot, it is fine.
3) Still in the very first few pages:
- the protagonist is an ordinary woman who works on a book shop, and loves reading. Even though she is immortal and has super powers, she lives her life just like every other person (minor+)
- Mercy pretty much doesn't have super powers, and she is a mechanic. Very different.
- she has a crush on a famous author who she is about to meet. But she can never be with him, because: (minor+)
- just getting near him will make him feel somewhat attracted to her (her succubus power)
- if they do get together, she will drain his energy when having sex (also a succubus power)
- Mercy love interest comes latter in the book if I'm not mistaken. And it even kind of caught me by surprise by the end of the book.
- the very fact that the book started with this screams of ‘romance' as the main theme of the story.
- Mercy handle this by shrugging off the handsome werewolves in her life. They were mostly background in the first book.
First 59min. I stopped reading the book, if you consider a dead obvious revelation in the first 10% of the book to be spoilers, don't read the covered section.
- the protagonist is addicted to coffee (minor)
- She meets a guy in line while attending her register. Due to their dialog, if this turns out to be the author she admires, I'll stop reading.- Bad guy dies. She is accused of his murder. (average)- The guy in line turns out to be the author. She realizes that she made a fool of herself because of her previous dialogue with him. This just marked the book as a romance for me, and I fully expect a significant part of the book will be dedicated to their relationship, how she whats him but can't be with him. How ordinarily he would dismiss her as just another groupie, but BECAUSE she didn't know who he was, he is fascinated with her. (MAJOR++++++, CRINGY++++++)
Read 1:01/11:28 9%
It's not that I hated the book, it was just that it was just too average. Nothing stood out. I would say some of the commentaries I saw here disagree with me on this. They say the author tried to be funny and failed. I did not detect an attempt to be funny. If it was supposed to be funny, then yes, this is a bad book.
I kept reading waiting to find something that triggers me, but not even that happened.
So, the zombie apocalypse is happening, and the protagonist has spent his whole life preparing for a situation like this. Not that any of this comes trough as something overly clever or anything. It is just a fact about the protagonist, same as saying that he is middle aged and married with 3 grown children.
I stopped reading by the time the protagonist started to notice some weird behavior among the zombies, but not even that was interesting!
Read 4:35/10:29 44%
This books reads as an excuse for relieving the golden age of the 80s. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just not my thing.
The year is 2044, and the creator of the Word of Warcraft equivalent died and left his fortune for whomever finds an Easter egg inside the virtual world he created.
Life is shitty in the future, and pretty much everyone uses it this virtual world to escape reality. Its popularity is so great that it even replaces a proper education in physical schools (which are pretty much gone from underfunding).
Anyway, in order to find the easter egg, people have to find clues in the pop culture of the 80s era. So people just start talking and dressing like the 80s. They watch 80s sitcoms, play 80s Atari games, etc. The person with most knowledge of the 80s culture will most likely be able to find the clues to discover the prize.
Read 1:50 / 15:41 12%
The book started off very well, with the encounter of an ordinary human lawyer named Nick Carter met with two alien beings. They represented some sort of intergalactic council that have decided that earth's music made it worthy of notice to the rest of the universe, and now wanted to purchase the license to all of its music.
The story started to crumble in the very next scene, where the protagonist met up with his cousin in a restaurant where an alien controlled parrot started to ask him what the two other ones wanted with him. This scene was very confusing and unamusing. Sudenly it was a common thing for aliens to come to Earth.
The next scene has him go home and invite his hot neighbor over, because she has a surprise birthday present to him. Listening to the author to describe how infatuated Nick was with her felt a little cringy and cliché. Then she said she had a new man in her life, that turned out to be a cat. And the present was actually just a bottle of wine. And then an alien (another one!) shows up and Nick acts as that is just the most normal thing in the world.
Those sort of things resembles a lot like The Hichhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is fine, but it was played out SO much better in Douglas Adams's book. Plus I did not like any of the humor so for far, besides the opening scene.
Read 1:31 / 9:53 15%
Being a horror book is already a no no for me, but this book received very good reviews so I decided to try it out.
Not only the exposition was too slow for me, some other things in the brief content I listened to tested my patience. The overly description of every detail and strange thing the protagonist experienced in his new apartment made me think that he author was going nowhere with that particular thread of story. It turned out I was right as the the review I refer to bellow says, ‘mystery for the sake of mystery'.
Also, what is so frightening about a ridiculously cheap apartment where the previous owner was uncomfortable living in and the neighbors are not so keen on their own apartments as well?
I agree with this review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/425855639?book_show_action=true. The things this guys rants about are all the thing makes me mad in a story as well.
Read 42:54 / 12:34 6%
Twilight for adults.
When a vampire appears, and he is describe as the most beautiful thing the protagonist has ever seen, and is carefully described as being perfect, with a reputation of seducing pretty much anyone he/she comes into contact with, you know where the book focus will be.
Read the top comments about the book, they pretty much nail it.
Read 1:30/23:57 6%
Another great book, the thing that bothered me the most was the same as previous books: once you have a being with infinite power you have to make awkward excuses to continue to have an interesting plot (see Matrix 2 for instance).
minor Also, with Fae able to absorbing energy of power users that die near her, and a group of dozens of power users going to a battle to the death with an enemy of unimaginable power, it seemed very unfortunate that she didn't go along BOTH times that happened.
This book is one of those 101 on how to write. The scenes are immersive, described through the use of multiple senses. The characters are brought to life with plenty of details and introspective dialogs. They are fully fleshed out, with unique personalities, narrated in an accessible language.
The exposition is perfectly paced. The plot evolves evenly throughout the book. It is interesting enough and it makes sense. The characters make sense. The villain is somewhat of a cliché, the ‘well meaning but cruel bad guy' and so are some of the characters, but that doesn't diminish the quality of the story.
The setting captures perfectly the spirit of the beginning of 20th century. It blends magic organically into the world, without being something over the top or downplayed. Major events in history of mankind are slightly changed to take into account the discovery of magic. Hitler for instance was a powerful necromancer, that used the resurrected bodies of his soldiers to keep fighting until their bones are shattered to dust. Tesla was an exceptional ‘cog', a super scientist of sorts, individuals who excel in a field of knowledge. So was Browning, the famous firearms designer, who is also an important character of the book.
Magic by the way is also explained in a very sensible manner, even rational I would say. Most of the magical people have just some minor magical affinity, with only a few developing their powers to a significant amount.
The reason I don't rate this book higher is that the plot in not exceptional/aligned enough to my interests. It is somewhat tame in most aspects (weird, fantastic, intellectual), so much that I would recommend this book to ‘normal' readers. Normal being somewhat averse to fantasy.
What follows is a minor criticism in the grand scheme of things:
- Your enemy is the most powerful human being that ever lived. He is immortal, you tried bombs, electrocution, fire, drowning, decapitation with the sharpest magically enhanced blade. Nothing worked. He haven't even got a scratch, gasped or dropped a sweat. This guy then gets a hold of the most powerful weapon ever created. It is world reaching ray that can destroy the entire US East coast with one single use, seconds after it is activated. He is about to use it for that very same purpose, and following that, he will threat the rest of the world into submission.- One guy has an idea to defeat him. But in order for him to execute his plan he must break an oath of never disobeying his superiors. He goes even further, he kills one of them. But his plan is a success. The enemy is dead, right at the last second where the US would be vaporized. Millions would have died.- You find about about his plan. Well, because he told you. You then decide he is a traitor and kills him as a reward. Never mind that by doing so, you act as judge and executioner. You also just violated the same oath he has taken, which also somewhat includes "don't execute other members of the order whenever you see fit'.- Now, I would call that a very stupid logic reasoning, most people would call it justice. That's besides the point. It is OK for stories to have such divisive characters performing actions that makes us question about its ethics and argue among ourselves. What it is NOT OK is for it to have NO CONSEQUENCE WHATSOEVER! Did any of the characters asked if killing one to save many is the right thing to do? What about cold blooded killing the culprit for said murder?
- This was a lost opportunity for plot and character developing.