jackson

This is a hard book to rate for me.

I loved the first half. It incrementally builds out a very interesting world filled with neat sci-fi concepts, exploring lots of interesting ideas. Meanwhile, it gives us lots of time to get to know our main character, how she thinks, and the characters around her. The characters, sci-fi concepts, and philosophical musings make this section of the book a fantastic read.

In the second half, once she starts waking other humans up, it became much less interesting to me. The cast of characters grows so quickly that (understandably) few are given much page time to understand them. But either because of the size of the cast, or for other reasons, the other humans all fell flat for me - 1-dimensional and uninteresting. Even our main character gets less interesting, as we have less time with her thoughts, so her actions start to feel less realistic, less relatable. Meanwhile, a bland political plot unfolds with a bland romantic sub-plot. Lacking compelling plot or characters by the end, I was ready for it to be done and left disappointed. 

(listened to audiobook) The audiobook narration, as can be expected from Fry, was great. 

The telling of the stories was entertaining and generally enhanced by Fry's commentary. However, much of the book didn't take the form of coherent narratives and occasionally was just a recounting of names, relationships, etymologies, or other facts outside of narrative structure. These parts, for me, detracted from the overall experience.

 Pretty good and makes a compelling and important argument about what to do about the direction technology is developing.

My only complaints:
- The tone felt akin to an armchair-expert uncle telling you about something
- It entirely lacked citations. Maybe that's standard for this kind of book, and I doubt he had many/any inaccuracies, but he made a lot of statements about things that happened or how things are that could use references. 

Wow. Excellent dystopic sci-fi. Incredibly well written, with great ideas shining light on truths about reality that are hard to ignore. Like all good sci-fi, has ideas in it that will stay with you and leave you thinking.

This review doesn't really do it justice. Look - it's just an amazing book. You've gotta be ready for some tough stuff, but it's very worth it.

Also, there are some interesting parallels to the Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons, I wonder if it in any way inspired some of this.

This is a fantastic book. So well written. So thoughtful, so interesting. Deals with important concepts through a useful and engaging lens.

A cool coloring-in of the happenings around events from the main books, and well-written as always, but it was tough to stay engaged. It seemed like each time I was really getting invested in each story and it's new characters, it ended and was time for the next one. Maybe collections of short stories just aren't for me.

One writing device employed a couple of times here that I thought was really neat - a viewpoint that moves with an object or logical chain of events instead of just one character. Abercrombie does a great job of quickly getting the reader into the new character's viewpoint, and the overall effect is quite interesting.

Pretty decent, but not amazing. A good, compelling read with a good heart, but there really isn't much going on here. The writing tone doesn't quite land - feels like it's trying to be casual and funny, which it kind of is, but not really. As far as sci-fi goes, the core concept is pretty cool, but compared to other sci-fi, the envisioning of the future is pretty shallow and doesn't feel very ‘real'. Apparently 2080 is largely just like today but with a couple additional pieces of cool tech. Still, looking past that, it's a pretty good story in an interesting setting.

Man, what a boring book.

What a beautiful book. The prose is poetic, but not in an annoying way. The world feels realistic and immersive. The characters are engaging and understandable. The story is tragic and beautiful. Very well written. If you loved Circe you should like this too, as long as two dudes being gay isn't a problem for you.

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. But it was just a drag to read. It didn't help that its plot was very slow, nor did it help that the characters frequently did and said things for inexplicable reasons (inexplicable even to themselves, it seems). The real kicker was that it lacked (to me) the beautiful prose that I've typically loved so much in Le Guin's books.

A seemingly endless slog of flashy, gritty descriptions and names meant to bedazzle the reader with their seeming creativity, obscuring rather than revealing the probably interesting world they're attempting to communicate.

Maybe a good book, but the writing style did not agree with me.

Fantastic book. Very well written.

Many books that tackle tales spanning hundreds or thousands of years struggle to keep the characters engaging as they rotate in and out. The characters end up flat and uninteresting. No so in Circe. In spite of the vast scope of its tale, the characters and plot stay engaging throughout.

The worldbuilding in Circe is excellent. Circe really brings to life the world of Greek mythology, but doesn't hit you over the head with facts, details, and names. Instead, it drops bits and pieces of lore as it's relevant to the main character, building up the world bit by bit. This is the kind of worldbuilding you expect from great fantasy novels, but applied to the world and tales of Greek mythology.

Very good book. While a break in theme and pacing from the other Earthsea books, Tehanu is still steeped in Le Guin's signature writing style that says so much using such simple, elegant language. It's a thoughtful book dripping with insight, wisdom, and philosophy. It wrestles with questions of gender and identity, while rounding out the world of Earthsea, giving the perspective of the ‘ordinary folk'.

Don't expect a page turner. But do expect gentle, kind wisdom and thoughtfulness.

This is a book with all the hallmarks of Abercrombie's writing, except for a very critical one: an intriguing plot. Otherwise, the writing is engaging, the characters are unique and well-developed, and it's all infused with the gritty anti-heroic Abercrombie magic throughout. But it wasn't a compelling read for me.

He did something interesting by placing the entirety of the book over the course of a few days of a battle. I respect him for trying. But ultimately, it was not a compelling read, and from about the middle of the book onwards, it was a true slog to finish.

Beautifully creative world/setting with an interesting interplay between sci-fi and religion, with a good mythic story overall.

But:

The storytelling is disjointed
The characters are difficult to keep straight
The characters don't feel real
Sometime the prose doesn't give enough info to know what's happening. Other times it's excessively verbose or flowery.

All of this makes it a very non-compelling read