Kake

I like this book (and have read it three times) but it really is a bit of a slog. Pared down to its essence, it's a wonderfully imaginative look at how the story of Jesus might really have unfolded with no need for belief in the supernatural. The downside is that all of this is intercut with pages and pages of unnecessary background that someone with a deep academic interest in the field might have enjoyed but for me just got in the way of the story. Having said that, you really honestly can just skip those bits and still follow what's going on. I just wish the author had edited himself a bit more.

DNF: This really feels like a spoof, but I don't think it's meant to be. I read to the end of the (fairly lengthy) Kindle sample, and it was just exhausting. A new character and setting every few pages, clunky writing with overly-ambitious word choices, and heavy dollops of worldbuilding thudding down all over the place.

(There are many not-great things about this book, and if I was reading it for the first time now I might not like it at all. But I liked it a lot when I first read it as a teenager, and I still like it now, though I roll my eyes at much of it.)

Clear and well-explained, with plenty of examples and a minimum of jargon.

DNF: This is very confusingly written. It feels more like a first draft than a finished novel.

From one point of view, this is an incredibly useful book that all local historians should read. It gave me several ideas for new projects, two of them so immediately actionable that I've already started on them. Although the author and many of the examples are American, as a British local historian I still found it very useful.

From another point of view, this is an instrument of white supremacy. It almost completely ignores the fact that the land now known as the USA had a long history before white people arrived, and has only a few passing mentions of the people whose land was invaded and stolen.

I read the second edition (from 2003) and there is now a third edition available, so I do hope there have been improvements in the latter aspect.

I must admit this was a bit of a slog in the middle part. Many aspects of the stories are somewhat repetitive, and there's only so much heterosexual longing a person can take (there's one story where literally the only things that happen are: man and woman see each other and fall instantly in love, man and woman hang out together twice, man and woman die of love because they can't be together). It picks up toward the end though.

This is a decent enough read when you're in the mood for something that won't stretch your brain at all (and that's the mood I'm in right now, which is why I plan to start the sequel right away).

I did find it a bit disappointing that even though a lot of the narrative takes place in a galley or in restaurants, all of the food mentioned was really basic, uninteresting, and sparsely described.

I also thought it was a shame that almost all the characters used every moment of their spare time trying to make more money. There wasn't even any explanation of why they wanted to do this - there just seemed to be a blanket assumption that of course everyone always wants more money.

This is not a book to deeply engage your brain. The main character can apparently do nothing wrong, and the worldbuilding is very shallow. It's fine if you just want to rub your eyes over some words, though, and I do intend to continue reading the sequels. Just a couple of caveats.

Firstly, for a series revolving around trading, the economics often make very little sense (e.g. the subplot where a beginner crocheter could create goods that sold for orders of magnitude more than the raw materials — in the real world, their shawls would have less value than the unused yarn). Also high-end tailoring doesn't work like that — they don't just magically find you ready-made garments that fit you perfectly!

I do generally try to ignore things like the above, since no author can be an expert on everything, and the ability to suspend one's disbelief is an important part of being able to enjoy a book, but it does feel much worse here than average.

Secondly, there's a lot of going on about how great people's bodies are, and how none of the crew are fat. This is not fun stuff to read and I wish the author hadn't included it.

DNF: Nobody should be expected to read that many similes.

DNF: the Kindle sample got me partway through Chapter 2, by which point it was very clear that I wasn't going to get on with the author's writing style — just far too many literary flourishes getting in the way of clarity.

It's not a badly written book, but I found it pretty tedious. A man in a pub told me I should read it, and I wish he hadn't.

I love the premise of this series - a portal to universes with different physical laws - and have enjoyed the short stories and novella in the same setting, but I felt this one was longer than it should have been. It really dragged toward the end, with the final action/tension section seeming to go on for ever. “Palmer was still at it.” Yes, yes, he was, and I wish he wasn't.

DNF: A lot of this feels more voyeuristic than anthropological, and I'm not a fan of that.

DNF: Got to the end of the Kindle sample and everything so far had consisted of rather cliched rape fantasy, which I don't find incredibly interesting.

DNF: got 15% of the way in. Just not really interested in reading about people being horrible to each other right now.

DNF: The Kindle version has text so large that even on the lowest font-size setting I find it uncomfortable to read. I contacted the publisher about this and they said they couldn't change it, so I guess I'm not going to be able to read it.

DNF: I read to the end of the Kindle sample, but there was too much infodumping for my taste, and the main character seemed really judgy.

I found this OK but rather insubstantial. Several key parts of the plot seemed not to quite work, and the worldbuilding was very thin.

I found this collection of short stories a bit disappointing after reading the author's excellent novel Hellspark. They're fairly standard “classic” SF, with the main exception being that they have a reasonable proportion of female characters instead of the usual bunch of men plus occasionally one (1) woman.

I found one of the stories (“Love Our Lockwood”) completely incomprehensible, as it seems to be a satire on something to do with voting in America, but I couldn't work out what the something was. And several of the others focus on overly simplistic solutions to complex political problems, which isn't really my thing.

DNF: It's not the book's fault, but right now a story about people having to be constantly on their guard is just way too stressful for me.

This is definitely one for the hard-core romance fans. There's some nicely evocative worldbuilding, and the characters are three-dimensional people. But nothing happens in it apart from the romance - which is absolutely fine, it's just not for me.

DNF: Got to the end of the Kindle sample and was just finding the writing too bland to continue. Very interesting premise, but very little real feel of the world in the writing.

I did like this book rather a lot overall, and until I got to the distressing bit described below under a spoiler cut, I was sure I'd be re-reading it in the future. I wasn't hugely keen on one of the subplots, specifically the way Larry kept harrassing Cecily, and the way people kept letting him. But mainly I found the description of Keith's death to be very disturbing, and I'm still trying to get it out of my mind.

I love everything about this book except the horrible, shocking ablism that shows up in one of the sub-plots. I intend to re-read it and pretend those parts don't exist.