Nick Rankovic
Very YA, with all the angst. But also very sweet and sad. The funny and quirky narrative helps with the moodiness and tragedy that simmer under the surface, waiting to swallow you. The structure was rather simple and somewhat predictable but it's OK. I cried several times. NOT the best book to be reading when your pet is in hospital.
DNF. After previously reading and greatly enjoying “Gnomon” by the same author, I was eager to dive into their earlier works. Had to give up after almost three months of not being drawn in. It is a fun book overall but the writing here had tangents which had asides which had more tangents... The choice to skip back in time to the MC's childhood in chapter 2 after the big setup in chapter 1 was a little offputting. Additionally, new characters kept getting introduced on almost every other page, often never to be mentioned again as we move on to yet another quirky scene. I don't think it was time wasted, but there are plenty of other more engaging books to read.
2/3(+) of the book is great! ~1/3 is terrible.
The “horror” elements can be a little in your face but the writing style is just the right amount of depth and speed. I was eager to find out the author's version of vampires, which are akin to eldritch horrors. And then suddenly on page 160/500ish one of the two main characters has a flashback to when he was 13, having to stay over at his “weird aunt”'s place. She'd been recently widowed and is exploring her sexuality again. Then suddenly there's an orgy with her, a “beastly” man, and of course her two 14, 15 year old daughters who are described on four pages how much they're “having fun” with the beastly man and then are ordered to get the MC to join in. The scene felt completely out of place, was supposedly there to “explain” his sexual hangups as an adult, where he refuses to be seduced by a farmer's daughter, who simply must have him. I don't know if I'm a prude but I don't get how did certain authors get away with these things. Have not seen a mention of this on other Goodreads review so felt obliged to note it here. I felt angry at the author, since I was thoroughly enjoying the book so far, and I refused to pick it up again, leading to a way longer reading time than expected.
The last part of the book was... full of interesting choices in a different way. The protagonist turns into a Jesus-figure with superpowers, while the antagonist's ultimate fate doesn't really make sense when you think about it.
Overall, not sure what to think, I think the book could've gone through another round of editing
Don't get me wrong, this is a good book, BUT... I was not prepared for the endless meandering with the plot, in a very atmospheric setting. It took me 3 months to finish this quite short book because of it! The ending was not very satisfying to me, unless I chose to interpret the story as told by an unreliable narrator. Speaking of the narrator, really happy to see a woman in her 60s as a protagonist.
The writing however was a pleasure to read and I will look into more books by this author.
Should perhaps be 3/5 stars, but I love birds, even more so than my cat does, so four it is. A fictional account on the life of Gwendolen “Len” Howard, a British naturalist and musician, but really the book is about the birds.
Like every book based on someone's actual life, the plot is iffy, and it's all about the journey. And the birds. The focus shifts between them and Len's life, as both her and the reader develop quite an attachment to the rascals.
A delightfully macabre retelling of Madam Tussaud's life. One thing to note is that since this is still the tale of an actual human life, as eventful as it was, the story doesn't really follow a traditional story structure. Which meant that I made a long pause in the reading around the middle of the book due to its pacing. But once I picked the book back up, it didn't take long to dive back in - Edward Carey knows what to do with words.
Torn between 3 and 4 stars, since the writing was top-notch, regardless of the midway slog. I never realised how fascinating and eventful Madam Tussaud's life was.
Dear Catherynne, I really liked your other novel [b:Silently and Very Fast 12887497 Silently and Very Fast Catherynne M. Valente https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1318737963l/12887497.SX50.jpg 18040996] and was hoping for something along these lines. But instead I got a lot of lengthy, barely coherent, nonsensical, occasionally funny but ultimately unsatisfying and exhausting drivel, something that you might find funny the first time, and I guess the second, but definitely not the third and forth and so on, counting up to the number of Elakhsian moons of Sagrada and beyond, and definitely not every bloody time. This was just my feeble attempt to replicate the method of madness, please don't do this again to this reader, thank you.
Some truly provocative ideas about consciousness, identity and the future. The execution however was lacking and could not possibly compare to the intellectual masterpiece that was [b: Blindsight 48484 Blindsight (Firefall, #1) Peter Watts https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386924412s/48484.jpg 47428] . At times it felt like I was reading a work of fan fiction of the first book, however it was still worth it.Now I'm off to drown my existential dread with alcohol.
This took a while to read, partially because I can't binge read short story collections, where each story stands and fills a space inside your head, and you just can't move on quickly. It was worth it!
Going through the list of stories and picking out personal favourites proved to be very difficult. Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio did a really good job. The following stuck the most for me, either for their writing style or the story itself:
Blood by Roddy Doyle (starts the anthology off wonderfully/gruesomely)
The Stars Are Falling by Joe R. Lansdale
Juvenal Nyx by Walter Mosley
Catch and Release by Lawrence Block
Let the Past Begin by Jonathan Carroll
Stories by Michael Moorcock
(to be frank, I didn't really like the Gaiman and Sarrantonio stories :p)
With that said, I will definitely look up many of the authors in this book.
A book from my teenagehood, didn't realise it's part of a trilogy. I originally read it as a recommendation by the creators of one my favourite PC games of all time – Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. There are seeds of some really good ideas here, and you can see the motifs carried over from Herbert's “Dune” days, featuring god-like beings and sciency mysticism. It is a book with many, many characters and Herbert does a good job of getting us acquainted with them and keep it all in sync. Overall however, I was left disappointed and quit the book.First of all, the gold-like central character was very unbelieveable, but I had this problem with [book:God Emperor of Dune 42432] as well. The timeline was very confusing and not clear. The characters act unreasonably and enter unnecessary conflict. I could go on.What was most grating was realising why my teenage mind would love this book. There is disproportionate attention being paid to every sensual physical details of female characters, while male characters are usually introduced by name only, or by a brief summary. This was especially jarring as it undermines the raison d'etre of most of the characters, since they are all meant to be part of a scientific/military expedition/colonisation effort, and reducing them to walking sex dolls I guess I'm just jaded at using genre writing to cover up for missing characterisation and a meaningful story. I can't believe I just wrote that in a review for a Frank Herbert novel...
