Steve
My god did this book miss the mark for me. Maybe I just wasn't in the right frame of mind, but reading this was tortuous. It took me ages to work out what was going on and, although it picked up in the final 20%, at no point did I care about the motivations of anyone involved. I almost DNF'd this multiple times.
Granted, the world-building obviously took a lot of effort, but maybe some time making it a little less opaque would have been better.
I was going to give this a 2, but I'll settle for a generous 3, since the universe building is at least unique.
Maybe if I had read this in my teens, when reading The Silmarrilion seemed like a fun way to pass the time, this might have caught my imagination more. Unfortunately, now, this bored me; there are only so many flowery phrases and turgid metaphors that I can handle per paragraph.
Also, it may not have helped that I listened to the audio book. The intonation of the narrator was like nails on a blackboard; every sentence was delivered as if it were the finest, most beautiful prose, which might have been ok if this were poetry, but it is not.
I'll leave this as two stars, since I can imagine there is an audience for this (obviously, given the book's reputation), but unfortunately that is not me.
Within the first few pages I was already reading this in Cillian Murphy's Brummie accent - and that was before I discovered that this was inspired by Peaky Blinders. In fact, inspired is probably an understatement; this is essentially Peaky Blinders relocated to Anhk-Morpork. Having said that, don't let that comparison mislead you into thinking this is humorous. This is very much hard people doing hard, violent things. Dark as it is however, it is still a highly propulsive story. Very much looking forward to the next in the series.
Great story with a E.T./Stranger Things feel that fairly zips along. Looking forward to the next volume...
Although I entirely agree with some of the other reviews regarding the quality of the writing (this is very much “tell, don't show”), after about 30% I was absolutely hooked. I think this is chiefly due to enjoying the company of the characters; few of them are inherently “bad” and they largely come across as fairly normal people dealing with very unusual circumstances.
Despite all the faults (which are easy to find it you are so inclined), I have to say that this was one of my favourite books of recent times.
DNF. I suspect this is fully on me, however I just could not get into these tales. Yes they are lyrical, but I constantly felt like I was missing something. Most of the tales just seem to end without any conclusion; almost like the author gave up (or assumed the reader could complete the rest of the story themselves). My guess is that there is some context that I am missing; a bit like reading Animal Farm without knowing anything about communism.
In any event, once I got to the racist depiction of a Chinese character I gave up. If I'm going to be confused, I don't also want to have to put up with racism (I am guessing this is excused as being “of its time”).
I'll give this 3 stars on the assumption that I am missing something (as evidenced by all the 5 star reviews this is getting).
This is somewhere between a 3-4 star book, so I am giving it the benefit of the doubt. The premise is ultimately pretty bleak, so I am not sure I would recommend this to anyone looking for something light, however it gets its bleakness across effectively so I can't say it is not well written (albeit from an essentially male perspective; I suspect female readers may feel somewhat less charitable as it is a fairly one-sided view of life).
4 stars for the romance, 3 for the fantasy. The beginning and end of this are a fun, involving love story, however the middle third is a mess of improbable coincidences and people who only reveal things when it is convenient for plot. Overall, a fun read but there is an awful lot of disbelief that needs to be suspended.
An interesting mix of Pinocchio, the Wizard or Oz and The Matrix. I'm not sure I entirely buy the central romance (it felt a little too simplistic), but it was a nice adventure (with some fun, snappy dialogue from the supporting characters).
After reading the author's note at the end, it is clear that this is exactly the book he wanted to write: fast, fun and light. Having said that, while reading it, I did sometimes start to get a little tired of how everyone had a snappy one-liner comeback for every. single. event. It was a little like spending several hours/days of Ryan Reynolds doing his shtick - fun in small doses, but eventually a little wearing. So, if you're looking for character development or depth, go elsewhere, but if you simply want something distracting, this does the job effectively.
Frankly, this blew me away. The story is fabulously nuanced, with your allegiances varying wildly from page to page (the final stages can give you whiplash). The thought that has obviously gone into imagining the culture and development of Kern's World is incredible. Needless to say, before this, I would have assumed you were nuts if you had suggested that a spider's sacrifice could bring tears to my eyes. This has gone straight onto my “recommend” list.
Much like As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, this is the story of someone who makes up their mind to travel from point A to point B and is then witness to Events. Coincidentally, both books capture the same period, set against the backdrop of the growth of fascism in Europe in the 1930's. While Laurie Lee's novel presents a more working-man view of events, Patrick Leigh Fermor starts out from a more comfortable background, combining village life with hobnobbing with the “great and the good” of European society.
From other reviews, I see that others have found the prose a little long-winded at times. For those who might be put off by this, I can strongly recommend the audiobook, which easily carried me over the slower sections.
Having read completed the trilogy, the combined effect is one of having completed a great journey, with the experience of a detailed snapshot of Europe at a specific moment in time.
This feels like a myth. You feel like you join the story after the beginning and leave before the end. That’s not to say there isn’t a coherent, and reasonably satisfying, beginning, middle and end, however it does leave a lot unsaid (or hinted at). This isn’t Tolkien, which is not necessarily a bad thing. If anything, this feels like an Ur-myth for the bildungsroman trope.
A book of two radically different halves. One is the story teased by the blurb; an engrossing, horrifying ride through an endless, pointless war. The other, which felt like the majority, is a wandering, muddy story that seems to serve no purpose other than as a frame for the more interesting tale. The ending was very predictable, so much so that I was eventually reading diagonally simply to get to the big reveal.
The writing also feels very dated, particularly most of the female characters. As with most things in the book, the best written woman is in the Felix storyline, with very strong overtones of the Rita character in All You Need Is Kill (a.k.a. Edge of Tomorrow/Live Die Repeat), so much so that I wouldn't be surprised if this was the inspiration for the Japanese novel.
Frankly, the disparities between the two halves of the book make this feel like it was written by two different people.
I'm not sure whether I'd recommend this book. It is true that the Felix plot line is a classic, but there is an awful lot of padding around this.
Woah. This book hit so many of my personal buttons that I don't quite know what I thnk at this point. On a superficial level it is a simple “first love” story, which is sweetly and realistically told. Around this tale is woven a tapestry of experiences from childhood to early adulthood, all framed by a struggle over the difference between personal faith and organized religion. The fact that the story is semi-autobiographical adds greater power.
This is going to be a book that stays with me for a long time.
It's fine. I think this might be a case where the audiobook performance got in the way of the story. John Lee has an idiosyncratic style, which apparently works for many people but not for me; a bit too monotone, with an oddly portentous intonation.
Update: after listening to other audiobooks narrated by John Lee, I think this is probably an outlier. For some reason this reading is much flatter than his other work.
This was fine. I’m struggling to say much more. A girl hunts with a (admittedly very large) bird; things happen. Stakes are not too high. It was short, and it got where it was going efficiently, but I don’t think it will stay with me.
Apparently two completely different books welded together without any editing oversight: the medieval portion of the story is engrossing and informative; the tortuous “futuristic” portion of the story feels like it was written in the 1950s (were mobile telecoms and computer networking really so unforeseeable when this was actually written in the early 90s?). You could have stripped out all of the Oxford story and been left with an excellent - much shorter - story about surviving the middle ages.
Although this contains all the usual Pratchettian asides, at the usual standard, this is let down slightly by the plot, which is a little wishy-washy in places. in addition, the synopsis suggests that the story is largely about Magrat however she soon fades into the background and this becomes a Granny W. novel (not that there's anything wrong with that, but it would have been nice for Magrat to geta chance to shine).
Anyhow, the initial roadtrip stages of the story are the most interesting but things become a little less interesting when they finally reach their destination.
So, it's a Pratchett novel, so you can't go far wrong if you're a fan, however I'm not sure this is one for those who aren't already invested in the world.
3.5 stars. The literary equivalent of a hamburger. Would go well with a long-haul flight.
Continuing my trend of enjoying superhero books that are less about superheroes and more about the characters and world around them. In this case, most of the heroics have already happened and Mitchell Hundred is now dealing with being Mayor of New York and the dilemmas and responsibilities this entails. Much of the story is told in flashback, partly to provide backstory to the mystery of how he got his powers, which he now rarely uses, and partly to frame decisions that he must make as Mayor.
Apparently there are 5 volumes in this series, so I hope this can keep it up for the entire run.
I think this might be a 4 star plot with 3 star writing. The story is an imaginative mixture of sci-fi and fantasy, which actually does posit an interesting solution to faster-than-light travel. On the other hand, the constant restating of the plot is annoyingly distracting (although I am now belatedly aware that this was originally published in instalments, hence the episodic nature). This would be a far better book if some time had been taken to edit the story for this omnibus edition, rather than simply mashing the episodes together. I am tempted however to keep reading the series.