zilver
after sitting with it for (quite) a while and finishing the rest of the series i???m upping the rating for this one! 4 stars thank u becky chambers
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3-3.5
???I know that if I am a person, I have no purpose by base, but I'm starving for one.???
This book wasn't bad, not bad at all. I think the part where I struggled a bit was also the part of me that had gotten attached to the crew of the Wayfarer and wasn't quite ready to let them go (and the additional part where I hadn't realised this wasn't actually a direct continuation from #1 until I started the book). I would've loved to see them in a cameo in this story, to make me feel a little less homesick.
I did really enjoy the philosophy of this story. What constitutes a person? How does an intelligent AI differ from “actual” people? Aren't we all just lines of codes, programmed differently? And it was really cool to have one of the protagonists actually be that AI and show the internal struggles that come with that.
All my love to Owl and Blue and Tak.
This book was such a surprise, to be honest? I wasn't sure what I expected but it wasn't this and I loved every second of it. Quick shoutout to the cover and title for both being beautiful as well.
I think this book is a great way of showing all the things sci-fi can be. Because yes, the story plays out on a space ship in deep space and there's talk of Mars and aliens and wormholes, but at the same time the story is for a large part about the characters (and boy do I love my character-based stories) and their relationships and their lives. And the characters are just... they were so diverse and complex and rich and all of them had interesting stories and histories to tell? I loved the way the non-human species felt so distinctly not human and they were given room to be their own people with their own cultures. It was a big relief that we didn't only get a human's pov, but that the pov's switched throughout and just trying to experience your own species through someone else's eyes was so cool and eye-opening and funny.
I'm so curious to see what the next book brings (like honestly I have no idea so that'll be cool to see)
last book in the series and arguably the smallest one at that, scope-wise. it takes place in just about a single dome with a small array of characters, all from vastly different spaces (haha because they???re in space. get it?) i think all in all nice way to structure a series of books about the immensity of the universe.
4.5 a grim fairy tale as neil gaiman loves to write. i've read his american gods and enjoyed it, but this book definitely brought back more feelings and memories of reading the graveyard book as a kid. it's really fascinating how good he is at making a tale that is definitely for grown ups sound so much like it is a tale for a child. or by a kid. or both? i love how subtly the theme of memories and what we want or should remember was woven into it. and i'll say - it wasn't until the epilogue that the book really got to me. i really enjoyed it before that, but the epilogue was when it really hit. Spoilerthe image of the main character returning to the hempstock farm throughout his life to remember and find solace and courage to return home, and to forget again was just really beautiful to me.and, VERY important to mention: the illustrated version is absolutely gorgeous. i know everyone is raving about the audiobook because it's read by gaiman himself (and i can't say i'm not curious) but to hold this book in your hands and see the images spread out before you is an Experience as well.
lost me for a bit halfway through when the things i expected to happen kept not happening - which, while also a good, interesting things, also meant things i really WANTED to read about weren???t happening either. but it got me back at the end. ily spiders (not in my house though. only when you???re cat-sized and intelligent and don???t want to eat me)
3 - 3.5 felt like she's still getting her footing in this one. definitely some magical bits but as a whole it lacked that all encompassing feeling when it came to the characters and world, which is what i love so much about her other work. makes me so curious about the singer's gun!
third read: the last chapters are really just like [tears all the way down] but in the best way
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second read: i cannot stress enough how much this book means to me i don???t think i???ll ever stop thinking about it
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first read: wow
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“Hell is the absence of people you long for.”
I am just so. Stunned by the beauty of this book. It's extremely difficult to describe, as I found when I tried to explain to my dad what it was about and what exactly made it so special.
I think the best I can do is say something about the feeling it gave me while reading it. The beauty of this book lies in its quietness. Like I wrote in my update, it made me feel like everything is connected in the least earthshaking way possible. Meaning that while this is a book that revolves around intertwining story lines, none of it felt like it meant something in a bigger sense. There was no big plot, no larger-than-life destinies. And yet everything felt meaningful.
It made me feel quiet and settled. I felt like I could make a home in this book despite it not being very long. I felt like I did make a home in this book. It's hard to explain. I guess just read it. It's the first apocalypse story I've absolutely loved in... years, probably (and there's no zombies!!! wow !!!1)
tl;dr just read this book please you deserve to read it and it deserves to be read
this book. oh boy, this book.
“I mean, when do we start feeling like the world belongs to us?” “I don't know,” I said. “Tomorrow.”
as anyone who knows me in the slightest can tell you: i have terrible memory. doesn't matter if it's concerning my favourite book, i'll have forgotten half of its details within the week. it's horrible, i hate it, i'm working with brain trainers to fix it but y'know, sometimes it is what it is.
anyway, point is: i knew i loved this book when i first read it - i'd given it 5 stars, put it on my special bookshelf, all that jazz. but at the same time it felt a little distant, that love. it was there but it wasn't really tangible, if that makes sense?
rereading this book was like coming home to an all encompassing comfort. i felt like crying for half of it, but in the best way. the immense love for these characters, their relationships, their story that benjamin alire s??enz has worked into this book are palpable in every word, every piece of dialogue. this is a story that came from the heart, and that's why it's made a place in my heart so effortlessly.
it's just in everything: he extreme gentleness s??enz adopts to describe complicated, conflicting, feelings, the rarity of seeing teenagers in (ya) literature have a set of wonderfully understanding and still complex parents, the way the narrative is allowed to unspool and the characters are allowed to find their way without any rush.
this book meant something to me in a very intrinsic way that's difficult to explain but easy to feel. i genuinely think it meant more to me this second time around. it hit me in all the right places. it made me want to lie down in the desert and watch the stars and wait for the rain. it made me feel understood and less alone.
(ps. i highly recommend listening to this wonderful playlist while reading)
enjoyed this a lot more than the first book, actually! i think that one lacked some depth to the characterisation and relationships that this book provided. it also felt like the plot in the first book was just there to Be Plot and Be Conflict but otherwise sort of unclearly linked to the rest of what the book was doing. this one felt a lot more cohesive, each character playing their own part in a larger story.
it also really highlighted each character???s sort of??? core being and allowed that part of them to shine through. i???m thinking thaniel???s steadfastness (the way he trusts mori but also never just let???s his own vision of things be swept under the rug (except for One Particular Thing)) and mori???s dedication (it???s sort of killing him to have this ability but he???ll use it anyway).
it was also a lot more achey than the first book. very ???i???ve seen you die in the future and am actively feeling that grief you while you???re still alive but also trying to prevent it from happening but every time i see you i see a ghost.??? love me a book that aches. love me a book that uses ghosts to ache.
4-4.5 keeping my original rating because i think 13 year old me deserves to have her enthusiasm and excitement registered on here. rereading this book was actually so much more fun than i thought it would be. there's a specific kind of joy to be found in knowing certain parts are going to happen but not remembering exactly how. this story is both incredibly harrowing and political and raw (and, as memory serves, those things will only grow stronger as the series goes on) but also surprisingly funny and heart-warming at times. suzanne collins knows how to balance the two well, and even though at this point in my (reading) life some things happened a little quickly or a little too obviously for my liking, i can easily see how important this book was and is. it set a standard for ya that i think very few other ya series have been able to meet. they've tried, but so often completely missed the bat as to what it is about this story that is so interesting. it's really not the love triangle, and it's really not (just) katniss being able to shoot stuff. it's the constant duality, the constant questioning of power; the power of the government, the power of ourselves, the power of our community. i got shivers when katniss receives the bread from district 11 after rue's death. the way collins lets us learn about this world, how unfair it is, how unfair it is to everyone all the time and we don't even know it (katniss thinks rue gets enough fresh food because she lives in district 11, she thinks peeta always eats well because he's a baker) because people in power don't want us to sympathise with each other and feel stronger in our unity, rather want us to be weaker in our division. tl;dr thg is and will be the og and it will always have a special place in my heart.
???We are the choices we make.???
Anyone I've talked to while reading this book has heard this already but I'm just going to say this again: after the whole Hunger Games, Divergent, Matched etc. times of dystopian trilogies I became... slightly allergic. It just felt like the arc of all of these books were becoming too predictable and it just made them really boring to me.
So starting this book I was kind of anticipating maybe getting that feeling too, and I know this is still only the first book so things might change and yada yada but, let me just say, that I was really really pleasantly surprised by the different kind of storytelling we get here.
It's not dystopian, exactly. It's kind of sci-fi because it's about a group of people going to a new planet because earth is full and also messed up and trying to build a new life there. So already, we start out not dealing with a controlling government but rather it's exploring what people do when there's no government, and it's about how they make sense of life and power.
Todd was really annoying at times but also like... he's fourteen. So I try to forgive him for being kind of dumb and making stupid decisions. I think Viola is really cool and I hope we're going to get to know more about her and the previous part of her life in the next book(s). Manchee is the freakin best I love animal companions.
Spoiler WHY CAN'T AARON JUST FUCKING DIE?????????????????????????? HE KEEPS SHOWING UP even after they tear his face off it's so ANNOYING. also when manchee died i lowkey died that was so sad.
