Read
-
Daisy's Run (The Clockwork Chimera #1)
Finished
It was fine. My biggest annoyance is that about half the book is spent running from the obvious truth that the protagonist is misjudging the situation and she absolutely refuses to consider the possibility. That might be a spoiler I guess but it’s so, so obvious the whole time. I feel like it’s written that way intentionally. But then… it’s just annoying.
-
To Be Taught, If Fortunate
Finished
-
The Land: Founding
Finished
I was really excited to check this series out. I enjoy the LitRPG genre as I understand it, and I was excited to see that the “founder” of the genre was from an underrepresented group, which I’m trying to make an effort to be mindful of in my reading.
But only about two chapters in this book were particularly interesting or engaging.
The early hours of playing a new RPG are often full of grind. Sometimes, that’s nice because it allows the brain to turn off, fall into a familiar pattern, get that dopamine rush from watching your stats rise. But if you were to simply describe this process to another person, even a fan of the genre, it’d be entirely mind-numbing. Sometimes, a good game spices up that process by adding unique lore, uncommon facets to the magic or other systems. Sometimes that can be enough to make the early hours more than a grind. It can add a layer of joyful discovery. But in this book, that wasn’t the case. Nothing particularly original seems to exist in this world so far. It’s all quite standard. What’s worse, the protagonist is supposedly very familiar with the world, from the game. Not everything is apparently like the game, but much of it is. So why spend so much time on piddling exposition? Few interesting characters are met; almost no world building. Much of it is taken up by actual reading of non-metaphorical repetitive dialog boxes and prompts. It’s truly like listening to someone describe their first ten hours in WoW. There’s not even much of the characteristic “modern Earth inhabitant meets fantasy world” wit of the LitRPG genre, besides like one “FML” reference.
The story of the world and why the protagonist has been brought there is established in the prologue and then never mentioned again.
The book has no thrust, no real climax, and ends suddenly and unexpectedly. We still have neither a short term goal (besides “level up village”) nor a long-term goal.
The third act starts to introduce some characters and some conflict but it doesn’t do anything with it besides a quick skirmish and I guess a sub-boss?
I dunno. I want to say I’ll give book two a chance because it’s a popular series and it’s possible the author learned a lot from book one, but this one was no fun and I listen while running so it actually meant I skipped my run for a while because I the book didn’t motivate me to return to it.
-
Through the Wall
Finished
-
Axiom's End
Finished
-
Snowflakes
Finished
-
A Queen in Hiding
Finished
-
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
Finished
-
Please See Us
Finished
-
The End of Policing
Finished
Honestly surprised at how moderate it felt. With such a bold title I expected more extreme stances. But it seemed pretty levelheaded and a lot of its points were not specifically related to abolition, but more to the problems faced and the things needed to fix the problem even partially. One could easily read this book and come away with a strong advocacy for reform, rather than abolition. But all the points combined certainly paint a picture of a situation that is very hard to fully address with reform (and in fact it points out a lot of the ways attempts at reform fail). Quick read, full of good (if depressing) examples of the problem we face. Recommended most for people who are new to these issues.
-
The Rage of Dragons
Finished
-
The Flight Attendant
Finished
-
A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe
Finished
I would expect that I’d have enjoyed this more than I did. It was fun enough and relatively novel, magic and sci-fi in an interesting blend, but I found myself regularly losing interest.
The audiobook is frustrating because at least one character is clearly written as British (or whatever fantasy world equates to British here), with obvious Britishism regularly injected into the dialog—at one point they even pointedly express confusion about “the can” before realizing it means “the loo”—and yet the reader read every character with the same bland and indistinguishable American accent. For such a dynamic and colorful world, the reading was pretty blah. It may have contributed to my disinterest. It wasn’t outright BAD reading but it wasn’t very good either and ignoring obvious speech pattern cues is annoying.
-
Black Nowhere
Finished
Honestly from a pure entertainment standpoint, I enjoyed this just fine. It’s like average pop music—it hits a lot of familiar notes and wraps up quickly. And that’s really a lot of what I look for in a book like this, so I was preparing to give this a three or a four.
But it’s apparently some kind of love letter to libertarianism by the end?
This is Lisa Tanchik book one, but it’s Nate Fallon’s book and despite Lisa having lost a sister to drugs, it spends zero time examining Fallon’s bullshit justifications, and ends with a little Rand-ian soliloquy offering one final justification for his actions. It’s a bummer because it’s a moderately fun cyber-thriller that could have had something interesting to say without much effort.
Fallon didn’t have to be a cartoon villain; taking apart the things that at first made the character sympathetic would’ve been more interesting than simply making him bad, but the book opts for neither.
Obviously, there are moments that the book realizes (and quickly sweeps aside) the real, negative consequences of his actions. And at times I think the author intended to go further there? A few conversations he has weakly imply a deeper criticism. But it never goes anywhere, and on the balance, the book appears to be more reverent than anything.
And also Lisa Tanchik is in this book for some length of time, I guess?
I read this book because Charlie Jane Anders, whose work I’ve really enjoyed, recommended its sequel. And to be truthful, I still might pick that up at some point. But I’m kind of surprised at the recommendation, in retrospect.
-
The Name of All Things
Finished