Read
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Ready Player OneA Novel
Finished
Pretty fun. Listened to most of it on audio. Something about the cover, and the way it had been presented, had led me to believe that this book was as bit more, I don’t know, literary? It’s not. It’s a fun science fiction adventure, and that’s about it. The language is plain, the characters are secondary to the adventure. It’s a nerd fantasy in the extreme, and sometimes that sort of takes you out of it a bit. But I am still a pretty big nerd. So I mostly enjoyed it, and now I’m moving on with my day.
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The Dark Is Rising
Finished
I remember liking [b:Over Sea, Under Stone|11312|Over Sea, Under Stone (The Dark is Rising, #1)|Susan Cooper|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1166468889s/11312.jpg|742] a lot more than this one, but I finished that one years ago.
This felt a lot less like an adventure and a lot more like …a kid who had a bunch of stuff happen to him. And it wasn’t even, like, “kid gets swept up in major adventure.” More like “kid goes about his day, but every now and then weird stuff happens that he’s somehow an important part of… without his actually making any decisions about those things.”
That’s my major takeaway from the story. My impression, and my objection.
Really wanted to love this series. Not sure I want to invest more time in it, after this one. Maybe I will in a while.
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Child 44
Finished
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I Don't Care If My Best Friend's Mom is a Sasquatch, She's Hot and I'm Taking a Shower With Her
Finished
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Revenge of the Witch
Finished
Picked it up because a movie’s coming out and I figured I’d read it before I (potentially) watched it. Having read it, I’ll say it looks like the movie won’t even be vaguely similar to the book.
Anyway: it was fine. The antagonists were not characters for the most part - more just abstract bad guys. But I did like some of the spookier writing. Not really a genre I care about, but it did give me the creeps a few times. Pretty formulaic; not a ton of world building at all - by which I mean I know next to nothing about the world they lived in. But not bad. Very quick. May pick up a sequel at some point.
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Spell or High Water
Finished
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Off to Be the Wizard
Finished
Quick and entertaining. A simple and interesting premise. Pretty funny. Picked it up on a whim. Mostly listened to the audiobook, which was well-done. Bought the sequel immediately. I’d recommend it, for something light.
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Allegiant
Finished
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The Magician's Land
Finished
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The Martian
Finished
It’s between 3 and 4 stars. I enjoyed it pretty thoroughly. In the end, it was more of a fun experience than a great book, so I went with three. It’s kind of how I felt about the movie Gravity: the actual plot, and anything they tried to do with it, wasn’t great. But the way they made you experience it was still really fun. Maybe I’m trying to describe hollow fun? But I don’t think this was quite hollow. Just … it leaned toward glib, when its subject matter could’ve been a lot more thrilling. It favored procedure over storytelling (“here’s how I’ll construct this tool” rather than any of the potential fear/introspection/character work that could’ve happened). The glibness made it entertaining – I laughed a lot as I read it – but maybe detracted from the end product.
I don’t know, mixed feelings: I really did enjoy it, start-to-finish, and I’d recommend anyone read it . But once it was over it felt a little shallow for what it could have been.
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Sabriel
Finished
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Directive 51
Finished
A lot of interesting ideas that then sort of wander and fizzle. I enjoyed it, but as a piece of fiction the structure and resolution (or even lack thereof) falls short.
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The Sparrow
Finished
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Trapped
Finished
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Divergent
Finished
I really enjoyed this. I spent a lot of the book trying to figure out where it was going, and what its political motivation is – dystopian futures rarely lack some political motivation. So far, the only messages I can tell are basic, moral, principles, not political ideologies. Which I like. I think there were hints dropped earlier on that in retrospect were intentional red herrings as far as the intent/plot of the book. I was trying to turn it into The Giver, or something along those lines, and trying to determine the moral lessons I should be learning from all of the factions, which ones were good and bad, etc, and while it shared some themes with overt allegories like The Giver and 1984, it’s definitely its own thing and a lot more than it initially appears to be.
I also found the love interest plotline seemed to be a much more convincing version of Twilight’s. I only read the first Twilight, because it was a garbage book, but it seems to me (as a straight man, obviously not the main target here) that this book did a much better job of a similar thing: the characters are obviously drawn to each other. There’s a lot of noticing of clavicles, and tensing of muscles, etc etc, but the characters are a lot more fleshed out and even the attraction feels a lot more convincing. I enjoyed it, and I also enjoyed that (like many other YA/children’s series with love stories) it wasn’t all about that. It played a part, and did a good job, but it didn’t detract from (or attempt to distract from) the larger plot.
I’m really looking forward to picking up the next one.
== Spoilers ==
The ending felt like it didn’t live up to what the book had put together – it felt like I, Robot (the movie) or any number of other sci-fi plots, when the book had developed a pretty interesting world and a unique economy and political system. Not only did the whole mind control thing feel like Will Smith battling robots, but the themes were echoed in the lead Erudite doing it all seemingly in the name of logic, and a number of other things. I hate to keep using a Will Smith mis-adaptation of Asimov as an example, especially since I know I’ve seen this storyline before, but it’s all I’m coming up with right now. I’m fine with that plot, mostly - I enjoyed the movie, too, mostly – I just felt like the book set it up for more. Beyond that, the book seemed to fall apart a little for other reasons here: you have trouble controlling divergents, and you decide the thing to do is send one you’re probably controlling to be like the only guy in charge of your quest for Chicago domination? I don’t know. I still liked it, and I’m excited to see what happens next, but I do think there was a lot of smarter stuff in the book before Roth had to conclude the first story arc.
