Books I've Rated 2 / 5
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Red Team Blues
Finished
Starts off interestingly. Then the protagonist has sex with a few beautiful women and several men tell him how much they admire him, and then the intrigue fizzles to an “I guess that’s it?” and then the book is apparently over.
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Fourth Wing
Finished
Someone would argue, and I’d agree, that this book isn’t “for” me, so whether or not I appreciate it is irrelevant. But I kind of wonder who it is for. For 70% of the book it’s a solidly formulaic YA novel and… then there’s explicit sex. And I don’t mean like, the characters have sex I mean it becomes an erotica novel, somewhat out of nowhere. Literary porn, although “literary” might give the wrong idea. It’s not written poorly but it’s also not written very well. Beyond the themes, the writing level of the whole novel feels very YA and the sex feels, to me, unnecessary, somewhat unexpected, and of an equal reading level except with more, you know, obscenity?
I definitely feel like I’m coming off a prude here and I don’t feel like I am one, but the sex scenes feel written simply but with adults in mind and I guess that clashed, for me, with the tone and level of the rest of the book.
The main plot is formulaic but interesting enough, but there’s not a lot else going on, and the weird horny stuff felt out of place and wasn’t for me and I’ve said that about plenty of books written by men (looking at you Terry Goodkind) so I’m gonna skip the rest of this series.
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Green Rider
Finished
This would be an unremarkable three-star book that blends into the broader Anglo fantasy genre except that it goes on these weird asides to advocate for monarchy and plutarchy. Nothing to do with the plot, except I guess as an intended red herring? And the primary “anti-monarchist” revolutionary never even says anything that’s wrong. But the protagonist still calls her “despicable” and then goes on a small rant about how her rich parents are self-made. It’s weird and unnecessary but I guess it is, like, the one thing in the book that stood out. The magic is unremarkable, the villain is generic. Blah.
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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.
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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.
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Planetside
Finished
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Black Sun Rising
Finished
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The Girl Before
Finished
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The Rook
Finished
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To Light a Candle
Finished
I enjoyed much of this book but the middle third of it falls into this really unsettling indoctrinating justification of genocide. Fantasy often walks a fine line with its many races and the wars between them but this one gets pretty brutal and doesn’t even examine that, basically at all. It’s taken as a given that the actual ethnic cleansing of a race of “tainted” elves from the lands is just and necessary, and it’s gross. It’s even weirder in a book that is otherwise so centered on kind of hippie principles—it even features the line “there’s no such thing as implied consent”, which, great! But that middle section … oof. I’m not sure I want to pick up the final book.
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A Simple Favor
Finished
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The Twilight Wife
Finished
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Year One
Finished
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The Paper Magician
Finished
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The Gunslinger
Finished
Man, I was really interested in reading this book and I did not enjoy it. It reads like a fever dream, and not in any sort of compelling or intriguing way. The heavy, invented colloquial speech is distracting. The plot is not … really a plot, it’s more of a montage of scenes. I found myself moderately interested in the flashbacks to Roland’s childhood, because things actually happened there and there was a bit of an understanding of the world he lived in, and there were real secondary characters. Just about everything in the present was hazy and disjointed, void of character or place, and building up to a climax that really wasn’t. This is only my second King book (the first was [b:11/22/63|10644930|11/22/63|Stephen King|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327876792s/10644930.jpg|15553789], which I really enjoyed even if I felt the ending got away from him), but my experience with this one was wildly different from the last. I think this book was written much earlier in his career and was maybe more experimental for him?
The good news is that this is one series that I don’t find myself compelled to finish. I have too many series to read already.
