Books I've Rated 2.5 / 5

• Gardens of the Moon

  by Steven Erikson

  Finished 2026-03-19

  I almost DNF’ed this book around 30%. The opening half hour of the audiobook is like a parody of fantasy written by someone who hates fantasy. A mishmash of prologues, pull-quotes, time jumps, and “Part One” / “Book One” / “Chapter One” … I feel like there were more. At 30%, I still had no idea what was happening in this book or what characters I was even following. Some fans of the series advised me that the series gets better, and that Erikson didn’t have an editor for this one (dunno if that’s true, but it jibes for sure). The novel settles and develops a narrative arc eventually. After that, it’s fine. I’ve read worse fantasy, and I’ve read much better. A number of characters, especially but not exclusively the Bridge Burners, blend together and I forgot anything unique about each of them. Now that it’s over, I have a general idea of what happened in the book, but the specifics are … vague. I would probably give the second half of this book closer to a 3, 3.25, but the first third drags it down some, so 2.5.

• The Atlas Complex The Atlas Book 3

  by Olivie Blake

  Finished 2025-12-19

  I loved the first two books in this series. I had read some other reviews of those books that were critical of Blake’s prose, but it generally felt apt for the story, for the characters. This one, right away, the prose seemed to go immediately up its own ass fast—not just whimsical and flowery, but disjointed and alienating. I pushed through because I wanted to know how this all resolved. The prose settled a little, for a while. But the book never really found its feet before it lost them again. The result of the experiment was both anticlimactic and perplexing. Maybe the writing style obscured the intent—not even just the intent, but the actual events that took place—but it seemed like that was the climax of the trilogy and in the end I don’t even really know what happened or why.

  And then it all fizzled out.

  From the perspective of “I like these characters and want to see them succeed,” there’s a number of obvious disappointments, but characters failing can absolutely be a compelling narrative. Here, though, it all just felt like a whole bunch of …nothing? No happy endings, but plenty of people working against their own interest, with little to no character growth and a completely avoidable tragic outcome on multiple fronts.

  I was really disappointed with this book, both as a piece of writing and as the resolution to a series I had really enjoyed.

• The Hunting Wives

  by May Cobb

  Finished 2025-11-06

  Of all the thrillers driven by “protagonist makes terrible decisions,” this is one of the worst offenders. I just don’t think enough was done to sell the motivation for this woman to put herself in such terrible situations, consistently. I get the suburban ennui, but it really only achieved lip service and we just dive right into “why, why, why are you doing this?” But ok, plenty of thrillers have bad decision-makers; this one also doesn’t resolve well. The whole mystery surrounding Margo’s motivations is cast aside when she just … ends up dead. And then the villain does the classic Bond villain monologue to wrap it all up. It wasn’t the worst thriller I’ve read, but it was deeply frustrating and in the end not very satisfying. Additionally, I know the media is saturated with men dating “barely-legal” teenage girls, but for me that’s gross regardless of the gender dynamic.

• She Didn't See It Coming

  by Shari Lapena

  Finished 2025-08-04

  I enjoyed most of this book but the resolution was pretty deeply unsatisfying and left a lot of loose ends—any thriller/mystery that’s any good will employ red herrings, but most of the red herrings at play here seem very forced in retrospect. Beyond that, the over-explanation at the end was at a certain point kind of silly. I’m all for making it clear what happened but it was made clear a few times over and then the characters internal-monologued their justifications on top of that.

  I’m trying not to just give everything a 3 simply because I still mostly enjoyed it. So, this gets 2.5.

• After On A Novel of Silicon Valley

  by Rob Reid

  Finished 2025-06-16

  Mildly interesting plot written in an extremely insufferable voice. Almost DNF’ed. Stuck it out and it was … fine.

• The Poacher's Son

  by Paul Doiron

  Finished 2025-03-31

• King's Cage

  by Victoria Aveyard

  Finished 2024-09-01

• Beyond the Shadows

  by Brent Weeks

  Finished 2024-04-18

  There was a lot I really liked about this book but much more than any other Weeks book I’ve read, it spent way, way too much of its time musing on the breasts and bodies of its female characters. Weeks has definitely done some of this in other books and there’s some level to which you can write this off as “we’re seeing the world through the eyes of a young male character” or whatever, but it was just too much in this book. It dragged the book down a lot, to an extent that I almost DNF’ed.

• The Black Echo

  by Michael Connelly

  Finished 2022-07-14

  Bad copaganda. IA as cartoonish bad guy, right down to cartoonish names. I’m sure it’s a product of its time. It could be worse, I suppose.