Reviews

Elysium: Or, the World After by Jennifer Marie Brissett

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xamon's review against another edition

5.0

My entire soul hurts. Bruh,,, she ain’t have to kill me like this. This book ‬is fucking beautiful, and heartbreaking and fuuuuuuuck, I’m in tears. I love it. Highly recommend. Just be braced. Fuck.

hank's review against another edition

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4.0

This is going to be a spoiler filled review, I can't think of any other way to describe it. I liked it, weird while reading, less weird at the ending.

Spoiler

Sad, dying A.I. whose damaged AI friend is also dead or dying. This is one of those books where I wish I had read the blurb on the back first, the book would have made much more sense and added to my enjoyment. The computer language interludes were mostly useless and could have been used better but this is a first novel.

Take home message was that I enjoyed it and would read more from the author

sarcastodon's review against another edition

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2.0

Eh... It was an interesting concept, but just didn't do it for me.

books4biana's review against another edition

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4.0

It took a while before I realized what I was reading. Like a collection of stories or memories, slightly joined but not really. The last 3rd of the book really tied things together.

Nothing like the movie.

chana_aurora's review against another edition

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4.0

I couldn’t put this book down. I heard it was trippy and it was. I really liked the trying too figure out exactly what was going on and even though I figured it out part way through, I still was engaged.

misha_ali's review against another edition

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2.0

This was an interesting idea and a really interesting concept to play with, but the execution was a little jumbled for me. Even at the short length it is, it feels too long in the set up and too rushed in the conclusion. The various iterations of the main characters switch up too much and are basically different people with similar names, so the character work here fell short for me, which resulted in a reduced overall investment in the story and premise.

amgee017's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

hiimkayte's review against another edition

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5.0

I listened to this as an audiobook and loved it. As the scenes switch between characters/place/time, the author does such a great job of quickly bringing you in - helping you understand what's going on, what the conflict is, and making you interested and rooting for the characters, before upending you into another place and time.
This was such an interesting way to show different parts of the world through a major sci-fi event (alien invasion). Kind of like how World War Z showed vignettes from different perspectives... but looser, and weirder.

treykagirl's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

angelofmusic317's review against another edition

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mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.25

The book started off wonderfully. The author kept you just intrigued and confused enough to want to continue the story but had enough continuous signs and symbols to keep you on track. After the first third of the book, my only complaint was the overuse of sex scenes that did nothing to enhance the story. However, somewhere around the middle of the story, when the author starts to drive the plot towards understanding what is really happening, the entire beautiful craftsmanship of the story disappears entirely. The story becomes a spaghetti-like mess of ideas thrown onto the paper. The conclusion was fast, disappointing, failed to clarify the signs and symbols, and was just generally a mess. I wanted to love this book but felt that it literally lost its plot.

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