Scan barcode
joshhall13's review against another edition
Such a fun concept "What would happen if you're love/addiction/obsession became powered by magic that you control?"
Even Tyler Durden's appearance couldn't rescue this plot. Of all the paths to create for books containing magic, it's hard to believe the author took such a boring one. It's like standing in front of the arsenal of the US, Russia, and Britain's military and then choosing to fight with a butterknife.
Even Tyler Durden's appearance couldn't rescue this plot. Of all the paths to create for books containing magic, it's hard to believe the author took such a boring one. It's like standing in front of the arsenal of the US, Russia, and Britain's military and then choosing to fight with a butterknife.
michalice's review against another edition
5.0
The only time I had heard about The Flux, was on another blog discussing the covers of several releases. When I was contacted about reviewing an audiobook I read the synopsis that was provided and quickly replied with a yes. After a few technical glitches I was able to get the credit to download this from audible. It was that moment that I realised that The Flux was the second book in a series, one where I had not read or listened to the first one.
When I began listening to The Flux I was hooked, I love this world that Ferrett Steinmetz has created. I love the different 'mancy, how something you are skilled at can be used as a form of 'mancy, enabling you to do a lot of things that are physically impossible, like turning dressing yourself in you favourite game outfit to fight in a battle, using Pokeballs to capture people.
The Flux has some amazing action sequences, with lots of brutal fight scenes and it does not hold out on the gore factor either, but I loved it. The attention to detail was truly outstanding, and it really made things come to life even more. I love the cover of this audiobook, and after getting to know the characters I like seeing who it portrays. The characters themselves have a way of standing out and making sure they are memorable. I love the interaction between the primary characters and how they work so well together. The 'mancy itself sounds amazing, but also scary. Wanting something so much that your 'mancy can make it happen, but one shift in that feeling of need can backlash, and can have dire effects, from turning a minor crash into a fatal one, from a safe place becoming unsafe fast, and from life to death.
The plot behind the book was fantastic, and while it initially started out easy to follow, as it progressed I did feel like I was missing important events that occurred in the previous book. The author has done a good job to fill in most of the blanks and explain things, but to me because I knew I had missed out I couldn't help but see the glaring gaps, this did affect me somewhat in my enjoyment,but it just makes me more determined to pick up the previous book so I can enjoy this book again as a whole series so far.
Narration
The narrator, Peter Brooke, has done a great job of telling this story. He made it easy to distinguish which character was who with slight differentiation in his voice. He helped the story draw you in even more than you already had been, and want to keep listening.
Final Verdict
The Flux was an amazing audiobook, and I have problem with listening to this all over again once I pick up the previous book in the series.
When I began listening to The Flux I was hooked, I love this world that Ferrett Steinmetz has created. I love the different 'mancy, how something you are skilled at can be used as a form of 'mancy, enabling you to do a lot of things that are physically impossible, like turning dressing yourself in you favourite game outfit to fight in a battle, using Pokeballs to capture people.
The Flux has some amazing action sequences, with lots of brutal fight scenes and it does not hold out on the gore factor either, but I loved it. The attention to detail was truly outstanding, and it really made things come to life even more. I love the cover of this audiobook, and after getting to know the characters I like seeing who it portrays. The characters themselves have a way of standing out and making sure they are memorable. I love the interaction between the primary characters and how they work so well together. The 'mancy itself sounds amazing, but also scary. Wanting something so much that your 'mancy can make it happen, but one shift in that feeling of need can backlash, and can have dire effects, from turning a minor crash into a fatal one, from a safe place becoming unsafe fast, and from life to death.
The plot behind the book was fantastic, and while it initially started out easy to follow, as it progressed I did feel like I was missing important events that occurred in the previous book. The author has done a good job to fill in most of the blanks and explain things, but to me because I knew I had missed out I couldn't help but see the glaring gaps, this did affect me somewhat in my enjoyment,but it just makes me more determined to pick up the previous book so I can enjoy this book again as a whole series so far.
Narration
The narrator, Peter Brooke, has done a great job of telling this story. He made it easy to distinguish which character was who with slight differentiation in his voice. He helped the story draw you in even more than you already had been, and want to keep listening.
Final Verdict
The Flux was an amazing audiobook, and I have problem with listening to this all over again once I pick up the previous book in the series.
meijhen's review against another edition
4.0
i don't understand why I hadn't heard about this book until now, and it was nearly impossible to find a copy of it. I couldn't find a copy of the first one at all!
Really good read. Highly recommend. Would definitely recommend reading #1 first -- I had a few moments of Hunh? as a result of not having read the first one.
Really good read. Highly recommend. Would definitely recommend reading #1 first -- I had a few moments of Hunh? as a result of not having read the first one.
titusfortner's review against another edition
3.0
You know those stories where the antagonist is so single-mindedly evil and the protagonist is so frustratingly dense that the payoff can't possibly compensate for the anxiety the book gave you... That's this book.
joelevard's review against another edition
4.0
The ending is pretty sloppy and rushed but man, is this a fun series. Dark though.
readingthething's review against another edition
4.0
This review first appeared at readingthething.net
Just so you know, that is the risk you run when you read THE FLUX by Ferrett Steinmetz. This book will be published October 6th of this year (only a month and a day away, guys!) by Angry Robot Books. This is the second book in the ‘Mancer series; the first book, FLEX, I reviewed as well.
I’ll try to give my opnion relatively spoiler free, but the fact it’s the second in a series, gives some spoilers of the first book in itself (but after my review of book one, I do expect you to have bought and read it. Right?). It took me a bit to get warmed up to THE FLUX. You get dumped right into the story from the first page, but I found it hard to get the feel back. Maybe because it seems to want to and get you back in the atmosphere and give clues to the past, and be action packed. My brain couldn’t do that.
After a bit, I did did find the right feel again and loved the descriptions of all the different kinds of ‘mancy, and could relate to most of the characters, who have to deal with their life not being as it once was, and change is always hard even for people in books. However, there was this sense of things being too easy for everyone, especially with some plottwist that felt like deus ex machina’s at times.
And then… there is another plottwist, but this one makes it all right again. It made me yell at the book (see the tweet at the beginning of this post), because shit got real, and real is often horrible. There is genuine chaos, destruction and emotion, and it made the first two thirds of the book much better in retrospect, because it made this changing view in the mind of the main character much more intense.
So. Again. Get this book. Read it. Be entertained.
Just so you know, that is the risk you run when you read THE FLUX by Ferrett Steinmetz. This book will be published October 6th of this year (only a month and a day away, guys!) by Angry Robot Books. This is the second book in the ‘Mancer series; the first book, FLEX, I reviewed as well.
I’ll try to give my opnion relatively spoiler free, but the fact it’s the second in a series, gives some spoilers of the first book in itself (but after my review of book one, I do expect you to have bought and read it. Right?). It took me a bit to get warmed up to THE FLUX. You get dumped right into the story from the first page, but I found it hard to get the feel back. Maybe because it seems to want to and get you back in the atmosphere and give clues to the past, and be action packed. My brain couldn’t do that.
After a bit, I did did find the right feel again and loved the descriptions of all the different kinds of ‘mancy, and could relate to most of the characters, who have to deal with their life not being as it once was, and change is always hard even for people in books. However, there was this sense of things being too easy for everyone, especially with some plottwist that felt like deus ex machina’s at times.
And then… there is another plottwist, but this one makes it all right again. It made me yell at the book (see the tweet at the beginning of this post), because shit got real, and real is often horrible. There is genuine chaos, destruction and emotion, and it made the first two thirds of the book much better in retrospect, because it made this changing view in the mind of the main character much more intense.
So. Again. Get this book. Read it. Be entertained.
tregina's review against another edition
3.0
I liked this, but I also found it terribly frustrating in some ways. Part of me understands the difficulty Paul has in handling Aliyah, which is at the heart of this story, but it plays out in ways that just didn't entirely work for me. I still really enjoy the magic system in place here and the culture that has grown up around it, but there were some pacing issues with this one that made it feel a little disjointed, and some decision-making that felt somewhat forced, just to make the story happen.
divarae's review against another edition
5.0
This book was just an incredible follow-up to the first book in the series, Flex. Everything is there: the character-building, the plot, the pacing. Besides Flex and The Flux, the only other book in the last few years that's given me that same feeling of can't-put-it-down was Ready Player One.
theartolater's review against another edition
5.0
Closer to a 4.5.
So Flex is great, and if you've read it, you know that already. The Flux is absolutely in the same universe, but it's a very different book. That's not a bad thing, but it also means that there are parts that stumble and there's some attention to detail that needs to be done by the reader for things to truly pay off.
Overall, we're past the point of Flex and now Paul is inside the machine. But if the first book was about saving his daughter by any means necessary, The Flex, in a sense, is about Paul trying to save his daughter from herself. It's an interesting dynamic in the story in that there are things we can control and things we can't, and this story is largely about both of those things as a result, as Aliyah is torn between what's right and what's true. And she's eight. And there are good guys and bad guys, but a significant amount of grey to go along with it.
Yeah, it's that kind of book.
There's a lot of balls in the air here, and what Steinmetz does well is keep them in the air while not losing the sense of the overall. Sometimes there's an inbalance between the action and the story, sometimes things are a little longer than they need to be, but the key point is that the story works. The beginning is a crazy adventure, and the end is just an enjoyable boss battle in every way, including a part that both got me visibly excited and emotionally upset - I tend to be a stoic reader, so that's worth praise in and of itself.
Ferrett Steinmetz is a longtime internet friend/acquaintance, and so knowing some of the things that inform this book definitely has a director's cut feel as a result. I might have actually enjoyed this more if I didn't know some of what he's shared over the years, and that's a testament to how good this book is on a whole.
Overall? A worthy sequel, even if it doesn't reach those heights. Read Flex first, obviously, but give this series a shot. It's some of the more unique and enjoyable urban fantasy I've read as of late.
So Flex is great, and if you've read it, you know that already. The Flux is absolutely in the same universe, but it's a very different book. That's not a bad thing, but it also means that there are parts that stumble and there's some attention to detail that needs to be done by the reader for things to truly pay off.
Overall, we're past the point of Flex and now Paul is inside the machine. But if the first book was about saving his daughter by any means necessary, The Flex, in a sense, is about Paul trying to save his daughter from herself. It's an interesting dynamic in the story in that there are things we can control and things we can't, and this story is largely about both of those things as a result, as Aliyah is torn between what's right and what's true. And she's eight. And there are good guys and bad guys, but a significant amount of grey to go along with it.
Yeah, it's that kind of book.
There's a lot of balls in the air here, and what Steinmetz does well is keep them in the air while not losing the sense of the overall. Sometimes there's an inbalance between the action and the story, sometimes things are a little longer than they need to be, but the key point is that the story works. The beginning is a crazy adventure, and the end is just an enjoyable boss battle in every way, including a part that both got me visibly excited and emotionally upset - I tend to be a stoic reader, so that's worth praise in and of itself.
Ferrett Steinmetz is a longtime internet friend/acquaintance, and so knowing some of the things that inform this book definitely has a director's cut feel as a result. I might have actually enjoyed this more if I didn't know some of what he's shared over the years, and that's a testament to how good this book is on a whole.
Overall? A worthy sequel, even if it doesn't reach those heights. Read Flex first, obviously, but give this series a shot. It's some of the more unique and enjoyable urban fantasy I've read as of late.
sayitagainjen's review against another edition
1.0
I got about 85 percent through the book before I finally gave up. The characters were so wholly unlikeable that I found myself hoping something terrible would happen to the lot of them. This is very basic writing hidden behind a cute magic system and a slew of tiresome pop culture references.