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3.92 AVERAGE
3.92 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
like an enormous rich cake studded with all sorts of candied words and images. it's dense and full of asides, a little meandering and ornamental, but cut through with shots of the absurd and grotesque. reads like high fantasy but set in a postpostapocalyptic world.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Torture
Moderate: Sexual content, Violence
Minor: Sexual violence
It was fine, it had some interesting worldbuilding (maybe the future sci-fi/low fantasy was new when he wrote it) and some cool mentions and little glimpses of future tech, but a lot of it seemed like dressing over a pretty bare-bones plot. Guy has cool sword, macguffin, and wide-eyed shivering female companions. The one thing he did really well was just hold this mystery of the post-apocalypse sci-fi world up throughout the entire books, never giving in to the temptation of revealing it all.
I was looking for something more, and will probably finish the last half of the Book of the New Sun, but I liked the Black Company way more.
I was looking for something more, and will probably finish the last half of the Book of the New Sun, but I liked the Black Company way more.
I liked book 1 a lot and book 2 a lot less. I've got 3 and 4 on my nightstand and hope they tend more toward the qualities I liked in book 1, which had so much neat world building. Although this is billed as science fiction by many who I suppose ought to know science fiction from fantasy, it read a lot more like fantasy to me, if fantasy with some sci-fi elements.
This book requires a lot patience but was overall a good story laden with a few glaring negative tropes of old fantasy
At first it took a long time to decipher what the author was trying to get across. The world is certainly not like ours in many ways and is never explained directly. Aspects like status, allegiances and lore are told through anecdotes which are sometimes important and sometimes not. If you don't mind working though all this, it is a rewarding book to read with unique ideas that couldn't be told outside of this form of storytelling. While confusing, something about the chaos of trying to understand the story is like being in a trance and sucked me in.
At first it took a long time to decipher what the author was trying to get across. The world is certainly not like ours in many ways and is never explained directly. Aspects like status, allegiances and lore are told through anecdotes which are sometimes important and sometimes not. If you don't mind working though all this, it is a rewarding book to read with unique ideas that couldn't be told outside of this form of storytelling. While confusing, something about the chaos of trying to understand the story is like being in a trance and sucked me in.
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
The premise and world building are interesting but muddled. If I could, I would give this book a 3.5 and feel that the plot reminds me more of a King Arthur-esque travel through a dark, shadowed world of imagined horrors and real ones. If anything, the occupation of the protagonist is one of the few things that one can relate to in the book and if anything is a solid anchor of reality in an otherwise confusing morass.
books that make u say WOOOO out loud and pump ur fist in the air when they say some shit like “the pelagic argosy sights land” or “how foolish to call them mirrors” or when a 40 foot tall mermaid shows up.
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Pretty much everything I never knew I wanted in scifi and fantasy, this is epic stuff, dark and mysterious, and one of the first books I've read that actually benefits close reading - this is challenging stuff in the best way. I read along with "Shelved By Genre", a genre fiction podcast, and that was also fantastic and added to the experience.
Severian's relationship with female characters sure is some tragic stuff at times. So far in the series, it's not clear if that's a Papa Gene thing, or a flaw intentionally written into the character. That's the only thing detracting from a full 10/10 for me - it's gonna be hard to know where to go in scifi from here.
Also, I think a weakness for the heavy metal Catholic apocrypha really did me in here.
Severian's relationship with female characters sure is some tragic stuff at times. So far in the series, it's not clear if that's a Papa Gene thing, or a flaw intentionally written into the character. That's the only thing detracting from a full 10/10 for me - it's gonna be hard to know where to go in scifi from here.
Also, I think a weakness for the heavy metal Catholic apocrypha really did me in here.