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skyward 's review for:
The Kaiju Preservation Society
by John Scalzi
for a sci-fi about dinosaur-like creatures, tell me why i had to google what they even looked like.
you would think a science-fiction set in another dimension would offer sufficient descriptions about the world, the base, the kaiju, etc so we know what we should imagine in our heads, but truly everything got like a 2 sentence description that was not helpful at all.... i still cannot figure out what the base looked like, the jungle, etc. and i wouldnt have mentioned this if it was a typical base, but scalzi mentioned features that were a bit unique, so some additional descriptors would have been nice.
also, this was probably the most info-dumping i have seen in a book ever. i'm no stranger to scifi/fantasy, so i'm used to a certain level of required background info for the worldbuilding/plot, but this was just another level. a lot of it couldve been summarized to speed up the book. also genuinely could not differentiate the friends' personalities from one another, genuinely every character had the same exact snarky sarcastic im so quirky personality so it probably wasn't hard for scalzi to just randomly pick who he wanted to say a certain line.
and, other than the fact that the book was incredibly slow + very little plot and didn't actually pick up until the last 70%, it just felt like there was little to no conflict until the last third of the book, with minor discrepancies along the way, with no explanation as to why they were happening now when the MC arrived out of all times. i feel like this is probably because this book aimed to be more exploratory and "atmospheric" rather than focus on plot, but i would have been better prepared for that if it was reflected in the summary.
also, the author has a way of describing abnormal or out of the ordinary events that happen so casually, so i couldn't really predict if it was truly a problem event or just "another day in the life". because, as soon as the MC arrives back then we'd know it was actually a massive problem, and it just messed with how i judged events that occur. this might have to do with the fact that humor is one of the main genres of the book, but it still messed with how i viewed events and characters' reactions to them.
speaking of the humor...lemme just say if i have to hear the phrase "I lift things" again im going to combust
finally, i thought the action scenes were well done once i started reading them as if they were movie scripts/scenes, bc a lot of the action/flying scenes felt like ive seen them in fantasy films before.
you would think a science-fiction set in another dimension would offer sufficient descriptions about the world, the base, the kaiju, etc so we know what we should imagine in our heads, but truly everything got like a 2 sentence description that was not helpful at all.... i still cannot figure out what the base looked like, the jungle, etc. and i wouldnt have mentioned this if it was a typical base, but scalzi mentioned features that were a bit unique, so some additional descriptors would have been nice.
also, this was probably the most info-dumping i have seen in a book ever. i'm no stranger to scifi/fantasy, so i'm used to a certain level of required background info for the worldbuilding/plot, but this was just another level. a lot of it couldve been summarized to speed up the book. also genuinely could not differentiate the friends' personalities from one another, genuinely every character had the same exact snarky sarcastic im so quirky personality so it probably wasn't hard for scalzi to just randomly pick who he wanted to say a certain line.
and, other than the fact that the book was incredibly slow + very little plot and didn't actually pick up until the last 70%, it just felt like there was little to no conflict until the last third of the book, with minor discrepancies along the way, with no explanation as to why they were happening now when the MC arrived out of all times. i feel like this is probably because this book aimed to be more exploratory and "atmospheric" rather than focus on plot, but i would have been better prepared for that if it was reflected in the summary.
also, the author has a way of describing abnormal or out of the ordinary events that happen so casually, so i couldn't really predict if it was truly a problem event or just "another day in the life". because, as soon as the MC arrives back then we'd know it was actually a massive problem, and it just messed with how i judged events that occur. this might have to do with the fact that humor is one of the main genres of the book, but it still messed with how i viewed events and characters' reactions to them.
speaking of the humor...lemme just say if i have to hear the phrase "I lift things" again im going to combust
finally, i thought the action scenes were well done once i started reading them as if they were movie scripts/scenes, bc a lot of the action/flying scenes felt like ive seen them in fantasy films before.