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keinbock's reviews
97 reviews
Glory Road by Robert A. Heinlein
4.25
Once again I really enjoy the voice. It's anachronistic and charming. The first half in particular was very enjoyable, until heinlein torpedoed star's character with some gross misogyny. She is an ancient powerful magician and empress of 20 universes and yet she let's the idiot protagonist scold her and unironically SPANK her? It's unsettling, infantalizing and just yuck.
Severance by Ling Ma
4.25
Solid and fresh take on the apocalypse. I was invested in her pregnancy and NY ghost and the saga of Ashley Janelle and Evan. However, the pacing and proportions of flashback to present narration was odd. Her escape from the mall was so abrupt; it could have been so much more satisfying if the author had taken her time and another 50 pages to build the stakes and story.
Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clark
4.0
Too much of a good thing. I loved the whimsical narration and creative prose, but there were too many characters and plotlines to keep straight. In general the original concept of two rival magicians vs. a fairy that keeps kidnapping their friends and servants, against a backdrop of the napoleonic wars, is intruiging and could have been much tighter, with 50% fewer characters and storylines. The extra hundreds of pages were worthless anyway because I kept forgetting the last events or backstories of characters I hadn't seen in 100+ pages. Maybe it world have worked better as a trilogy
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
4.75
Normally I don't go for futurespeak style narration, but somehow this one made it charming and I was along for the ride. I loved the heist style narration in the beginning and was just enjoying the technobabble and barely understandable slang.
Also a big fan of the world building in terms of luna society, marriage, etc.
My only gripes are that sometimes it's too hard to follow the futurespeak and I didn't like the mysterious death of Mike as an ending. I wanted him to go rogue.
Also a big fan of the world building in terms of luna society, marriage, etc.
My only gripes are that sometimes it's too hard to follow the futurespeak and I didn't like the mysterious death of Mike as an ending. I wanted him to go rogue.
William Golding, Lord of the flies Penguin Study Notes by Gillian E. Hanscombe
3.75
A compelling story told confusingly. At times it was harder to understand than books twice as old, and part of that is slang and dated language, but it's also written vaguely in a lot of places, and I had to reread things to figure out what I was supposed to infer from some obscure passage.
Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix
4.25
I was quite invested in the characters. The deaths were emotional
Stranger In A Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
4.0
I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt, including some leeway for misogyny and assuming some of the cringe cliches were original for their time. I was not a fan of all the plot being delivered via dialogue. I preferred the first half, with the cool world building and unique psychology of Martian culture and language, to the second half's sex cult.