ppkfs's reviews
125 reviews

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

challenging mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

dark reflective sad medium-paced

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

2.0

It just wasn't very good. Yes, it sure was a seminal work in describing a kind of dystopia that comes about from an intended utopia, but it never actually got around to being a story. It was just...a whole lot of not much.

The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

adventurous hopeful inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.75

Knight Stalker: A Short Story in Three Parts by A.C. Rodríguez

challenging dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

But, I am atop you, sucking up from yourflesh-blade all your maleness and genetic seed into my matrix-binary-coded wombwhich gives birth in the ether-collective-mind; my mad sex convulses out your very souljust for a moment toward my angel-star

Satan, for that's precisely who she is, harrumphs

The Devil farts

I....can see what the author is going for. It's meant to be a supernatural reflection on the sins of a killer. It's meant to combine that jarring, theological, literary prose with mysterious, short expositions of dialogue. You don't know these people (or beings I guess) and you are never told, but you are transported to this other plane where the words don't matter or make sense individually but you realise you've gotten through 3 pages of dense prose off nothing but vibes.

It just does not land at all. Not even slightly. It rushes into the obvious (oh you're some sort of god/devil/angel/being) and then all the cards are immediately put onto the table and there is no break before it jumps into the vaguery. Could this be done well in a short story? Probably. But the prose...it's almost painful. I would call it bad edgy fanfiction.

It reminds me of Gerald's Game by Stephen King, where the entire novel (sure, in that there are 400 pages) is a reflection of a singular person with a back and forth...but even if I really didn't like Gerald's Game, King has the ability to write those rambling paragraphs of prose that don't mean anything but you are absolutely absorbed. Unfortunately this book does not.

Sorry.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child abuse, Death, Rape, Murder

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

challenging emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

3.75

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.75

I really don't know how to rate this. On one hand, I polished it off in 3 days and was always looking forward to reading more, which is kind of surprising to me when it's very not my sort of book. Reflecting on it, I can see why people call it a masterpiece but it...just didn't land for me somehow.

I enjoyed it, I can see why people say what they did about it, but it did not hit me in that way.

Sacred And Terrible Air by Robert Kurvitz

challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

It started off so well - yes, it definitely requires you to have played Disco Elysium for the setting to make sense, but it was at the sweet spot of being cryptically mysterious and engrossing.

And then it quickly sort of fell down for the second half as it had grander plans it could not support; I have absolutely no idea what happened in the last 15% of the book. At some point you need to do SOME explaining of your story.

A Perfect Spy by John le Carré

emotional mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

It by Stephen King

challenging dark tense slow-paced

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

3.25

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

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

3.25