razakius's reviews
28 reviews

The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook by Matt Dinniman

adventurous funny medium-paced

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

3.5

You can see the author growing with each book. Character growth has gotten better with each book in the series and feels much less forced in this one than the last. The addition of Katia to the story has brought in a welcome difference in characters and I think helps flesh out the book as a whole. I did find the theme of the book interesting but maybe too confusing. Weirdly, DCC does best in a straightforward plot. This one overcomplicated it a bit.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Violence

Moderate: Cursing

Minor: Alcoholism

Carl's Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman

adventurous funny fast-paced

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

4.25

Another strong book in the DCC series. I didn't like it quite as much as the first book but it was still really strong and hard to put down. It's a fun read more than what I would call a "good" read. The author still doesn't have a ton to say, but doesn't really need it either. It was nice that he made some attempts to develop the characters, he was more succesful developing Donut than Carl. With Carl the character development largely felt forced with flashback-like sequences and didn't at all feel natural.

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

adventurous funny fast-paced

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

4.0

I struggle to say that this book is... "good." I mean that to say that the author of this book has absolutely nothing to say in the book other than perhaps reality TV is trash. I do think that eventually there is the opportunity to bring in topics of consumerism, wealth, and many other topics, but in this book, it's a romp through a dungeon.

It is a very fun one at that. I  had a difficult time putting it down. I wanted to see what happened next constantly throughout the book. I would make time to read it. A big reason for that is that the author is a master of creating a cliffhanger at the end of every single chapter, both big and small and you just needed more. Love this book, I hope the author makes it more substantive in the future books, but even if he doesn't, this book is a great read.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

dark mysterious medium-paced

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

3.5

I certainly did not figure out who did it in this one which after reading Sanderson books last year felt different and welcome! Also comparitively it didn't feel forced like his. Not that they are really comparable but considering how he tries so hard to have a surprise ending I wanted to get a sense for how someone who is known for it did it, and it was definitely a better version of the surprise ending.

That being said, the story itself was rather simple and straight forward, which idk, may be the reason why the ending didn't feel forced. Definitely a good light read.

Dragons of Eternity by Tracy Hickman, Margaret Weis

adventurous hopeful medium-paced

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

3.0

Overall, I never really liked Destina as a character, didn't feel like the development ever was really there for her, just one day she woke up and decided not to be a brat. Yay. This book did feature her more than the second book, but she wasn't as bad as the first. I will say that at times I questioned why the secondary plot was even happening and I feel like the authors knew this was happening because there were several occasions where the characters in it had to repeat why what they were doing was important. Even so, it never entirely felt like they needed to bring back Tanis other than the fact that Sturm was injured, which the people who sent him didn't realize when they sent him. This book was rather holey in its plot overall. But it was nice to see the gang again even so.

Dragons of the Dwarven Depths by Tracy Hickman, Margaret Weis

4.0

Really brought me back into what I loved about the series. Not as good as the original Chronicles but a pretty good reminder of it and not a bad story either.

Draconomicon: The Book of Dragons by James Wyatt, Andy Collins, Skip Williams

4.0

very good description of dragons

Dragons of the Highlord Skies by Margaret Weis

2.0

A fairly disappointing second book to a new trilogy. The promised scenes with Lord Soth never really showed and the story of the three knights was fairly dull overall. Still, not the worst book in the series, but by far not up to Weis & Hickman standards.

Pikachu's Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokemon by

3.0

A fairly decent book about how Pokemon became popular, both why and how Nintendo marketed it. It ranged from extremely interesting to outright boring. I think this tends to be true with any compilation. The ones I felt that were worth reading were "Cuteness as Japan's Millennial Product" by Anne Allison, "How 'Japanese' is Pokemon?" by Koichi Iwabuchi, "Localizing the Pokemon TV Series for the American Market" by Hirofumi Katsuno and Jeffrey Maret, and "Conclusion: The Rise and Fall of the Pokemon Empire" by Joseph Tobin. These I felt were the best by far, the rest could have very well been skipped IMHO.

The Shattered Land by Keith Baker

4.0

The second in the Dreaming Dark Trilogy, I really enjoyed this book. Once I got midway in, it became really exciting and I found it hard to put the book down. I think this series is putting the word "Trilogy" to the test as this book doesn't really mesh in with the first book in the series outside of the fact that it shares the same characters. Still I really enjoyed this one, I Heard it was the best of the three but I am still looking forward to the last.