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sarahetc's Reviews (1.17k)
Last night I quit this book. The thought of having to read any more of this nonsense made me want to never read books again and so I quit. It's four and five stars all over the place, so I guess there are people out there who just love this. But I didn't love it and I don't love this particular outpost of science fiction. This book taught me (or reinforced) that "posthumanity" is nothing I will ever be interested in. Rather, it's something I will never be interested in so long as it's genre shorthand for Pornographic-and-Scatological. What is it with scifi types that makes them think about humans beyond humanity and doubledown on the sex and shit? It's disgusting and, so far as I've been able to figure, pointless. Or maybe disgusting pointlessness is the point? Nevertheless, ugh. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Cory Doctorow's special brand of pedantry. It's all right there, up front, with special shoutouts to Sarah Palin. I am not kidding. Blargh.
Author should be changed to Dr. Character Development and Mr. Pundit. Because Buckley goes along fine for awhile, writing a fairly interesting story about just-improbable-enough to be very, very interesting characters and then, whammo, Mr. Pundit takes over the book and it starts reading like an NRO blog post about the book.
Which is to say that Boomsday takes the kernel of an idea-- that the Baby Boomers are going to ruin everyone and everything by collapsing the Ponzi scheme that is Social Security and so Gen X (Y, M, whatevs) starts calling for their voluntary suicides-- and builds wonderful characters up around it. It reads like 275 pages of rip-roaring character sketches, each worthwhile enough to be a novel on its own. And the idea itself, that Boomers are the most incredibly selfish generation in history ruining it for everyone that comes after them, is legitimate although hyperbolic. Buckley seemed to weary of making the two work together though, so it reads like two novels written by two people. At one point a chapter even starts "two months later." Really?
This could really have been something. But it fizzled. And maybe that's thematically significant.
Which is to say that Boomsday takes the kernel of an idea-- that the Baby Boomers are going to ruin everyone and everything by collapsing the Ponzi scheme that is Social Security and so Gen X (Y, M, whatevs) starts calling for their voluntary suicides-- and builds wonderful characters up around it. It reads like 275 pages of rip-roaring character sketches, each worthwhile enough to be a novel on its own. And the idea itself, that Boomers are the most incredibly selfish generation in history ruining it for everyone that comes after them, is legitimate although hyperbolic. Buckley seemed to weary of making the two work together though, so it reads like two novels written by two people. At one point a chapter even starts "two months later." Really?
This could really have been something. But it fizzled. And maybe that's thematically significant.
This was cute and pointless and laugh out loud funny in spots.
Vincent is a warm, thoughtful writer and her stories of catching babies in Berkley, California are warm and thoughtful, too. With just a few mishaps to color what is an otherwise glowing manual of the successes of homebirth, Vincent comes across as more passionate than rational, but still pretty darn rational. I wasn't surprised or even very entertained by anything I read. It's a nice book with nice stories-- hippie enough to appeal to the woo crowd, but with enough references to nursing and enough bad outcomes and near misses to remind the average person that normal birth, despite Vincent's insistence, is a retrospective diagnosis.
I don't think there's anything I can say about this that hasn't already been said. It's remarkable and frightening and weird and sick and tremendous. There are three more days 'til Christmas, so if you're looking for something to get me, the rest of the trades that are out for this. I can't wait to see where this goes! The story that Hollywood wishes it could tell indeed.
This is a book about Emperor Mollusk. He gets in a fight with The Sinister Brain. His "friends" help him. He has spaceships and exoskeletons. Stuff goes boom. Ideal reading for your 13 year old son or the 13 year old boy trapped inside of you just desperate to read something that doesn't have a lot of crappy character development, plot, art, or any of that stuff-- just a mollusk in an exoskeleton versus a brain in an exoskeleton wherein stuff goes boom. Boom.
This probably deserves a serious review and I just don't know if I have it in me. And I think I am unable to do it genuinely because I like Andrew Klavan so much as a person. So maybe I'll start there.
I know Andrew Klavan from him Klavan on the Culture spots. He's the perfect blend of sarcastic and serious in those short videos, which outline what most people would call a conservative worldview. So I tend to pursue his work just because I know I won't have to deal with all the overwrought tropes of a progressive worldview (or just plain mass culture, if you will). But the flip side is that when you're working against mass culture, everything seems didactic. Will, the narrator of this book, is a very neutral POV. Palmer takes the "conservative" side character and Jim the "progressive" side character. And while the politics of the book isn't a 50lb anvil, it's definitely at least a skillet to the face.
So there. Klavan writes exciting adventure type novels. This is pretty much Jungle 24 for the YA crowd. Good, but not great. Politically didactic, but again, for the YA crowd. If you'd like to introduce a young person to ideas above and beyond "social justice," this might be an entre.
I know Andrew Klavan from him Klavan on the Culture spots. He's the perfect blend of sarcastic and serious in those short videos, which outline what most people would call a conservative worldview. So I tend to pursue his work just because I know I won't have to deal with all the overwrought tropes of a progressive worldview (or just plain mass culture, if you will). But the flip side is that when you're working against mass culture, everything seems didactic. Will, the narrator of this book, is a very neutral POV. Palmer takes the "conservative" side character and Jim the "progressive" side character. And while the politics of the book isn't a 50lb anvil, it's definitely at least a skillet to the face.
So there. Klavan writes exciting adventure type novels. This is pretty much Jungle 24 for the YA crowd. Good, but not great. Politically didactic, but again, for the YA crowd. If you'd like to introduce a young person to ideas above and beyond "social justice," this might be an entre.
For me, this started out rip-roaring hilarious-- laughing, crying, peeing my pants at 3:00 a.m. hilarious. And then got progressively more and more formulaic and dull until I had to make myself finish the last 30 pages. Now I remember why I don't read her blog, even though everyone insists that she's the funniest funny that ever did some outrageous thing that no normal person would ever do, because they're not conspicuously crazy and hilarious like her. Oh well. Not like the the other kids.
In the end, it was nice. I think that, all things considered, Howey's vision and world might be best served in the hands of J.J. Abrams with a $10 million budget and a seven season contract.
I'd like to know a lot of other things, but the omnibus, overall, didn't leave me slavvering for more details. There's enough of a universe and likeable enough characters to make the stories interesting, but nothing compelling enough to make me need more. Recommended for those into dystopias, claustrophobic literature and helices.
I'd like to know a lot of other things, but the omnibus, overall, didn't leave me slavvering for more details. There's enough of a universe and likeable enough characters to make the stories interesting, but nothing compelling enough to make me need more. Recommended for those into dystopias, claustrophobic literature and helices.
Oh dear. Oh Crooked Warden. I did not love the stuffing out of this book. In fact, I spent the last hundred pages alternately wishing it were better and wishing it were over. I'm so sad and disappointed in myself. That's how I know I'm in a cult. But how I know even more is that if you handed me The Thorn of Emberlain, I would sit there, holding it against me, torn over what expectations to have and how big I should allow them to become. So having given this four stars because it was only merely excellent instead of mind-bogglingly stupendous, can I talk about it? Thanks. Spoilers? Probs.
First of all, I have to go read every other review ever written to find out about what other people think of Sabetha. Because the pre-release press was all HELL YEAH SABETHA. And I read it and thought, Hell yeah! And then I read the actual book and thought, "Hell no. Wait. What?" Because Sabetha is annoying as shit. Sabetha is like some cardboard caricature from Jezebel. Sabetha spends two books getting built up as the love of Locke's life and the lynchpin of the Gentlemen Bastard's operation and then shows up, whines, bitches, whines some more and plays a lot of stupid teenage headgames with Locke. Which, props for extensive realism, I suppose. Yet all grown up Sabetha is just as annoying and, if possible, even more self-centered. In fact, having read additional press wherein Lynch talks about the difficulty of writing some things because they are so self-revelatory, I feel very, very sorry for his experiences with relationships. When you really, deeply, truly love someone, harsh truths about their past are not a license to walk and think about your own fate. You double-down on that commitment or get out.
But I see now that, in doing the Meeting Half Way dance of authors and readers, I met Lynch and realize I absolutely hate this location.
The rest of the book reads as plagued by tension, but not the good narrative kind. It's the bad narrative kind where the two major stories of the book compete with one another. Yet instead of either of them striving for a good showing, they both seem to just plod along, knowing they'll reach the finish line and not caring overly much when or how that happens. There was nothing in the majority of the book that I found remarkable. In fact, all but about 50 pages seems like so much background and set up for what comes next. And I can appreciate that. For every seven book series, you're going to have to have some kind of turning point. There will always be a Goblet of Fire or a Feast for Crows. Hopefully this is it and we get back to the good stuff in 2015 or whenever the next book comes out.
Is the book worth it? Sure. Could you just skip to the last 35 pages? I don't know, since it's three of seven. But if it weren't, yeah, you probably could.
All that said, they are still the Gentleman Bastards. They are still Locke and Jean. And I still love them deeply. I'm disappointed in myself, really. I know better than this. Or I should. But that's the thing about this series. It makes you forget how you loved and lost, because again you love so hard.
First of all, I have to go read every other review ever written to find out about what other people think of Sabetha. Because the pre-release press was all HELL YEAH SABETHA. And I read it and thought, Hell yeah! And then I read the actual book and thought, "Hell no. Wait. What?" Because Sabetha is annoying as shit. Sabetha is like some cardboard caricature from Jezebel. Sabetha spends two books getting built up as the love of Locke's life and the lynchpin of the Gentlemen Bastard's operation and then shows up, whines, bitches, whines some more and plays a lot of stupid teenage headgames with Locke. Which, props for extensive realism, I suppose. Yet all grown up Sabetha is just as annoying and, if possible, even more self-centered. In fact, having read additional press wherein Lynch talks about the difficulty of writing some things because they are so self-revelatory, I feel very, very sorry for his experiences with relationships. When you really, deeply, truly love someone, harsh truths about their past are not a license to walk and think about your own fate. You double-down on that commitment or get out.
But I see now that, in doing the Meeting Half Way dance of authors and readers, I met Lynch and realize I absolutely hate this location.
The rest of the book reads as plagued by tension, but not the good narrative kind. It's the bad narrative kind where the two major stories of the book compete with one another. Yet instead of either of them striving for a good showing, they both seem to just plod along, knowing they'll reach the finish line and not caring overly much when or how that happens. There was nothing in the majority of the book that I found remarkable. In fact, all but about 50 pages seems like so much background and set up for what comes next. And I can appreciate that. For every seven book series, you're going to have to have some kind of turning point. There will always be a Goblet of Fire or a Feast for Crows. Hopefully this is it and we get back to the good stuff in 2015 or whenever the next book comes out.
Is the book worth it? Sure. Could you just skip to the last 35 pages? I don't know, since it's three of seven. But if it weren't, yeah, you probably could.
All that said, they are still the Gentleman Bastards. They are still Locke and Jean. And I still love them deeply. I'm disappointed in myself, really. I know better than this. Or I should. But that's the thing about this series. It makes you forget how you loved and lost, because again you love so hard.