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stateofchassis's reviews
154 reviews
The Rose by W.B. Yeats
An improvement over Crossways - it actually has a poem that peeks above proficiency and into genuinely being quite good - though still felt rather distant and uninteresting to me
The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.5
A deeply frustrating read.
It's so underwritten that I cannot tell you what any of these people, or places, or creatures, sound like. I can't tell you what they look like, how they feel. The people are all silhouettes speaking in the same voice. The strange world and weird lifeforms that are supposed to be main appeal of this type of escapist adventure fluff are not described at all. Sure a lot of surface level pseudo-scientific detail is given, but I have no idea of what it feels like to stand in that vague jungle world beyond there being trees and it being warm. The kaiju are mostly not described at all. More attention is paid to their pop culture reference names than to their physicality, to what it's like to inhabit their space. The scant times they are described it borders on self-parody (e.g. "the kaiju looked like every kaiju you've ever seen in a film") or are as indistinct as the faces of playschool acquaintances.
The other leg this book tries to stand on is its humour. Unfortunately, that leg is a phantom limb. Most jokes, usually in the form of quips or references, are stale and repeated so often as to become torturous. The author doesn't seem to understand how to write a joke in prose either. Multiple points throughout the novel, I could see a moment that's clearly meant to be a joke and I understood what the writer was going for, but it's written as if it were in a film or TV show. (See the joke with the large binders, or thecaught by the enemy henchman bit ) Perhaps his editor could've informed him that he wasn't writing a screenplay.
In fact, the whole mess needs a stern and strong-willed editor. I noticed multiple mistakes in the text, in its factual content, and open contradictions in plot elements (e.g.A shotgun is set up early on as having an incredibly wide spread and that it shouldn't "be pointed within 90 degrees of a person", only for later on the protagonist to somehow roll out of the way of its "tightly packed" buckshot. )
This novel being nominated for so many 'best novel' categories in well-regarded SFF awards, even winning the Locus, absolutely baffles me. It accomplishes none of its goals, and all it did for me was frustrate me so much as to break from routine and actually review a book on here.
It's so underwritten that I cannot tell you what any of these people, or places, or creatures, sound like. I can't tell you what they look like, how they feel. The people are all silhouettes speaking in the same voice. The strange world and weird lifeforms that are supposed to be main appeal of this type of escapist adventure fluff are not described at all. Sure a lot of surface level pseudo-scientific detail is given, but I have no idea of what it feels like to stand in that vague jungle world beyond there being trees and it being warm. The kaiju are mostly not described at all. More attention is paid to their pop culture reference names than to their physicality, to what it's like to inhabit their space. The scant times they are described it borders on self-parody (e.g. "the kaiju looked like every kaiju you've ever seen in a film") or are as indistinct as the faces of playschool acquaintances.
The other leg this book tries to stand on is its humour. Unfortunately, that leg is a phantom limb. Most jokes, usually in the form of quips or references, are stale and repeated so often as to become torturous. The author doesn't seem to understand how to write a joke in prose either. Multiple points throughout the novel, I could see a moment that's clearly meant to be a joke and I understood what the writer was going for, but it's written as if it were in a film or TV show. (See the joke with the large binders, or the
In fact, the whole mess needs a stern and strong-willed editor. I noticed multiple mistakes in the text, in its factual content, and open contradictions in plot elements (e.g.
This novel being nominated for so many 'best novel' categories in well-regarded SFF awards, even winning the Locus, absolutely baffles me. It accomplishes none of its goals, and all it did for me was frustrate me so much as to break from routine and actually review a book on here.