What do you think?
Rate this book
Freeport
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 18, 2020
Up there in at least my top five favorite books of all time, I love the length, I love the world, I love the bitterness of the tone. Especially paramount to me is the portrayal of an anarchist society as a fundamental struggle, a painful life, that people participate in willingly because they see it as the most ethical way to live. I am not the biggest Gundam Wing fan so maybe someone who actually managed to finish the show would get more out of this but I think if you have an appreciation for fanfic you'll enjoy it thoroughly. I could list world building tidbits and character moments I'm obsessed with day in and day out so I'll keep it short, my favorite aspects of Freeport are: Duo's inner darkness and Wufei's reckoning with it, the fight scenes, Wufei helping random neighbors cause he can, the ultimate big bad, and of course THE TROLLS!
My critique of Freeport lies almost entirely with the female side characters, almost all of them felt flat (though likeable), and the portrayal of the WOC damsel in distress really made me "uhhhhhh." In one of the first chapters there's a portrayal of a transwoman that felt downright stereotypical and she was mostly used as a prop to demonstrate Wufei othering himself from other LGBT people out of shame-just made it harder for me to rec the book in good conscience. These aspects of the book do read old internet fanfiction but all portrayals have good intentions and none are anywhere near more common female side character portrayals in the 2000s.
On my second re-read I actually listened to the audiobook by Opalsong which is a 30+ hour herculean effort. I'm glad I read the original text first but if you have a job where you can listen while you work/commute the audio really is a great alternative to staring at your phone for however long it takes you to get through 400k.
My critique of Freeport lies almost entirely with the female side characters, almost all of them felt flat (though likeable), and the portrayal of the WOC damsel in distress really made me "uhhhhhh." In one of the first chapters there's a portrayal of a transwoman that felt downright stereotypical and she was mostly used as a prop to demonstrate Wufei othering himself from other LGBT people out of shame-just made it harder for me to rec the book in good conscience. These aspects of the book do read old internet fanfiction but all portrayals have good intentions and none are anywhere near more common female side character portrayals in the 2000s.
On my second re-read I actually listened to the audiobook by Opalsong which is a 30+ hour herculean effort. I'm glad I read the original text first but if you have a job where you can listen while you work/commute the audio really is a great alternative to staring at your phone for however long it takes you to get through 400k.
August 21, 2014
The first half of this had me interested, but then... I'm not sure what happened. It's possibly the length that's the problem: it's just too long. I like Freeport, but the plot confused me quite a lot until stuff got sorted in the end, and I couldn't remember a lot of the side-characters when they were all of a sudden mentioned.
I like Duo though. Wufei's a bit too much of an idealist for me, but he can fight, and the fighting scenes featuring him were pretty awesome.
I like Duo though. Wufei's a bit too much of an idealist for me, but he can fight, and the fighting scenes featuring him were pretty awesome.
December 15, 2014
A story I always recommend to anyone who wants to read thought experiments on how a large scale anarchist community would work; doesn't have the answers, just explores the question in a very enjoyable way.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews