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Nathan

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Nathan’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (188)
currently-reading‎ (29)
read‎ (842)
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fiction‎ (479)
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science-fiction‎ (118)
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collections-and-anthologies‎ (37)
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Nathan is Currently Reading

Nathan is currently reading

Blindsight (Firefall, #1)

by Peter Watts (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: fiction, science-fiction, currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in March 2017

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Nathan said: " This is the most clever and thought-provoking book I've read so far this year. For a novel that's squeaks in under 400 pages, there's a surprising amount of depth, and much like the human consciousness that Watts explores, much of what is essential l ...more "

Mar 12, 2017 06:00PM · see review

Nathan is currently reading

Absolution (Southern Reach #4)

by Jeff Vandermeer (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading, fiction, horror, science-fiction

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Nathan said: " This book was quite disappointing for me. At 300 pages in, I’m tempted to add this to my DNF pile, but I expect I’ll consume the rest of it in bite-size chunks over the next couple of weeks, if only to be able to claim that I gave it a fair shake. I’ This book was quite disappointing for me. At 300 pages in, I’m tempted to add this to my DNF pile, but I expect I’ll consume the rest of it in bite-size chunks over the next couple of weeks, if only to be able to claim that I gave it a fair shake. I’ll edit the review if my opinion changes.

Annihilation is one of my favorite books, and possibly the finest work of speculative fiction written in the last twenty years. A dense and multifaceted tome about an encounter between humanity and the incomprehensible, elevated to excellence by the lyricism and economy of Vandermeer’s prose, as well as the character of the Biologist, a protagonist who is enigmatic, compelling, and profoundly flawed.

Unfortunately, in comparison to the rest of the Southern Reach series, I wonder if Annihilation was a flash in the pan. Authority was a competent work of weird fiction, but lost the thread of mystery and character that made Annihilation so spellbinding, while Acceptance had its high points but tripped up on a tendency to overexplain details better left as a mystery. And now there is Absolution. There is really nothing here worth recommending. The novel is split into two halves: the story of a washed-up secret agent monitoring Area X in the months before the curtain comes down, and the story of the first expedition in the weeks following the cataclysm. The first half is tolerable, and seeks to fill in some of the blanks left by the original trilogy. However, it feels like an afterthought, and it doesn’t connect well with the main storytelling beats of the previous books as it meanders to a conclusion that feels both confusing and disjointed. The main character is written as a husk, broken by tragedy. However, he feels like a different kind of husk--a puppet of the author who follows the strings to the main plot points without agency.

The second half. Hoo boy, the second half. Another reviewer claimed that if you removed all of the f bombs, the book would be twenty pages shorter. That is a slight exaggeration, but only slight. By my back-of-the-envelope calculation, if you removed all the swear words in the second half, it would be somewhere between 5 and 10 pages shorter. It is almost unreadable, a stream of crudities from a narrator who is deeply ugly without any of the interesting texture that ugliness can lend to a character. This character appeared in the earlier books, where he was equally unpleasant, but the effect was mitigated because he was held at arms length by the narrative. Here he is front, center, and inescapable. If this is intended to shock or offend, it does neither. It only bores. There is no beauty to the writing, and there is barely any coherence. I had to read a page twice before I realized that two people had died.

Overall, this is not a book I can recommend, even to someone who enjoyed the entire Southern Reach trilogy. If it were shorter, it might be more tolerable, but at 450 pages, Absolution is bloated and sloppily written. ...more "

Oct 28, 2026 12:48PM · see review

Nathan is currently reading

The Butcher's Masquerade (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #5)

by Matt Dinniman (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading

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Oct 08, 2026 01:55PM

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Nathan’s Quotes

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

tags: fantasy, humor, scifi

23538 likes

“I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.”
― Mark Twain

tags: humor, knowledge

6895 likes

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

tags: bene-gesserit, fear, litany-against-fear, motivational, scifi

17106 likes