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Fascinating ideas. I just wish he wouldn’t constantly over-explain the meaning and morals of everything

Interesting but very dense - maybe too comprehensive? A lot of name-dropping and use of specialist terms without explanation of their significance, which is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Can sometimes feel a bit self-impressed, like listening to a rambling university lecturer who enjoys making subtle little jokes that will go over most people’s heads

This book feels like a missed opportunity. It has some pretty bad writing in it. Like… “Long moony hops carrying them forward.” What…?! There are also lots of mistakes, like starts of sentences that haven’t been capitalised and bits of dialogue missing speech marks, which makes me wonder if it was properly proofread. Cool concept but not great writing sadly…

Feels both overwritten and not very well edited

The creepy old bastard put Ender on house arrest… this book is gross

This scene with Mazer Rackham was fucking stupid

May as well rename this “The Adventures of Saint Ender”, ffs

Ender “the best at everything without even having to try” Wiggins is starting to get pretty annoying. Also, I don’t understand what the point of the game is. Why are they spending so much time doing it? And whilst we’re doing questions, why do the enemy aliens have such stupid names?? “Buggers”?

How have I ended up reading two books in a row with terrible, impossible to like protagonists??

Holy hell, this book is bad. I wish it wasn’t, but it is. It’s like Star Wars prequel level bad. Although for some reason I’m still reading it…

I don’t think it makes sense that she decides not to tell her crew about her sister being kidnapped, but she tells her dad - who she doesn’t trust at all??

I cannot help but find “The Fridge” a deeply annoying name for a supposedly scary crime syndicate. Also, I can’t help but think that Eva is finding all this too easy. She doesn’t actually FEEL scared even though strangers have kidnapped her sister. On top of that, I think too much of her characterisation comes through description and narratorial interjections rather than her actions.

I was looking for something less dense to read and this is hitting the spot so far. Slightly goofy/action-oriented in a way that I don’t love, but mainly just enjoying the fact that I can actually get through it easily without having to re-read whole passages multiple times to understand them properly (Snow Crash I’m looking at you… all that Sumerian mythology stuff, oh man)

I’m stuck! This book is too damn dense! I don’t seem to have the headspace to keep all the threads in mind right now. But I’m hoping to finish it.

There’s a lot of good stuff in here but some of the characterisation is kinda… racist. Persisting for the corporate satire and because I love cyberpunk novels. And because it’s part of the Geek Canon.

Favourite part of it so far is the sentient cyborg guard dog. Also, I (mostly) like the writing style.

Cool but so far I prefer Virtual Light! This one’s a bit more hardcore, more gritty, and I actually miss the slightly more comedic tone of VL. Still great stuff though!

Great! Such dense descriptions and great vernacular writing style

Great book, incredibly rich and evocative description - sometimes so rich that it takes a long time to read each passage, exploring all the metaphors, turns of phrase, wordplay. Like each passage is in itself a miniature piece of formally beautiful writing.

This particular chapter is a little heartbreaking and it’s not always an easy read in terms of the characters’ lives - but amazing descriptions of music!

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Gooood

I really like the way this book combines scientific insight with broader philosophical speculation. In particular, how it embraces a position of relativism towards questions of meaning - the way that things change depending on how you look at them. Also, how a research mission, no matter how carefully you prepare, always ends up going astray in some way. And that's part of the joy of the process.