Ryofire > Recent Status Updates

I haven't been this bored with a book since... Element of Fire. And I can't decide if I'm more bored or not.

This reads like a rightwinger's vision of how society collapses. "People lost sight of their proper values and gave themselves over to drug abuse, alcoholism, promiscuity, and mysticism. Crime rates skyrocketed, while arrest rates fell in inverse proportion." Although it's a translation, so the quality of the English translation may have no bearing on the original Japanese, it's just not good writing, either.

I can see this is well-written, but I just find it incredibly boring. Sad, because I've loved other books by Parrish.

I was honestly so bored with this that I started reading a slew of other books instead and completely forgot where I was in this.

I can't tell if this is better than 2 and 3 or I'm just already skimming enough that it doesn't get to me as much as trying to read it normally and THEN choosing to skim to get through it.

Last book Kevin was the main problem. Now Sam is the main problem. This is infinitely worse.

Why did the supposedly intelligent characters do the same stupid things they did last book? This is just kind of embarrassing now.

One of my favorite lines is their discussion about how leadership works: you take responsibility for the actions of your underlings.

Is there a reason no one has commented on how bad the prose itself is in this? I've read McCaffrey before (admittedly, her science fiction), and I don't remember it being THIS terrible. I know this was published near the start of her career, so that might be part of the issue.

Maybe there's something in here about how gross war is? How unromantic it is? How terrible soldiers are? That's the kindest I can be to this.

Ach I love Blitzen. Poor guy.

This won me over with the line about CE versus AD and how the usage of CE is because fuck Christians, basically.

The end... the end is in sight...

There's a scene where some characters throw a manuscript(?) in a fire to burn without being read and honestly, I think this might have been too on point for what should have happened here.

The best way to keep my interest on a boring story is to have flashbacks and back and forths of who might be watching from the POV of characters I don't know.

-sigh- Ooh, GoT reference. Eugh. This is not encouraging me to finish.

Woof there is a lot of use of the g slur for the Roma in this. And a weird reverse racism subplot that... I don't think really works. Admittedly I'm coming back to this after a while, but I'm remembering why I've dropped this twice.

...I'm not sure if this is railing against socialism or imperialism, but it seems to be conflating the both of them by saying "this person who believes in medicare for all also believes in the mantra "always carry a big stick" and forget the first part of that saying".

The problem with a bad or failed parody when I legit do not know if it's parody, still, is that... I just don't know. Like Sapkowski will drop anti-choice rhetoric one book, how the patriarchy uses anti-choice rhetoric to control women the next, and then this nonsense shows up: “The results of overpopulation may be disastrous” and like... what do I make of this, exactly?