Chrz > Recent Status Updates

Lem is insistent on controlling my mental image—in taxonomic detail—of something that is supposed to be incomprehensible to the human mind. I'd really rather have some negative space to project my imagination onto, rather than having to try, and fail, to imagine it exactly the way he wants me to.

Hate the aliens

Every single character is kind of unbearably arrogant, which is the sort of thing that would usually turn me off from a book, but in this case it is for extremely good reason. This is not a character-driven story anyway, I love it. I am devouring it.

Honestly starting to lose interest at this point...struggling through it

There are so many formatting errors, who edited this?
And every time I hear mention of a spren my life force ebbs a little more away. Oh my god I'm bored

I keep rolling my eyes help

I'm honestly so disappointed that I'm not enjoying this so far...it feels like cringe bro-fantasy and I'm at chapter seven and there still isn't a recognisable plot to follow. I'm sad about it.

I'm gonna have to come back to this later when I'm in a better head space because it's clearly going to be extremely depressing

I will commit to struggling through this outrageously long book. To be fair the last 15 pages have started to become more interesting and less tiresome...

The first half of this book was really interesting and then all of a sudden it got weird and not so good...

At first I thought maybe this is just too young for me. And then I thought maybe it was AI? But then I decided that no; there is no excuse for this

Omg we cannot be serious right now. I thought this was a mystery/horror story why am I reading about the teenage main character inappropriately tonguing some guy in front of her mother and a load of other people who are cheering them on this is so weird

It's like...for kids, but also fan service to 90s nostalgia that kids won't understand. I can't figure out if this book is for me or not for me.

For a small town with French origins that doesn't take kindly to outsiders, it sure is multicultural, and no one is French.

I really love the concept, but some of the writing is juuuust tickling the edge of being gibberish 😂

I haven't really got a clue what is happening and the story is all over the place but it seems to be getting more interesting? I think?

Really wanting to like it but it's already starting to feel like a bit of a chore :( there are so many words

I'm enjoying the speculative ideas in this book but it's not touching me emotionally. Maybe that will come from the last section which I am approaching now

This is already way more my thing than the poppy war series ✨

It's like this book has been completely rushed and yet half the events are completely unnecessary. We keep constantly thinking characters have died and then when rin is reunited with them they don't even acknowledge it? Just carry on straight from where they left off with the same old conversations... the pacing is horrible, half the descriptions don't make sense and have no continuity...I actually hate it

I don't know if I can finish...
I want to finish to be able to give an accurate review and also as an act of study in how to write a bad book. In any case the fact that the author has had so much success assuages me that even if I think my own sworn so bad, bad work can get great recognition.

Ps this author is PROBLEMATIC

So far this book presents exactly the same problems that the main character experiences in the first book of the series. Oh no, she can't summon the god any more. Oh no, she's being experimented on again. All the characters are just ruminating on the events of the last book instead of moving forward in the story. Actual action points seem like afterthoughts that are breezed past in mere pages.

Hating on The Poppy War, so sue me

This book is full of contradictions.
Does opium help them reach the pantheon and open them to the gods or does it close them off? Is nuwen a snail or a snake? Apparently rin needs to be more like Altan because he could control the phoenix in his head but we know he was also smoking opium because he couldn't quell the rage? Please make up your mind, kuang

Feels like side quests from a video game.
Rin is insufferable and I absolutely detest her.
I've rolled my eyes several times.

2 chapters in and things are looking messy and uncompelling...

Ok it's incredible. I adore this

For some reason I was prepared not to enjoy this. It seemed to far removed from the things I've been reading lately. But Piranesi (though that is not his name from his recollection of course) is so pure, and his philosophy is so calming that I'm finding a lovely peace in its, where I would often gravitate towards drama and pain depicted in writing.

After reading Babel before this, I can feel how the author has grown prose-wise in the time since she wrote The Pppy War. Sometimes it takes me out of it a bit. But after wading through Neuromancer I'm just so relieved to be able to follow the plot, and things are starting to get interesting

I've opened this book up on four separate occasions to get into it and I just simply can't. It feels totally indigestible to me. I have no emotional connection to anything and the prose is just deliberately indecipherable. I find it annoying. I'm gonna try and trade it in.