Hunter Kroll > Recent Status Updates

Strikingly good, and surprisingly accessible. Revisiting some of these books really makes me wish I was a bit wiser when I went to high school and college

A welcome departure from the shitty prose I keep accidentally reading. I literally said “Wow” out loud after the first page, granted less to do with this book and more to do with Nettle and Bone

While I understand the importance of COVID historically and especially in China something feels so odd about seeing it in a book and I kind of hate it. Then again in 20 years this will be called “historical fiction” so alas

It may or may not be getting better. We shall see.

It’s aight

Encapsulation of this book is the part where a somewhat interesting interaction takes place and then in the literal start of the next scene the MC asks “What happened?” - like those are the first two words of the scene - and then the travel party talks about it for a whole page

It truly is a frustrating read because I love many of the smaller ideas in the book but the unfortunate lack of characters is making it a bit difficult. The godmother is an interesting addition in this section but we still have too little from Marra which is a shame because we did spend 40 pages at the beginning on her backstory

The world grows more interesting as you spend more time in it and I understand the high ratings. That said, the prose continues to frustrate. Some will call it economical, but it’s really just rushed - when action is happening, there’s a staccato to it, and in descriptions there’s always both a bit less than I want and a few more ideas than I can handle. I think I’d generally prefer longer sentences

Not well written

It occurs to me that this is not actually a book. It literally says on the title “an arcane history” which I understand is from the perspective of the books world but it really does read more like a textbook at times

In a footnote: “A comparative analysis of the quantity of footnotes added to translations of European texts vs non-European texts. Non-European texts…tended to be loaded down with an astonishing amount of explanatory context, to the effect that the text was never read as a work on its own, but always through the guided lens of the translator” my sister in Christ have some self awareness

Sometimes a book poses an interesting idea about how you’re not obligated to be grateful for things you didn’t choose and then HOLY FUCK Crazy violence outta nowhere

The gays. I was certain of it back on page 50, to bring it back now feels almost like a reintroduction. Not that it needs this dimension, but it’s certainly there

It’s hard to say that not wanting to go set explosives on a British ship makes you an enemy of the rebellion but I imagine anything looks silly if you zoom out far enough

Interesting to see how much goodwill I give Rebecca because she’s so knowledgeable about the history of language and her magic system is kind of awesome

In many ways I understand the criticisms of the top 1 star review: they’re saying it incorrectly but what they mean is that the sense of otherness for Robin is over established in chapters 1-3 (3-4 of the same exact beat) and the footnotes at times state things that it would be more correct to allow the narrative to imply

Something so cool about someone with a PhD explaining the little nuances of their specialty. I will happily read a lot more of that

To some degree I wonder if the slam poetry style limits what we can experience emotionally (which I believe to be rich), because everything has to come out as a one or two liner instead being a bit more lived in

So interesting, my only concern is that as you continue to stack 2-300 poems that some of them are going to repeat themselves - there’ll need to be enough action throughout to keep that from happening

Sam is lowkey evil man

One interesting piece of growth is that I think her newer work has more natural sounding language - a lot of the similes in this book use nice sounding words or phrases but don’t actually make any logical sense

This seems to be a bit higher rated than their other work which is interesting - it’s definitely different, the voice is simultaneously more confident in its style and less unique in its language, and it has less of the sentences that I’ve loved in their work in the past, but the ideas are good and the flashback chapter is excellent

Virgin “strong female character” vs Chad “go wait in the bedroom bruh”

Worst pacing since Alain Bernard’s anchor leg in 2008?

Homer gives everyone a reasonable death and talks about their history and then there’s just one guy “not smart or strong” and he dies from being stupid and falling. 10/10 writing

I see why Christopher Nolan would enjoy this given the nonlinear storytelling

Did Homer invent clickbait? Should be called the Telemachyssey

Get a line editor next time

Damn