Allison Denny > Recent Status Updates

Somehow I had conflated Riverworld, Discworld, Ringworld, and The Wheel of Time, and I didn't like what I thought I knew about this mashup. I didn't want anything to do with any of these series when I came across them. So that's how this has been out for 35 years and I'm just now trying this for the first time. I'm very glad I have, it's great so far.

I'm enjoying this a ton but I do wonder why we don't see more of Bella. Given the themes, I would expect her to be deeply involved in everything.

The Wallfacer project makes for incredibly tedious reading. I completely believe that a large bureaucracy would constantly demand explanations from people it explicitly put in positions where they weren't supposed to need to explain themselves--related, I can see why it got an Obama blurb--but dear god. It's boring and frustrating.

This is as much of a slog as it was last time. It's like it was written to be serialized, or written for people who had never read any of the previous books. It's like 50% repetitive exposition dumps, often in context that makes no sense. It's frustrating and gets boring, and even worse, I know the ending is going to be bad. Unclear why I'm reading it again.

Not great! It's a cool idea but very mediocre execution.

Not great! It's a cool idea but very mediocre execution. I have up on it.

Not great! It's a cool idea but very mediocre execution. I have up on it.

I remember finishing this in 2008 and being super underwhelmed. It's going much better for me this time around, now that I've passed a calculus class and recognize the Waterhouses and Shaftoes from other works.

(Also, who or what is Enoch Root?? Please don't spoil me, but I have so many questions.)

First, it's hilarious and ridiculous that Stephenson tries to set Sophia up as not-like-the-other-girls by claiming she's too whatever to use a purse.....and then describing in detail the purse that she carries. A wallet on chain may not technically be a purse, but close enough. Second, I'm having a HARD time with what's happening to these characters I've grown to love. The purse issue is just to distract myself.

Stephenson has accidentally written a great example of the male gaze in action: Randy watching Amy climb out of the water, then Amy catching him, rolling her eyes, and going about her business while he more or less continues to moon over her.

I know I shouldn't but I just love John Gaius.

I wasn't really interested in Icehome when I finished IPB, and I'm still not sure I am. But apparently there's good backstory and world-building details to be had here. So I'm giving it another shot!

I'm sorry, did a character just offer to come in and reorganize the NYPL's archives? To better organize them? I get the vibe that the author knows enough about libraries to be dangerous...maybe not enough to be accurate.

There are some serious timeline anomalies that are bugging me! I can't tell if they're supposed to be part of the mystery, or just mistakes.

Cronin writes one of my favorite fictional versions of Texas. He clearly gets the mythos, but is also clearly rolling his eyes at it. It walks a nice line.

We just met our Mary Sue, and I'm trying my best but I am still having a hard time with this. I keep wondering why he couldn't have used Richard Bachman instead. Then I wonder why I'd be okay with that, but not the way it's actually written. Then I wonder if I'm just getting upset about this to distract myself from the truly awful Susannah-Mia plot, and what I remember coming up there.

I gave this one star the last time around! Let's see what I think now.

Is this a sad dog book? I've been reading Stephen King for 25 years now, I thought I could handle anything he was going to throw at me, but I wasn't prepared for a sad dog book.

I'm super over Jondalar's weird one-sided feud with Wolf. How many times does he have to hear that Ayla thinks of Wolf as her baby before he gets it through his dumb head? Is Jondalar just an asshole? (He definitely keeps saying flathead, so, maybe he is just an asshole. 🤷‍♀️)

I read this series in high school and had the urge to read some of it again. The anachronistic narration 25 is really getting to me already. People have been people, with roughly the same levels of intelligence and curiosity and social skills as we have now, for hundreds of thousands of years. I can accept that. I can't accept that these characters would have measured their height in feet and inches.

Just for the record, Moon is now known as Murderbat in my household vernacular. (He's not a bat, nor is he especially murdery, but I couldn't let it pass )

This series is one of my literary happy places.

A billionaire making matters into his own hands to stop climate change with his own huge pile of assets? Yes please!

I'm reading this because the internet tells me Kaz and Inej show up eventually. There's not nearly enough Kaz or Inej yet! I don't know, the whole Ravka court and Grisha plotlines have never grabbed my attention. I keep thinking that Nikolai et al need an adult in the room when I rarely had that thought for the Kerch gang. Different power scales maybe?

It's been almost 20 years since I read this the first time, so I think that's long enough to give it a second shot. I'm able to enjoy it a lot more this time around. It helps to know what to expect, and to recalibrate my expectations for Leto. He's like one of those cautionary tales about how immortality drives you crazy. I had no appreciation for this concept when I was 17.

As a super-introvert, I can't help thinking that it sounds exhausting to meet this many people and get so involved in their lives upon moving someplace.

Visiting Georgia for the first time ever and this is the only book I brought.

I watched Shadow and Bone and came away from it wanting to reread this. I'd thought the Grisha trilogy was mediocre bordering on bad, the Six of Crows duology was great bordering on genius, and I have mixed feelings about the show. It vastly improved Alina's story but watered down Kaz's crew's experience so much I almost bailed halfway through. It did look pretty. Anyway, looking forward to reading this again!

Finally Dr. Stratt says what we're all thinking! I was wondering if Grace really lacked so much self-awareness, and by extension, if Weir did. This development should have come about 200 pages earlier for my tastes, but it might still work out.

"'Do you think I kept you on the project for so long because I needed a junior high schoolteacher around?' 'Oh...' I said."

The perfect example of Grace's overactive ego. Yes, he absolutely did think that the most important project in the entire history of the world needed a smarmy, sarcastic, disgraced generalist running around, and never once thought that he could have been kept on for spoilery handwaving.