Yanik > Recent Status Updates

Ugh, what a fantastically emotionally detached POS Jaylen is.

Really enjoying it so far. Absolutely Roux's prose!
Also, holykriff, what a fantastic THR reference!:D

It came in early.
Kriff it, we doing two SW novels at the same time now!

Really enjoying this, breezing through.
Nd-5's progression is fantastic and precious.
Damage, both physical and mental are a running theme as well as layers of trust and dependency. It's a thrilling sweep through the SW underworld, but with deep emotional storytelling, much like the game.
Anyway, need to double-time this, SW Legacy is coming in tomorrow!

The Chromium Fence was very blunt, heavy handed and almost a caricature of us/them Fascism. But, ugh, was it pitch black.

Picked this up again. Want to bring more fantasy into my active reading but need to finish this omnibus chonker first.
Anyway, yay Skaven.:3

Pay for the Printer was very cool, especially in our world of 3d-printing and AI reliance. Very relevant message.
In the middle of War Veteran and I'm not really feeling it. Bit too much of the classic sci-fi tropey pitfalls. The Cold War-reflective premise is decently interesting, but the characters are just wildly bizarrely out of place. Add to that mid-century standards and time-travel...We'll see.

Not entirely sure when this was written, '87?
Eitherway, there's some serious blue-tinted glasses views going on here. Not sure if this is the perspective I want. Though I guess I should not be too surprised given the source.

Upon the Dull Earth is why I read. Such a bright, vivid piece of storytelling that masterfully paints a world and pulls you in, for a short bit makes you part of its bizarre chaos. The fact we follow the POV of Rick, the possessive, self-centered boyfriend to the fantastically fascinating, intelligent, Silvia who communicates with the beyond and has her life planned out for herself is very poignant to the theme.

Shell game was fun, in a dark psychological horror kind of way.
Upon the Dull Earth was on another level. Fantastic prose, great characterization for its tiny cast and huge, terrifying implications with its biblical horror fantasy plot.

Oh wow, there has been a lot of hyper-capitalist dystopia and a decent amount of android/robot exploration, but it hasn't come together like this before.
Sales Pitch was an actual 1954 Cyberpunk short story. Yes, it has the gender norms, mid-century trappings and vocabulary of the time, but man is it cyberpunk in everything else, from the visuals and themes to the dark depressive storytelling.

This is more than paying homage to The Rising Storm.

Serve the Master- Post AI/Robot was Apocalypse humanity living in underground shelters/vaults. Very brutal Fallout-esque world.
Exhibit Piece- Escapism from a future dystopia via portal fantasy. Again, Fallouty vibes with the mid-century modern Cold War setting.
The Crawlers- One of the closest to horror so far. Main theme being humanities destructive drive for knowledge and power without heed for the consequences.

Have been hyper-focused on Star Wars for a bit. The Living Force's humorous tone isn't wat I want today so this is a nice side-read to pick back up again.

Alright, the canon lore connections have been on point, but I was not expecting a Young Jedi Adventures reference, love it!

I love how fantastically out of touch but well-meaning the Jedi are portrayed and what a cavalcade of fun side characters we get to see on Kwenn. Reminds me of a Vance novel in its wittiness and format.

Really liking it so far. It isn't just a more humorous tone of storytelling(which is great), it has a lot of heart and gets to a very sore and tragic point of the diminishing Jedi order. Love getting to spend this much time with Depa.
Miller is super good at pulling in story points and canon events from all around. Not just in the continuation of the prequel era novel threads, but also High Republic references.

It's alright. Flashes of really good atmospheric storytelling, but mostly kind of shallow plotting and characterization. Altman is a non-personality dude-guy. There have been 2 named female characters appearances so far. One did not reappear after her one page, the other is the MC's love interest. With Evenson's credentials, it is like he either deliberately dumbing down his writing, or not putting in the effort.

It's been getting progressively better and I'm quite enjoying it now.
Characters are quick to perish, but for the most part, they get decent amount to shine and build up to their demise now. Tensions, mysteries and dread are being build up.

It's been a bit of a slow burn, which I generally don't mind, especially when the characters are this inflective, but the plot felt kind of floaty and couldn't grab me too much until now. These new revelations are putting some real strain on sore points though, and I like it.

It's doing a lot of classic sci-fi writing; barely any character building, semi-big ideas it wants to get to but not the means to tell the story to get there.
If you want to do psychological horror with people's minds being altered, we need a bit more groundwork to show who they are to see what they are turning into.
Same with the plot, it starts off running, sprinting. Prose is okay, sometimes quite good.

-Poof-

I love how many influences are being pulled in.

The quote on the back cover is apt. This is all about the Jedi striving for what is right, having good intentions and choosing the light every day, BUT being flawed, struggling and faltering as anyone. Yes, the decline of the Jedi Order is evident, but is also on a personal level that these people are just coping to their abilities.
Gray is such a master of writing Jedi and their connection to the Force.

Not too convinced yet.
I like the Yucatan setting, that's cool, but there very little tension being build and zero foundation being made for any of it to make technical sense. I hope we're meant to feel this grasping for reason. I am sure we're not meant to feel like this stale.

It's nice, I love how much internalizations we get from Qui-Gon; Claudia is perfect for these kinds of character-driven Force-musings.
Having Rael Averros back after reading Dooku is cool too.
Not too sure about Prax, he is very autistic coded, and the bond between him and Rahara seems genuine and well developed. But him being raised by protocol droids being the reason for his behavior and mind kind of rubs wrong.

What a fever dream.:')

Almost there.
Like with Sheepfarmer's Daughter, it can be quite jarring how often Moon switches pacing and changes out entire cast sections.
It is not that interactions and relations feel shallow or simple, far from it, Moon revels in minute social and cultural arguments.
But it is hard to keep track of entire crews of multiple ships when the story can leave them behind at a moment's notice.

Very glad with how those story threads ended up being resolved and tying back to the larger plot and back to the minute business of space travel again. Love it.