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gorgeous. unless the ending fumbles it, this overall rating of 3,6 is too low.

gorgeous writing, important work, and I'm thrilled that I'll be voicing the audiobook!

surprisingly well written, since i expected just silliness, and balances satire and earnestness kind of sweetly!

while I had done much of the work from My Grandmother's Hands prior to reading the book, I have great respect for how Menakem approaches these situations and I am not disappointed by his take on interpersonal conflict in committed relationships. i consider all my closest friends to be intimate committed relationships and am finding that i am ready for exactly this work--this is definitely high level adulting.

stunning

despite my frustration and perhaps scathing review of aspects of the first in the series, there were elements i wanted to follow, a good audio narrator, and a friend told me the writing got better over books 1-3. i would agree so far, more consistent character concerns for sure.

i like the reader well enough though descriptions and reviews of the book led me to expect something with a more broadly comic tone, still drier than say Douglas Adams but closer to, say, To Say Nothing of the Dog. makes me want to revisit the lusher more poetic wit I recall of This Is How You Win the Time War.

i can appreciate the aesthetic. as usual Gibson has sentence level power and ambitious ideas...but i find the whole novel curiously soulless. all plot, not much actual character/human development/impact, which feels wrong for a book so inherently about power, class, technology, addiction. read online it holds up better as noir vs sci fi that comments on society and that feels ok, tho noir is v poetic/philosophical.

as a Mad/neurodivergent poet who's undergone extensive psychiatrist treatment myself, this is just the thing to read on a day my brain and nervous system have decided they should explode in panic. I'm not even that big a Ginsberg fan but this book is a testament to Madness and the complex ways psychiatry and the medical complex enact both saneism and socially constructed values of normalcy. grateful for advance copy.

while thus far eschewing cultural/social trauma, though relating to intergenerational mechanisms, this is the interpersonal neurobiology approach to trauma that would pair will with My Grandmother's Hands. while not indigenous, it recalls the bridging of science and indigeneity that is the relational work of Braiding Sweetgrass. while meant for practicing therapists, accessible, esp for Buddhists/IFS/psychedelics

completely surprising and engrossing. a beautiful, complicated journey to take with the author thru the intersection of Siberian ecology, history, politics, economy, music, and story.

when i like a Ruefle poem, i like it very much. her poetry can be spacious, sonorous, poignant, at times gently holding riddles (<3) and easiness. it can be calming, appealing. that said, many poems in this book seem a combination of easy and arch, texts assume they are V MEANINGFUL w/o asking themselves what they are and pursuing. that's one beautiful ethic of poetry but not one i like spending a whole book with.

I have to agree with critiques about the sophistication of writing (repetition and explanation that don't expand or drive things forward) and depth of characters and plot. My take is the split between the sides of the wormhole doesn't work, in part because each (but especially Niko) is limited by obsession with the other--not that they aren't integral to each other but the scope of thinking seems narrow. missed opps.

I agree with some reviews that this begins quite slowly but becomes rich and exciting; tho I'm really interested in the fictionalized oral history as a formal concept, not a book I'd typically pursue, and I picked it up on a friend's review of the audio cast. It really is a solid performance (particularly the characters of Virgil le Fleur! and Opal). For me it really did take almost half the book to get excited.

hilariously, the 3rd of 6 "Forbidden Magic" fantasy novels to choose from. more hilariously, I really liked this as a teenager.

enjoyment of sensual pleasures is the practice of a worldling