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19th century Britain fucking S U C K E D

The authoee expounds endlessly, dragging forth his ideas, by repeating everything, restating what has been said, and engaging in thesauratic flights of redundancy.

One of those mysteries where the mystery is "What is the mystery?"

I'm having a good time, but the plot has still not materialized out of the "disconnected bits of exposition" phase. A certain character keeps threatening to "explain everything," and hasn't done so yet!

I've barely started this book about WW1, and I've already laughed aloud twice. Can history really be written this engagingly???

I have finally encountered the mythic "Themself" in print!

Part One done. Book is fine so far, a solid 3/5.

Is this going to be one of those books that chronicles a toxic asshole's destructive behavior and handwaves it all away with "But he was REALLY smart, so who can say if it was bad?" So far this is just about all it is, and I can feel my "objective journalism" klaxon starting to spin up.

First story has a cyborg dolphin. 10/10 no notes.

This book is at least twice as long as it needs to be, and could probably actually just be a short story. There's chapter after chapter in which the plot is not advanced, painfully blunt exposition directed to characters that should already know everything they're being told, and actions that seem totally divorced from motives. On page 331 of 567, one of the characters finally encounters a situation with real stakes.

If you were wondering about the vibe of this book, the closing sentence of an early story is, "The old man remained alone in his misery."