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It's just a really boring book. That's the really damning thing. It's also just lazily written with undeveloped side characters and painfully cheesy dialogue, but that would all be forgivable with actual pacing -- more action and tension, and about a thousand times less exposition.

All in all, an underwhelming second outing with none of the fun and heart of Ready Player One.

What's most surprising -- and disappointing -- about this book is how little it utilizes its premise. If I pick up a book about gamers waging space battles, I at least expect to get some fucking space battles. After nearly 300 pages there's only been one -- two if you count the Icebreaker mission. The rest of it? Exposition, exposition, exposition. I have little confidence that all this laborious setup will pay off.

The more I read, the more I learn about some new, horrifying fact about how livestock animals are treated and the positively Dahmeresque ways their "byproducts" are distributed and used in various industries unrelated to farming. Bonus: weird misogynistic jokes likening donkeys to housewives.

>Love interest kisses MC 20 minutes after meeting him
>MC makes grave and arrogant tactical error, destroying large swath of Earth's already-limited artillery
>MC gets slap on the wrist, faces no other consequences, allowed to continue normal service because he's so good at video games
>Book casually drops bombshell character revelation with no prior buildup or tension

Yep, it's just lazy writing. All the way down.

also I like that Alexis is introduced as The Coolest Most Desirable Gurl Evurrrrr but is a total dweeb who talks to her handpainted R2-D2 canteen.

I'm going to be misreading "Europans" as "Europeans" for the rest of the damn book...

This is still pretty lame so far, but now that the story has finally kicked off (after 100 pages) hopefully there'll be something to enjoy down the road.

This is alright, but it kinda just feels like a book of trivia with a more adult-oriented slant. Seems pretty well-researched though. Less rattling-off random facts, more storytelling, please.

“That’s how you know you’ve mastered a videogame—when a bunch of butt-hurt crybabies start to accuse you of cheating in an effort to cope with the beatdown they’ve just suffered at your hands.”

60 pages and the plot hasn't moved an inch...c'mon. Also, I never want to read another sentence about "Oedipal torments" again.

Yes, it's goofy as hell and badly in need of an editor. But it's not like it's completely without an original voice, even if it heavily echoes Wade's sardonic narration from RPO.

I keep picturing Izzie in my head as looking like the youtuber Icky. Kinda hard not to when she's another black-haired doll whose name practically rhymes...

^Regardless, it just reminds me that a ton of everyday people live with struggles they don't have the vocabulary to understand or even identify, and that makes me sad!!! It reminds me of the time I casually mentioned alexithymia (which I don't have myself, but know about) in a facebook thread and got a ton of replies from people realizing they had it. They should teach psychology in K-12...

It's weird being reminded that most people don't know about things like Seasonal Affective Disorder. I know because I've read about them all on wikipedia, to the point that I've had a broad armchair knowledge of every major mental health term for like 10 years now, but I guess that just makes me a weirdo. To me it feels like not knowing what elephants are or something.

ugh, this really is the most tumblr thing I've ever read

It feels like whenever the author has a chance to write some meaningful character drama, they always water it down into simple miscommunication (or a refusal to communicate entirely). Also, wasn't expecting that nerdfighter reference...

nvm, it timeskipped to autumn so there's no way they haven't fucked by now. ;_; the book is still uncomfortably corny but I guess the games are like that too. also not really feeling the drama around renee + steph's relationship with her dad tbh.

This is all very cute so far, but I'm waiting to see how far the romantic plot is actually willing to go. It could play things safe and tasteful all the way through, with no explicit scenes beyond maybe a fade-to-black.

But I'd be very interested if this book, a story about a cis lesbian falling for a trans woman, is willing to feature sex in any descriptive capacity. It's a rare thing to see, even in LGBTQ romance.

oh yeah this is definitely YA LOL 💀 not a bad thing on its own but there's definitely a jejune quality to the writing -- it's painting by all the familiar numbers of an LGBTQ romantic drama, sincere and self-serious to every end without ever really elevating itself. not that it can't still surprise me, which I hope it will.

Giving this a shot before I play True Colors again...mostly to learn more about Izzie, the only named trans character in the series.

The tone is very YA-y, which I expected, but it does leave me with a faint trickle of embarrassment while reading. It also channels a very "2015 tumblr" consciousness -- not too bothersome for now, but if I run into more lines like "I'm a pun gay!" I think I'm going to have a problem.

Got this as a gift in 08, never read......think the adult humor might have put me off. I'm ((probably)) old enough for it now though.

Really wish I'd grabbed the special illustrated edition of this before it was gone, I have all the others and it hurts to have to read this as an ebook lol

I have to say, there's a ring of hollowness in me as I continue to progress through these side stories knowing now that Veilguard wasn't the DA game we all hoped for and that the series itself isn't continuing anytime soon, if ever. I'm glad I'm experiencing them regardless, but that anticipatory excitement I felt when starting Stolen Throne a year ago is gone.

I can't believe how much game-changing stuff is in here that most DA fans probably don't even know about. The fate of King Maric. A crazy lore revelation about Calenhad. The actual (kinda) debut of Bianca Davri. Varric fanservice. Isabela's past and her former name. Sten as the Arishok. I knew about that last one, but somehow the rest of it never made it to me through fandom osmosis. Glad I read this.

I liked Those Who Speak much better than Silent Grove -- more immediate drama and stakes, and it felt like a more complete story instead of ending just when things got interesting. Also got some enjoyable angles of Isabela in the panels......

Also, just wanna gripe about one of the writer's annotations on Isabela -- I am sooooo done with creators clutching their pearls about "exploitative" or "oversexualized" portrayals of female characters **already designed with deliberate sex appeal in mind.** Just go all the way with it, ffs. 🙄 Eastern creators don't have this weird hangup, which is why we're blessed with characters like 2B and Eve.

First graphic novel I've touched in......forever, honestly. Art looks really nice and the story so far is up to scratch, though I wish the cast wouldn't banter so much in life-threatening situations. I wouldn't normally want to read something annotated for the first time, but they're not bothersome (yet) and they're helpful at easing me in to a story that's far out of my typical medium.

Great read. Not as many filler scenes (usually battles) as the previous DA books, and vivid in its portraiture of its main characters, their motivations, and their relationships. There were certain important scenes that felt a little compressed and inelegant in execution, and sometimes I didn't have the clearest picture of how the magic worked. But this is easily the best DA book I've read yet.

ngl I wish I knew about these books before I played all the games because imagine reading about the eluvians here not knowing how important they'd be in Inquisition :0

nvm, just learned that he actually did spare that poor Dalish mage and I, apparently, can't read. He's still on thin ice though......