Jon > Recent Status Updates

I haven't had a great response to Hobb, and this isn't really moving the needle so far. The one thing I thought she'd nail was the alienness of the ships themselves, and...not really. I mean, what would a "living ship" even mean? In this case it seems it's an animatronic figurehead with nerve endings that run throughout the hull. And that speaks like any other human. Hmm.

So far really good. The Norse-ness is perhaps a bit overbearing (I might've wished for just a bit more distance: it's weird to hear about fjords, knarrs, thralls, and seaxes, but no Odin, Thor, etc.). The characters are sympathetic, though the villains are pretty one-dimensional.

I'm not exactly sure who this is written for yet. It mostly feels YA, and I'm having trouble suspending disbelief at some real idiocy on display (in a world where you might literally be killed for some identifying trait, you probably don't increase the chances of that happening, ever).

To be fair, the "it's continuing the legacy of Jordan and Sanderson" should have been warning enough.

Looks like this will wind up a DNF/abandoned. I just have no investment in the characters or setting. While I understand there actually is a behind-the-scenes plot that gets fleshed out across multiple volumes, I just don't think my tastes will ever mesh with LitRPG.

I kept hearing about this, so I'll try. But wow, my skepticism is high, and the faux-Bader/Warburton voice in the audiobook isn't helping.

Need to re-read the first one, basically forgot everything.

Had to set this aside as the audiobook narration (Sean Rohani) was atrocious. Either no inflection or the wrong inflection; perhaps he was reading one single word at a time instead of parsing the whole phrase.

Eesh, what a sad opening. It's done about as well as you might want, but I don't want it to be done at all.

Aspects of this are great, but there's a strange incoherence as well. What are these shadow things doing when not pursuing various individuals? How is it possible that basically no one is aware of all these horrors? Why has there never been any technological or sociological progress given the many thousands of years? All a bit more telling than showing than I'd prefer as well.

But still, mostly enjoying it.

I swore I read or listened to this a few years ago, but watching the new TV show it was really hazy.

A distracting narrator (audiobook) isn't helping here. I like the plot and the "magic" system, and it feels like it's building to interesting revelations and so forth. So a good adventure novel.

But yikes, the conversations are really bad. I'm more attuned perhaps than normal, as I'm simultaneously reading a Guy Gavriel Kay novel, and he's a master. I want to like this more, but he keeps dashing my hopes.

Classic GGK in so many ways: near-purple prose about even minor details, characters who reveal themselves mostly through oh-so-clever conversations, a curious lack of plot in the ordinary sense, a great many takes and retakes of the same event from different POVs.

I have a vague sort of tier system with GGK, where his works are major or minor arcana. I have a strong hunch this will be the latter. Still a good one.

I'm still not quite fully invested. The world's rules are borderline nonsensical. So we have surgical dressing, airships, trains, submarines, and...some people literally can't turn door knobs.

I'm torn. It's fast-paced and sort of pulpy, which is fun and a little unexpected. But I don't think he's connected enough dots to justify the main "flight from Imperial agents" plotline. I guess he has a convenient out in the Apt/Inapt distinction, but these characters are human-adjacent enough that just basic curiousity and self-interest should apply, not just to individuals but their societies.

Ugh, what a slog compared to the first one. Constant tonal changes are distracting, and none of the protagonists are sympathetic.

Audiobook. Not sure I like where any of this is going. Kira is annoying, none of the other characters have any personality at all. The voice narrator has a distractingly terrible accent for a few characters, and nonstop breathy intensity for Kira that is just too much.

I mean, Paolini is kind of a hack, so none of this should surprise me, but it seemed worth a try.

So far so great. Reminds of other authors, esp. the squick factor of Asher and the "founder" alien tropeyness of Brin.

I dunno. She isn't an 11 year old girl in any appreciable way. And while I kinda like the pseudo-shorthand style, the author contradicts his own rules, with super-awkward descriptive passages that remind me of the cringiest bits of Heinlein when he's trying to be funny.

Just not in the mood for this. I may return to it soon.

It's just a slog for me. I get that it's really a puzzle, but it's just more work than I want from my fiction.

Not sure why I'm reading this. Cheap on amazon, I guess. It's bad SF but fast moving and has some plot twists. A "fun" read but nothing to take seriously.

Unlikely to persist in this. Parts are good, but it's a chore to read. Awful dialogue, with occasional howlers. I rather enjoy the mild gore, though it's clearly at a YA level, but I'm not persuaded about how prudish this society is. Probably a Mormon thing. Another Sanderson flop for me, likely done with this guy.

As feared, a little YA for my liking, as with all of the few books of his I've read. Much of the dialog is cringeworthy, but is clearly intended to be witty, which makes me feel bad (though more for myself or the author, I'm not quite sure). And the infodumping is awkwardly shoehorned in, like most hack writers do: hey, bit character, let me verbally remind you of some detailed facts about our shared culture.

I'm trying, but this is a slog. I get that the plot isn't the real story, but it's just so tiring sifting through it. And so many aspects of the plot don't make much internal sense.

Well, the novella buried in the novel was...something. Pretty good stuff there, very New Weird. I'm not sure I'm all that invested in the politicking of the "main" story, though. A distinct step down so far from The Scar, which was itself a bit of a fall from Perdido.

Re-reading to Emma. She always likes the Gollum parts--I get pretty animated. Though unfortunately I feel I'm emulating Andy Serkis too much. I liked my original Gollum better, but have kind of forgotten it.

Yikes, I had forgotten all the casual sexism and sloppy writing from the first book.

But it's just a casual, pulp fiction read, so I'll go on for a bit longer and just let it play out.

I had forgotten why this book was uncomfortable. I am deeply, perhaps pathologically, skeptical of psychology. So that's a strike. I'm also somewhat allergic to mysticism; strike two.

But it's well-written and a kinda-engaging premise, if I don't make eye contact with it.

This is laugh-out-loud funny at times. Perhaps a bit too witty. I really had no expectations going in, but I'm really enjoying it for what it is: a madcap, weird, partly incoherent rambling adventure.

Enjoyable characters, though a little twee at times. And it's a little too infodumpy at this point. But likeable enough, curious to see how things progress.