Christian > Recent Status Updates

Thought it was fitting that Moonlight Sonata popped up on shuffle as I was finishing this :) A HEA, but a hard-earned, through-the-wringer one. Whew!

Switching over to the print version once I get a copy. The narrator for the Audible version sounds like an arrogant prick.

Attempting to read this again because why not. After allowing some time to pass for the toxic self-destructive academic cynicism to not trigger me so much, I'm actually enjoying it. It's not every day that you read poetic metaphors of everyday life in terms of chemical equations. Or a glorious comparison of a battle-hardened postdoc making diazomethane to Schroedinger's Cat. Death/Nondeath by exploding chemicals!

I had to stop listening to the Audible version of this, because the narrator kept sounding like a stoned version of Brain from "The Pinky and the Brain" and I couldn't take it seriously anymore. Combine that with a scene demonstrating what helium does to voices... 🤣 I just can't.

After a very long introduction and 2 pointless chapters, we finally get to the beginning of the story. Normally I wouldn’t be this angry over a book, if it was a real nonfiction books read for research. But a fiction book disguised as nonfiction, it’s well done and yet obnoxious and annoying.

The past couple of chapters were full of some of the most beautiful and emotional writing I’ve read in a long time. I’m glad I’m reading mainly from a physical book and not the Kindle version, else I’d be highlighting everything in sight!

... Ay, that was intense. Noah is truly a villian, as well as the scum of the earth and a poor excuse for a human being, and his blackmail attempt is more like an Inquisition threat and way too mean-spirited for the kind of request he needed. I hope Maris finds out before much damage is done and LEAVES him!

Finally, FINALLY was able to start reading this without getting distracted! Loving it so far - a book within a book!

It’s really, really hard for me to read this without taiko drum beats and Japanese ondo songs constantly running through my head and distracting me. (The worst is “Pokemon Kazoete Uta” complete with the drunken old lady singing voice... make it stop...)

And now the story has gone completely off the rails, and I don’t care enough to care. I draw the line at the surprise Chinese Al Qaeda bomb factory (wtf) and the introduction of even MORE characters. This book is so confused. Ready Player One handled the MMO/gamelit stuff better.

This is my... third (?) attempt at reading this, and it feels like for every 20 pages of cool MMO gameplay usage in the real world and hilariously bad fake Russian accents, there’s 100 pages of off-topic, randomly tangential, completely ADD information dumps. It’s tiring!

It was a little dull in the beginning but at this point it’s a very interesting melding of Dragonsdawn (families colonizing a pastoral planet) and Dinosaur Planet/Ireta (research colony and alien politics).

So after suffering a Chapter 1 full of scary dystopian political manifestos, we get a Chapter 2 of the worst overcrowded dystopia imaginable during COVID-19. Ew. Ewwww. The characters need to run away to another planet right now or I’ll run away screaming to another book!

A couple of chapters in and the beginning is very reminiscent of The Neverending Story... if the book was a Jumanji board and the shopkeeper was Yugi Mutou. I'm intrigued and creeped out at the same time, and I'm not already wanting to strangle the heroine yet... which is a rarity for most YA books I end up reading these days. It reminds me so much of the dark Gothic YA romances I'd read from the library as a teen!