Terry > Recent Status Updates

Through winter. Some dramatic build up: a wrestling match, a tense Christmas dinner, Tet, an a-hole from corporate. Still feels like parts and not a whole.

This has been a slog. Finally, I’m in a scene that touches me. Two bare souls in the bath. But it has been a long walk for this baptism.

Done w the first section. Still not sure about Hai or the languid pace.

Four chapters in and I’m on the fence. Not clear why I’m interested in our MC Hai. It is spinning its tale very slowly.

Still tough to read; frequently leaves me tearing up.

This is so well written and completely grievous. Miller does a fine job of both particularizing and universalizing her story.

So eloquent, powerful, sad, and enraging.

Still funny

So far, very funny, in a New Yorker-ish sort of way.

Although nothing much is happening - John Ames is edging closer to death - I can scary a conflict brewing. Lovely book, but no real plot points.

A lazy drift through a life and the Midwest.

Pace seems to pick up as the walkers wear down.

This story is a little like the walk: an endurance test. A little hard to calibrate all the characters, half way through and a third of the boys have gotten their tickets. The road goes on forever. And so it goes.

This isn't about the characters; King studiously avoids developing them. So far, 30 or so have dies, and only a couple were felt. This might be a good metaphor for war, where the march goes on without much caring about the participants, but so far I'm just weary hanging out with these fellas.

Such a good yarn

The definition of plot driven. No female characters of any consequence up to this point.

Two characters, weaving between their stories. Humbling how much of this would have been fiction in 1992 and is now fact.

This is a slow burn.

So the thing they set out to do is resolved. What’s left for the last 100 pages.

The story has built to the brothers deciding here to go do the criminal thing.

WTF Willy? I knew this would be dark, but…jeebus.

So good. If you know Twain’s book, it is even better, but Everette’s work stands on its own. Sharp and insightful.

A good start and a clear premise.

The relationship is inevitable, but cutely being held at arms length.

Morgan makes senses - athlete leaves her homophobic private school for a public school. Ruby is a little harder for me to grasp: a beauty pageant contestant and auto-mechanic. Not that this can't happen, but don't feel like Dugan has done quite enough to make it believable. The meet-cute is plausible.

More adult than YA at this point: politics, religion, genocide, atrocities. Quite enjoyable in a Game of Thrones kind of way.

The combat was good, if melodramatic. Shifted tone from epic fantasy to animae exaggeration, which annoyed me some. And Ren has gone from enlightened practitioner and fearsome warrior back to cowering school girl, which makes little sense.

A fine romp. Much prefer this to Fourth Wing.

I notice some repetition: she likes 'improvisational' as a description of localized disaster response.

Interesting.