clownface's reviews
77 reviews

very good info, but man, this guy can NOT stop talking about how teens are On That Phone. i wish it was just a straight historical/political analysis because mr. walton's personal life and opinions were uninteresting at best and annoying at worst.

interesting stuff but i am so tired of books that just lie about what they're about. the description barely mentions AI and yet 80+% of the book is devoted just to describing game-playing AI and the people who make it. so if you're expecting an actual history of chess or backgammon, maybe just try wikipedia?

i liked what johns was going for but it didn't quite gel together for me. i'd love to see how their style and writing develop in the future, though; there's clearly a lot of passion and talent here :-)

interesting, but didn't quite live up to the hype for me. i liked the protag and the worldbuilding a lot, though :-)

bad things first: the ending was too vague for *me personally*, although i don't think it's unjustified; and, Bob's cult-leader-vibes were just an eensy bit too intense, especially in the earlier chapters

it's heavy on the symbolism and the imagery and the themes, and i love all of that stuff. the character voice in the narration is very, very strong, and i really enjoy the bouncing-around-the-timeline storytelling style in general. obviously the main draw of this book for a lot of people is how shockingly accurate it ended up being to the real-world covid-19 pandemic, and those elements are strong

something about this book wormed its way deep into my head and i don't know if that's a good or bad sign

genuinely haunting. such a wonderful and original story. an incredible critique of patriarchy, marriage, the treatment (both medical and social) of mental illness, even of the exploitative nature of the arts. i listened to the audiobook, and the sections narrated by Janet Song gave me goosebumps. lovely work

if i had a nickel every time a china mieville book describes a weird, kind-of-dark game that our main character used to play as a child, specifically in order to help the readers better understand the rules of the setting, i would have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice (the other example i've read being Embassytown).

classic mieville: incredibly unique and interesting setting, pretty bland characters and too wordy. i liked that we never got clear answers on "how" the City and the City came to be, and i *loved* the worldbuilding, though. and the actual plotline is pretty interesting with some fun twists, until we get into the 3rd part of the book, where it just completely lost me, personally.

it was a neat concept, but took way too long to build up to actual "creepy" occurrences, and when we did get there, it was the same thing over and over. also, a lot of stuff that didn't seem to go anywhere, and the ending was too abrupt for me. i liked the character development though. this would work much better, i think, as a television miniseries. 

stopped reading when the author just started making shit up. "here's a (poorly conducted) study that mimosa trees have memory. anyway, now that we've proven that all trees can remember things, i'm going to say that spruce trees store memories in their roots, despite there being literally no evidence at all for this." 

dude... spruce trees and mimosa trees are about as closely related as humans and jellyfish. this argument is like saying "since jellyfish don't have brains, obviously humans can't have brains either." teach me something instead of just making shit up!