drizzlybear's reviews
1520 reviews

this was NOT tightly plotted but that's okay, i had fun

seth really got PUT THROUGH IT tho ig there was the long denouement where everythin was okay in the end

lots of exposition in this one and idk if i've read too many of these too fast but the challenges felt a bit handwavy/same old
also poor seth being brandon mull's PUNCHING BAG i feel like

although that changed REALLY abruptly at the end

it’s always pretty cool to read stuff like sci-fi from 50 years ago, the accepted concepts and tropes are different from what we have now and it’s a cool shift to see
this books reads kind of like an ethnography which was kind of cool? just a detailed account of an alien culture (although there was plot too ofc the overall tone was very ‘documenting this for history’). maybe some people wouldn’t like this but i thought it was neat. and it even got me in the feels at the end!
i really respect ursula le guin. she has a cool afterword at the end (in my 25th anniversary edition, which was 1994) where she discusses how she used he/him pronouns and masculine forms like ‘man’, ‘king’ and ‘lord’ as generic pronouns to describe a sexless race, and how she grew to realise that was unsuitable and she’d do it different now??? we love to see it. and she went on to provide several appendices that played around with the pronouns in different variations. it was weird bc it definitely felt different to read it with neopronouns or mixed/more gender less pronouns, really makes you realise that despite what you know or tell yourself, subconsciously you just like… can’t get away from the pronoun/gender/whole entire personality assumptions.

this was a wild ride but i enjoyed it, felt really chaotic and confusing but i was happy to go with it 

again kind of slow until 50-60% of the way through, so maybe that's just the writing style? still had interesting things going on, more tension than the first two books but i think that's 'cause the stakes are higher
thorn is still frustrating as fuck BUT hopefully we're seeing some growth and change there

enjoyed this one more! perhaps bc i know the characters better and therefore could guess at their motivations more?
i feel like im maybe supposed to like thorn but i just don't yet. i don't like any of them bc they were mean >:(

weird, but probably in the way that many translated novels feel to me - something about the culture it's set in being just one step to the left of where i expect
a political intrigue/drama where i have no idea what's happening and what all the character's motives are

he really got me with that

zoe bait and switch

idk if i’ve read too many in a row or if im just getting sick of the higher stakes but im not vibing it as much? 
maybe bc higher stakes it just feels like there’s pointlessly more punishment and struggle. 
also rip zoe relegated to being ‘jacks wife’ 

much shock many value