grogu_djarin's reviews
120 reviews

Overall Thoughts:
I'm someone who always believes I should finish a book to be able to judge it, but never has a book come so close to making me question that belief. Apparently, I'm also a bit of a masochist because nearly every page I was begging myself to let this be the first book I DNF. The book starts with a semi-engaging promise that it will explore everything wrong with corporate culture, a deconstruction of capitalism, the humanization of homeless people, and counter-cultural forms of protests. From the book synopsis on the back, you'd almost think this as well. That is, until you get to a certain point where this premise is quickly abandoned and the book rapidly devolves into the main character forming what is essentially a shit cult of homeless women dedicated to shitting on each other, living in shit, eating shit, and having shit orgies. Expect half of the book going on in excruciating detail, for pages at a time, on what is essentially shit worship. If your stomach feels queasy at just that sentence, imagine hundreds of pages of it, in vivid detail! I saw another review on here that starts with, "Local man discovers women can poop and won’t shut up about it." What a perfect summation of this book! 

 

Overall Thoughts:
While I found this equally as enjoyable as the first two books in the trilogy, I ultimately felt that the answers to all the questions were less satisfying than the questions themselves. The worldbuilding surrounding these answers, centered on the extinct civilization that built the obelisks, Syl Anagist, is deep and imaginative, but it resolved all the sense of mystery and wonder present in the earlier books. The new setting, which feels more like science fiction, is also so different it almost feels like a different book. 

That said, the quality of the writing is superb and there is excellent character exploration throughout. I especially liked how thematic parallels were woven through the book, both in the past and present but also in Essun and Nassun's respective character arcs. The trilogy’s central themes of power, oppression, and intergenerational trauma are not only revisited but amplified, and Jemisin skillfully explores how these dynamics existed in the seeming utopia of Syl Anagist, just as they had been explored earlier in the Fulcrum and the Stillness. Essun and Nassun felt like two sides of the same coin, each pursuing similar yet diametrically opposed goals, leading to an inevitable confrontation as the story progresses. Themes of personal choice, and the difficulties in making them, also run parallel for all three characters (Essun, Nassun, and Hoa) and were quite strong. 

Overall Thoughts:
While I enjoyed the book as much as the first one, it really suffers from middle book syndrome in a lot of ways. A majority of the book takes place in only two locations (Castrima and Found Moon) and not much happens throughout. Essentially, the bulk of the book is Alabaster training Essun and Schaffa training Nassun. That said, it still manages to have a lot of good character moments throughout, but it still feels slower than the first and that many things overstay their welcome. It expands on much of the mystery of the first book, answering some but introducing new ones to replace them. You learn more about the obelisks and Jemisin does a great job portraying their power, you can feel it yourself in the words she writes. 

 

Overall Thoughts:
I'd been wanting to read this for some while with high expectations and I can see why it's so well-regarded! The worldbuilding is top notch and each of the three storylines (Essun, Damaya, Syenite) bring unique perspectives and explore different aspects of the world such as orogeny (earth magic), the Fulcrum, comms, and the Fifth Season. I also liked how the these storylines gradually threaded together. The orogeny and sessapinae (organs in the brain that detect vibrations in the earth) were such an inventive and integral part of the story, it's written so well it's easy to believe there actually could be a world like this and I loved how orogeny obeyed thermodynamics (with orogenes needing to absorb heat from the environment to use it). 

Of the three stories, I probably liked Syenite's the best though initially I thought it was the weakest. It rapidly picked up momentum after a certain point. The others were great as well though and I enjoyed the contrast of the extravagance of the Fulcrum in Damaya's story to the severity of a Fifth Season in Essun's. Overall, it had just a bit of everything you'd want in a fantasy novel. There was mystery, adventure, triumphs, losses, childhood wonder, and even some creepy moments. 

Overall Thoughts:
I wasn't sure what to expect from this book and so I'm still unsure if it met my expectations or not. It's a great reflection on death, near-death, dying, grief, and life and explores them from the perspective of an individual and society, ranging from death of a family member, a stranger, mass death, and celebrity death. There's even an odd moment where a tree reflects on its death and transformation into a desk. It's a good reminder that everything ends and explores the thought process around that.

That said, I'm not sure I liked the format. It's very experimental I'd say. It centers around Wolf meeting Mrs. Death and writing about some of the deaths she's observed and she tells the story of a number of deaths from Wolf's ancestors. It's a mix of interview-like conversations, poems, stories, observations, and reflections and the tone could best be stated as something like reading a stream-of-conscience, both from Wolf and Mrs. Death. There's also a substantial amount of repetition. Repetition in which words or phrases are repeated either directly or in variation. Repetition to drive home a point or to add a poetical lyricism. Repetition for the sake of repetition. Repetition, repetition. While the book has some great reflections on death, I think the format detracts a lot from it since the book seems to ramble throughout it.

Overall Thoughts:
In the afterward the author said he'd had ideas for two different books, one on a world without colonialism and the other on astral projection, and decided to merge the ideas into one book. I don't think he did himself any favors doing so as both ideas are under-developed in my opinion and the end result is a largely incoherent mess where not a lot happens until the final 20% or so. 

First, with the world without colonialism I felt he achieved the exact opposite of what he intended. That world is dystopian, far more stratified, highly corporate with few liberties, and somehow substantially more advanced with the Ark (built in the early 1900's) being a 4 mile tall and 5 mile underground super-structure built over London where everyone sleeps in VR pods. Meanwhile, in real life, the Industrial Revolution largely happened due to the stolen wealth and labor exploited by colonial powers so is he arguing we'd have been more advanced without colonialism? Then, the few chapters that do explore the real life London arguably depict a life better for all the characters even though they struggle with the lingering effects of British colonialism and racism in society. It's unfortunate this was such a small part of the book because it was superbly written and I would have loved an entire book of this. 

Second, the astral projection is really underutilized. There are only a few instances throughout the book of Markriss using it, but the majority is used to explore alternate Diniums. None of the cosmology behind it gets explained until the last pages either, and I feel it would have been better if some of it is mentioned earlier. For the book supposedly centering around the astral projection, a lot of times it feels like an afterthought. 

Lastly, this was a really painful and slow read for a lot of reasons. I'm not one to DNF a book because I feel I can't judge it fairly until I've read the entire thing, but I don't think I've ever been so tempted to DNF a book every 2 pages. The book is needlessly vivid and over-detailed, to the point where every environment and person is described in excruciating detail and it really makes the story feel choppy. There are also a lot of passive voice and sentence fragments sprinkled throughout which exacerbates this.

Overall Thoughts:
I read this as part of a class on the psychology of death. I think it was a really effective book that made me think a lot. It really surprised me all the different ways that people celebrate their dead and there was a very broad sampling of death cultures from around the world ranging for traditional to hyper-modern. Some of these traditions seem bizarre and unnerving and would even be considered disrespectful to the dead from a Western perspective, but then you read about all the love and attention that people put into these customs for the deceased and it makes you wonder if a sealed off burial vault or cremation shows as much respect for the dead or if we're just trying to sanitize the experience of losing a loved one. This is by no means a comprehensive list of death customs from around the world, but the ones that we're presented with really do cover a wide range and there is a bit of everything in it. 

Overall Thoughts:
I'm not sure what to say about this book besides I hated it. Supposedly the devil sells his daughter to a man and he seems great at first then really awful so she curses him and the building, then the whole story devolves into loosely connected short stories filled to the brim with sex and drug use. That's the whole book, there's not really a plot.

Overall Thoughts:
I was a bit underwhelmed by this. On one hand, it was great to finally learn more about the German practitioners after they've been teased so long and the book does a good job going into their history and different practices (which they operate quite differently from the Folly), but on the other hand this felt more like a standard Rivers of London book with German words sprinkled in. Not enough was changed tonally or in the narrative voice to make me feel this was anything different and at times I forgot it was taking place in Germany because my mind kept defaulting to Peter. That said, I really liked Tobi and Vanessa as a team and I hope they show up more in the future (hopefully in a partnership with the Folly).

Overall Thoughts:
This was a fantastic conclusion to the story started in the earlier volumes! It brought back some of the story elements that were missing in volumes 2 and 3 (notably the heavy presence of the Mongolians and connecting the story to actual historical events). This was everything the previous volumes were building up to, especially since the King Duan is introduced in the beginning so the protagonists have met all of the Five Greats that were still living. This book also represented a significant tonal shift by becoming noticeably more philosophical and reflective. In particular, there is a lot of reflection on the costs of war, the effects of imperialism on the common folk, and the responsibilities of a martial artist. While the earlier volumes also had their fair share of dark moments despite an overall lighthearted and adventurous tone, this was definitely the darkest of the bunch and there are some extremely sad and emotional moments.