pedanther's reviews
460 reviews

Version Control with Git: A Pocket Guide by Ryan Taylor

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informative medium-paced

There's a Sea in My Bedroom by Margaret Wild

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hopeful lighthearted relaxing fast-paced

4.0

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

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lighthearted reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

3.5

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Soulless by Gail Carriger

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adventurous lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No

3.25

I found the prose style easy to read - aside from an irritating tendency to change its mind several times a scene about who the viewpoint character was - but for me the story never entirely came alive. The plot is serviceable, but unsurprising, the characters underdeveloped, and while the worldbuilding has some interesting elements, it also has a tendency to rely on unexamined tropes that often left me wishing that certain aspects had been thought through more. I suspect that someone who's already more into urban fantasy and/or regency romance than me would find it more enjoyable. (I don't know if someone who's more into regency romance than me would be more or less annoyed by the use of regency romance tropes in a story that's explicitly set in the late Victorian era.) I wasn't surprised to find PG Wodehouse listed as one of the author's inspirations; I'm going to say that she doesn't have Wodehouse's knack for funny character names and leave it at that.

It says something that I've gone on so long about the book: I don't usually have this much to say about books I really dislike (or books I really like). This one's in that middle ground where it was good enough that I want to be just to it, but not good enough that I really liked it. Not sorry I gave it a shot, not likely to read any of the sequels.

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A Fall of Stardust by Neil Gaiman

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lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

3.75

The thing about the short story, which is titled "Wall: A Prologue", is that it does feel like a prologue: it kind of works as a story in itself, but there's clearly another entire story following it that we don't get to hear about. I have a suspicion (or possibly half a memory of being told once) that it really is the prologue to a novel that Gaiman never got around to writing the rest of; the fact that it first saw print in a collection of unpublished bits and bobs for charity, and not in a regular short story form, is suggestive.

The poems are all fun.

Adventures in the Dream Trade by Neil Gaiman

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informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

renascentia: from the ashes by tonberrys, kuchikopi

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Content Warnings