rikercoleman's reviews
93 reviews

Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

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emotional inspiring mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Speaker for the Dead really spoke to me in a way that Ender’s Game never did. I don’t think it would work nearly as well without Ender’s Game as a prequel, but I found this touching and human. The flaws of the characters and of the institutions they build drive the story forward through a decades-long plot. 
Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher

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adventurous dark lighthearted fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.25

Kingfisher manages to make the “fairytale inspired” genre feel new and intriguing, rather than overdone and hackneyed. The story elements feel grounded in legend, but the characters are wholly new, with intriguing flaws, histories, and backstories. I cried along with Mara
when she discovered her sister’s abusive marriage,
and was rooting for her the whole way. I hate reviews that make comparisons with other authors, but I have to say that this is a successful dark take on Pratchett’s Discworld—a world brimming with practical magic, and characters brimming with life. 
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The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber

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adventurous slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? N/A
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

1.5

I found this book incredibly uncompelling. The premise is tired
”Mysterious object shows up in the sky, sending humanity into turmoil!”< /spoiler> and the characters one dimensional. Could have been better if it was about half the length. Sometimes threatened to get interesting, but never really delivered. Would have been a DNF, if I was not trying to read all the Hugo-winning books. 
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

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slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? N/A
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

1.5

Occasionally seems like something interesting might happen, but never really delivers for long. The concept of an elite who style themselves as gods on account of their absolute control of technology is interesting, although it does make me wonder why the Hindu mythos was used instead of the Greek.  (Why not Prometheus?)
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

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mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
Beloved by Toni Morrison

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 28%.
Not very much happened
Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

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medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I really wanted to like this book, and I did really like the politics of the clans and the priesthood, as well as the worldbuilding, but I just couldn’t get into it. The writing style fell kind of flat for me. 
Atom Land: A Guided Tour Through the Strange (and Impossibly Small) World of Particle Physics by Jon Butterworth

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funny informative lighthearted fast-paced

4.0

Very fun! The journey allegory gets a bit tiresome when it’s trotted out chapter after chapter, but the book as a whole is very informative and light hearted. It gets much deeper into high energy physics than I expected. Very impressed by how intuitive the explanations of the W and Z bosons, and the Higgs are. Particularly impressed by how it manages to finish in a fun, if predictable way. Even the tired exploration metaphor is a little bit more fun when calling modified gravity theorists “salty sea dogs.”
The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders

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adventurous

5.0

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

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reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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