smartflutist661's reviews
1350 reviews

Not as good as the other novella, The Slow Regard of Silent Things. But Rothfuss remains a wordsmith, and Bast is certainly interesting enough to base a few ten-thousands of words on. I also liked the theme of "your self is better than you think, if only you think it is"... though dangerous if misapplied.

I feel like I've seen a lot of "Roman Empire... in SPAAAAACCCCCEEEEEEEEE!", but much less "collapse of the British Empire... in SPAAAAACCCCCEEEEEEEEE!". So I really enjoyed this one. Well-plotted, strong characterization, uses the sociopolitical framework and the aliens to great advantage. Feel like there are a lot of alien species off-screen still. Excited to read about the fall of the Dread Empire.

Not as good as I was hoping it would be, but still pretty good. I think I was expecting a little more TTRPG inspiration, and it seemed to be trying to avoid leaning into the ridiculousness of the power morpheme concept in the beginning, which just made it awkward. Also Isobel was lowkey a terrible narrator. 

Pretty mil-spec fantasy romance—neither Clio nor the incubus are nearly as interesting as the various Guild Codex protagonists. But fun enough, I suppose.

Different enough from the first to not get stale, not different enough to improve upon it. I'd like to see if the sequel series is better, so I'll probably get to book three next time I need some brain candy.

Enjoyable enough but not very memorable. May pick up the rest of the series at some point.

The "explain the minutiae of every experiment, including numbers" was a bit tiresome, but calmed down partway through. But this was pretty much exactly what I expected based on The Martian—fun nerd porn with smart people doing smart things to save themselves/others.

Rocky

made it different enough that it was interesting, and more compelling in some ways.

A nice expansion of the worldbuilding and of Kate's character.