smartflutist661's reviews
1354 reviews

Five stars despite a few of the stories not quite working for me, because the ones that did absolutely knocked it out of the park. "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", "Exhalation", "What's Expected of Us", and "The Great Silence" were all masterpieces of the science fiction short story; The Lifecycle of Software Objects and The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling were both excellent, and "Omphalos" was nearly as good. I didn't really connect with "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom", though I did appreciate it. "Dacey's Patent Automatic Nanny" is the only story from the collection that I was disappointed by, though I did enjoy the humor about Victorian parenting. Lots of focus throughout on existence, fate, truth, and purpose (which are admittedly my catnip), so if you're in the mood for an existential crisis, this may be your collection.

Not quite as good as Sebastian.

This is just Black Jewels... again. In a slightly different world. But the world is different enough to remain interesting. And I loved Black Jewels.

Fun as usual. Appreciated a little bit of a change of pace, Saetien's story in particular, though I found the lack of violence disturbing.

I think this book accomplishes what it sets out to do perfectly, which almost earns it a full five stars. It just didn't quite have the impact on me for that. But if you're looking for a very classic fairy tale written in the last few decades, this is your book. Like all good fairy tales,

Tristran was the lost prince all along

, which I thought was extremely obvious but apparently took until the end of the book for some of my compatriots to get. I thought the dramatic irony worked well

to tie the storylines together

. Just in general, loved how neatly everything tied together—not a single wasted word, which is a strength of fairy tales, in my opinion.

Kind of disappointing. Vicki remains not my favorite main character, and the rest of the cast doesn't make up for it in this one. Also I feel like hardly anyone got eaten.

Really this was just one book split in half. But this half had more of the romance, I think.

Exactly what I've come to expect from the World of the White Rat. Excellent, often broken characters and a fun adventure... that's quite a bit darker than the tone of the book would suggest.

Finished the series because Wings was only like 5 hours long on audio. It had an ending. If you read the second book, you know the ending. It was fine.

About the same as Truckers, though I liked the bit of extra focus on Dorcas and appreciated that Masklin was offscreen for most of it (not a compelling character for me).