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storyorc's reviews
643 reviews
Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie
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? No
3.0
The world is still intricate and interesting, the characters are still colourful and surprising, but the plot took too long get to impactful choices. 85% meetings and tea. It felt like the writing of Ancillary Justice would have condensed that into a quarter as many pages, or at least interspersed some more action. Not calling for literal shoot 'em ups either, I'd also have been happy with multilayered negotiations, subterfuge, or emotional challenges. It was cool to see the protagonist in her element commanding a ship - I'd love to be on her crew - but it turned out she was too good at it.
Chainsaw Man, Vol. 2 by Tatsuki Fujimoto
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
Denji rising his life on the implied promise that his boss will sleep with him is a bit of an eye roll but the cast is interesting, funny, and hard to predict enough to stay on board. Gives the feeling that an attempt at depth will be made later and I'm willing to wait for it. The characters have clear space to build up still. The trap the team ends up in is spooky too.
Albatross by Terry Fallis
Did not finish book. Stopped at 63%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 63%.
Almost everything interesting about this book is conveniently summed up in the premise of the plot - what if you found out you were naturally insanely gifted in a highly lucrative field completed detached from your passion, i.e. when, if ever, should you sell out? As someone who did sell out in a much less extreme version of these events, I was starving to know how Adam would manage.
SPOILERS here on out.
He manages fine. He goes along with the golf longer than he needs to, until dramatic events shake him up enough to quit. He's also incredibly twee. It's 80% charming, then rapidly flips into irritating as hell. More support for my belief that authors should get a moderate electric shock every time they consider making their main character also a writer.
Albatross is fun rep for Canadian writing nerds but it's all just so low-stakes and bland. I stopped when I realised I would rather play golf than hear Adam whine anymore. Just quit after 5 mill and go write in a cabin.
SPOILERS here on out.
He manages fine. He goes along with the golf longer than he needs to, until dramatic events shake him up enough to quit. He's also incredibly twee. It's 80% charming, then rapidly flips into irritating as hell. More support for my belief that authors should get a moderate electric shock every time they consider making their main character also a writer.
Albatross is fun rep for Canadian writing nerds but it's all just so low-stakes and bland. I stopped when I realised I would rather play golf than hear Adam whine anymore. Just quit after 5 mill and go write in a cabin.
The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
adventurous
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.5
A good book to read if you need a distraction or to be cheered up. The prose, plot, and characters are pleasant and it is cute in a quirky, righteous way. Would make a good blockbuster with a studio editor to punch it up.
However, KPS is shallow - intentionally! The author is not lying when he compares it to a pop song. Most of the scientists are interchangeable quip machines and obstacles barely inconvenience them. The villain is an arse devoid of any nuance while everyone else acts like if a company actually meant it when they say they're a family.
The world is fun though, and clearly had work put into it. I would have loved a Michael Crichton-style thriller set here, even if it was hard to accept how chill everyone was with being exposed to radiation blasts.
What was unforgivably lacking in work was the kaiju description! I almost threw the book down when, at once point, instead of a lush description of a monster, the narration effectively goes "there he was". In the climax, some badass kaiju activity is flattened to 'indescribable'. As someone infinitely more interested in hulking leviathans than quirky, one-note millennials, this choice in focus was frustrating. It was also oddly slow, only kicking into high gear at the 66% mark.
Props for having the coolest character be French Canadien though.
However, KPS is shallow - intentionally! The author is not lying when he compares it to a pop song. Most of the scientists are interchangeable quip machines and obstacles barely inconvenience them. The villain is an arse devoid of any nuance while everyone else acts like if a company actually meant it when they say they're a family.
The world is fun though, and clearly had work put into it. I would have loved a Michael Crichton-style thriller set here, even if it was hard to accept how chill everyone was with being exposed to radiation blasts.
What was unforgivably lacking in work was the kaiju description! I almost threw the book down when, at once point, instead of a lush description of a monster, the narration effectively goes "there he was". In the climax, some badass kaiju activity is flattened to 'indescribable'. As someone infinitely more interested in hulking leviathans than quirky, one-note millennials, this choice in focus was frustrating. It was also oddly slow, only kicking into high gear at the 66% mark.
Props for having the coolest character be French Canadien though.
Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
sad
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
3.5
Mercymorn and Augustine's plot thread is MAGIC but the rest shambled along, propelled only by the inescapable life force of its characters. Might buy a copy and cut out the pages that don't involve them. Harrow's own struggles aren't even bad - are in fact quite fascinatingly intricate - but they took so long to crystallise.
I am again in awe of Muir's imagination when it comes to the realm of the Nine Houses and its exhaustive applications of necromancy. I am also again at the mercy of her sense of humour. There is one particular dad joke (if you know, you definitely know) that made me stop and demand reparations from her author photograph. She has delivered unto me a dessert beyond my wildest dreams and makes me eat it with a crazy straw. That said, her vision for the series is so clearly fused with this quippy meme humour that I can't risk wishing it away. And 80% of it is very entertaining. So, like an elderly neighbour, I just tap the ceiling with my broom every so often and whine that she should turn it down.
This is a book for you if you:
I am again in awe of Muir's imagination when it comes to the realm of the Nine Houses and its exhaustive applications of necromancy. I am also again at the mercy of her sense of humour. There is one particular dad joke (if you know, you definitely know) that made me stop and demand reparations from her author photograph. She has delivered unto me a dessert beyond my wildest dreams and makes me eat it with a crazy straw. That said, her vision for the series is so clearly fused with this quippy meme humour that I can't risk wishing it away. And 80% of it is very entertaining. So, like an elderly neighbour, I just tap the ceiling with my broom every so often and whine that she should turn it down.
This is a book for you if you:
- Find absolutely rancid relationships compelling
- Embrace an unreliable narrator
- Read AU/fix-it fanfiction AND hurt no comfort
- Think Marvel movies need more quips
- Have been described as 'patient'
- Like the TV show Archer
- Wish dark academia was more relatable
- Are excited when beloved franchises get prequels
- Have a tumblr
Death's End by Cixin Liu
adventurous
challenging
dark
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Cixin Liu may actually be some kind of alien with galactic knowledge wearing human skin, though I'm still not sure if he's one that hates or loves humanity. The book picks up with humanity holding onto the edge of a cliff by one hand and is a grueling, horrifically imaginative cycle of them pulling themselves up and getting kicked back down. More than once, Liu drops the kind of cosmic knowledge that would drive a Lovecraftian character mad. Even if like me, you don't possess the brainpower to appreciate all the vast implications, the shape of them is enough to induce a sense of vertigo. The timescale of this series alone is a feat of bravery. I felt ten years older when it was done.
Can't give full marks because there are still stretches where you have to force yourself to stay engaged and the characters seem like (often frustrating) caricatures rather than people but it is a big step up from The Dark Forest in that there is no time-wasting dream girl side plot. The women in this book are back to having agency, though what they do with it... Ye Wenjie levels of nuanced ethics there, you could debate all day. The book still needlessly ties women to compassion and men to ruthlessness but the conflict between these two traits when the survival of the human race is on the line is interesting enough forgive that.
The only things to evoke similar feelings in me are The Forever War and 2001: A Space Odyssey (film) but even they can't compete with Liu on the sheer number of visionary concepts and technologies.
Can't give full marks because there are still stretches where you have to force yourself to stay engaged and the characters seem like (often frustrating) caricatures rather than people but it is a big step up from The Dark Forest in that there is no time-wasting dream girl side plot. The women in this book are back to having agency, though what they do with it... Ye Wenjie levels of nuanced ethics there, you could debate all day. The book still needlessly ties women to compassion and men to ruthlessness but the conflict between these two traits when the survival of the human race is on the line is interesting enough forgive that.
The only things to evoke similar feelings in me are The Forever War and 2001: A Space Odyssey (film) but even they can't compete with Liu on the sheer number of visionary concepts and technologies.
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
challenging
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
Fantastic inspiration for anyone creating fantasy cities or wanting to reflect on sociological aspects of people living life in large groups. Not quite as revelatory as I was hoping though, not too many of the cities grabbed me (though a handful did!). The framing device of Marco Polo telling Kubla Khan all this felt tiresome outside one rumination on why Polo didn't tell Khan about his home city, Venice, as well.
Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
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? No
3.0
Another solid little episode from this charming premise. Mickey is a cute addition and the only exception to how it is becoming difficult to have stakes in this series since the supporting case changes each book and MurderBot often solves problems with some technological feat we couldn't predict and barely understand. The humourous tone is still hitting though. That said, nothing here makes me want to read the full novel-length installment that is next so this is where I disembark.
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-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
5.0
This book has a stranglehold on my imagination. I haven't wanted to travel a galaxy so bad since Firefly. And the fact that it's all told through the perspective of a (excuse the Culturism) ship mind?? In one - ONE - book, Leckie tackles high sci-fi concepts like ship's anciliary human bodies, clones, and galactic colonisation, as well as the intimate guilt of coming to terms with one's place in an oppressive system, as WELL as a splash of gender radicalism (perfect complement to Left Hand of Darkness, btw; a true blind taste test of gender). And her bitter, brutal, vibrant characters - I love them? What the hell.
The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa
Did not finish book. Stopped at 30%.
Did not finish book. Stopped at 30%.
I am not the reader for this book. The premise drew me immediately but FAR too contemplative for my taste. The main characters are unfazed to the point that they feel they lack heart but I'm not sure if that's a cultural thing, the author's style, or an intentional way to show how the Disappearances take from the island's inhabitants despite their attempts to carry on like everything is fine. The final nail in the coffin for me was being forced to read excerpts from the main character's tedious romance novel every so often. Authors should be banned from writing authors. I wanted to stay for the mystery, tried to get into the mindset to appreciate slow, thoughtful prose, but the novel-within-a-novel defeated me. Blasphemous as it is, I was praying each time her work was mentioned that novels would Disappear next.