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Half the World (Shattered Sea, #2)

2015-02-15 00:00

Cover for Half the World (Shattered Sea, #2)

Review:

Be­ing YA, it's di­lut­ed Aber­crom­bie. That's not bad, since I am not sure I could take the strong stuff (say, Red Coun­try) right now.

It's per­haps a bit too winky: fore­see­ing no man can kill some guy and car­ry­ing your fa­ther's bones in a bag around your neck are just the two most ob­vi­ous bit­s.

One oth­er thing that lit up some yel­low lights for me was that at the end it turns out to be a sort old-­fash­ioned sci­fi's com­pe­ten­cy porn sto­ry set on a fan­ta­sy world.

Still love the idea of us be­ing elves.

The Providence of Fire (Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, #2)

2015-02-08 00:00

Cover for The Providence of Fire (Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, #2)

Review:

It was a rough start. I had read the first book a while ago, and, to be hon­est, did­n't re­mem­ber enough of the set­ting and char­ac­ters to make sense of what I was read­ing.

Then it all came back, and the roller­coast­er start­ed. This book has some se­ri­ous mo­tor. THINGS HAP­PEN. And then more things hap­pen. And then some more. Oth­er writ­ers would make a whole tril­o­gy with this much plot!

A lot of fun, the world build­ing goes from in­ter­est­ing to im­pres­sive. I did miss some maps to make sense of the big bat­tle, maybe it's just that the kin­dle ver­sion did­n't have them, or that I just did­n't see them.

Look­ing for­ward to #3

Meta (Meta, #1)

2015-01-26 00:00

Cover for Meta (Meta, #1)

Review:

I grade books like Roger Ebert grad­ed movies: com­pared to ex­pec­ta­tion­s.

If I am giv­en an ac­claimed clas­sic like A Can­ti­cle for Lei­bow­itz, and it ends up claim­ing ba­bies suf­fer­ing ag­o­niz­ing deaths are a good thing be­cause god likes to see them go through it, and has no moral prob­lems with that, even propos­ing that as the su­pe­ri­or moral po­si­tion, the gross­ness of its ide­ol­o­gy makes it hard for me to ig­nore that the book's ar­gu­ment is al­so crap, so 1 star.

On the oth­er hand, you have books like Meta. Clas­sic? No. Ac­claimed? No. Fun? Sure. Bad­ly writ­ten? No. A quick read that leaves you won­der­ing what hap­pens nex­t? Yes. So 3 stars.
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