Reviews and Comments

This really seems to be a case of a bandwagon gone insane. I was looking forward to this book after seeing very high recommendations from a lot of high-profile people: Veronica Belmont, John Scalzi (I think?), Felicia Day, NPR books, I know I am forgetting more... and nearly every review here is five stars. How could I not love this one? Well, recently, I have discovered that I am really not fitting in with the mainstream. I have had terrible luck lately with ridiculously popular books and Ancillary Justice is no exception.

I was excited to see Ann's treatment of gender due to the now famous use of "she" as the default pronoun in the book. Unfortunately, it doesn't work at all. What could have been a very interesting take on gender became a gimmick that just didn't fit. "She" in this case comes across as a mistranslation. It is a word that, in English, is very closely associated with the feminine. There are a few exceptions, like boats, guns, or cars, where people will refer to the genderless object as a she. If translating from a language or culture that doesn't recognize a difference between masculine and feminine, one would definitely not choose "she". Sure, it doesn't make for such clever marketing. However, before I get drowned out by cries of "misogynist!", one would not use "he", either. We already have a word for the neutral gender: "it". If that seems too impersonal, one could refer to "the person" throughout the book. It doesn't flow very well and definitely doesn't hold any gimmick value, so it is a lame choice, but it would still make more sense.

Now, aside from the gender issue, the book was a muddled mess. Ann apparently had terrible difficulty with descriptions, using "angry" or "anger" just about a hundred times by my count. She used the word "gesture" a hundred times, as well. There were gestures for everything: polite gestures, gestures of "ambiguity" - whatever they would be, apologetic gestures, negating gestures, more gestures of ambiguity, "abortive" gestures, gestures showing a lack of concern or helplessness. It really came across as what it was: an author's first time at bat.

The story seems to have been thrown together by the writer making angry gestures while holding a pen. Characters would be walking along, talking - and then falling, suddenly. Ok, so you needed to get the story going, but just a sudden fall down hundreds of meters? Maybe my copy was missing a few pages? The story focused on local, regional and galactic/universal politics. If that is your bag, give it a shot. In my mind, though, it read like Tom Cruise's movie Mission Impossible: convoluted story lines going everywhere but nowhere at the same time, characters that were undeveloped to the point where I was indifferent to their fates and actions, and a stupid plan that was the foundation of the whole plot.

Stupid plan? That isn't nice! Honestly, the whole idea of the book is that a guy has a terrible plan. Somebody wants to steal a gun and kill thousands of bad guys, yet she (see what I did there? Gimmick!) knows she may only successfully kill a small handful? To make it worse, there are mind-reading ships that can tell if you are stressed or sweating, which just may be significant if your goal is the assassination of one thousand clones of the galactic empire's supreme leader! Conveniently, though, these clones all seem to hang around common ships and hang onto the outside of escaping ships, trying to shoot their way in. Lazy. Wow. This is the last Ann Leckie book I am going to waste my time on. Sorry, Ann, I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but I am sure that my review certainly won't sink your next book or movie deal.

I have written low star reviews of popular books before and have received angry messages from fanboys intending to intimidate me into giving more stars (really!), so I feel it necessary to provide this explanation of what a book review site is: it is a collection of different opinions. If you don't like somebody's opinion of your favorite book, sending messages to that person to give a better review completely reduces the value of the review site as a whole. If every offended person here got everybody else to give a book give stars, every book would have five stars. How does that help you find your next book to read? Instead, there are a billion five star reviews for Ancillary Justice and a few low ones. If you agree with the tastes of the low star reviewers, maybe the book isn't for you. If you want to play the numbers game, read the book, you will probably love it.

I don't know what is wrong with me and my taste in books. It started not long ago with The Luminaries. Everybody loved it... except for me. Then it was The Hundred Year Old Man, which was universally adored (but I hated it). I was so pumped to see that The Golem And The Jinni was getting fantastic reviews and was so excited to dive in, but it did absolutely nothing for me. Now, I see that Patrick Rothfuss (yes, Patrick Frickin' Rothfuss!) gave a glowing review of Neil Gaiman's latest (Neil Frickin' Gaiman!!!). And the book was... what, exactly? I really don't know. Maybe I need to give it time to see of it will grow on me. It seemed sort of boring, missing all do the soul that was in Coraline and The Graveyard Book. This really seemed like it should have been a short story. It was just a swing and a miss for me. At least there are about 7 billion other people out there who loved the book. Don't let me stop you from reading it. Statistically speaking, you'll probably love it.

I don't even know that I really feel that three stars is fair for this, but I'd just feel dirty giving two stars to Neil Gaiman.

This is a fantastic example of what a fantasy novel should be. I read this shortly after reading The Hobbit (for the second time) and - I know it's blasphemous - I much prefer the Elfstones of Shannara. Neither book is a literary masterpiece. However, when I think of an idea fantasy story, I think of dangerous quests, imaginative creatures and blistering action sequences. The action in Elfstones was fantastic, with elves, dwarves and trolls fighting alongside one another. There were a lot of memorable creatures, from the wooden men to Genewen the Roc, and awesome fantasy characters like Stee Jans. Thankfully, there are a couple dozen more to go after this!

4.5 stars. It wasn't as well-written as the prequel, although King himself says that he is a different author now than he was. The Shining had some really special, memorable passages. It is also a classic in its genre, so it is very difficult to follow it up and keep the fans happy. I found myself trying to read slowly so I wouldn't get to the end. I am hoping that he may turn it into a trilogy at some point or at least write another novel in the same universe.

Lots of fun, great character, the Audible version has fantastic voice acting. I am a new John Ceepak fan! I will definitely be trying out the next in the series.

4.5 stars! It wasn't perfect, but laid the foundation for lots of others.

AMAZING. I wasn't into it for the first quarter or so, but by halfway through, I couldn't put it down. This is going to give Annabel some serious competition for Canada Reads 2014. It's the better book, but doesn't feel as "Canadian" - merely due to the setting and whatnot. Either way, one of my favorite books I've read this year.

Edit: just finishing up Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood. At this point, with only The Orenda left to read, Half Blood Blues is my favorite out of the Canada Reads finalists.

Edit 2: It has been a little while since I finished the book. It has really stuck with me, so I came back here to make sure that I gave it five stars instead of four. Yep, I have it five. It really deserves it.

Well, my rating of two stars looks quite low, but given the descriptions that Goodreads provides, I was unable to justify 3 stars ("I liked it"). Unfortunately, it was merely - in my opinion - OK. Goodreads suggests two stars for "it was ok", so that's what I gave. I don't know why I feel it so necessary to defend my rating, but I've gotten a lot of flak in the past over what people see as low ratings for books that they like (hello, "The Luminaries"!). Oh well. That's what ratings are for. If everybody gave out 5 stars, the site would be useless.

Anyway, now for the review. I was really hoping to like this book, especially after I read (and fell in love with) "Annabel" by Kathleen Winter. These are both Canada Reads 2014 finalists (I've just got three more to go!). Unfortunately, Cockroach just wasn't my kind of book. I didn't care for the characters. Sure, the main character was a delusional criminal, but I am not referring to his morality. The character just didn't seem REAL. I didn't care about anybody because they didn't seem human. The whole book is written in a style that I can't quite describe... it's not the brain-numbing, pseudo-intellectual, artsy style that I hated in The Luminaries. I felt that I was reading the work of a poet. The author was more interested in making his prose seem worthy of an award, not making a universe that actually existed, with living, breathing, dynamic characters. I recognized some of the streets and locations in the book (who doesn't love Montreal?), but that was the only dose of realism that I found.

Sorry, Rawi and lovers of the Cockroach, I just couldn't care about any of this book. It wasn't terrible, but it just wasn't for me.

I almost stopped reading this about three times. It is not an easy read - emotionally, not in terms of complexity. I am so glad I stuck through it. I felt so bad for Wayne right from the beginning, especially when the baby was described as not yet having any reason to mistrust anybody. I just knew that this would change in such a jarring way. I enjoyed reading through the discussion questions after the epilogue. I still can't answer many of the questions and will devote some time now to reading what others thought.

This is the first Canada Reads 2014 book that I have read (Cockroach is next), but the competition will have to be fierce to have a chance. I hope to have all of the books read by the time the competition starts.

EDIT (28 January 2013): OK, I finished this book almost two months ago. Since then, I've read all of the other Canada Reads finalists (with the exception of The Orenda, which I'm currently halfway through). After reading Half-Blood Blues, I thought that it might be a better book than Annabel. However, some time has gone by and Annabel is still in my thoughts. A book that sticks with you is a really powerful thing. There was one thing in this book that didn't (and still doesn't) sit well with me: the medically dubious event. If you've read the book, you will immediately know what I'm talking about. I don't want to spoil anything for people who haven't finished it, so I won't say anything more. However, despite that, the book is quite incredible. I don't know if I have enough emotional strength to reread it, but I'd love to go through it again as I had missed a lot of the symbolism (and know about these things thanks to people who write better reviews than I do!).

Having seen the movie (my favorite thriller of all time), I decided to read this before starting Doctor Sleep. Am I ever glad I did! The movie tells a completely different story! I would have been so confused with all of the references that Doctor Sleep makes to the first book. I haven't read Stephen King since high school, so I now respect him as the talented author he is. Absolutely amazing book.

This is one of my favorite detective books. I have never read any of J.K. Rowling's books (yeah, I know, I know) since I really don't like Young Adult stuff. However, I was so blown away by her writing style (she's really good) that I am dying for more.

I hope that she continues the Cormoran Strike series, as I'd love to see what else he can get into. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that she will, since it was sort of her way to write without a spotlight. Hopefully, she had another book on the way when this one was outed as hers.

I was entertained by the poor reviews of this book which were written by people who just don't like the author. Some people just resent those who are successful. Having read this, I can see why Rowling is a success. She's a fantastic author. I will give her other books a chance now.