Reviews and Comments

Brent Weeks' ability to continually surprise me with new twists to his characters is impressive. I'll admit, I'm left wondering exactly how many more books this story's gonna span, but I have no doubt I'll read 'em, however many there will be.

Man. Okay, so my initial assessment, that the author was somehow failing to make me like the protagonist, was only half right. She WAS leaving me disconnected to the main character, but it was both purposeful and surprisingly effective. I won't spoil anything, but the story's resolution embodied the nature of Kepler very well.

That being said, the only thing holding me back from a 5-star review was the flatness of the 'ghosts' themselves. I can see why they were so less-than-human, and it served the story well that they were, but I still found it hard to be satisfied with it. Ah, well.

The narration, however, was incredible, and I'll be looking for more books read by Peter Kenny. Absolutely incredible.

The challenge with critiquing a collection, for me at least, is whether to assess each story individually and then average it out, or to pretend that there's some overall cohesiveness the author(s) succeeded or failed to attain. Because the truth is that even when the stories all share a theme or tone, I can't see the forest for the trees.

I started this collection thinking I was going to write a little critique about each story, and for the first half or so, I did; I summarized each tale, noted what the main conceit was and what I thought of the execution. At some point, though, I started feeling a bit too proud of my incisive tone and just read the rest. I'm not sure if that increased my enjoyment or not, but anyhow, it's done.

I'll be glad to share my thoughts on the first dozen or so stories with anyone who wants to read them, but I'd suggest that you first read the stories themselves, because my little blurbs don't really prepare you.

I think the writing might actually be improving, or maybe he's just getting more comfortable with the world he's building; whichever, I enjoyed this book even more than the first.

While I still have issues with the glossing-over of slavery, I'm overall pretty happy with this story. My initial concerns over the slow reveal of the magic system's intricacies are gone, and I'll agree that the author did it right; there's enough in place to make everything sensible, while still having lots of reveal in later books. I like the reversal of the Mass-Energy Equivalence equation as a magic system, and I look forward to seeing where this goes.

The premise of the story seemed obvious almost from the get-go, yet the pace of the reveals suggested that the author didn't think so. I'll admit that the complications at the end were a surprise, and I enjoyed the journey to the resolution, I just... I dunno. It didn't grab me like I hoped it would.

I'm finding it difficult to summarize this book without dishonest praise or undeserved criticism. The truth is the story at the heart of the novel is a simple one: a whodunit in space, and a surprisingly blinkered story of shunning the Other. The structure of it reminded me of Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, with its rambling passages and none-too-subtle "extracts", which came across to me as the real reason the book existed -- an excuse to world-build.

While there were some wonderfully poetic turns of phrase, and a lot of fascinating assertions on the future of gender and sexuality, the predominance of the novel came off as naval-gazing.

Very, very nice. I can see why so many of the genre sites I peruse speak so highly of this series.
Took me a while to get through, but only because I've been constantly distracted these last few weeks.

It's been years since I've read this series, and while I remembered the books fondly, I guess I'd forgotten exactly how these books tick. I struggled with Wrinkle, wrestled with Wind, but it's this book that's gonna defeat me. I'll probably try these books again someday, but for now I guess I'm just too jaded for L'Engle's optimistically mystical take on Good and Evil.

Okay, so maybe nostalgia isn't as overwhelming as all that. Still a good story, but the process of overcoming Meg's Herculean stubbornness is, in a word, exhausting. Okay, two words: goddamn maddening.