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Wow, not what I expected: actual character development in a sci-fi title with lots of new species, cultures, and morphologies. How refreshing to take the time for this and not just plot plot plot! It does drag just a teeny bit: I wanted more to happen at one point. But I have faith Chambers can calibrate plot and character development for the rest of this series. Excited to read the rest.

The second title in The Craft Sequence, I didn’t like it as much as the first. Gladstone doesn’t hand-hold in his world-building, which I prefer, but I felt I missed a lot of subtleties with the new characters, time period, and location. This is the kind of thing a re-read will address though, and I look forward to that.

I do love every part of the world across these books, just certain parts more than others.

I really wanted to like this. And I did until just after Robin gets into Oxford. Maybe it’s because so much resonated with my own life and studies, I didn’t need to be lectured to as much as he did—I get it, girl. My frustration may just be disappointment in my younger self.

What is going on with editors these days? It did NOT need to be this long. The magical system rooted in translation was pretty cool. Dark Academia fails me again.

What a great writer. Learned after the fact that he’s one of the co-authors of “This Is How You Lose the Time War”. Makes sense.

The ideas here felt new and exciting. Exposition and world-building doesn’t happen in clunky blocks like it does in so many books. It takes real skill not to frustrate readers when you throw together dead gods, magic from starlight, gargoyles, vampires, contract law, and a whole lot more.

I expected to be lost—it’s been a while since I read the prior two books—but nope! And we get to spend more time with the Grattna, a species whose bodies, language, and worldview is based on threes, not binaries. Fascinating!

Overall, the series has too many species, cultures, etc. to fully track, but the way they solve problems and work through their shit is how more people should be in the universe.

Cool premise that the author doesn't carry all the way through. The story unfolds through several POV characters, but there's always the one (or more) that you're bored with, or there's a boring stretch for one you do like. So I often felt unsatisfied.

The conceit that the book itself is written by a man in a matriarchal world is fascinating. It only bookends the novel with "research" interspersed—I wished there was more.

I went through a brief love affair with Doctorow. But the sweetly clunky how-to-do-X-techie-thing-to-bring-down-Y-bad-guy-slash-system got too clunky for me. And repetitive too.

These short stories were OK though. Maybe he's gotten better, or maybe it's been long enough between my readings. Either way in all his writing, I still don't understand how encryption and private/public keys work (not asking for an explanation).