Category Archives: Book Reviews

Reviews of books, old or new, that I read

Ruin by John Gwynne

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I had a long enough break between the last book and this one to reengage fully with the story and I enjoyed it all the way through this book.  It was pretty unrealistic at times, aside from the obvious fantasy elements.  The biggest example of this was the remarkable timing.  There were many times when certain events happened at just the right time, such as two groups of people meeting up just in time to join a battle that was all but lost.  But those were forgivable, as the story as a whole was still enjoyable.  I very much admire Gwynne’s ability to have all these different storylines and characters moving alongside each other and have them come affect each other and come together.  With this book, a lot of the stories converged and the overall story built significantly.  Very exciting and kept me up three hours too late last night so I could finish.
The actual writing is much the same as the first two books.  Still different than I am used to, but it is usually clear.  He does still have a habit of restating things.  Sometimes I understand why he does, it is from a different character’s POV, but it often offers no new information and I’m left thinking “we already know this.”  His use of thoughts still bugs me.  I am not a fan of direct thoughts in most instances anyway, but his use sometimes has no apparent use.  It often feels like the thoughts were added after the fact, restating something word for word.  And there is so much of it some places.  A few pages are half italicized and it feels off and distracts from the story.
Overall, I very much liked the book.  I do have some issues with how it is written, but they do little to detract from my enjoyment.  I still recommend the series and look forward to the next book. 

Valor by John Gwynne

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Pretty good.  Maybe not as good as the first one, but good.  It felt a bit long.  I liked the slow buildup in the first one, but by the end of this one I was getting a little tired of the story.  Going to continue reading them, but I definitely have to take a break before the next one.  There were more exciting events in this one I feel like, but they seemed a little overshadowed and rushed and the story is just going a little long maybe.  It is still enjoyable and I’m sure it won’t bother some people, but I was getting exhausted with it.  And I must say, the number of limbs that get severed and sparks that fly from swords in these books is incredible.  They really should get more calcium and I wonder if they decided flint was a good material for making swords with.

The writing itself is the same as the first one.  Not how I like to write and sometimes confusing to read, but not too bad.  There are times when it isn’t clear who is doing the action or talking and he sometimes seems to write exactly how he would think or say it, but it comes off as sounding a little weird and sometimes confusing.  There are some times when he repeats things and I can’t get past the fact that he just said it, it pulls me out of the story.  Then I found a decent amount of typos.  Mostly missing quotation marks, but a couple of other punctuation and spelling errors.  They could have benefitted from another careful look.

So I just listed everything bad with it.  I still enjoyed it and will continue with the series and if you enjoy fantasy epics, this series is great.  Everything good I said in my review for Malice still applies, I just started getting a little bored.  But I have a fairly short attention span, especially when it comes to stories, so you may not run into that problem.  Don’t let me scare you from these books.  If the size of them doesn’t, then my review shouldn’t.

 

Malice by John Gwynne

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One of my favorite books.  The definition of fantasy.  A great epic with magic and creatures and battles and deception.  The story is gripping right to the end, although the main conflict doesn’t start until near the end.  I have always been one for jumping straight into the conflict, but this one worked well doing it differently.  There are plenty of smaller conflicts to keep you occupied while the main one builds slowly, looming in the background and over the characters’ heads.  And the characters, they are amazing.  Each is unique and well-rounded and grows throughout, their development is wonderful.  The world is complex and deep, obviously having been well thought out ahead of time.

The writing itself wasn’t perfect.  He has a tendency to run on with his sentences and that, combined with his way of putting things led to some confusion.  He also loves his italics.  I’ve said before that I don’t really like using italics, particularly for emphasis, and he did that.  A lot.  Sometimes it felt like he was trying to emphasize every other word.  It was too much.  But overall, the writing melted away as the story gripped me, as it should.

This book gave me a lot to think about for my own writing and worldbuilding.  I actually started planning another story, or, rather, changed and expanded on one I had, thanks to this.  The actual plot of the story has nothing to do with Malice, but I am very inspired by how the plot unfolded and how we get to observe it.

This is a very short review compared to what it should be, but I stayed up way too late to finish the book.  I made notes throughout my reading and consolidated the main points here, but there is more I could say if I really wanted to get into it, but the main point is that I loved the slow building, yet gripping story.  I just ordered the next two books in the series and wait eagerly for them to show up on my doorstep.  I definitely recommend this book to any and all fantasy lovers.

Survival by Devon C Ford

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Not my favorite. 2/5. Maybe 3/5. To start, the prologue. It should not have been titled “prologue.” It was chapter 1. There was absolutely no reason for it to be called a prologue. Same with the epilogue. They were part of the story. This is a superficial thing to complain about as it really doesn’t really affect the book, but it bugs me.

Next, the writing. It clearly didn’t have a professional editor go over it. Numerous typos and mistakes that should have been caught. It felt almost like I was reading a first draft. And that’s just the beginning. He split up a single character’s dialogue over multiple paragraphs when he really shouldn’t have, which confused me during every conversation as I tried to figure out who was talking. He was also really bad about not using names when he should have. He’d use ‘he’ throughout a scene, but have multiple men and it often wasn’t clear which one he was referring to.

The tone felt a bit confused at times as well. Sometimes it felt very lighthearted, which didn’t match what was happening, which can sometimes work, but it didn’t this time. Sometimes the narration was dark, but the dialogue was joking, and they didn’t blend well. The dialogue also often felt forced and out of place.

His use of POV characters was sloppy as well. He followed a single character most of the time, but sometimes would be following him, then suddenly we’re witnessing a conversation that he had left. Then we’re following another character with no clear indication that he made a switch, which would leave me confused for a moment. There were a couple of times that he switched POV characters completely and obviously, but the switch served no purpose and the story wouldn’t have changed if he had left out that chapter and let that character disappear again without putting him so much into the spotlight first.

The story itself wasn’t too bad. A bit slow. It had very few exciting or even interesting moments. Most of the book was setting up a camp after the apocalypse, which itself wasn’t even exciting. Most of it was common sense and stuff we’ve seen happen a hundred times at the beginnings of stories. And that was the whole book. It did get exciting at the end. The very end. There was no resolution. I understand that it is the start of a series, but there should still be resolution. Every book in the series should complete the story arc, not end at the top just for the sake of a cliffhanger. There has to be resolution after the climax. This story ended practically in the middle of the climax.

It wasn’t all bad though. I did like the characters by the end (though at first I couldn’t care less about them), and each character was unique. The story did have some good points. There was the occasional idea that was unique from other post-apocalyptic stories and it was interesting seeing so much detail going into the setup of the new society, even if it did get boring.

So yeah, not real great, but not horrible. I complain more than I praise because I think more about what’s wrong than what’s right while I read. That’s mainly because I’m focusing so much on figuring out what not to do in my writing and it’s easier to point out what’s wrong. Someone who isn’t a writer may not find issue with as much as I have. But I wasn’t a huge fan. I may read the rest of the series, but probably not. I have a new stack of freshly obtained books that I’m more interested in to read.

Bloodline by Claudia Gray

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Very much enjoyed this one.  Like Lost Stars, it wasn’t horribly action-exciting, but didn’t once lose my attention.  Despite there not being a lot of action, it didn’t feel slow at all.  It was very interesting seeing the politics of the New Republic, which we got none of in the movie.  I enjoyed the characters as well, both the new ones and the known ones.  The characters brought in from the movies felt true and I liked seeing them in another time and position.

The writing was very much the same as Lost Stars.  Some of the style I still don’t prefer, but it worked.  It’s well done, just not how I like.  But it didn’t detract from my enjoyment at all.  I don’t really have much else to say, as I was too invested in reading it to put much effort into analyzing it.  That in itself is a good sign that it is a good read.

Lost Stars by Claudia Gray

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I definitely enjoyed this one.  Early on I had some issues with how it was written, but that disappeared as I kept reading.  I felt that the writing was geared more toward a young audience (despite the story feeling geared toward a slightly older audience), that it was dumbed down.  It stated the obvious.  It used italics and such in the way I did when I first started out writing, but have come to dislike.  But as I kept reading, I didn’t really notice it as much.  It could be that there as an actual change in the writing as the characters aged, or I could have gotten so invested in the story that I stopped noticing.  The latter is certainly believable.

The story was not overly exciting for most of it, but it definitely kept me enthralled.  I very much enjoy reading Star Wars stories and seeing the events of the movies from different angles.  It was nice to see different perspectives and the events between and beyond what we see in the movies.  I am still disappointed with the discarding of the EU, but I am also excited to keep up with these new stories.  The characters and plot were fairly predictable (partially because it ran parallel to the movies until the end), but not so much that it wasn’t interesting. 

Between that interest and my excess of downtime, this was about the fastest I have read a book in a long time.  Definitely recommended for all Star Wars fans.

EDDA by Conor Kostick

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This one was alright.  Not as good as the first of the series, but alright.  The story was fairly interesting, but nothing too amazing.  The danger didn’t feel very real for most of the story.  Magic, as usual, is cheap and overpowered.  I also didn’t really feel as invested in the characters this time, especially the returning ones.  I’ve kind of grown bored of them and they didn’t really develop much more in this one.

The writing itself was similar to the other two in the series, nothing remarkable.  He repeated things that didn’t need repeating fairly often and sometimes told what he had already spent a few sentences showing, ruining the effect.  He also gravitates more toward saying things explicitly, rather than leaving us to infer, which sometimes makes me feel like he thinks I’m stupid.  Which would be okay for a young age group, which is who most of it is written for, but then he has a habit of using unnecessarily intelligent words.  I had to use the dictionary a few times and I am older than his target audience and read the dictionary for fun.  Again, this isn’t always a bad thing if the word is the best choice, but there were times when a more common word would have worked just as well.

Overall, I’m glad I’m done.  The series started off well and immediately went downhill, as so many do.  I am debating whether I want to read his other book or not.  I definitely will be reading others before it if I do.

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

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An interesting read.  Definitely a brain workout trying to understand all the science and relativity and whatnot.  Much of it was fascinating.  The technology and the military and the science was very intriguing.  His vision of how society would change was interesting. 

The story itself was pretty good.  I felt slightly detached for a lot of it, but not too bad, and the science did distract from the plot a little, but was enjoyable in itself.  It covered a long period of time without a lot of really exciting stuff happening.  That’s not a bad thing necessarily, I just tend to prefer short time lines that drop you right into the action and really show a lot of detail of said action.  But for the story being told, this was probably the best way it could have been written. 

His style I did like.  It felt fairly informal, but also very intelligent and well-written.  He fused the protagonist’s thoughts seamlessly into the narration in just the way I like.  It was a fairly quick read, aside from when you’re trying to grasp the scientific concepts, but didn’t feel dumbed down like a lot of the more recent quicker reads.

Overall, I enjoyed it.  Not my favorite book and probably won’t make it onto my “reread shelf,” but I am glad I read it.

Lexicon by Max Barry

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I really enjoyed this one.  At first I was a little annoyed by the inconsistent jumps in POV and time, but that disappeared quickly.  I was never lost and my enjoyment did not diminish because of this, just the opposite in fact.  I loved his style as well.  It was different than what I usually read; it felt more informal, which I really enjoyed.  The idea behind the story is fascinating.  I don’t want to give away too much, but they way it views words and the brain and the idea of this “magic” is amazing.  The story itself was great as well.  I read it much faster than I have been reading lately and didn’t want to put it down.  Barry does a wonderful job of keeping you guessing and in suspense.  I did feel the ending fell short a little bit, but maybe I’m just too picky, as there hasn’t really been a book or movie I’ve been satisfied with the ending of lately. 

Overall I would definitely recommend this book.  It is very intelligent and gripping.  I will definitely be adding other works by Max Barry to my list of books to read.

Saga by Conor Kostick

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Pretty good.  Not my favorite, but pretty good.  A good follow-up to EPIC.  It had an interesting premise and characters.  There were some improvements made from EPIC, namely in the POV department.  He took it to a whole new level, but executed it well.  The changes felt more regular and better prepared than in the first book.  They were a little confusing at first, but once I got used to them, they definitely added to the story.  The writing itself was just about the same as the first book, not perfect but pretty good.  He was a little inconsistent at times; there were a couple of times I noticed he referred to a character by his full name, then a little later by his shortened nickname and back again.  It didn’t take away from my understanding of the book at all, but it felt wrong.

In terms of story, I was a little disappointed.  It started out kinda slow and took a long time to get going.  There was very little at first that would hint at where it was going.  It just seemed to be pulling itself along with no goal.  Eventually the goal became clear, but the story didn’t really speed up until the last few chapters.  Even then, the sense of danger and fear of failure never really came.  Maybe I’m just too picky, but I’m adding this one to my pile of stories that I feel have low stakes, low danger and a disappointing climax.  But I still enjoyed it.  Mostly.  Not quite as much as EPIC.  Probably won’t be reading it again.