Tag Archives: Goodreads

This was a crawl

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The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook by Matt Dinniman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


As with the first two books of this series, the format and snarky text remains very similar. The story continues…

Only the railroad stuff was just a slog really. There’s a disclaimer about not trying to puzzle it out at the start of the book and I thought it was something I would just shrug off. It was not, it was the whole book. I wanted this one to be better and it felt like a slump.

Did I still cruise through it faster than anything else I’ve read lately? Pretty much. Will I go and get the next one? Probably, but I think Carl is going to get a break for a minute. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.



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Crawling or Running?

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Carl’s Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


It’s odd to be part of a trend as it’s trending, but here I am. I was hesitant to dig into this one. I thought maybe after the first crawl I had seen enough. Incorrect.

I zipped through this book at a startling pace and polished it off very quickly. It is not significantly different in form, context or wording than the last one. If you read and enjoyed the first one, this one will be a quick addition to your finished pile of books!

I wouldn’t say I ‘crawled’ through this one, more like ‘ran’!



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Goliath

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Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


I don’t want people to be put off by a 1 star review here. There are times when something is simply ‘not for you’. There are a lot of people out there that can’t accept that, but it’s true. Some things don’t relate or aren’t a shared… anything. I felt (a little bit) the same way about Black Panther when that movie first came out. There are parts (maybe the whole thing) that simply aren’t for me. Never were.

I suspect this is part of the reason I couldn’t struggle through the book. It might be an important book. Some people might find it to be the most wonderful or influential or whatever thing… but I am not one of those people.

I could not muster any relation to, nor any positive feelings for these characters. The situation may have been ‘real’ but it didn’t feel right to me. I just stopped because it did nothing good for me. That does NOT mean it might not be for you. Maybe it would be? Dunno – but I have other books to get to.



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Am I a Crawler?

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Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Having just posted about a book that was a love story with romance and poetry… this is not that.

I was skeptical about this book. Anything with ‘buzz’ just sounds like a lot of disappointment waiting to happen. Pop culture often feels like a thing I want to avoid more than something I should know.

I have finished this one off at a very rapid pace – and have purchased the second in the series. That will stand as its own recommendation I think. Moving on to the second in a series is a rare thing for me.

This book could be considered a full story. Did I need to go to the second one? That is a pet peeve of mine – just stopping a story in the middle for the sake of creating a second book. I loathe that publishing tactic. This story teetered on the edge of that, but there was just enough closure to work. The writing style is very easy to read, with short chapters that keep the action moving right along.

The book starts with the set up from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and just moves in a different direction. Some of the humor seems cruel to me, but that, perhaps, is the point. The aliens aren’t trying to be nice, they’re trying to wipe people out while producing a Running Man style show where the characters are abused for the entertainment of the audience. I am not super fond of the main character, nor am I enough of a cat fan to be overly attached to the main duo. What this story does deliver is enough interesting world building to make the action feel important. There are a ton of threads dangling in the story that (if the author is good) will get tied back into the story later.

So… good, but will it carry past the second novel? We shall see.



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Time Shifting

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This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I suspect it will shock some people who know and repeatedly hear about my penchant for simpler hero stories and books that go boom, I very much enjoyed this book.

Is it flowery, poetic and romantic? Yes. It is all those things and more. It has a longing in it that the author brings out in each of the characters. So different, yet not really that different at all. When one is deeply involved in a thing, sometimes the only other who can truly understand is also deeply involved in the same thing. Being on opposite sides becomes academic when there aren’t any others who share the profound depth of knowledge and experience.

I can’t match the language skills of the authors, but I will say I enjoyed this elevated text. Love is not easy, and neither is the relationship in this story. The delivery methods for messages were fascinating. One that still stands out is, “…burn before reading…”. Time shifting stories often get trapped in a cycle of what if scenarios and technicalities, but this story only hints at the full background and gives just enough to make it believable. In the end, the simplest clues and the smallest actions give pause to the reader and concern for the relationship, while showing hints of a deepening love.

An excellent book. Absolutely recommend to the romantics out there.



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Breadknives and BS

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Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I didn’t know what to expect with this entry into the world of Legends & Lattes. I hadn’t read anything leading up to it, nor did I read the back cover copy. I enjoyed the first one, and the second one was ok. I have been leaning toward ‘cozy’ lately and this seemed like it would fit the bill.

It is still cozy… but there’s a lot more action and a lot more peril in this one than in the previous entries. The whole thing is a very interesting take on adventure. It starts without intention to adventure, morphs into a mid-life crisis and wraps up as something I can’t really identify.

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

I wanted to empathize with Fern more than I could. Going from the position of ‘I have everything’ to ‘I can’t be here anymore’ seemed very abrupt. Running away from your problems is not a heroic thing, and I generally have a lot of problems with that. I think if there was some return to wrap up the story that was more than ‘I am broken and I won’t be here anymore’ it might have been better? Just abandon your pet? I’m shocked more people aren’t upset about that. Come back to your friends just long enough to… make yourself feel better about what you did?

I’m sure there’s a part of this that’s supposed to be a happy ending where Fern is off with the unintentional bad guy that she thought smelled good – but I just don’t see it. Maybe it’s me?



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Black Leopard, not read wolf~

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Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


I put this work into the same category as I do many other works that win awards for reasons beyond my understanding. I don’t get it. I am clearly not the right audience for this work. Part of my dislike is the writer’s style. Part of my dislike is the sexual violence. Part of my dislike is the main character… I just don’t connect. I gave this more than one shot, but just never got past about chapter 4 or 5.

I will say this title did provide for interesting discussion among the members of our club. Interesting discussion is about as far as I can recommend it.



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Something I did not add to my Goodreads review is the artwork I created based on whatever inspiration I could find in the portion of the book I did read. The visuals of this mystic tree and following various forms of a being through the mist did help me create this work. It was also nice that I got some small amount of feedback on the art. IF I can create something and it provides enough of a mood or a feeling that you are compelled to comment that’s a good sign.

Small and Angry

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The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I don’t know if 3 stars is enough ~ I think 3.5 is closer to where I am. This was a smoothly written book with very believable characters. I did enjoy it.

I wonder if it is more of a character study than an adventure story? This is part of my hesitancy with the full on liking. The characters are great but this feels like a small piece of something much bigger and it doesn’t seem like we’re getting more than “hey, this was our adventure”. Even when I read the teaser for the next book, it seemed like this one was just done. The next book doesn’t seem to have any of the same people.

To be entirely fair, I do like stand alone books. This is fantastic for that, but there are a number of things that I wanted more of and questions that I didn’t think were answered. Still good.



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Reading Statistics

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I posted up a summary of a decade of reading last year. I am not a spreadsheet person, nor did I make a graph but I did lay out the numbers. I averaged just a little over 22 books a year during that time. Pretty close to two per month.

This year I made it to 19 (20 if you count the one I’m reading right now because it will probably be done by the end of the week). All things considered, not a bad amount. The month to month has understandable gaps, and some of the selections I made were decidedly shorter than others, but they were still books and they still counted as reading.

If I stated some kind of goal or set out to specifically read any number of books for the coming year I think that would turn something enjoyable and relaxing into work. As if I just had to get to that next or last book to make a quota. I do things like that (personal goals that mean nothing to anyone other than the voices in my head) but I think for relaxation time it would become a problem.

I’m pretty sure I’ll hit 11 in the coming year, as that’s how many meetings of Watch The Skies we’ll have and we pick a book each month, but beyond that I just hope the book selections I get will be really good stories. I want to have a book that I sneak a peek into while I’m on a break at work. I want a story that inspires me to go and create fan art for it. That’s the sign of a good year of books in my mind.

How did your year of reading go?

Old Man Indeed

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The first time I read “Old Man’s War” was back in 2009. I checked the date on Goodreads… and I suspect I was lucky because I don’t think I started posting books there much earlier than that (although it’s shocking to me that I’ve been posting to Goodreads for 16+ years at this point).

I had a very positive review at the time and it was very focused on the action. I complained about the 150ish pages of set up.

I saw that the latest in that series was published a couple of months ago. It’s the seventh! book in the series – he must be doing something right. I thought I’d dive back into the series and see about cruising through a nice space opera with some action and plenty of fun stuff to read. I picked up a new copy (e-reader this time partly for convenience and partly because I coudln’t find the other one) and dove in.

To carry forward the diving analogy… I dove into the shallow part of the pool and it didn’t end the way I thought it would.

The part I didn’t remember was the basis of these stories is that the military uses old people. The ‘magic/science’ allows all the knowledge and experience to be swapped into a new, supercharged body that is built to fight. That also means the characters in the stories have a ton of life they have lived… and lost.

The book opens with the main character visiting the grave of the woman he’d been married to for decades who died after having a massive stroke.

That just crushed me. I had to stop almost as soon as I started.

When you read a book matters so much. All the other parts, the style, the characters, the plot are the core but the timing is everything. Back in ’09 I gave no thought to what that meant. I wanted to push past all that ‘old man’ part and get to the war part. Well, here we are 16 years later and the ‘old man’ part is intensely difficult to read. I did finish the reread of this one. The book is still good, but it’s not the same excitement driving work that I read earlier in my life.

I still like the book. I’m not nearly as enthusiastic as I was. I struggled with the main character seeing his wife so clearly in others in so many places. I see the found spirit part but I don’t think I believe it. Maybe if I read this again in a decade or so it might be different, but I don’t think I’m going any further with the series right now (or maybe ever). We’ll see how the timing works out in the future.