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yoyosemite's reviews
7 reviews
Shadows in Flight by Orson Scott Card
3.5
why are the 6 year olds making incest jokes?
anyways we at least get to see the buggers again and the plot steadily improves throughout the book, so that’s good i guess. the first couple chapters are incredibly rocky though.
anyways we at least get to see the buggers again and the plot steadily improves throughout the book, so that’s good i guess. the first couple chapters are incredibly rocky though.
Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This was honestly hard to get through. Even though the plot develops nicely towards the end of the book, I find almost everything else quite lacking, with the exception of the war games/strategy component.
The biggest criticism I have of this book is the dynamic between Petra and Bean. Half of their conversations don't even feel human and just come across as gross when the author clearly intended the opposite. Also the fact that they're married in their mid-teens is off putting. Many of these exchanges made me question if humanity's ancestors should have even bothered to crawl out of the primordial soup.
Not only this, but Bean spends half the book occasionally making off-handed, mopey comments about how he's not human or he isn't worthy of love. While I think it's important to show this side of Bean, it becomes very repetitive very quickly.
The other component I dislike in this book is Peter. His portrayal here tries to ...humanize(?) him, but it just feels contradictory to prior books and makes him quite annoying. Frankly, I believe the role Peter needs to fulfill requires him to be a bit unlikeable and the way Card went about changing this somehow made him a less interesting character. Card even resorts to using Peter's parents to prop him up which just feels disgraceful, at least in how it was executed here. There are also some sections where Peter is downright stupid (not even talking about Achilles's betrayal ) in ways that just don't fit with his character.
As I said, there were parts of this I enjoyed; especially the snippets of Virlomi sowing rebellion amongst the Indians, Alai's strategy against the Chinese, and the final showdown between Bean and and Achilles. The last of these isn't perfect but I thought it was a fitting end to the story.
The biggest criticism I have of this book is the dynamic between Petra and Bean. Half of their conversations don't even feel human and just come across as gross when the author clearly intended the opposite. Also the fact that they're married in their mid-teens is off putting. Many of these exchanges made me question if humanity's ancestors should have even bothered to crawl out of the primordial soup.
Not only this, but Bean spends half the book occasionally making off-handed, mopey comments about how he's not human or he isn't worthy of love. While I think it's important to show this side of Bean, it becomes very repetitive very quickly.
The other component I dislike in this book is Peter. His portrayal here tries to ...humanize(?) him, but it just feels contradictory to prior books and makes him quite annoying. Frankly, I believe the role Peter needs to fulfill requires him to be a bit unlikeable and the way Card went about changing this somehow made him a less interesting character. Card even resorts to using Peter's parents to prop him up which just feels disgraceful, at least in how it was executed here. There are also some sections where Peter is downright stupid (
As I said, there were parts of this I enjoyed; especially the snippets of Virlomi sowing rebellion amongst the Indians, Alai's strategy against the Chinese, and the final showdown between Bean and and Achilles. The last of these isn't perfect but I thought it was a fitting end to the story.
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
adventurous
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson
adventurous
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Blackwing by Ed McDonald
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
This is the type of book that (for me) needs to be read slowly. I had the book on loan, and after the first 100 or so pages I realized that I should probably just buy it later rather than borrow it.