rg9400's reviews
217 reviews

This is an interesting book for me to review. Initially, I really struggled with it due to the insane amount of exposition explaining all the different mechanics of the game. However, once the setup is done and the book settles into its rhythm, it actually started becoming fun. I still really struggle with the constant mention of skills and stats, most of which often cause me to start tuning out. However, I was impressed with the amount of creativity involved with all the different boss battles. The book also has a lot of humor which might not always land, but I found a bunch of moments amusing and entertaining, especially centered around the cat, Princess Donut. The book does a surprising amount of setup for future books as well by mentioning different items or mechanics that will only trigger in future floors, and the whole spectator/competing for entertainment aspect leads to some interesting worldbuilding. The audiobook is also really impressive, a very immersive production. The achievements can be funny though there were so many in this book that it got slightly irritating. Overall, this is a really fun pulpy book that feels like a cross between something like The Hunger Games, an MMORPG, and some irreverent comedy series. Unfortunately, I do think the LitRPG elements of skills, stats, and game mechanics lead to a ton of exposition with minimal value, and I found myself annoyed enough at those elements to prevent it from becoming an instant favorites. It might be a hot take, but I think this book would have been so much better (and more popular) had it been almost exactly the same but with those parts omitted or toned down. Even then, I found it more than entertaining enough to continue to the next book.

I have a lot of complex thoughts on this book. On one hand, I think the characters are strong with compelling arcs even if they were not always the ones I wanted. On the other hand, I was left wanting a lot more from the elements other than characters. I found the plot less engaging compared to The Trouble with Peace, mainly because I found the sociopolitical setup lacking nuance. Part of that is because I could not help but reflect on books that deal with similar simmering class strife while exploring thematic ideas, and in this book, that type of setup is almost exclusively used for character purposes versus trying to make a larger analysis (or if it was, it feels like a rotten way of doing so). I understand that fantasy has not always been the best in exploring these themes through their power struggles, but after reading numerous books that do utilize the sociopolitical setup to further thematic commentary, it was hard not to notice the lack of nuance in Wisdom of Crowds. Another issue I had was with the ending, not in terms of where our main characters end up but in terms of some last-minute reveals that felt unearned. I understand what Abercrombie is trying to accomplish, and it feels interesting at a high level, but it doesn't feel like it belongs within this trilogy because there is so little to setup those particular twists. It feels more driven by shock factor versus something organic to the story itself. My final complaint doesn't have anything to do within the Age of Madness trilogy itself but rather the First Law series as a whole. Throughout the 6 books prior to this, we get a lot of setup of different nations, and the first trilogy also sets up a variety of historical lore. This book does not really capitalize on that at all. Almost all the older generation of characters feel superfluous to the story, many of whom  are only mentioned offscreen. The lore is pretty much completely ignored, and there is no sense of other nations or larger worldbuilding. The standalones feel mostly irrelevant outside of The Heroes, and even that doesn't feel like required reading. In a lot of ways, this feels like a much more standalone series, which is why the ending frustrated me because it is the ONLY thing in this trilogy that feels like it requires context from the first trilogy to truly work. And because Abercrombie wants to maximize shock value, he does not develop that ending in this trilogy, preventing it from fully being standalone even though my recommendation would be to skip all the middling other books and start directly with Age of Madness. Within the scope of the standalone Age of Madness (divorced from the ending and the larger series), I think the trilogy is pretty strong when you focus on the characters. Rikka, Orso, Savine, Vic are all fantastic with interesting interior conflicts and interpersonal relationships. Their dynamics made it so easy to read this trilogy, and there are plenty of moments that feel cathartic and strong due to that character work. Abercrombie might struggle in a lot of other areas, but I feel like character is one area where he has clearly improved exponentially from The Blade Itself. Because of the characters, I still rate Wisdom of Crowds (and Age of Madness as a whole) high even if I feel like it won't become a favorite of mine due to the issues I mentioned. Abercrombie's prose and voice is also very distinct even if it is not the most pleasant to read. He might not be an author I follow going forward, but I am glad I finally read through this entire series despite my quibbles with it.

This was my first Joe Abercrombie book that I genuinely liked without any major caveat. I still have some quibbles. The plot and characters from the earlier books seem largely irrelevant, making this trilogy feel much more like a standalone than a culmination of the series as a whole. I've said it before, but that isn't necessarily a weakness in the sense that I honestly would recommend people to skip everything else and jump straight into it due to that aspect of the writing...but it also means I was constantly wondering if any of the numerous unanswered threads from prior books were ever going to be reintroduced (they were not). The lore and world feel very vaguely defined. But outside of that, I really enjoyed this book. Instead of spending lengthy sections on action, this book zoned in on actual politics. I enjoyed seeing the different characters try to forge alliances or stab people in the back. It also felt like most of the characters had interesting interior conflicts that were reflected in their attempts at grasping power. Also, it does not really feel like a middle book. Even though it definitely sets up the final book in The Wisdom of Crowds, it feels like there are complete arcs within this book itself which I really appreciated also. I am enjoying this final trilogy significantly more than any of the other books in the series.

Right off the bat, I could tell A Little Hatred had addressed a lot of my criticisms from Abercrombie's earlier books. No longer was the prose overly reliant on repetitive phrases and there was a large set of new characters, with actual female characters with agency and purpose beyond simply being the fixation of another male character. In a lot of ways, I found the first half of this book to easily be the best of his writing, and I was thinking it might actually become a favorite of mine. The story introduces us to a whole host of new characters, many of whom feel multi-dimensional. Seeing their tensions tested through the growing social and political unrest was expertly done. This new generation of characters have inherited certain qualities and beliefs from their parents, and my favorite parts of the book were undoubtedly the moments where they interact with their parents. Unfortunately, I did cool down on the book during the second half when some of his worst tendencies reared their head again. Frankly, I have not cared about the storyline in the North throughout this series and I continue to not care again in this book, with the people in power changing as various factions fight for control without ever giving us a reason to care about why they are fighting. This book reinforces that with certain characters meeting their end without ever really making us care about them to begin with. It just seems like an easy way for Abercrombie to add in action, especially in a book like this where there really shouldn't be a ton of action to begin with. And like my earlier reviews, I find his action really uninteresting. The North aside, my other two complaints are more minor. I found it slightly unbelievable how our cast of characters just happen to run into each other, with everyone having sex with everyone else. Maybe it is intentional (unlike with his action), but Abercrombie's sex scenes are equally unpleasant to read, so beyond being unbelievable, it also just wasn't fun to read. My final criticism is that there does not really seem to be a larger plot or thematic underpinning to this story. I was hoping this final series would start to bring together a lot of the different setup from the earlier books together. It doesn't do that really, with it feeling like it is telling a new story with a new cast of characters. There is no further exploration of the lore or the magic, and most earlier characters are just given a passing mention. I think you could start with this book and not actually miss out on much outside of some nice family moments built on knowledge of what the parents went through. Of course, this can change in the next 2 books. Overall though, criticisms aside, I do think this is a much stronger entry into the series that I actually enjoyed reading for large parts of its runtime.

First off, I'm going to get some quick negatives out of the way before raving about this book. There are a few parts of this book that are a bit confusing. The magic system mechanics went a bit over my head, especially when they were doing the training. However, once the book gets going and characters are just using the magic without too much explanation, it works really well. The entire concept of the magic in this world is that it revolves around emotions, the idea that the first battlefield is in the mind, and it really works well when it isn't getting a bit too system-driven. Secondly, there are some aspects surrounding a character's family and culture that I struggled understanding. These are introduced without a ton of exposition, and though we eventually learn more about them, it does end up creating confusion when it could have been explained a bit through exposition. Initially, I felt like I had missed a chapter or another book, and I ended up not fully understanding some of the schemes in the book because of this aspect.

With those out of the way, let me tell you, I devoured this book. I have been on a run of books that I felt ranged from bad to just good, nothing that really excited me. With this book, I couldn't wait to read it every night, and I ended up devouring all 900 pages. It expands from the prior book a lot, widening the world and being significantly longer. Yet, it still ends up feeling a lot more intimate as well. Our characters are cooped up together on a ship as time progresses and circumstances and challenges become more and more dire. As the tension ratchets up, it almost feels like a pressure cooker, with them each being pushed to their breaking points. My favorite moments were not these though, they were the more serene moments as the characters just interacted with each other during training or sailing. While Rahelu is still the main focus, Delilah Waan does give us more perspectives from other characters, and I really liked some of these new POVs. In particular, I think she does one dynamic and character relationship so well throughout the book that I genuinely loved where it ended up at the end and felt like it was a very unique arc. The book is split into 3 Acts, each feeling like a separate adventure/part of the journey. In terms of plot, there is a lot going on, many different factions both within the Dominion and outside, and while it could be overwhelming at times, it also did create a genuine sense of mystery because I had no idea where this book was going. The explosive ending feels like it wraps up this story while leaving an opening for the third book. Second books often struggle because they do not want to defer consequences and meaningful character arcs, but not here. It's an improvement across the board from one of my favorite recent self-published fantasy books, and I cannot wait for the next one!

Ancillary Justice's present day storyline follows an AI that has been split apart from the many other humans and ship that it used to control, interspliced with flashbacks when it was a ship and the events that led to its present day circumstance. I really enjoyed the flashbacks which built up an interesting political dynamic and mystery related to some shadowy figure moving behind the scenes. These chapters had narrative tension and seemed to be building towards some interesting sociopolitical themes. Unfortunately, this storyline catches up to the present day, and the story fully shifts to the other timeline at this point. This story was significantly less interesting to me and didn't have the same tension or intrigue. I also found myself struggling to connect with the disconnected AI character or their companion, the latter of whom really feels kind of random within this book. Also, while I think it's an interesting idea, I didn't care much for the antagonist once it was revealed who was pulling the strings. I think it pushed the story into more of a high concept sci-fi story instead of a more theme and character-driven story that is trying to make sociopolitical commentary. The writing style really reminds me of something like A Memory Called Empire which is why I was expecting the latter, as well as some of the setup. However, the book doesn't exactly jump into those aspects, instead focusing on the sci-fi style conflicts. There are still questions about identity and what it means to be human and civilized. However, it purposefully mixes genders around similar to something like Terra Ignota or frames the empire's annexations as fuel for its imperialism similar to something like The Traitor Baru Cormorant without really exploring these topics in-depth like those books do. I still really enjoyed the flashback chapters and the first half to first 2/3rds of this book, but based on the direction it is heading, I might skip the sequels.

I really struggled with this book. It starts out fantastically, with a tragic backstory for the titular character Renia that feels grounded, character-focused, and intimate. It sets the stage for what I felt could have been a really strong character. Jump to the present day, and you have a setting where she is working as a scribe and a book goes missing, and the unique setup also felt like another compelling building block. That's where things started to go off the rails for me. The book introduces a ton of POVs, sometimes multiple within a chapter. Jumping perspectives within a chapter tends to frustrate me as it is hard to make the chapter feel cohesive, and that's certainly the case here. But even worse, I often found it confusing. The writing is not as precise and clear, often using a lot of pronouns despite shifting character POVs so often. You also get a weird mix of names. Some are overtly unimaginative such as Bob, Peter, Jeff, and then you have a bunch that feel more standard to fantasy like Renia and Sundance. It's not the most important thing, but it made it harder to focus because it really felt like I was constantly jumping in and out of different books. The biggest problem with this approach though is that Renia simply does not have a ton of screentime. We follow so many different characters that her storyline often feels neglected, and there are major developments in her arc that happen so suddenly that they felt like they had no weight to them. I also feel like her backstory and setup are neglected in favor of worldbuilding and plot, making me feel like she does not live up to her introduction in the slightest. By the end, I had lost all sight of her character. This is true of a variety of the characters introduced in the early section of the book by the way. These characters disappear for large swaths of the book, and it becomes hard to care about them when they come back. On top of all the issues I had with the character work, structure, and writing style, I also felt the plot become very unwieldy. I honestly found a lot of it confusing and muddled. The worldbuilding is done chaotically, with important exposition being delivered near the end of the book instead of the beginning. It isn't even clear why we should care about the missing book until well into the story. If the sacrifices to the character work were in service of a clever plot, I could somewhat excuse it. However, the mystery ends up never feeling compelling because the plot itself feels like it was made up as it went along. I try not to be overtly negative, especially about indie fantasy, but this book just frustrated me in a lot of ways. It felt like the author threw a lot of ideas on the wall, hoping some would stick. And I wish he just wrote the book that the beginning promised instead. 

City of Last Chances is a book I like a lot in concept. Following a city currently oppressed by an occupying force, it follows a variety of characters from different aspects of society as they teeter on the edge of a rebellion. There is the last priest of a dying religion that can see his god, a group of students with idealistic visions, smugglers, factory workers, the old noble families of the city, a criminal organization, a pawnbroker, and so on. Each of these characters has a different reason for wanting to rebel as well as a different vision for the future. Some groups view it as an opportunity, others see it as futile, and others are not so sure oppression ends when the occupying force leaves since they were subject to it before. All of this is fascinating on a thematic level, and there are lots of interesting tangentially related questions, such as the cost of action versus inaction. On top of everything, Tchaikovsky lights a spark, leading to a sequence of events that end up involving all of these players. Throughout it all, there are also a variety of unique fantasy elements like a mysterious forest that transports people to other worlds and a zone within the city filled with horrors. All of this sounds great to me. The problem is that this is a 500-page book. It feels sprawling, and as soon as I started to get into a particular philosophical, political, or narrative thread, something new would be introduced that completely distracted me. I think the book sometimes goes 10 chapters without returning to an earlier POV, and throughout new characters continue to be introduced alongside a bunch of subplots that sometimes feel very isolated from the main narrative. The end result is a book that might paint a portrait about a city and the starting embers of revolution but still feels incredibly disjointed. I would like to highlight that I also struggled with the narrator of the audiobook, who would take very unnaratural pauses throughout, making it even harder for me to immerse myself. The disjointed nature of the book coupled with the weaker narration made me struggle with the page-by-page execution even if I loved the concepts. Plus, like with any other multi-POV fantasy book, I had the perspectives that I enjoyed and those that I did not, which wasn't great when there was no telling when a POV would return (if at all). Overall, I think this book is ambitious and doing some interesting things, but I wasn't very engaged when actually reading it.

The Last Hour Between Worlds is a fun popcorn read (narrated by the brilliant Moira Quirk) reminiscent of Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. It follows Kembral Thorne, a Hound, who is simply trying to enjoy a party that her rival, Rika Nonesuch, a Cat, is also attending. Quickly, things start to go wrong as people start dying and the world keeps resetting as the house they are in seems to be getting sucked into weirder and weirder dimensions of reality as they seem to be caught up in a game with cosmic players. To be clear, while the setup is similar to Seven Deaths, this really isn't a whodunit or that focused on the intricacies of the timeloop. There are certainly reveals and ways that the characters try to counteract what is going on, but it feels a lot less mystery driven than I was originally expecting. This is my main complaint as it seems more focused on trying to do worldbuilding instead, which often leads to mixed results because I struggled to keep all the rules straight and wasn't always sure everything made sense or was consistent. I feel the book would have been better served not getting so fixated on crafting all of these rules to explain the mystery since the reader learns about them well after the characters, meaning the characters are working with knowledge the reader does not know. Instead, it could have spent more time on the things we do know such as the list of suspects and players and the loop.  The concept also leads to some interesting imagery, though I wish the prose was a bit stronger to really bring some of those weirder aspects to life.  Despite this criticism, I still really enjoyed this book. A lot of that is due to Moira Quirk's excellent narration paired with our lovable duo whose quirky dynamic works really well. 

I think Red Country has the best high level story of the standalones, and it resolves some of my issues with his character work. An actual female character whose purpose does not seem to be entirely defined by a male character! Though character work is better across the board, with a character from the original trilogy feeling more nuanced in this story. The problem is that the book does feel a bit inconsequential, and the page by page execution isn't as engaging, leading my interest to waver throughout. I think part of that is due to me not being a huge fan of Westerns, and this does seem to be playing with that style.