tsunni's reviews
302 reviews

This is one of those un-rateable literary books that probably take a ton of contextual knowledge and thematic analysis to properly understand the author’s intent. Lacking either of those these are my brief thoughts governed by my own life experience growing up incompatible with traditional Asian culture:

Pretty much a repeat of the first book, with a different short and forgettable mystery; lots of cozy and (relatively) low stakes vibes, this was a nice break from the bigger and darker stories I've been consuming lately. The personalities of Mossa and Pleiti, their relationship, and the setting are the stars of the show again, and delightful enough for the brief length of the story. The references in this one cast a much wider net than book one and Older takes full advantage of the setting's cultural hodgepodge to throw some startling and amusing curveballs (I did not expect a Boys Over Flowers reference here, I loved it). I found myself looking up words in the dictionary much more this time around, but I decided halfway through that this fit Pleiti's personality perfectly and ceased to be bothered by it. Would probably read again one day, it's one of those stories that's comfortable to sink into and doesn't demand much of you.

Titanchild is a fantastic second and last book of the Talon Duology, with the same positive qualities as Jen Williams's other work: varied and easy to love characters of all stripes, and masterful weaving of multiple plotlines into a grand satisfying finale. In contrast to the Winnowing Flame trilogy which had a moderate pacing and took it's time to build and linger, the Talon Duology is extremely efficient -- especially Titanchild -- almost to the point of flawed briefness; but the quality of writing never dips and the large ensemble cast of main characters never come across as two dimensional (though for some it comes very close), which is an impressive feat considering how fast she whips through chapter after chapter of plot. This could have easily been a three or four book series and I almost wish it was, as there's so much more to explore about some of these characters (especially Jack and Epona and their whole

sapphic

arc, which I absolutely adored), or about the continuing references to British myth and history, Caliburn and the Lady of the Lake and some of the famous associated members of that myth, the Green Man and pagan myths, Boudica and her daughters. The antagonists and the titans could've used more time as well, though the squeamish part of me is perfectly happy with the brief amount of book time devoted to gorey and demonic parts of the cast. I think people who love efficient storytelling in their fantasy will find a lot more to like here, but I think the quality of the writing makes this an easy recommend in general.

I'm a big fan of Jen Williams's Winnowing Flame trilogy, and I found a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses here; fantastic worldbuilding, well planned and executed plot, decent characters and relationships that are missing just a little spark that carries them into being great. Something about the pacing in Talonsister suffers in comparison, feeling simultaneously slow in the broader sense but fast in each short chapter focused on one of several povs. The bigger picture doesn't all fall into place until very late, and dragging myself there one chapter at a time took me much longer than usual. I do find something to enjoy in all of the characters (even the antagonists are fun, though tropey), some of them standouts like Leven the amnesiac soldier, Ynis the griffon girl, or Belise the former street rat and her "guardian" Kaeto. The last parts of the book as all the threads converged and consequences of their actions emerged were fantastic, enough for me to start up book 2 of the duology immediately.

A short, low stakes, futuristic scifi yet retro character focused mystery that does a decent job with worldbuilding and character development for the short length of the story. The writing and the way the narrator used her words made me stumble quite often, but I liked both the mains' personalities and how they played against each other. It achieved the coziness and the romantic tension reasonably well; the mystery was perfunctory and eh. I loved the setting and the dripfeed of background. 

This didn’t start as a 5/5. The first part of the book felt directionless, meandering; I had picked this up without any idea what it was about, only The Expanse series driving me to read it. I didn’t really like any of the characters or the setting, although I was given plenty of detail about both.

Another chunk of the book went by. New concepts were being introduced. The characters and their relationships kept developing. Big things have happened, and I was finally starting to get a sense of where things were going, but it still wasn’t entirely clear.

Then everything fell into place perfectly, and I devoured the rest. The setup is big, the scope bigger than even the Expanse, the characters moving in all their own directions laser focused on what could be a long, exciting series.

This takes a while to ramp up, the characters aren't going to be fun or engaging; at first. Keep going, I totally think it’s worth it. I am super excited for what comes next.

Incredibly twisted. This is a mix of a Korean revenge flick and the worst of Japanese school repressiveness and bullying stories, presented as confessionals from students and teachers in a spiraling, escalating mix of shocking wtf. The varying viewpoints do tend to rehash a lot of the same details, but it's a relatively short read and doesn't overstay its welcome.

Two Serpents Rise is the second story in the world of the Craft Sequence, a prequel to the first book in publication order Three Parts Dead. Max Gladstone absolutely got me hooked on the world building in TPD and that continues to be the case in TSR and probably the strongest element of both. It's a world of competing magic and gods, and we see a slice of how that war is progressing in a different city and different time in each; Three Parts Dead takes place in Alt Coulumb at a point of working compromises and tense symbiosis between magic and gods, but Two Serpents Rise is set in Dresediel Lex years before, analogue to real world Los Angeles and fresh on the tail end of conflict with open battle still a possibility. I love that these books really dig into some of the banality of what a world of magic and gods might look like in every day life, when corporations might be headed by incredibly strong magic wielders dedicated to something as day to day as supplying water to a city of millions, with magical contracts on contracts being woven into every single facet of the city. Not that the story is anything boring; the complex magical systems, the religions and cultures being stomped out, the zealots and magical craftspeople coming to odds, serves up a lot of tension that keeps the story engaging.

What I didn't like or liked less in Two Serpents Rise than Three Parts Dead: Caleb our protagonist, the risk assessor working for the water utility headed by an undead, magic wielding skeleton, is much less of an interesting character than Tara was in Three Parts Dead. Caleb is a more reserved and withdrawn character with less of the charm, impetuousness, and energy Tara brought to the first book. The writing in Two Serpents Rise is also a big change from book one. Three Parts Dead was written in a workmanlike straightforward prose, which might be less interesting but allowed the complex world to stand on its own. This book takes a more metaphorical, sometimes flowery approach to the prose, which was hit or miss with me and sometimes left me struggling with the writing and understanding what was going on. It's ultimately a matter of taste, but the combination of less interesting protagonist and prose style I didn't enjoy made this much more of a struggle to get through than book 1. The plot and the world still carry me through and my complaints are pretty minor; the Craft Sequence world is one of the more interesting ones I've read in a while and I'm eager to read the rest of the books in the series.

I was a big fan of Max Gladstone's work on This Is How You Lose the Time War with Amal El-Mohtar. Three Parts Dead is a lot more of the typical, heroes journey-ish fantasy than that book was, but with a lot of the same level of creativity and quality of writing I was hoping to find. I loved that Tara's arc here is less of the typical magical powers and growth kind, although she gets ample room to demonstrate her genius along those lines; it's more one of cleverness and brinkmanship as she digs her way out of a low spot in her life, set as a magical law thriller. Abelard, the other young protagonist, also starts out deep in a hole and has a great contrasting arc expanding his world beyond that of a low level religious technician. The world is just as weird and interesting as all that sounds; a lot of the ideas in this story aren't strictly new, but they're interpreted and combined and presented in ways that felt really fresh and exciting to me, and Gladstone manages to balance making all the characters just emotionally engaging and three dimensional enough at the same time. Three Parts Dead is on the quicker side of medium paced, and was just really fun for me; I tore through it extremely fast and enjoyed it the whole time.

This is a long, long, sprawling space opera epic bursting with amazing technological ideas, and incredibly alien cultures and species, all of which is explored thoroughly in this hefty giant tome of a book. I was blown away by the amount of creativity at play here in terms of sheer imaginative power; this is my first Peter F. Hamilton exposure, and as a new kinda-fan I can see why he has the rep he has as a scifi author.

Unfortunately I think my personal taste doesn't align very well with Exodus, as I need characters I can emotionally connect with to keep me going and invested, especially with super lengthy epics such as this one; depth of character and emotional complexity was sacrificed for the sake of science fiction opera grandeur here, as there's simply too many ideas to explore and too big and sweeping a plot to do much else. As much as I was drawn in by the scifi-ness of it all, I struggled with wanting to drop it more than a handful of times, especially in the first half as the story kept introducing new disconnected plotlines and characters. Things take a very long time to start coming together, and even when they do late into the second half of the book, the whole thing ends in a pretty unsatisfying cliffhanger. I was already dreading trying to finish the book by a quarter of the way in, so struggling to get through a sequel of the same length is off the table for now. 

Still, I like Peter F. Hamilton and practically everything he came up with outside of the characters. I just wish he did it differently; maybe in several volumes with proper self contained plot lines and much more character work, or maybe with a few hundred pages less. I did become enough of a fan to check out the game this book ties into, and I'm playing with seeing if he has any shorter self contained novels that I might want to read. As for Exodus, I would totally still recommend it if you're more of a big plot and big scifi ideas type of reader, because it's still brilliant in that way; if you're an emotional-connection-to-character(s) type of reader like I am, this may end up being a struggle for you as well.