Reviews and Comments

bondolo

bondolo@bookwyrm.social

Joined 1 year, 6 months ago

Esoteric reader interested in ideas.

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Erin Morgenstern: The Night Circus (Hardcover, 2011, Doubleday) 4 stars

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday …

Satisfying Fantasy

4 stars

I enjoyed this fantasy and thought it had enough red herrings and surprises to reward. I am somewhat curious about the prior challenges but would think it tedious for this great book to be turned into a series.

reviewed Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (The Southern Reach Trilogy, #1)

Jeff VanderMeer: Annihilation (Paperback, 2014, Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 4 stars

Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades. Nature …

Moment only

3 stars

This book didn’t really work for me. Neither horror nor science fiction. It didn’t work as a thriller either. It needed more development. Some was there for the lead character but meeting the other characters in training would have provided connection and depth that was wanted.

An unknown benefactor supplies an orphaned blacksmith's apprentice with the means to be educated in …

I may need to read more

4 stars

I enjoyed this novel more than I expected. Dickens writes very impressively, which maybe should not be a surprise but I imagined something more formal and tedious. He writes with a rhythm and some amazing turns of phrases. I am unfamiliar with the speech of the time to understand how much of what seems novel to me is merely the idiom of the time.

reviewed Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett (Founders trilogy series -- 1)

Robert Jackson Bennett: Foundryside (2018) 4 stars

A thief in a city controlled by industrialized magic joins forces with a rare honest …

Improbable Growth Arc

2 stars

Main character becomes almost god-like through the narrative but somehow dwelled in obscurity for years before. Some set piece scenes were out of place and others abbreviated.