Reviews and Comments

Entertaining and fast paced action movie-like novel set in WW1 China

This was a good idea in desperate need of a good editor. The formatting and misspellings distracted from the story.

This was fun enough.

Terrific page-turner to curl up with on a rainy day. This was fast paced and kept me glued. Strikes a nerve as AI peeks over our real life horizon. Perfect read for the beach or the trip to the beach. Recommend.

This was an interesting read and exercise in self reflection. The author and I have different tastes, musically, so I was interested in seeing how relevant the text would be in my case. The answer is: sort of. I would totally have gotten more out of this book if I had been familiar with and a fan of the music. I'm interested mostly in the neuroscience and picked up some interesting ideas but this seems more like a personal memoir than guidebook.

Finally

I figured out whodunit about halfway through but still enjoyed some twists along the way.

A good mystery that I did not figure out halfway through. There's a good selection of unreliable characters with quirks and opathies that made putting this together a lot of fun. The shady new-age charlatan is a modern character that I am finding I enjoy.

An enjoyable palate cleanser between heavier reads. I would have liked to see this story fleshed out into a novel.

I didn't enjoy reading this book but that's not to say it wasn't a good book, or worthwhile. There were some revelations in there for me to enjoy - and I sure did! I told others about this book while reading it - but they were buried inside of too many words. The appendix consumes 48% of this tome but so much more of the text could have safely been stowed there for the detail-starved reader. I was frequently reminded of "Moby Dick" and found myself wondering whether it would be safe to skip whole chunks. I admit to skimming at times. Could be me, this wasn't a popular book for nothing...but I'm so relieved to be finished.

bookstodon #books

I read in bed every night. It seems the more I need to stop and reflect, the faster I fall asleep. I'm falling asleep every few pages on this one so it's slow going. Long winded at times but some interesting stuff to consider. Like, women invented math and science before it got mansplained. I can't wait to finish this book.

The story moved along quickly. There were a lot of characters and I had trouble at first keeping track of them. My favorite was Cassie but I didn't get to spend enough time with her. I never developed much emotional attachment to any of the characters; had I cared more for or about them this would've rated higher for me.

There's been a lot of positive chatter about this book online. It's not my typical genre but how ever will I know if I will enjoy it if I don't give it a go? #amreading

Great fast read with some fun twists and no deep intellectual commitment required and nothing here to make me worry about the actual real world. I didn't learn anything new and I didn't have any epiphanies...a perfect distraction.

This is the first book I've ever read that I think I am actually too old to appreciate. I'm not a gamer and lack the familiarity with that world that might help me better grasp the literary Easter eggs. I'm sure I missed a few. It's a lovely tale, well-written, with characters I cared about.