Reviews and Comments

This book was pretty frustrating. I enjoyed by time with The House Wars and was trying to follow the recommended reading order. So I started this book hoping I’d find it as captivating. However, I find everything in this book to be a little too complicated. I almost feel like I’ve started the second book in a series rather than the first.

The world feels huge but as a reader you’re not really setup for it. There’s too many characters, too many titles, and all of it is thrown at you very fast. Not to mention it can sometimes be hard to know who’s talking to who in a given moment.

I’ve seen people say this book really takes off at the 50% mark, but I can’t get there. Around page 150 I started skimming, and before I knew it I wasn't sure what was going on, and couldn’t be bothered to care anymore. I hate not finishing books, but this is way too work for fantasy. A shame because I had high hopes that I’d get through all Michelle West’s books eventually. But I’m stopping here for now

I just finished this book and enjoyed it a lot. It did not contain as much TNG information as I thought it would, but Stewart told the story of his earlier life in that way that I felt to be extremely charming. It could be that I’m so familiar with his voice and mannerisms that I can’t help but hear his voice in my head when he says things like, “delightful!” as I’m reading along.

When we did reach the point of his career of TNG, and his future movies I felt it didn’t disappoint. At about 450 pages this book feels just long enough, and based on Stewart’s last line I think he understood that anymore would make the book feel too bloated. Overall I’d highly recommend it anyone curious about Patrick Stewart outside of his later works. But even if you aren’t you might be surprised by how engrossed you become

I was a big fan of AVGN back in the day, and even though I think the show has taken a dive in quality, as well as some controversy I wanted to buy this book as a show of support to James.

That being said I’m not sure I’d recommend it. James meanders a lot in his telling of his story, and there’s segments of this book that just seem included to pad out the length. At one point James lists all the “films” he created prior to the AVGN, which are basically just home movies. It’s wild to me James considers these part of his filmography as he counts his current number of films in the 200s

There’s also a decent amount of time dedicated to James college life in which he talks about an incident which was pretty impactful to his life. But in reading it the story felt really mundane, and didn’t exactly paint James in a good light. He claimed it was the inspiration to this book, and I’m not 100% sure what that says. I’m not even it needed to be included.

For those mainly interested in the AVGN you won’t hear anything about it until just over the 200 page mark. This seems like a missed opportunity as the last portion of the book is mostly spent on the movie, and the issues/stories about production, etc etc. For anything you can say about the current state of the channel James is really the grandfather to video essayists many of us have come to love today, and while I understand talking about the movie I think he could have gone a bit further.

I would have liked more time spent on those earlier days as the AVGN was first taking off, and how YouTube has changed over the years. I know the movie was a high point to James life, but considering the end-product was pretty forgettable for the average viewer I think more focus on his time spent collaborating with Mike and Bootsy and production facts about our favorite AVGN episodes would have been more appropriate. Don’t get me wrong some of that is in there, but it gets passed over very quickly.

So back to where I started. I wouldn’t really recommend this book, and I honestly think it closer to a 2 star than a 3. I noticed several grammatical errors as well. But ultimately I have nothing against James. It’s fun for some people to rag on him these days, but he’s accomplished a lot for just a guy with a camera, simple outfit, and a basement to film in. I wish him and the family the best. I probably won’t buy another one of his books if it’s published but I was happy to support this one.

Oh, and for the “truthers” who may read this James does not address any of the controversies that surrounded the channel from Mike’s tweet to present. Which is fine for me as I don’t blame James for not wanting to go into it. But may be disappointing for some