Reviews and Comments

I always love reading anything by Ryan North.

Interesting world-building, good and compelling characters, a bit long.

Fun concepts, little detail, no ending.

This one was much more emotional than the previous books in the series, and a great deal of character development. The crime and resolution tend to take a back seat to this focus. It also seems to prepare for stories to come.

Lots of really great character moments. I enjoy spending time here. Where there might be some convenience to the plot, it still fits the tone.

More fun with the characters from the first novel, but a little darker, with a bit of a truncated ending. It raises the stakes, which makes stories a little less relatable for me, but it continued to keep my interest.

The characters and emotions Osman creates in this series are somehow both powerful and comfortable.

Estimated start date. Had to take a break after the part where they visited the Midwest that had been fully ceded to extremists. Just felt too real at the time. Just finished part five, which I enjoyed (it's good to see Enoch Root again, though I never finished The Baroque Cycle, so I don't know much more about him than what was in Cryptonomicon), though I've lost some of the thread in the interim. It's harder to find time for a book this big, so I'm taking another break from it.

This is an interesting view of American politics through Irish eyes, which is particularly poignant.

Several characters with really interesting quirks and stories, in a universe that has recently gotten bigger than Earth.

Lots of interesting characters, though there isn't always a payoff for some of the setup. Quite a ride.

I liked Mur Lafferty's Playing For Keeps, how many years ago? Looking forward to this one.

This is an unrelenting adventure with some modest telekinesis. No time is wasted, the pace never lets up. LA is more than merely a setting, the book is quite detailed about the various neighborhoods, which combines somewhat unusually with the British spellings.

This was intense, and enjoyable.

Great detail on conceptual graphing and practical use of Mermaid to efficiently and effectively examine, reason about, and communicate about complex systems in a variety of compelling and maintainable ways.