Reviews and Comments

Two longish darkly comic short stories about small-minded people whose lack of imagination & trust in others leaves them in tragedy of one kind or another.

These pieces sit somewhere between Chekhov & Elena Ferrante. I dug them.

It's probably the closest we'll get to a proper memoir out of a very interesting & likeable guy, who's utterly unique in the publishing world.

Regardless of whether you are a fan of his actual output or not, you can't question his consistency, and as far as his style and approach to writing, he keeps it simple and straightforward, which for a beginning writer is really useful. And like all Stephen King works, it's an easy read that keeps moving.

Much like King himself did while writing this book, I took a break in the middle because of, um, an unexpected hospital visit.

It's a fun, breezy read, even if it does bog down a tetch toward the end as it ties up some loose ends, but there's clearly a Blanchett ot a Streep or a Julianne Moore or someone who's gonna win an Oscar for playing the title role in the movie adaptation.

Couldn't sleep. Ran through this in one night.

If you have the stomach to read a book about how to survive an apocalypse right now, this is a banger. As created literary religions go, Earthseed is better than most, and Lauren Olamina is just such a well-written, thoughtful character.

If you need any encouragement from the likes of me, well, add my voice to the chorus: this is a banger.

Comparing it to Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash as a comparable superlong plausibly surreal American techno-dystopia, it's a little less tightly written and catch-phrasey, but it has a better plot. This is more readable. Like most 800-pagers, it could probably have been split in half (or into a series), focusing on, say, Marchers vs. Militias, Virtual (Black Swan) World vs. Real Pandemic World, the romances versus the hatreds, or I don't know, something. Still. It moves along, and the twists & turns are logical inside the framework of the novel story. Well worth the read.

Just excellently executed, and engaging the whole way through. I loved it.

This book will speak to any angsty post-adolescent, but be warned, it does get a little dark, and doesn't get lighter as it goes along.