competencefantasy's Reviews (912)

Mean spirited in several places and with a few exceptions neither funny nor cute.

Parts of it were just so boring, and so much time was spent on characters going over what they thought would be the consequences of their actions only to throw it all out and change everything in the last three scenes.

I really like that it resisted temptation to turn the whole thing cloyingly inspirational.

This was a lot more impactful than I expected it to be.

It hasn't aged perfectly, but the ending is still resonant.

Welp. Wow. I need a moment.

I think it likely has some pacing issues towards the end. I couldn't tell whether the last major plot was act 3 or an epilogue. However this book gets major props for two things. The first is that its godlike and ascending characters actually feel otherworldly, with motivations among human heads. Being able to emphasize with or "get" a god has use in some places, but I like that these ones feel like more than humans with overpowered magic. The second thing is that the execution of the world premise is truly bizarre, not completely fleshed out in all places to be fair, but weird and interesting. It's hard to put something down when I've got nothing else like it to replace it.

Oh, one more thing. This is dark. If you can't pair off any person or animal with any method of torture or murder and sit through the results... err

If you read this book, do it for the imagery and atmosphere.

The name really ought to be how to end a plague. The focus even within AIDS activism is narrowed. I also found the first person account jumped in and out of the third person ones oddly. However it is very informative about things within its scope and taught be several things I did not know.