competencefantasy's Reviews (912)

Excuse me, I have to interrupt this nicely abstracted legality-mage fantasy discussion of complicitness in oppression and also family drama to mention another coffee mug.

I didn't hate the sex scene.

This is really good fun. There's a dramatic and humorous story of a woman trying to get her bearings in a supernatural government agency, after a complete memory and personality wipe. This is interspersed with infodump letters from her former self, and an urgently progressing spy narrative. The book worked for me on almost every level, with my one critique being some of the nuances in the portrayal of interrogation as a government technique. However, I find it hard to mark the text down for anything because it's a rollicking, Bechdel test smashing, good time, and I had too much fun to grump.

This is second in a series, and if you liked the first one you will probably enjoy this as well. I've rated it a little lower than the first one, primarily because I found a couple of the plot points not as tightly woven. It may also be a little bit of spite on my part for a particular trope my favorite minor character had to go through. Those petty things aside, this is still a solidly good book. The pacing, worldbuilding, mythology, and characterization are top notch.

All the magic of the first earthsea book, now with well developed women.

I wasn't sure of the premise but it was better executed than I expected. The world is really colorful and I believe the characters even if the internal monologue gets a touch on the nose.

Some of the worldbuilding elements were a little anachronistic but I was suprised at how into this I got.

First of all, let's get this out of the way. One is entitled to write one's book in third person, first person, stream of consciousness, etc. However having the entirety of it in all of those at once, while it produces some lovely meter and paragraph pacing, does run this risk of being a bit confusing.

I feel like I was set up to like this book by personal circumstances. When I was in high school I read Tudor fiction to excess. Then I quit in college because there was nothing new under the sun (just a year before Wolf Hall came out).

My previous experience with Tudor fiction made it easy for me to understand what was going on, whether or not the book did a good job of telling me. That proved necessary because Wolf Hall needs to be read fast. It shouldn't be skimmed, mind, but it needs a certain genial willingness not to worry too much about which person said which thing again. Any time I had to slow down to sort out whose line it was anyway, the book came to an almost complete stop.

This isn't so much about getting in to Cromwell's head, you see, as about Cromwell getting into yours. Once he was there, the book opened up. With very strong characterization and a unique voice, Cromwell is just the sort of person I wanted hovering over my metaphorical shoulder, providing witty commentary. So much of the book was quotable, and a lot of it was laugh-out-loud funny, at least when I had the context straight.

Overall, Hilary Mantel has accomplished something I dearly wanted in my high school days and given Henry VIII's advisers actual personalities, rather than just factions and ideologies.

Let me first say I love the premise. Good, ok here are some things this reminded me of at least once:
A drunken dnd session
Grimdark fantasy
The librarians
A bioware game
Joe Abercrombie
Terry Prachet
Brutal Legend

As you might have guessed the tone is all over the place. I don't know that this is a problem. The funny is funny and the wow that's dark is dark wow. It'll end up being a matter of taste if you like the mix. Make no mistake though, it's never just a little tonal swing. The wacky situation where you never know if an explosion is a laughing or crying mattter is the story's only consistent flavor.