ewdocparris's reviews
19 reviews

If you've enjoyed the Bobiverse books, I think you'll like this equally. Taylor sets himself a few more hurtles to clear and the book is longer. It's a tough act to pull off since there is, for the most part, only one character. But I think he pulls it off and sets up future franchise books in the process.
The care and feeding of a franchise is a real trick and I think Taylor does an excellent job of playing into the story's conventions while opening up new territory and branching out to new characters to give the central manifold Bobs some breathing space. I feel as if he's pouring new foundations in this piece to support future entries.
I do hope he returns to shorter stories. The Bobiverse is light fare that doesn't hold up as well over a longer page count.
Either way, I'll buy the next one. It's a fun world.

A fantastic love letter to the city of New York and its boroughs.
Jemisin creates a magical reality that nods at Lovecraft but feels more accessible, more like Stephen King's Dark Tower series. Her ability to tease open the fabric of reality and expose the multiversal underpinnings shows the hand of a master. But it's the characters, flawed and cranky as they are, where Jemisin's true genius shines. As with the Broken Earth series, her ability to craft rich human characters with deep emotional lives and then place them in life-changing situations is the real special effect of her work.
A joy to read. Can't wait for the next in the series.

As its author it's probably expected that I'd give my book a glowing review, though I've met a number of authors who aren't all that confident of their writing. I am confident in saying that no one has read The Dent in the Universe more times than I have, so, from that perspective, I love this book. It is a true page-turner (the last four chapters especially so). But I also love how it skewers our current mindless tech culture. There is no human endeavor so full of smart people that has done so much damage to human institutions. This is my love letter to those who slumber through AGILE stand-ups, who work to make their world-changing products, and who never think through the ways in which the world is better off unchanged—or the power their ideas might put in the hands of monsters.

I'd like to thank the good reviewers here at GoodReads. Your honest reviews, good or bad, are so valuable to authors. While I'd love if every review of The Dent in the Universe was a 5 star love-fest, the reviewers who gave it lower ratings aren't wrong. I try to write my books for a very particular reader. My writing isn't for everyone. If everyone adored my writing I probably haven't done my job properly. So, to all who felt this book wasn't for you, thanks for your review. Not every book is, or should be, for everyone. To all those who found something worthwhile, thanks to you too. Spread the word.

Be Good,
Doc

The works of Cordwainer Smith are delightful and just plain weird. Norstrilia is double so.

This is a masterful novel and, paired with it's precursor, "The Parable of the Sower," as important a work of fiction as I can imagine. The story of a young, driven woman and would be messiah planted in a world that has crumbled and is still on its downward trajectory is compelling. Add to that Butler's talent for anticipating the fallout from the undealt-with crisis of the environment and the unchallenged brutality of American conservatism and ignorance—all of it creates a world that could be today, or it could be next week. One thing is certain, it could happen in our lifetimes. One feels that "The Handmaid's Tale" could fit into this dystopic universe like a hand in glove. Gilead could have been a regional faction of Butler's Christian America movement. The same threads of racism and misogyny run through both. Interesting that the two most important science fiction works of the last 40 years both take aim at Christofascism in such accurate, prophetic ways.

You must read this book.

A haunting, evocative portrait of the 1920s dustbowl and its impact on a family of good people. A manifesto of the effects of capitalism on the hearts and souls of a nation. A masterpiece of prose and perhaps the quintessential American novel.
Steinbeck's writing is heartbreakingly beautiful as he paints the landscapes and people of 1920s America. His descriptive chapters are almost poetry, almost jazz in their staccato imagery interspersed with bits of dialogue heard un passing. The chapters where he drills down to a single example, the Joad family, among the nation's teaming millions—these chapters are filled with tender, daring character studies of good people facing problems they cannot, could not overcome. The power of the Joads is that they continue to try—to the very last syllable they continue to push forward and to help their fellow men.
This is a book that is at least as powerful now as it was when it was first published. The problems with rampant capitalism and greed have never been solved and threaten our nation again. Everyone should read this book.

1984 is an important book. It's a well written book, for the most part. But it isn't a terribly good book.
To a degree I feel that Orwell was a bit of a sadist and relished in lurid descriptions of Winston Smith's misery. To a degree, I feel Orwell fabricated a world that allowed him to explore his own personal paranoid fears of the world. But finally I find this book is an earnest warning against the type of totalitarianism that was Stalin's Russia as Orwell was writing it.
But here's the thing I kept coming around to in my reading. There is no state that can spend the amount of energy correcting the minds of minor offenders as the party does in this book. The bureaucracy needed to spy on every human on the planet would require all the people on the planet involved in only that effort. In the end, as all paranoid delusions are, it's the expression of an egotistical mind—one who believes their thoughts or sins against society matter enough that the entirety of the government must watch their every move, gather the evidence against them, and punish them.
Winston Smith is a nothing, a nowhere man— and not even terribly bright. There is no world-governing party that could survive if its energies were spent being concerned about him, and the billions like him, in any way.