Not as compelling as the first omnibus, but only because the first one is pretty much all five-star issues. The plotting and character work is still there, as are the cliffhangers and banger opening scenes. It’s slightly off the rails and convoluted but gets back to it by the end.

Not being able to stand the Anthropocene reviewed, I went into this trepidatiously, plus I’d seen the movie some time ago too, so there were no surprises. But I actually liked this quite a bit, for what it is. It’s prescriptive and one of those sentimental, overly orchestrated emotionally manipulative type books, like Irving or Haig.

That actually suits YA pretty well though, since this fiction is preoccupied with developing minds choosing who and what they are going to believe in. And this adds up to, well, maybe we should treat sick people with the same dignity as everybody else. With a message like that, I don’t mind the prescriptive elements. It’s cheesy and I don’t think most teenagers that age would behave the way these two do, but they are pretty expressly characters with a capital C, and the book is intentional about infusing them with some qualities you wouldn’t usually see—which is why they are characters and not concerned with verisimilitude (on that front).

I went in disliking the author and thinking I wasn’t going to like it, so I have to give it props. The deck was stacked against it and It still won. Though, more than some of it may be down to the absolutely stellar narration too.

This reminded me of Midnight’s Children in some ways. Which is a great thing. The beliefs about the world beyond what most can perceive permeate the narrators recanting of his life, and is so super saturated, it becomes normalized. In reality, even without that the novel would work because it is so well realized. So much happens in really not that much time, and all of the characters are interrogated thoroughly as time marches on.

From the move to corruption and wealth, to death of some, or the constant itinerant nature of his father, perpetually reinventing himself in destructive ways, or his mother who attempts to fuse harmony with that utter chaos—all with a boy who is constantly othered and seems without agency. It’s great at capturing this particular kind of marginalization, at describing just enough of the time and place that you get a clear picture of the world in which they are situated. But the story is heavily rooted in a family drama tinged with the mystery embedded by the way chief aspects of the plot are divulged. Huge shake-ups in the world, as well as, to some degree, if his perceptions of reality are reliable, and what that says about the rest of the story he is telling.

Great, engrossing, probably appealing only to the slow and myopic reader that is okay with a literary approach to fantasy, but for those in the niche, it’s likely to exceed expectations.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this, and though it segues into a dystopia and becomes very war/military fiction, I enjoyed it quite a lot more than I expected, despite this departure. I thought it would be some weird super hero origin story from the late 50s in Argentina; to some degree, I suppose it is. But it’s a lot more in common with classic science fiction than that. And it has a lot of grounded combat with a resistance against, of all things, aliens. It kept me guessing constantly and ended pretty abruptly, but poignantly.

In the end it’s just neat to see the development of comics in another country, too.

A winding, time-hopping, fantastically introspective reading experience. For the first half, or maybe two thirds, it basically changes styles with each part. Emerging from a frenetically fast and really mindfully rumination on two people being inexorably connected despite time being experienced wildly different for each.

Basically, it’s a short story that segues into a queer story that feels like more of the actual “start” of the story, perhaps the former being a prologue. But a similar tension between a connection to a person and the need to fulfill other things in their lives. Coupled with a character in each which operate in a somewhat disaffected manner due to their interpersonal skills and, probably, some neurodiversity. Interestingly (to me), many readers finding the book really isolating because they don’t find the characters relatable. I found my experience was the exact opposite. Probably because I have similar struggles and people characterize it as a lack of empathy.

Communication can be just tough for some people and I found the authorial voice to be phenomenal at elucidating the thoughts and feelings of the people on both fronts. I thought it was moving and the author is very clearly interested in the same things as me in their scenes, which is nice, and kind of rare for me as a reader. The prose are poetic and exactly to my taste. Word ecosystem felt specific and tailored to the kind of odd story; continually bouncing around time and space and characters and fostering a sense of mystery as things progress. And, as mentioned, wonderfully queer.

This is a 4, but by a hairpin. I wouldn’t be surprised if the reading experience stays with me and it goes up, to be honest. Especially because I will 100% look for a physical copy now, though do wonder if the audiobook is part of what sold it so well and made it so memorable.

Yesterday I couldn’t make it too far into Behave, because of the usual nonfiction reasons: it’s dry, contains unengaging prose, spits numbers and facts. I retain nothing. This book is the opposite of that. I guess narrative nonfiction… but with fiction is my jam. And… perhaps just incorporating craft from fiction, such as telling an actual story and not writing a boring thesis paper is how you capture an audiences attention. Who knows.

Regardless, this book was absolutely, completely riveting from the start. We follow “golden age” physicists as they struggle to define the field. Personal lives sometimes drilling down to the granular, always serving a purpose in their thinking, their work, and the outcome of their work. Spring boarding off each is a new character, typically.

It’s also massively, sometimes staggeringly intersectional. Weaving in philosophy, ethical concerns and outcomes, morality. The people feel more “alive” than in any other document I’ve read about them. Sure, some of it has to be fictionalized. But magical things happen when science is communicated by characters that feel real: you automatically feel the information is important and it’s easy to follow. What’s more is the work is an extension of their personalities and upbringing. The interplay makes the dry details compelling.

Absolutely the gold standard with which I will measure future nonfiction reads (which is completely unfair because there’s fictional elements) and a niche of it I will seek out in the future. What a counterpoint to the much lauded and ceaseless drivel of Behave.

P.S. the audiobook narration is perfectly matched. Recommended!

This book has a strange, self-aware voice. There is literally a chapter where the voice, defining itself as such, sets the scene. We don’t know who the narrator is, and because it is a parable, it takes on an ominous quality. Every character is noted only as the role they play in the society: Teacher, Mayor, Old Woman, Doctor. The odd minor character may have a name, but that person is typically directly accountable for something, at an individual level.

This makes it so when three dead bodies wash ashore and a few people decide to cover it up, the larger community is doing this. There is a shared blame, even if it is apathy. In short order the ecology of his primordial place, without the advancements of technology like phones and the internet, begins to reflect the tumultuous physical landscape, embodied in the islands predominate feature: a volcano. Peaceable for some time. Yet in the right circumstances it has the power to erase itself completely. Cover all trace with magma and poison, as it consumes everything completely. The actions of our archetypes seem to sooth or exacerbate this precipitous condition.

Tonally it vacillates, but mostly gets away with it due to setting up the uncanny voice and the archetypes of people. When they devolve in caricatures, from time to time, you need only read their “name” to see where it comes from. It’s a straight forward, quick story to read, though it does have a few intersections where these deviations lead you some place else than you’d expect. But the qualities the macro approach imbue the story with, also make it very hard to relate to at a character level or view the story in any other way than it’s self aware self. This can make parts feel overwritten; particularly when the “voice” feels like an almost pointless digression when it zooms in to a granular aspect of the story. It simply cannot do both well.

Ultimately, it’s a fairly bleak book. Ecology reflecting the inner nature of mankind. Beauty and bounty waiting to be destroyed almost inevitably. Everything else feels like a reprieve. The mystery of the dead men is beside the point. At its heart, this is solely an engagement meant to draw parallels between roles in society—leading one to conclude and extrapolate things about how we have constructed it—as well as the need to see with clear eyes what the things we have constructed says about us. And who, or what, this serves.

This actually had more plot that I expected, based on other reviews. The protagonist is negotiating the everyday, years after traumatic events occur. The incursions of memory become surrealistic, for instance as he watches a couple in a playground early on while leaving from a chore. He becomes lost in it and the detail becomes impossible - until you realize he’s not watching anyone, he’s remembering. So it is with his limited interactions with people too. There is a palimpsest moment for every scene. The mundane and the expected same interactions eventually unearth a surrealistic moment that unspools what goes unsaid.

The prose work really does become mesmeric. I can’t say it wasn’t sometimes annoying either though, because as you delve deeper into each scene in its circuitous way, the same information eventually ends up like a parrot. It’s less grating on the page than on audio though, so I’ll stick with that in the future.

It doesn’t feel completely contained, I must say. Reading it as a stand alone story, it feels clipped, because it is. So I am glad I waited for the complete septology and will just mark that book, rather than each trilogy for my reading goals - but it’s nice to have a place where you codify individual thoughts on each part too.

Was a bit lost reading New Mutants, revisited this to shore up. Liked it a lot more than I did initially. It’s very Hickman - cerebral, multiple timelines that converge, Recontextualizing a few current assumptions. Completely changes mutants and seems a large shake-up. Curious to see what creators did with it.

What a weird one. I am not totally sure I understood it all and the illustration work isn’t where it’s at now, with her other work. It’s quick and melancholy and has unhinged people and trauma, so you know you’re reading Walden. It captures claustrophobia of the situation well too. I just found it a bit baffling still though.