Interesting, sometimes funny, somewhat weird in structure. Because it’s a series of essays it feels like some chapters retread the same ground and occasionally are actually confusing because some aren’t chronological. It’s pretty odd and it bugged me a bit, but It was always compelling because so many wild things are recounted.

I expected it would be a story of now he became a comedian but that wasn’t the case. If I remember correctly pretty much all of the stories are before high school is over. Maybe he is saving the rest of his life for another book, or something? Who knows. The structure mostly works, just don’t think of it as a normal narrative and you won’t be confused.

Is it somewhat ridiculous and hammy and tropey, absolutely. But it’s also a lot of fun and I’m just really into some of the setting stuff, like Baba Yaga and other occult stuff. Evil Nazis. It’s beautifully drawn. I’m about it.

Great way to consume the series. Big fan of oversized collections. The extras at the back with extra lore stuff was fun, but it’s not a reason to pick up this version versus others, absolutely the thick stock pages and large format is the only real reason.

I really liked both collected trades in this and have been told it only gets better, so I’m pretty excited to see what the series has to offer if this isn’t that great. Some better dialogue and less tropey interactions/story beats could easily turn these books into 5 star reads, for me.

While the ending of You is pretty perfect, if there was going to be a sequel, having Joe go to L.A in search of a girl only to make his way through a sea of fake people is a pretty perfect continuation of the themes established in book 1.

Once again personalities and archetypes are stripped away by Joe’s creepily keen and disgustingly sexual gaze as he interacts with sad and legitimately terrible people. Rich people, poor people, authority figures and everything in between.

It’s not as tight as You but it still has the same authorial voice that is unsettling, hilarious, unfiltered. I was pulled in all the same and wasn’t sad about it in the least.

Very interesting. Crowd psychology has always fascinated me but the dynamics on social media—especially on Twitter—is even more interesting to me because you can hardly spend any time on it at all without seeing shaming happening. Sometimes people are in the right and it’s the only kind of Justice that can be obtained, other times it’s just the algorithm feeding you information it knows will incense you, and the fallout is a disaster without any accountability, ironically.

This book does a good job of have a through line narrative and peppering in data and anecdotes and interviews to explore mob psychology online within a narrow framework. It’s hardly comprehensive or definitive, but in so far as getting a few perspectives it is useful and, as mentioned, very interesting (for me).

These two prequel books could have easily been truncated I think. I haven’t read the original books though, so perhaps there’s some fun Easter egg reveals and what not I am missing, but from purely a pertinent events in the chronology and interesting plot beats perspective, I felt both books were incredibly slow, even when action was happening.

It’s got a really strange cadence that just feels “chill” all the time, which makes even assassinations low key events. I think the narrator does not help this at all either. He’s not completely monotone but he is also not making an effort to distinguish characters or shift his voice much based on what’s happening. So who knows, maybe if I’d read both books rather than listened, I’d have enjoyed them more.

But my feeling is mostly that there’s some interesting concepts and plot beats that have been padded significantly to make some pretty substantially longer novels, especially compared to the originals. Which makes me a bit hesitant to pick up the series again. I like it a lot more than the first couple Culture books, which I just ended up giving up on because they were hopelessly tropey despite having interesting concepts, so I will probably try at least the main “first” book and see what happens.

I mean, being a tabletop game designer this is like the embodiment of my interests. Fantastic art, great story, great concept, more engaging than the previous arc. Exceptional stuff. Can’t wait for the last arc.

Fantastic in a CW every way vulnerable marginalized peoples are taken advantage of, inflicted with trauma, and oppressed kind of way. I found it a hard book to read often, and I had to stop it a couple times and switch to something else. But it is very effective speculative fiction in Canada, which I think needs a lot more of this.

Too many Canadians think that this kind of thing wouldn’t happen here, but we are absolutely headed in this direction with the UCP leadership fostering the same white supremacy as the GOP in the states. We aren’t as far along as them, but we are well on our way. Hate crimes are up and it is disturbingly easy to see the steps in the book a government would take to get the level of Othering here.

It is not all doom and gloom in this book, though. There are fantastic scenes of defiance and reveling in queerness and queer culture in an accessible and intelligent way, communicating semi-complex notions surrounding marginalized culture(s). Certainly worth a read. And again, love that it’s centering Canada.