hollowistheworld's Reviews (105)

This was... Wow. This is so different from what I usually read I didn't expect to find it more than mildly interesting but it was phenomenal. Beautifully, masterfully written. I feel like my brain's been rewired. I've been learning Spanish, and my new goal is to get good enough to read this book in its original language. I listened to it on audible and I am going to buy both the English and Spanish physical versions. I loved this. It was tragic, hopeful, dark, illuminating. Full of monsters and men and rats and ravens. I nearly cried. And it was so human, so feeling, in a way that most books of this type are not. There was no stiffness, no feeling that the author was an alien trying to get me to care about a concept too foreign to comprehend. It was no mere regurgitation of facts. Fernandez looks at history and wonders about the missing pieces, the human pieces. The people and moments who have been lost to us forever. She gives life to them - a life which may not be entirely truth, but which reminds us that history is made of people, not facts or symbols or numbers. 

I'm not a huge fan of stories that skip over the climax by knocking the POV character out, but the focus of the story is obviously on murderbot's personal journey, not the events surrounding it, and it's a short story, so it doesn't feel like wasted buildup. A very enjoyable read - I'll definitely adding the rest of the series to my TBR.

I should have taken the description of being popular on tiktok as a warning. Not only were the characters flat, unbelievable, boring, and obnoxious all at once, but the writing style was the most pretentious pile of slop I've been exposed to since my early college writing classes. The only part with a shred of potential was the very end as the sequel was set up, but it didn't come even close to making the 14 hour slog worth it. The plot twists were unearned, the whole thing was a dull info dump, everyone kept saying they weren't who they were at the start, but they sure didn't look like they'd changed to me. 

What part of this was the most unpleasant? The fact that every POV character was a self-pitying asshole who couldn't take responsibility for his choices if his life depended on it? The rape fantasies most of them have? The female characters who don't even have names half the time and have the personalities and believability of wet bags of flour, when they're not being treated as villains for having interests outside of fucking the man they have the misfortune of being in a room with? It was well written, I'll give it that, but reading about men jerking off to their right to be shitheads is not my idea of a good time, regardless of the presentation. Anything interesting the author had to say about race or classism or the flaws of higher education was buried for me under the sexism and the circle-jerk pretentiousness that soaked the work. The end spends a great deal of time talking about the sexism occurring in an unrequited love affair, but seems unaware that the preceding pages are nothing but men whining about annoying women, prudish women, women who want to fuck people who are not them. Perhaps this was the point. Perhaps the author thought he was subverting this. If so, he failed horribly. By the time anything in the narrative began to condemn such behavior I had already slogged through 95% of the book throwing around the word bitch anytime a woman dared to express an opinion. Any opinion. I had lost any willingness to assume the best of the authors intentions. I am glad I did not spend money on this book, and will be pleased to send it away.