reubenalbatross's Reviews (521)

Fuck me, Andrew’s story is awe inspiring, and his writing talent is obscene! 

I was in absolute pieces and weeping for most of part one, yet I couldn't put it down. What a talent and what a strong man. I was completely drawn into the story, and felt like I was there with them on that mountain.

The rest of the book is a beautiful and authentic feeling account of Andrew figuring out his new existence, and getting his life back. It’s told so honestly, tenderly, and at times hilariously. 

What an awesome man and fantastic writer. 

I don’t know what I was expecting with this, but it was shit. Why the fuck would you release single chapters as separate books?? Makes no sense in this day and age or in this format. 

This ‘book’ is so weird that if it didn’t make fun of a covid conspiracy theorist, I’d be certain it was written by a right wing, red pill loser. Or maybe it was… 

The injuries from the crash make absolutely no sense. Only two people die on impact, and only 1 of the reaming 6 have any significant injuries? Nonsensical. 

It has laughable ideas about wolves. Wolves do not attack humans, especially a group of humans, and wolf packs don’t have alphas! That was debunked years go! 

Also “Moving leftward”, “a rightward twist” – what the fuck is that? Who says directions like that? 

Oh, and of course there could never be any women in the team. They couldn’t possibly do whatever machoistic ‘job’ they men are meant to be doing. 

I think the fact that there are so many issues in 30 pages of this shows it’s a pointless pile of crap. 

A very solid book. 

Once again, I am amazed by Reid’s ability to create in a few paragraphs what many authors would only manage in a whole book. In just a few sentences, I already knew the essence of each character, or could completely immerse myself in the setting she’d described. She pinpoints such small but very telling details, and weaves them together to create a fully rounded inner world. 

Unfortunately, I did not love one of the main settings of this book – the party. This was especially the case after midnight hit, as the main focus was on the party itself, and there were no longer any flashbacks or compelling backstories included. It was just rich people being twats and snogging, which did start to get a little old. 

However, once the Rivas got down to the beach towards the end, it picked back up and I did enjoy the ending.  

I’m so happy this series was recommended to me. I love Pratchett’s Discworld, and this book has a lot of the stuff I love in there, but is different enough for it to be enjoyable (not to mention it was written before Discworld?!). 

One of the things I enjoyed the most was Skeeve and Aahz’s dynamic. Skeeve is an apprentice who we can see is clever, sharp, and witty from the writing itself, not just by being told it. Apprentices in so many fantasies tend to be weak and/or verging on stupid at the beginning of books, so it’s nice to see Skeeve fighting back against Aahz right from the start. 

And it was just so funny! Some of the quotes at the beginning of the chapters completely took me OUT. 

Definitely a series I’ll be continuing.  

This is definitely one of my favourite non-fictions to date. I don’t think non-fiction (besides memoir) has ever made me feel quite so much. 

I enjoyed actually learning about the nitty gritty details of people/events I’ve always known about on face value, but never actually been exposed to fully e.g. I didn’t realise Jonestown was socialist at its routes, but it made SO much sense, especially about America’s response to socialism. 

It also drove home how truly obsessed America is with God, as well as making me realise how awful Crossfit and QAnon are.
 
I did think the messages got a little repetitive towards the end, but overall this was a really well written and accessible book with a lot of interesting takes.  

The beginning of this was really strong. I got MAJOR creep factor from Leonard and Wen’s first interaction especially. 

Then, towards the middle it started to get boring. It was just the same conversations over and over again – ‘is it real, is it all a lie? – with little substance or nuance added each time.  

I also didn’t care about any of the deaths, which was definitely due to the writing. They weren’t given anywhere near the weight they needed. I think some of this may have been a stylistic choice from Tremblay, as he tried to portray the damaged/confused thoughts of the characters, but it just meant that such moments didn’t have the necessary impact for me to care. 
 
Then, approaching the end, I realised the book was going to have an open ending… Sometimes open endings REALLY work for me, especially if I’m left with a feeling of existential dread. In this book it was just annoyingly predictable. The conversations beating me over the head about whether everything was a lie or not started to get pretty pretentious as the book neared the end. And it got so theoretical/speculative, with nothing actually happening for the last 1-2 hours of the audiobook, that we were just left with two guys pretentiously discussing their life philosophies. Zero existential dread from me, or much of anything really apart from annoyance and disappointment. 

It was all just a bit meh, which was especially disappointing as I thought the beginning of the book really was great. 

 

I could not carry on with this after the

gun

was found. SURELY that’s the time to leave? Jules is just so dumb; I couldn’t do it anymore. It’s just the same thought patterns over and over again, pretty accurate for anxiety rep, pretty god damn boring to read. 
 

Other things that annoyed me: 

- "I now have only four hundred and thirty-two dollars to my name." – said a woman who was saying she was completely destitute, it’s no way NEAR as dramatic of a situation as she made it sound. Yeah, it’s not a lot of money, but it is some, especially after being out of work for so long and having no financial obligations.
 

- Jules’ parents were absolutely fucking pathetic. Your kid moans about having to eat off-brand food once, and instead of having a sensible conversation about it, or just letting your kid sulk, you “never bought the generic brand of anything” again?? Bat shit parenting. 

Clearly Riley Sager is not for me. 

My one, singular complaint about this book is that the Scottish/British-isms Van Pelt tries to use feel a little out of place and caricature-ish. No-one says “a spot of tea”, especially not anyone from Scotland. 

But apart from that, what a book! It all felt so REAL as I was reading it, I was totally sucked in. This is some of the best character work I’ve read in a really long time. They’re all such complex, flawed, and endearing characters. 

And, though it isn’t stated whether or not he has it in the book, Cameron might be the closest and most accurate representation of ADHD in a character I’ve ever read – it was really nice to see. 

What a beautifully written and tender book. 

The actual premise of this book is fantastic, and I was enthralled at the beginning as we found out about it. The writing is engaging and created real atmosphere and setting. It seemed the ideal fantasy book for me. 
 
However, the horrific 'romance' in this book completely ruined the experience. 

Guiwenneth, the ‘woman’ brought into existence from the main character’s ideals as the perfect partner, is a literal child – “She was a girl. A child”. She’s “16 or 17”, while her only meaning in the book is as an object of sexual desire for the main character. What’s more, her childishness is seen as one of her best features! “childish, terrifying sexuality” – so gross and wildly disappointing. 

After reading other reviews and seeing that this disgraceful ‘romance’ plot only gets worse, I’ve decided to not put myself through any more of the book. I was SO disappointed by this turn, why couldn’t it have just stayed a nice, normal, non-predatory fantasy? Is that really asking for too much? 

The premise of this book was really intriguing, but unfortunately that’s pretty much all the positivity I have to say about it. 

First of all, the general worldbuilding/big picture of the story left a LOT to be desired. The premise of bone marrow being used to allow people to dream again is a really interesting one, but it wasn’t fleshed out anywhere near enough to add anything to the novel. Add to that that we never really see how the non-indigenous people live and how the bone marrow was actually being used, meant we had no context for the central idea of the story. For example, surely after so many years of harvesting, everyone would either be fixed by it, or dead if they didn’t already have access to it? The weakness of this actually detracted from the plot, and in my opinion this book would have been a lot stronger without it. If it was a general dystopian about a group of indigenous people trying to survive a catastrophic climate event, all of the same elements could have been explored, and probably in a more impactful way. 

Additionally, the very size of Canada made no sense. They were travelling for over 5 YEARS in Canada, but never seemed to make it ‘North’ or reach any ocean. Canada is not that big. But in the same breath, two of the group by chance came upon long lost family members within the space of a couple of weeks? Make it make sense! 

There was also a strong theme of misogyny throughout the book, which is odd coming from a female author. For example, the guys were also looking out for ‘the girls’ more than the other guys, for no apparent reason other than they were women. Or only the men having guns and doing scouting, hunting etc. At some point it was said that they take it in turns, but that was never actually shown in the book. Some of this may be true to the tradition of Native Americans, but I still didn’t like it. 

Of the four women in the group, one dies, one is essentially crazy and gets captured, one is nothing more than an object of sexual desire for the male main character, and one is severely mentally traumatised (which is her only character trait). Whereas all the GUYS are pretty normal (notwithstanding their lives before the group), and nothing as momentous/disturbing ever happens to them (apart from the mc). Some of this may be down to Dimaline’s apparent inability to flesh characters out, but it still made me uncomfortable. 

Adding to that, of course the two girls of eligible age in the group get paired up with others guys from the group, as if platonic relationships essentially can never exist. Since when does every woman have to have a (male) partner to be valid? Let alone the last tragedy of the book being a woman dying (during a pretty predictable ending). Or, let’s not forget, Francis’ mother being ‘mentally unstable’, but every father figure he comes into contact with is seemingly perfect. 

Finally, we come to Francis. I didn’t mind his character throughout the majority of the book, he was a kid working his way through a difficult situation. But my GOD, he turned into an utter dick in the last 30-ish%. He was a GROWN MAN by this point, and that’s when he’s at his worst. He starts pratting around to impress people, his rivalry with Derrick is ridiculous, he’s INSANELY insecure and jealous over Rose, and calls a woman a ‘female’. And then to add insult to injury right at the end of the book, Rose just forgives Francis’ dicky behaviour because someone died? His dicky behaviour, which he calls an ‘argument’, when in fact it was just him being an incel freak. 

Oh, and to top it off, the very end was entirely baffling. Dimaline seemed to be suggesting that not a single one of them had ever seen someone that wasn’t fully Native American. Someone who was half native, half Caucasian seemed like a total mystery to them. 

What a weird weird book.