rikercoleman's Reviews (96)

Lovely read, a bit out of date at this point, but that’s inevitable with a quickly evolving field. This is a great and approachable way to learn about how LLMs actually work. Author is funny and writes well for a general audience. 

I do not know what to make of this book. I got it in a little free library for an airport read, and my god was it strange. Quick and intriguing read, but be ready to be baffled and uncomfortable. 

Really liked this. It tackles a completely different side of AI ethics than I’ve seen before, which is arguably more important than the hypothetical Terminator scenario. 

Speaker for the Dead really spoke to me in a way that Ender’s Game never did. I don’t think it would work nearly as well without Ender’s Game as a prequel, but I found this touching and human. The flaws of the characters and of the institutions they build drive the story forward through a decades-long plot. 

Kingfisher manages to make the “fairytale inspired” genre feel new and intriguing, rather than overdone and hackneyed. The story elements feel grounded in legend, but the characters are wholly new, with intriguing flaws, histories, and backstories. I cried along with Mara

when she discovered her sister’s abusive marriage,

and was rooting for her the whole way. I hate reviews that make comparisons with other authors, but I have to say that this is a successful dark take on Pratchett’s Discworld—a world brimming with practical magic, and characters brimming with life. 

I found this book incredibly uncompelling. The premise is tired

”Mysterious object shows up in the sky, sending humanity into turmoil!”< /spoiler> and the characters one dimensional. Could have been better if it was about half the length. Sometimes threatened to get interesting, but never really delivered. Would have been a DNF, if I was not trying to read all the Hugo-winning books. 

Occasionally seems like something interesting might happen, but never really delivers for long. The concept of an elite who style themselves as gods on account of their absolute control of technology is interesting, although it does make me wonder why the Hindu mythos was used instead of the Greek.  (Why not Prometheus?)

Not very much happened

I really wanted to like this book, and I did really like the politics of the clans and the priesthood, as well as the worldbuilding, but I just couldn’t get into it. The writing style fell kind of flat for me.