rikercoleman's Reviews (96)

This was a sweet little read. It was moving and sad, but beautiful at the same time.

This is one of my favorite non-fiction books to date. It’s funny, informative, AND delves deeply into linguistics of the internet, a topic which is phenomenally interesting to me. This is the book I wish I’d had in middle school, both to explain why some things people said about internet culture or did online irked me, and to explain to me that my affectation of grammar-policing was not making me cool and smart, but rather annoying and close-minded. 

The setting and premise of this book is really interesting, but I struggled to follow the plot. Which is probably my fault. 

The setting of this book is brilliant and intriguing, but the plot drags on forever. Landsman is a walking cliche: the detective who is ruining himself and lives only for his work; the rogue cop who gets the job done. Add that to the fact that nothing particularly interesting happens until about 250 pages in, and you have a slog of a book. This book had so much potential to be amazing, with the premise and the way Chanson built up the culture of the Sitka district, but it just doesn’t live up to it. 

Johannes Cabal is the man you love to hate. He’s despicable but delightfully clever, and gets out of scrapes by the power of his wits. The book doesn’t dwell on the nitty-gritty details of necromancy, but instead treats it as something that he just does, which adds to the enjoyment. I’m also weak for a good murder mystery, and one set in such a steampunk universe is perfect to me.

This book was such a delightful romp that discussed serious topics like censorship and authoritarian governments, but did it through a pretty ridiculous lens of letters being made illegal. I very much appreciated it. What was not mentioned, however, is my personal favorite pangram: Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow. No proper nouns, the sentence makes sense, and it sounds way cooler than the foxy-dog sentence. 

You can tell this book was written during the Cold War. Canticle paints a grim picture of humanity’s future, but a creative one. The setting is well written and the idea that humanity is doomed to cycles of self-destruction and “Simplification” is a chilling one. The low rating is because it didn’t suit my (completely objective and unbiased) personal tastes; post-apocalyptic books are not really my favorite, and it was overall too dark for me to really enjoy it all that much. While the monastery was a fantastically interesting setting, there were some elements of the text’s ‘50s Catholic morality that I found questionable. 

This book was eye-opening, particularly as someone who was too young to understand what was happening during Katrina. It told the story of the hurricane and the chaos, violence, and human rights abuses that followed, which is a big topic to cover, but told it in a very personal way, specific to Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun’s experiences. It was very moving.