This book was incredibly frustrating to read. It was just so simplistic and unrealistic. I couldn't buy into it. It felt like a book written by a child fulfilling all his fantasies - video games suddenly enabling him to fight to save the world, meeting the girl of his dreams and being inexplicably suave enough to make her fall for him in an hour, etc. None of the characters were well developed or complex in any way, most egregiously the aliens. There is an insane amount of repetition in explaining that there's "something missing!" and then when it's finally explained, it falls completely flat. I recommend everyone read The Three Body Problem instead.

A good continuation of The Paper Magician. The things I didn't like about the former, I continued to dislike in this one. Mainly the classic protagonist behavior of always taking matters into one's own hands and never practically assessing the dangers involved. However, some really cool things also happen in this story and it's definitely exciting.

This book was an entertaining listen despite its flaws. My biggest issue with this book is a great dislike of the character of Dresden. We'll see whether that's insurmountable. I do like how Butcher conceptualizes magic and his super creepy vampires were great (except for the weird Dresden comments about their sexuality.)

After giving Mistborn and The Well of Ascension 5/5 stars, I wish I could give The Hero of Ages 6. I would do it, even though that would undermine the integrity of the entire system of ratings I have followed so far. All that to say, Sanderson dug deeper than I though possible with the conclusion to this fantastic trilogy. As The Well of Ascension drew to a close, everything you believed was turned on its head, and in The Hero of Ages the so loved heroes of the epic grow incredibly as they confront bigger questions and the greatest enemy imaginable. This book just felt like it was about so much more and delivered everything I wanted of it.

New challenges await my favorite cast of characters as they grapple with an all new world of trouble. I feel like so much of what this book is about happens all right at the end, but I relished reading everything that happened as that moment approached and my biggest complaint is that Sanderson let a year pass between books without describing every detail of their trials in that time.

In both Name of the Wind and Wise Man's Fear I found reading Rothfuss's work to be like eating fine dark chocolate. Each word is carefully selected, each sentence a delight to savor. Kvothe's story advanced well beyond where it began, an amazing sequence of new experiences I never could have imagined. I can't wait for the conclusion of this story, especially as my interest in the tale of young Kvothe at University and beyond is surpassed by my concern for the Kvothe of the present, telling his own story and yet so far removed from those days of adventure. I want to know more about the young Kvothe, yes, but even more about that man and what we may yet get to see of what his future has in store.

This book is super guilty of this no explanations magicalism that I find really irritating in books while simultaneously gobbling it up. The 'feelings that don't make sense and yet are so strong the protagonist acts on them' BS is frustrating but I get so hooked by unanswered questions, and this book is full of them! I don't know if I fully trust that they will be answered satisfactorily yet but I haven't given up hope either. I'm really excited to read the next one. There's definitely some hand wavy stuff that I don't think makes sense (yet at least) and also a lot of things happening that feel too perfect to be totally believable. Slightly more spoilery rant follows - the one (literally one, this is supposed to feel purposeful but to me just feels annoying) female character is such a plot device (at least at first.) She eventually becomes at least half cool with me but I was so irritated at the way she shows up and then is sloughed off into a coma for a while to let some action unfold without her being in the way. Okay that's it. I'm off to bemoan the next book not being available at the library RIGHT AWAY.

I hated pretty much every character in this book, but enjoyed the book itself quite a bit anyway. I spent a pretty good chunk of the beginning feeling like I was slogging through a bunch of details I didn't care about just to get to the big reveal I expected from the ending, but it picked up the pace at some point and then kept me hooked right to the ending, which was sort of annoying but ultimately I felt satisfied by it.

The premise of this novel was really cool, and I enjoyed all the little ways the super hero genre was reexamined, however I found almost all the characters to be pretty forgettable. The narration of the story alternates between Doctor Impossible, a legendary super villain, and Fatale, a super hero who's just getting her start with a famous team of heroes. Both characters struggled to hold my attention. Their saving grace was Lily, my favorite character in the story, whose presence was fortunately woven throughout both plot arcs. The pace definitely picked up as the story progressed, and the frustratingly glossed over back stories of both characters were eventually filled in fairly well. I still found them both to be kind of uninteresting, and I was often frustrated at Grossman's constant skipping backwards and forwards in time in a manner I found more disruptive to the story than usual. It felt like every chapter began in the middle of an action sequence and then wound backwards to show how the characters had gotten there from where they'd been at the end of the previous chapter. Overall, the book was enjoyable, but not a must-read.