thegreatmanda's Reviews (459)

Everything I've ever read by Jim Butcher has been a LOT of fun. Not a perfect writer, but he started out in the "not bad" category and has been steadily, visibly improving. I don't have ratings up for the other novels of the Dresden Files, but that's only because I can't remember at this point how well I liked each individual book. The series as an ongoing single entity has been a phenomenally good ride, and Dresden is an irresistible character.

This one did not have the deeply mesmerizing quality of Beauty, the last part of which had me tearing myself painfully away every time I had to put the book down and do something else. However, I still very much enjoyed this revamp of the classic Sleeping Beauty, who was always far too wimpy for my taste anyway. The overall effect was quaint and charming, but maybe just forgettable where Beauty is really not.

OK maybe it's just been a long time since I've read an Anna Pigeon novel and I'm forgetting what the character was like, but in this one her natural prickliness seemed more like petulance and a tendency to whine silently to the reader just for the hell of it. Still really liked the book, but I used to like Anna a lot more than I did this time around.

The Vorkosigan saga is a lot heavier on the science fiction than Bujold's Sharing Knife series is, which for me always makes a book harder to sink into. Even so, Bujold does a very nice job of pulling the reader into this strange and unfamiliar world. She also knows how to handle serial novel writing well - I was somewhat worried I'd feel lost reading this, as it's well into a series I've never read, but the author does an excellent job of casually referring to past events without alienating a reader unfamiliar with the characters' history. It could just as easily have been a stand-alone novel in which the characters were supposed to have a rich history together, with the relevant parts of that history explained as necessary and without a lot of dull, heavy exposition. The three-star rating would have been a four but for the fact that books this deep into the science fiction genre are not really my thing, and because of that my attention did occasionally wander away. Still, I may be reading more of the Vorkosigan series anyway, now that I'm interested in the characters.

This is a powerful story that would have pulled more stars from me had I not spent the entire book despising the main character. He was selfish, prejudiced during the moments that really mattered, and then later so riddled with guilt and self-loathing that it became a revoltingly self-indulgent pity party. I could not stand the guy. Sue me.

The writing is... bleh. Much like Amir's pity party actually - over the top and in your face and CONSTANTLY BEGGING FOR ATTENTION! I've also seen other reviewers pointing out how ridiculous all the 'coincidences' in the plot are - I have no real opinion about that one. I guess I see their point, but I also think if you apply that thinking to every book you've ever read and liked, you'll suddenly feel like a moron and lose all interest in fiction. I could VERY easily scoff at Memoirs of a Geisha for the same problem, but I still very much enjoyed reading it, so I won't.

Other than that, the whole thing was kind of moving and seems to provide a valuable insight into Afghanistan and its people. This is my first experience with Afghan anything though, so I can't speak to how good of an example it is - for someone completely unfamiliar with that culture and history, it did serve a purpose.