yumdirt's Reviews (310)

What a slog! Ohh chef! I'll order one Nuts-to-Butts Gritty Action Fantasy with Dark Humor, but oh chef, please hold the humor. I couldn't possibly, no no.

I really enjoyed some portions of this, actually just precisely this one thing: I love how things just... happen. In several moments we may have a building tension, some fast words, mean looks, a clusterfuck set to break loose - and then a guy gets cleaved! or a guy gets exploded by a wizard! or a guy goes into a supernatural frenzy! or... a guy gets cleaved again? Cynical punchline with every scene. As (eventually?) enjoyable as it was to spend time with (really only two of) these characters, by the time I was onboard, I was just so numbed by an insistence to focus on barbarity and flippant meanness from every character instead of any ounce of worldbuilding or plot. I'll read something with a cast of morally bereft protagonists, but "Angland"? Really? Lol

what murdaa? Me, ostracized? I CAST FIREBALL!

Was it fashionable to just put the most accident-prone and god-forsaken motherfuckers aboard almost every ship voyage, and then write them off after 3 months? Really seems that way. It's so funny.

"this Cape kills nearly every single ship that passes through it."
"NUH UH"

I feel that Sanderson simply having any sort of short novel within THIS world just feels off. The weight it wants to impart makes no sense, like a cup of water thrown into a sea. Within the main books, we have miles and miles, literally thousands of pages, to live in and to see the characters play in the sandbox. Just remove the preemptive, set-up cameos in the main books entirely, and it could make for more robust side novels?

"That was what the big Billy Goat said. He flew at the Troll and poked his eyes out with his horns, and crushed him to bits, body and bones, and tossed him out into the burn."

This small hardcover from Taschen - complete with gorgeous binding, rich and deep colors from the waxy pages, and of course that mesmerizing artwork from Nielsen - is one of my favorite books I own.

Our protagonist Cathal is a quietly vile man: someone who places value on his own lazy behavior, and is complicit or willingly blind to his upbringing and learned patterns of selfishness, cruelty, and misogyny. I just spent a week in Ireland, and while I was waiting for a bus down south to Glendalough, I noticed a man across the street and up a window, seemingly exhausted at his desk job. That image seemed trivial - until I read this. Short as this story is, I felt vividly transported right back to that afternoon. It's much the same bus ride Cathal takes, the same stops, roads, and farms in Wicklow County. It was as if I was sitting behind him on the bus and watching firsthand as he crumples from smalltalk with a woman, wastes away at his place in the countryside, eats away a woman's time and earnest attempt at love. Ireland has so much beauty, and I did catch myself wondering how locals may have felt about their country beyond the beauty, when even their men could be complacent in ugly rituals of poor upbringing or by drab patriarchal life. This tiny story met me exactly halfway.

Ariel: ...Fuck what your mum and dad did to you and your brother. Fuck it. I'd've tortured the fuck out of them if I had them here, just like I'm gonna torture the fuck out of you now too. 'Cos two wrongs do not make a right. Two wrongs do not make a right. So kneel down over here, please, so I can connect you to this battery.
Katurian: Come on, not again...
Ariel: Come over here, please, I said...

Dark as pitch, unseating, and strange! But then that now-trademark McDonagh comedy hits you like the proverbial train. I cannot fully or smartly disseminate why this is excellent, but I know I'll be thinking about it for some time.

Fear as the root of all evil, fear that the hate and abuse passed down to you will continue to manifest outside your control, in those you thought you'd be safe passing the torch to. The great flaw of capitalism as a breeding ground for entrenched racism, abuse of power, and sexism in 1974 Boston projects. Three Billboards meets Fruitvale Station, and with extra too. And yet, it's a fairly short read, it doesn't overstay or stray from its central themes. The protagonist is a sledgehammer, and the uprooting tremors she causes in her poisoned community and within her own tormented, angry soul are constantly, truly felt. Artful blend of dark and tragic drama, heroic flourishes, and a deeply flawed, unforgiving, irredeemable white perspective.