Review: The Dragon Republic

The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first book in this series, "The Poppy War", was my favorite book of 2019. Granted it was a lackluster year, but that still doesn't change the fact I was amazed by it. Now the sequel, "The Dragon Republic", is here to allow me the chance to be fully disappointed by it. So, did it? Review spoiler, it did not. I wouldn't go out of my way to say it's better or worse than the first, mostly because it's really just more of the same. Which, for once, is a very good thing.

The good news is that the same well-written characters and prose are still here. Kuang has an extremely strong voice and it flows easily into every word she writes. The book isn't only entertaining, but rich in both characters and plot. Not only satisfying but good for you too. Also, as a sequel, it jumps right into the heart of the story without having to spend a lot of time in school. Teaching us valuable lessons in character introduction.

I do have issues, but they are small and didn't detract terribly from my experience. My biggest issue is some of the pacing. There's a spot about two-thirds of the way in that lingers too long. It's important but should have been trimmed down for the sake of flow. It also hangs around after the story is over to set up the next book. Ninety percent of the story is firmly contained within the bounds of the text, but the last couple of chapters should have been saved for the third novel. It's not a cliffhanger per se, but it colors outside the lines of what the novel should be for the sake of being a tease and ending on a more dramatic note.

There also aren't any new characters to enjoy. There are actual new characters of course, but they are merely there because the shifting plot demands it. Making them more important to the plot rather than to the story. If that makes sense.

There's one last thing, and this might be a deal-breaker for some readers. Rin, our main heroin (get it?), isn't a likable character. And I don't mean in an antihero person-you-love-to-hate kind of way. She's rash, rude, disrespects everyone, easily falls into traps, a drug addict, and will kill tons of innocent people for simple revenge. The book is even aware of this as it readily admits her faults as side characters call her things like 'impulsive'. Here's the thing though, I still love the shit out of her. I don't know if its the breaking of the mold or refusing to abide by certain character rules, but I still love reading about Rin despite everything. It just might not be for everyone.

I loved the first book in this series, and the sequel lives up to its promise. If you liked "The Poppy War", I don't see why you can't also like its follow up. Not a perfect book. But, besides Dune, what is?

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The Nothing

I'm just going to assume anyone reading my blog has read the one from the month before. The good news is that I have selected an editor to help polish my book. The bad news is that it'll probably have to wait until after I sell the house. I haven't reached out for a quote just yet, but it'll probably cost me three to four thousand dollars. As long as my budget is stretched across two houses, I haven't been able to save any real amount of money. So if anyone wants to drop the money in my lap, feel free to do so.

I'm still slowly going through the edit of Colony Earth. The changes I'm making are minor, but it's letting me get familiar once again with my characters. There's an upcoming chapter that will require larger changes, but I haven't crossed that bridge just yet.

I know no one reads my book reviews, but I did finish the Witcher series. The review for the final book and overall thoughts are coming soon.

That's pretty much it. I keep meaning to schedule some time for my bad poetry, but something keeps coming up. Like video games.

Until next time, and at all times, be kind.

Do It Like Montresor

I've made a decision. It seems pretty insignificant considering everything that's been going on. You know, the world coming to an end. But, I feel it has to be done. And there's no talking me out of it either. It is like I've walked through a door, closed it behind me, and then bricked it up like Montresor. And, for the love of God, I don't even care if it blows up in my face.

I'm going to self-publish. I could go into a rant about the publishing industry but I would just sound like a jaded neckbeard. I've just come to my last breaking point with not being a published author. I know there's a good chance that only a hand full of people will read my book if I self-publish. And most of them will be my friends and family. But, fuck it, I have to try.

That's all I really have to say this month. I've been a daze for the last couple of months as Earth spirals down the uncaring universal drain. Just hoping there's a flipside of this. Humans, for all our faults, are crafty little shits. We'll probably be alright. 

All cynicism punctuated with vague optimism aside, the daze is why I've been silent the last couple of months. Still doing book reviews as I'm still reading. But it feels mostly out of habit and self-therapy than anything else. Step one to getting self-published is finding myself an editor to work with. It'll cost money and might take a few tries to find someone. Time and money always find a way to include themselves in any equation.

On the actual writing side of things, I've picked up my Colony Earth project again as I slowly comb over the tome. Just something to do as I wait for responses from the leads I'm chasing down. Once I finish editing and familiarizing myself with what I've already written, it'll finally be time to start new work. I've been trying to sell Variant War for so long hopefully I'll remember how it's done. Either way, it's been a long time coming.

 Until next time, and at all times, be kind.

Review: The Lathe of Heaven

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As an opening shot in the era known as New Wave Science Fiction, it's not bad. As a novel you're trying to enjoy today, it doesn't hold up as well as Le Guin's other works. It spends so much time being art that it actually forgets it was supposed to be a book. Instead of worrying about plot and character, it plays out more like expanding on a concept that should have been confined to a short story. If you're like me, you hold Le Guin in very high regard, but that still doesn't mean I can give a full recommendation to this novel.

If you do decide to read Heaven, I would say that the first thing you need to do is research New Wave Science Fiction. The short version is that Harlan Ellison wrote stories that borderline on insane and it kicked off an entire genre in that fame. However, what Ellison did right was that he kept all those crazy concepts in short story form. They don't work as well when stretched out into a novel format. I'm the first person to say it's okay to be strange and not easy to understand, but I'm also the first to say that being strange doesn't automatically mean it's good.

Heaven just has too many problems with structure to make it enjoyable. Even though it's below average in length, it still takes too long to really get started. Also, the inherent flaw of the concept means the narrative has to world build over and over again. It's intriguing on a certain level, but it also creates a lack of investment. How do you care about a world that's just going to change by the next chapter? That's just it, you don't.

If you haven't read anything from Le Guin or New Wave before, you should certainly not start here. While well-received in its time, both Le Guin and New Wave has much better works for you to do a deep dive on. If you've already built a shrine around your copy of "Left Hand of Darkness" then this book might be an interesting read even if it doesn't satisfy like you would normally want a novel to do so.

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Review: Mister Miracle

Mister Miracle by Tom King
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm literally going to get "Darkseid is." tattooed on my arm. No joke. I get a new tattoo every year, and this is going to be my next one. I already love Tom King's work so much I want to have his babies, but I do not mince words with I say Mister Miracle is a crowning achievement. Not only is it deep and emotional, but it also opens the mind to what comic books can be. It's that f%&@ing good.

Since nitpicking is my strong suit, I'll start there. If I can at least. I bounced possible complaints in my head, but there were soundly defeated by the positive vibes I feel for this book. The only one that stood up to this fairly one-sided mental battle was the bits involving Metron. It was a little too obscure and not fully fleshed out as far as explaining what he is even doing in this book. The cliffhanger at the end of issue #11 has no real resolution to it in regards to that singular plot point. I'm not saying #12 makes for a bad ending, it doesn't, but his involvement leads too much into fan theory territory. And I hate fan theories.

Besides that singular issue, the writing is God tier good. Seriously, one of the best books I've ever read. Well, the best within the last several years at least. The best comparison I can make is the movie Vertigo. Where everything is just so nuanced and layered. Grappling with issues like suicide and depression in a way that connects with whatever you call a soul. It also maintains a thorough plot with each issue laying out every point in express detail. I seriously don't know where Tom King goes from here.

The art is awesome. It matches perfectly with the story and conveys each aspect in the way comic books were meant to. Mitch Gerads and Tom King as a true dream team. I honestly think I'm running out of ways to say this book is great.

I try not to fanboy, it leads down a path of liking things that aren't genuinely good. Or worse, justifying things you would consider mediocre otherwise. Like saying Bumblebee is the best Transformers movie while ignoring how a legless pug could jump over that bar. The worst, of course, is not being able to like something that is great because some aspect of fandom tells you not to. I'm looking at you Star Wars fans. Regardless, I try not to love this book because I'm a fan of Tom King. I am a fan, but I would hate if I loved something that wasn't actually good. I still think this book is great, and you should too, but I pray to the New Gods that I never become that person.

Darkseid is.

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Review: Blacksad

Blacksad by Juan Díaz Canales
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was going to try to open this review with a cat pun of some sorts, but I couldn't come up with anything. I just didn't leave this book with enough emotional investment to try as hard as I possibly could. This book is serviceable, even likable in some parts, but doesn't really convince me that it's worth more than a single pass. Bottom line, it's okay.

I wasn't completely sold on the idea on a noir cat story walking into this, and that's on me, but the book doesn't do a super great job selling it once you're in. The writing is just a little too standard for my tastes. It isn't bad but doesn't do well enough to fully engage me. There are sparks, but no ignition. For example, the opening to issue three is clever as all hell, but it isn't that good throughout the entire book. Plus, the narration can be nonsensical at times, which might be on par for the noir genre but is still annoying.

Probably my biggest problem with the writing was the lack of world building. It just borrows too many ideas from real-world events to create its world and characters. It mostly takes generic concepts about racism and dames to blend together with anthropomorphic characters. The thing is, if so much of this book is taken from the real world, why even bother with animal-like characters? With a little more creative world building and slightly tighter writing, I probably would have enjoyed this book a lot more.

Art-wise, I will say is fan-fucking-tasic. It's perfect for what intended purpose of the comic and is just great art in general. Some of the direction and paneling is uncreative, but that criticism is coming from a guy whose favorite method is nine perfectly same rectangles. If I graded this book purely on the art, I would have given it five stars.

If I was to sum up this book in one phrase, it would be: It's almost good. Which sucks. Because, despite popular belief, I want all books to be good. Instead, what I got was only okay. It's coke zero when I wanted a coke. I can see people loving this book, and that's okay. Blacksad isn't trash, but I wouldn't read it again on purpose.

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Review: Dune

Dune by Frank Herbert
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Despite the rabid nature of love that I pour onto this book, I will fully admit that it isn't for everyone. It was barely published in its time, and would never have a chance of being successful today. It violates so many rules of storytelling that I'm surprised Hemingway hasn't risen from his grave and thrown a yellow flag in protest. It treats every detail evenly, both important and mundane. It practically tells you word for word what is going to happen from the very beginning, leaving almost nothing for surprise. It's written in third person omniscient, which is a death curse to most regardless of the quality of the prose. And, perhaps most troublesome of all, it's dense. Far denser than it needs to be, requiring a hundred ten percent of your attention span.

The question must be asked: If Dune has so many fundamental problems, why do uber nerds like me love it so? The answer: It's complicated. Literally. Dune is so layered in its complexity that it's near impossible to write a proper review without going into deep philosophical analysis. It touches so many bases on religion, politics, ecology, and even invents some new subjects we didn't even know we needed. Much of the book could be taken apart and examined deeper for unexpressed meanings. And, unlike a David Lynch film, will actually have them.

That's the gift and curse of Dune. It can't just be read, it has to be absorbed. If you walk into this thinking its a cool read about deserts and giant adorable sandworms, you'll be sadly mistaken. It does have that, vast plains of sand and the cutest invertebrates in literature, but those are merely backdrops to a deep narrative of message and warning. That's the good news. The bad news is that most of that depth is buried between the lines.

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Review: POS: Piece of Sh*t

POS: Piece of Sh*t by Pierre Paquet
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

It's difficult to rate a book that has unlikable characters. Even if the character is a jerk or just plain evil, they can still be likable in an engaging sense. It's even more difficult with this particular book because the unlikable character is unlikable by design rather than just shitty writing. So I tried to examine this book by other aspects than just the character. It was then that I discovered it wasn't just the main character that was unlikable.

Perhaps the biggest problem with this book is the plot structure. It seems to have a habit of focusing on a specific story aspect and jumps from subplot to subplot without much connection or organic flow. Basically, it reads like this: something happens then, four or five days later, something completely unrelated happens. It's not really a story but rather a sequence of scenes that aren't tied together very well. It's so bad that the epilogue is used to conclude a common story thread rather than be an afterthought side story like it should be.

Like I said before, the main character is unlikable by design, but that doesn't change the fact he is unlikable. What probably bothers me the most is that a good deal of the shit that happens to him is his own fault. If anyone says, "How hard can (pretty much anything) be?", don't get into business with them. It's not just a comment against the book, but general life advice you should take to heart.

The art is serviceable, but I didn't care much for it. It tells the story well enough, but this book was obviously done on a budget. I'm not saying only big-budget books should get noticed, but poverty isn't an excuse for a lack of talent. That being said, my biggest problems are still with the writing, so I still would have liked this book if the art was the same but had a better handle on its structural issues.

I can't really recommend this book. Obviously. I'm generally a negative person, so I'll seemly shit on a book I actually like. But, that is merely nitpicking without taking in the overwhelmingly positive nature of it. This book, however, has serious problems with its ability to tell a story. I get its point, but, like a bad joke, just because you get it doesn't mean it's funny.

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Review: The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This wasn't a book I liked, as much as I just tolerated until its end. It's not bad by any strong measure, but rather it just wasn't creative or interesting enough to warrant my approval. I'm sure there are people out there more familiar with the mystery genre that will eat this book up, and more power to ya, but it was just too average and long for me to really like. It's just another British book in the seemingly endless stacks of British books in the market today (or any day within the last two hundred years).

In a lot of ways, it tries to be unique with its narrative structure. But, if you peel back the superficial layers, you'll find it doesn't have that much going for it. It tries too much to the 'hosts' that the narrator doesn't act out as an actual character, but instead deludes a multiple perspective narration by keeping the voice in the first person. The book literally locks the narrator down in several parts by telling himself that he can't act outside the framework of the host body he is in. Rather than have a character take multiple views, it has multiple characters pretending to be one person. This book could have been completely rewritten as having normal multiple characters third-person narration, and very little would have been lost in the process.

(mild spoilers ahead, but most of it you learn in the first few chapters or in the book's dust jacket)

Maybe my problem with this book was that too much of it was contrived rather than creative. The narrator has eight different lives to solve a mystery. Why eight lives? Because that's how many lives the author created to fit the narrative into. There isn't a single mechanic/reason why it's eight. It could be three or twelve or five thousand and it wouldn't make a difference. It's eight because that was the scope of the author's vision. No more nor less. And having something that inorganic of a plot structure bothered me. Sorry.

Like I said before, this book isn't bad. The dialogue is serviceable, the secondary characters aren't too annoying, and the pacing is practical. It does get exposition heavy by the end. Though, since most books of this type do that, I can forgive it. It just isn't as entertaining nor enlightening as I normally hope for. The host body mechanic is a neat idea in and of itself, but it's just poorly used. Imagine having a cool mech suit that can fight giant monsters and dive deep beneath the ocean, but you only use it to commute to and from work. It's like that, except you just replace the monsters with people who would murder over rich white people problems. Bad isn't the word, it's just shallower than it pretends to be.

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