Gobbits

Not scary or creepy. Very Rape-y

Revisado: 11-27-20

The book has a really unsatisfactory ending. For the most part the only characters whose plot arc gets an ending at all are the ones that get killed. It's like Alma hit a certain page count and said, "Well that's long enough, I spose I better end this thing!"

Also, she spends the least time on the part of the journey that would be the best horror fuel, the winter.

Way too boringly sexual. Almost all the characters interactions revolve around sex, but the book is about as sexy as a doormat. Also, so much sexually violent content, It's awful. This book is one of those ones where there's as much or more time spent describing sexual violence as there is describing normal sex.

Content warning:
Threats of rape
Rape
Molestation
Partner Violence (Physical and Sexual abuse)
Incest
Incest again!

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 12 personas

Boring and annoying

Revisado: 10-21-19

Almost nothing interesting happens, and basically all the characters are annoying delinquent children. The book is also full of unnecessarily foul language, and don't get me wrong, I don't mind a bit of tasteful profanity, but there isn't anything tasteful (or scary) about this book.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Long, exhaustive, surprisingly biblically shallow

Revisado: 07-18-18

Disclaimer: could not finish, I made it like 20 hours in and it wore me down.

This book is much less about Christianity than it is an exhaustive berating of polytheists for how stupid they are to believe in such gods. Painfully detailed in its discussions of Roman polytheistic theology and Roman history it is actually, in my opinion, a very good textbook on said religion.

As for Christianity, discussion is brief and practical discussion is far briefer still. Augustine's theology so far consists of a body soul duality in which the body is evil and contains all of one's evil desires while the soul is the heavenly part the purification of which is where all good things in human nature come from. The atonement of the soul of course comes from the death of Jesus, but also through suffering imparted by God which purifies the soul of the body's pollution.

He barely spends any time discussing scripture, and I suspect that he may have done a better job building the City of God if he had spent less time explaining to polytheists why they are wrong and more more effort on developing intimacy with God's text and God's people. Furthermore, if he had been a little less anti-Semitic and had spent more time in the old testament he may have developed a more nuanced view of what to do with the flesh part of a human being.

Still, we had to come from somewhere, and i can't be too hard on Augustine, he wasn't the one who made all of the disastrous choices that sent Christianity down the path it went down during the second and third centuries, he's a product of those choices, and was doing the best with where God put him.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

Good Introduction

Revisado: 07-18-18

This book is a good introduction to progressive Christianity, but if you've been a progressive Christian for a while this won't be of much use to you.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Dry, dense, fascinating, insightful, clever

Revisado: 05-15-18

This book does an amazing job of contemporizing the prophetic voices with a fascinating take on our society. Not light reading.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

Good, but full of old material.

Revisado: 04-18-18

It was good, but almost half the stories were excerpts from Talley's other books, which was disappointing.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Not as good as first novel.

Revisado: 04-27-17

If you liked the first book, this book is worth your while, but it's definitely not as good as the first one. The plot of this one is vastly more predictable, and the twists are much less well executed.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 3 personas

A disappointing sequel

Revisado: 06-17-16

I really loved the first interworld book. I did not feel the same way about this one.

The largest and most glaring issue is the switch of narrator, the voice actor from the first book really contributed to the character of Joey Harker, while this one had a dumb macho voice I might expect to be narrating an over-the-top zombie novel.

There was also a pretty significant shift in what the two books were like as well, the first book was full of interesting world building, and this one was much less interesting. Also, the first book had some really hefty emotional bits with him and his family, this one not so much.

Also, the world of this book feels like it breaks with the spirit of the first one.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Scratches the zombie itch, melodramatic

Revisado: 04-26-16

The Good:
The bad guy is plenty creepy.
It has zombies.
The dynamic of the reporter and the video guy is enjoyable.
The protagonist's cop buddy is a wonderful human being.

The Bad:
Very melodramatic and self-important for a cheese-ball zombie novel.
Tiny spoiler: In particular it's got some super irritating parts told from the perspective of a zombie that almost made me put the book down.
It "scientifically" explains the zombies with science so cartoonishly inaccurate that Mary Baker Eddy the founder and discoverer of Christian Science would be proud.
The protagonist is a faux-feminist, dude in a woman's body character, and she has unrealistic abandonment issues.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Exciting Hard Science Fiction *and* World Building

Revisado: 01-26-16

Neal Stephenson is by far one of the best hard science fiction authors ever, and this massive book is no exception.

He manages to make scientifically accurate stories about orbital mechanics riveting. Although I would make the same complaint of this book that I would also make of Quicksilver. Mr. Stephenson has a tendency of going off on lengthy tangents to describe locations, things, or principles. These do at times bog down his narrative, but I would suggest that they lend themselves to listening rather than reading.

My largest complaint is that the book goes through a major narrative shift that really makes it almost two separate books (again like Quicksilver), but both books are excellent (like Quicksilver) and so once you get used to the new setting it works.

On Mary Robinette Kowal's narration: She does an amazing job with the caveat that she tends to make all of the men sound like condescending dirty so-and-so's.

Will Damron also does a good job.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 2 personas