Kristopher F Grows

Not very good. Gimmicky additions detracted from the poems.

Revisado: 05-05-25

The arrangers made strange artistic choices. The worst was recording several poems onto answering machines. I get the contrast or statement being attempted, but it just made listening to the poems hard. This isn't so much Robert Burns as a collage made out of Robert Burns.

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It's the best book I've ever read in my life.

Revisado: 02-05-23

The two prior books in this series were good; this is on a whole other level. Its only drawback is being poorly suited to be read as a stand-alone if one prefers to. I had to sit and stare at a wall for a while just to finish processing it. Just an amazing piece of work.

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Fantastic imagery, fair story, nonsense characters

Revisado: 03-02-21

One problem with the audiobook, specifically, is that the narrator would often end statements with a rising intonation that mis-labeled them as questions. Often, but not consistently, so it was impossible to adapt to.
As to the book: beautiful descriptions of a unique setting. World building was fine if you don't look too hard, but the rate at which they burn the fuel for their ships (not discussed to avoid spoilers) is so massively out of synch with any plausible replacement rate that the setting couldn't exist under its own rules for more than a week. Economics is an odd thing to pull one out of the story, but this did it.
The characters are passible on the whole, but several of the major figures, especially the main character, make nonsense decisions that tend to make a fairly decent plot come across as contrived. We are told there is a reason, but it always ends up being some vagery that doesn't hold up with that character's own motivations, even inside their own interior monologue.
I did enjoy the setting, I might even continue or re-listen, but the cast borders on insufferable so it depends.

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Not great, a B or B+.

Revisado: 07-23-19

I'm unsure why this one landed flat. Perhaps because I read Way of Kings beforehand and the execution has improved much in the interim. Every solution was too convenient might be a good way to put it, though that is not to say the book was bad.

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Recovered from the previous book's plotting issues

Revisado: 06-25-19

This book moved overall series plot forward in ways the second basically didn't attempt. Characterization was actually a touch weaker this time, ambiance steady, but storytelling showed few of the difficulties #2 possessed. It's not the first book, but that thing is too spot on for words.

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but weaker than #1, bit decent.

Revisado: 06-25-19

Characters were great like before, ambiance not quite so good but still very well done, but the plot was kind of a mishmash like many transitional books tend to be.

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Fantastic ambiance, plot, characters, all of it.

Revisado: 06-25-19

I really can't recommend this book enough. It's rare when I can't find something obvious to point to as a relative weakness, but everything was really tight.

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Decent.

Revisado: 06-25-19

Holds together better than Perdito Street Station, but a good deal less engaging or evocative.

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Ended with a whimper, if that.

Revisado: 06-25-19

I think Mieville was trying so hard to make a point with this one that he got in his own way, both failing to engagingly tell a story and failing to effectively make the point. Even the talked about gay romance in it wasn't actually there, it was one character's codependent obsession that never evolved or changed the character in any way. The relationship had no arc, the characters largely had no arcs. It was like reading a biography of a particularly boring model train enthusiast, and that is with Mieville's typical weirdness thrown in, which itself was lacking this time.

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