A. Ross

Too much plot, not enough character

Revisado: 07-14-21

Had Rabbits been split into two, even three books, it might have been great. But as a single novel with what frequently feels like layers of repetitive plot construction, it finds itself spinning its wheels for the middle-latter third of its length. At the very end, Miles makes an attempt to draw all the strands together in something coherent, but there are too many wild stories, coincidences, and anachronisms (AI in the 1950s?!) that it winds up making little sense. Every one of the lead characters, but especially K, Chloe, Crow, and Emily deserve more than they get from the wafer-thin personalities they're given. Still, Miles has a gift for plot, and I only hope that the eventual Netflix show that emerges from this novel/podcast has a team of (preferably female) writers to help build a sense of relatable humanity into these characters.

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A story half-told

Revisado: 07-13-20

Zack's story is compelling and disturbing.

What's missing in the telling is any attempt to describe one of the most important events of his post-break life: his realization that the events that happened in NYC were indeed imagined.

Instead, what we get is a passing comment that after 8 weeks or so in Wichita, he was ready to return to New York. Considering how clearly the original break was described and dissected, it's important to understand why and how Zack felt like it was time to return to his old life.

I expect that getting used to uncertainty and the potential for another decline is part of Zack's journey, but it's hard to understand his motivations when we only have part of the story.

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Pacing problems, but an enjoyable read

Revisado: 07-08-20

As a background piece, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes serves its purpose well. We learn about how much the Hunger Games evolved after their first, rather rough-and-ready decade. Much of that is due to Coriolanus Snow, the book's main character--the same one who later becomes president of Panem.

Collins manages to make Snow sympathetic, which is no small feat. Contextually, he can never be more than an antihero, but here, he is worth rooting for during 90% of the book. That last 10% is where most of the problems arise, however.

Snow's change of heart and character shift happen too abruptly--mostly after he and Lucy Gray enter the District 12 cabin near the lake. Neither his alteration of mindset, nor her suspicion of him is fleshed out well, and the shift feels out of step with the rest of the character development and plot. Another chapter where we see a more gradual change evolve would have been all it would have taken to make the ending feel properly motivated and in-line with the characters to that point.

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It'll make you say "OK, Boomer."

Revisado: 12-28-19

Weingarten's tin ear for race and identity make this book a rough slog. That's doubly true because so many of the "compelling" stories he chooses pivot around the ways that minority groups were marginalized in the 1980s and continue to be marginalized in similar (or even identical) ways.

He flat-out doesn't understand women, people of color, or queer subjects, and shows time and again that he probably shouldn't be the one to tell the stories of the people for whom this day is special.

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Not worth the 75 minutes it takes to listen.

Revisado: 12-22-18

Sadly, this is just recycled New-Age pabulum. You've heard it all before, and probably explained better and in a more compelling tone.

Save your money.

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Clumsy first novel with disappointing narration

Revisado: 11-15-18

The Clarity is written like a screenplay. It is so much like a screenplay, I wondered with each new section if I weren't just listening to Keith Thomas's reject pile.

So if you're looking for deep character development and gorgeous description, you won't either of them here. There are problems with under-motivated plot points throughout, like the main adversary, whose hatred makes no sense at all, not even at the end of the book, when the first attempt to explain his motivation occurs. Or two characters inexplicably falling in love with one another, one literally minutes after her serious boyfriend is murdered in front of her eyes.

There's also a heavy, heavy reliance on thick exposition and stopping action to allow for convoluted, often nonsensical explanations of what's going on. Yet there are still plot holes.

The author doesn't really have a good grasp on how doctorate-level education or academic science works, either. The main character seems to be a PhD chemist *and* psychologist *and* a working social worker, all at the same time. Oh, and on the side she's investigating past life experiences, not to mention giving open lectures and teaching undergraduates as the hottest faculty member at her university.

The diversity of the cast is interesting, but it frequently feels perfunctory when the person's identity is the most salient feature of the character. It's as if the author is ticking off categories on a list: a Hispanic cop, a Hmong research subject, a transgender lab assistant, an African-American cop and his Ghanaian babysitter, a Korean doctor, a gay psychology researcher, etc.

Robin Eller's performance also hinders this audio book. She over-enunciates to a distracting extent, pronouncing t's hard and slowing her cadence in odd places in a sentence, making it difficult to follow the natural flow of what she's saying.

She also mispronounces many words, some difficult, like 'beneficent' and 'Caucasus' as well as some common words like 'alcoholism,' 'typo,' and even 'Ms.' (which she mangles into 'Mrs.' when referring to a pre-teen). Early in the book, she struggles with the word 'Clark's,' turning it into 'Clarkses' several times during a high-tension scene.

Both the novel itself and the audio version needed another edit. There's something interesting here, but it's frustratingly half-baked in its current form.

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Slow-burning, not sci-fi or fantasy

Revisado: 02-02-17

Version Control is a glacially slow character novel, despite what you might guess from the blurb or Audible description. There is a plot, but it unspools at an agonzing pace that might just lead you to put the book down before you get halfway through.

Worse, it is sometimes not a very good character novel. Woody (Rebecca's father) is a complete waste, an excrescence. Alicia is drawn in such broad strokes that she might as well be a caricature--even Palmer's attempt at giving her some quirks (like her taste in 1990s popular hip-hop) doesn't do much to humanize such a flat character.

Still, there's an interesting idea here somewhere. I only wish the book had been half its length.

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Great first two acts and a few reading issues

Revisado: 08-28-16

The Mandibles is fantastic from the start until about two-thirds of the way through the book, when the story shifts forward in time for the last time. At that stage, plot slips away and exposition takes over, with characters doing a lot of telling-not-showing. Things pick up again in the final chapter, but even then, there's just way too much thick description and world building without a purpose to it.

Another strike against it: The narrator has lots of jarring pronunciation issues that derail the flow of the story.

Overall, this isn't as good as "We Need to Talk About Kevin," but its premise is fascinating enough to make it worth a listen.

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She's TRYING SO HARD, everyone.

Revisado: 10-23-15

This is just seven hours of the author playing up her many quirks, turning every story into a showcase of what she considers to be her oddball status. It's annoying, frustrating, and just genuinely neither weird enough or interesting enough to offer much pleasure to a reader.

Worse, you can see through the overwritten jokes just how hard she is trying to be humorous and insightful. But her affect just comes off as self-conscious, as desperate to be different and unusual. She name-drops David Sedaris here, commenting that he makes writing humor seem so easy--the exact opposite of what Jenny Lawson does throughout this effortful slog.

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It's an awful, awful book.

Revisado: 08-26-15

Ready Player One was a charming, well-plotted, fun comic novel that did so many things right. Yes, there were missteps, but the good things about the novel far outweighed the bad.

For Armada, it's almost as if Ernest Cline took the list of missteps and crafted an entire book around them. The whole book feels like one awkwardly-delivered litany of references to 1980s movies, video games, and science fiction television shows. It's painful to listen to some of the references, partly because it's hard to imagine anyone who would think they were funny, clever, interesting, or an important part of the story.

The worst part is the plot. It feels like an afterthought, and not even more than a fleeting one. The concept isn't a bad one, and could have made for a brilliant book (or even series), but the broad, ham-fisted approach to plotting that Cline takes makes me totally apathetic about what happens in this universe next. Sodality? Who cares?

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