Gender- and genre-bending
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman
X-posted to LibraryThing, Early Reviewers (where I gave it 4.5 stars).Robert K. Massie has a talent for writing biographies that read like fiction. Catherine the Great is an absorbing read – partly because her life was so fascinating, partly because of Massie's engaging style. He paints a portrait of an 'enlightened autocrat' who is powerful yet rules with tolerance and without cruelty (he mentions quite a few times Catherine's opposition to the uses of torture and her tolerance of religious minorities in Southern Russia). He attempts to uncover motivations for her actions through her memoirs and letters. Massie speculates about her choices of favorites and about her relationship with her son Paul. In fact, the book is largely about Catherine's relationships with other people: her mother, empress Elizabeth, Peter III, her favorites, and the heads of foreign states like Frederick II.My only real problem with this book is that Massie mentions Platon Zubov, Catherine's last favorite, a few times in a way that makes the reader expect a whole chapter on the man, yet never really offers any more information. (Perhaps it's because I have an ARC and something is missing?)I think this would be a great biography to start learning about Catherine's fascinating life and reign. It would also be a good book for somebody not particularly familiar with Russian and European history of the time, as some background is provided throughout the volume.
Reamde: A Novel
Stephenson is yet to disappoint me. This is a great read, really fast-paced, which makes it seem shorter than its 1000 pages. Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon remain my favorite Stephenson's books, but this one certainly deserves 5 stars.
The Magicians: A Novel
I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed this. I put off reading this for a long time because everybody kept saying how it's 'Harry Potter for adults', and books hyped up like that normally don't live up to expectations. I didn't particularly care for Part 3, to be honest, but overall it was really good. Love the writing style.
On Basilisk Station
Great start to a series, really enjoyed it. Honor is awesome (and I want a treecat!). My gripe is that Weber tends to overdescribe what people are feeling, and likes having his characters 'stomp' or 'sit' on their negative emotions.
The Fuzzy Papers: Little Fuzzy & Fuzzy Sapiens
I admit I was reluctant to pick this one up for a long time -- really, a book about tiny furry aliens? Decided to read it after John Scalzi's Fuzzy Nation came out. Surprisingly enjoyable. I liked Little Fuzzy more than I liked Fuzzy Sapiens, so I would say 4 stars for the former, 3 stars for the latter.
Jubilee
A heart-wrenching story. The only problem I found with it is that it read like a non-fiction piece in some places. It's a true story, but it just felt as if the author could not decide whether it was supposed to be a novel or a non-fiction book.
Embassytown
I found the ideas fascinating, but something was lacking in the execution. I didn't find the style of narration engaging, and, to be honest, by the end it became a rather slow read.
The Gods of Gotham
Really mild, almost-not-even-spoilers ahead, but going to hide it because people get very tetchy about ASOIF and possible spoilerage.In short, somewhat underwhelming. Here are my main points:1) Too long. Seems like GRRM's writing got a great deal more verbose than in the earlier books. Also, some of his writing is starting to grate on my nerves. He overuses some expressions, like 'nipples on a breastplate'. Can we stop with the damn nipples? 2) Daenerys chapters are the most boring and slow of all. If you thought it would be otherwise with her having the dragons and everything, you are mistaken. She just spends the entire novel sitting on a bench eating dates, it seems like.3) I think part of the problem is that most of the action in the Dance is happening outside Westeros in random places nobody cares about. This may be because the first couple of books came with somewhat crappy maps, and we didn't even have a map of the world outside Westeros until later in the series, but it's harder to care about anything happening across the sea. Oh look, we sacked some city X and moved on to city Y, and now we are at war with city X and we are hanging out with people whose names seem to consist solely of the letter Z. Now, that said, I am still giving this 4 stars. Mostly because it's still a good read. Also, I think in my mind 'things happening in ASOIF' became equal to 'people dying', so maybe the novel seemed slow because the rate of death of important characters was quite low (no, GRRM, you are not fooling me with THAT scene. Yeah, that one, you know of which I speak).
The Dragon's Path (The Dagger and the Coin)
Maybe I expected too much from this book. I really liked certain parts, but I could not bring myself to care about the whole political intrigue and the people involved.
The Armageddon Rag: A Novel
I usually don't really like books about music and musicians. The simple reason is that nine times out of ten, those books fail at describing music, conveying what it's like. It's hard to do. I mean, try to explain to someone who have never heard Jimi Hendrix what he sounds like. You have to give to GRRM, though, he did a brilliant job with Nazgûl in Armageddon Rag. You can almost hear their stuff in your head, even though you realize they are a fictional band. If you've only read his ASOIF novels, pick this one up -- it truly shows how a versatile and brilliant writer he is.
Half a Crown
Really loved the entire series. 'Chilling' is probably the best description for these books. At times, I was somewhat annoyed by the similarity of all three female protagonists (probably a feature, not a bug), but still stayed up late to finish the books. Walton's writing is excellent.
The Sea Thy Mistress
I'm actually not exactly sure what was missing in this trilogy for me. The books are beautifully written, and yet... Maybe it was the pacing? Some of the characters? I really can't pinpoint the problem. I just didn't enjoy them as much as I had hoped.
The Wise Man's Fear (Kingkiller Chronicles, Day 2)
Oddly enough, I'm actually not sure how I feel about this book. I don't mean to say it's bad. It's a great read, and in many ways it met my expectations for the sequel to The Name of the Wind. That said, there were times when I felt like it was just dragging on. The part in the forest could stand at least a couple of chapters trimmed from it. The encounter with the fae seemed odd and out of place. I could see no particular reason why it was there when I was reading through it and kept thinking 'can we just please move on already'. It just looked like it had been thrown in there quite suddenly simply to have yet another extraordinary thing happen to Kvothe. I understand it is intended as a 'chronicle', but I think this book needed a bit more resolution of the overarching puzzle, i.e. Chandrian, and less storytelling with the sole purpose of creating Kvothe's legend.
Ringworld
I am not quite sure whether I want to give Ringworld 2 or 3 stars. It is an odd book. It is a classic and not a bad read, but it has one of those 'let's go explore a strange alien world/artifact' plots, which means not much happens except for, well, exploring. I can see why people liked this -- there are some interesting ideas in it, but they aren't quite enough to make this a great book.
Among Others
This book is magic itself. I read it all night last night until my eyes were closing and I couldn't go on anymore. Just perfect.
The Evolutionary Void
Peter F. Hamilton doesn't write trilogies. Or duologies, or anything like that. He writes 2000-5000-page books that then get split up by the publisher. Therefore, this is basically a rating/review for the whole Void series. My biggest problem with the Void trilogy was the story of Edeard. It did nothing for me. I hated him, I didn't like his world, I didn't like his story. I wanted to get back to the Commonwealth. This is the reason I enjoyed The Evolutionary Void a bit more than the other two books -- it wasn't as heavy on the dreams. Another problem: all new characters were sort of meh and not particularly well-developed. Maybe except for Araminta. If it weren't for some old faces, I swear I wouldn't be able to remember anybody from this series. Overall, I found these books to be not as gripping as the Commonwealth saga ones, to be honest. I also though they didn't quite have the same, shall we say, meticulousness in plotting and description. At times I felt some scenes to be just barely sketched and wanted more details, particularly when it came to the Commonwealth segments.
Currently reading
Nina Here Nor There: My Journey Beyond Gender
La Délicatesse (Folio) (French Edition)
