Victories Greater Than Death

I got this book as a free download from Tor.com, which is the only reason I decided to read it. I did enjoy the other Charlie Jane Anders book I read, All the Birds in the Sky. And I guess I was expecting more of the same. But that was a subtle story that took me by surprise. And this....wasn't.

It's not that it was bad. I'm just not really the target audience for this book. I'm not much interested in young adult books. But it was free and on my kindle and I figured it'd be a quick read. The fact that it took me over two weeks to read this YA novel with less than 300 pages tells you something about how invested I was in it.

It actually started pretty strong, with a fun premise, interesting and sarcastic characters, and a plot that kicked into high gear almost immediately. But then the middle of the book got muddled. Parts of it felt more like an outline than a novel, as the story jumped from scene to scene with very little transition, which kept me off balance and made it harder for me to invest in the story. It did come together into an exciting ending that mostly felt earned. But by then I was just reading it because I was too stubborn to stop.

It also appears that this is the first book in a series, and Anders certainly leaves the door open for a big, epic story. If I'd encountered this book in high school, I probably would have loved it the way I love John Scalzi now. As it is, I'm just not interested in reliving all the angst of high school. Even if there are lots of cool aliens. Maybe my kids will love it ten years from now.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shadows of Self

Let's dive right into the biggest problem I had with this book, which is Sanderson's treatment of Lessie. Wax's lady-love, in a classic case of fridging, gets killed in the prologue of The Alloy of Law , giving Wax a reason to return to the big city and mope around for a while. She turns back up in the prologue of this book, which details how she and Wax met. And at first I was excited to get a bit more backstory. I wondered if maybe all the prologues would be about her, letting her be more than the awesome woman who died to give Wax some man-pain. This turned out not to be the case. Instead, the prologue was just there to remind us that she existed. Until it's revealed at the very end of the book that she's been alive all along, having faked her own death on God's orders. (It makes slightly more sense than that.) This comes up just in time for her to die in Wax's arms again, sending him into a fresh bout of grief plus bonus loss of faith in God. That'...
Read more

Specials

I have to admit that the conclusion to this trilogy felt a little flat to me. There were definitely some good things, and I still think the series as a whole is good and tackles interesting questions with some good nuance. I even liked the actual ending of the story. But so much of this book felt like a rehash of the second one that I felt a little bored by the end of it. Once again, Tally has had her brain rewired, and once again she sets out into the wilderness where he solitude helps her figure out what she actually wants. The love triangle sort of fizzles out and the stakes are revealed to be not nearly as high as it seemed. What felt like a worldwide conspiracy is mostly confined to one city, and Tally's role shifts. She does help save the world, but it's more about preventing a war than ushering a grand revolution. Which isn't to say that the revolution doesn't happen. But it's not the complete overthrow of society that the rebels wanted. And that's pr...
Read more

Parable of the Sower: The Graphic Novel

This is one of my favorite books, so I clearly had to read the graphic novel version. It's a good story to revisit every now and then, and this edition makes that a lot easier. Since so much of the information is conveyed through images, reading it is a lot quicker. Of course, this being an adaptation, a lot of things got left out. I know the story well enough to have recognized all the omissions. The story still works well, but I'll always think the original has more depth.   Overall, it's a good adaptation of a really important novel. And if the new format helps it reach new audiences, that can only be a good thing.
Read more