Reviews and Comments

This was a good read, even if the ending got a bit ... "less".

I found the first two thirds to be the stronger part of the book. The way the world was talked around, papered over, and suppressed made for some powerful and occasionally hilarious moments.

The back third, cathartic as some of it was, didn't excite me as much. I wonder how much of that is because of who I am and because the book wasn't really written with me as the audience, and how much of it might be due to the book.

In any case, I still recommend this book unreservedly; it's a fantastic read.

This was a fantastic bit of writing; a novella that I devoured a little bit TOO fast. It's all first-person, the narrator is probably reliable, and I have SO MANY QUESTIONS about the worldbuilding.

I really appreciated the author's postscript about having a lot less scientific rigor in it given the concept. There's also a neat easter egg if you read it in colour.

I enjoyed this book way more than I expected to based on the premise. A bartender asked me what the book was about, and the best description I could come up with was "Imagine gamers that are trying to, and succeeding at, saving the world, in a corpo-fascist shithole future" and that never changed.

It's interesting to have a viewpoint first person character that is not particularly likeable and yet still manages to be a real protagonist; the last time I ran into this was in the Hunger Games series, and this book has a bit of a YA-bent to it too, albeit with several tropes absent.

I enjoyed it; I found myself wanting more, although I think the next book would be a lot harder to write well.

I gotta say, I would NOT mind it if Saga would stop with the gut punches.

This was a bite-sized fun book that sadly didn't dig into the world as much as I'd have liked. I enjoyed what I got, but wanted more.

In the end this book was unsatisfying, despite the individual parts being enjoyable. The ending felt rushed and in some senses unearned. I wanted more agency from the protagonist... up until he got agency and then it was hard to understand the suddenness of the change.

The ending was a bit rushed, and had a bit too much of the "gunfight at the OK corral" feel to it, but I enjoyed the book, and the worldbuilding was excellent.

Finding out that there was a sequel to Wanderers got me really curious; it's an interesting post-apocalypse.

There's no question it's a novel of the period in which it was written; white nationalism, populist insurrections, and anti-maskers figure prominently.

So far I'm about 10% into this one, and my main criticism is that I JUST WANT THE CHARACTERS TO FUCKING TALK TO EACH OTHER.

The ending of this was a fair amount more optimistic than I expected, although there was a twist that -- honestly -- I saw coming, but still really appreciated. There's a sequel, surprisingly, and I'm looking forward to seeing where Wendig takes the story.

I read about 80% of this on a flight back to Seattle from Detroit and ... hoo boy, what a MOOD. It's a pretty grim pandemic book. I like it, I want to see how it ends, but I am not finding joy in reading it, that's for damn sure.

I read this (via Audible) on the drive to Portland yesterday. It's a brief nibble of a story, and does a great job of setting up its premise, hinting at the structure of what is to come, and then ending on a lovely grace note. I really enjoyed it, and I don't really want more; I think it was the perfect amount of that story.

In the end... I still don't like the way Muir writes, and it makes me sad because I like her worldbuilding. I hate that I never know consistently what's happening, because when I do know what's going on I quite enjoy the writing. It gets worse, too, at climactic points in the book, where Muir will sometimes just stop identifying who's talking by the terms used in the rest of the book.

Argh. I want to love these books, and they just do not work for me.

I read this on the plane yesterday, and finished it today at the High Level diner in Edmonton. It was, as I predicted, a delight to read. I love the way T. Kingfisher plays with tropes, while still giving me the satisfaction of the ending I wanted.

I've started this, and I'm working my way through it; these books, although I think I end up enjoying them, are always way more work than I expect, because the way the author hides things from me as a reader just doesn't jive with how I understand stories.

At least two people in my life have started reading and chosen not to finish this book, which won the Nebula award for Best Novel this year (I'm curious about its non-appearance on the Hugo finalist list for Best Novel, and I suppose we'll need to wait for the data to come out to see why.)

That contrast fascinates me, though, because it's rare to see such diametrically opposed views of a book; on the one hand, "Best Novel" and on the other hand mulitple DNFs from people who ordinarily have pretty good taste.