30 August 2014

Review: Side Jobs: Stories From the Dresden Files


Side Jobs: Stories From the Dresden Files
Side Jobs: Stories From the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Side Jobs is about as mixed as you'd expect a short story collection of odds and sods to be.

It should be prefaced that the collection has a singular purpose of getting the shorter in-universe stuff published, plain and simple. So when the first story is described by Butcher as a bit rough, he's not kidding. It also allows Butcher to play around in the universe a bit, such as with stories from the perspective of the vampire Thomas and from Karrin herself (my personal favorite story in the book). It doesn't take itself terribly seriously, and that's a good thing.

The downside to the collection is that some of it, well, isn't great. The first story in particular is really tough to read, especially coming at it 12 books in when you've gotten used to a specific, more professional style from Butcher. Not all the stories work - the love spell one fell flat for me, the very short one toward the beginning, "Vignette," didn't really work for me, and a number of them are just flat-out unmemorable. There's one story in particular that really rubbed me the wrong way with the sexualization of Molly, and it really took me out of things. I don't know why, but I didn't expect it and really didn't like it.

As a whole, though? Not bad. Not great, but it has its moments, and you can really truly say that about any group of short stories that are out there. It's a solid collection in a universe I'm already really enjoying, so that's ultimately all that matters in the end. Closer to a 3.5.



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Review: Side Jobs: Stories From the Dresden Files


Side Jobs: Stories From the Dresden Files
Side Jobs: Stories From the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Side Jobsis about as mixed as you'd expect a short story collection of odds and sods to be.

It should be prefaced that the collection has a singular purpose of getting the shorter in-universe stuff published, plain and simple. So when the first story is described by Butcher as a bit rough, he's not kidding. It also allows Butcher to play around in the universe a bit, such as with stories from the perspective of the vampire Thomas and from Karrin herself (my personal favorite story in the book). It doesn't take itself terribly seriously, and that's a good thing.

The downside to the collection is that some of it, well, isn't great. The first story in particular is really tough to read, especially coming at it 12 books in when you've gotten used to a specific, more professional style from Butcher. Not all the stories work - the love spell one fell flat for me, the very short one toward the beginning, "Vignette," didn't really work for me, and a number of them are just flat-out unmemorable. There's one story in particular that really rubbed me the wrong way with the sexualization of Molly, and it really took me out of things. I don't know why, but I didn't expect it and really didn't like it.

As a whole, though? Not bad. Not great, but it has its moments, and you can really truly say that about any group of short stories that are out there. It's a solid collection in a universe I'm already really enjoying, so that's ultimately all that matters in the end. Closer to a 3.5.



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Review: The Dragon's Path


The Dragon's Path
The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Having some time to kill on a plane a few weeks back, it felt like a good idea to try my hand at another epic fantasy, especially as my regular go-tos are ones I'm currently caught up on. The Dragon's Path is mostly good-to-great, and, perhaps more importantly, definitely scratches that itch that I was looking to solve.

Like any good long-term epic fantasy read, this one has its share of point of view storylines. There's the orphan girl, the noble heir, soldiers and politics, and all of these stories are, to Abraham's credit, interesting without staying too long. Even with my favorites like A Song of Ice and Fire, you have point of view characters that you want to ignore for a time to get back to the plot points you like, and this book doesn't seem to have that same sort of drag. It's not to say there aren't favorites - I'm personally partial to the story involving Cithrin the orphan banker - but nothing feels like filler or a way to keep the characters involved without giving them anything to do.

If there's a downside, it's that the story doesn't feel epic yet. Unlike ASOIAF or The Stormlight Archives, this feels a little lighter in both structure and story. This is not a bad thing at all, and it's in fact welcome in some regards, but if you're looking for that "true epic," this might not be the thing you're looking for. Then again, we're a number of books into the overall story now, so it might pick up significantly in the later volumes.

Overall, probably closer to a 4.5. Definitely a series I intend to continue, and definitely something that fills a significant void in what I've been reading of late.



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26 August 2014

Review: Gabriel Finley and the Raven's Riddle


Gabriel Finley and the Raven's Riddle
Gabriel Finley and the Raven's Riddle by George Hagen

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Closer to a 1.5, honestly.

This book is truly a bit of a mess. It doesn't know if it's a fantasy book, or a horror book, or a book centered around riddles, or a book centered around birds, or a book about animal companions, or a book about animal zombies/vampires. It could be all of these things, or it could be about none of them at all.

And did I mention it's a book for kids?

The story is incredibly long for what it is, has very cardboard characters and a far-too-confusing premise for the audience it's after. I really don't get it at all, and I'm at a loss to figure out where in the process it went wrong. I'm hesitant to call it a complete failure, but it's pretty much the closest I can get to "failure" without actually calling it one. There's redeemable ideas about virtue and selfless acts throughout, but you have to get through a LOT of nonsense to get there along the way, and it's just not worth it.

Avoid this one at all costs.



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16 August 2014

Review: Sisters


Sisters
Sisters by Raina Telgemeier

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



This is a book I liked while reading it, and end up finding that I loved the more I thought about it.

Smile was a solid read because of the fun story and the way that Telgemeier is able to tell an uncomfortable story about her childhood with grace and charm. Sisters is a different story, this one partially a road trip story about coping with a family that doesn't really get you and maybe never will, and partially a series of flashbacks regarding growing up with a younger sister that you started out excited about but ended up not having a ton in common with.

It's a great tale about how family is supposed to stick together, how we cope with trouble in a family environment, how we don't always know how to fit in. I wish this book existed when I was 12, and, at 33, I still find a lot to relate to and learn from with this book. It's a truly beautiful read, and it really belongs on everyone's shelf. Highly recommended.



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09 August 2014

Review: The Circuit: Executor Rising


The Circuit: Executor Rising
The Circuit: Executor Rising by Rhett C. Bruno

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I'm always looking for a great space opera, even though the genre doesn't always work for me. Sometimes it's the plot, sometimes it's the attention to detail, sometimes it's just that the ideas aren't compelling. The Circuit is a space opera that draws from a lot of different ideas, and when it works, it's really solid, but sometimes there's less likable parts to wade through to get to the meat.

The story is more of an espionage piece in outer space, with a basically-unchallenged governing group and those who want that to change. There's mercenaries, there are government representatives, there's seemingly sentient transport units, and all of them have their own basic machinations.

The issue with broader "space operas," or anything with varying points of view, is that some storylines end up being more enjoyable than others. While the start and finish of this book were both very compelling, most of the middle I had a lot of trouble engaging with, whether it be due to my own personal feelings on the story or whether it being just that some characters felt better formed than others. Bruno excels at making ADIM, the transport android, a very enjoyable character, while the more rogueish types ended up feeling like background characters when they were the main thrust of the story. It really took me out of things a bit and made it a little more difficult to fully immerse.

Overall, though? It's not a bad book by any means. In a world where you have great space operas from Peter Hamilton, and newer pieces from John C. Wright and John Love, the genre has some mountainous competition. At the end of the day, I wanted the book to be as great as its start and finish was, and I didn't get there. Future books in this universe may succeed in that regard, and I'll definitely check them out, but this one might frustrate you from time to time.



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07 August 2014

Review: Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation


Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation
Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation by Blake J. Harris

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I grew up a Nintendo partisan. My brother had the Genesis, my friends at school certainly thought Sega was "cooler," but knowing that I liked RPGs from the beginning, you could only get Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, basically any SquareSoft game, on Nintendo. So I did the Nintendo Power thing and that was the end of it - there was no internet to know about the different plans for the companies like we see today, no discussion outside of classrooms/workplaces, and so on.

Console Wars is an oral history of sorts of the timeframe of the growth of the console market in the 1980s and early 1990s. It covers the time of Sega making their big run toward the Super Nintendo up until the announcement of the Nintendo 64 and the Sega Saturn with the introduction of the PlayStation, and does so in a breezy, direct way.

The pros of this book are the personalities as well as the structure of the narrative. We get very distinct ideas of the people central to the discussions, and it's a great nostalgia trip for someone who lived it. The major con is that it is centralized almost entirely on Sega. As someone who lived the Nintendo dream, I appreciated that part, but if I were reading this ignorant of the whole situation, you'd almost think Sega ended up coming out ahead in the end, and we know how that resulted.

Overall, still a fun, solid read. Definitely good for anyone who loves or loved video games, and a great account of the times on a whole.



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Review: Full Fathom Five


Full Fathom Five
Full Fathom Five by Max Gladstone

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I've now read the three books in Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence and, in a lot of ways, Full Fathom Five is the best of the three. There's something inherently great about excellent worldbuilding, and when an author makes such an interesting world and then plays in it in such a wonderful way, it means so much of the stories become a joy to read.

It's difficult to discuss one book without discussing all three, though. The middle book felt more like a traditional urban fantasy, the first a legal thriller of sorts, and this book is more, to me, a bureaucratic tale. Whether that's intended or not, I don't know nor care, but taken as a complete piece up to this point, that's where the pleasure derives, as Gladstone appears to be at his best here in describing the minutia of the situations and proving a look into his world. It's not to say the story itself is secondary (although the important points are known from the first book), but that my enjoyment stems from what's built.

Overall, I don't know what (if anything) comes next from this series. Regardless, even as I was a little iffy on the middle book, this brought me right back in, and I really enjoyed it. Start at book one, and you'll want to get into this in no time.



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04 August 2014

Review: Changes


Changes
Changes by Jim Butcher

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



With Changes, some mixed reviews had me wary on this, but outside of a pretty deliberate curveball, this ended up really restoring my faith in the series.

The story begins with a pretty much out-of-nowhere plot development that Dresden has a daughter. Okay. Sure. Weirder things happen, I guess, so why not just run with the story. The daughter, however, is a MacGuffin of sorts to drive us to what's essentially an ultimate goal of a conspiracy to eliminate Dresden and his line from the universe entirely. Where we go from there is very typical Dresden adventure, complete with a final quarter of the book that is both exciting and fast-paced as any other in the series.

It's becoming easier to be critical of these books now that we're 12 in, but even the choices made here, especially with the daughter, do not seem to be done for story purposes as much as to provide an excuse to do things. The good news is that this story in particular does wrap up a lot of the loose ends I was complaining about when looking at the previous book, which was a happy surprise. Plus, the sense of danger is alive and well, and perhaps not the way I had considered (not to give anything away to those who might not be twelve books in). Even when this book is ultimately about 30-40 pages too long, it's not dragged down from start to finish with that problem, a testament to the overall storytelling involved.

Really, with this book, there's just a "what's next" element that hasn't existed in some time. We get some hints of what Dresden can do that we didn't before, and the door is wide, wide open now in a way that it wasn't before. I'm still frustrated by some of those choices, but it's more than made up for by the continued quality of what we're seeing. While I know I'm reading the short story collection next, I'm probably more invested in the overall story now than I have been for a few volumes now.



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