On paper, this is a book that I shouldn't like. There's not much of a plot, the story is quite predictable, and it doesn't say anything that other stoOn paper, this is a book that I shouldn't like. There's not much of a plot, the story is quite predictable, and it doesn't say anything that other stories in the genre hasn't said. And yet this is my favorite read of the year so far. Everything about this book is just charming, from the prose, to the characters, and even the dynamics between the different characters. Really wish I'd read this sooner. Full review here....more
Babel’s full title, Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution tells you exactly what this book is aBabel’s full title, Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution tells you exactly what this book is about. I had never read R.F. Kuang’s award-winning Poppy Wars trilogy. I spontaneously picked up this book because I knew it had something to do with translations (something that I do quite a bit because of my degree) and language learning (the thing that I’m currently hyperfixated on), and I definitely did not regret that decision.
Babel contains so much more than what I’d thought it did. But yes, languages and translations are central to the story. The thing that separates Babel’s world from our own is the magic system, which is based on silver. In this world, silver bars can be ascribed with “match-pairs”, words from a pair of different languages that mean similar — but not exactly the same — things. Doing so makes the silver bar evoke whatever is lost in that translation. It is one of the most elegant magic system I’ve ever read. But the magic isn’t even my favorite part of the book.
The story is about Robin Swift, a Cantonese boy whose family perished as Canton was ravaged by a plague. Robin was saved by an English scholar, Richard Lovell, who ended up giving him almost everything, education, food, shelter, even his name… but not affection. As Robin grew up in England, he began to doubt his sense of identity. Professor Lovell had saved him, yes, but the life he leads now — a scholarly life in the Oxford faculty of Babel, where translators study languages in order to use silver effectively— is not one he had chosen himself.
Yes, he is having a good time by making use of all the privileges he got as an Oxford student, but at the same time, he’s starting to notice how he and other non-white people like him gets treated in England, and he’s beginning to see the contradiction of his life. Like most of his cohorts at Babel, he’s enjoying life as an English scholar on one hand, while on the other hand, being someone whose motherland is affected by British colonialism/imperialism. Babel is a story — like most good stories — full of contradictions, and that is the main one that drives everything forward.
In short, Babel has everything. Fascinating alternate-history worldbuilding that will satisfy both fantasy nerds and history nerds, a diverse set of characters that feel real, fascinating theoretical ramblings about languages, translation, and language learning, and most importantly, it has a story that not only works really well, but clearly has something very important to say, and I think it delivered it exceptionally.
Wow, this really reminded me of Golden Son in the best possible ways, and somehow, it's even bleaker and more brutal than Golden Son (and I've be4.5/5
Wow, this really reminded me of Golden Son in the best possible ways, and somehow, it's even bleaker and more brutal than Golden Son (and I've been reading 40k books recently, so I know bleak and brutal). I think that brutality (I'd say this book is borderline grimdark, if not full-on grimdark) is gonna cause a divided reaction among readers, but I honestly loved it, this book did a really good job of making me think that none of the characters were safe.
The thing that surprised me the most were the characters, which was the one aspect that prevented me from loving Iron Gold because the non-Darrow POVs didn't interest me that much. But here, all the different point of views just worked perfectly, there was no particular POV that I didn't like. In this book, I grew to like Ephraim and Lyria despite feeling indifferent about them before. They grew a lot as characters and were put in situations where they can shine, unlike in Iron Gold. In Iron Gold, I hated Lysander in a bad way, but now I hate him in a good way (if that makes sense), now I understand him better and even though he's a stupid self-righteous prick, I get where he comes from, his actions make more sense. In the end, he and Darrow want the same thing, and that's what makes their conflict so interesting to me. And there were also Mustang's POV this time, and I have to say, her chapters were some of the best in the book, her unique perspective on the state of the world was needed. And not to mention the non-POV characters, from Pax and Electra to Alexandar (my favorite non-POV character), they all get at least some development and it was easy for me to get attached to them.
While I do think the plot is a bit long-winded at some parts (the book is 750+ pages...), I have to say, it was paced and structured in a way that made me unable to stop reading (last time I read that fast was Words of Radiance, and that was something special, this might be too). Part 1 of this book felt like it could be the climax of another, and after that I'd thought that it would soon lose momentum, but I was wrong, somehow it kept my attention all the way through in a way that didn't feel forced or nonsensical. If anything, the way the story went revealed a lot about the worldbuilding that we didn't know before, so that's another plus. Not only was it unputdownable (that's not a word), it was also really unpredictable. Like I said in the beginning, I was never sure which characters were safe. But, this unpredictability is also a bit of a detriment I feel. It's a detriment in a way that some of the things that happened just felt a bit too random with too little foreshadowing so they just fell flat and felt like a cheap cop out.
Another kinda minor problem I had is that the book had too many antagonists, even with its 750+ pages, I felt like a lot of them weren't explored as thoroughly as I'd liked and just seemed a bit all over the place and not necessarily in a good way.
I don't really have anything else about this book, it's brilliant, but it's a very exhausting book and I really hope the final part of the trilogy will offer some much needed levity and good things happening to characters I like because I feel like we've earned it after this....more
Today's chapter is called 20.end in an arc called Last, so I would assume that this is over. And what a fantastic journey this has been. Not perfect bToday's chapter is called 20.end in an arc called Last, so I would assume that this is over. And what a fantastic journey this has been. Not perfect by any means, but this story still means a lot to me, despite its many imperfections.
Let's start with the inevitable comparison to Worm. No, this isn't like Worm at all, despite the fact that it features a lot of the same characters. The main difference to me is the focus. Some people will say that Ward is slower and more boring, which is a fair statement, I've felt that at some points, as Wildbow's tendency to meander during interludes are still there, even if the interludes in general are better this time, more unique, more focused. But in my perspective, while Worm focused on large-scale escalations/engaging battle scenes, Ward is more of a character(s)-study compared to Worm. That is not to say that Worm had weak characterizations, or Ward had no fantastically written fight scenes, because neither of those things are true.
The character work in Ward is just masterful, the pacing slows down because the narrative focuses more on the characters, rather than what's happening in the world (which causes some parts of the worldbuilding to suffer, it's not quite as immersive or realistic as Worm's). Twig was even more character focused than Ward, and I feel like Ward tried to strike a balance between Twig's character-focus-ness, and Worm's never-ending escalations, but it got lost somewhere in between.
The characters in Ward are all damaged, fucked up people. Ward really showed how much Wilbow has improved as a writer, especially in terms of characterizations. This time, they're all more diverse and dynamic. They struggle with many things, some of which I could relate with. And I just love the way Wildbow handles this part of the story. None of the characters are even close to perfect/mary sue/whatever you want to call them. There's depth to them that there weren't in many characters in Worm, again the slower pacing at the beginning probably have something to do with that. Characters' redemptions were handled really well too. While Worm had one great redemption arc, Ward had many, all of them are different from each other too so it didn't seem repetitive. In short, their struggles and the way they overcome (or try to) them is my favorite part of Ward.
Seeing some of the characters that survived to the end of Ward, and comparing them to the beginning of Worm, or even the beginning of Ward, it's insane how much all of them have changed. In Worm I didn't think that character development was one of Wildbow's strengths, but after Ward, I definitely think it is.
I'm also one of the few who thinks that Ward's protagonist is better than Worm's. Ward's MC is just more engaging to me. The way their powers work at the beginning might not be as fun or interesting as Taylor's, but the evolution and change to what we got at the end of the story? really well done.
Re: worldbuilding. I just feel like there's a lot of missed potentials, things that seemed interesting and were introduced but never brought up again. Looking at it from that point of view, Ward needs editing even more than Worm. Admittedly, the worldbuilding isn't all bad. The way the mythology of the Entity evolved in Ward is super fascinating, there are also even more cool powers.
I think the main issue with Ward for me is the erratic pacing. What I said above about this being slow/more boring relative to Worm mostly only applies to the first half and near the end. At first it was jarring, expecting something like worm and getting this, I almost stopped reading. But by the time I accepted the fact that this was a different type of story (and I loved the pacing then), I think Wildbow might have listened too much to the criticisms and sped things up too much in the middle, before backpedaling at the end with long-winded fights. In the final few arcs, so many things happened in the span of a week that it became unrealistic and just strange if you just think about it. (most of what happened in the last 4 arcs took place in 2 days for example).
There's also one more issue, which is hard to convey without spoilers because it's something that happens in the middle of the climax of the story. But basically, Wildbow tried to do something different with a very common trope in superhero stories, however, he failed to properly communicate what he was doing, causing the community to perceive it as something that went against one of the core themes of the story. And since this is something that has to do with one of the themes tackled by the story, for a while I saw it as a huge misstep, until it was resolved really well. I think the fact that there are a 3 day gaps between chapter make it a lot worse than it would've been otherwise. I think in a reread, or to anyone who's binge reading the story, it probably wouldn't be such a big deal.
Overall, I have my complaints, but I don't regret at all reading this 1.7 million+ words behemoth. The Parahumans universe have been a constant in my life since almost three years ago at this point. It has been very comforting knowing I would have something to look forward to every Wednesday and Sunday. Thank you for these characters, Wildbow, and on to the next stories... (plus i'm still reading Twig and haven't read Pact)
To quote the final line, and one of my favorite lines, of the story, “A reminder that we press on, no matter what. That there’s always a way forward.”. At the end, that is exactly what Ward is for me....more
So Dream and Delirium went on a trip across the world trying to find their lost brother, Destruction. And it was amazing, in fact, this might be my faSo Dream and Delirium went on a trip across the world trying to find their lost brother, Destruction. And it was amazing, in fact, this might be my favorite so far. I think this is mostly because, in some ways, it involves all of the Endless. The "side" stories of Bast, Ishtar, and Orpheus were also great in their own ways.
The story in this one was somewhat different than the previous ones, which is great. The art was good, it's probably because I've been reading a lot of Sandman recently, but I liked it anyway.
Destruction and Delirium were very interesting, Destruction had many quotable lines with limited screentime (pagetime?) and Delirium definitely stole the show imo. Oh and I love how the title is "Brief Lives", very fitting....more
A new favorite. I regret not reading this sooner. I like the way the book explored anarchism, capitalism and authoritarianism. And I also like the wayA new favorite. I regret not reading this sooner. I like the way the book explored anarchism, capitalism and authoritarianism. And I also like the way the main character is so affected by them. It's definitely one of those reads that make me think a lot, and one that I'm convinced will be even better on a reread. full review here...more
So I just finished rereading this book and it's still my all time favorite book (so far). And this series is already number one for me despite only haSo I just finished rereading this book and it's still my all time favorite book (so far). And this series is already number one for me despite only having 2 books. Words of Radiance was an improvement compared to Way of Kings, it takes all the positives from WoK, and improves them even further, while at the same time the negatives from WoK are all gone, except for one.
So let's talk about the negatives first, in WoK I had a slight issue with the slow pacing, and while WoR is slightly faster paced, it's not by much. The amount of action isn't that much different, so if you didn't like WoK because of it, you probably wouldn't like WoR that much. Personally, I got used to it so I didn't have any problems with it. Also, another slight negative, the interludes, in my WoK reread, I found pretty much all of them interesting, but here, other than the Taravangian and Lift chapters, I didn't really care about the other interludes.
Now to the positives, first, the characters. I didn't really like Shallan in the first book, but here, her backstory and just her PoV in general really made me like her as a character, she was given more to do than just being Jasnah's ward. The other main characters were fine, but my favorite is probably Kaladin, his action sequences were great. The world building of Roshar was expanded, and now we know a bit more about the magic system. And the ending... Wow, that was one of the craziest endings I've ever read (along with Golden Son). It was just so epic, and the fact that it had about 700+ pages of build up, and still managed to not disappoint, that's just great writing.
I also really like the connection to the greater Cosmere storyline, from all the worldhoppers to the mentions of the Shards/Shardholder (not to be confused with Shardblade/plate), especially Odium (who I think is gonna be the Big Bad in the overall Cosmere storyline, he seems like the most evil Shard). I believe this book also features the most amount of Hoid so far, which is great, since he's so mysterious and all that (can't wait for Dragonsteel for his backstory in Yolen).
Overall, a very great book, and my all time favorite. Can't wait for Oathbringer. my original review: [SPOILER ALERT]
Holy crap, this book is so good, when I finished reading Way of Kings, I thought there would be no way for Sanderson to write a better sequel than that. I was, gladly, proven wrong. So first off, the good: The worldbuilding is amazing, seriously but that's not the best part, for me, the best part is the character development, you can definitely see how they changed throughout the book, when I knew that this book's main PoV is Shallan, I was skeptical, like a lot of people, I didn't really like Shallan's character in Way of Kings, but damn, she definitely grew on me on this book, and the flashback to her past gave the necessary depth to her character, same goes for Adolin, I thought that he was annoying in the first book, and then he stabbed Sadeas in the eye, that was satisfying and Kaladin... I don't think I can say much other than he's slowly becoming my favorite character in fiction, he has many strong points, but he also has weaknesses, as for Hoid/Wit, I love the mystery surrounding him, a lot of the things he said in this books is making me curious about who exactly he is and what the things that he can actually do. And in the end of the book, when Nightblood talked to Szeth for the first time, that reveal was awesome, and the fact that Vasher is somehow also in Roshar, now I'm curious if he's there to look for Nightblood... As for the plot itself, well, frankly, like the first book, the earlier part of the book is rather slow, but the last 30% of the book more than made up for it, that's for sure, the climax is definitely more satisfying than WoK's climax....more
What a wonderful conclusion to a fantastic trilogy, gotta say that this book is somewhat more predictable than the previous ones (I got like, 2/10 preWhat a wonderful conclusion to a fantastic trilogy, gotta say that this book is somewhat more predictable than the previous ones (I got like, 2/10 predictions correct instead of 0/10), but that isn't necessarily a bad thing though. This trilogy has been an emotional roller coaster for me. The world building is great, the characters have deep backstories and the dialog are terrific. Brandon Sanderson somehow was able to intertwine all the plots and subplots into one amazing book.
I just can't wait to delve deeper into the Cosmere...more
HYPERION by Dan Simmons is the first book in the 4 book series, Hyperion Cantos. It’s one of those sci-fi classics that is included in every single "CHYPERION by Dan Simmons is the first book in the 4 book series, Hyperion Cantos. It’s one of those sci-fi classics that is included in every single "Classic Sci-Fi Stories You Must Read" list along with things like Dune and Foundation and some others. Because of that, I actually have read this book before, in 2015 according to goodreads. And it's weird because it's one of few books I'd read that I didn't really remember the plot of, hell, I didn’t even remember whether I liked it or not, even though (weirdly enough), I still remembered all of the main characters’ names somehow.
Hyperion tells the story of a group of people who are going on a pilgrimage to this mysterious place called the Time Tombs, which is a monument centered around the mysterious creature known as The Shrike. On the way to the Tombs, they tell each other the stories of why they are there and how they are connected to the Shrike. Meanwhile, as this was happening, the Hegemony (which is like the biggest collection of humanity I guess) is kinda preparing for a war against the Ousters, a smaller faction of humanity that seceded from the Hegemony hundreds of years ago (I think) and is seen by the people of Hegemony as a group of barbarians. I have to say, despite the high level of hype that all the discourses have exposed to me, I personally think this book does deserve to be considered a classic.
I feel like there are so many things about this book that I want to talk about, I had so many notes and bookmarked pages from this book. The first thing I want to touch on is the format. Because of the setup that I mentioned earlier, the story is often compared to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which I think is fair enough. Both stories are big stories containing smaller stories from many pilgrims who are on a pilgrimage to some sort of religious site. Because of this, I thought the way Hyperion is structured is very interesting, and it has both good things and bad things. I wanna mention two things about the structure that didn’t work for me, at least not to the extent the rest of the book did. And honestly, these might just be the only two things about the book that didn’t work, the rest are just phenomenal.
Okay so, first, because of the way the book is structured (present day story -> MC #1’s flashback -> present day story -> MC #2’s flashback etc. it kept going until everyone told their stories), I feel like there isn’t really any momentum that drive the “main” story forward, most of the time, the main story is just not that engaging and feels like a distraction from the amazing flashbacks. Sometimes, some kinda weird unexplainable thing happens (which is an extension of the style of worldbuilding) and like, it pushes the story forward, but other than that, it is kinda bland. What’s not bland are the individual flashbacks, which I’ll get to later. And another thing about the structure that feels off to me is the way the book ends. I feel like it ended a bit too early. To me, it felt like the ending lacks the necessary punch for it to be a satisfying ending. Similar to how I felt when I was watching the penultimate episode of a season of my favorite show, but then realized that’s the end of the season because the final episode’s shooting was canceled because of COVID and will have to be rolled into the beginning of the next season. But then again, with the lack of momentum and buildup before it, maybe it would’ve been weird if it ended more conventionally, I dunno, I’m just not the biggest fan of the momentum-less main plot and somewhat unsatisfying ending. But, honestly, these two things don’t really detract from my enjoyment much, probably because the things that the book did well, it did VERY well, mostly anyway. If anything, the other stuff are just done so well that they overshadowed these flaws.
Next I want to delve a bit into the style of worldbuilding employed in this book, because I think it’s interesting. So, at the beginning it almost felt like the worldbuilding style is similar to that of Malazan. And what I mean by this is that you are just dropped into the world straight away, then you get bombarded with terms and information without context, all of which has no meaning to you because you have no idea what they are and what their relationships with each other are. It’s like you are shown a lot of meaningless dots with nothing you can use to connect them. And at first I didn’t like this, similar to how I didn’t like Malazan’s worldbuilding, it just doesn’t feel engaging to me, how am I supposed to care about a bunch of things I have no idea about? But I think there’s a difference between this book and Malazan in that aspect, and that’s with the fact that in this book, you quickly get more and more information and context so you can more easily connect the dots (which also grew more meaningful overtime) that were just thrown at you at the beginning. I think Malazan did that too, but it just took so long, by that point I already gave up on the series completely (though I might try again someday, who knows). It feels like Hyperion hits the perfect balance of worldbuilding that I think is very difficult to get right. Sometimes you’d end up on one end of the spectrum like Malazan, and sometimes you’d end up with clunky expositional dumps on the other. While Hyperion is perfectly in the middle of that. Even though at first you barely know anything, it doesn’t take too long before you know enough about the world to be invested in it, and yet at the same time, nothing is over-explained so there are still gaps that you can fill in using your imagination, which I think is good. So yeah in short, Hyperion’s worldbuilding = pretty good.
Now I want to talk a bit about the characters and their stories, and this still kinda has something to do with the worldbuilding. I don’t think I have any favorite character here, at all. And that’s a good thing because it means all of the main characters are about equally as compelling as the others. What that means is that there isn’t really any boring flashbacks or anything like that. All of the flashbacks are really compelling in different ways (some are mystery, some are drama, some are romance, etc.) and it just shows how versatile of a writer Simmons is.
Which leads me to possibly my favorite aspect of the book, the one thing that ties all the flashbacks together, which is The Shrike and everything surrounding it. So, the Shrike is a ten-feet-tall, four-armed creature made out of sharp metal with big, blazing red eyes that can seemingly move without moving (the creature, not the eyes), just design-wise, it is very very cool. To add to that, I feel like I’ve seen and read so many science fiction stories where the final boss character is just characterized as being stronger than everyone else, to the point where it’s just kinda boring. Sure, to some extent, The Shrike is exactly that, it is a creature more powerful than everyone else, but that’s barely scratching the surface of how interesting it is. So, at the beginning, all we know about it is that it (and also the Time Tombs) is something from the future that is constantly traveling backwards through time for some possibly nefarious purpose. That in itself I think is a very interesting concept that I haven’t really seen explored elsewhere. But added on to that, is how it affects people all over the Hegemony. There’s an entire religion built around it, and the worldbuilding surrounding it (at least from what little we got) are very interesting and add insight into how different people perceive it.
But while the societal impacts of the Shrike are fascinating, by far the most impressive thing is just how The Shrike affects the main characters individually. I just think that it is very impressive for the different stories to all be so vastly different and yet there is this one thing that left such a huge impact on everyone here. I think this part of the book is basically peak science fiction storytelling. Yes, the main (or rather, present day) plot is a bit meh, but this is really the heart of the book anyway. The way these characters are affected by this incredibly unique world and everything in it. The way their stories arc and the characters themselves change in such a short amount of pages. The way Simmons uses such a wide range of science fiction tropes and elements to craft these amazing, compelling, emotional stories for these flawed, truly human characters. It’s all just so marvelous. Pretty much all the stories here moved me, some more than the others, sure, but it’s an incredible achievement to be able to do ALL of that in such a (relatively) short story. So, individually, these stories are little masterpieces on their own, and collectively, they all help each other to paint a clear (but not too clear) picture of the Shrike, who is at this point just one of the most interesting characters I have ever read in any science fiction story.
One final tangent I want to get into is the book’s overarching connection with the poet John Keats and his poem, Hyperion. It’s been a while since I read Hyperion and studied about Keats, so I can’t say I grasped the full extent of the connection between this book and the dead poet and his really long poem. But I have to say, I think it’s incorporated very well and naturally, while usually things that try to do this usually fails and gets preachy instead, but this book doesn’t do that. It just seems like Simmons has some interesting observation about Keats and/or the poem Hyperion, and he managed to include all of that in this book. Also, the thought of a poem from the 1800s still affecting the world in like 1000 years basically (I don’t remember the exact timeline) is just very amusing to me and I’m glad this connection is here.
So yeah, I don’t think it’s perfect, it took a while to get into, the prose is… not really my favorite, so whatever, I guess, not to mention all the stuff about the ending and momentum (or lack thereof) earlier. But it’s one of those rare things where both the individual parts themselves and the sum of them all are both masterpieces, because that’s just what this is, a science fiction masterpiece and a classic that truly deserves its classic status and hopefully will remain that way in the future. Back when I first read this book, I put it in my top ten of all time list, and after this reread, I think it deserves to stay there....more
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