Reviews and Comments

Leaving_Marx

Leaving_Marx@wyrmsign.org

Joined 2 years, 4 months ago

Printer, anarchist, illustrator, & enthusiast of the printed word.

FediBanter: @Thundering@kolektiva.social

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I want everyone to read it and think of it often ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Great book, fun, and uncomplicated ⭐⭐⭐ Good, feel complicated about if I wasted my time ⭐⭐+⬇️ I hate read this

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reviewed House of Open Wounds by Adrian Tchaikovsky (The Tyrant Philosophers, #2)

Adrian Tchaikovsky: House of Open Wounds (2023, Head of Zeus) 4 stars

City-by-city, kingdom-by-kingdom, the Palleseen have sworn to bring Perfection and Correctness to an imperfect world. …

Book 2 lets go

5 stars

Really loved the first book in this series so even with developing the characters and world further and the addition of a demon sex workers character, it can only get a 4.5 to differentiate it from book 1.

set in a military camp this time, it appeared as a departure from a lot of the themes from the first book but it maintained the polygod central plot.

Definitely enjoyed and would recommend and am not sure where book three is gonna take us, but i am in for the ride.

reviewed City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky (The Tyrant Philosophers, #1)

Adrian Tchaikovsky: City of Last Chances (2022, Head of Zeus) 4 stars

Arthur C. Clarke winner and Sunday Times bestseller Adrian Tchaikovsky's triumphant return to fantasy with …

Second Go this time with the sequels

5 stars

I really think this is one of my favourite AT novels I have read.

My simple pitch, this is the fantasy novel equivalent of Fredy Perlmans "Worker-student action committees".

full stop.

reviewed Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky (The Final Architecture, #3)

Adrian Tchaikovsky: Lords of Uncreation (Paperback, 2023, Tor Books) 5 stars

He's found a way to end their war, but will humanity survive to see it? …

Finale

5 stars

Just wrapped up this series and very much appreciated it. It had both the scale of everything but still kept the story and characters within a time and place that was easy to comprehend.

many sympathetic characters and many despicable.

By the end I had trouble keeping track of the different factions involved in the grand scale of all the issues, but I appreciated the application of three way fight logistics, and cataclysmic problems.

happy I read it and for anyone Adrian Tchaikovsky pilled it is a great series.

reviewed Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky (The Final Architecture, #1)

Adrian Tchaikovsky: Shards of Earth (Paperback, 2022, Orbit) 5 stars

The war is over. Its heroes forgotten. Until one chance discovery . . .

Idris …

reread for 2025

5 stars

I just devoured this one for a refresher before starting the next two books in the trilogy. Really like AT's world building and how his prose really paints me a picture that looks just like 70's sci-fi mate paintings and book covers.

and as always this book features invertebrates as a plot point like so many of his stories!

....and multi-party conflicts, world ending crisis, class and gender politics, revolutions, the occult and cults, and other standards of good sci-fi in my opinion.

Stephen King: Salem (French language) 3 stars

'Salem's Lot is a 1975 horror novel by American author Stephen King. It was his …

Officially over trying with S.K.

2 stars

This book was a bit of a punishment to get through. I just really hate Stephen King's writing and not gonna try another book. I have liked some film adaptations and was hoping for easy reading from his works but they drag, they aren't scary, they do not age well. I shouldn't expect much but every women is intellectually dumb and every man is emotional dumb and they are all so two dimensional.

Ursula K. Le Guin: The  Dispossessed (Hardcover, 1991, Harper Paperbacks) 5 stars

Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, …

The dispossessed

5 stars

Listened to the '87 CBC audio drama of it and it was such a time capsule to audio productions from another era. The specific seductive feminine voice, the music, the way shevek sounds like he is the voice actor for some favourite Canadian children's cartoon.

Peter Gelderloos: Organization | Continuity | Community (Paperback, Detritus Books) 4 stars

False modesty has prevented us from seeing how effective we’ve been, ego has prevented us …

Wanting to win big.

4 stars

To start off 2025, I wanted to read a gelderloos essay because I find his writing usually focuses on posi, optimist, and big picture topics and I had just got my hands on this pocket book.

The title essay is broken into 3 sections, starting off with a look at formal and informal formats and trying to suggest when and how these different forms support a struggle, and when adherence or critique of any one form will hinter an expansive struggle.

Second section looks what keeps people going, keeps people around and in the scene, and has people burning out. Mostly it focuses in the ideas and dynamics that create that inner fire people have to push forward against opposition and resistance.

The third section looks at community, which in this content really is an exploration of power dynamics -- formal or informal -- within a scene, how they play …

China Miéville: Kraken (Hardcover, 2010, MacMillan) 5 stars

Kraken is a fantasy novel by British author China Miéville. It is published in the …

Squid Cult

4 stars

a fun read but found myself near the end having my mind wander away from the story line which is not what you want when it's coming to a climax.

stuff I really enjoyed was unconventional takes on religion and cults, and the presentation of a larger labour strike by fantasy creatures. whenever class struggle works its way into sci-fi or fantasy for me it makes me really appreciate the book.

really love China Mieville's world building and writing, but this wasn't a top book of his for me.

Peter Gelderloos: Organization | Continuity | Community (Paperback, Detritus Books) 4 stars

False modesty has prevented us from seeing how effective we’ve been, ego has prevented us …

Bookwyrm note: just learnt how to add new titles for obscure anarchist titles to our local instance and put this one in! It is as simple as adding /create-book to the end of your instances url and filling out the details and uploading a pic of the cover. Definitely going to expand and add texts as I go through them now!

China Miéville: Un Lun Dun (Paperback, 2007, Del Rey) 4 stars

What is Un Lun Dun?It is London through the looking glass, an urban Wonderland of …

YA fiction from a freak

4 stars

First review of 2025. This was a fun book, first title I've read from China Miélville targetted at a younger audience. Fun story, as if the author had decided to take a variety of puns and through the lens of surrealism bring them to life. There are some unexpected directions it goes in but follows the YA epic model of fantasy, multiverses, and magic.

Fun low stakes read for those who never grow out of the genre.