A software developer who loves fantasy and science fiction.
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"Richard Mayhew is an ordinary young man with an ordinary life and a good heart. …
I love "hidden world" stories like this, so I had a great time with this book!
A super fun story within a fantasy gearpunk alternate history of the world! I love the little bits of world building revealed, and hope there's more to come. Even if not, the story was a delight, and the characters were fun.
A hero with an incredible talent...for breaking things. A life-or-death mission...to rescue a bag of sand. A fearsome threat from …
The Other Wind is a fantasy novel by the American author Ursula K. Le Guin, published by Harcourt in 2001. …
After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants to escape. A residential programme for bright high-schoolers seems …
The eagerly awaited sequel to the #1 New York Times bestselling Oathbringer, from epic fantasy author Brandon Sanderson
After forming …
High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother, with only the books on his shelf …
No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving every day. James …
This book has a lot of practical advice on how to make it easier to do things you want to do and stop things you don't. It starts off with an explanation of habits and how they form and goes on to explain how you can leverage those very things to make positive habits easier to follow through on.
The strategies that stood out most to me were "define a specific time and place" for your habit, prepare the space for your habit to make it easier to do, and add your habit to something else that you already do. For example, the past week I'be been leaving my phone in the kitchen to charge before going to bed. This not only helps me stay off the phone and get distracted before going to sleep but also ensures I go to the kitchen in the morning, where I can brew …
White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress. This insulated …
ALL HER LIFE, SPENSA'S DREAMED of becoming a pilot. Of proving she's a hero like …
A cliffhanger?! Nooo!! I need to find out what happens Next!!!
Black: The Birth of Evil is a novel written by author Ted Dekker. It is …
2.5 stars, really. This used to be one of my favorite book series, but going back and reading it with new eyes has forced me to reconsider. I really love the underlying idea of the story—switching between worlds when you sleep and getting information to help in each world? Brilliant! A plot to threaten the world's population that can only be stopped with information from the other world? Awesome! Christian allegory so heavy that it's actually literal in the other world? Ehh...
That's the main problem with the story. It has this amazing idea and some stellar storytelling for the thriller part, but the ham-handed allegory from an Evangeical Christian idealist point of view just makes the whole thing less good. If the other world was just a regular fantasy world with a well-developed world, then most of the things that happen could be perfectly acceptable in terms of that …
2.5 stars, really. This used to be one of my favorite book series, but going back and reading it with new eyes has forced me to reconsider. I really love the underlying idea of the story—switching between worlds when you sleep and getting information to help in each world? Brilliant! A plot to threaten the world's population that can only be stopped with information from the other world? Awesome! Christian allegory so heavy that it's actually literal in the other world? Ehh...
That's the main problem with the story. It has this amazing idea and some stellar storytelling for the thriller part, but the ham-handed allegory from an Evangeical Christian idealist point of view just makes the whole thing less good. If the other world was just a regular fantasy world with a well-developed world, then most of the things that happen could be perfectly acceptable in terms of that constructed world's culture, but it's not, and that makes all the difference.
Also, in a culture that values pursuing and rescuing your mate in reference to how their god loves them, Elyon does a shit job rescuing the people he claims to love so much when they get in trouble!
EDIT: I had to come back and add to this because I couldn't stop thinking about why exactly I didn't like this book as much, and it turns out, it's really NOT just because of the lazy allegory work. It's because the parts in the other world are just not very good! It tries to do too much in too short a time and with minimal explanation; it pushes a dangerous stereotype of love and jealousy that doesn't make any sense; and the outcome of a mistake doesn't make any sense, among other problems.
I don't want to get into spoilers, so I'll leave it at that, but suffice it to say that this could have been a much better story if more time was put into building out the world and giving more time to the characters in it. After all, the time flow between worlds is split—why rush things so much in the other world?
