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In general, I find Host's sci-fi to be more creative than her fantasy, but I am really interested in the way that Host subtlety plays with our expectations on how romance and sex should be treated. She never draws attention to it, but it's distinctively different. It's one of the more interesting things about this book.

I'm working on a short story about a pair of psychic twins, and I don't feel like looking up what it's called. Anyway, the dialogue is very good, but I'm starting to get worried it's not going anywhere.

On the whole, this wasn't for me, and it's hard to ignore the mild racism, but it was well-structured and well-written, so there's only so much anger I can generate at it.

I suppose this is roughly the book equivalent of a well-made but not particularly interesting action movie. There's not even an attempt at any sort of character arc, even though the characters are well-developed enough that James could've written one if he wanted to. It's just a tight, well-written story, nothing more.

To James' credit, this book is really well-written, and mostly well-structured so far. It has its flaws, but it accomplishes what it sets out to do effectively.

The July Ghost by J.S. Byatt: 4/5 A bit thematically cliched, but well-written and well-structured.

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter: 2/5 (DNF) Overwritten, predictable, boring.

I'm really looking forward to the last chapter - it has a hell of a lot of work to do in order to synthesize all of the ideas running throughout this book. To be honest, I feel like it would take a whole book to do it. It honestly makes me wish this book was structured totally differently - the case studies could've been far more smoothly integrated.

This is a minor point, but James does a really bad job of suggesting the time the events of the story take. We'll get things that take hours, but I'll never really feel the time passing - it doesn't matter to the characters. I think it's a matter of switching between narrative summary and action too liberally.

I feel like this book is kind of operating on rule of cool. Like, it's strange to me how emotionally cold the characters are, but I kind of don't care, because that's clearly not the point. This is mildly racist and misogynistic, though, and I have a bit more trouble looking past that.

Pia's portrayal is kind of toeing the line between reasonably powerful and fetishistic. I probably wouldn't notice it as a problem, if not for how frequently we see her from the eyes of others, and how rare we get her own perspective. It sort of draws attention to her physical beauty, her money, and her dominance over others, without the reader fully sympathizing with her (at least so far).

Death by Landscape by Margaret Atwood: 3/5 Atwood's prose is a joy to read, as usual, but the story spends too much time on the uninteresting aspects, while skipping what seems like they should be the best parts.

I think I was kind of worried about this being bad, but if nothing else, this is really well-written. I'm enjoying it so far.

This is pretty interesting to read, I'm just not very convinced of its importance. It lacks the sort of solid through-line that would make it really worthwhile to me.

I'm not sure the thesis is really strong enough to carry this book. "It's all about the data"... that's not going to be news to most people, and without a serious exploration of why data goes ignored (instead of taking it for granted that it just happens sometimes and if people knew better they wouldn't do it), the book seems pretty useless. Along with a really inconsistent tone, I'm not all that into this.

This is pretty interesting I guess. I'm hoping that the thesis will remain a strong through-line throughout the book, because I can definitely picture this being pointless otherwise. But for now, it's fine.

The Glass Slip-Up by Louise Cooper: 2/5 There were a couple surprising moments, but this was mostly cliched and hack-y.

Alaska by John Morressy: 3/5 Mildly funny and entertaining, not very original or memorable.

The Cat with Two Tails by Terry Jones: 1/5 Completely witless and pointless.

The Warlock's Daughter by Anthony Armstrong: 2/5 Mildly funny, but the story is underwhelming and the characters are boring.

This book keeps doing this really annoying thing where it shows us a big event, and then completely skips over the aftermath of that event. I sort of get the idea behind this - keeping the pace up, not getting caught up in unnecessary scenes, show don't tell. But the actual effect is that we never really feel the emotional impact of things that should be huge. It makes the book dull and muted.

There is no drive at all to this book. Nothing pulling the plot forward. These characters don't have goals, and there's no tension whatsoever. There's only so long that you can show us a bunch of unexplained creepy things happening before it gets tiresome.

The Toll Bridge by Harvey Jacobs: 5/5 This story is kind of brilliant. Very creative, and while it's not quite laugh-out-loud funny, it's still pretty amusing. It does a good job of getting in and out, exploring the premise and concluding before it gets tiresome.

We are way too far into this book to still be in the 'weird stuff happening with no explanation' phase. Enough setup, time for some payoff.

Weird things are happening! I gotta be honest, the weirdness isn't that interesting to me so far, except for what's going on with the athlete, which is pretty compelling. But that's one perspective out of four that has engaged me so far. Well, we'll just have to see what happens as we start getting explanations, or at very least, the weirdness gets more coherent.

This is pretty damn dated. Like, much more dated than most YA novels from 2004 that I read. The prose and dialogue are also pretty bad, with lots of corny 'teenspeak'. I know that Metz is a capable storyteller, so I hope that once the plot kicks in, I'll be able to ignore all that, but it's a pretty bad sign going in.

Death Swatch by Esther Friesner: 1/5 The attempts at humor are actively painful, and the whole premise is much darker than what Friesner is prepared to handle.

Press Ann by Terry Bison: 4/5 The ending didn't make much sense, but it's a fun, creative story until then.

Troll Bridge by Terry Pratchett: 3/5 Good premise and characterization, short on laughs and payoff to the concept.

I don't want this book to end yet. I feel like there's so much more story to be told, and I really want Quinn to tell it.

Golden Apples of the Sun by Gardner Dozois, Jack Dann, and Michael Swanwick: 2/5 There are some moments of creativity, but honestly, this was more depressing than funny to me. The ending, which is the only part that maybe could've worked, was too rushed to land effectively.

The longer you weight to deliver the money shot, the better it has to be for the book to work. There's a lot of potential commentary here - about memory, family, power, tradition, all sorts of things. I'm not saying all of that is made or broken by the inevitable reveal, but... well, it'll make a big difference. Even if the reveal doesn't come or it's bad, this will still be a wonderfully original and complex book

I am aching to get to the resolution to these mysteries. It's a huge risk to put so much of the novel's core themes on what will inevitably have to be a major plot twist - I'm not sure if it's even possible for Quinn to follow through in a satisfying way. But I really, really want her to, because the narration and worldbuilding are both really creative and interesting.

Pizza to Go by Tom Holt: 5/5 This was really creative, and a lot of fun to read. I laughed out loud more than once.

A Malady of Magicks by Craig Shaw Gardner: 3/5 This was a pretty good premise for a story, but in execution, it ended up being more lightweight than actually funny. Certainly not very memorable, and not very creative past the premise.

I suspect this book will be made or broken by the resolution to the mysteries that it's sort of setting up. I really, really want this book to be great, because it has a lot of very good, very creative ideas, and the narration is genuinely unique. And it's absolutely not too late for the book to become really good - experimental books often take a while before they really click. But we'll just have to see.