David Traver Adolphus > Recent Status Updates

So far this is a toxic mix of sexism and classism.

It always makes me so happy to run into a first novel this good. The last couple of months have been very busy for me but I keep picking it back up. I'm really interested to see how it wraps up, and looking forward to The Thousand Eyes.

I don't know what's going on but I love it

Iris is so toxic. I almost wonder if Stross recognized what he was writing. Kind of a Richard Morgan thing going on there.

One of the many things I love about Stross is the amount of thought he put into how this economy would work. It's an unexpected and delightful plot thread.

It's taking a lot of pages for not much to happen.

Adroitly written and very readable, but also very stupid. As far as I can tell, "Portals" was self-published, and it shows, because an editor would have had the author rework the core concept into something that feels less like what you'd come up with in a late night college weed session.

Just unrelentingly brutal.

It's taken like 1,500 pages of this series, but I'm finally starting to be able to keep some of the innumerable similarly-named characters straight.

"Sprawling" is an understatement.

A bit of a slow start, but otherwise this is just about everything you want in a fat, sprawling epic fantasy. It really is an extremely impressive debut novel. Some of the major plot lines feel a little telegraphed, but I'm not far enough along yet to see if that's actually the direction they go.

I like it, but it's slow moving so far.

This is hard going. I like the idea, but the constant forced one liners and quips, combined with the terrible anachronisms, make it a slog.

So grim. So, so grim.

So far this is The Martian with slightly different words.

I don't know if I've ever read a series written with more hope and love.

How cynical would a person have to be not to love Becky Chambers?

I don't love the you-never-see-a-character-again-after-their-chapter format, but it's a hoot.

This is dense like James Joyce is dense. I can never read more than a few pages at a sitting.