its_kievan's reviews
186 reviews

Definitely the best sci-fi action horror novel I've ever read. Also probably the only sci-fi action horror novel I've ever read, but it still kicks ass. Setting a horror on a luxury cruise ship in space is genius, and the writing absolutely zooms along. I can imagine some people taking issue with

Claire being able to see ghosts

, but I think that the little extra bit of mystery brought the whole story together perfectly.

In 1839, a small group of refugees fleeing religious persecution founded the city of Nauvoo, Illinois. Those refugees were the first members of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (better known as Mormons), and Nauvoo was to be their new holy kingdom on Earth. Yet, barely five years later, their prophet was dead, their community hopelessly divided by the doctrine of polygamy, and their people forced by armed mobs to flee into the wilderness. Park lays out, in excellent detail, the people and politics that tore apart one of the greatest religious experiments in American history.

An excellent little character-driven history about a fascinating and criminally neglected slice of US history. Park does an excellent job of bringing people and places to life, and keeping the pace of the story flowing - two things that are often lacking when it comes to history books. He does assume a fair bit of knowledge about the origins and early doctrine of Mormonism, and I wasn't convinced by his attempts to tie Nauvoo to a broader thesis about American democratic culture, but those are mostly minor quibbles. A fairly beginner-friendly book backed by a huge amount of research and a clear respect and empathy for the people involved without whitewashing the atrocities of the period.

A car crash of a book. The plot is nonsense, the romance is absurd, the relationship conflicts are contrived, the characters are one-dimensional, the prose is awful, the twists come out of nowhere, the setting is monstrously underdeveloped, and yes I do already have a copy of the next one and will be reading it immediately.

Also it is deeply funny to me that Yarros said "there's a bit of my husband in every book boyfriend I write" when her husband is a white military veteran and Xaden is a POC guy fighting to overthrow a propaganda-fuelled military regime. Much to ponder there.

Honestly not like any book I’ve ever read. Weird, disturbing, sad, and still strangely tender and beautiful.

I would have eaten this up when I was 19 and angry, but while I'm still angry I am no longer 19 and so I have some qualms.

First off, a lot of this book is very, very good. Prashad channels his righteous anger at US imperialism, violence, and hypocrisy into a series of compelling case studies. You can't help but share his hatred and horror when you read about the baldfacedly vile actions of US diplomats and politicians who are willing to sanction mass murders if it lines their pockets or scores a point against an imagined all-powerful enemy. This shit really happened, and it's still happening, and we need authors like Prashad to show people exactly how the world works.

That said, Washington Bullets is a polemic, not a history book, and it has some issues. The most minor is the editing. The book is often unfocused and meandering, making it feel a lot longer than it actually is. There's a lot of assumed knowledge, and a fair few sentences that don't really make sense. There is also a lack of supporting evidence. Prashad quotes from documents, but does not cite them; from people, but often does not name them. In his "Sources" section, he basically says that he spoke to a lot of anonymous people and he's been in the anti-imperialist movement for a while, so just trust him. And I don't think he's deliberately making stuff up, but that does make me hesitate.

The big problem is that Prashad is writing a book about the evils of Western, capitalist, American-led imperialism. The book contains an afterword that warns about the danger of Manichaean (black-and-white) thinking, but ironically this is exactly the trap that Prashad falls into. Every overthrown or assassinated leader is a saint, dedicated only to the welfare of their people. Any complaint about their rule is the product of fascists, oligarchs, and US propaganda. Any socialist government is wholly good, and no socialist nation (or successor to a socialist nation) has ever engaged in imperialism. When Russia annexed Crimea and the Donbas, they were simply acting defensively against NATO encroachment - and yes, this is an actual example from the book. US imperialism is bad and awful and wrong, but so is any kind of imperialism. And imperialism is not wrong because all leftist leaders are perfect paragons of virtue, but because it is morally wrong for a foreign country to depose a democratically-elected leader of any political affiliation.

Anyway, good book with some serious flaws. I'd happily give this to any first-year uni student, then talk them off the ledge with something like The Jakarta Method.

It's fun to read an old dad novel and be like ohhh this is why that author's a multimillionaire now. And, yeah, Grisham knows exactly what he's doing.

Clearly well-researched, but ends up being very dense and repetitive. It's also burdened by the author's ideological blinkers: conservatives have no real political convictions, just a vacuous desire for power at any costs, while Democrats are slavish devotees of big government who are "controlled" by their left wing (a claim he makes with zero evidence. Rule and Ruin is a great resource if you are interested in the movers and shakers of moderate Republicanism, but little else.

A real struggle, one of those books where even halfway through I wasn’t entirely sure if I liked it. Turns out I do, despite the fifty billion names I had to memorise, and I’ve already borrowed the next book. A classic of the “kicks ass but I totally get it if you bounced off” genre.

A deeply strange, beautiful, and melancholy book about a period in history that still defies understanding. Absolutely not what I was expecting from this book, but I’m so glad I read it. In my mind Stasiland deserves a place alongside Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried as something so much less and so much more than a history book.

We did it, we’ve created romantasy books for those guys who are really into Ancient Rome