maxsebastian's reviews
300 reviews

As fun as it was when I first read it, Artemis Fowl most definitely holds up. This time through, I listened to this book alongside two of my housemates. We all had a fantastic time. Although this story is clearly designed for younger audiences, the magic, inventiveness of its protagonists, and flair of Irish pride make it fun for everyone.

Rogue Squadron is solid through and through. From providing more details about how x-wings work than any other Star Wars piece of media I have read to getting in the head of some true hotshot pilots, this book is exactly what I'd want from Top Gun. Although the stakes of this story feel lower than in Heir to the Empire or the Star Wars movies, I still think this book is excellent. The focus of this book on what the role of soldiers are as a war ends is well executed and intriguing. 

Its characters, particularly Wedge Antillies and Tycho Celchu, are real standouts. Although I found Corran Horn to be a bit of a self insert brave but careless character, his arc seems promising. I'm not 100% sold on the villains for this series, but I'm not sure that that matters. The tension seems to be more tied to the politics of legitimizing the New Republic than fighting any particular foe. 

Well...I didn't love this entry in The Lightbringer series. The main positive for me here is Gavin Guile's storyline, which is absolutely fantastic. It's full of answers to questions I've wanted to know since I started this series! Every other plot line, especially Kip's, dragged for me in The Blood Mirror. The fact that several plots had major character moments around sex was also not my favorite choice.

Although it's a bit of a step down from the first two books in the Lightbringer series, I still rather enjoyed The Broken Eye. This entry is filled with more interesting character development and some well deserved twists. My complaints mostly carry over from the previous entries, but I will note that I was presently surprised by how drafting "resonances" account for why there is not a continuum range of colors that can be drafted.

Sometimes a book is so engaging that whatever you're doing, you can't stop thinking about it, that when you make breakfast or tidy your room, you try to find some way to just keep reading it. Like many of the Starlight Archive books, Wind and Truth gave me that perfect feeling. While I'll happily acknowledge that this book has flaws, my experience with it was so pleasant that, from my subjective stance, I don't really mind. After waiting more than two years for this book, Wind and Truth was exactly what I wanted.

Let's start with the flaws. First, there are certain arcs in this story that are weaker than others. For all his strengths, not all of Brandon Sanderson's characters hit the same. Similarly, different parts of the world are less compelling. I was not a huge fan of the large sections of the book that are spent outside the physical realm, which felt a little repetitive, at least from a character arc standpoint. Surprisingly, I also did not find Szeth's backstory or his journey in Shinovar with Kaladin all that interesting despite the hype I've had for this exact plot for years. This feeling comes down to the fact that their work, and Szeth's memories to a lesser extent, ultimately are a slightly boring fetch quest. While Sanderson's focus on mental health is still powerful, the topic is discussed in a repetitive manner that is a little in your face in Wind and Truth. Sanderson's prose is also a little basic and repetitive in this story but that did not bother me more here than in previous works.

Ok, now on to the good. It's basically everything else. Nearly every plot is the physical realm is a banger. People across the entirety of the internet have been talking about this, but wow is Adolin amazing in this story. I've always liked Adolin, so getting to spend this much time with him in felt fantastic. Setting up Sigzil's arc based on the events of The Sunlit Man was also a great moment. The way Jasnah's viewpoints are challenged in this story feel central to the next set of these books. These moments are all plotted well throughout Wind and Truth, in a way that is both engaging and feels exactly right for these characters. The world of Roshar still holds the title as my favorite cosmere planet. Throughout this story, I kept thinking about the little things that drew me to this world, a giant lake that's only a few feet deep, the mechanics of shardblades, the cooking of Bridge Four, and so much more. Although many of these things were not the focus of this entry, I couldn't help but reminisce about them all the same.

In the next arc of The Stormlight Archive, I hope we can spend more time again just examining how this world works. I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah...this book is as good as The Black Prism. Again, I question how I didn't like reading this series the first time around. From the magic to the mysteries, this series has so many fantastic elements. I even liked the magic the gathering like card game duels between Andross and Kip! My largest flag here, however, is that, for whatever reason, slavery is kind of presented in a moderately positive light in this book? That is, slavery is societally deemed acceptable and some enslaved people are even portrayed as happy to be that way because their masters are "good."

Most prominently, Marissia, Gavin Guile's room slave, seems upset at Gavin's attempt to dismiss her.

I have also continued to struggle to know when something about the plot or magic system is intended to be mysterious or is just something I missed.

For example, I talked to friends who had read the series about whether or not the Chromeria officially recognized the existence of full spectrum polychromes. We all thought they did not, but then towards the end of The Blinding Knife, Kip encounters policies about this exact situation during Blackguard testing.

This lack of clarity between mystery and complexity is irritating.

When I first read The Black Prism in 2022, I said the following: "I know this book is better than the rating I'm giving it." Yes, oh yes, it was. The Black Prism might be the best first book in a fantasy series that I've read since Mistborn: The Final Empire. I read The Black Prism during the two most stressful weeks of my year, and still I could not stop thinking about it every night as I fell asleep. The Lightbringer series has a very interesting reputation. Each of its strengths is also considered a weakness. Quickly, I want to address some of these points and explain my experience with them.

The Black Prism features a magic system that is on par with the best produced by Brandon Sanderson, but it is poorly explained. In the Lightbringer universe, characters, called drafters, can transform colors they see into physical material called luxin. This substance has a range of fascinating properties that are useful in different contexts. Green luxin is flexible and makes fantastic armor while yellow luxin maintains structures built of other colors of luxin. Each also forces its users into different emotional states. Red luxin makes its drafters prone to anger while blue is a color of impassive focus. Each drafter can use one or more of these colors, but they only have access to a limited amount before effectively going insane. There are so many more intricacies here, like a religious leader who can draft unlimited amounts of every color called the Prism, but what I've described here is the basic idea.

While occasionally a little scientifically questionable (some drafters can control "sub-red" light, which loosely corresponds to thermal infrared emission, but there is no one who can access the near-infrared regime between visible light and the thermal infrared), who cares? Drafting is fascinating and has interesting limits. The problem is, Brent Weeks chooses not to explain those boundaries, instead throwing the reader and certain viewpoint characters into the story blind. Given that there are some crazy plot twists in this story, it is sometimes difficult to know what I should understand about the magic and what is actually related to some yet unrevealed secret. On that note, Weeks is well known for his insane plot twists that sometimes verge on silly. In this book at least, I felt that every twist was justified and exciting. 

Weeks's characters are often lauded as well, and, for the most part, I agree. Nearly every time I turned the page to a new chapter, I felt that great feeling of "oh I forgot about that person! I can't wait to see what's happening with them." That said, Weeks is also criticized for his depiction of character features. His descriptions do center the male gaze and are jarringly fat phobic. In my opinion, this is the biggest fault of the series so far. I think a good bit of this is done intentionally, particularly in the context of our main protagonist, Kip, who is very uncomfortable in his own body. Regardless, reading The Black Prism sometimes made me feel really icky. 

As indicated by this long review, I have a lot of thoughts about The Black Prism. For the first time in a while, I went straight to the next book in this series without a break to read something else in between. I can't wait to check in about my reading experience with that story soon!

An all time classic, I think Hugh Grant is now my favorite reading of this excellent story. I can't wait to listen again next year.

The Dark Tower is a complex and interesting series, but I don’t think I’m in the place for it right now. By diving too deep into the pre-reading of Steven King’s multiverse and spacing out the books, I hurt my enjoyment of the series. This month is a pretty intense period in my life, and I don’t have the bandwidth to parse this story right now. 

I feel conflicted about Reaper Man. While there were parts here I found interesting, a lot of the book dragged and blurred for me. I'm in a bit of a reading slump, and I bet I'd like this story more in the future.