What a phrase! But upon purchasing the book i realize it’s awfully short. Then i discover the title’s provenance: not the author. The writing style is awfully hurried. Listicles and factoids later, this pattern matches to the disappointing genre of: (i was bad at this then got therapy which helped so now im writing a book about it) Christian anecdotes don’t help. By chapter two i’m out. Let’s try the teacher dallas willard rather than his acolyte.
Author: Joe Abercrombie Score: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Completed: January 1, 2025 Last edited time: January 11, 2026 7:41 AM Status: Reviewed Type: Book Cards on the Table The Devils sits halfway between the grimdark First Law trilogy and the gamified chaos of Dungeon Crawler Carl. It may have been deliberate and more popular, but is not entirely to my taste. The book leans hard on the found-family dynamic. The result is serviceable cohesion rather than earned intimacy. With a large ensemble, the book prioritizes interesting combinations of characters over sustained attention to any one of them. That tradeoff makes sense in a long-running series; it’s harder to pull off cleanly in a single novel. The focus fragments, and no single arc quite takes hold. ...
**Offending the Culture Gods in Reassimilation ** A stressed lesbian medium fights gods, ghosts, gangsters, and grandmas in 21st century Penang. * In a book about feeling alienated, I feel seen. First is the difficulty when trying to re-assimilate into a foreign culture, especially when that culture is your own. The look Aku gave her was familiar. Jess had seen it at different points points from, Mom, Dad, Coco, and their friends. It was a look of realization that here was an alien to whom even the most basic things, even the things everyone understood, would have to be explained. * Then the basic desire to find people that have shared context. * It was just nice to hang out with somebody that was her age, somebody that was more like her than her parents. Jess could guess what kind of restaurant Shang went to, what he did for fun, what he watched on Netflix. * Sure I didn’t grow up with Asian parents (* Mom would kill her if she got murdered here, she thought. * ) but some feelings are universal. I appreciated the focus on filial relationships, and the visceral setting. Plot twists weren’t entirely predictable, and to the detriment of my sleep schedule, I finished the book in one sitting. Recommended.
Wait, this isn’t by the Dalai Lama this is quoted and analysis by a psychologist. I think I’ll go elsewhere.
A Canticle for Leibowitz follows the arc of a post-apocalypse humanity, through three story arcs: Through the discovery of key artifacts during the new dark ages after a nuclear disaster. Another about the struggle for control of information and innovation between scientists and religious scholars A third in post apocalypse space age, where interplanetary colonization is possible, but nuclear war turns out to be a repeating cycle rather than a one off event. Perhaps the highlight of the book was the different characters, who seemed more real and flawed than typical protagonists. Unfortunately by the time I would become invested in any of them, the plot would fast forward by a few hundred years, with hardly a sentence spared about how our main character died an untimely death and was eaten by buzzards. As a remix of history, providing a scenario showing humanity in an apocalypse-rebirth-cycle, but the structure of disjointed stories made it hard to get into and I never really understood what I was supposed to pay attention to in each canto.
I didn’t really enjoy this book. There’s so much going on, but nothing had depth, and even the plot didn’t make it far. The politics felt shallow, written mainly in the service of plot. The genderless bias was interesting, but half of the characters were breaking the rules, so maybe they weren’t really rules to begin with. The science fiction aspects felt tacked on and surface level. The narrator interjections started out interesting, but ended up tedious. The theological / existential questions may have been the most interesting parts of the book, but they never went anywhere.
Not recommended. It is a mediocre theory that seriously overfit data from the mid-90’s and has led to some really problematic ideas and policies since. For a much more nuanced perspective on the role of civilizations on the current state of global affairs, try World 3.0 by Pankaj Ghemawat.