Book Review 2024
2024 Book Review.
Finished: 24
Pages: 12,127
| Book Title | Author | Series Name | Genre | Rating | Date | Pages | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Last Conversation | Paul Tremblay | Forward: Stories of Tomorrow | SciFi | 1 | 2024 | 67 | Fiction |
| You Have Arrived at Your Destination | Amor Towles | Forward: Stories of Tomorrow | SciFi | 2 | 2024 | 54 | Fiction |
| Emergency Skin | N.K. Jemisin | Forward: Stories of Tomorrow | SciFi | 3 | 2024 | 38 | Fiction |
| Ark | Veronica roth | Forward: Stories of Tomorrow | SciFi | 4 | 2024 | 45 | Fiction |
| Randomize | Andy Weir | Forward: Stories of Tomorrow | SciFi | 4 | 2024 | 32 | Fiction |
| Summer Frost | Blake Crouch | Forward: Stories of Tomorrow | SciFi | 4 | 2024 | 85 | Fiction |
| Six of Crows | Leigh Bardugo | Six of Crows | Fantasty | 3 | 2024 | 495 | Fiction |
| Crooked Kingdom | Leigh Bardugo | Six of Crows | Fantasty | 3 | 2024 | 578 | Fiction |
| Absolution | Jeff Vandermeer | Southern Reach | SciFi | 4 | 2024 | 464 | Fiction |
| Shōgun, Part One | James Clavell | The Asian Saga | Historical Fiction | 3 | 2024 | 699 | Fiction |
| The Land of Lost Things | John Connolly | The Book Of Lost Things | Coming of Age/Fantasy | 3 | 2024 | 364 | Fiction |
| Leviathan Wakes | James S.A. Corey | The Expanse | SciFi | 4 | 2024 | 592 | Fiction |
| Caliban’s War | James S.A. Corey | The Expanse | SciFi | 4 | 2024 | 624 | Fiction |
| Abaddon’s Gate | James S.A. Corey | The Expanse | SciFi | 5 | 2024 | 576 | Fiction |
| Cibola Burn | James S.A. Corey | The Expanse | SciFi | 5 | 2024 | 624 | Fiction |
| The Blade Itself | Joe Abercrombie | The First Law Trilogy | Fantasy | 4 | 2024 | 560 | Fiction |
| The Forever War | Joe Haldeman | The Forever War | SciFi | 4 | 2024 | 264 | Fiction |
| Oryx and Crake | Margaret Atwood | The MaddAddam Trilogy | Post Apocalypse | 3 | 2024 | 389 | Fiction |
| Vicious | V.E. Schwab | Villains | Superhero | 2 | 2024 | 480 | Fiction |
| Vengeful | V.E. Schwab | Villains | Superhero | 3 | 2024 | 462 | Fiction |
| The Reddening | Adam Nevill | Horror | 1 | 2024 | 419 | Fiction | |
| The Count of Monte Cristo | Alexandre Dumas | Classic | 4 | 2024 | 1138 | Fiction | |
| The Gentleman In Moscow | Amor Towles | Historical Fiction | 3 | 2024 | 465 | Fiction | |
| The Egg and Other Stories | Andy Weir | SciFi | 3 | 2024 | 128 | Fiction | |
| The Golem and the Jinni | Helene Wecker | Fiction/Jewish Lit. | 1 | 2024 | 496 | Fiction | |
| Devolution | Max Brooks | Thriller | 4 | 2024 | 288 | Fiction | |
| Termination Shock | Neal Stephenson | SciFi | 3 | 2024 | 720 | Fiction | |
| Mountain in the Sea | Ray Nayler | SciFi | 2 | 2024 | 464 | Fiction | |
| The Sparrow | Mary Doria Russell | SciFi | 4 | 2024 | 517 | Fiction |
The Sparrow
I’m honestly unsure if I think this book is a 3 or a 4. It took a very long time to “get where it’s going” … lots of filler and honestly kind of boring or even silly dialogue the entire book. Heck of an ending though, and deals with some heavy religious themes. Interesting?
Absolution
Part 4 of Southern Reach??? Insane. Terrifying. Confusing. Fuck. You’ll get it if you read it.
Shōgun, Part One
A weird blend of action and feudal Japanese politics. A book that’s sort of anti-white savior but in a way that’s well done. Historical fiction in a setting I had not seen previously…generally a pretty good book overall just expect a lot of dialog in between the action sequences.
The Land of Lost Things
An interesting sequuel to the Book of Lost Things that I read earlier in 2019 I think…it’s fine for what it is but not as good as the first. Expect more of the same from the first book, but different.
The Blade Itself
A book about walking around. There’s a character who walks around in the woods, a character who walks around a city, a character who LIMPS around a city, and a character who walks around a desert. These characters all eventually meet up with a few other characters and eventually converge on one another where the proceed to have some conversations about things happening in the world. Eventually, there’s some action sequences in the last 1/6th of the book and overall sets up a very strong foundation for the rest of the trilogy (I assume). However, as a book, it’s just a bit … okay. I shouldn’t complain, it’s a perfectly fine fantasy story, just feels like a huge setup which is lackluster unless you continue the trilogy.
Devolution
Pure comedy - I did not expect this book to be as funny as it turned out to be. The premise of bigfoots attacking a remote (and stranded) neighborhood probably doesn’t sound funny, but the execution certainly is. The book is told very seriously, and very realistically however there are some things that I just could not get over. Like the fact that nobody in the story owns a single tool of any kind (why would they?) Also I don’t know if it was on purpose but Brooks made every character a total stereotype in one way or another which added to the humor. Overall, a highly highly entertaining story. Just don’t take it too seriously!
The Count of Monte Cristo
A classic - I’ve always wanted to read this one. It’s incredibly long, has a complicated plot, has about 75 characters to keep track of, and is written like a classic. So it’s not the easiest read ever, but it’s certainly not the worst. A story of love, loss, justice, revenge, pity, remorse, depression, strength, power, wealth, weakness, hope, trust, forgiveness, and betrayal. It’s a book that has a little bit of everything where you’re certainly rooting for Edmond for the entire journey.
Oryx and Crake
A post apocalytpic and dystopian book filled with blue butts, futuristic genetics, wild boar (kind of), sex slavery, and people generally being awful. Writing is excellent. The characters all suck, none of them have any redeeming qualities what-so-ever which makes it a painful book. It’s a unique approach to the usually overdone “end of the world” books you run into. Unsure if I’d pursue the sequels.
Mountain in the Sea
Unfortunately just not a good book. I expected a first contact story about hyper-evolved octopus being basically alien creatures. You do get that, but it’s buried beneath a vague dystopian/scifi setting, scientists exploring the octopus as slow as possible, an android, corporations doing corporation stuff, a guy trapped on an AI ship, and a mind-hacker being chased by government spies or something. That all probably sounds cool but it’s just straight up not? Most of the side storylines just feel irrelevant to the overall story. It’s pacing is slow, it’s setting is weird, it’s just a strange book that I honestly didn’t enjoy very much.
Six of Crows
Overall a fun fantasy story but nothing too serious. The biggest issues is the book suffers from convenient writing constantly having you say “oh really it worked perfectly just like that, huh?” and is often a bit hard to believe what is happening. Second, all of the characters are 17-20 years old or so, but their dialog and skills sets would lead you to believe they are 35+ and grizzled war veterans or something of the sort. Bit unusual…still, not bad.
Crooked Kingdom
An interesting sequel to Six of Crows, had some highs and lows but overall was a fairly tight story – generic fantasy, etc… wouldn’t call it life changing but it also wasn’t super bad or anything of the sort.
Vicious
A bit like Steelheart by by Brandon Sanderson which I read in 2022. A novel about “superheroes” of a sort, but more like the show “Heros” on NBC back in 2016 where “Ordinary people around the world discover they have super powers.” but with a darker twist. The novel was “fun” and very easy to read quickly; however, upon closer examination it had more plot holes than a book printed on pages of Swiss cheese. So at the end of the day was it bad? No. was it super good? Also no.
Vengeful
Somewhat better than the first (Vicious) but still sort of an average read. If you read the first, you may as well read the second since it’s actually a somewhat better story overall. The titles are backwards though, the first book should have been called Vengeful and the second Vicious…
A Gentleman in Moscow
This was actually a rare DNF turned “Finished” from 2020 where I stopped reading as I became “bored with the story”…this time I approached the book on audible and was able to get through it. Unfortunately, it was still somewhat…boring? The book is written very well and the author is clearly very talented, it reads a bit like a biography of a real person which is impressive considering it’s fictional, albeit historic fiction. It’s a novel about resilience and perseverance, good and evil, love, kindness, and compassion, togetherness and loneliness, ingenuity and bravery, and ultimately the slow march of time. There’s potentially a lot to unpack in a novel like this, and I can see why it’s held in high regard by many. Unfortunately for me, I just needed a few more Michael Bay explosions to hold my SciFi addicted attention I guess. I did finish it, and the ending was excellent so I can’t complain.
Leviathan Wakes
Perhaps thankfully I never watched “The Expanse” on Amazon Prime, so I went into this novel blind to the TV show adaptation. In general, it’s a really solid space murder-mystery drama book, I guess? There’s space ships, air recyclers, murders, a love story, nukes, and alien pathogens. If you like fairly realistic space SciFi and some of those things I just listed then you’ll likely enjoy this. Plus if you love it, there’s a whole lot of sequels!
Caliban’s War
The expanse part two…excellent. Lots of character building, fun space adventure!
Abaddon’s Gate
The story of the Expanse really “picks up” in this 3rd novel, crazy good Sci-Fi!
Cibola Burn
Epic universe spanning sci-fi scales down to what is essentially a western set on another planet, sounds strange but it’s great!
Forward
A collection of short stories by different authors that require different ratings. Ignore the 0/5 as I’ll rate each on their own.
- Ark by Veronica Roth - A, not bad. Touching in many ways and a bit sad.
- Summer Frost by Blake Crouch - A, I actually quite enjoyed this even if it comes across as a black mirror script.
- Emergency Skin by N.K. Jeminsin - A, quite comical and the unique point of view / narrator writing is sort of refreshing and interesting.
- You Have Arrived at Your Destination by Amor Towles - C, Amor is a great writer, maybe the best of this bunch; but this story is fine but nothing special for me.
- The Last Conversation by Paul Tremblay - D, I just didn’t really enjoy this one. It’s fine? It’s…too slow?
- Randomize by Andy Weir - B, a fun ocean’s 11 style scifi story with only 4 characters or so…
The Egg and Other Stories
A collection of very short stories from Andy Weir. They’re all…bad? I mean they’re all about 5 minutes long but almost immediately I realized every story just was written for a quirky little twist ending that sort of made it less fun than it should have been for some reason. Given the low time investment required it’s fine but also not something I’d go out of my way to recommend. Ignore the 0/5 as I’ll rate each on their own.
- Access - C, just sort of silly
- Antihypoxiant - B, pretty fun actually
- Annie’s Day - A, my favorite of the collection for no reason
- The Real Deal - F, meh
- Bored World - C ,it’s fine I guess
- The Midtown Butcher - C, again, silly
- Meeting Sarah - F, meh
- The Chef- F, meh
- The Egg- B, the title story is good if not a bit of an overplayed concept
The Forever War
An interesting book with some fun scifi especially around time dilation. It has sort of a low-point about 2/3rd through the book but thankfully it picks up again for a good ending. No major complaints beyond a weird fixation from the author on the potential homosexuality of humanity (not a joke).
The Reddening
Possibly one of the worst books I’ve ever read, if this hadn’t been part of my book club I would have DNF’d there’s almost nothing redeeming about this book it’s just bad from page 1 until the last.
The Golem and the Jinni
Pretty awful. Some people like it, I am not one of those people. I would not recommend this to a friend.
Termination Shock
I’ve read a lot from this author, this was possibly one of my least favorite. It’s well written, and in theory the premise of the book is interesting…but it sort of falls apart toward the end. It’s also a very slow burn, so that’s a bit rough. Very good character development, except one character is sort off in their own universe the whole book until the very end when you go “oh that’s what that character was in the book for” and it… it’s not a good reason. If you wanna read Stephenson pick another of his books first.