Tag: book-reviews

Gone Before Goodbye by by Reese Witherspoon and Harlan Coben, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

I knew it will be a tough book to read because it had bad reviews. It wasn’t easy but wasn’t too bad either.

Alexander Belyaev has a story about a man who is essentially dead but his head is attached to a machine and is still talking. The head is waiting for a compatible headless body so it can be reattached. The story is called Professor Dowell’s Head. You would expect that Gone Before Goodbye is a crime mystery thriller, where we are trying to figure out what happened to the missing person (who’s gone). But it is, in reality, something similar to Belyaev’s stray head.

The book is very well written in most parts, and well translated too. The first 100 pages were excellent; then chaos set in. Maggie, a surgeon who lost her license, is offered redemption if she performs a difficult and illegal surgery. Once she accepts and sells her soul to the devil, people start flying around the globe like there’s no tomorrow and for no clear reason. Perhaps to show off how rich they are.

The resolution is like the head I mentioned. It’s sci-fi and ridiculous. We also have an avatar, living inside a phone, a common trope in present-day sci-fi. These AIs are usually demigods, who can do everything, and so is Maggie’s AI app. Also ridiculous.

Why three stars and not four, for example? Because it is never really clear why anything really happens. The book contains all kinds of cataclysmic and dramatic moments, and not a single one of them is actually necessary for the story. The explanation for everything is that a head is trying to find a body. Characters fly to Russia, billionaire balls are held, some people chase others, while committing grand acts of bravery without any relation to this problem. It’s not exactly a head but you’ll see if you read it. So I felt a disconnect between the great writing style, nice characters, the grandiose scenes, and setup, and the missing link to the actual story.

I could have given it two stars as well because of the publisher’s decision to compact the 350-page book into 300 pages by making the letters tiny and squeezing the letter spacing.

Despite the review, I enjoyed the individual fragments of good writing. 3/5 because of that.

Nightshade by Michael Connelly, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ 6 Comments

Michael Connelly is one of my favorite crime/thriller authors. I’ve read almost everything he’s written (probably everything but I’m not sure about one book). He is producing high quality books pretty consistently. However, he has flops. Nightshade is one of the books I did not like.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Stilwell has been moved to Catalina Island, after a series of questionable life choices. Within the book, he has three tasks:

  • Investigate the murder of a protected buffalo
  • Get statements from some suspicious character who hit a police officer with a bottle
  • Keep his partner Natasha happy

This is not what he does, so in a sense, he continues with the questionable life choices and is surprising that the police didn’t transfer him to the North Pole. He jumps in to investigate a murder, and of course, one murder leads to another, so there are many murders.

Had the killer or the multiple killers stayed put, none of the book would’ve happened as Detective Stilwell’s entire game is to find clues in the exceptional overreaction by the suspects, giving them away over and over. Remove that and there’s no book. The original clues get compromised or are mostly ignored by the detective. For example, the body found in the beginning of the book – the book itself makes it very clear the first body should’ve been found elsewhere or never found.

Now, Natasha. Detective Stilwell is in love, according to the pages. He will manipulate, lie to, and ignore Natasha “Tash” Dano over and over. His treatment towards her is reckless, irresponsible, and borderline abusive. Although it is completely fine to describe an abusive relationship in a fiction book, the term for what we see is fridging. Fridging is when a character is introduced for the sole purpose of being killed and placed in a fridge, so the detective has business to do. I felt that the female protagonist only exists to increase the difficulty level to Detective Stillwell. The character development for her felt superficial but it is like that for the rest of the characters as well, except maybe the main victim, whose life and dreams we’ll explore in greater depths.

The best part of the book is the cover. It is beautiful and was one of the reasons to read it last week.

I rated Nightshade with 2*/5. One of the stars is a bonus for the cover and the whole Catalina idea. The content is perhaps the worst I’ve read by Michael Connelly.

My May in Books

~ Veselin ~ 6 Comments
Wrapping up the month with 8 books.

Best

  • Dragonfired by J. Zachary Pike – rich in ideas, full of intelligent creatures, and an epic conclusion of the trilogy about the dark profits. It has cobolds and everyone is greedy, except maybe Gorm Ingerson.
  • Silo by Hugh Howey – a mechanic has to survive in a plausible post-apocalyptic anti-utopia where all remaining humans are stuck in a bunker and tied in lies. I should’ve blogged a book review about because I really liked it, it had this Andy Weir feel I love in books. However, I never got to it. Maybe I’ll write one once I complete book two, which is already at home.
  • Necromancer by Gordon Dickson – I awarded 3 stars to it but it has an AI that kills all human creativity. It was a great visionary idea for a 1960s book I was surprised to find there, between the future full of old tech. It is one of the main risks I see for humanity when adjusting to the LLM boom.

Worst

  • Think Twice by Harlan Coben – after my repeated failures with Lee Child, I start wondering if I outgrew the entire genre. Jack Reacher turned into Steven Seagal, and now Myron Bolitar and his buddy Win are turning to Paw Patrol. I can’t read another one that silly and think about getting rid of my Harlan Coben shelf like I did with Lee Child. It will open space for gems like the next one.
  • Don’t look back – a gamebook that got a well-deserved average of 2* on Goodreads. It was silly in a very disturbing way.

Both books had a moment where the main protagonist just enters a room, kills 3-4 NPC characters, and leaves the room without ever mentioning that again. I should’ve awarded both with 1* for being disturbing and 0 for their editors, if they had any.

Other

  • The Golem and the Jinni, Diablo, and Bion 3 were fine. I may read the continuation of Diablo because it may have necromancers, the continuation of Bion to support the publisher, and would not read the continuation of the Golem and the Jinni. I think the story concluded well and should remain like that in my mind.

February In Books

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

I purchased lots of books in February but only read eight. The two best were the two that had been stuck on my unread shelves for months, if not years. I read them to clear space for other books and was pleasantly surprised.

Best

  1. The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin – I have to admit I purchased that because the book cover was pretty. The book itself was written in a strange way but it stuck and I think it was the best for the month, although the competition is close. The volcanic Earth where humans can cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions is quite memorable.
  2. The Wisdom of Crowds by Joe Abercrombie – Abercrombie delivers a lot more of the same in both good and bad sense. The Wisdom of Crowds is mind-blowing but also 750-ish pages, 250 longer than the necessary to be my top pick for the month. Savine dan Glokta doesn’t disappoint.
  3. Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher – an excellent short fantasy with a simple idea and a complex magical system about domestic violence, curses, and fairy godmothers. Although a fantastic book and a clear 5*/5, the other two were more impressive. I’ll happily read other works by the same author.

Worst

  • Extremis by Barry Eisler – I gave it 4/5, 2 weeks later I’m ready to adjust it to a solid 3. It was clear what will happen from the first page, and it happened in a slow motion.
  • Operation Star Guest by Lubomir Nikolov – I read the flying saucer book from this post but unlike the other books by the same author, which I frequently award with 5*, this came as sloppy and rushed. We are on a mission to find a flying saucer and contact an alien civilization. What do we do? Worry about food because we didn’t pack any and how to start fire. Yeah, no.

Overall, a good month for reading with a total of 8, five of which got five stars.

2024 In Books

~ Veselin ~ 4 Comments

2024 was the first year in which I managed to go over 100 books. This was a major achievement for me and a result of several circumstances:

  • I reengaged with the gamebook community, which is full of voracious readers (and writers)
  • I discovered the Thraxas and Stephanie Plum series that are super interesting and each book is short, single-thread, bubblegum-ish
  • A few of my friends were inspired to read a lot this year so I was not alone on this journey
  • I ignored several of the latest books by Brandon Sanderson, Joe Abercrombie, Zachary Pike, J.K. Rowling, Liu Cixin just because they were too long. Maybe I go back to these works in 2025. Or 2035. Not soon. Ignoring enormous books by otherwise great authors seems to be a good strategy. TL;DR.

Here are the best finds from reading 111 books and 36217 pages:

Best Series

  • Thraxas by Martin Scott – a Pratchett-style comic fantasy series, which I completed entirely in 2024. There are some hints of exploitation in the first 2-3 books.

Top 5 books

  1. We Are Legion by Dennis E. Taylor – Bob starts exploring the galaxy and the opportunities are endless
  2. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
  3. Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames
  4. Conquer Yourself by Silvia Azdreeva
  5. All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Best Gamebook

Trends

  • Kobolds are everywhere
  • AI is human and should be treated as a life form (yet to find a book say otherwise)
  • Pretty covers sell well

2025

I’m not sure if I’ll try to keep the pace for 2025 yet. I’ll set an official goal to read 52 books, or 1/week for the year.