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Anime in Book Form? Something Else? | The Sword of Kaigen | Book Review

An epic, anime inspired rebellion, a meditation on grief, a love story? All of it? The Sword of Kaigen, by M. L. Wang. This is a Japanese inspired fantasy, where a woman has long ago retired from her once violent past to become a housewife at the request of her father. She is now in a loveless marriage with a cold man and four sons who all seem to reflect his characteristics to varying degrees—save for one. She has struggled to find connection with her husband, and with her children, but that might be changing with her oldest starting to question the Empire that he has grown up in his whole life. This is the second perspective: the oldest son, practically a prodigy even though he is only fourteen years old. He is entirely fixated on uncovering his family's key secret, known as The Whispering Blade, a technique that is unparalleled in its power. His father is putting a lot of pressure on him, and he is not sure if he can do it. This book is well praised in the book community, though...
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Interpretations of Piranesi | Spoiler Discussion

I wasn't planning on writing anything for Piranesi, if only because this is one of those books that I thought you should go into completely blind. I'm in agreement with pretty much everyone else on that because you can't really talk about this book without spoilers. I also balked at doing a spoiler review because I tend to do them when I have a lot to talk about, which is usually when I have issues with the book. It is safe to say I did not have many issues. But as I looked at some of the reviews and saw some of the interpretations of the book, I thought I would at least write something providing my take of the ending of the book, and also my interpretation of the story as a whole. Spoilers Ahead Greatest Strength The greatest strength of the book is the perspective shift. I don't mean that there is a shift during the plot of the book (part way through), but that the book's foundations are built on the "shift." We get the story from one perspective, and th...
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Ubik | Reviewing D*ck Again

I just finished reading Ubik, by Dick. You know the one. Frankly speaking, this is one of those novels that I think you should just go into blind. I'm beginning to notice a trend, though I've only read two of Dick's novels. Dick likes to smash his novels full to the brim with countless concepts that could be used to make a novel, all on their own. The mere act of describing this novel would make me look like a lunatic. I commented on this in Androids, and I see more of it here. That said, I do think that Ubik, as scattered as it seems to be in the beginning, manages to tie everything in the novel together in a way that is surprisingly parsimonious, and nothing short of absolute mindfuckery. I loved it. There are some things that are unfortunately underutilized, I can't even mention them for the sake of spoilers, but it really just comes down to the fact that Dick is thick with his conceptual construction. So much is there, so it is inevitable that some elements would ha...
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The Trilogy Finally Ends 500,000 Words Later | To Green Angel Tower | Book Review

I just finished reading the gargantuan novel, To Green Angel Tower, by Tad Williams. I thought about reading this book in parts, given its length. It's apparently up there with War and Peace in its length, and it is neatly divided into four sections—but I was engaged enough that I wanted to just finish the book. The fact that I heavily used the audiobook in conjunction with the ebook helped with that. This book is not only long, but it is the culmination of a trilogy. It finished The Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy. I have already reviewed the first two entries beforehand, and I will link them below. To briefly recap, I thought The Dragonbone Chair had potential, and it had an amazing climax. Stone of Farewell was not good, save for scatterings of scenes. It was basically the instantiation of middle book syndrome. But because my critique was simply that it didn't need to exist, I was still committed to moving on to the last entry eventually. Right from the outset, I have to s...
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Islamist Handmaid's Tale? | Submission by Michel Houellebecq

I just finished reading Submission, by Michel Houellebecq. This book is French, though I read the translated version, for obvious reasons. The book is rather infamous for its content, which is naturally why I chose to read it. And perhaps, how you describe it says a bit about your attitude regarding it. I wanted to make a joke about how this was basically The Handmaid's Tale in France, except you replace the Far Right with radical Islam (assuming there is a difference?); as such, many on the left don't like it. But while it does depict a near future, where a Muslim Brotherhood group takes over France, in coalition with the socialists, all because they could not bear to let the Far Right party win, the focus of the story is actually elsewhere. What is this book about? Well, as it is often stated in right wing circles, empires are not defeated, they commit suicide. This book is about France's suicide. It is about the West's suicide. The reader is placed within the head of...
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(Well . . .)Do Androids (Actually) Dream of Electric Sheep?: Book Review and Discussion

I just finished reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by—I want to censor myself for the audience's sake—Phillip K. Penis. This is a science fiction novel written in the 1960s about 2021, a world where the Soviet Union still exists, where video calls have replaced phone calls, where cell phones don't exist, where hover cars are commonplace, and the world has largely been left in desolation due to some undisclosed nuclear conflict. At this point, mankind is now moving on, colonizing the wider solar system, namely Mars. Part of the incentive structure are androids, which are given out to people who leave earth. That is the carrot. The stick is the state of earth, itself. That said, many people remain, and Earth is where the novel is set. This is the book that inspired the movie Blade Runner. I have not seen it. I have seen the occasional out-of-context clip. And I've heard much about it. The biggest thing is that the movie is nothing like the book. I will probably watc...
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(Lord of) The Company: Book Review

I just finished reading The Company, by K.J. Parker. This is not exactly a fantasy novel, but it certainly has that aesthetic. It takes you back to medieval times, and it captures the aesthetic of what you could call a grimdark fantasy novel; the catch is that there is no magic in the novel. It is a very dark, heavily character driven novel. People often criticize it by saying that nothing happens (until the very end), but that's because they go in expecting large and momentous events to unfold—kind of like a fantasy novel. The plot of this novel is very subtle, and it's more about the character dynamics than anything else. But another thing, which I think a lot of people miss in relation to this point, is that there is a certain way in which the story is told, which affects how people perceive its pace. We will get into the specifics below. The basic premise of this book is that Kunessin, a former military general, has returned home. He is making contact with all of his old wa...
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