The book should’ve been called Spare: Grace more me, contempt for thee. Or maybe Spare: How I was second in line to the throne and everyone treated meThe book should’ve been called Spare: Grace more me, contempt for thee. Or maybe Spare: How I was second in line to the throne and everyone treated me so badly but I don’t care at all so I wrote a 400 page book about it so you know how little it matters to me.
I pay attention to British royalty to a certain extent because my wife does. I didn’t have a strong opinion on Harry since I didn’t follow much of it, but my general thought was that he was just an entitled guy who is kind of dumb and can’t grasp how privileged his life had been. My feelings on Meghan haven’t changed after reading this book, but I think much less of Harry. I wouldn’t say that I enjoyed the book, but it felt like an interesting perspective into the mind of a total narcissist and eternal victim.
The frustrating thing about Harry as a person is that all of his self-proclaimed altruistic and selfless desires are completely at odds with his actions. I’d think everyone could sympathize with his feelings towards the press and his hatred for the paparazzi. If he really wanted to disappear from the headlines and not have people following him around, all he’d have to do is quit the royal family as quietly as possible and then fade away. There’d always be some level of interest in him, but it would be drastically less. Every so often people would be interested in him, like when the Queen died or some other major event. But he wouldn’t be faced with the daily onslaught. In truth, he doesn’t want to be a normal person. He desperately wants to be praised and seen as a virtuous person. He also shamelessly uses his royal status to make tons of money while he cries about the royal family and about how little he wants the spotlight. All of this is what he says and he takes every interview he can, makes Netflix shows, and writes books lambasting everyone not named Harry. He is also supposedly desperate to be on good terms with his family, but then he takes every opportunity to publicly complain about them, say how terrible they are, and call them racists. One of the things that really stood out in this book is how the defining feature about Harry as a person is that his mother died, and that is so strange. It is normal to grieve and regularly feel the loss of a parent. It is normal for that to effect you to some level your entire life. It is extremely weird for that event to be the defining characteristic of your identity. You definitely understand when he is very young that he would have some coping mechanisms to handle the loss. But then you sit there dumbfounded as you read how he believed as late as when he was 17-20 that his mother didn’t actually die and that she was hiding out in Switzerland or something like that. Then you realize you are reading a book written by a lunatic as he describes how the leopard he came across in Africa was actually a message from his mother…whom he thought was still alive. Apparently, in his drug or grief addled brain, he concocted the idea that Diana was chilling in the Alps sending various wild animals to hunt down her son to deliver a message that she was alright. It'd be crazy if he thought his dead mother was doing this from some form of afterlife, but it’s far worse that he thinks she is alive and doing it. It is obviously sad, but it also displays a mental weakness and disconnect from reality that explains a lot of his views and actions throughout his life.
The most annoying part of the book was how obviously and wildly distorted the descriptions of various events were in his favor. He always goes into each scenario with a heart of gold, the truest intentions, and only desiring to be truthful. Everyone “against him” is the opposite. They are conniving people who are deceitful, petty, and only concerned with themselves. But, he likes to remind us, he isn’t telling you this for any personal reasons, and he certainly doesn’t want you to think he is talking badly about anybody. Oh no, he just is duty bound to tell the truth because he wants to set the record straight and begin the reconciliation with his family by…let me check my notes…oh yeah, by telling you how his family are all a bunch of selfish disingenuous liars.
Reading about his version of events is frustrating because I think pretty often that 30-40% of it is true. But instead of accepting that maybe someone like his father or his brother just views a situation in a different manner than he does or doesn’t agree with what he thinks should be done, he repeatedly assumes that this means they are liars and hate him. The motives and feelings he says people have is often contrary to the stories he himself tells. For instance, he often complains about how his father was essentially terrible, cold, and didn’t care about him at all. There isn’t a comment too small for Harry to view it as further proof that he is unwanted and unloved. But then he’d tell a little story about how he was scared of the dark, and his father would come into his room when he was trying to sleep and rub his face until he fell asleep. This happened all the time. I was like, yeah Harry, it sounds like he hates your guts. Charles would write him letters telling him how proud he was and how much he loved him, but Harry would boohoo that he didn’t tell him to his face. Charles would try to share his passions with Harry, but Harry would hate every minute of it. Charles pretty much only refers to him as “darling boy”. That wouldn’t stop him from complaining about how unloved he was in the next paragraph.
He is supposedly desperate to repair the rift with his family. He is gallantly willing to put aside all the wrongs they’ve done to him in the past, even though he has always been selfless. And then he’d write things like this about his brother. “It was all so obvious. He cared less about finding his purpose or passion than about winning his lifelong competition with me.” You’re very publicly telling one side of events that your brother almost certainly views wildly differently. You’re also doing this knowing full well that he isn’t going to respond, so you’ll get to you make accusations without any pushback. It’s wild that he thinks he’ll win people to his side by publicly airing one sided grievances, poisoning any chance at all of reconciliation, all the while saying how badly you love them and want to be a happy family.
There were far too many passages about how macho and fearless he is. It is so over the top and ludicrous that it’s hard to fathom that he actually sees himself this way. People are regularly remarking on things like how he is scared of death, and he’d think something, “No, I don’t feel fear. I died on the inside in 1997…” (when his mom died). And the reader thinks they accidentally copied in the diary entry of a 14 year old goth kid. My favorite example is when he was in Africa and there was a leopard in camp. His bodyguards and friends, who are either hardened military men or extremely experienced people in the wild, are all frozen in shock and fear and being like, “Oh FUUUUUUUUCK.” But not Harry. Oh no. Not Harry the spare that nobody loves (but don’t make the mistake of thinking his incessant whining about being the spare means he cares about that. Not at all. But did you know his bedroom at one of the palaces they stayed at was smaller than Williams?). Anyway, he just stares at the leopard because he has no fear of death. Plus, he is also a lunatic who thinks running into a leopard in Africa is literally a message from his mother who he thinks probably isn’t actually dead. I was laughing just imagining if his version of events were the truth. Like this leopard strolls through camp, and everyone is frozen in terror. But Harry is just standing there looking at it, and says something like, “Message received mum. I love you too.” And then his bodyguards surreptitiously glancing at each other and wondering how to tell their superiors that the Prince is fully retarded. My wife watched the movie that was made when Harry and Meghan got engaged about how they met and fell in love. There is an early scene where a young Harry is in Africa and he comes face to face with a lion. I was in the middle of rolling my eyes at how unlikely this scene was when Harry looks the lion in the face and says, “Mom?” I was laughing so hard. I thought it was the stupidity of tv that they would make up such an absurd scenario where this kid legitimately thought a lion was his mom. I suspect that scene was related to this incident, and it turns out they weren’t all that far off. I’m still laughing. The book was laced with this strange mixture of emo/bravado where he’d write something like, “They feared me on the pitch because they thought I was fearless, that I didn’t feel pain. In truth, I relished pain. I sought it out. I wanted the pain on the inside to match the outside.” It got old reading about how everyone else would be terrified and frozen in fear about something that didn’t faze him at all.
Like most everyone else, I’m so sick of the weeping over privacy. My wife and I watched the Netflix show they put out, and they were filming themselves and even had camera crews following them around throughout their marriage. Seems a weird thing for them to set up when the only thing they want is privacy. I guess they were just fortunate that they hired a camera crew to catch some of their tender private moments that can just so happen be used in a Netflix show years later. It clearly illustrated that privacy is the last thing they want. What they crave is a way to monetize their position and control the narrative so that people will love them. They are desperate to be adored. I’m guessing everyone agrees the paparazzi are scum and sympathize with the abuse the royals have to put up with. But it is crazy that he and Meghan clearly have put a lot of planning and effort into working on how they are viewed in the public through the media, because he regularly crucifies his family members for the same thing. I’m sure it’s different for him somehow. He’s probably doing it for the right reasons. His mom died, so you can’t say anything.
Other random thoughts: - Another moment of extreme hypocrisy is when he describes one of the women who worked at the school. Here is what he wrote about this woman: “The matron I dealt with the most was Pat. Unlike the other matrons, Pat wasn’t hot. Pat was cold. Pat was small, mousy, frazzled, and her hair fell greasily into her always tired eyes. Pat didn’t seem to get much joy out of life, though she did find two things reliably satisfying – catching a boy somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be, and shutting down any bouts of roughhouse…Only the newest and stupidest boys would go to Pat with a problem. Or worse, a cut. She wouldn’t bandage it: she’d poke it with a finger or squirt something into it that hurt twice as much. She wasn’t a sadist, she just seemed ‘empathy challenged’. Odd, because she knew about suffering. Pat had many crosses to bear. The biggest seemed her knees and spine. The latter was crooked, the former chronically stiff. Walking was hard, stairs were torture. She’d descend backwards, glacially. Often we’d stand on the landing below her, doing antic dances, making faces. Do I need to say which boy did this with the most enthusiasm? We never worried about Pat catching us. She was a tortoise and we were tree frogs…We went on mocking her as she came down the stairs. The reward was worth the risk.” That’s a passage this monster put in his book where the main focus is him crying about the press saying mean things about him and his wife. Was it necessary to describe how she is ugly and deformed? Even if you feel the scene is needed, surely you don’t need to give some many clues or a freakin name that many people could easily discover who this is. Is it a huge surprise that Pat was allegedly “empathy challenged” when treating the scrape of the little bastards that viciously mocked her physical deformities? I guess Pat putting something that prevents infections on a cut is evidence of her cruelty now? I guess moms all over the world are evil then. This was one of the most shocking passages in the book to me when you compare it to everything else he talks about. In the middle of this book of eternal victimhood, he takes the time to publicly humiliate this woman one more time. You almost hope Pat isn’t alive anymore to have to face this ridicule from one of the most famous men on the planet. But Harry doesn’t care how she would feel, or how her children would be devastated to have their mom needlessly and likely baselessly slandered to the world. It is absolutely shameless that he would put this in his book. -As I mentioned above, Harry is an unreliable narrator. Even when things would get interesting, I still wouldn’t be close to taking his word on anything. Almost everything seems to be cherry-picked and edited down to what makes him viewed the best, which is of course of his the accusations he brings against his family. - There are too many examples to list, but Harry just couldn’t accept the concept of not responding to lies and exaggerations in the tabloids. When he would get told to just ignore it, he didn’t hesitate to assume that this is because they were secretly glad about it because they either leaked the information themselves or felt that they looked better because he looked bad. He conveniently ignores times when he would give identical advice to people like Meghan’s father. Luckily for him, when he gave the same advice, it was because he was looking out for his father in law and not the nefarious reasons he always assumed everyone else had. - When Harry got to Camp Dwyer in Afghanistan, he exhibits an impressive level of narcissism. There is a monument there that honors a dead soldier named Dwyer. The post has signs pointing in the direction of the cities that Dwyer had called home, and how far away they were. This is what Harry wrote about it, “That first morning, walking past the spike, I had a thought. Maybe I should write my own home up there.” It was one of those moments that you just can’t believe how self-absorbed he is. Why would your first thought be to put something about yourself on a monument to a fallen comrade. That’d be like visiting the Vietnam memorial amidst a bunch of veterans and thinking that you should carve your name in the wall. - Harry essentially worships the environment. He regularly has these spiritual interactions with random animals he comes across that sounds like he was meeting a deity. The animals always have some profound thing they tell him about his life like the fox he saw in Windsor, the leopard in camp, the elephant in the river, or the lion that woke up. It would be crazy stuff too, because it wasn’t like he just saw a powerful beast and it moved something in him. He fully believes that he would have some interaction with some random creature in the wild, and that this was some kind of message from the universe. I think he must just always be high out of his mind; how else could you explain him thinking animals are giving him messages from his mother (who he was insanely convinced was just missing and not dead, which makes it even crazier. Like is Diana hiding out in Switzerland and recruiting leopards to go to Africa to tell her son everything is alright?) or that a lion in Africa is going to be watching over him? Maybe it wasn’t a lie that he wasn’t scared. He is probably just so stupid that he thinks the lion is his guardian and it will all be good. Here is another example: “I knelt beside the female, touched her skin, looked at her half-closed amber eyes. I can’t explain it, and I can’t defend it…but I felt that I knew her. As I stood, one of the Namibian soldiers brushed past me, crouched beside the other lion. A big male. The soldier held up his AK-47, asked one of his buddies to get a photo. As if he’d made a kill. I was about to say something, but Billy the Rock beat me to it. He told the Namibian soldier to get the fuck away from the lions. Sullen, the soldier slunk away. I turned now to say something to the doctor. There was a flash. I turned again, to see where it had come from, which soldier had shot his phone camera, and heard the men gasp. I looked back: The lioness was standing before me. Resurrected. She stumbled forward. It’s OK, the doctor said. It’s OK. She fell again, right at my feet. Goodnight, sweet princess. I looked left, right. No one was near me. The soldiers had all raced back to their trucks. The one with the AK-47 was rolling up the window. Even Billy the Rock had taken a half-step back. The doctor said, Sorry about that. Don’t be. We returned to camp. Everyone climbed into their tents, their trucks, except me. I returned to my mat by the fire. You’re joking, they all said. What about the lions? We just saw proof that there are lions out here, boss. Pff. Trust me. That lioness isn’t going to hurt anybody. In fact she’s probably watching over us.” I also laughed at how Mr. Woke colonialism is evil doesn’t hesitate to get in the face of a person in their home country and tell them how they should be behaving. Not very multi-cultural of him. - He is constantly trying to act like he isn’t some uppity royal like his brother. He makes a point to comment on the expensive renovations at William’s house and how many nice things they have. He compares that to when they renovated Frogmore Cottage and as he says, they only wanted the bare minimum, piping, heating, and water. I looked it up and it cost 2.4 million pounds. Probably had a bit more done than the bare essentials. Then he’ll talk about how he buys his clothes at TJ Maxx because he’s just a regular guy. Right. - Mr. Global Warming sure jets around the world a lot. He seems completely oblivious to how privileged his life has been financially. He’s got girlfriends on different continents and it isn’t a concern for him to jet around to see them. If he gets stressed, he just heads down to Botswana to decompress. I doubt he has any concept how many things he casually does and takes for granted that would be financially impossible for almost everyone else in the world. - Harry has very convenient recall. When he as complaints against people, he can remember very specifically what was said. Shockingly, the arguments form his opponents (usually Charles or William), are most often not remembered in detail. He would usually write something very specific about what he said, and then write something along the lines of, “and the Willy argued back, clearly wanting to have Meghan and I look bad in the press at his expense.” Out of space...more
I'm not sure what other people are reading that they give this so many stars. I haven't really liked a Dune book since the first one. This was my finaI'm not sure what other people are reading that they give this so many stars. I haven't really liked a Dune book since the first one. This was my final attempt at the series. I'll probably re-read Dune many times in my life but I'll treat it as a standalone.
I actually really liked the sections on the Great Honored Matre. Unfortunately, these were usually about 4-5 pages in between 60 pages on Odrade that made me want to gouge out my eyes. For every event in the book (outside of the one battle), I either didn't care, didn't have a clear picture of what was happening, or both....more
I should have known I wouldn't like it when the protagonist describes his wife's head as "a shiny hard corn kernel or a riverbed fossil." That was theI should have known I wouldn't like it when the protagonist describes his wife's head as "a shiny hard corn kernel or a riverbed fossil." That was the first or second sentence of the book. This book makes me think that anyone can write a book. The plot itself wasn't horrible (there were even some ideas that I thought were really clever), but the writing was bad enough to be distracting. Some of the actions of the characters seemed to only happen because the plot demanded it. She described on two separate occasions the scent of a woman as vaginal. The first time she also mentioned strange lube. What the heck is that? The author also really really likes spelling out sound effects. I'll make up an example: "The horse trotted down the street, clip-clop clip-clop clip-clop clip-clop clip-clop clip-clop clip-clop clip-clop clip-clop." This happens throughout the book and I found it really annoying. The author did a good job illustrating a crazy person. The ending is not great, but way better than the ending of the movie.
I really disliked the two guy reading Nick's part of the book. He was brutal. His voice sounded really whiny and his impersonation of a woman speaking voice was the worst. The girl did a good job on everything except when she would read dialogue for Nick.
I probably would've quit on this book if I wasn't just listening to it on my way to and from work. ...more
I listened to the audio book this time (my first attempt at an audio book so I didn't want to listen to something I really cared about) and it was horI listened to the audio book this time (my first attempt at an audio book so I didn't want to listen to something I really cared about) and it was horrible. Basically, if you look at the picture below and think, "Wow, what art. What depth. I need to sit and ponder what this means for hours on end.", then maybe this is a book for you. [image] I'm certainly in the minority in my opinion, but I really can't find what everyone else thought was so enjoyable. I laughed one time. It just felt like the author was trying so hard to be clever and it just didn't work.
Some of my complaints: - Pretty much the only thing Arthur ever does is repeat what someone else just said incredulously. He was really annoying. "I was really what?!" That would be Arthur's response to my statement. It got old in his first conversation. -Hearing the robot who seemed to be voice by Eeyore talk got old fast. -Listening to the AI from the ship that was apparently a highly flamboyant gay man was painful as well.
What I liked: -Stephen Fry. I think he did a pretty good job as a narrator. -That one time I laughed....more
I finally won a first reads give-away! So I'll start by saying thank you to the author for providing me the opportunity to read/review this book. ThatI finally won a first reads give-away! So I'll start by saying thank you to the author for providing me the opportunity to read/review this book. That said, I don't have very many good things to say.
I'll start with the good: - I thought the cover was pretty awesome. It is the kind of cover that would catch my eye at a bookstore and get me to read the back cover. - The general premise of the book isn't crazy original, but it was still intriguing. I was really expecting to like this book.
The Bad: - Frankly, this book needs a total re-write. The typos/grammatical errors are non-stop. My impression while I was reading was that this was a book written in a different language and then translated to English. I wasn't able to discover if that was the case, but it certainly reads that way. - The entire book is mind-blowingly repetitive. The narrator and all of the characters will tell you the exact same thing again and again. You could literally take out probably a third of the book and not lose a single thing. - Here is a great example of what to expect from this book: "I know one thing for certain now. There was someone who was investigating the culprit, and I was certain that culprit was the rogue organization, although at that moment I was not certain." This kind of thing happens all the time. - I don't think the author did a great job introducing information and world building. I was often pretty in the dark about how things were (the book is set like 500 years in the future). - The characters would be so confused and have no knowledge about certain subjects, which makes sense. But then later they would figure something out or something would be really obvious to them, and I'd be like, how the heck could they understand this? The protagonist also would just intuitively know things for no particular reason. He wouldn't know what a pet was, but would just know by instinct that chocolate was not good for dogs. - Slight spoiler: (view spoiler)[ He goes to what I'm assuming was a missile silo outside of Utopus. It is in Zone Zero. He goes 4 or 5 times, and then later learns it is in Zone Zero. How could he not have known? These people are terrified of the outside world, and they don't even have clear demarcations of the border? And in a city of 80 million (as estimated by the protagonist), there aren't any rebellious teenagers who are curious enough to go out to Zone Zero? (hide spoiler)] - (view spoiler)[ This entire book is a "journey" story. He is always making his way to the destination. When we get there, we literally don't even know it. Literally all of a sudden someone is talking to him, and I'm like, who the heck is talking to him and did we arrive? You learn almost nothing about this destination you have spent 300 pages walking to. (hide spoiler)]
All in all, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. While the core idea is not bad, the author doesn't deliver. I wouldn't have finished the book if I wasn't committed to giving it a review. I would recommend to the author to put off the second book in the series and clean up this story first. ...more
This book was a fitting end to a lackluster trilogy. I thought the first book was interesting. It wasn't great, but I enjoyed the read. The second booThis book was a fitting end to a lackluster trilogy. I thought the first book was interesting. It wasn't great, but I enjoyed the read. The second book was horrible. The finale was better than its predecessor, but it still sucked. I mainly read it because I hate not finishing a book/series. I gave this 2 stars when I started the review, but after writing down the long list of things I hated, I realized it doesn't deserve that much credit.
I'll just list the things I hated: - I really didn't care about any of the characters by this point. The only one I even remotely wanted to know more about was Holland. Lila, who is probably supposed to be your favorite, is this supposedly hardcore chick who never does anything hardcore. She is portrayed as so cold and cut throat but her actions never back this up. Kell just seemed pathetic in this book. Alucard is only there so there can be a gay love story (which was much more prominent than the love story between the two main characters). Rhy was boring and idiotic. I kept hoping some of them would die so that maybe they would elicit some emotional investment out of me but I was just bored. -(view spoiler)[Why did there have to be the stupid contrived "misunderstanding" cliche about why Alucard left? In all the time the two are banging each other, Alucard can't think of a good time to bring up why he disappeared all those years ago? It felt like the author needed some tension between the two and couldn't think of anything better. (hide spoiler)] -There is so much inconsistency in the thought processes and abilities of the characters. (view spoiler)[Why doesn't the bad guy use his minions to attack the palace? I guess he realized he personally can't get past the wards so he may as well take a nap and let the plot advance until it is ready for him to attack. He could have immediately sent the masses to attack. Or he could have used them to kill any people who he wasn't able to turn. Or he could have killed Rhy on one of the many times he would go out wandering the city looking for people. (hide spoiler)] - (view spoiler)[And seriously, the wards on the palace are going to fail because 300 people are banging their heads against it? The bad guy I guess is so stupid that he can't think to use a catapult or any other form of weapon? And he had thousands of people under his control earlier in the book. Why wouldn't he use this tactic then? This just seemed like really lazy storytelling to me. (hide spoiler)] - I never found much to like about Lila. And it is still ridiculous that she became one of the best magicians in the world over the course of a few months. -(view spoiler)[ It was nice of the shadow king guy to let all of the antari leave unmolested. (hide spoiler)] -The worst part of the entire series.(view spoiler)[ The whole, the sea serpents burn their own ship before they take another one seems cliche and unoriginal. Also, it makes no sense. Do they hate money? Wouldn't they be better off selling the new ship? Also, the author specifically discusses how tiny the Ghost is (very crowded with only like 8 people aboard), but the Sea Serpants will burn their larger, I would assume, boat. So how will that work? The 10-30 guys will all live on the tiny boat now? Do Sea Serpents not have a single possession on board or do they just burn all of their stuff whenever they spot a new ship? Did the Ghost not have a lookout? How could the Sea Serpents set their boat on fire and then come in for a sneak attack? Perhaps the stupidest thing in this entire series is that this battle wasn't a total slaughter. We have 3 antari and Alucard, the most powerful magicians in the world. Kell could have won that stupid tournament in the last book if he wanted to. Lila got something like 3rd place. Alucard got 1st. Holland is better than both of them. And I am supposed to believe that they would struggle fighting a small band of pirates? Really? Can't they just all use magic and more or less instantly kill all of their opponents since they can't defend themselves against magic? If magicians are this pathetic, why would any of their kingdoms value them and why would any fear them? (hide spoiler)] This was a good example of the series as a whole. The abilities/skills of the protagonists would vary drastically from one scene to the next depending on what the plot called for. -(view spoiler)[Why is there even a cliche of jumping in front of someone to take a sword/bullet? Why wouldn't Hastra (I think that was his name) just push Kell out of the way? Then they would both get to live. The author also likes the "character gets stabbed and dies instantly" cliche. (hide spoiler)] - (view spoiler)[Why did Jasta need to murder her crew? Weren't they a part of her family? They were pirates, it seems to me they would've gone along with what Jasta was planning. Maybe they were "moral" pirates that authors/movie producers like so much who don't steal/murder and instead do....I don't know what. Maybe just sail around waiting for some heroic cause they can reluctantly be a part of. (hide spoiler)] - (view spoiler)[ The legend of Rhy wandering through the sleeping city is something the author describes, but she also specifically says that nobody saw him, so how did that legend start? (hide spoiler)] -(view spoiler)[Again with the taking the sword in the chest for somebody else. Rhy couldn't push his mom out of the way? Rhy can still feel pain, but when he gets stabbed through the chest by Col he just makes some snarky comment and kills him? He can then go to his mother before he even starts feeling pain? And why would Col, one of the best swordsmen in the world, let go of his sword? I guess he was just so surprised that Rhy is apparently immortal and impervious to pain that he just released his weapon. (hide spoiler)] -(view spoiler)[Not being able to transport from a boat seems like a stupid rule that was invented just so they had to have the stupid boat ride back to dry land. (hide spoiler)] -(view spoiler)[Why would it take Osaron days to realize all his minions had been put to sleep? It's like he just decided to ignore everything that was important to him until his enemies had a way to fight him. And is he really not powerful enough to wake them up? He would swat around antari like they are nothing, but some priests put together a few wards and he is like, "well crap, I guess I better not even try to break one of these wards. These must be the super powerful kind, not like the ones on the palace that I can destroy with 30 minions." (hide spoiler)] -(view spoiler)[Lila wants to attack the Veskan fleet of ships, presumably with thousands of soldiers, because they are antari. She must have forgotten that a small group of pirates just came very close to killing them all. (hide spoiler)] -(view spoiler)[When Maxim went outside to fight Osaron, it was kind of dumb but ok. What the heck was Rhy doing when he went outside? I guess he really had to go and tell Osaron to his face that he isn't scared of him. Just one more example of the plot dictating the actions of the characters. (hide spoiler)] -(view spoiler)[The author isn't alone in having the antagonist be almost god-like for the entire story and be unstoppable only to have the main characters suddenly be able to hold their own against him in the end. (hide spoiler)]
I finished the book and thought, "Good. It's over. Now on to read something I actually like." To sum up: The characters were boring and annoying. In a different book, the plot may have been interesting. It isn't like nothing happened. The problem is there was so much inconsistency and that the actions of the characters rarely made sense. It is like the author thought up an outline of the plot and said, "I'm going to stick with this even if I have to force the characters to do totally illogical things to make it happen." I shouldn't be able to point to a key plot feature and say, "why would the character do that? He could have done this, this, or this and the entire story falls apart....more
The best thing about this book is the cover. The first book in the series was ok. Everything that was at least moderately interesting in the first booThe best thing about this book is the cover. The first book in the series was ok. Everything that was at least moderately interesting in the first book, the author didn't carry over into the second. The entire thing is centered around this big competition, which you don't even get to until 360 pages in. Once you get there, it definitely doesn't seem like something worth writing a book about. The "important" plot seemed hastily thrown together, and ultimately was barely a part of the story. The worst part of the book is that the motivations and reasoning for the characters are absurd. Both of the main characters take these humongous risks (view spoiler)[ Lila and Kell both joining the tournament. (hide spoiler)], and there is absolutely no reason to. (view spoiler)[Kell joins because he is bored or needs to blow off some steam or something stupid like that. Lila because...that's just the kind of thing she does? There is never a good reason given for Kell being willing to disobey his king and possibly starting a war if the other nations finding out. There was also never a good reason given for Lila attacking a contender, and then impersonating him. She is throwing away her place on the crew (the best reason for this is that she runs before she gets comfortable) and if she is found out, she will be executed. And conveniently she takes the place of the one champion that doesn't have a single person know who he is. This guy is one of the most powerful magicians from his country, and not a single person would recognize him? (hide spoiler)] Once you finally get to the competition, the battles aren't that interesting and to me weren't very logical. (view spoiler)[Kell, the most powerful magician in the entire world, would struggle with any of these competitors because he isn't used to limiting himself to one to three elements? That seemed weak, but fine. Lila going from barely able to do anything to randomly being able to destroy some of the best magicians in the world over the course of a short time seemed ridiculous. It wasn't believable when Star Wars did, and it wasn't believable in this book. (hide spoiler)]
Also, I personally didn't enjoy reading about the bisexual lovefest or of Rhy admiring the body of pretty much every guy he encounters.
Basically, this book had no point. The important part of the plot took up about 30 pages of the book, while what should've been a sideplot took up the rest. I spent the entire book thinking that the reasons they were doing everything were beyond stupid, and I didn't care about any of it. At least the first book had stuff happen....more
I read this book in a day, not because I liked it, but because I couldn't stand it and just wanted to be done. I loved The Name of the Wind. That is oI read this book in a day, not because I liked it, but because I couldn't stand it and just wanted to be done. I loved The Name of the Wind. That is one of my favorite books. Wise Man's Fear was decent if you overlook the sex-god part. It has been awhile since I've read this series, so I couldn't recite a list of characters or draw a map of the relevant Kingkiller locations if asked. In spite of that, I would still expect to be able to follow this story. I spent the entirety of reading this book (skimmed the second half) confused and bored. The author warns you it isn't a typical story, but I'm not sure what it is supposed to be. Here is my recommendation, if you are thrilled at the prospect of reading about a girl running around interior decorating and kissing inanimate objects, then this book is for you. Also, if you are totally full of yourself and think you are super "deep", I'm sure you would love this. This was pretty much 150 pages of gibberish. I think Rothfuss was trying to be deep and artsy. Here is a line, "It was a dull, blunt bite against her tender altogether hindmost self." What? It isn't that I can't understand what he is saying, it just seems to determined to be artsy. Also, you get a constant list of locations Auri is going but usually not much of a description of what those places are. To sum up, I'm completely dumbfounded how the average star rating is 3.91 as of this writing. I think the crowd who appreciates this type of book is the type who enjoying going to the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. An example of this "art" consists of 3 basketballs floating in a half filled aquarium. And people are staring at it contemplating I don't know what, probably how it is totally a representation of the ubiquity of the inherent violence of capitalism or some crap like that. Rothfuss is very clear that this isn't your typical story, and I'm warning you that it isn't something that would be enjoyed by anybody I know. ...more
I am very confused why anyone would give this book a higher rating than 2 stars. This is the exact same book as the Last Colony, except told from the I am very confused why anyone would give this book a higher rating than 2 stars. This is the exact same book as the Last Colony, except told from the perspective of Zoe with a couple of extra scenes. So instead of being told from the perspective of a character that we have gotten to know and can relate to, we get the same story-line but with teenage angst and hormones added, cause that is so fun. It is like the Twilight version of the story. The book jacket says this book is a stand-alone. If that was the case, I could cut it some slack, but there is no way you would really understand what was happening if you hadn't read at a minimum The Last Colony. There are so many things that are quickly glossed over that you would not comprehend the relevance if you didn't already know exactly what happens. My best analogy of this book is watching a movie that uses narration heavily. Now watch the movie again, but this time the narrator is a different character. You might think that occasionally it was interesting what this new narrator said, but the entire time you are thinking, "I just watched this movie. This is stupid." (view spoiler)[ How stupid is Zoe. She is supposedly so smart and can figure everything out. She knows full well that the Consu require species to defeat them in mortal combat for them to answer a question. She is really shocked that Obin had to die in order to get the Consu to help Roanoke? That was a very weak part of the plot/character development. (hide spoiler)] Skip this one....more
This book was a huge rip-off of the Count of Monte Cristo. It has been a while since I've read that book, but I remember enough to know where the authThis book was a huge rip-off of the Count of Monte Cristo. It has been a while since I've read that book, but I remember enough to know where the author got his ideas from. As I read this, I remember thinking in the beginning, "huh, that is kind of like Count of Monte Cristo." Then something else would happen, and then again and again until about half-way through I am very angry because now I can predict exactly what is going to happen next because the author stole the story and just put the events in a different time period. The book itself is fine if you can get over the fact that the author is a hack....more
I have to say that I do not understand the appeal of this book at all. When I saw all of the high ratings, I assumed there would be a plot, passable wI have to say that I do not understand the appeal of this book at all. When I saw all of the high ratings, I assumed there would be a plot, passable writing, and engaging characters. Instead I got a plot that moved at a snail's pace, atrocious and infuriatingly repetitive dialogue, and numerous characters who were simply tedious. If you want to read passages about the military styled life of birds or the politics between geese or how a certain type of fish is a doctor to other types of fish, then this is right up your alley because that is most of the book. I couldn't wait to finish this book so I could move on to books that I actually enjoy. The best part about the book was that it is only 210 pages, but they still felt like an eternity to me. I will not be reading anymore of this series....more
Well I hated this book. It is basically a collection of short stories that for the most part aren't entertaining and were boring. I'm sure there are pWell I hated this book. It is basically a collection of short stories that for the most part aren't entertaining and were boring. I'm sure there are plenty of people who found some deep meaning but, like many books considered classics, it royally sucked. If you like going to the Museum of Modern art and staring at some basketballs floating in a half-filled aquarium, then maybe you would like this book. If you watched Mad Max: Fury Road and thought, wow, this is art. Then you should read this book, because if you enjoy that kind of crap, this is right up your alley....more
I have very little good to say about this book. Let me start by saying, if you are one of those people who try to make everything deep then this is prI have very little good to say about this book. Let me start by saying, if you are one of those people who try to make everything deep then this is probably right up your alley. This book was so boring. One of the things that annoyed me greatly was how the protagonist constantly has to explain to you how he has changed the name of a person or tell you that he is purposefully leaving out details so you can't discover his identity. I understand if you want to throw that in there once in the beginning, but he has to do it 10-15 times in a book that is only 277 pages. It was so freakin annoying. Also, almost nothing happens in the entire book. This is probably what those deep people love. I'll take a bloodbath over this every day of the week. Spoiler alert, on page 266 of 277, the first gun is pulled that isn't being used for testing. 266! I read it all because I'm stubborn but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. To recap, if you are one of those posers who loves to go stare at a painting of a couple of squares for hours and discuss at length what the author was trying to express, go out now and read this waste of time. You will love it....more
