Book Thought Blurbs

Absolutely gut wrenching! In the best way.

Golden Son is the second book in the Red Rising series where we continue to follow Darrows journey of infiltrating the golds. Book 1 in the series was already good, but book 2 definitely stepped it up a notch.

Non-Spoilery Thoughts:                

We are immediately thrown back into the action and Pierce stepped up the tension by introducing a fleet of new characters to root for and wish dead (also fleet cause there are more spaceships in this one. Get it?). The pacing of this book is intense. Every time I think we will settle into a boring section of the book a new twist or plot direction is introduced. Every time I think I know what will happen, a character does an unexpected action that sends our progress on its head. You never know what to expect and it is brilliant.

This book introduced a greater sci-fi element with space battles. Really interesting concepts of spaceships and breaching doors as well as powered suits up the tension of the “normal” fighting we saw in book 1. Of course, the entire concept of the Iron Rain was just epic.

The dynamics changed interestingly now that Augustus is so close to Darrow and our other characters. He is still a leader of the golds, but now we get to see his power struggles and pettiness. Everyone who seemed untouchable and all powerful becomes more human and greedier as we watch Darrow ascend in society (with some ups and downs).

Finally, this book doesn’t care about your emotions. It will have characters do as they would do, not how you want them to. It reminded me of back when Game of Thrones was at its peak and people didn’t know which character would make it out on top of the struggle and which would fall.

Rating: 10 /10 easy

Spoilery Thoughts:          

One thing that annoyed me a bit is that Darrow deliberately steps away from his friends to pursue his ambitions. It is true to his character, but at the end of the last one he and Mustang were on good terms and in the same house, and in this one they split up or went separate ways and we don’t see it happen. We just hear about it.

But that negative is really me just nit-picking. I have a hard time finding something wrong with this story. It might be my current favourite book. Though I must say, I was relieved when the Howlers finally made an appearance. Sevro and Darrow are both my favourite characters of this series and seeing them back together again was fantastic.

Pierce Brown manufactures conflict in a way that I just eat right off the page. The war between Bellona and Augustus is entertaining, but the rivalry between Darrow and Cassius is fantastic. The fight between Cassius and Darrow was really intense. Of course, this fight also led to the plot reveal that Darrow trained with Lorn au Arcos, an epic fighter who we haven’t seen fight, but everyone knows is a certified badass. I loved hearing about Lorn before meeting him, and I liked the man just as much when he finally got introduced.

But I am getting ahead of myself. First, a quick note on Octavia au Lune, the Sovereign and new introduced biggest ruler of the galaxy. With Nero au Augustus becoming more of a mentor than a tyrannical ruler, Octavia seems to slot right into the missing power vacancy. She is also the person people like Nero must answer to. What I loved is that Pierce Brown stayed true to his introduction of the golds. Octavia seems untouchable and infallible but turns out to be as corrupt and greedy as the rest of them. When Darrow makes questionable decisions, it is these actions that remind us that he is trying to change things for a reason. The golds suck!

Finally, the ending of this book. Man. I did not see that coming. We just finished the greatest battle of the series so far. We got to witness what an iron rain was. We have had zero time to let our minds settle. And then, at the end of the book, when you expect to finally let things settle as we set up the next book in the series, everything goes tits up. The Jackel killing his father and everyone at the victory ceremony who stood against him was vicious, brutal, and absolutely not what I was expecting. He has become a new favourite book villain of mine. Someone who is not just outright evil but twisted and manipulative. We leave this book with Darrow defeated, a good chunk of his friends presumed dead, and the biggest evil since the beginning, Nero au Augustus, dead. When I read this scene, I involuntarily thought back to “Star Wars The Last Jedi” when they killed the big bad Snoke and left us with no plot for the last movie. That is not how you replace the big bad. But GOLDEN SON! THIS! This is how you kill off the big bad. By overthrowing him with an even greater evil. And we know that other ruling golds exist on multiple other planets. Our good meaning and conflicted protagonist Darrow has lost everything, and is facing insurmountable odds. What a crazy way to end a book. I picked up the third book immediately… No one is leaving me with an ending like that for long.

John Scalzi has quickly become one of my favourite authors with his action-packed sci fi adventures in a faced-paced novel length. I feel he is an easy author to recommend to anyone who wants to check out sci fi as his books simply don’t look very daunting in length and have fun covers, but include well thought out characters and interesting events.

“Old Mans War” is a military sci fi adventure, playing with the concept that, given biomodification, anyone can be a soldier. If this sort of thing and some on the ground battles on different planets with smart strategic moves and bizarre alien creatures sounds good to you too, then this might just be your cup of tea.

Spoilery Thoughts: We follow John Perry, an old man who loses his wife of many years and decides he might as well join the military at seventy-five because he has nothing else left. Luckily, this military exclusively recruits seventy-five-year-olds, and John Perry and some other recruits get rocketed into orbit with a space elevator. On their journey into space, they all get their old people bodies replaced by bioengineered clone bodies that look twenty-five years old with green skin, smart blood, enhanced senses and some other cool features. This leads to the very bizarre reading experience of watching a gang of old seventy-five-year-olds meet each other again in young attractive bodies and bang each other’s brains out… The take-away from this, Scalzi plays with the concepts and ideas of morality and how people would really behave in this futuristic setting. People are not just machines when they become soldiers. They still love and hate and make mistakes.

From there the recruits get trained to use their special new bodies for war, where they learn that they are still vastly outmatched by the alien creatures out there. Different societies and species exist, and most want to kill you. Great. We follow John Perry on a few missions and get exciting battle scenes on different planets mixed with the moral and ethical questions a soldier would have if they left the only planet they knew and went to blow up some stuff for a space government. I liked this part of the book, so it was great for me. But if you don’t like this part because nothing massively plot specific happens, then this will be a draining section of the book. However, I really don’t see how this could not be liked, as Scalzi keeps introducing new alien concepts that make it intriguing. A particular favourite of mine is where John Perry joins a fight on a planet against aliens way smaller than him, and he has a mental breakdown where he questions what he is even doing in this military, and he rage kicks a alien sky scraper no taller than himself and acts as this alien species own personal Godzilla.

I won’t spoil the entire story, but this is a good chunk into the book already. If you like the sound of it, check it out.

My thoughts: “Old Mans War” is a great book filled with a military style plot that I didn’t think I would enjoy but actually really did. John Perry is a decent main character. He is easy to empathise with in the beginning of the story and becomes a great person to experience space through later. Some of the side characters I found less memorable. A few stay with us throughout the story, but due to the nature of joining different attack squads we are sometimes thrown with a whole new platoon that I didn’t really care for. The fighting in this book is fantastic, the alien concepts fun and unique, and generally quite scary. I love the pacing of this book. It is an easy read. I never felt I had to sludge through a chapter to finally get to a certain point. This is something I value more and more as I read more books. I love sci fi and fantasy, but I no longer enjoy a book being 1000 pages long where two hundred are spent explaining an ancient feud that has nothing to do with our story.

Rating: 8/10

(fun fact: this was my first post, but being inexperienced as I am at blogging I broke the structure and couldn’t fix it. So I repost it now. Think of this as my introduction post to my blog. An AboutMe2.0)

The thought of blogging came while walking through a nice park. I want to write more and get better at it. This includes writing my own stories, which I am doing (currently one third threw writing my first fantasy novel). But the only way to get better at writing is to keep reading. And when I am done with a book, I write down my thoughts on the book. So then I thought “Hey, why not share these thoughts online and see what others think as well?” and since we all know the internet to be a friendly place filled with loving people, I’d say this is a splendid idea.

So here we are. My first post. It has no purpose. It is not reviewing anything yet. That will come later. This is just my initial brain vomit about blogging for the first time in my life.

If you’re reading this, thanks for stopping by. In the future I plan to post a review of a book or at least a thought on sci fi and fantasy writing every week. I also plan to put in a comments section and a suggested book reads section. It will take me a while to figure out how to do that, and then it will probably take a while to find people who will write there. I look forward to seeing you there!

But first, maybe I should create the blog, set everything up, and get this text off of this word document and straight online…

A Rediculous Space Adventure

I am pretty sure this is a Sci Fi classic. Mine is the 42^nd anniversary edition, which tells you this isn’t a new book. It’s also a hilarious nod to a joke within the book. 42 is suddenly my favourite number now.  

This book is wacky fun. We follow along our not so remarkable human friend Arthur Dent as he (first chapter spoiler) is ripped away from Earth just before it gets demolished for a galactic threw road. Sounds ridiculous? That’s because it is. And the rest of the book continues to be so. Douglas Adams kept finding new unexpected ways to make me laugh in this book. Be it an underhanded comment mocking todays society or a hilarious dialogue that smashes our wacky characters together. My favourite character is easily a robot named Marvin who is a highly sophisticated machine capable of vast computation who is only used for menial tasks such as fetching tea. But he is self-aware and therefore he is constantly depressed.

I think the only negative thing I can say about this book is the ending. This book doesn’t really have a plot, as we are simply flung from one ridiculous occurrence to the next. As a result, the book does not really have a proper ending. Instead, I felt it was abruptly stopped and it is now up to us to immediately buy book two and see what happens.

There was also a moment past the half way point of this story where I did not feel compelled to keep reading, and I dropped the book for a few days before finishing it. I guess this could mean the pacing could be better, but this is not an epic fantasy novel. I think this small book can easily be read for a few chapters, then dropped for a few days and read later. I certainly felt no guilt doing so. Or you could read a small amount on your public transport every day. It is not a very demanding book of you. Just take 20 minutes out of your day and have fun reading incredibly funny space shenanigans.

The Hitchikers Guide to The Galagy is a comedic space adventure full of crazy worlds and weird people. Would recommend it to anyone who wants to have a laugh.

Rating: 7/10

I think Red Rising by Pierce Brown was just the book I was looking for. You see, some resent readings have felt like a real chore to get through. The world can be great, a character can be interesting, the plot can be intriguing, and yet nothing felt it deserved the title “page turner”. I have been in search for a new book that lets me forget I am sitting in the living room in the real world.

That book is Red Rising. A book that is thrilling and keeps my interest throughout. There is something so easy and fun about reading this book and following along on Darrows journey. Where to start…

The books pacing is fast. I like that. In the first few chapters I worried that Pierce would not flesh out his characters enough for me to care from them. I am not sure at what point in his chapters he won me over, but he did and from that point forward I no longer felt the pacing was too fast and instead felt I was jumping onto an incredible adventure.

The character themes really gripped me. Darrow is such an interesting main protagonist who struggles recognizing where his own motivations are guiding him and where he is driven by a revenge story. It also adds a layer of tension when Darrow makes a new friend in his journey, and we as readers know he will inevitably have to betray them. He is a great protagonist I had fun reading. His responses and emotions to unexpected situations keep the story tense, and his rage and hatred for the rulers of his world was so consuming I felt angry in my own home while sipping a coffee.

I was skeptical of the world building before reading the book. I had heard that this was a futuristic society where people have been separated by colours and that our main character is from the lowest class. My mind immediately wandered to the likes of Hunger Games, Maze Runner, Divergent and whatever else I read back in school. As an adult now, that description of the Red Rising society almost lost me before I started reading. So here is my message to you, potential reader. DON’T GET DISCOURAGED. In my opinion, the Red Rising series is only similar to YA dystopian books on paper. In reality it is a gruesome and brutal space opera with flawed and conflicted characters. The world surrounding the story sounds amazing, being on a terraformed Mars with everything from rural and grubby mines to lavish and exquisite cities in a man-made utopia.

To me this book was fantastic!

Rating: 8/10