en-US Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:53:59 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Review842526106 Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:53:59 -0700 /review/show/842526106 Skye Nathaniel gave 2 stars to X-Men: The Complete Age of Apocalypse Epic, Book 1 (Paperback) by Scott Lobdell
bookshelves: fiction, comics-and-graphic-novels
I've heard that Age of Apocalypse Book 1 is a selection of unimportant side stories that serves as a poor introduction to this fan favorite alternate universe storyline, but that's not the real problem; more importantly, it's badly written and badly drawn, suffering from clumsy exposition, adolescent melodrama, a bland setting, thin characters, confusing action, clichéd plots, and bloated scale.

As an inexperienced reader of Marvel comics, I'll just assume that this is not representative quality and pretend that I never came across it, lest I lose interest in the X-Men altogether. ]]> Review323035749 Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:53:55 -0700 /review/show/323035749 Skye Nathaniel gave 2 stars to Hexwood (Paperback) by Diana Wynne Jones
bookshelves: spec-fic-and-magical-realism, fiction, puzzle-story
I sought out and purchased Hexwood after finding it suggested as a good example of a story that unfolds like a puzzle. I enjoy unconventional literature that requires nontrivial effort in piecing together the narrative. Unfortunately, while Hexwood definitely falls into this category of fiction, it is a poor effort that I would not recommend either to the young-adult audience for which it was written or to adults looking for an interesting labyrinth of a plot.

Hexwood's central conceit is that a machine whose purpose is to repeatedly test the outcomes of running a given set of elements through an infinite variety of scenarios has run amuck and threatens to engulf more and more of the world in its expanding game space. Although this could be a somewhat entertaining (if thinly veiled) metafictional allegory for authorship, the book has no such intention but instead plays the premise straight. In fact, for the longest time, the idea of the machine seems to serve merely as a license to depict whatever arbitrary events the author desires—a license of which she takes little imaginative advantage, mostly retreading clichéd fantasy tropes that, in fact, do not become subversive or more interesting in any way from the knowledge that they are illusory.

The first hundred pages are a chore, a series of time-skipped scenes vaguely designed to provide purposefully unrevealing glimpses of strange phenomena with inadequately clued rules surrounding carefully ill-defined characters in a terribly bland forest setting. The reader is insufficiently tantalized by the mysteries of the book's first third because the actors, setting, and circumstances lack for compelling detail and momentum.

There is a cartoonish aspect to the vague sci-fi wizardry; this may be appropriate to the young-adult audience, but it is not much to my taste. The characters act like they are concerned with the rules of performing magic, but the story's premise essentially provides an unlimited source of supernatural creation that undermines the restrictions which some characters impose upon themselves for reasons that are never entirely clear. The prose itself is nothing special; depictions of characters' thoughts and feelings are nakedly and coldly expository most of the time. The author's approach to characterization is generally not engaging.

When the story's science-fiction frame finally begins to disclose the identities of these people, the effect is not one of grasping newfound comprehension but rather simple relief that something is, at long last, actually happening. After the turn, the field of the story rapidly telescopes, but this payoff accomplishes nothing that is worth the cold, wasted space of the long first act.

Hexwood is indeed the narrative puzzlebox that I was promised, but—and I am loath to say this as an admirer of books featuring experimental narrative structures—it is a failure of storytelling due to the omniscient narrator's capricious lack of interest in engaging the reader for so long. The book is not so much ill-conceived as it is poorly designed; the mysteries of the story neither require nor are improved by keeping the reader in the dark for so long.

I would be interested in reading a story that seeks to manipulate the reader through layered and hidden roles and events, but, because the content here fails to justify or make good use of that kind of form, Hexwood comes off seeming vapid, pretentious, and even sadistic. It is confusing for confusion's sake; a pointless book that pretends to be more clever than it is and that does not respect the reader's time. ]]> ReadStatus9499437979 Mon, 02 Jun 2025 07:40:13 -0700 /review/show/7621249692 Skye Nathaniel started reading Delicious in Dungeon, Vol. 1 by Ryoko Kui
]]> ReadStatus9499434292 Mon, 02 Jun 2025 07:39:05 -0700 /review/show/7621250559 Skye Nathaniel wants to read ダンジョン� 14 [Dungeon Meshi 14] by Ryoko Kui
]]> ReadStatus9499434221 Mon, 02 Jun 2025 07:39:04 -0700 /review/show/7621250509 Skye Nathaniel wants to read ダンジョン� 13 [Dungeon Meshi 13] by Ryoko Kui
]]> ReadStatus9499434149 Mon, 02 Jun 2025 07:39:03 -0700 /review/show/7621250460 Skye Nathaniel wants to read Delicious in Dungeon, Vol. 12 by Ryoko Kui
]]> ReadStatus9499434010 Mon, 02 Jun 2025 07:39:00 -0700 /review/show/7621250354 Skye Nathaniel wants to read ダンジョン� 11 [Dungeon Meshi 11] by Ryoko Kui
]]> ReadStatus9499433901 Mon, 02 Jun 2025 07:38:58 -0700 /review/show/7621250278 Skye Nathaniel wants to read ダンジョン� 10 [Dungeon Meshi 10] by Ryoko Kui
]]> ReadStatus9499433839 Mon, 02 Jun 2025 07:38:57 -0700 /review/show/7621250224 Skye Nathaniel wants to read ダンジョン� 9 [Dungeon Meshi 9] by Ryoko Kui
]]> ReadStatus9499433766 Mon, 02 Jun 2025 07:38:56 -0700 /review/show/7621250173 Skye Nathaniel wants to read ダンジョン� 8 [Dungeon Meshi 8] by Ryoko Kui
]]>