As others have said, incredibly ambitious work and very artistic. While I can appreciate the stylistic choices with the font and placement, it was more distracting than it was engaging. Only when I reflect back on it do I think "that was kind of cool". Otherwise, having to turn the book upside-down, or flip back pages took me out of the moment and broke the spell.

The first third to half of the book was definitely horror, though more the "unsettling, creepy" type which I enjoyed thoroughly. I can see why some people would hate the book with it's endless footnotes, many completely fabricated, and all the tangents and references. It can read like some PhD thesis at points. Seems like MZD was one of those students who thought "when am I ever going to need THIS in life?" and decided to make all those lessons on Greek mythology and early explorers mean something. That said, I didn't mind it.

I wasn't a huge fan of the ending for this type of book. Also, others have mentioned the gratuitous sexual references made by Johnny get tiresome. I'll probably re-read this at some point, but the last third really slowed down and I lost interest.

Definitely as cozy as Psalm, but I don't think the characters evolved at all. They're just hanging out, asking the same question(s) of themselves and society.

This is Harry Potter and Fourth Wing all over again. (I realize Fourth Wing was written after this, but I just finished Fourth Wing and can't do another one of these right now) Same formula of orphan gets placed with a family that hates her, then has the talent or sheer will to get into a school she "doesn't belong", then immediately meets someone who hates her just for existing.

I'm only 8% in and I'm sure she'll rise to the top after struggling her whole way through school. Which is always conveniently split into multiple years so it can be across several books. She'll team up with other outcasts, or the super popular guy will see something in her and take her under his wing. Probably won't be overly public about it if that's the case.

At this point, I don't even care what the Poppy Wars are about or who the "real" bad guy is that's invading the land or calling some curse upon whatever province/city/school we're dealing with. If we're going to keep going with this formula, at least have the guts to go all GoT and kill off the main character.

The writing style is abhorrent grammar rules exist for a reason you can't tell who is talking half the time. isn't this annoying shouldn't there be a question mark in here you ask. shouldn't there be quotation marks in that last sentence

I picked up Moore based on a reddit thread about funny authors. I went in with zero idea what to expect; I didn't even read the summary. As it happened, I downloaded the kindle at the airport as I was about to fly off to Maui. Coincidentally, the book takes place

in Maui.

For the first third of the book, it's just about Nate Quinn studying whale songs. Again, I had no idea what the book was about, so I was just trudging along. There were some mildly funny bits, but not overly interesting. Then, Quinn sees what he thinks is writing on a the tail of a whale, which is where the story starts to pick up. Things start happening to his "lab" and bits of his research go missing. At first, it seems like a typical whodunnit. But the truth is weirder than I could imagine.

I laughed out loud in a few places. I wouldn't call it "hilarious", but it was an interesting read and enough to make me want to explore more from, well, Moore.

It was a fine, quick read. The witty banter and cynicism is why you read this one. Lord Goring reminds me of Lord Henry from Dorian Gray.

I don't know what to say about this one. Funny and weird. I don't know what's real or not.

As others have said, not a whole lot of plot. You just kind of follow Shibata along her "pregnancy". The last couple chapters pick up the pace and lay out the lessons you're supposed to take from the book very plainly.

Holy shit this was intense. The amount of despair and hope compressed into such a compact story really forged a diamond.

How can you describe eternity and it’s implications in under 100 pages? Read this book and find out.

> What is love that it has such power? Whatever it is, it seems unlikely this God who placed me here knows anything about it. If it loved me in the least, could it inflict what it has upon me? Who can understand? Once I feared to say such things, dreading a worse punishment. But what worse fate could there be? To remember love and know it is unattainable? To know love wanders somewhere light-years and light-years distant, ever knowing it is forever out of reach?

Beautiful and bleak.

If you're someone who needs answers and stories wrapped up in a bow, do not read this. You will be left with as many questions as the protagonist who was essentially born into captivity on what may or may not be an alien planet, then left to wander the vast nothingness alone for decades after her last companion dies. A large part of the beauty is in its ambiguity.

From the afterword:

The narrator is at the heart of this doubleness [femaleness being somehow both central to and almost incidental in this novel], presenting her memories and theories to us from a space of peculiar neutrality. She is not like the other women of the novel, with their memories of the outside world and knowledge of relationships, sex, love and family. Her body never developed the markers of reproduction, and being raised in an underground bunker since an early age, she is in a unique position to be a person without any of the signifiers of personhood. She is an example of a person raised without culture, without societal constructs, without knowledge. She is a pure experiment asking: what does a person become when stripped to the core, raised in isolation? What might a woman be like under these conditions? It is testament to the strength and beauty of this novel that she remains a character too, not just a device; she is formed, sympathetic, and possessing both curiosity and courage.

The Rincewind novels are probably my least favorite of the series. Though they are usually funny, they tend to slip into "wtf is going on" territory towards the end. With this one, I had that feeling most of the way through. It was a drag to get through and I'm glad I can move on to some of the better story lines.

Spoiler

The university wizards are trying to find Rincewind because he always accidentally gets things done. They hop through a window in the university and end up on some tropical island at the beginning of time? Then some god is mucking about with Creation and learns from the wizards about evolution and sex. Then they hop on a boat that was grown out of necessity and get swept up in a storm and land on the Last Continent. Only now the water is running out and some guy is painting pictures of animals that fade into the rock and come alive. They find Rincewind, only now there's 2 Rincewinds and one of them is Archchancellor. They go into the cellar of the "other" university and OG Rincewind paints some stuff and past and present coalesce and it starts raining, thus saving the Last Continent.

Did that make and sense? Exactly.