Aaron Lavack

So many ideas!

Reviewed: 17-08-2024

A great sequel to dogs of war. Takes the ideas in that book and builds on them. Hard to say which is better, but this is certainly a bit more chilling (until the very end where it’s perhaps too honest about the limitations of the villain).

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The best since the first

Reviewed: 15-07-2024

Overall - this is top notch Ann leckie (Don’t start here if you’ve not read her before - got to ancillary justice). Not her absolute best, but pretty enjoyable all in all.
I think the last quarter could have done with a bit more work - it lacked the ‘oh cool!’ Movements that characterized the earlier parts of the book. But I guess it was good enough.
There was a lot of pronoun stuff, but it didn’t feel too preachy. That said, if you’re majorly triggered by that then give this a miss. You’ll just be swearing for the whole book.

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A sweet farewell

Reviewed: 13-01-2023

Iain m banks’ final book. It’s got the feeling of a farewell, and can perhaps be read as a reflection on mortality. Or just as another excellent entry in his culture series. Better than some of his books, though probably not his best, it’s still a good read, and feels like a fitting bookend to his corpus.
If you’ve enjoyed his other work then give it a read. If not - perhaps start with player of games or use of weapons.

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Well plotted, but terribly written.

Reviewed: 29-11-2021

The basic set up for the story is pretty cool - the work is stuck in a permanent dusk, allowing vampires to multiply and take over. In captivity, the last and greatest of the silver saints - an order of faux-catholic half-vampire vampire hunters - narrates the tale of how he became the man who slew the vampire king to his vampire captors’ historian before they execute him.
Unfortunately the quality of the prose is workmanlike at best. In places it was so bad that I had to take a break from listening for a few days. And more than once I came close to returning it.
In some places this just meant the book felt like a badly scripted movie, but in others it made it hard to invest in the characters as they felt like 13 year olds cos-playing as ‘badass’ vampire hunters.
There were also a good number of instances where Kristoff asks the reader to believe some really stupid stuff about the world. Potatoes grow fine in this dusk world, but every other plant has been over-run with fungus, etc.
Despite these problems, I made it through to the end, and I’m even tempted to get the next book. Kristoff made the world just interesting enough, and the plot just twisty enough to overcome the book’s other limitations.
So, if you’re not too fussy about the quality of prose, and you’re happy to go along for the ride without examining the world you’re travelling through too closely, then Empire of the Vampire might be worth your time.

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7 people found this helpful

Only buy if you’re starting with this book.

Reviewed: 18-06-2019

As with all Miles Cameron’s books, the story is pretty good. The period authenticity is even better. But I only know that because I went and read the book. This useless recording is unlistenable. If they’d used this narrator from the first book it might have been acceptable (he’s a two to three star reader), but changing from the much better reader in the previous two books destroys the experience. It’s like turning on your favourite show and finding they’ve replaced the whole cast and slashed the budget. It feels like an insult to get this after paying for something much better.
I’ve tried to find out why it happened, but haven’t been able to. I think it would feel like less of an insult if I knew why ;assuming there was some good reason). But, really, publishers should plan to avoid this sort of thing in advance.

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2 people found this helpful

I am no longer capable of lying

Reviewed: 19-07-2018

Well, maybe not quite incapable. But it was a great book anyway! Sam is always coherent, and a lot of fun.i love his lack of interest in social norms.

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Too good!

Reviewed: 17-09-2017

I couldn't stop listening! The narration was great, the plot, enjoyable, and the prose, transporting. If you love boardgames, I'm quite sure you'll love this novel. And if you don't, well - after this you'll probably want to. Right, I'm going to start on the next culture book.

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1 person found this helpful

Not a great place to start

Reviewed: 09-09-2017

This a live recording of a retreat. It's worth getting if you've already read/heard the power of now, a new earth, and stillness speaks, but if not, those are better places to start.
For more frequent eggtart listeners, you'll probably enjoy this. It gives you a good sense of being there at the retreat and, as always he has some great insights to share (mixed in with ' new earth' levels of unfounded logical leaps). The good stuff is really good though :-)

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2 people found this helpful