Rocky Davies

I'm not so starstruck...

Revisado: 04-18-25

Look, I used to be a huge Brando fan too, so I get why some people just gush over anything Sanderson writes, be it a novel or soup recipe, but the shine has worn off for me. If this were the first Sanderson book you picked up, you'd be pretty confused and dumbfounded as to why all the hype is there. I think some people just write a "blank check" to him and don't really stop to objectively judge the book.

Yumi is a very slow book with slow characters and slow development and not really subject matter in Sanderson's wheelhouse. It's a romance. Not a rom-com. Just an anime style romance, I guess. Set in a modern fantasy world. That's kinda bland. The whole thing is just kinda bland. Let's be brutally honest here. If the whole focus of the book is on the romance, then the romance should be high chemistry and flirtatious and fun. We don't get that here. There's no development in why the two fall in love, it's merely that they are physically close to each other. "Well, you're the nearest person, so I guess we should fall in love." It doesn't feel developed or earned, even though that's the whole point of the book. They're not in love and then suddenly they are. It's just not fully developed. Definitely not 4.8 out of 5 developed as the rating currently sits at. It's like a 3 out of 5 star book. And that might be generous.

Now, Sanderson is an incredible writer, but in recent years, he's had too many yes men and women and too much of a praising echo chamber. It has hurt his work. He needs some brutal and honest love to get him back to where he used to be.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

This one was a lot of fun and finally had some...

Revisado: 04-10-25

...good progress. I've had a lot of fun with this series and although it had started to dip a bit from the usual "inner filler" that series get, this entry picked it back up by the end. It left off at a great starting point for the next one. I'm excited to grab it once it comes out.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

A little too thin and generic for me.

Revisado: 04-05-25

First off, I wasn't a fan of the narrator and so that obviously puts a strong bias on the book. I had to kick up the speed 2x to even tolerate him. That was strike one against it. Strike two was the over the top swearing. I'm just not a fan of casual constant cussing. Strike three was the generic, tired genre tropes. I've read/listened to a lot of these types of stories and so after a while, they all start to blend together. I've really been looking for something to stand out a bit and offer a new take, or at least a slightly new take. I didn't find it here, even though this series was offered up as fitting that bill.

The main character wasn't too likable, he and the other central characters were pretty two dimensional and unrealistic in their actions and reactions. They just had nothing to them. There was no reason to care about them. There was no reason for them to really care about each other, either. The whole love story subplot had zero development or chemistry, it just happened. The audience was left with, "okay, I guess that's a thing." As such, there was no reward for it. There was pretty much no reward for anything in the book. Things just happened without any development or build-up. The MC never struggled or learned or grew, they were just automatically overpowered and everything was effortless. They didn't even seem to care. It just led to a very thin and shallow story. I get that the OP-MC is common to this genre, but others do it with a little more heart and charisma. Heretical Fishing and Beware of Chicken are two that come to mind in that regard. I'd recommend giving them a try.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Fun and "cute," but I wish there were more...

Revisado: 04-03-25

I like quirky, creative takes on the same old leveling tropes. Shrubley is a fun twist, and sets up some fun characters, but after that setup, everything else falls a little short. It quickly becomes quite generic and worn out. I liked the setup, so I really wish there was more "shrub"stance behind it. It's like the authors came up with a fun band of misfits and an unlikely hero, but that was as far as they got. Then they just set a backdrop vanilla story to it and figured that was enough.

I'm on the fence about continuing. If the next book had a little more thought put towards the story, I'd jump right in. However, I'm worried it will be another generic tale.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

A book about meetings... for 27 hours...

Revisado: 03-27-25

Near the end of the book, Joseph laments that his life has become nothing but a series of meetings. Now imagine, as the reader, having to sit through 25 hours of Joseph's meetings. Riveting! Okay, that's a lie. It's a slog. Even with the speed kicked up. I seriously don't get why the author thought this was a great entry into the series. Now, I love the universe and the characters and the overall story, but this is just tedious, mind-numbing, board meeting transcript for hour after hour. This entire book could have and should have been condensed to a 5 hour novel with a 20 hour appendix, added for those who love meeting dialogue after meeting dialogue. All of those specifics in procedure, metrics, manufacturing, blah blah blah, mattered nothing to the story and just stretched and stretched it.

We see nothing of character development here, nor plot advancement. You could read a summary of this book and then proceed to the next book. I'm so disappointed. The only thing interesting happened in the last ten minutes.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Was hoping for more of Frankenstein in Frankenstei

Revisado: 02-11-25

Yeah, I was a little disappointed. In all the promo material and what not, it seemed like this story would focus on Frankenstein's Monster, Deucalion. Not so. This focuses more on the cop trying to solve strange murders in the town. "Frankenstein" just shows up randomly and flippantly.

I got this and the sequels on a big sale, so hopefully the others focus more on who I actually care to read about.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

I was a little disappointed with this entry, but..

Revisado: 02-05-25

...but, I get that it's built to kinda setup a bunch that will happen next. This whole book was kinda a transition/setup book versus a fun free standing story. As such, it was a little disappointing. I just hope that the next couple books help justify this weaker entry. I really love the world, so I hope it continues to grow and develop.

I've been reading this series alongside Heretical Fishing, so it's pretty interesting how much the two overlap and feel similar.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

The series peaked in book 2.

Revisado: 01-14-25

Look, everyone knows Brandon Sanderson is an incredible author. He's great. But I think that sometimes that leads to being surrounded by a lot of adoring fans and "yes men" and people who believe you can do no wrong. This is unfortunate because even incredible "artists" need to be told no sometimes and that they need to scrap ideas here and tighten up over there. I think Sanderson's writing has started to suffer because of this condition.

The Stormlight Archive started off incredibly. Books one and two are some of the finest fantasy ever written. Action, adventure, lore, character progression, they had it all. I've read them several times. Then we got to book three, not bad, but definitely not on par. It started to drift more into philosophy and debate and consciousness. Our main characters started to go off the rails.

Then book four was a nightmare. Our main characters became overly melodramatic and frankly, boring characters. Who wants to read about mental disorders and ptsd in their fantasy escapes? I have enough of that in my real life. I come to fantasy to take a break. The entire book was the opposite of the first two. Everything that made them great is what made book four horrible.

Then here in book five, we have a bit of easing from the hours and hours of "therapy" but it's still there far more than any fantasy should have. I honestly didn't care for it at all. I want Kalladin the awesome flying sky warrior, the leader, the superhero. Here we just have Kalladin the psych major at community college. Imagine you go to see a Spider-Man movie and it's about Peter Parker studying for his chemistry test for two hours. Some may say, "You're missing the point!" I'm not, I'm just saying the "point" is boring. This series started out as Kalladin's story and then in the end he just became an abandoned side character.

The other main characters also got a curb kick. Shallan just became an annoyance, with storylines that could have been cut and no one would have cared. Dalinar got so stuck in hypothetical and convoluted rhetoric that everyone was asleep reading it. Jasnah was an afterthought. Blah. Everyone that you once loved and cared about was just watered down to a bland broth.

If you can't tell, I'm pretty upset with the way things went. It started off so grand and majestic and incredible. It ended like a sad deflating balloon. I know there's another half. There's 6-10. I really hope it's not another phone book of touchy feely "talk through your emotions." I want the grand adventure back.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

More for tween girls...

Revisado: 12-09-24

Okay, to clarify, I love Honour Rae's "All the Skills" series. I quickly went through all the current titles in that series and so when I saw that she had a new series, "She of Many Dragons," I quickly purchased it too. Having just finished it, I can say that it wasn't quite for me. That isn't to say it's bad or anything, just that I clearly wasn't the target audience. This book feels more like something my 12 year old daughter would love. It's a little more juvenile in tone and subject matter. It has a cool premise, and I would love a more advanced take on it, with a deeper story and characters, but it is what it is. There's not much plot here or development, and the pacing is pretty slow for what you get. So again, an easy and comfortable read for a 12 year old, but not so much for a seasoned fantasy nerd.

On top of that, the narrator is very Disney Princess-esque, which is perfect for that seeming target audience, but not for me. I'll just go back to and eagerly await the next All the Skills book. I'll recommend this one to my daughter.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Kinda your average generic fantasy book.

Revisado: 12-06-24

Alright, let's be honest here, if you've read fantasy for any length of time, you've come across a thousand basic tropes that seem to be reassembled by every average fantasy writer out there. Rise of the Ranger falls right into that melting pot. I read great reviews and so I was expecting something a little new, something with a unique flavor. Nope. It's just bland. Like a vanilla ice cream cone. Not horrible, but not great. Just your run of the mill common fantasy tale.

And I just have to comment on the most annoying part of this book by far. The names. Why in the world, when creating a handful of new fantasy character names, would you make them all sound the same!?!!?! I swear that 90% of the characters' names started with an "A" or a "G." It made it extremely difficult to keep track of all the different main characters (there's a lot) when they were all like, "Asha turned to Aledor who spoke to Alenthor about Ardasha's sword named Alshathor. Then they met up with Gideon at Gerathar's Point, home of Girshadon's brother Galekesha." C'mon, man! Especially this being an audiobook vs. a book, it was a nightmare. Note to writers: don't name your fantasy characters with all similar names.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña