Judas Unchained by Peter F. Hamilton
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Ongoing, updates will follow as I work my way through this monster…
Audiobook part 1, 5h 20min, pages 1-159, ★★★☆☆, nothing really stuck with me. It was ok, I guess. Nothing really memorable happened. Or it did, but it was indistinguishable from the end of the last book…
The Swords of Glass, Vol. 1 : Yama by Sylviane Corgiat
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Swords of glass fall from the sky…
…and change everything. Lovely artwork!
It looks as if it‘s done with coloured pencils and watercolour. The forrest animals are incredibly cute. And the landscapes are also really nice to look at…
Coming of age, maybe the end of the world as they know it, revenge and a quest… completely open end, so I will very likely continue with the next volume straight away.
The story is good so far, although not terrible original or mysterious. I think it‘s a pretty safe bet to say that we will look at a happy end at the end of whatever volume this story arc takes us.
Sunstone Vol. 1 by Stjepan Šejić
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Good artwork with nice page layouts and colouring.
The story is sweet and a little sappy and for a length of 87 pages pretty simple and straight forward. Girl meets girl online, they get to know each other, then decide to meet. Lots of anxiety and girly angst. They meet, they like, they get on with girly bondage. Not too graphic.
Lots of cute latex outfits. Some more pretty good artwork.
36 pages of extra stuff… kinda a lot, right?
Better than ok, but it lacks any kind of tension and is a little too girly for my taste. Probably not going to continue.
Lazarus: Risen #3 by Greg Rucka
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Forever is here again, ready to kick ass…
Looks like she‘s still trying to figure out what the bigger picture is and what her father is really up to… She might have a plan, but if she does, I don‘t get it.
Could Johanna Carlyle actually be a decent person? I have always been deeply suspicious…
Ominous things going on.
The artwork is generally good. I find the look of the female characters too similar though. They all seem to have the same face and only hair colour, glasses and clothes give any hints who each of them is. Some of that is on purpose, I get it. But that much?
Only three-quarters of this comic are main story, after that it‘s other things. Pretty thin plot. Pretty. Thin. Nice little cliffhanger.
I am still not happy with the new format. It feels like a long wait for not a lot.
The next one in March 2020, Gifts of God, will be a standalone with different MCs, so I might skip it.
Precious Little Things: A Tor.com Original by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A prequel to the magical novella Made Things. I enjoyed this prequel more than the novella.
It had a fairytale feel to it. The world was more fully envisioned than the novella. The characters remained a bit more one-dimensional though.
I liked Tam and that he wanted more for his child than he had been given. Poor guy.
The ending left me unsatisfied. It feels unfinished.
Can be read for free here:
https://www.tor.com/2019/11/20/precio…
Made Things by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
You know Pinocchio, right? This is not his story. Here the Made Things or rather the homunculi come across as a separate world of clans and types with their own society and ecosystem. They connect with the world of humans via the help of the Moppet, aka our main character Coppelia.
This is a fantasy heist story. Not my favourite trope, it‘s usually too formulaic for my taste. Which this is, to some extent.
The story didn‘t do a thing for me. I actually considered to DNF this, but it probably doesn‘t do the story justice. I missed Tchaikovsky‘s humour. Maybe he is more suited to science fiction?
2.5 stars, rounded up (barely)
Pandora’s Star by Peter F. Hamilton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a very long book and really should be read with the plan to continue with Judas Unchained. The story unfolds with the speed of a geriatric snail, so bring patience and time and appreciation for the little things along. I took me two months to get through the audiobook—ok, I am slow with audio—and I did it with the print version next to me, to double-check on details.
The world building is great, this is full of great ideas. And when there is action, it is well done. Characters take their time to develop and the aliens are truly scary in their otherness. This is good, although I wonder what it would be like at half the page count…
Thoughts and comments, while working my way through this monster:
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Audiobook Part 1: 6 h 56 min (183 pages), Chapters 1-6, ★★★½☆
Glacially slow set-up and introduction of a variety of characters. Very little plot progression. I liked what was there. Alas, it was not for the impatient and easily bored (aka ME!). I wonder how all these very different stories will come together.
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Audiobook Part 2: 7 h 22 min (pages 184-376), Chapter 7-11, ★★★★★
Interesting biology and chemistry! Really cool idea, although Merredin is not necessarily a planet I would like to visit. Just that by itself is a great plot bunny for a colonization/first contact novel! There are several other planets and constructs in this part of the book, that would make for great settings for separate novels. The world building here is fascinating.
With all people living multiple lives, I would love to have a timeline sketched out at the back of the book. If I should ever decide to re-read this book, I plan to make annotations and try to figure out a timeline myself.
You definitely need patience with this book. Interesting things happen and then you switch POV and…. something else happens and it‘s all a very loooong game….
But by Chapter 10 (yes, yes, almost 300 pages of set-up), things are starting to come together, the many characters are becoming familiar names and the plot picks up the pace.
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Audiobook Part 3: 7 h 30 min (pages 377-574), Chapters 12-16, ★★★★☆
The characters are finally familiar and we are getting into the meat of the story.
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Audiobook Part 4: 8 h 52 min (pages 575-806), Chapters 17-21, ★★★★☆
Chapter 18 was horrific! We are moving towards a climax… maybe… Besides the action I still enjoyed Ozzie‘s chapters the most.
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Audiobook Part 5: 6 h 48 min (pages 807-988), Chapters 22-25, ★★★★☆
Wow, I finished! I thought this would never end. There was some light wrapping up of the status quo at the end, but I guess it would be a good strategy to have Judas Unchained ready to go! I pretty much continued with the audio straight away.
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On the Marie Celeste of the Commonwealth universe: https://peterfhamilton.fandom.com/wik…
And the RL Mary Celeste: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ce…
The Commonwealth, publication order:
https://www.goodreads.com/series/1085…
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