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Going by themes and plot alone I should have loved this book, but the execution was all wrong. The format was clumsy, the characters were insufferable, the dialogue was annoying, the political details were unrealistic, and the sexism was straight out of 80s. (Practically the first thing said about the giant female-presenting robot was that it had "perky tits", seriously?) Even the translation was uninspired.

While I'm interested in seeing where the story goes, I hate the idea of spending any more time with these people trying to out-sass each other and prove that they can be oh-so-tough and not affected by anything that happens. Editors, what were you thinking?

Anyone can write a complicated story. It takes real skill to write a compelling, simple story.

The Luminous Dead is a very compelling, simple story.

A cave, an obsession, an unhealthy relationship, bizarre technology that seems almost haunted. This is a nightmare of a book that captures the feeling of being in a cave, and then twists it into the most relentless horror story I've read in ages.

Even though MJ-12: Inception wasn't a long book, it still took too long to get going. The last third or so I really enjoyed, but the parts before that were treading over familiar ground, a superhero/spy origin story that felt completely done to death.

Still, the end was good, the previously low stakes felt properly raised. If I could trust the story to keep up the pace it achieved, I'd probably be getting the sequels in a heartbeat.

A talky, ponderous, philosophical novel about an incomprehensible alien entity that is somehow supremely dangerous. There were so many things here that did not work for me: the egregious stereotypes, the tell-don't-show approach to everything from emotions to plot points, the annoying naïvete of the main characters, and a central conceit that ultimately did not resonate with me at all. I couldn't find any depth in the mysticism either. Honestly, this felt like the story of an experimental LARP or a low-budget and not particularly good Twilight Zone episode. I didn't really hate the story as much as I was utterly unmoved and uninvested.

Sometimes you want characters, who are human, well-rounded, have weaknesses and make mistakes. And sometimes you want Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr, who's more awesome than Batman.

The Confederation novels are essentially a pulp mil-scifi space opera. They have a big plot that interests me not in the slightest, but they have a protagonist I cannot help but love. Weird superpowerful aliens blah blah, I'm just here for Godzilla ... err, I mean Gunny Kerr. If the book was nothing except her taking on impossible odds, I'd be perfectly happy and would probably have given it four stars. But the big plot, while sort of clever, is to me just not as interesting as the low-level heroics.

These books are seriously not for me. Yes, they are competently written, the plots are interesting, the protagonists good enough BUT I honestly cannot stand the malicious incompetence of everyone else in the world. Particularly the ending of this one felt needlessly cruel in the vein of "nah nah, you cannot get what you want because everyone else is a stupid asshole". Also, all the detail is somehow ... in the wrong place? We get detailed competence porn of clever people doing clever things with zero tension, but we absolutely gloss over things I'd have felt deserved a bit more explanation.

I don't know. I'm just on a different wavelength than the writer, apparently.