Book Sandworm My Book Reviews

I’m doing the Dark Tower separately, because I’m having too many thoughts. Also, SPOILERS!

The Dark Tower

• Rating: 10/10. Maybe I’m being overly fair, but it’s one of my favorite things in the world, and I have to give it the best rating I can.
• Best: Where can I even begin? It’s a post-modern, fantasy, horror, sci-fi western about the last Gunslinger who lives in a post-apocalyptic dimension wherein he obsessively seeks a tower whose destruction would destroy the universe. How does that not hook you? If you’ve not read it, surely that makes you want to know more. And that’s why the very first book was an immediate win for me. I hear people say the first book’s not that good. Screw that! I stepped in that world and didn’t even know what to do with myself. There is nothing else like it. Ever. In the history of ever. Get with the program.
• Least: They’d all be nitpicks. Truly. Like the fact that nerfing Randall Flagg and having Mordred be the one to kill him was a huge mistake. Having Mordred become the main dragon after Flagg’s demise, also a mistake. King seemed to think he was sympathetic, but he really wasn’t. Having Susannah abandon the journey, another huge mistake in my eyes. Giving her a fakey Eddie-and-Jake family left me feeling empty. And I wanted to cry when she threw Roland’s gun in the trash. Forged from Excaliber and into the garbage. Oh, that’s just some dust in my eye. Wizard and Glass is a beautiful book that I love, but I also remember being frustrated by reading a really long flashback. Yet I believe I’m one of the few fans not annoyed by the ending, who actually found it hopeful. So we all have our nitpicks.
• Character: Eddie Dean, if ye kennit. I tend to gravitate toward the ka-mais, it’s true.

Okay, doing that thing we all do where we start talking like the books when we think about them too long. So thankee, I’m done.

kouklaki-mou asked: Dune, The Stand (really, I could just fill these asks with SK!), The Night Circus, The Gargoyle, Rant (Chuck Palahniuk), Anansi Boys, Coldheart Canyon, Silver Metal Lover, the Dark Tower series

Dune

• Rating: 10/10
• Best: Sci-fi/fantasy that genuinely marries the genres is so rare, and I loved seeing it here.
• Least: Nothing really. Maybe that I was made to feel like this book would be hard to read, and I didn’t feel it was. But that’s more the fault of people around me, not the book. It has this ungrounded reputation for being baffling. It isn’t. It’s a deep world, but it can be grasped easily enough. Don’t let books intimidate you!
• Character: Paul, but then that’s probably expected.

The Stand

• Rating: 10/10
• Best: EPIC!
• Least: That I haven’t read it in a long time, should reread, but its length keeps making me remember I have other books I haven’t even read yet… It’s length isn’t daunting the first time. It’s daunting for rereads.
• Character: Larry Underwood. Tons I could list, but he’s number one.

The Night Circus

• Rating: 7/10
• Best: The magic and wonder of the circus. Plus, I love books about circuses. Don’t ask, because I don’t know.
• Least: Not enough characterization and plot to entirely suit me.
• Character: Celia Bowen. About halfway through the book, I realized I was mostly reading for her.

The Gargoyle

• Rating: 10/10
• Best: I so rarely gravitate toward books with an emphasis on romance, but this book is so different that it can’t really be put in that category. Genre bending = good.
• Least: Again, one of my favorite books, so I have nothing. It was sad? That’s sort of negative, right?
• Character: The narrator. I don’t think we ever got his name, did we? Anyway, he was quirky and interesting and kept pulling the story along, so I enjoyed that.

Rant

• Rating: 10/10
• Best: Palahniuk writes a time travel book.
• Least: Favorite book. Can’t complain.
• Character: Rant. Which would stand to reason.

Anansi Boys

• Rating: 8/10
• Best: American Gods sequel, you gotta know I was all over that.
• Least: It was very fluffy, which I don’t mind, but not a ton of depth to it.
• Character: Spider, believe it or not. I liked Charlie, but Spider definitely entertained me.

Coldheart Canyon

• Rating: 10/10
• Best: EVERYTHING.
• Least: Maybe just that part about the angel and how Tammy keeps him at bay… Because it was very silly.
• Character: Tammy. She’s amazing and one of the strongest female leads of any book I’ve ever read.

Silver Metal Lover

• Rating: 10/10
• Best: Robot love story. There was a time, before YA started to permeate every book shelf, that this was really rare and different. ALSO! It still trumps most YA, because there is sex! HA!
• Least: It’s sad. I dunno.
• Character: Silver. There’s a reason Jane wants him so bad. Because he’s awesome.

kouklaki-mou asked: The Great Gatsby, Imajica, Horns, Under the Dome, Wuthering Heights, A Storm of Swords (giving you a specific one!), Glamorama, what else... LOL!

Woo, here we go!

The Great Gatsby

• Rating: 10/10
• Best: I loved how truthful it felt.
• Least: It wasn’t long enough. That story could’ve gone on and on, and I would’ve eaten it up.
• Character: Gatsby. I just felt for him. I know some think him a creeper, but I think anyone who tries that hard for a dream and fails deserves a lot of sympathy. 

Imajica

• Rating: 9/10
• Best: The huge scope of it.
• Least: The slow parts.
• Character: So many. But especially Pie. The first half of the book was worth it for Pie alone.

Horns

• Rating: 10/10 
• Best: It was incredibly unique.
• Least: I got nothing. This is one of my favorite books.
• Character: Ig, but then I think that was the point.

Under the Dome

• Rating: 10/10
• Best: Everything King does well in an epic novel is here.
• Least: I wanted the bad guy’s comeuppance to be MORE. 
• Character: Barbie. I so dig those King men.

Wuthering Heights

• Rating: 8/10
• Best: It’s so much more a ghost story than people realize, and I love it for that.
• Least: The parts about Cathy II growing up dragged for me.
• Character: This book isn’t really about having a favorite character. So… no.

A Storm of Swords

• Rating: 10/10
• Best: OMG WTF BBQ!
• Least: OMG WTF BBQ! If you don’t understand how both can apply as answers, you need to read this series and see for yourself.
• Character: This was the book that made me fall in love with Jaime Lannister. So probably him. I feel like I’m betraying Tyrion. Both? I can’t.

Glamorama

• Rating: 8/10
• Best: It’s darkly hilarious and improbable and fun and DARK.
• Least: Eh, Victor was a bit of an annoyance after a while.
• Character: Again about not really having a favorite character in a book where everyone is a jerk of some kind. Maybe Victor. Maybe.