Dune Messiah was very much not my kind of book, and for different reasons than I disliked Dune. While my criticism regarding Good vs Evil characters from the first volume isn't relevant to the second one, Frank Herbert's narration style of showing the thoughts of just about everybody felt like a giant "tell, don't show". I felt like the story just crawled along. Everything was overthought and overexplained, none of the characters were likeable in any way, and very little actually happened. I felt that the large time gap ("I don't want to be the messiah and cause a jihad" - 12 years later, guess what) took also part in my disbelief at the fact that there was nothing an emperor could do to at least mitigate the issues he suffered from. Ehh, I probably won't go on with the series.
The Stormlight Archive looks like it's going to be outstanding Fantasy – Brandon Sanderson starts out with a nearly flawless first volume with The Way of Kings. We get a fascinating, complex world, with slow, steady, and subtle worldbuilding (except for a bit of on-the-nose "I'm explaining the rules here" in the first five pages). This world has a lot of distinct cultures, with histories, and mythologies (partly connected, partly separate), and we get to figure it out mostly for ourselves! The story is fairly unpredictable (at least for more than a hundred pages at a time or so), the characters are distinct, mostly lovable or at least understandable, and not Mary Sue-ish at all. One of the protagonists has to deal with explicit depressive episodes, for example. It's a long book, but it's very much worth it, and while at times characters seem like Fantasy archetypes (is that Ned Stark? Is that Hermione?) – that never lasts long, and instead they evolve to be distinct characters that I can't wait to read more about.
Codex Alera continues to be stunning Fantasy – I'm honestly not sure how this Jim Butcher is the same who wrote the Dresden Files. Those are good, but nowhere near Codex Alera. In the second to last volume, we see a great mix of character development, new characters, characters with legitimate but opposing views, and of course brilliant last minute tactics. All characters we care about get a fair bit of development, and since nearly all characters are very very nuanced, including the deeper introduction of non-human cultures, I'm more than willing to accept the one or two plain villains. Seeing an end-of-the-world level struggle on all sides of the three plots (Amara and Bernard, Isana with the frost people, Tavi on an entirely different continent) was a good mix, even though I felt the chapter endings/POV switches were not always executed at good points.
I'm pretty sad this series is over soon now, especially since I'm not one for re-reads (I'd love to, but in the same time I could read new books!) So I hope the last volume, First Lord's Fury, will be an appropriately awesome ending.
Wooop! Sci-Fi version of Hunger Games with real characters (a bit Mary Sue-ish, but still fun). Also, touches of Brave New World in terms of castes.
Golden Son was a worthy successor to Red Rising. It, too, had a slow start, only here te start extends to the 50% mark of the book. After that, a fairly slow and generic story picks up speed, originality, and its past characteristics. Even at its best though it still feels forced in a way that's hard to describe: As if everything happened just because the author willed it that way, and may as well have happened completely differently without breaking any internal logic. The wooden language doesn't help either. I felt there was a lot of unfulfilled potential in this book, and I'm not sure if I'm going to continue the series.
The Secret Life of Bots is an utterly charming novella by Suzanne Palmer. I can't really say much without spoiling parts of it, but the protagonist is lovely without being humanised, the personal dynamics are sweet and witty, and the time reading it was very well spent.
Excellent scifi. Cibola Burn is the fourth part of The Expanse, and the series just keeps on giving. Every book is exactly the kind of scifi I want to read – difficult situations, new worlds, people who are consistent and neither good nor evil (except for Naomi, of course), but just live their lives. Cibola Burn felt very much like I'd fear the exploration of thousands of suddenly appearing new worlds would go. I think if you think too hard about the technology level displayed in the series, some missing (AI, among other things) tech doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I'm willing to forgive this for the vast, technologically and psycologically sound universe.