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fakelvis

fakelvis@bookwyrm.social

Joined 9 months, 3 weeks ago

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reviewed Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (Ready Player One, #1)

Ernest Cline, Ernest Cline: Ready Player One (Paperback, 2011, Crown Publishers) 4 stars

Ready Player One is a 2011 science fiction novel, and the debut novel of American …

Review of 'Ready Player One' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This isn't high-brow literature or flawless story-telling by any stretch of the imagination. It is, however, damn good fun.

Having been born in the mid-80s and growing up in the 90s, many of Ready Player One's references were a little lost on me. But as a complete nerd, I didn't care and loved every second of it.

It's a fun story, with a few predictable turns, a deus ex machina too many, sometimes laying on the nostalgia a bit thick, and gender/race/ableist tokenism that borders on excessive. But it IS fun.

If those few concerns (and they are quite minor, only appearing a couple of times each in the whole story), this could easily have been a five star book.

Neal Stephenson, Neal Stephenson: Seveneves (Paperback, 2016, The Borough Press) 4 stars

When a catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb, it triggers a feverish …

Review of 'Seveneves' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Enjoyment like a rollercoaster (ups and downs).

This was my second ever 'hard' science fiction novel--after The Martian--and from the first page I was completely engaged with the detail, realism and narrative strung by Stephenson. It's a book that will grab you and not let you go.

The third act opens very weakly, taking my rating from five stars down to three: something just felt 'off' as the descriptions became extremely speculative and unfocused. However, once the direction of the third act became clear, and the focus moved more toward the cultural interactions and the upcoming adventure, I was again completely hooked.

A book I loved, with a bump in the middle of the road that may leave some readers debating whether to continue. I'll be telling others: read this; do continue. After the first 50 pages of the third act, Stephenson picks up where he left of and …