one4ale's reviews
78 reviews

Phenomenal. I already knew him from 8 Billion Genies, but this exceeded all expectations. I could hardly put this book down without immediately wanting to see what's next, and not for a moment throughout the first half did I have a moment of peace without anxiety for Will and Hamza.
A lot of times I don't know how to feel about a story because I know it ends well. More or less, everything ends as you think and the meat of the story, the journey, is the only thing that makes it worth it. Endings are hard to land for me and it was my biggest fear reading this; Soule landed it, I think.

I think a lot of the critiques made by others are valid. I think a lot of the critiques made by others made me wonder if we read the same book. Here's mine:

Critiques

Spoiler

- The women related to Will could've had more to do. Miko's role is mostly to be the voice of reason to him and Hamza, and support Will, and Leigh's role is mostly to be the Witness to Events as a Lois Lane trope and again to support Will. Neither of those things are bad on its own, and they're fun to read and get to know in their own right. I just think it could've leaned more on other aspects of them, especially towards the end. The Florida Ladies and the Coach were great, though, I loved them.
- Kind of a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse ending? Everything wraps up nice and neatly into basically paradise, but that's kind of the point of the predictions so it's whatever.
- The final bad guy is a Central Asian terrorist with a nuke.

tl;dr: Good book, has issues, would read again after forgetting the plot in time. Find a library and read it.

A wonderful detective story. Unlike the ones I usually read, the detective was just a guy (which I liked). He wasn't a genius or a neurotic or some other thing, just thorough and perceptive; I think this worked best for this book. It really let me believe I was there alongside the characters figuring it out as it happens, instead of having random wild twists that make no sense. The twist that was in the book was "sensational," but I could easily accept it.
Also, I really enjoyed the shifting perspective to the female lead as she investigates herself. Probably some of the best sections of the book, if you like competent characters.

Re-read this by listening to the audiobook, even better than I remembered. I think the music was a nice touch, and getting to hear the author read his own work was good too.

Took me a couple of hours to read, wonderful fantasy novel. The ending genuinely made me go :0. It wasn't super crazy, but that's how good it was to read.

Great story, only takes a few hours to read. It's a classic adventure story, what's not to like. I recommend reading it to Skyrim music.

Incredibly fun as just as good as the first. Every chapter had a unique writing style and keeping track of every character was actually fun.

I read this fifteen times as a youth and now again, still just as good as I remember it.

Everything about this book is good, I can’t think of a single genuine critique about it. I think everyone in the world should read this. I think I should read this, again, a month from now.

Somehow this held up better and was more engaging than some of the books I read this year. I think what it does better than most is that, even made for a kid, it doesn’t feel like an idiot plot or patronizingly bad.

One of my favorite Christie Mysteries. Poirot novels are always a fun read for me (because I love the mystery genre) and she’s not the world’s best selling author (barring God and Shakespeare) for nothing. This is the 4th novel in the Poirot series but besides a few unimportant references they’re all pretty standalone. The killer reveal in this one literally made me go :0 it’s just a very interesting plot line.

I really thought this would be a high 3 at best, but after ruminating on it I feel like it should be a 4 even if just barely.
This book had no "plot" in the sense that there was no main thread to follow. It was, rather, a handful of smaller threads that despite being small were enjoyable. I do not like cozy literature, nor do I like "sad people thinking" books. Despite this, Emily Austin had me wrapped in.
I liked all the characters, I liked the small plots. I didn't get bored and I didn't feel like my time was wasted. It is the best example I've read of a good "sad girl cozy etc etc." and some of it was even relatable.
I do critique that it feels similar to her prior work, specifically in that the MC's of both could be more or less swapped, but that may say more about Austin's personal influence on them.

Whenever people talk about STEM and Humanities it's always in contrast to the other, mutually exclusive; it was good to read a book like this that celebrates the romance and emotion already in science. A lot of times you'll hear of an artistic science that reduces the science in favor of art and this does not that. It's Rovelli's perspective of time that allows it to be beautiful, in and of itself.

I already knew enough about the physics involved to understand most of it (though towards the end I had to do some outside reading just to more or less follow) but I think if I knew nothing about anything I would've learned as I went. I learned a lot anyways, though, always fun.

My favorite section was on the topic of gravity and cones, which I'm still thinking about now.