Sarah's Reviews > The Book of Phoenix
The Book of Phoenix (Who Fears Death, #0.5)
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To my shock this is a DNF at 63%. I loved Who Fears Death and I've been wanting to read this for more than two years.
Where to begin?
The Writing:
This book reads like it needed about 10 more rewrites for a number of reasons. First, it's a blend of sci-fi and fantasy but it reads like it was too unfocused to fit in either genre rather than this being a deliberate choice. It's a mess of unrigorous somewhere-in-the-middle and that's-good-enough.
Second, a few more rewrites might have killed this little problem:
p19 "So you are not American?" I asked. "But you live here. You work here. You-"
"I'm legal, but not a citizen. Not yet. I will be. My work with you will earn me the pull I need."
P52 The woman from Nigeria whom I now realized was most likely banking on the benefits of experimentation on me to earn her American citizenship.
I only marked one of these but there was more than one of these duplicate realizations. You can't realize something and then realize it again, except when a book needs some editing.
The Story:
Am I really supposed to believe that the only copy of a secret company's human experiments is at the Library of Congress? Really?
Where's the plot? Did I miss it? Is a plot really something you can miss?
The whole book read like she sat down and pounded out the story without bothering to do any research or make the story internally consistent. I'm extremely disappointed because I've loved other work by the author and I thought I would get a story of similar quality. This book was such a mess that I found myself getting cranky and I could not finish it.
Where to begin?
The Writing:
This book reads like it needed about 10 more rewrites for a number of reasons. First, it's a blend of sci-fi and fantasy but it reads like it was too unfocused to fit in either genre rather than this being a deliberate choice. It's a mess of unrigorous somewhere-in-the-middle and that's-good-enough.
Second, a few more rewrites might have killed this little problem:
p19 "So you are not American?" I asked. "But you live here. You work here. You-"
"I'm legal, but not a citizen. Not yet. I will be. My work with you will earn me the pull I need."
P52 The woman from Nigeria whom I now realized was most likely banking on the benefits of experimentation on me to earn her American citizenship.
I only marked one of these but there was more than one of these duplicate realizations. You can't realize something and then realize it again, except when a book needs some editing.
The Story:
Am I really supposed to believe that the only copy of a secret company's human experiments is at the Library of Congress? Really?
Where's the plot? Did I miss it? Is a plot really something you can miss?
The whole book read like she sat down and pounded out the story without bothering to do any research or make the story internally consistent. I'm extremely disappointed because I've loved other work by the author and I thought I would get a story of similar quality. This book was such a mess that I found myself getting cranky and I could not finish it.
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Reading Progress
May 16, 2017
– Shelved as:
to-read
May 16, 2017
– Shelved
June 3, 2017
–
Started Reading
June 4, 2017
– Shelved as:
abandoned
June 4, 2017
– Shelved as:
scifi-fantasy-challenge-2017
June 4, 2017
–
Finished Reading
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Vavita
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05 juin 2017 06:59
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