Currently reading
McGlue
Knife Fight and Other Struggles
Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
The Good Lord Bird
Ancillary Justice
Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More (New Edition)
Dissident Gardens
Nightmare Movies: Horror on Screen Since the 1960s
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
Complete Novels
My blurbs:--What if Stephen King and Anne Tyler had a kid who wrote a postapocalyptic vampire novel? This would be that novel!
--The Stand and I Am Legend kick the shit out of Twilight.
--Now that Lost has ended, get "lost" in this novel!
--Like The Road, if it was more fun to read.
--During the times I was awake, I sometimes read this book, and did not fall into an unexpected slumber while doing so!
I was trying to drum up something interesting to say about this novel, but Greg and NewEngland say it pretty clearly, so I'm opting for silly smartassery. I found the book's pacing intriguingly odd, and given how familiar some of the book's tics and tropes were, and given that it is of a size to make you really understand the distinction between weight and mass, Cronin's structure keeps the plot surprisingly nimble. It can occasionally veer into post-apoca-hash (mystical mumbo-jumbo that makes no particular sense and even as a mcguffin seems unnecessary), but it is also very richly imagined--a full rich world effectively conceived yet conveyed through character and plot, rather than the tedious expository fussiness of much Epic Fantasy.
I was always entertained, and always impressed by the unshowy skill at work; I was, however, after the first gripping 200 pages also never really enraptured--I enjoyed it, will read the next segment, yet I'm not all weak in the knees, didn't feel the earth move. Maybe tamp down those expectations, put fingers in ears and say "la la la la la la" while the hyperbole unfolds. Enjoyable.