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Sarah (7798 KP) rated Brave New World in Books

Sep 10, 2019

Brave New World

Aldous Huxley | 1932 | Fiction & Poetry

7.7

(44 Ratings)

Book Rating

Interesting idea, but poorly executed

I tried to read this many years ago, and I remember getting a couple of chapters in and giving up, but I couldn't recall why so decided to give it another go.

I can now see why I gave up on this book. The plot itself is a great idea, and similar in a way to the wonderful 1984. However unlike 1984, I found this book to be very poorly executed and i just couldn't get into the writing style at all. I love the idea of a dystopian future, but a lot of the features of this future society feel like they've been named by a child and a lot aren't explained enough to truly comprehend what's going on. The writing style too comes across as very confused and I really struggled with it. The characters are a good idea and flawed, but rather underdeveloped. In fact the whole book feels quite underdeveloped and its only a chapter or so at the end that I truly enjoyed.

I really wish this had been better written, as it's a fantastic idea for a novel.

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Awix (3310 KP) rated Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader in Books

Oct 10, 2019

Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader

James Luceno | 2005 | Science Fiction/Fantasy

7.3

(3 Ratings)

Book Rating

Fair to middling Star Wars tie-in novel, dealing with the aftermath of Episode III. For a novel named after Vader with his mush all over the cover, much of the novel deals with Palpatine (which was fine by me) and much with a band of rather bland fugitive Jedi (which unfortunately wasn't). Vader himself doesn't turn up until well into the book, giving it a slightly lopsided feel; the new characters aren't as interesting as the ones from the movies.

Luceno writes quite capably and the book does have a certain Star Warsy feel to it; some of the cameos from well-known characters do feel a bit laboriously contrived, though, and it almost feels as though it's pandering to that desire to have every last detail of the galaxy far, far away's history explained in detail. More seriously, it never feels like it gets a grip on Anakin/Vader as a character in the middle of a psychological transformation - at least not to the point that you really care about it. Easy to read, some good bits, but nowhere near the standard of (say) Matthew Stover's Episode III novelisation.