Ultimately, this is pretty generic pulp fantasy. It suffers from a lot of the flaws of the genre. For example, it tosses around words like goblin and orc and ogre and troll without explaining what these different races are, and how they differ. Context tells me that I've presented them there in roughly ascending order of threat level, but that still doesn't help me understand what they are! How big is a giant? I defy any of you to answer that question based solely on the text.

But the thing is... that's not really a problem for a book like this, is it? The intended audience is people who would already know these things. This isn't original fantasy, after all -- it's licensed fantasy, explicitly in a D&D setting. Presumably that was the draw when this was first published. And it isn't like I didn't enjoy the book, so in the end, I guess it doesn't really matter.

I'm really torn as to what to do with these books.

Looking at purely the story being told, it's probably a better story than was told in the games -- though no doubt the transition to video game would involve the addition of a lot of filler, to pad out the playing time. After all, we've gotta keep this in multiple volumes so we rake in the cash, am I right?

But as a book? It reads rather awkwardly. Things that make sense in a video game, such as attacks being named and what have you, are suddenly very stilted and unnatural in text. So it's a dilemma. This is one of the few books where I feel the need to differentiate between the story being told, and the way the author is telling it. Please every English professor everywhere forgive me for this comparison, but: it's like Charles Dickens. I like the way he plots his stories, and the way he makes things fit together, but I don't think his writing style is particularly interesting. And now that I have compared a disposable light novel based on a video game to one of the classic authors of English literature, I guess I am a huge tool forever.

But! All of that is actually not why I've rated this book so low. I may need to go back and re-read the first two volumes to see if this is something that I just didn't notice until now, or if it really is something that started with this volume, but the book has a slightly infuriating habit of having a character say something, and then immediately reiterating it in the narration. It's show more ridiculous. I don't like my books to assume I'm too stupid to understand what I'm reading. And that, more than anything else, was the obstacle that prevented me from finishing this book faster than I did. show less

And the plot thins.

I received this book about a year after I was supposed to, so I felt no particular rush in actually getting a review of it finished. Finally I started to feel a little guilty, and decided to dig in before it was far too late, instead of merely too late.

But it turned out to not be an issues, as I blazed through this book at a very high clip. That might seem like a recommendation, but it isn't; let me explain: when reading a good book, I'll have to pause periodically, maybe every few pages, to reflect upon what I've read, and let it sink in. This goes double or triple for a particularly dense of philosophical book, which I suppose is what I was expecting out of this. On the other hand, this book is so devoid of content that the pages simply flew by, making little to no impression on me. The only times I had to take a break were the times when my patience with the author completely ran out.

He seems to want very badly to think of himself as open-minded. It's right there in the title! And yet the answers to all of his hard questions comes down, more or less, to "but nevermind that, because we know [our particular brand of] Christianity is right." To be honest, I don't think anything actually bothers him about Christianity. At least not seriously. He isn't grappling with these issues. He merely seems to be acknowledging that some people find them to be issues, and then dismissing them because of FAITH. As if it were a good thing.

I don't even think this is a matter of my not show more being the target audience for the book, because the book is so pitifully insubstantial that I'm not even sure it has an audience. Maybe other Christians who want to fancy themselves open-minded? They certainly ought to enjoy the book's reading level. It seems to be right about at their intellectual level. Oh, damn, I almost made it the entire review without a snarky comment. show less

I was feeling a bit feverish as I finished this book, and its sum effect on my could best be described as surreal. I found myself repeatedly re-reading certain sections of the book, trying to figure out if events had actually occured that way, or if I had somehow stopped understanding the words on the page and started simply hallucinating. Particularly at the end.

I don't mean that as a bad thing.

My gods the fanservice. I mean I know it's a manga, and therefore rife with fanservice almost universally, but sometimes it just bothers me more than others. Why, in a comic about an online game, would you decide to have your 14-year-old girl character take a shower, and bring her gaming device into the shower with her. The constant panty shots are one thing, but do we really need a panel in which only a splash of water obscures her (remember: 14-year-old) crotch from our view? Was that vital to the story somehow? Ugh.

I think Lenore is just not really my thing. It's a lot more disjointed than I was expecting.

I'm pretty sure anything I'd like to say about this book has been said more eloquently by other people. So instead I'll cast eloquence aside and say: Jesus what a piece of shit. It makes me want to go through my library and bump all of my other half-star ratings up to one star, just to emphasize that this really is the worst book I've ever read.

There is exactly one clever sentence in this book, and that is when Edward wonders aloud why, when placing bets on whether Bella would come home with him or not, anyone would choose to bet against the precognitive girl. There. Now you don't need to read 500 pages.

It is a MIRACLE that this book is still in one piece, considering how much I flipped through it over the years.

I'd just like to say that my tagging this as humor is only for consistance with my other uses of the tag. Really I should tag it as "humor" -- scarequotes intact.

As if doubt was a bad thing.

Freud is much better when he's not talking about what he's commonly associated with. Which is kind of sad I guess.

What.

I have a strange spot in my heart for this book. It's not well-written by any stretch, but I guess maybe I just have fond memories of it. This is probably the best book it is possible to write based on the original Doom.

Philosophy should have ended with this book. This book also has the best closing lines of anything ever written -- or, every philosophy text, I should say. 1984 has the best closing line of any novel ever written.

My first Vonnegut novel, but certainly not to be my last I think. I'm not sure how I managed to go just under twenty-five years without reading one of his books, but clearly that was just under twenty-five years wasted, wasn't it?

This book has a strange effect on me. I don't have much to say about it beyond that -- I'm sure anything I might say has already been said in the 334 other reviews.

Nnnnnguh, Kant. This book is more or less indecipherable due to Kant's impenetrable writing style. I feel bad for the guy, to an extent. I honestly do. He grew very frustrated after this book was published because it was so poorly received, but reading it, it's not hard to understand why.

I'd also like to point out that the back of my copy claims that it includes a "faithful rendering of Kant's [...] sentence structure"... as if that were a good thing.

It is such a good thing that the author was not compelled to write disappointing sequel after disappointing sequel to this book. Because that is the sort of thing that might diminish my appreciation of it as a stand-alone work. But thankfully, that is not the case.

I didn't understand all the antipathy towards this book when we read it back in school. It was quite good, even if the 'voice' is obviously... non-modern.

I confess, Devi was always Jhonen Vasquez's most interesting character to me.

Hey, it's Nny in color. But more importantly, it's more Devi.

I rank this as better than the movie(s), perhaps specifically because it's also more absurd than them?

This is my go-to source whenever I'm writing something with a Judeo-Christian slant.

This book is like wallpaper. I read it, but it made no impression on me whatsoever.

The fun part of this book was realizing that "Wilks" and "Billie" were clearly Hicks and Newt, only they had to change it when Alien 3 came out.

The chapter with the gun is possibly the most adorable thing ever, ever.

This part works beautifully as a counterpart to the Inferno -- rrrrrrright up until the part where he decides that calling something indescribable is a substitute for descriptions.

I mean, who does he think he is, Lovecraft?

Ah yes, the Ciardi translation. I feel like this is what most people are thinking of when they think of Dante. Poetic, at the cost of accuracy.

I read this back in the day -- I was fortunate enough to not have its ending spoiled for me beforehand. Totally didn't see it coming. By the way, don't you love the completely nonsensical "THIS IS SCIENCE FICTION" cover on these books?