Children of Dune

I remember quite liking this book the first two times I read it, but the latest time it felt rather lacking in plot. Most of the book is mired in a swamp of introspection which often teeters on the edge of full-on Randian rant. I really want to still like this book and it still has its moments, but they’re getting fewer and farther apart as I get older. 7/10.

Jurassic Park

Speaking of rants, I had no idea that Ian Malcolm was the John Galt of this story. This is a rare case of the movie being better than the book. Maybe you could appreciate this book if your interest was computer science in the early nineties or the vagaries of Chaos Theory, but I’m a simple man who wanted a story about dinosaurs but got fifty diagrams of computer menus instead.

I’m just happy that Malcolm died at the end. 6/10.

The Lost World

“Somehow, Malcolm returned.”

The film is trash, so I had high hopes that this was merely a problem of the story being lost on its way to the screen. I still haven’t finished the book, but from what I can tell, the book is trash as well. It’s a different type of trash than the film, but equally worthless. Nobody in either telling has a good reason to be on Dinosaur Island Version 2 and they all deserve to die. I keep reading out of morbid curiosity, hoping that at least the raptors get a good meal. 1/10.

Mistborn

Just finished re-reading the first book. It’s pretty great. An engaging magic system, parts of which remind me of Attack on Titan, and characters that don’t make me want to punch dry-wall (Lost World, I’m looking at you). Overall, it’s a very solid 8/10 up until the last sentence of the epilogue, when that line drops the entire book to a 7/10. I’d recommend striking it from the page with a Sharpie marker, you’ll lose nothing by it.

I would still heartily recommend the three-part series, however.