#algorithm reading recs

This review is for Iron Gold by Pierce Brown (author of The Red Rising Saga). It is the FOURTH book in the saga and was published in 2018.

Premise:

Since this is the FOURTH book in the series, I won’t go into the details about the premise. I keep the review as spoiler free as possible.

Review:

I have a confession. I started reading Iron Gold in 2019...According to Goodreads, I started reading it on August 1, 2019. I finished reading it on November 17, 2020. Life things happened (including a move) and I put Iron Gold down for a while. I got to around the 200 page mark at the end of September 2019 and didn’t pick it back up until the tail end of August 2020. Here’s the thing, Iron Gold is not a book meant to be binge-read. Pierce Brown himself acknowledged this. And I took it to heart apparently. :P

Anyway, with that out of the way, I enjoyed Iron Gold. It was more expansive than the original trilogy and I loved seeing Pierce Brown grow as a writer. Instead of a single perspective, we got 4 different POVs. There’s one POV that I didn’t enjoy as much but I appreciated the depth the character provided to the overall story. I acknowledge that my choppy reading experience of Iron Gold contributes to how I feel about the book. I want to re-read it (and do so in a shorter timeframe) when we know the release date of book 6 and I can plan my re-read of the series. Alright, let’s get to the breakdown of my review:

Characters - I didn’t get enough of the characters that I loved from the original trilogy. But I love a couple of the new characters we were introduced to. Those new characters have me very excited for the rest of the series. I really enjoyed the multiple POVs and the depth of characters we got to see. Brown is good at creating morally grey characters and I love to read them. There was one POV that I found to be a bit too depressing for me. I understand why the character is the way they are but I also wanted to slap them in the face a few too many times. So my rating for characters is a 2.5.

Worldbuilding - With the multiple POVs, we got to see more of the world Brown started building in the original trilogy. I really enjoyed the expansion. I didn’t find any of the new stuff mind-blowing but it was fun to see more details of some places that I cannot say because spoilers. I’d say that the characters are stronger than the world. So my rating for worldbuilding is a 2.5.

Storytelling / Writing Style - This book had Pierce Brown written all over it. There’s was just more of it than the previous books. There’s the pattern of Action, info / setup, action, lull, psych, omg. It was an emotional roller coaster ride. I found myself not wanting to binge read the whole thing and sometimes, I needed to force myself to pick up the book. I ended up using the audiobook to help me keep up momentum to read more of it. It’s weird. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy the book but I also wasn’t itching to pick it up or read it in one go like I did with the previous books. Pierce Brown himself acknowledged Iron Gold isn’t one to rush through. It’s to be savored. I heartily agree. It is a different pace and having the multiple POVs switch the way they did contributed to that. I think having some longer chapters for each POV would have helped the pacing be more even - especially when he had back to back chapters for the same POV. For this category, I give a rating of 2.

Logic - Upon my first reading, I didn’t have any major problems with the logic. I can’t say it is perfect but I didn’t have any major issues (that I can remember...). So with that, I give the logic a rating of 2.5.

Enjoyment - I enjoyed the book when I was reading it. But I did have to take it in small bites. It was like nibbling on rich, bitter, dark chocolate and savoring the small piece as it melted on my tongue. Can’t have too much at once. My rating for enjoyment is a 2.25.

Conclusion:

This review is for Red Sister by Mark Lawrence (author of The Broken Empire trilogy). It is the first book in the fantasy trilogy, Book of the Ancestor and was published in 2017.

Premise:

Nona Grey was about to be hanged for killing a man when, just in time, the Abbot of the convent of Sweet Mercy convinces one of the jail guards to release Nona into her care. Thus begins Nona’s life at Sweet Mercy where she joins other young women in training to become some badass nuns.

Review:

I wanted this book to be a 5-star read. But, it wasn’t. I was so sad I didn’t enjoy it more. I love the concept of the badass nuns and the Path and the four tribes. There were really cool things and some awesome action scenes. But, in the end, there were aspects that I wished were done differently. Here’s the breakdown of my review:

Characters - I liked Nona for the most part. It was touching to watch her grow from a naive young girl to a confident and skilled young woman. Abbott Glass was interesting in the first half of the book. There were a few other characters that I really liked. I love people from different backgrounds / experiences coming together to form a group. It is one of my favorite tropes. So my rating for characters is a 2.

Worldbuilding - I like the worldbuilding well enough. The idea of a moon giving warmth instead of the sun was cool. The Corridor was a really nice part of the world. The convent school, the classes of nuns, the different genetics that give powers, how the Path works, so many fun and awesome elements! So my rating for worldbuilding is a 2.5.

Storytelling / Writing Style - I had the most trouble with this aspect of the book. There was a character who told a story within the book multiple times. That’s really all I can say. I understood the author’s intent but it was done one too many times in my opinion or at least the story bits were a tad too long. I also had a hard time picturing some of the settings / character movements. There's a part towards the end of the book that I felt was supposed to be super climatic but the way the story was told was jarring and slowed down the pacing. The buildup was not consistent and the climax felt deflated because of it. Lastly, this is a very personal nit, the lack of commas caused me to re-read sentences quite a bit which disrupted the flow of the story for me. For this category, I give a rating of 1.5.

Logic - The logic okay. I understood the motivations of the characters and the sequence of events. Almost everything was fine. Almost everything. There’s one particular part where I thought a certain character was inconsistent and that inconsistency was used to drive the plot. There were other more minor occurrences where I questioned the logic of how some things happened. So with that, I give the logic a rating of 2.

Enjoyment - I really wanted to enjoy this book. My favorite part is towards the beginning of the book when Nona first arrives at the convent. There were some other parts that I really liked but can’t give more details because that would be spoilers. However, this book fell short of my expectations (partially my fault for having such high expectations to begin with). My rating for enjoyment is a 1.5.

Conclusion:

This review is for A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine (aka AnnaLinden Weller). It is a science fiction book published in 2019. It was the 2020 Hugo Award recipient for Best Novel. 

Premise:

Mahit Dzmare has been appointed as the new ambassador of Lsel, a station on the outskirts of a galactic empire. She is sent to the city planet at the heart of the Teixcalaanli Empire to represent Lsel. When she arrives at the heart of the empire, she discovers the previous ambassador is dead; hence, the demand from the city planet for a new ambassador. Mahit is suspicious of her predecessor’s death and starts to dig. 

Review:

I predicted this book would be a 5-star read. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. However, I still enjoyed many aspects of this book and will read its sequel. Here’s the breakdown of my review:

Characters - Some of the characters were very interesting: Mahit, Yskander, Three Seagrass, Twelve Azalea, and Nineteen Adze (I had to look up what an adze was). The rest of the characters were a bit lackluster (except for Map. He’s too cute!). I did grow to care about some of the characters but not deeply enough to be that emotionally impacted. The way the book is written, I felt a bit disconnected from the characters. It seemed like I was reading an account of events and of the characters at times rather than really being immersed in the characters. Although, I think the Teixcalaanli culture is a character in itself. We explore parts of it quite in depth. That all being said, my rating for characters is a 2.

Worldbuilding - I enjoyed the world building. There was definitely depth (e.g., poetry’s role in the Teixcalaanli culture, the cloudhooks, the imagos, etc.). The naming convention for the citizens of the city planet was interesting. It’s a number + a noun (e.g., Three Seagrass). Which is similar to Mayan naming convention (maybe?). Martine spends a lot of page time describing the role of poetry and verse in the Teixcalannli culture and appropriate facial expressions for each situation. The latter part got a bit annoying. I didn’t find the worldbuilding to be confusing. Martine’s academic background seeps into her writing. But I did find it a bit frustrating that while a lot of pages were spent giving information about the world, I didn’t feel like the worldbuilding was very complete. We went deep in some areas but glossed over many others (e.g., life on Lsel, imago integration therapy). I didn’t find anything particularly unique about the world. For example, I’ve seen similar things done in Ancillary Justice. So my rating for worldbuilding is a 2. 

Storytelling / Writing Style - Some people may find the worldbuilding a bit dry, but I enjoyed what we got - especially the part where people were basically rap-battling as a game. The way the information was given to the reader was consumable and not overwhelming. Martine’s writing is exquisite at times. There were parts where she painted a clear imagery in my mind with her words. Those parts were beautiful. One major complaint I have, though, are the excerpts that preceded each chapter. We get one excerpt from Teixcalaan and one excerpt from Lsel. Sometimes, the excerpts were a bit too long for my taste. I felt like the excerpts were pre-work the author did to flesh out the world and characters and were just slapped on to the final version of the book. The only ones I really enjoyed were excerpts of the fictional poems. Another qualm I have is the way humor was sprinkled throughout the book. For example, the naming convention was sometimes used to illicit laughter from the reader but I found that sometimes the names took me out of the story. Additionally, the humor felt a bit out of place - not well integrated into the flow of the story. There would be very serious and intense moments and then *pop* something would be said that is meant to be funny. I’ve read other stories where that works (e.g., The Murderbot Diaries), but the Teixcalaanli culture and the characters were all so serious that the humor felt disconnected. But I did enjoy the writing enough that I’m interested to read other things by Martine. For this category, I give a rating of 2.5.

Logic - The logic was fine. Martine explicitly explains pretty much everything she wanted the reader to get out of the book. She didn’t leave much to chance / doubt. For example, a character will say a sentence and Martine will explain exactly what she wanted the reader to get out said sentence. There were also interludes throughout the book that gave more backstory that explained motivations of certain characters. The plot itself was also fine. Nothing terribly complex. For logic, I give a rating of 3.

Enjoyment - While I give the logic part a 3 rating, having everything so clearly explained actually took away from my enjoyment of the book a bit. The intrigue was lessened because Martine explained so much as we went along. The way humor was planted in the book did not really increase my enjoyment as it felt a bit forced. I still enjoyed the book though. Mainly because the Teixcalaanli culture was interesting and Three Seagrass was a pretty good character. I probably won’t re-read this book. Unless the sequel is amazing and a re-read of A Memory Called Empire would provide a new reading experience. My rating for enjoyment is a 2.

Conclusion:

It’s been a little while since I’ve updated. Oops.

For this post, I wanted to document my predictions for the outcomes of my Algorithms Recommendations Reading Project.

As a reminder, I selected 3 bookish sites that provide book recommendations based on what the user inputs as books they like / dislike / want to read, etc. I chose Goodreads, LibraryThing, and StoryGraph. If you would like to see what the recommendations each site gave me are, see here. 

So here are my predictions:

Goodreads’ recommendations will be a mixed bag. Since Goodreads relies more heavily on recommending popular books, I think my enjoyment of its recommendations is going to be hit or miss. The algorithm doesn’t seem to be as robust and doesn’t take into account as many factors. It seems to primarily key off of which genre the reader likes, which books are popular within those genres, and some broader categorizations (like YA, adult, etc.). Out of the top 18 recs I pulled from Goodreads, I’ve read 1 and heard of another 15.

LibraryThing’s recommendations will be pretty safe. I think I will enjoy the majority of books from its recommendations. That’s because LibraryThing’s algorithm seems to play it safe by recommending other books by authors I indicated liking already. For example, LibraryThing recommended several Jo Nesbo books and the remaining Red Rising books I’ve yet to read. That said, LibraryThing did throw in a few books by authors outside of the ones that I inputted. I think in those cases, it relies on what other readers have liked that also like the books I indicated liking. So I think I’ll enjoy the majority of LibraryThing’s recommendations. Out of the top 42 recs, I’ve read 11 and heard of another 22.  Side note: Out of all 3 sets of recommendations, I’ve read the most number of recs from LibraryThing prior to starting this project. I think that means something. Not sure yet what though. :P Maybe it is the best at predicting my reading taste?

StoryGraph’s recommendations will help me discover more new authors that I enjoy. Its recs are the most interesting to me (and the reason why I wanted to conduct this experiment). Out of the top 15 recs from StoryGraph, I’ve read 2 and heard of another 3. So it is not a mind-blowing prediction since most of the recs I had not heard of but the key is whether I’ll enjoy those recs. 

The truth is...I don’t really have a solid system. I have a “system” but it’s not consistently applied. 

I know this is a common situation for many people who review books, especially the casual reviewer. Some systems are simple: Did I like it or did I not like it? The thumbs up / thumbs down approach. Some systems are elaborate: World building, writing style, tone/voice of the author, character development, plot development, logic, how unique is the content, how diverse is the cast, how themes are explored, etc. 

For the purpose of my reading projects, I will use a moderately casual rating system. More in-depth than whether I enjoyed the book but also not creating my own complex algorithm.

I’ve chosen 5 factors to review for each book I’m reading for my Algorithm Recommendations Reading project:

Characters - Are the characters engaging (do I care about them)? Are the characters developed enough to be interesting?

Worldbuilding - Does the world have enough depth to be interesting? Is the world understandable and not very confusing? Bonus if there’s something unique about the world.

Storytelling / Writing Style - Is the story told in a compelling way? Is the voice of the author engaging? Would I want to read other things by the author?

Logic - Did the story / world building / characters, etc. make sense? This an important aspect for me so I’m specifically calling it out in its own category.

Enjoyment - Did I have fun reading the book? Would I re-read it? 

I will be rating on a scale of 0-3 for each of the categories:

0 = Terrible / hated it

1 = It’s not the worst but much improvement is needed

2 = It’s decent

3 = It’s great

Disclaimer: This rating system may change over time but it’s my starting point.

Lastly, with each review, I will conclude with whether I would recommend the book to others, and if so, to whom I would recommend. 

This idea sparked when I was reviewing the “Ordered for you” feature on StoryGraph and at the top of the list was a book that I had never heard of before. If you have never heard of StoryGraph, it is a new website (currently in beta at the time of writing this post) that aims to help readers find tailored book recommendations. The site allows you to categorize books by mood, pace, and more. 

Anyway, I got the idea in my head and I couldn’t shake it. So I created this reading project: read a number of the top recommended books from different algorithms.

Here’s how it works: 

I chose 3 reading sites: Goodreads (duh), LibraryThing, and StoryGraph.

I selected 3 genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Thriller.

I selected a number of books I’ve read with various ratings from each genre. I biased towards books I enjoyed. See below for the list of books.

I loaded the list of books and ratings onto each site. NOTE: I created fresh accounts on each site. The 30 books are the only book inputs I gave the algorithm.

Then, the algorithm did its magic.

Here is the list of 30 books I chose to feed to the algorithms:

Here are the recommendation results per site:

Initial Analysis

Goodreads gave me highly popular titles within the 3 genres. I’ve only read 1 of the books on this list.

LibraryThing gave me mainly other books by the authors that I indicated I liked. It did recommend books by other authors within the 3 genres. I’ve read several on this list already.

StoryGraph is the most interesting, I think. It had the most in depth survey for collecting information about my reading preferences and most of the titles it recommended me, I had never heard of. I’m most curious to see how this set of recs pan out. I’ve read a couple of books on this list already.

As you can see, I put little markers on some of the books. Here’s the legend: 

What’s Next

Over the course of the next....many months (let’s be honest), I’ll be reading through at least the top 5 recs from each algorithm recommendations list. And I’ll document / review whether the rec was a hit or miss or something in between. Then we shall see which algorithm is a superior recommendation engine!

The first books I’ll be picking up in August will be Elantris by Brandon Sanderson and Iron Gold by Pierce Brown. That’s the plan!

If you’re curious about this experience, I invite you to follow along. If you want to try this out yourself, I would love to see what your results are. 

Cheers and happy reading,