Several People Are Typing
I had such a good time with this one! It’s told exclusively through Slack chat messages, which makes it a really fast read, and it is so funny. There is an ensemble cast, but Gerald is more or less the main character. He inexplicably finds his consciousness uploaded into Slack, and none of his co-workers at a PR firm believe him (understandably!) and assume he is just working from home and doing a comic bit. The main plot of the novel is his trying to figure out how to get himself back into his body.
While you could read this for commentary on work culture, that part actually didn’t resonate as much with me because I don’t work a corporate job like that. I was reading it for the absolutely absurd humor; in fact there’s one part that makes even less logical sense than Gerald being sucked into a computer, and you just have to go with it. However, there was also a surprising amount of depth. Many of the characters are at least somewhat distinct from each other (e.g., the responsible second in command, the sort of pedantic one), and I respect the author for being able to do that.
I do recommend looking up content warnings because you might not expect a book like this to have any, but there’s one part that could be considered debatably problematic. But otherwise I fully recommend this. 4 stars.
The Priory of the Orange Tree
It took me about 3 weeks to read this novel that clocks in at over 800 pages. It’s not a fast read, and it is also pretty slow-paced for about the first half. In fact, it is nearly glacially-paced for a while, but somehow it sucked me in. I would lose track of time reading it.
This is a high fantasy of epic scope, with a lot of time spent on world-building, especially politics. There are 4 main POV characters, largely divided between the West and East. This is one of the few instances where I would recommend just reading the blurb on the book to find out what it’s about, but also know that it’s about a lot more than that. There is a general overarching concern about an increase in dragon activity and what that might mean for the world, though.
There are definitely readers who would consider the book unevenly paced. After the slow first half, it picks up speed, and parts of it are nearly breakneck or glossed over. (And apparently the author has admitted to rushing some action scenes because she isn’t good at writing them.) But it never bothered me and still seemed controlled, rather than poorly written. You will want a dictionary near you as you read this, but the writing is fairly straightforward and accessible, which is important given how much dense world-building (but not info-dumping) readers get at the beginning. I came to know and care about most of the main characters (and hate one of them, which seems to be a pretty consistent reaction across a lot of readers) as well as many side characters.
I feel like I’m not doing this book justice in how I talk about it. I don’t know how to. There’s so much in it: politics, religion, culture, romance. And it all comes together so well. This book isn’t going to be for everyone. It’s going to be too slow for some, too political for others, and definitely too long for probably a number of people. But it was definitely for me. 5 stars.