Book reviews by Phil
For readers who linger.
Fantasy, sci-fi, theology, and the long series I kept picking back up. I rate everything in mugs, not stars.
On the shelf
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Bought The Sequel Immediatelyby Richard Swan
Richard Swan's first foray outside the Empire of the Wolf reads like someone handed George Orwell a Star Wars budget and told him not to waste it on spectacle. This is 1984 filtere…
Read reviewTold A Stranger About It Unpromptedby Jesse Aragon
Jesse Aragon wrote the kind of debut novel that should be illegal, the kind where you finish it and immediately go check the author bio for a typo, because surely someone doesn't j…
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Told A Stranger About It Unpromptedby Kristin Kobes Du Mez
Every so often a book comes along that doesn't just explain something, it reorganizes the furniture in your head so you can never walk through the room the same way again. That's w…
Read reviewTold A Stranger About It Unpromptedby Andrzej Sapkowski
*Time of Contempt* is the best Witcher book yet, and it's the first one that fully admits what this series actually is. This isn't five standalone novels, it's one long story getti…
Read reviewBought The Sequel Immediatelyby Andrzej Sapkowski
*Blood of Elves* is the first time this series asks you to trust it instead of just enjoying it, and the trust mostly gets rewarded. This is the first true novel, and the pace shi…
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Read Past Bedtimeby Andrzej Sapkowski
*Sword of Destiny* is a rougher, more scattered read than *The Last Wish*, and also a more honest one. It spends less time proving Sapkowski can build a world and more time showing…
Read reviewNot stars. Mugs.
Every review gets a mug score. I do most of my reading with a mug nearby, so that felt right. There's also the Compulsion Scale, which tracks what the book actually did to me. Not just whether I thought it was good.
How I rate things
