What Are You Reading, Part 2

[+Slowswift he/him]

1 hour ago, WhyEverNot_8 said:

Oh shoot, I’ll have to check that out, thanks!

I have a lanyard and shirt of the series from a collaboration they did with a sushi place near me, so that’s pretty awesome!

No problem!

Ooh, nice.

[Treamayne]

Tanya Huff - Wizard of the Grove (Omnibus of "Child of the Grove" and "The Last Wizard") 1989

Kinda interesting (but maybe wierd by modern plotting) in that the first book has a few timeskips and protagonist shifts, ultimately settling on Crystal as the primary Series (Duology) Protagonist. I am about halfway though Book 2 and it's mostly good so far with interesting world-building and a very Reckoner's feel to Wizardry. Slight Spoiler

Spoiler

Crystal is persecuted/feared often because there has never been a Wizard before her that was not corrupted by their power, so everyone assumes she will be corrupted too.

Slightly more spoilers:

Spoiler

Book 2 has one of the weirdest love triangles ever. . . 

 

It's a soft magic system, but with some intuitive rules that are not explicitely stated, but prevalent none-the-less. 

Edited April 29 by Treamayne
Clarity/SPAG

[The Unknown Order he/him]

I just finished Seven Blades in Black by Sam Sykes.

Oh. My. Goodness. 

It was so good. I knew it was going to be good, but I didn't fully appreciate it until a quarter of the way through. I was kinda only reading it off and on, but then I decided I liked the story too much to be as slow as I was. I read up to the two thirds mark today, then I finished it tonight. 

It was magnificent, and I am so sad my library doesn't have book two. Go read it. It will be worth it.

[Eluvianii he/him]

Finished Gardens of the Moon, it was pretty good. Whatever the hell I was expecting when I started reading it, it wasn't this.

Rule of cool reigns supreme here, but without sacrificing story quality. Those happen to be my favorite kind of stories.

It's so weird, it takes everything you're advised not to do when writing a story, then does it, and it works.

What's that, you should create a grounded magic system that's not overpowered and over the top? How about I break the ground and throw it at you a hundred meters in the air?

Oh, that the "overpowered is forbidden" rules applies to characters themselves you say. No worries, I'll just slip in several characters that could single-handedly level entire cities if they so choose. A huge cast of literal gods that can do the same while we're at it.

What do you mean most stories pick a tone and stick to it? That's too narrow, here, have a scene about morality and the meaninglessness of a character's entire life immediately followed by an awkward teenager trying to figure out how to flirt for the first time.

Trying to find people talking about this series before reading I came to the conclusion that it was a fairly depressing series that used humor to make the tone bearable. The only thing I found that didn't fit with that was a certain phrase. "Malazan covers the entire range of human emotion". After reading this I think it makes sense. Sure, some scenes can be intense, and the danger feels real at all times. If half the cast is dead by the end of the series I won't be surprised in the least. But there's also a huge amount of the story that sits on the extreme opposite side of the spectrum. The author really tries to do everything at once and succeeds. Mostly. The one example of a romance arc in this book was pretty bad, hope that gets better.

I'm excited to continue the series. Depending on how things go, I might have found my favorite book series. The last time I had a hunch like that it came true, so here's hoping I'm right this time too.

[The Unknown Order he/him]

Finished an Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard. It was really fun. There was a bit of a rocky start, with two viewpoint characters blurring together, but they get split apart pretty well by the midpoint. Apparently it has sequels, but it had an amazing ending on its own, like probably the best standalone ending for a first book that I've seen. Parts of the worldbuilding didn't get across as well as they could have, but it was clear they were there.

I completely bounced off of the Terraformers by Annalee Newitz. Didn't like the worldbuilding from page one, the summary didn't encourage me nor was it even that accurate to the contents of the early book.

Now, finally, onto the Path of Daggers by Robert Jordan. I'm looking forward to it.

Also listening to Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch. I've read it a bunch of times, but I'm doing a listen through the series. I actually like this narrator. He's pretty good.

[aneonfoxtribute]

Finished ReZero EX 2. No matter how many times I experience Wilhelm's backstory, it's still so good. No wonder Nagatsuki wrote the exact same backstory three separate times.

[The Unknown Order he/him]

Recently finished the third Night Angel book, and man, Brent Weeks gets so much undeserved flack for his endings. I liked Lightbringer, but I loved this ending (I could have been happy with what felt like a climax a third of the way through, but I got something even better). I have definitely seen the progression of his skills from the first Night Angel book to the later Lightbringer books, but they're all pretty fun. I wasn't sure if I was going to keep going around book two, but man am I glad I did. This was truly a fun ride. Looking forward to Nemesis.

I also finished Earth Afire (I think) by Orson Scott Card. It was good. I'm looking forward to the third book, but it's not my favorite Enderverse book by far. It's also not my least favorite. 

Now on to Dune Messiah. Hopefully I make it past the first chapter this time.

[The Unknown Order he/him]

Hey, double posting because everyone else spontaneously stopped reading.

Did not end up reading Dune Messiah yet, I picked up the Martian first. It was absolutely brilliant. Amazing, loved it, convinced my father to watch the movie with me literally 30 minutes after I finished it. I think I'm going to read Artemis before Project Hail Mary, as much as I'm tempted otherwise. We'll see which hold I get first. 

[Treamayne]

On 6/7/2024 at 3:09 AM, The Unknown Ajah said:

Hey, double posting because everyone else spontaneously stopped reading.

Did not end up reading Dune Messiah yet, I picked up the Martian first. It was absolutely brilliant. Amazing, loved it, convinced my father to watch the movie with me literally 30 minutes after I finished it. I think I'm going to read Artemis before Project Hail Mary, as much as I'm tempted otherwise. We'll see which hold I get first. 

Glad you enjoyed The Martian - one of those rare stories where both the movie and book shine by each focusing on their strength (even if I missed some subplots removed to save time for the movie). 

Spoiler

Also, casting Sean Bean as Mitch . . . wonder if it was just so he could deliver the Project Elrond line?

Genius

I would definitely recommend P:HM over Artemis though. 

Spoiler

I actually don't recommend Artemis at all. Started hating the main character and thought "well she must get an amazing character arc" - ended hating the main character and thought "well, no need to keep this book around."

Like Cline's "Armada", they each had a wonderful first book and very skippable second book (though Weir's PHM is awesome and Cline's RP2 is hiw worst installment so far).

Of course, YMMV

Edit:

I'm currently working on Book 1 of Dungeon Crawler Carl (in addition to other rereads), my first attempt at LitRPG recommended by a coworker. Not bad so far, though the formatting has irked me enough that I am making massive changes to the ePub just so I can enjoy the story.

Granted this is not likely to be a problem most would experience; but, to me, if the formatting is off or detracts from readability, then I have problems enjoying the story as the format itself pulls me away. Also, since one of my hobbies is ePub editing, I find it hard to accept poorly formatted works as-is, when I know I can make my personal copy flow better for my reading style. Not sure how this (or any LitRPG) would look in print, but I would hope it was not like the ePub before I started "fixing" it. 

Edit 2:

Finished both the changes to the ePub and finished Book 1. Interesting, in a "Star Trek version of Hunger Games" kind of way. With a splash of the game Munchkin (in book form). From the Goodreads summary:

Spoiler

The apocalypse will be televised!

A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible.

In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth—from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds—collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground.

The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.

Only a few dare venture inside. But once you're in, you can't get out. And what's worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it's game over. In this game, it's not about your strength or your dexterity. It's about your followers, your views. Your clout. It's about building an audience and killing those goblins with style.

You can't just survive here. You gotta survive big.

I'm not sure if I'll continue the series. . . it will partly depend on if it is Amazon-only (though it seems there are, or will be print copies, so maybe I can find mass-market editions).

Edited June 12 by Treamayne
SPAG/Update

[Use the Falchion]

On 5/12/2024 at 6:05 PM, Eluvianii said:

Finished Gardens of the Moon, it was pretty good. Whatever the hell I was expecting when I started reading it, it wasn't this.

Rule of cool reigns supreme here, but without sacrificing story quality. Those happen to be my favorite kind of stories.

It's so weird, it takes everything you're advised not to do when writing a story, then does it, and it works.

What's that, you should create a grounded magic system that's not overpowered and over the top? How about I break the ground and throw it at you a hundred meters in the air?

Oh, that the "overpowered is forbidden" rules applies to characters themselves you say. No worries, I'll just slip in several characters that could single-handedly level entire cities if they so choose. A huge cast of literal gods that can do the same while we're at it.

What do you mean most stories pick a tone and stick to it? That's too narrow, here, have a scene about morality and the meaninglessness of a character's entire life immediately followed by an awkward teenager trying to figure out how to flirt for the first time.

Trying to find people talking about this series before reading I came to the conclusion that it was a fairly depressing series that used humor to make the tone bearable. The only thing I found that didn't fit with that was a certain phrase. "Malazan covers the entire range of human emotion". After reading this I think it makes sense. Sure, some scenes can be intense, and the danger feels real at all times. If half the cast is dead by the end of the series I won't be surprised in the least. But there's also a huge amount of the story that sits on the extreme opposite side of the spectrum. The author really tries to do everything at once and succeeds. Mostly. The one example of a romance arc in this book was pretty bad, hope that gets better.

I'm excited to continue the series. Depending on how things go, I might have found my favorite book series. The last time I had a hunch like that it came true, so here's hoping I'm right this time too.

Gardens of the Moon was a tough read personally, but the next three books have some of the single best action scenes I've ever read in all of Fantasy. I still haven't started Book 5, and I finished Book 4 nearly 5 years ago...

 

I just finished up all of the released Mark of the Fool books by JM Clarke a day or two ago. I wouldn't say I devoured the series, as that's an exclusive club* by my standards, but I did read them very, VERY quickly. Maybe I'll change my mind in retrospect, who knows. The series itself is fun and does a lot of what I want from other magic school setting books, namely, exploring the different types of magic. The action is good, the characters are fun, and the world is pretty solidly built. There are promises and payoff, and I'm looking forward to seeing where the series goes. The biggest marks against the book are the pacing and prose. The pacing is weird at times in a few ways. Sometimes there's just nonstop action for most of the book, while other times it feels like we have to wait 80% of the book to get to the good stuff. Some books are well-paced, while others I skipped entire chapters. I'm not sure it got better, but I got used to it. (Granted, not everyone may fill this way.) For the prose, the books are written in a very casual way, as if the author intended it to be read. This isn't as extreme as Project Hail Mary, but it shows sometimes when I read a sentence, get confused, and then have to say the sentence out-loud to understand how it's supposed to sound before continuing. These complaints are minor though, and I found this series far more entertaining to read in the long-run than Mage Errant. 

 

*A Song of Ice and Fire (2013 - I have since sold my copies and don't plan on buying any new books in the series), The Name of the Wind (2013 - I have since sold my copies and don't plan on buying any new books in the series), Brandon Sanderson's works (2014), The Wheel of Time (2018), Cradle (2023), and Unbound (2023).

Series that come close are: The Expanse (2018 - note that I read up to the released point and haven't finished the series, so I don't count it in the above category), Prentice Ash (2023), Mark of the Fool (2024), An Outcast In Another World (2024),  

[The cheeseman Sola Scriptora]

2 hours ago, Use the Falchion said:

*A Song of Ice and Fire (2013 - I have since sold my copies and don't plan on buying any new books in the series), The Name of the Wind (2013 - I have since sold my copies and don't plan on buying any new books in the series

Why not?

[Use the Falchion]

3 hours ago, The cheeseman said:

Why not?

For A Song of Ice and Fire, I've moved on emotionally. For the Name of the Wind, I don't really like Rothfuss as a person or author anymore, and I'm not invested. When I sold my ASOIAF books, I felt a moment of sadness doing so. When I sold my NotW books, I felt nothing but surprise it took this long. 

For both series, I'm just not interested in reading series that will most likely be incomplete due to the author's own pride or hubris.

Don't get me wrong, I do think we'll see The Winds of Winter eventually, but I honestly think GRRM will die before he writes A Dream of Spring and won't let anyone finish the books. I respect the ever-loving stuffing out of Martin, and his influence on entertainment will still be felt for years to come, but he also has far too many projects going on and these take up a lot of his writing time. (He's also older and probably wants to enjoy the luxuries he's worked for, which is completely fair and deserved!) If Sanderson didn't have Dragonsteel behind him, I think he'd be much in the same boat at this point in his career.*

Rothfuss on the other hand...I'm not sure we'll ever see The Doors of Stone, and I certainly don't think we'll ever see any other books that were planned for after the trilogy is complete. Between Rothfuss's editor claiming she hadn't read a single chapter of the book back in 2020 (and then having DAW go under because Rothfuss was her golden goose. And THEN Rothfuss announcing his own publishing press the same year DAW goes under), the entire prologue chapter controversy, Rothfuss's silence on the entire matter for years until his non-apology in October (which was a great time to mention it because he had a repackaged novella coming out the next month), and the hiring ad for an assistant that does far more than just assist in one or two areas from less than a month ago, I'm just not interested in anything else he has to say. To me, Rothfuss's career is like watching a train crash in slow motion, in that it's horrible and you wish it wouldn't happen but you also can't look away. Maybe he'll have a triumphant return to the literary world with Book 3 and beyond, but I think his time in the limelight has passed, for better or for worse. 

 

*Heck, I'd argue that when - not if, but when - Brandon starts working on adaptations, he'll have to slow down in the same way. Maybe it won't be as bad as Martin, but it'll be a while before things pick back up again, if they ever do. Hopefully Sanderson can write a few more secret projects and buffer-books in-between now and then, so that his productivity will still feel good.

[Treamayne]

On 6/7/2024 at 6:34 AM, Treamayne said:

I'm not sure if I'll continue the series. . . it will partly depend on if it is Amazon-only (though it seems there are, or will be print copies, so maybe I can find mass-market editions).

I ended up supporting the author's Patreon to get access to the ebooks without going through Amazon.

Now starting book 6 (Book 7 comes out later this year, I think).

[BlueWildRye he/him]

The Republic of Pirates by Colin Woodard.

Edited July 12 by BlueWildRye
In the words of Treamayne, SPAG

[Use the Falchion]

Quest Academy series by Brian J. Nordon. It's a nice blend of LitRPG and Progression Fantasy, leaning more into the latter. At least until about halfway through Book 2. I stayed up literally all-night finishing Book 1 and reading 75% of Book 2. (And then sleeping and finishing the book as soon as I woke up.) Preordered Book 3, so adding that to my Google Sheets planner thingy. 

Not knowing anything about the series or author, and not noticing the spelling of certain words (like, Savior vs Saviour), I found it funny that I noticed that the author was European through the word and use of Relegation. Thank you, Ted Lasso! 

The books are decently written, and the world is quite interesting. The "post-apocalyptic superpower" setting worked for me in a way that The Path of Ascension series didn't, but I think fans of the latter will like this series. The series does have flaws, particularly with how the author writes women (they're almost all flirty, seductive, or sexual for the entirety of the first book. Everyone (except one character, who, while being antagonistic, isn't evil) ADORES the main character as well, which to me can be a bit tiring. I get it, but it I think that there are nuances that the author can work on for the series going forward. 

This series continues my trend of reading/liking series where the main character has a quirk or special power that gets noticed by higher-ups at whatever world and/or socio-academic setting they're in and using that training as a springboard for even greater things. Bonus points if it's focused on teamwork and collaborative efforts. (Unintended Cultivator, Elydes, etc.) I'm finding this to be a sister setting to the whole "MC starts with a deficit, but due to circumstances they're able to catch up to their peers, and their work ethic when they were considered disabled comes into play once the odds are evened." Once again, bonus points if focused on teamwork and collaborative efforts. (Cradle by Will Wight, Manifestation by Samuel Hinton.) (Mark of the Fool and Cytoverse are in in the middle, because like many things, this is a spectrum.) 

Another thing I've noticed I liked is the "consumption/power copy" trope in Progression Fantasy and LitRPG. I like the different takes I've read on it, and it's fun to see how overpowered the characters can get:

In Katekyo Hitman Reborn, the main character Tsuna has this ability, but he rarely uses it due to the circumstances and difficulty setting up the technique.  

In Ultimate Level 1, Max's ability nigh-exclusively allows him to gain stats and skills by killing opponents. It's also how he heals. (He CAN gain XP by using his baking class, but utility classes in this world take so long to gain XP and level that it's not remotely worth it.) 

In Cradle, this becomes one of Lindon's core techniques, providing him with Madra (that he can use or vent) and occasionally memories. This relates back to Lindon's core personality and his overall power theming as well.

In Unbound, Felix's technique evolves over the series, but it works very similar to Lindon's and Max's. Felix can gain memories from Consuming Mana or opponent's corpses wholesale, and he gains a chance at gaining a skill they possessed in doing so. He can also Consume things to recover Mana, Stamina, or Essence later in the series. 

In Quest Academy, Sal is able to copy virtually any ability he can see being used with his eyes by replicating the way the Essence flows and knots, and then can keep the ability so long as he remembers how the flows and knots go. And when he does this, he automatically gets said power at its maximum ability, a level that most of its original users will never achieve it at. This ranges from his parents' abilities to appraise objects or restore things to a former form, to his best friend's ability to see into the future. Sal has other powers, but those are best saved for the book proper. He also occasionally gets called out on not using said power to its fullest potential, but what that means is relative, and it's also where his character growth will most likely be focused on. 

 

If anyone has any other good "power copy/absorption" series, but also where it DOESN'T crowd out other members of the cast, I'm willing to try them out! Except for Worm, if that's one. I don't feel like it. 

[Briar King]

Phew…finally!!

Started this WoT rereread on 9/2/21 and just finished it today 7/31/24. That took wayyyyyyy longer than I thought it would. 
 

Will likely start either Browns Lightbringer or GGKs Sarentium.

[Briar King]

I decided on GGKs Sarantium. Wonderful 60 pgs in so far. GGK is an exceptional writer.

I was going with Lightbringer 1st but as I was going through the DP I realized while I remembered the names I didn’t really remember all they had done/died etc and that I would be better off rereading Red Rising and company instead of just reading bk 6. Ugh yet more rereading I need to do along with Mistborn era 2 and 1st Law. 
 

Sarantium was the way to go for a fresh read.

[The Unknown Order he/him]

Been a little while since I checked in, but I've been busy the last couple of weeks.

Finished the Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer in mid July. Also re-read tEotW, which was surprisingly fun.

I then took a little bit of a break, but in just a couple days I read Gideon the Ninth (forgot the author). Aside from the humor it wasn't really my style, but I still really enjoyed it. Looking forward to later books in the series.

I read Will of the Many by James Islington in a single day. That was an amazing book, I'm waiting on the edge of my seat for the sequel. It's really cool to see his writing skills of the course his four books. Going from mediocre but fun, to one of the best endings to a series I've seen, to an amazing hook to a new world with an incredible magic system.

Now onto Children of Dune. It's a bit of a downer after the other two, but I'm hopeful. I got some spoilers for God-emperor of Dune, and I'm really excited.

After that, I've got Over Your Dead Body by Dan Wells. Should be fun, I really enjoy the John Cleaver books.

[J. Magi she/her]

I'm doing this to improve my typing and because I'm bored <<< 3 (EDIT: It literally took 50 minutes lol what am I doing with my life)

Stormfather, by Janny Wurts

(Edit #2: spoilered for length and a few plot spoilers)

Spoiler

This was a book that I came across as randomly as you can lol, I didn't pick it up for myself nor was it recommended to me. Ever year for Christmas all my family members do a book exchange (it's a bit like secret Santa, where we all draw names and we don't know who has who). My brother ended up getting me this book when he had me not this last Christmas, but the one before. He got it up at a used book store here in our town, and thought I'd like it because it seems to be a generic fantasy sort. (He also got me the rest of the trilogy, and gave it to me for my birthday--I've started the second book, so far). 

Needless to say, neither of us really knew what the book was about except from the cover description. My dad told me had read some of the author's other work, and liked it, so I was hopeful. Also because it's pretty enigmatic and not very famous I've never heard/seen anyone who's also read it.

I think I'd give this book a solid 2.5/5, which sounds bad I guess. It wasn't really bad, it just wasn't good either (I'll explain more in a bit).

Things I liked:

- One of the things I liked most about this book was it's prose. Janny Wurts is actually a painter as well as an author (she did the cover, map, and illustrations for her own book which is super cool), and you can really tell in her descriptions. It's beautifully described and her word choice is excellent. The book is on the older side (I believe it's from the '80's), so the language is a bit harder and my poor gen z brain did struggle but mostly I really liked it.

- The world didn't need to be outlandish to be interesting. I quite liked the setting. The story takes place on a fairly small group of islands in the ocean, and seafaring is a big part of the culture. One of the main settings is this massive seaside pirate kingdom which I thought was cool (though it could have been expounded upon)

- I enjoyed certain plot points, not all, but a few of them. There were interesting concepts at play.

Things I didn't like:

- The characters were . . . fine I guess. A lot of them fell into cliches, and though I'm not usually the kind of person to immediately hate cliches I don't think it worked here. Nothing was blatantly shallow and tropey the way some really bad books are, it just didn't impress me. Characters are one of my favorite parts of story's (no duh) and I didn't really come away with a favorite or with admiration for the writing. 

Okay that isn't true, I do have a favorite character, and I found his character concept really interesting. Buuuuuuuut he gets thrown in a magical prison in the start of the book and the rest of the story is about saving him so ;/ he wasn't really in it that much. Also I made an SU about this, but for this specific character I'm taking about, the author neglected to give any hints about his age and I lowkey thought he was meant to be a young man, but then there's an official illustration of him and he's an old man. So that was weird and frustrating.

Back to the whole cast in general, I don't want to say the characters felt flat--because they didn't. Pretty much every main character had an arch. The problem was, those arcs felt cookie cuter. There was the farm boy to warrior guy, and the helpless girl to powerful sorcerer lady, and the guy who gets corrupted by power and hate. They weren't written badly, they just weren't written well. And you could say, I suppose, that because it's on the earlier side those tropes weren't as cliche in it's time (my mom always makes that argument lol). But if that's the case, then at the very least it didn't age well.

- Most of the plot felt like fluff. This wasn't a very long book (I think it was 300-400 pages) which made the wishy washy plot feel worse. A good deal of the story is told from the perspective of a young girl learning mind reading and manipulation powers. A lot of it is her reaching out over the world (this girls range is insane) with her mind and watching events happen to other characters, and influencing things here in there. There's even a psychic battle which was kind of interesting. The result however is this very descriptive heavy, slow mind reading journeys that were boing to read. The plot was pushed along just fine, I just felt like it could have been briefer, idk. None of the story beats were particularly shocking or investing, it all just kind of happened. And, like many books that feature several POV's, one character was getting more stuff done and his chapters were more interesting, but it was overshadowed by the nothing burger of the rest. It wasn't bad. It worked. But it didn't work well.

- There were some . . . interesting age things that happened (this point is spoiler, btw). The sorcerer student girl I mentioned above starts the story as around 10-12 (it doesn't give her specific age). She gets put to sleep in this magic capsule thing for her mind power training and while she stays in it, she ages more quickly and becomes 18 in around a year. Later on, she works with another character who's 18 and (while I haven't finished the other books yet) I feel like it's implied they're going to be romantic interests. Which I find kinda weird. There's no plot reason for her character to be aged up like this--the only thing I can think of is the author didn't want you to 'ship' her with adult characters at the start of the story, but did want you to 'ship' her with this other adult character at the end of the story. I don't know if that's it being a product of it's time, or I'm completing overanalyzing things but either way I didn't really like it. Hopefully, in the other books the romance doesn't follow through.

-(More spoilers on this one, if you care). This book played into a fantasy(?) trope I dislike, and there's nothing wrong with it. I just really hate that specific trope. The trope in question is the classic 'the fantasy world is actually an old space colony of earth's, and I've tricked you into reading a sci fi.' Sort of like the Pern books (though I did like the Harper series). I find it disappointing because, if I sit down to read a book described as fantasy I want it to be fantasy. This isn't really the fault of the author, because like I said, I didn't know much about the book before diving in. I'm also just not much of a sci-fi fan, to be honest. My favorite sci fi material is Star Wars and that's pretty much sci-fi in setting and aesthetics only. It is worth mentioning though, that the sci-fi element isn't really a part of the story yet. It was mentioned offhandedly in the POV of an immortal AI character who a part of a crash landed space ship. I expect it'll tie in to things later in the trilogy, but it hasn't yet.

-It was hard to read. I mentioned this above, and I think this might be my own failing not the authors. I wouldn't bring it up as a negative point if it weren't for two reasons.

1-It made the book an absolute slog, and despite it's medium length it took months to finish. I'm not the fastest reader, but I'm not terrible either. It was just a lot less enjoyable because reading it felt like a chore.

2-Because of the sailing-centric worldbuilding I mentioned above, the book makes use of tons of obscure seafaring terms that I had never heard before. I found myself pulling out a dictionary to look up words because context clues were not enough to help me. The author's vocabulary is genuinely impressive, honestly.

-The mind-reading girl felt way over powered, and there were instances when she could have used her powers that weren't taken advantage of. It was frustrating.

-There was also a bit too much spice in it for me. Nothing extremely explicit (there was a sex scene, but it was summarized not narrated), but as someone who dislikes pretty much all sexual implications and actions in books, I didn't like it (real shocker). This isn't a writing quality issue to be sure, I know some people don't mind reading that. But I do.

-The climax was a bit anti-climactic. (More spoilers) The characters were chasing a specific goal the whole book, and at the very end decided to just? do something else? It was very disappointing ngl. One of the main antagonists was revealed to have been possessed by demons the whole time (?) and wasn't actually evil--which had never once been hinted at or built up too. The main characters let the other antagonist get away which was very frustrating.

In the end, quite the meh nothingburger of book. Will I finish the trilogy? Probably. All the other stuff on my tbr won't be available at the library for a few more weeks and I'll need something in the meantime. I am reading The Hunger Games as well, but I'm flying through it pretty quickly. Plus, it was gifted to me, so I kind of feel obligated to finish it. Maybe I won't. We'll see I guess.

Edited August 3 by J. Magi

[jamesbondsmith He/him]

Just finished Bookshops and Bonedust, a prequel to Legends and Lattes (which I haven't gotten round to reading). I liked it, was slow going at points but the best parts really resonated with how I've felt about life currently or in the past.

Will jump onto Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrel next, because that's the next library loan to expire

[Zurvanight he/him]

I started Shadowmarch by Tad Williams a few days ago. 300 pages in and I'm hooked. I bought the whole series haha.

 

Williams does a great job on making the Qar or the Twilight People (fairy folk) actually spooky. The land of Southmarch slowly changing due to the return of the Qar is done extremely well, with subtle changes at first, gradually getting darker and more disturbing the further I read. 

[Use the Falchion]

Mother of Learning by Nobody103. I tried out the book last year and didn't feel it. (That didn't stop me from buying it though.) However, it popped up on some lists again, and I had an idea for a Roguelike/Soulsborne Fire Emblem game (just a "minigame" compared to some of my other ideas, but an interesting one nonetheless) and wanted to see how some other stories do it. 

This story is a Groundhog Day story, with the duration of time being a month rather than a single day. I'm usually not a fan of these stories, outside of Happy Death Day and Happy Death Day 2 U, but this one is very entertaining, and I've sped through the first two books as fast as I have had the time to do. I bought Book 3 tonight and will read it tomorrow. Hopefully I'll finish Books 3 & 4 by Sunday, and I'll use my Labor Day to read All the Skills 4. 

 

I also finished I'm Not the Hero 2 last week, and it was fun! I think it flowed a lot better than the first book, but the ending was awful. It just sort of stopped. Book 3 needs a better ending. 

[Briar King]

Finished Sarantium 1 last night and started 2. That was a good book with a better 1st half than 2nd but it was clear it was more of a setup book. Hoping for a good close out in 2.

That was only my 2nd GGK book and as I said it was good yes but it didn’t hold a candle imo to the beauty that is Tigana.

After I finish 2 I think I’ll hit pause on GGK instead of rushing through all that I got recently and go to House War 1 by Michelle West. We shall see though. 

[Dunkum he/him]

1 hour ago, Briar King said:

Finished Sarantium 1 last night and started 2. That was a good book with a better 1st half than 2nd but it was clear it was more of a setup book. Hoping for a good close out in 2.

That was only my 2nd GGK book and as I said it was good yes but it didn’t hold a candle imo to the beauty that is Tigana.

After I finish 2 I think I’ll hit pause on GGK instead of rushing through all that I got recently and go to House War 1 by Michelle West. We shall see though. 

I've read 7 or 8 by him and Tigana was far and away the best. it was also, unfortunately, the first one I read by him, meaning all the rest felt just slightly disappointing.

[Briar King]

I had decided to read it 1st cause it seemed like it was a love it or hate it divided book. I know lots of his fans that call me crazy elseNet when I am praising it.