What are you reading at the moment?

So after finishing James Maxwell's entire catalogue (his writing got kinda samey. I highly recommend Evermen, but the other series wasn't up to the same standard. Partly because he recycles themes so blatantly), I finished both of the Muirwood trilogies by Jeff Wheeler. I'm now onto more of his catalogue and am about to start the Kingfountain series.

I've also picked up and abandoned a few truly terrible litRPGs in between series, to give a bit of a break from the epic fantasies and hard sci-fi novels I've been binge reading.

Honestly, probably going to give litRPG books a bit of a rest and wait until my bad editing tolerance levels are back up to snuff before picking the genre back up again.

 

If you like urban fantasy the Demon Accords are really good and might be a good filler

 

Eh, those aren't available on KU, I don't think? My Amazon budget is nonexistent as I'm preparing for a move right now.

Even so, urban fantasy isn't really my jam. I'm not into the paranormal stuff - I like my fantasy like I like my Cheech & Chong movies: high.

 

Gave up on this as well. Finally found something that's kept my attention: The Dragon's Path (The Dagger and the Coin #1) by Daniel Abraham. I didn't even realise that Daniel Abraham (along with Ty Franck) is better known as James SA Corey, the pseudonym they use to write the Expanse books (which I haven't read yet).

 

I take a break every four or five LitRPGs to cleanse my reading palette. It's making me take the well-written novels less for granted, and my enjoyment of them is increased.

A quotable if I've ever read one

For the topic: Currently reading Cast Under an Alien Sun (Destiny's Crucible Book 1) on KU. Skipped all of the military chapters, and am lingering pleasantly over the rest.

 

Sleeping beauties, the new book by Stephen King.... and his son Owen.

I'm returning it today though, so glad it wasn't a pre-order. way too political for my tastes.

 

I've been reading one called My Sister's Grave on Kindle Unlimited. It's a pretty generic mystery / thriller type book so far, but well written and I'm enjoying it. I like to read these every once in a while, because I like to write them every once in a while too.

I'm trying to figure out how I'm possibly going to follow up a post-apocalyptic LitRPG trilogy with a small-town murder mystery?

 

Skysworn is out. Book 4 or the Cradle Series by Will Wight. It's not Litrpg but it is awesome

 

Got mine today!

 

Just finished "Life Reset" by Shemer Kuznits. The MC, Owen, is high-level adventurer who made his fortune inventing spells and has gotten used to the good life, basically as the CEO of a in-game corporation with tons of lackeys and underlings to do the hard work, and the most powerful guy around. And then he gets backstabbed by the underling he trusted the most - transformed into a goblin, a cannon fodder mob, and murdered to respawn in a lousy goblin-filled cave in the wilderness with none of his equipment or spells. Out of the game, he decides to risk staying as a goblin despite the fact that it was never designed as a player race and the bugs he uncovers might fry his brain, because it represents a unique chance to get his revenge.

The book's crunchier than a bowl of Grape Nuts, with Owen checking his stats constantly (I could do with less of that) and most of it emphasizes strategy as he tried to build his clan of weak, kinda dumb goblins into a town with a decent fighting force. He receives a great deal of help from "Vic", a virtual intelligence - a personality created by the game's AI to run NPCs who has a beef with his "dad" - and whose existence hints at a greater overreaching plot.

Overall I quite enjoyed it & would recommend it. I liked the atypical choice of a goblin hero. It puts Owen at a terrible disadvantage and he has a long struggle ahead of him, even when he's at his highest point he's got to dig deep and fight hard for success. And he hasn't even yet made it back to the human lands, where he's likely to be killed on sight! There's a good balance of crafting and battle as he progresses, and watching a town grow from the ground up is fun, especially if you like Civilization or SimCity type games. This is the first book and the sequel hasn't been published yet, but it ends after a satisfying battle, and the hints of shady stuff going on with the game company, the AI and their grievences, and of course Owen's revenge plot leave plenty of suspense for the next one, which I will definitely be picking up.

A few crits. There are enough spelling/formatting errors to be noticeable, but not enough to really disrupt the read. Like I mentioned, there are a LOT of charts, not just Owen but the various goblins and their new town as it grows. Reading it on a little Kindle screen can get tiresome. There are also some unwarranted sexist and one rather racist remarks that add nothing to the story and could easily be excised. The main problem I found is that Owen's goblin love interest, his new clan's hunter, starts out interesting but then basically devolves into something to snuggle up with him in bed at night, they literally have almost no conversation beyond a certain point so it's hard to feel he honestly loves her enough to go on a roaring rampage of revenge at the end - he has much more involved interaction with the goblins' elderly, bad-tempered cook! But this is fairly typical of action-adventure type books so I doubt most readers would be bothered by it.

 

Good review @Viergacht

 

Nice @Viergacht , I was wondering if that was any good.

I've finally caved in and got (The Slime Dungeon).
I'm only mid way through the book at the moment. It's true, this thing needs some heavy duty proof reading. the story however is what surprised me.

A dungeon core decides it wants to be a slime dungeon, a pixie shows up and bonds with it through the power of a computer game (I am not joking) and they use game menu pop ups to upgrade as the core gets more mana.

It could be my own biases since I read Dungeon born before this one but I suspect those two were written by the same person with the slime Dungeon (by Jeffery Falcon Logue) being the first trial draft of the author under a penname and dungeon born being the second more refined one under his real one.

Slime Dungeon reads less like a story then a look under the hood of the making of one. The author explains things in exposition instead of having the characters do them as well as explain all the motivations and reasons behind everything.

The book has an unrefined charm to it and although it has issues there is a lot of heart to it and was clearly written by a gamer that knows what's he's talking about.

Has issues but the charm over takes them and it's still a fun read.

 

House of Chains - Steven Erikson. I have read the Malazan books a couple of times over the years but dove into this one because the story of Karsa is almost a stand alone. BTW Erikson is one of the nicest guys in the biz.

 

Just finished Elven by Bernard Hennen and James Sullivan. It's a dense meaty book that reminds me a lot of the Elric of Melnibone saga, where the heroes are on an epic quest and you view it through the thousand years or so that the quest takes in a series of time skipping vignettes.

Definitely a good read, and it even made me slow down my reading speed. Like I said, this book is dense, but in a damn good way. It earned one of my rare five stars.

 

On Book 4 of the Dagger and the Coin series. I find it fascinating, unlike any other fantasy series. Not as much focus on action, but the characters and story draw you in.

 

"Undead on Arrival" by Justin Robinson.
This takes places 5 years after a zombie apocalypse where the zombies pretty much won - humanity consists of a few people huddled in their homes by night, scavenging by day, mostly just passing time until they die. The town of Devon consists of three main enclaves, a fortress-like hotel, a church, and a small, barricaded community run by the main character, Novak. Novak is a hardass, nihilistic bastard who does ugly things for survival, and when he's bitten by a zombie head someone stashed in his locker, he has no shortage of people as suspects - as the title hints, this is a zombie version of DOA, where Novak uses his last day before turning undead to hunt down and get revenge on his killer. This is one of those books where as nasty as the zombies are, the humans are just as unpleasant. No one here is heroic or trying to salvage civilization, they're just struggling to survive day to day on the scraps, concerned with their own squalid affairs and squabbles, and more than a good number of them mentally "off".

Robinson's quickly becoming one of my favorite authors, and this is a fast-paced read, a gritty, grimy zombie noir that doesn't waste time on grand world-building or the usual apocalypse tropes.

 

"The Iron Teeth" and "City of Daggers", the sequel, by Scott Straughan, I bought the books on amazon but it's also available as a web serial here: http://www.ironteethserial.com/

Somehow I have been reading a l0t of books involving goblins lately. This one is a standout, written from the viewpoint of the goblin Blacknail, who's just an average little green goblin - sneaky, greedy,lazy, and cowardly - in a city where his kind are semi-domesticated and used for things like cleaning sewers. For reasons unknown to him, he's caged and sold, then stolen from his caravan by bandits, one of whom, Saeter, takes him on a a servant/apprentice. Despite being terrified of the wilderness at first, Blacknail proves surprisingly adept at learning, and though he doesn't understand much of what is happening around him we human readers figure out the leader of the band of outlaws is trying to form a force big enough to take control of the territory in opposition to another bandit leader, and there's more to Saeter than just the scruffy, middle-aged scout he appears to be. Blacknail's good living triggers a rare biological transformation into a hobgoblin - a larger, smarter version of a goblin with a vicious streak. Instead of killing or abandoning him, Saeter manages to train Blacknail to control his new instincts and he becomes a shockingly effective assassin (albeit one who can be paid off with a wedge of cheese).

I greatly enjoyed both these books, and I'm starting on the serial now, too. The author does a great job of worldbuilding this realistic fantasy world from Blacknail's limited perspective, and unlike a lot of fantasies where non-humans are just funny-looking people, he really gets into the mind of a hobgoblin - a creature that thinks almost, but not quite, as well as a human and is driven by feral instincts and an alien morality. A lot of the humor comes from these clashing viewpoints and humans misunderstanding his motives, for example Blacknail capturing an enemy scout, torturing him for information, and then declaring him a new friend because he saved the man's life - from himself! Or Blacknail setting a successful human trap baited with those stupid shiny coin things he can't understand why we find so valuable.

 

Pangea Online: Death and Axes
I'm enjoying it quite a bit!

 

Life reset

An over powered wizard in game used the "being the first" badge in the game to rank up Exp and sit comfortably at the top.
Getting complacent with his position his guild throws him out with a turn to goblin race cursed scroll.

A good start, an OP character having to start from zero and work his way back to the top.... NOPE!!!!!!!!!

He learns nothing, in fact he does to others what has been done to him (aka backstabbing them and taking their post to climb to the top again) even as a goblin the author gives him cheat coupon after cheat coupon early on so he's over powered and undefeatable.

He breaks character and acts dumb as a rock with a (oh, teehee opsie!) whenever the plot needs to through some element of risk into it. but it doesn't even last one paragraph as the author rushes to save him and gives him a pat on the head for being a good boy and following the correct path.

It's forced and although it started off interesting it quickly fell apart as the MC was just to OP for anything to matter.

 

Tried Book 1 of The Game is Life. Just couldn't get into it. Can't really review it since I didn't read more than a chapter or two.

Didn't realise the Overlord books were light novels, rather than manga (thanks @Seagrim!) so took a chance and got the first one. Now I just want to watch the series again! Nice thing about the book is it gives you more detail than the anime could fit in. Might get the rest of the books as well, but I don't want to spoil it for myself by reading ahead before Season 2 comes out next year.