What are you reading at the moment?

Ya i had a feeling that book would turn out that way thanks for saveing me a credit can I recommend sigil online as a good life reset style book that does it right.

 

ya i finished the first book and it was ok but I dont reccomend going back to it not that its bad i just found it entirely uncompelling and colorless i can see why people like it but its defnitely a you like it or you dont kinda book

 

Currently reading the shadow of what was lost. Im enjoying it except its a little low magic so far for my tastes and the plot feels a bit sparse although thats probably because Im not that far into it. Its very reminiscent of the older style of high fantasy mixed with sword and sorcery something like dragon lance or LOTR more of the old school style of longer books and alot of going places and learning things about a larger plot rather then the more recent style of a single MC with perhaps a pet (spirit animal,dragon) and some friends and the entire book revolves around them. They have three MCs and an adventuring party setup its hard to describe but it definitely gives me a more nostalgic oldschool epic fantasy feel

 

Reading the Goblin Slayer light novels and they are AWESOME. They have also been picked up for a manga series.



My review:

4/5 stars.

"Really liked it. Somewhat grim and brutal, but the author made me think for the first time about how fantasy epics are usually written and how most of us play games. We all want the heroes to level up as quick as possible so they can fight bigger and stronger monsters that threaten the kingdom and then, of course, marry the princesses (or princes!) they rescued.

None of us ever think about those horrible little goblins left behind, still viciously attacking, abducting, slaughtering and torturing the little folk, the defenseless farmers, villagers and towns people who have no one left behind any more to protect them. Everyone has moved on to bigger cities and bigger rewards. Why would you work for a few copper coins when you can earn gold and jewels?

So, while the heroes are out seeking fame and fortune, creating their legends, behind them the goblins just keep on doing what they do: Murder, rape and pillage, with no one that could be bothered to stop them. After all, those poor peasants could never afford the wages of a high-level adventurer.

Well, no more. Enter the freaking Goblin Slayer. He's not going anywhere. He's not stopping. He's not interested in dragons, princesses, or treasures. He is relentless, implacable and he's only got one goal: To kill every last goblin that draws breath.

And he is one of my favourite new characters."

 

I was feeling blue so I decided to go with a nostalgia attack and opened up Harry Potter. I book I read when I was maybe 15 or 16 and it blew my mind.

Nostalgia tinted glasses = Subtle, magical, memorable.

Real view remembered as I was reading = FEEL BAD FOR THE ORPHAN BOY, AGREE WITH HIM OR YOU ARE JUST LIKE DUDDLY AND MALFOY! all that with the author hitting you over the head with the hard cover book repeatedly.

It was only then that I remembered, the first book I thought was good but not worth that much attention. the writing was meh and the focus was shifted away from the characters and to things (hugworts and the stuff harry was getting)

Reading it as an adult however I can see that book one. 320 pages. was just character and stage set up with a mini mystery thrown in there to keep you interested. It actually reminded me of when I'm trying to feed the one year old "hey look over there, cat. it's a cat on TV." he laughs at the silly cat while I shove a spoon of mush into it's mouth and we keep going till the plate is empty.

I'm starting book two (yeah I have the full set, bought book by book as it was releasing) and this is where they start to have a personality.

 

I'm half way through ( The Chamber of secrets). the second book in the HP series... can someone please remind me why this thing changed the world? I forgot.

I was meh on the first one but totally acknowledge it's creativity. Also I liked the story teller narration it had going on.

This one however gave me tonal whiplash, going from a tight plot driven story to a flappy plot driven story from Harry's perspective. Hardly offers the reader anything new and so... very.... boring...

should have jumped directly to the prisoner of Azkaban and just ignored the rest. Harry Potter it's been a pleasure but I think I'm going to stick to my rose coloured lenses view of you from now on.

 

Never go back for nostalgia. I read the Potter books a bit ago, but, I just think of them as Hardy Boys or Scooby Doo with wands.

 

Omg that is so true! The first one read as a scooby doo mystery inc kind of adventure and the second was 100% Hardy boys! I knew it reminded me of something!

Reading book three right now actually. this will be the last one I read from the series... only because I remember it acting me the most. so far it's actually really well written. Maybe she got better with time or something.

 

Currently reading Awaken Online!

 

The Devil is a Part-Timer.

 

Black Friday. I wanted to see what all the hoopla is about.

 

I'm back to reading a classic. Good Omens by Gaiman and Pratchett.

 

I actively dislike HP. Not because of the books themselves, which are basically tolerably written YA fantasy (despite being blatant ripoffs of various other authors in places, primarily the late Sir Terry Pratchett) schlock. No, I have an irrational dislike of the books because I loathe the author. And that’s a story in and of itself that I won’t be going into, but suffice it to say that I had a fairly complex and drawn out interaction with her that was so terrible it tainted my view of the entire universe she stitched together from better authors’ work.

Anyway, I’ve found another five star series to compete with the Alexis Carew novels: On Silver Wings by Evan Currie.

Damn this man can write.

The series (I’m currently reading book 4 of 7) is a hard sci-fantasy military space opera that’s primarily not set in space. Sure, there’s been plenty of space battles but the main protagonist, Sorilla Aida, is a special forces soldier. This passage describes her perfectly, without giving any major spoilers:

She manages to be absolutely terrifying while still remaining human, and perfect without being a Mary Sue. And there have been quite a few situations in the books so far that have had me laughing out loud so hard that my dog came to see if I was okay or not.

Mr. Currie is another author whose entire catalogue I will be devouring and eagerly anticipating his new releases. You can join his mailing list to get a copy of book one of On Silver Wings for free, and the rest are available free through KU. He’s got a few other series as well, but weirdly his strategy seems to be flipped around from most authors regarding which books are paid only and which are available through KU - the first books of his series are paid only, while the rest are on KU.

He also writes steampunk alt-history (Roman Legion steampunk! That’s unusual), post apocalyptic paranormal science fantasy (demons invaded the world, humanity lost), and a book titled “Seal Team 13” which I haven’t read - yet - but the title leads me to believe its modern urban paranormal fantasy with a military twist.

Check him out if you’ve ever got time and free space in your backlog. I promise you won’t regret it.

 

@CheshirePhoenix Yeah I can see what you mean.

I liked the third one but stopped after that. I like how everything has a function, in a lot of books things are there as window dressing, plot devices or just to evoke a reaction/emotion in the reader. in HP everything is there for a reason even if they don't need it. I mean she gave the brooms a reason, a stupid one true since that game makes zero sense but a reason.

The writer herself... Ok I'm starting to doubt she actually wrote those books. her recent works were derivative at best and down right horrible at worst, then we have her twitter feed. Some people should just stay off the internet all together.

 

Maybe she isn't dealing well with the fact that stuff she wrote that didn't have HP in the title flopped worse than George Lucas's "North". Considering her publisher pulled one of the books out of the queue for a major re-write, maybe they did decide at that point to being in a ghostwriter and keep her under their thumb.

 

Credit where credit is due, her plagiarism DID inspire a whole generation of children to read. Adults, too. And more readers is always a really, really good thing. In her case though, I think it was more of an unintended consequence. I know that at the very least, Pratchett was INCREDIBLY steamed by her ripping off his work.

Weirdly, the sites comparing the two and pointing out other direct plagiarism tend to be taken down rather quickly. I guess when you’ve got approximately all of the money ever, and a literal army of lawyers, you can quite easily handle embarrassing websites like that.

After all, if she’s willing to personally direct her legal team to get a 7 year old girl expelled from school over writing a HP fanfic through legal intimidation of a magazine, a school board, a school principal, and even an individual teacher, I definitely wouldn’t put it past her to sic lawyers on sites that point out her “shortcomings”.

 

Or maybe they flopped because they were awful? I actually watched fantastical beasts in the movies and my god was it boring! I mean there is uninspired and then there is that movie. Sad part is, they probably knew it would do badly and kept name dropping HP in it. worked too since it boosted the rating quite a bit by HP fans.

I missed out on Pratchett growing up, most fantasy books I read were so bad that I dropped the genre all together. I heard he was creative but a little bit insane judging by his writing ^^;

As for Rowling.... was she trying to copy walt disney? A part of me thinks someone else wrote those books and she just added a little bit of polish in the end and now that they are out of the picture she has no idea what to do with herself.

 

I think everyone who’s creative is at least a little bit insane.

I grew up on: Terry Pratchett (Discworld), Piers Anthony (Xanth), Mercedes Lackey (Valdemar), Robert Asprin (Myth, Phule’s Company), Weiss & Hickman (Dragonlance, Darksword trilogy), Jane Yolen (Dragon’s Blood), Jan Sievert (C.A.D.S), Anne McCaffrey (Dragonriders of Pern), and many others.

I can unreservedly recommend any of the above. They are all great books for all ages.

 

Ok, so maybe I won’t be deep diving Evan Currie’s catalogue after all.

Finished his post-apocalyptic sci-fi series starter, The Knighthood (Atlantis Rising #1) and was fairly meh about it. It’s a decent premise, but the writing was not up to the standards I was expecting.

I definitely still recommend his military sci-fi series On Silver Wings and Odyssey One though. Odyssey One is more spaceship action, while On Silver Wings is focused on the ground game. There’s something there for everyone.

I’ve a new Alexis Carew novel to read, then it’s back to Evan Currie to check out his fantasy and steampunk alt-history, with a few other books in the queue.

 

So the new Alexis Carew novel. I’m conflicted - on the one hand, the writing was just as crisp and pleasant to read as always, and the historical parallels were there too. But on the other hand, it ended in a cliffhanger with an afterword saying that the author thought the book would be too long if he didn’t cut it off somewhere.

That, my friends, is a cardinal sin. The recent surge in massive books spearheaded by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, and continued by George RR Martin, puts the lie to “people won’t read long books” as a general rule of thumb. Also, you can always - always - make more room on the cutting room floor by tightening your story and trimming the fat. It’s sometimes hard to do without affecting pacing, but even in this book I saw a ton that could’ve been cut without affecting the story at all.

And failing that, you can still pick a more natural breakpoint in the story if it still needs to be told in multiple books.

I gave it 4 stars instead of 5.

After that, I just finished Hugo Huesca’s latest litRPG/dungeon core hybrid novel, Dungeon Lord (The Wraith’s Haunt #1). It has an interesting take on the genres, by upending them - after all, who SAYS dungeon cores can’t go out and be adventurers? I heartily recommend it and it also merits a 4/5, if only because it just didn’t reach that level where I absolutely MUST give something a 5th Star. It was missing some special sauce, but it’s got all the fixings of a really good series starter.

Next up is a few more military space operas. I don’t want to burn out on Currie’s writing so I decided to clear a bit more from my backlog before going back to his catalogue.