What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it...

[slikmar]

2 hours ago, death tribble said:

I disagree entirely with this. Butcher has been building this for years. And in Battleground we get a culmination of a lot of things that have building for a while.

 

Battleground by Jim Butcher

Set over the course mainly of one night, Chicago becomes a battle field as a Titan and her Fomor allies try to take the city apart and anyone who stands in their way. They pick the fight on the Longest Day when Mab's power is at her weakest. And oh boy do we get a fight. There is no easy way out or reasoning this away after all the death and destruction. But it was impressive.

And we get an explanation of stuff that happened in the earlier books as a hidden enemy is finally revealed and thwarted. But there is something to come in the next books. There was stuff I did not expect from Marcone for one and the sad death of another character in a way that I did not expect. And Harry is on the outs with the White Council once more.

You have to have read most of the other books to really appreciate this one and you have to have read Peace Talks.

And now the long wait until the next paid of books comes out.

I agree with you on Battleground and was a culmination of a lot, reminded me of Changes in that respect. Speaking of, if the spell CRT spoke of was the one from Changes, Harry couldn't have cast that spell, the vampires set it up, he just changed a parameter. If not, well, Harry has always been a powerhouse, what he has learned is control and maximizing that power. On the other hand 

Spoiler

I cannot see how he gets out of the creature that can possess anyone if they even hear about it. They showed early that for some reason Harry can affect it, but it goes back to why I stopped watching DS9 during the shifter war, despite how good the writing is, if the bad guys can be anyone you have already lost.

 

I have been listening to the Junkyard Druid series, all of them, and there are a lot of parallels, including the power creep. If you like Dresden, I recommend it by M.D. Massey.

[Sociotard]

Just finished The Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee. It was a mix of wuxia movies and The Godfather.

 

I did like it. I recommend it if you enjoyed A Song of Ice and Fire. It similarly features lots of diplomatic snarls, plotting, epic fights, and dead protagonists.

[Lawnmower Boy]

On 2/8/2024 at 9:16 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

Its not a book per se but I have been reading Savage Realms magazines on Kindle.  They are sword and sorcery short stories bundled, a handfull every month.  Some are a lot better than others, but overall its fun stuff and worth reading.

 

I kept up with the Dresden books for a while but got tired of the escalation of the story and it got ridiculous to me after a while.  Dresden wiping out a thousand vampires with a single spell claiming he could have cast it at any time but never had the acreage required.  The stories were at their best just as PI with magic street level stuff, not this huge storyline of epic proportions.  Butcher lost his way.

I'm with Chris on this one. He might not have picked the best example, but you can't possible deny the escalation. If I recall the vampire thing correctly (the story blurs together for me a bit, not a good sign), I was more upset with the way that Butcher killed off Dresden's girlfriend/baby mother, as that seemed like a sign  of incipient character stasis, which has certainly come true since. All series end, and I had the mistaken impression that Battleground was going to give us closure. Butcher is fabulously wealthy and 53. He can throw Dresden off the waterfall go into semi-retirement. write more books in the Aeronaut's Windlass series to keep himself busy, and buy his son a hobby farm or a congressional district or something so that he doesn't have to turn into another Brian Herbert. 

[Grailknight]

17 hours ago, slikmar said:

I agree with you on Battleground and was a culmination of a lot, reminded me of Changes in that respect. Speaking of, if the spell CRT spoke of was the one from Changes, Harry couldn't have cast that spell, the vampires set it up, he just changed a parameter. If not, well, Harry has always been a powerhouse, what he has learned is control and maximizing that power. On the other hand 

  Hide contents

I cannot see how he gets out of the creature that can possess anyone if they even hear about it. They showed early that for some reason Harry can affect it, but it goes back to why I stopped watching DS9 during the shifter war, despite how good the writing is, if the bad guys can be anyone you have already lost.

 

I have been listening to the Junkyard Druid series, all of them, and there are a lot of parallels, including the power creep. If you like Dresden, I recommend it by M.D. Massey.

 

Harry can avoid being possessed by Nemesis because he is a Starborn and has power over Outsiders. They cannot control his mind without his consent and his magic and even physical attacks are more effective against them. He can still be killed but he'll die his own man.

[csyphrett]

On 2/9/2024 at 12:16 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

Its not a book per se but I have been reading Savage Realms magazines on Kindle.  They are sword and sorcery short stories bundled, a handfull every month.  Some are a lot better than others, but overall its fun stuff and worth reading.

 

I kept up with the Dresden books for a while but got tired of the escalation of the story and it got ridiculous to me after a while.  Dresden wiping out a thousand vampires with a single spell claiming he could have cast it at any time but never had the acreage required.  The stories were at their best just as PI with magic street level stuff, not this huge storyline of epic proportions.  Butcher lost his way.

He stole the spell and had no way to cast it because you need to kill an active member of the bloodline to use it. The vampires wanted to use it by killing Maggie to kill Dresden, Ebenezer (The second or third most powerful mage in the world), and maybe Thomas and anyone related to his side which might have killed most of the white court. So in the middle of the battle, Harry uses the spell on the youngest member of the vampires' bloodline, his ex-girlfriend Susan. All the full vampires of the court are killed and the half-vampires like Susan are released back to being human.

 

The other three courts aren't affected by the spell.

CES   

On 2/16/2024 at 10:00 AM, Lawnmower Boy said:

I'm with Chris on this one. He might not have picked the best example, but you can't possible deny the escalation. If I recall the vampire thing correctly (the story blurs together for me a bit, not a good sign), I was more upset with the way that Butcher killed off Dresden's girlfriend/baby mother, as that seemed like a sign  of incipient character stasis, which has certainly come true since. All series end, and I had the mistaken impression that Battleground was going to give us closure. Butcher is fabulously wealthy and 53. He can throw Dresden off the waterfall go into semi-retirement. write more books in the Aeronaut's Windlass series to keep himself busy, and buy his son a hobby farm or a congressional district or something so that he doesn't have to turn into another Brian Herbert. 

I think all of Harry's love interests are doomed. I think he is under a curse and doesn't realize it. It hasn't been confirmed in story yet, but I would not be surprised if Laura Raith takes a bullet at their wedding.

CES

[Hermit]

Okay, recently I listened to an Audiobook Star Kingdom Omnibus (Part 1) written by  Lindsay Buroker. I mention that because a good narrator can elevate average writing, and a bad narrator can severely mar an otherwise excellent story. That said, I think I would have loved the story, or more accurately, the characters regardless of (IMO) Fred Berman's excellent voice work. I've mentioned before, I'm a Characters over Plot kind of guy and the characters in this are a LOT of fun!  So not to spoil things too much, but some of our main characters include:

An idealistic, often optimistic, and dorky robotics expert with more allergies than you care to count, a twitching eye, and a big heart who seems to have a knack for rallying others even though they grumble about him.

His roomate, a microbiologist who seems to be borderline autistic, or at least anti-social. She's also a good friend, who writes fantasy novels under a pen name, and has practiced in Kendo.

A burned out jaded star ship captain so deep in debt she can't see daylight, who happened to have once been a bounty hunter with amazing aim.

Her cheeky AI on the ship.

A young woman genetically altered to be a killing machine, but who is sweet as can be and has unicorn shaped wax candles in her quarters.

 

and more...

 

The characters start out engaging, and I grew to care for them rapidly. There  is character growth for each of them as well so this isn't something where they start out perfect and just stay that way. They all get into some pretty derring do through out, in the backdrop of greater political machinations on a galactic scale where different forces seek to use them, or, barring that, take them out.

 

Nutshell of my opinion? I Loved it.  It had a Firefly meets Dumas novel vibe to it... though less Western Twang, and more robots.

 

 

 

[DShomshak]

Throne of Glass, by Sarah J. Maas

 

According to a recent episode of the "Today Explained" radio program, the latest fad in Romance fiction is "Romantasy," or as some fans call it, "Fairy Smut." Find Mister Right while saving the kingdom from the Dark Lord, that sort of thing. One of the top current authors in this, they said, is Sarah J. Maas (though her work started in YA and has stayed there apparently through publisher inertia). My library had her first book, Throne of Glass, on audiobook, so I listened to it.

 

Late-teen heroine Celaena Sardothien was raised by an assassin after her parents were murdered and became the most feared assasin in the land before being captured and sent to the salt mines. She's pulled out to participate in a contest to become the champion of the king who has already brutally conquered much of the continent and wants to take the rest, too. The two men behind the plan are the young, hawt, and good-hearted (if irritating) Crown Prince, and the young, hawt, and good-hearted (if dour) Captain of the Guard, who are also best friends. Both are attracted to her, and she to both of them, because, duh. The contest becomes a bit more dangerous when other contestants turn up ripped to shreds, with suggestions of occult ritual. There's also a captive princess from one of the conquered countries, and the ghost of a long-dead queen who warns Celaena that someone is trying to unleash a great supernatural evil, and Celaena must win the contest so she'll be in a position to stop it. The immediate threat is dealt with, but this is the start of a series, so the great evil is yet to be revealed, let alone thwarted, and the love triangle is nowhere near resolved.

 

It is perhaps unfair to judge a writer by her first novel, but I was not impelled to seek the rest of the series. The good guys and gals are blandly likeable. Celaena has some trauma, but a lot less than I'd expect given her past. The plot is fairly predictable. World-building is skimpy, though I assume later books go into why the conqueror king outlawed magic (and what that magic was), and why (and how) he encased the old stone castle of his capital with a bigger castle made of architecturally sound glass. But if I really want to know, I'll just read the summary on Wikipedia.

 

Not recommended.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

 

[Sundog]

Promise of Blood, by Brian McClellan

 

First book in the Powder Mage trilogy, and to a certain extent a re-telling of the French Revolution. Magic exists, and in the kingdom of Ardo manifests as one of three primary ways - Privileged, full function sorcerors who can manipulate the raw essence of magic (to tremendous destructive force if desired) provided they are wearing their power-enabling gloves, Powder Mages, who can manipulate black powder and bullets, and who are feared by the Privileged for their ability to kill at well beyond the range of Privileged sorcery, and the Knacked, who have minor but unique and usually useful abilities - early in the book we are introduced to a Knacked with perfect recall, and another who never needs to sleep. But it becomes clear that, despite their rather arrogant belief in their understanding of the world, Ardo and the rest of the 9 Kingdoms have a fair ways to go to comprehending everything there is to know on the subject of magic.

 

The various characters are well drawn, with comprehensible motivations and flaws. Would recommend this book.

[slikmar]

I have been listening to Noleyn and then Faralin, just started Esrahaddan,  by Michael J Sullivan set in his world of Elan. These predate the Riyeria books and post date the Rise of the empire series. They are the transitions from the age of legends to Riryeria books and how we got there. They have some serious gut punches, but if fans of his other books, as I am, I highly recommend.
 

[Hermit]

13 hours ago, slikmar said:

I have been listening to Noleyn and then Faralin, just started Esrahaddan,  by Michael J Sullivan set in his world of Elan. These predate the Riyeria books and post date the Rise of the empire series. They are the transitions from the age of legends to Riryeria books and how we got there. They have some serious gut punches, but if fans of his other books, as I am, I highly recommend.
 

I just started Esrahaddon myself. So far, really engaging and entertaining. Good to see how Esra got his start. I loved Niblik

[slikmar]

I am in part 2, where Esra is 13. I like how he is using the opening of this series to "humanize the Goblins". I also really like Niblik. I tend to do the audiobooks, and Tim Gerard Reynolds is an amazing reader, one of the better ones I have heard. 

After finishing this book, I am seriously thinking of going back to Riyria Revelations with an understanding of how this series and the Age of Legends fits into what happened.

 

The whole series could be taken as the character arcs of 2 characters (3 I guess if you include Trilos): Morn DuLay and Torin (Kyle, Malcom, Uberlin, etc.) Is fascinating and I can't wait to see what he does next.

 

Spoiler

I really wanted an afterword in Faralain to show her arriving at the gates of Pyre and finding Zephron sitting there unable to pass due to what she did and Faralain basically saying screw that and dragging Zephron in with her. I understand why Michael didn't do it, but I wanted it. 

 

[Pariah]

I recently got a copy of The Hobbit on CD from the local library. It's a good way to pass the time back and forth to school. There was a lot of it that I didn't remember; it's been decades since I read it.

 

My next thought was to get The Fellowship of the Ring, but there are 20 some odd people in line ahead of me for it. So instead I checked out a different audiobook, The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley. Again, a book I've read before but it's been a very long time.

 

(Spoilered for verbose summary.)

Spoiler

Our heroine, Aerin, is the daughter of the second wife of the King of Damar. She is tall and ungainly with pale skin and fiery red hair, unlike pretty much everyone else who has dark hair and ambiguously brown skin. Furthermore, her cousin and chief court rival Galanna continuously taunts her about her heritage, suggesting that her mother was a witch who seduced the king just to produce an heir. She also loves pointing out that the magic talent that those of the Royal Blood all exhibit has somehow skipped Aerin. Her only friend in all of this is another cousin, a kind young man named Tor who is the presumptive heir to the throne.

 

After being goaded by Galanna into trying to prove her royal blood, and nearly dying in the effort, Aerin undergoes many months of rehabilitation that eventually finds her forging a friendship with her father's lame, retired war horse, learning swordplay, and developing a flame retardant ointment from a thousand year old book. So armed, she takes it upon herself to start slaying the small dragons that pester the periphery of the kingdom of Damar. Aerin gains a great deal of self-confidence and some measure of respect in the pursuit. But then, as her father and his army are called away to deal with an insurrection, she learns that Maur, the last great dragon from the old days, has awakened and is tormenting a nearby town. She goes looking for him and eventually finds him in a mountain valley.

 

She manages to slay Maur, but is nearly killed herself in the process. Worse, she has been poisoned by the dragon, which eats away at both her health and her sanity. She can hear the dragon's voice in her head, a fact that is intensified when a couple of idiots in her father's army decide to bring the huge skull of the dragon home and mount it in the Great Hall as a trophy. The visions eventually prove too much, and Aerin leaves to seek out the help of a blonde haired man who's been appearing in her dreams.

 

She finds the man, or perhaps he finds her, just in time to keep her from dying. He nurses her back to health and eventually bathes her in the Lake of Dreams, which makes her not quite mortal. His name is Luthe, and he's a wizard. He teaches her about an evil wizard who threatens all the world—and who happens to be her mother's brother. And yes, her mother was in fact a witch, and did marry the King in the hopes of producing a (male) heir who would defeat this wizard. Already frail and otherwise unwell, the birth of a daughter was too much for her to handle, and she died.

 

Aerin learns what she can from the Luthe, who for various reasons cannot face the dark wizard himself, and then goes to seek out her malevolent uncle. In a battle that seems to transcend the limits of time, she fights and eventually defeats him, again nearly at the cost of her own life. In the process, she takes from him the Hero's Crown, a powerful artifact that was taken from the kings of Damar generations ago. Luthe drags her back to the present time and again brings her back to health. They become lovers, but Aerin knows she must return to her homeland.

 

She arrives home to find a horde of literally inhuman Northerners has nearly taken the kingdom. She fights through the battle to find Tor, placing the Hero's Crown on his head. Her arrival, plus the bestowal of the Crown's power on Tor, is enough to turn the tide, and the Northerners are routed. But her father has been mortally wounded and dies in Aerin's arms.

 

Tor becomes King and marries Aerin, whom he has always loved—even if she had never allowed herself to believe it—a few months later. The unnatural forces released during the battle have turned Damar from a pleasant wooded kingdom into a flat, arid desert. Aerin helps her people adjust to their new habitat and, she and Tor becomes legends in their own time. They live more or less happily ever after.

 

McKinley does a great job with characterization and world building. Her descriptions of the people, the land,  the magic, and the otherworldly experiences Aerin has along the way are finely crafted. She tells a good story. It was quite enjoyable to re-familiarize myself with the book after so long.

 

Although written two years later, this book is a thousand-year prequel to one of Robin McKinley's other works, The Blue Sword. That's what I'm listening to now.

 

 

Edited March 18 by Pariah

[csyphrett]

Read a collection of Solomon Kane stories by Howard. Some of these I have read before, some of them were new to me. I have to say that Kane is more dogged than Jonah Hex, tracking a bandit across the ocean, across Europe into Africa, and then tracking him to where he has set up as the right hand of the chief in the jungle. This is a pursuit that took up years of Kane's life.

 

Favorite of the batch is The Return of Richard Grenville and the melancholic Solomon Kane's Homecoming.

CES 

[Christopher R Taylor]

I like Solomon Kane even better than Conan, I think he's my favorite of Howard's creations.

[death tribble]

Forge of Darkness by Steven Erikson

This continues the mythology of The Malazan Book of The Fallen and serves as a prequel of sorts and deals with the Tiste and how they became separated into factions. You have to read the Malazan books to get what is going on but if like me you are a fan then read this. But be warned there are scenes that will trouble people.

The story deals with the early lives of Anomander Rake and Draconus. Part of the narrative deals with Draconus taking his son to see someone and also what his sisters do in his absence. Also what those who oppose Draconus do and this is where it gets nasty. Even though this is a prequel, definitely start with the Malazan series and Gardens of the Moon and not this.