Finished listening to the mistborn trilogy which I enjoyed a lot. Started listening to secret history which is phenomenal so far. Loving the alternative perspective and the sense of humour. It’s really making me enjoy Kelsier in a way I didn’t in the main series.
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Done. Now I can read the wiki without fear of spoilers.
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I read “Elder Race” by Adrian Tchaikovsky last night. I really liked the two different perspectives on the “magic” that was very well done. Mixing SF and Fantasy in this way made for a very fun read. Would recommend and also it is short.
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There are currently two interesting book Humble Bundles:
- Neal Shusterman–I recommend the Arc of Scythe (“utopian” YA scifi with some interesting takes on AI and still interesting even after chatGPT) , it is worth it for that alone, I haven’t read the rest, so I am not sure I am getting it… has anyone read more of his stuff and can give recommendations?
- Ursula K le Guin–I already have a bunch of those but it is a huge bundle and I am quite tempted despite having Earthsea, Dispossessed (yeah that one is on the unfinished pile, I never got beyond a few pages. I should try again.) and a few of her non-fiction writings already.
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I’ve picked up The Saints of Salvation by Peter F. Hamilton. I read Salvation Lost about 3 years ago but don’t really remember much. Still enjoying it though.
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I woke up earlier than I wanted to this morning so wrapped up The Saints of Salvation.
I’ve seen a lot of chat online about the quality of this trilogy. It was fine, not up there with Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained which got me into Hamilton’s work.
I realise I was in the middle of three of his series. At least that’s down to two now with Night Without Stars and The Naked God left to read.
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Finally finished The Sunlit Man (Secret Project #4) last night despite a bad headache… so I can start listening/reading/devouring Wind and Truth today. Yay Stormlight #5 is out!
Am I still a Sanderson fan-girl? Yes, I am. Not enough to follow everything he does or having read every single book he has written. But the Cosmere stuff? I think I’ve read 95% of that at least once. And I am saying 95% because I am a fan but not enough of one to devour all the news all the time there might be some short-story or novella out there I have missed 
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Just blitzed through Starter Villain by Scalzi after picking it up the other week. A breezy romp.
Not sure what’s next.
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Me too! Literally just finished the coda (the man loves his codas) today.
And I also have no idea what I’m going to read next.
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Quite enjoyed “How to become a Dark Lord (and die trying)” by Django Wexler. Must read the Scalzi.
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I’ve not read that, but the title makes me think of Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman, which is also a pretty good read.
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I have received “Fight Me” (Austin Grossman’s new one) for Christmas, but currently busy reading “Polostan” by Neal Stephenson. It jumps around odd parts of 1920s and 30s American and Soviet history, but is pretty entertaining.
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I’ve not read that one, but I have read his second and third novels You and Crooked. I didn’t enjoy them as much as Soon I Will Be Invincible, but the concepts behind all three are neat. You definitely draws on Grossman’s time with Looking Glass (which was the reason I took an interest in his first novel), and I liked that more than Crooked. Even SIWBI, as much as I like it, didn’t quite wind up being what I wanted it to be, though – I feel as if Grossman has great ideas for stories, and then never takes them in the direction I wanted. I think if the descriptions sound like something you absolutely want to read then you’d definitely get enjoyment out of them; but they’re not books I’d recommend unreservedly.
I hadn’t heard of Fight Me, but I see it’s a return to Super heroes and villains. I’d be interested to hear what you think of it once you get around to reading it.
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Rounding out the year with December’s stack of books.
Took me nicely to 150 books read in 2024. Though I realised that’s just according to GoodReads. There were a couple of RPGs I read that aren’t on there.
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After Billy Bragg’s book about skiffle I’ve moved on to a couple of fantasy anthologies: Sovereigns of the Blue Rose and Tales from the Mount.
These are both published by Green Ronin’s fiction imprint and collect stories from different authors, all set in the world of their Blue Rose roleplaying game; game fiction never raises my expectations terribly high, mainly because I’ve read Quag Keep, Gord the Rogue: Saga of Old City and a book about that drow who sounds like a lightbulb on the fritz. Still, there are a few decent pieces here, aiming to follow the style of romantic fantasy which influenced the game in the first place. Both are themed anthologies, with one concerning the different rulers of the main kingdom through the ages, and the other tying in with an adventure campaign about a semi-mythical vanishing mountain.
My main problem with the collections is that the individual stories are often merely scenes and fragments, some of them quite frustratingly incomplete in themselves. With few recurring characters, that makes them feel isolated and unsatisfying. Tales from the Mount feels especially afflicted by this. The remainder are more rounded stories, with lightly drawn but still solid characters, and they largely make up for the disappointments.
Still, while they are decent enough game fiction collections, I’d only actually recommend them to someone who was interested in the setting as part of the game.
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So have I. It feels like a basically uninspired fantasy adventure, with an opening narrative to cash in on this new dungeons and dragons thing.
A similar problem is why I stopped reading Clarkesworld. My ideal short story is a novel in miniature, beginning-middle-end; I can see that the slice of life is clearly something that a lot of people like, or even the slice of life ending in someone making a fateful decision not to put up with it any more, but for me a piece of world-building or character study or whatever isn’t satisfying as a narrative.
(My wife reminds me of that time when many popular novels meant a bored housewife agonising for ten chapters over whether to have an affair, and in the end deciding not to.)
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