[QuickTidal]

Finished TWELVE MONTHS (awesome, thoughts in Abyss's thread)

Finished Anthony Riches EMPIRE: WOUNDS OF HONOUR, which was AMAZING...best new Ancient Rome book I've read since I found Ben Kane. I had the rest of the series picked up ebook on a sale once and only just got around to book 1, so I'm in now.

[Tiste Simeon]

Some recent reads:

Orb Sceptre Throne by Esselmont, on audiobook - this has always been my least favourite of the whole Malazan collection (at least in terms of full length novels and while I enjoyed it more than I ever did on this read through - the last quarter was especially good - it still doesn't satisfy me like all the others do. I get why people like it but I just can't quite connect with it.

I think it's partly down to how they de-mystified the Seguleh. It's always irked me a bit. Also it follows TTH which is probably my favourite of all so it's quite hard to live up to those standards.

Anyway it has lots of Traveller who is hands down the best Malazan character so that's all good. Plus the Antsy/Orchid Spawns bit is great.

An Ethical Guide to Murder by Jenny Morris on audiobook - I initially took this to be a fun "quirky" book that was a good palate cleanser in between Malazan stories, but in reality it is a deep and thought provoking story (though still quite funny in bits).

It follows a woman who discovers she has the power of life and death. By touching someone she can see the exact time and date they die. No other information or anything, just a date and time and a certainty. She soon after discovers that she has the power to drain a person's life force and bring their death nearer and hold their years inside, and then pass those years onto others to give them more time.

What follows is both an entertaining and occasionally thrilling take of her trying to do the right thing with these powers and actually making the reader (or listener) really think about the consequences of these actions and producing questions like "is it ever ok to kill" and "who decides who deserves to live or die?"

I was gripped all the way through and considering it's not the longest book ever, it packs an awful lot in. Highly recommended and I think it was free with audible for a while...

The Will of the Many by James Islington, dead tree version.

This is my first ever book I've read of his and man I loved it! It's a Rome inspired fantasy world where "Will" is ceded to those ranked above you in the appropriately named Hierarchy and those at the top are super powerful. It follows a 17 year old lad who is not originally from the Hierarchy and how he gets adopted into a high ranking person's family in order to attend a special academy for the best and the brightest to become more powerful so they can become the new leaders of the senate etc

Only the reason he was adopted is so he can try to find the truth about an incident that happened years previously and not only that but the kids himself has his own secrets and plans.

It's a well told and generally fast paced take with a very well crafted world and fun characters. I'm definitely going to be getting the sequel, The Strength of the Few.

Currently reading: Dust of Dreams on audiobook, There is No Antiemetics Division by Qntm in dead tree and still plodding through Oathbringer (though still enjoying it!) on Kindle.

[Tsundoku]

Tiste Simeon, on 21 February 2026 - 07:10 PM, said:

An Ethical Guide to Murder by Jenny Morris on audiobook - I initially took this to be a fun "quirky" book that was a good palate cleanser in between Malazan stories, but in reality it is a deep and thought provoking story (though still quite funny in bits).

It follows a woman who discovers she has the power of life and death. By touching someone she can see the exact time and date they die. No other information or anything, just a date and time and a certainty. She soon after discovers that she has the power to drain a person's life force and bring their death nearer and hold their years inside, and then pass those years onto others to give them more time.

What follows is both an entertaining and occasionally thrilling take of her trying to do the right thing with these powers and actually making the reader (or listener) really think about the consequences of these actions and producing questions like "is it ever ok to kill" and "who decides who deserves to live or die?"

I was gripped all the way through and considering it's not the longest book ever, it packs an awful lot in. Highly recommended and I think it was free with audible for a while...

"President Trump, may I shake your hand?"

[Tiste Simeon]

Well, exactly. I won't spoil anything but there's a fair amount of that - not Trump specifically, but his ilk - in the plot.

[Mentalist]

Wrapped up The Girl and the Stars

Gonna pick up the rest of the series when I'm visiting my parents for Easter.

Now it's time to tackle The Dark tower. I've previously read "Gunslinger" in French, but I have very vague recollections. And now I got the first 3 books on my shelf, for some quick reads.

[Chance]

Twelve Months got me reading again mixing new books with a Dresden re-read.

Latest up was Precursor the latest installment of the Spiral War books which have been excellent for a good while, but like many long series it is probably starting to be a bit too familiar to really inspire the same wonder as some of the earlier books.

On to Ghost Story which is my least favorite of the later Dresden books.

Tiste Simeon, on 21 February 2026 - 07:10 PM, said:

The Will of the Many by James Islington, dead tree version.

...

It's a well told and generally fast paced take with a very well crafted world and fun characters. I'm definitely going to be getting the sequel, The Strength of the Few.

I really enjoyed the Will of the Many but the sequel was just so grim it threw me entirely a fair bit into it, so damned grimdark I just couldn't continue it.

[QuickTidal]

Chance, on 23 February 2026 - 07:18 PM, said:

Tiste Simeon, on 21 February 2026 - 07:10 PM, said:

The Will of the Many by James Islington, dead tree version.

...

It's a well told and generally fast paced take with a very well crafted world and fun characters. I'm definitely going to be getting the sequel, The Strength of the Few.

I really enjoyed the Will of the Many but the sequel was just so grim it threw me entirely a fair bit into it, so damned grimdark I just couldn't continue it.

My problem was that one was that the twist at the end of Book 1 was not only convoluted, but felt unearned? I dunno. Solid book till then, not sure if I'll read the sequel.

[Tiste Simeon]

QuickTidal, on 23 February 2026 - 07:29 PM, said:

Chance, on 23 February 2026 - 07:18 PM, said:

Tiste Simeon, on 21 February 2026 - 07:10 PM, said:

The Will of the Many by James Islington, dead tree version.

...

It's a well told and generally fast paced take with a very well crafted world and fun characters. I'm definitely going to be getting the sequel, The Strength of the Few.

I really enjoyed the Will of the Many but the sequel was just so grim it threw me entirely a fair bit into it, so damned grimdark I just couldn't continue it.

My problem was that one was that the twist at the end of Book 1 was not only convoluted, but felt unearned? I dunno. Solid book till then, not sure if I'll read the sequel.

Yeah I guess I get where you're coming from with that. I'm intrigued to see where it goes though I'm a bit disheartened to hear it turns all grimdark.

[Chance]

Close to finishing up Ghost Stories and it's better than I remember it, quite enjoyable.

Tiste Simeon, on 24 February 2026 - 05:44 AM, said:

QuickTidal, on 23 February 2026 - 07:29 PM, said:

Chance, on 23 February 2026 - 07:18 PM, said:

Tiste Simeon, on 21 February 2026 - 07:10 PM, said:

The Will of the Many by James Islington, dead tree version.

...

It's a well told and generally fast paced take with a very well crafted world and fun characters. I'm definitely going to be getting the sequel, The Strength of the Few.

I really enjoyed the Will of the Many but the sequel was just so grim it threw me entirely a fair bit into it, so damned grimdark I just couldn't continue it.

My problem was that one was that the twist at the end of Book 1 was not only convoluted, but felt unearned? I dunno. Solid book till then, not sure if I'll read the sequel.

Yeah I guess I get where you're coming from with that. I'm intrigued to see where it goes though I'm a bit disheartened to hear it turns all grimdark.

It's a good book but it is very much horrific death/murders, torture and bleakness up to where I left off with not all that much of the book left, I'll finish it someday soon when I'm in the right mood.

It is also a bit weird because what happened at the end of the first book is kinda misdirection and something else really happened which determines a lot of the structure of the second book making it both occasionally awesome and a bit slow with three parallel stories taking place over the second book.

This post has been edited by Chance: 24 February 2026 - 03:45 PM

[Abyss]

Just Finished THE INNKEEPER CHRONICLES by Ilona 'married spies still using that pen name for some reason' Andrews.

CLEAN SWEEP
SWEEP IN PEACE
ONE FELL SWEEP
SWEEP WITH ME (novella)
SWEEP OF THE BLADE
SWEEP OF THE HEART

...that's the series to date, they've blog'd there are two more planned.

This was a fun read, a lot of the style and tone of the authors' KATE DANIELS series is here - (mostly) badass female MC, tough/tender male love interest, wider world w supernatural and sf elements, eclectic supporting cast - but nicely different world/setting/cast. I had avoided this series bcs it was marketed as being heavy on the romance angle which is usually not my thing. A few people on reddit posted that wasn't accurate, and as we're not getting a Katemine fix any time soon i thought i'd give it a try. Happy i did.

The series focuses around Dina, an 'Innkeeper', being a person who maintains an semi-sentient Inn that shelters and serves intergalactic/interdimensional guests who are on Earth for whatever reason and need to remain hidden because the population cannot know etc etc. We meet Dina while her Inn, which is effectively a large house/estate that is alive and 'bigger on the inside' and magic AND scifi, is low on guests. It's a thing here that the Inns need guests and activity to gain power. Dina is not exactly new at this but not wildly experienced either. Her Inn has exactly one guest, a spectacularly written old woman ex empress cannibal who chews up every scene she's in, a pet dog who is more or less that cat from the Marvel movies with all the tentacles, and her biggest hassle is the new werewolf hot guy ex commando down the street and yeah i rolled my eyes too but the authors handle it well. In fact they do a very nice job of introducing characters who appear to be one thing and end up being another. Werehottie Shawn is the obvious example but more or less everyone else except the dog and the comic relief get some nice levels added as the story rolls along.

One fun aspect to this series is that for the most part, the 'supernatural' beings are actually aliens... werewolves, vampires, etc, are from other planets and dimensions. It's a nicely different take from the usual urban fantasy hidden world tropes, and they work in a lot of worldbuilding and backstory without getting bogged down in infodumps.

Bk 1 is all setup with an alien bounty-hunter causing trouble. Book 2 brings in a wider cast and Dina's sister Maud. 3 and the novella do a lot of worldbuilding and developing the overplot, the novella in particular is impressive for more or less jamming a novel's worth of events and development into a fairly short story, 4 is a fast paced vampire politics and wild action story around Maud (i cannot overstate how well written the action sequences are in this book), and 5... is is a little weird, it kind of read as tho they had two different stories to tell and had to jam them into one book, and while it works, the shift between tense race to save a friend from the Big Bad and 'The Bachelor: Interplanetary' was a little jarring, with far more infodump than the earlier books, i suspect because they're setting up for the final books and a wider scope to the story. Overall it works, but 4 remains my favorite so far.

The action in general is great, I had wondered if the shift in MC - Dina can fight but she's closer to a mage than Kate Daniels' swordswoman - might result in less, but nope, the stabby zappy punchy explodey are just great. Maud is definitely a more physical character and damn they have some great fun writing her fight scenes.

The earbook narrator changes over the course of the series but they all do excellent work, zero complaints (Graphic Audio is doing a full cast version but i haven't ear'd that).

All of which is to say, if you feel like an urban fantasy fix in the flavor of the Kate Daniels series, this is worth a look. I'll preorder the next book as soon as it shows up.

[Tiste Simeon]

Chance, on 24 February 2026 - 03:43 PM, said:

It's a good book but it is very much horrific death/murders, torture and bleakness up to where I left off with not all that much of the book left, I'll finish it someday soon when I'm in the right mood.

It is also a bit weird because what happened at the end of the first book is kinda misdirection and something else really happened which determines a lot of the structure of the second book making it both occasionally awesome and a bit slow with three parallel stories taking place over the second book.

Hmm interesting thanks for the response. I'm still going to get it I think but at least I'm going in forewarned! I'll wait until it's on sale probably.

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

Frankenstein

Not to repeat what I said in JPK's thread, but I found this a really beautiful read. Definitely a classic that I 100% get why it's a classic - Mary Shelley produced something really exquisite.

As an aside, I live on Shelley Close. Given the naming convention of the surrounding streets, I'm well aware they meant her husband. I'm claiming my street for Mary!

Going on to a bit of a niche one called Raising Loki. I follow an Instagram account called lokitheraven (there's also a Youtube channel), and the book is the story of taking in Loki, an abused raven, and working with him by his keeper Elliott. I'm assuming it's going to be something like in the mould of H is for Hawk.

This post has been edited by TheRetiredBridgeburner: 26 February 2026 - 07:54 AM

[QuickTidal]

TheRetiredBridgeburner, on 26 February 2026 - 07:51 AM, said:

As an aside, I live on Shelley Close. Given the naming convention of the surrounding streets, I'm well aware they meant her husband. I'm claiming my street for Mary!

That's awesome!

My "street name" story is a bit more macabre...the condo I lived in in Toronto for 15 years with my wife, sat next to a small street that had once been residential houses in the 1920's and 30's, but had since become the back alley and garage entrance to the parking for our condo bldg and the condo bldg next door...but the street sign was still up for the street it used to be...so imagine my surprise when one day I'm reading THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY, which is about how infamous serial killer H.H. Holmes terrorized the 1893 Chicago's Worlds Fair and killed people in a house he had deliberately built to kill and dismember people and dispose of them with wicked inventions...well he eventually escaped Chicago and fled to Canada...Toronto more specifically and had a rental house on that little street where he continued to kill people (mostly young women) he was finally caught and arrested, by the Boston police a year later after fleeing Canada...so there I was reading the book and I stood up and looked out our window to the laneway below and saw where some of the final events of that book take place...it was a WILD ass moment.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 26 February 2026 - 01:09 PM

[Abyss]

A few false starts this week coming off of the just finished INNKEEPER marathon... first was Gail Simone's RED SONJA: CONSUMED. I adore Gail, i think she's an awesome person and one of the bestest comics writers out there, her Red Sonja comics run is rightfully legendary, and her current Xmen run is a way up high point during a really weak era, so i was pretty stoked for this... unfortunately DNF about six chapters in. Her writing for Sonja is great, everything i want from the character. It's just that every other chapter is some other character POV and those fall into two categories... person we meet who is tropey and i am bored by and then they are dead by the end of the chapter, or tropey character i am bored by. It's odd because Gail's character work is shiny, and maybe it's just my present frame of brain but characters who don't engage me lose my interest quickly and that was looking like 50% of the book, so hit the pause, maybe i'll come back. Zero shade on Felicia Day's all good narration.

Next up was Joe Hill's THE FIREMAN. I've circled around Hill's work for a while, i loved his LOCKE n KEY comics and the buzz around his fiction is generally positive so it caught my eye within the TRP/TLF and i decided to give it a try, and well... it's fine, but, so far, this book is about a worldwide epidemic and a woman in a bad relationship and it feels like THE STAND LITE, despite the very clever epidemic idea that has people all over the world slowly bursting into flame. I ack the comparison to his dad may be unfair, but whether it's that book or others i just feel like i've read this before and i know where it's going and yawn and i don't feel like toughing it out so another DNF. And again zero shade to the narrator, Kate Mulgrew kills at this, she can carry a mood like Capn Janeway carries a starship.

So, as i'm flailing Spotify drops HEXARCHATE STORIES into my 'hey sucker, you still have freebie earbook hours left, read this' panel, so i did and it's great. It's an anthology of shorts from Yoon Ha Lee's MACHINERIES OF EMPIRE series, most of which so far relate to MC Jidao's childhood and early years. They're fun and interesting and very very clever at dropping little tidbits of worldbuilding into the complexity of the setting. Also surprisingly enjoying the author notes after each story... Lee is Korean by descent and Texan by everything else and he put a lot of himself into this series that wouldn't be obvious and is interesting to see reflected.

This post has been edited by Abyss: 26 February 2026 - 07:34 PM
Reason for edit: author details

[polishgenius]

Abyss, on 26 February 2026 - 04:15 PM, said:

So, as i'm flailing Spotify drops HEXARCHATE STORIES into my 'hey sucker, you still have freebie earbook hours left, read this' panel, so i did and it's great. It's an anthology of shorts from Yoon Ha Lee's MACHINERIES OF EMPIRE series, most of which so far relate to MC Jidao's childhood and early years. They're fun and interesting and very very clever at dropping little tidbits of worldbuilding into the complexity of the setting. Also surprisingly enjoying the author notes after each story... Lee is Chinese by descent and Texan by everything else and she put a lot of herself into this series that wouldn't be obvious and is interesting to see reflected.

Lee is a South Korean man not a Chinese woman, just for clarity...


Great collection, and I think you'll enjoy the last story in particular, a novella that caps the trilogy.

[worry]

If it's any help, The Fireman actually doesn't wind up being much like The Stand at all. Much more tightly focused and less mythic. As far as King books go, it's probably closest to Cell, but it does wind up being more original than that. Still might not put you in the mood for it though.

[Abyss]

polishgenius, on 26 February 2026 - 05:02 PM, said:

...Lee is a South Korean man not a Chinese woman, just for clarity...

Great collection, and I think you'll enjoy the last story in particular, a novella that caps the trilogy.

Noted/fixed/tnx!

[Abyss]

worry, on 26 February 2026 - 05:24 PM, said:

If it's any help, The Fireman actually doesn't wind up being much like The Stand at all. Much more tightly focused and less mythic. As far as King books go, it's probably closest to Cell, but it does wind up being more original than that. Still might not put you in the mood for it though.

Possibly - may be that i'm just not feeling the 'ordinary people in danger in the real world' vibe atm. It's not the writing it's the story, if that makes sense.

[worry]

Yeah -- I liked it, so I wouldn't call it a slog, but it is a dirge.

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

QuickTidal, on 26 February 2026 - 01:08 PM, said:

TheRetiredBridgeburner, on 26 February 2026 - 07:51 AM, said:

As an aside, I live on Shelley Close. Given the naming convention of the surrounding streets, I'm well aware they meant her husband. I'm claiming my street for Mary!

That's awesome!

My "street name" story is a bit more macabre...the condo I lived in in Toronto for 15 years with my wife, sat next to a small street that had once been residential houses in the 1920's and 30's, but had since become the back alley and garage entrance to the parking for our condo bldg and the condo bldg next door...but the street sign was still up for the street it used to be...so imagine my surprise when one day I'm reading THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY, which is about how infamous serial killer H.H. Holmes terrorized the 1893 Chicago's Worlds Fair and killed people in a house he had deliberately built to kill and dismember people and dispose of them with wicked inventions...well he eventually escaped Chicago and fled to Canada...Toronto more specifically and had a rental house on that little street where he continued to kill people (mostly young women) he was finally caught and arrested, by the Boston police a year later after fleeing Canada...so there I was reading the book and I stood up and looked out our window to the laneway below and saw where some of the final events of that book take place...it was a WILD ass moment.

That is indeed WILD!