[amphibian]

Romance novels keep the publishing industry afloat because they earn so much money.

Maas is a fantasy mega star right now because she's gotten into that dynamic like Gabaldon, like Auel etc.

That brings a lot of newer eyeballs to the genre, yet there are certain "I'm new here and don't fully know the landscape" critiques that are going to dominate reviews.

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

These books are not great. Since I was lured in by the idea of a strong female assassin and the main character is not actually that, I think I will switch over to reading Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel books. I've heard great things about those over the years.

[worry]

Finished Valor -- definitely an improvement on Malice. It's still a simpler story than the real top tier in fantasy (imo), but there was a lot more drive to this one. I very consistently wanted to find out what happened next, which is pretty much what you want whether it's a popcorn read or something weightier.

Just a couple minor nitpicks (somewhat spoilery):

Spoiler

I thought I was reading a 1980s slasher, not cuz it was scary or violent, but cuz of the way this book treats sex. There's only three horny characters total in a named cast of dozens. One of the main bad guys is a horny cruel old lady. One of the other main bad guys is a horny cruel pirate. The third horny person is a good guy, more or less, but his horniness is literally his downfall. Come on, JG! Let people be horny in peace.

The other thing is people get their heads lopped off real easy. The one time it's not easy is during a literal execution, rather than battle. I guess it's pretty funny how often it happens, but I don't think that's what JG was going for.

Anyway, I liked this one. Next I will detour with a short weird fiction alien invasion novel called The Seep by Chana Porter, and then will get to Ruin right after.

[Abyss]

Just finished THE GIRL AND THE STARS, see the Mark Lawrence ded-thread for more, but short version, i enjoyed it and plowed thru half the next book THE GIRL AND THE MOUNTAIN before needing a short break.

A random audible sale gave me something called THE ASCENT by Adam Plantinga. The author's a retired police officer w a couple of nonfiction books on law enforcement out, this is his first fiction piece. I wanted popcorn, i got popcorn. It's a fun action thriller about some people stuck in a prison who have to ascend through multiple floors full of inmates to escape. The male MC has some 'author self-insertion' elements to him but it's not bad and it's to be expected from an ex cop writing a character who is an ex cop. He does a decent job w the female MC and avoids a lot of the traps male thriller authors fall into making them either perpetual damsels in distress or men in dresses. About halfway, no surprises but it's fun, low think high pace and exactly what i was jonesing for but didn't feel like looking thru the eTRP to find. Woman/man narrator duo are excellent, they really sell their characters' pov's which helps make the relatively hollywood action script story a bit more engaging.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 15 May 2024 - 03:04 PM, said:

A random audible sale gave me something called THE ASCENT by Adam Plantinga. The author's a retired police officer w a couple of nonfiction books on law enforcement out, this is his first fiction piece. I wanted popcorn, i got popcorn. It's a fun action thriller about some people stuck in a prison who have to ascend through multiple floors full of inmates to escape. The male MC has some 'author self-insertion' elements to him but it's not bad and it's to be expected from an ex cop writing a character who is an ex cop. He does a decent job w the female MC and avoids a lot of the traps male thriller authors fall into making them either perpetual damsels in distress or men in dresses. About halfway, no surprises but it's fun, low think high pace and exactly what i was jonesing for but didn't feel like looking thru the eTRP to find. Woman/man narrator duo are excellent, they really sell their characters' povs which helps make the relatively hollywood action script story a bit more engaging.

Just finished. Totally stuck the landing. I would read another book by this author in a thin fading edge of death heartbeat. It's very much in the vein of a higher action less whodunnit REACHER with less (but still some) crusading.The author effectively crafted some fun twists, created situations where MCs were credibly at risk, writes some damn fine action, and ties it all up nicely. I suspect that this either started as a script or was written intending to sell the rights to be one, because the author really nails the hollywood action beats in a way that could easily be a low budget thriller or a Big Hollywood Big Stars actioner. Particularly clever is how he weaves a series of supporting colourful antagonist characters through the story who could easily be short appearances or expanded roles for actors who are free that week/love the script/owe a producer a favour/someone has incriminating video.

So this gets a reco for fun fast low brain high entertainment read.


Marathon'd a few more hours of THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES podcast audiodrama. Still great horror/suspense fun and as it moves into a second season the author is digging in to a bigger underlying plot. He brings in the rest of the cast more and incorporates a slight format change - a 'secret' recording that follows the usual supernatural encounter story - that really draws the listener in effectively without losing the fun self-contained element to each episode. It's well done, the story is a series of audio archives by the 'head archivist' of something called the Magnus Institute, a low profile but not secret UK gov effort to track and record encounters w the supernatural. Due to reasons, the newly appointed head archivist (predecessor went missing under mysterious suspicious enigmatic circumstances) has a huge stack of written records of encounters with the supernatural that have to be transferred to audio. So he reads them. Sometimes people come in with new encounters to report, so we get random bystanders and staff as well. The readings are exceptionally well done, with just a hint of background music and absolutely masterful writing to tell an effective suspense/horror story in under 20min. As you listen, the archivist starts to include notes and raise connections... the bookseller in one episode is mentioned in another, a suspected necromancer from one encounter appears in a travelling carnival a decade earlier, a suspected dabbler in demon summoning has the same name as an architect mentioned later in relation to a haunted building. He also drops in some bits without shining a light on them, that utterly rewards the listener if you catch them before the archivist - I confess to feeling very smug at figuring out something before the entirely fictional character. This podcast is completed and has about 200 episodes, and a sequel series still in progress, so it's a lot of goodness for the excellent price of free.


And now back into THE GIRL AND THE MOUNTAIN. The worldbuilding is being steadily layered in to great effect and i now care about these characters as much as i did the cast of Book of the Ancestor. Mark's skill is really on display here.

[worry]

The Seep -- that weird fic novel mentioned above, about a "gentle" alien invasion. I thought this was fun and funny, among other things. A little sad, a little trippy too. It's got that "Is this a utopia or a dystopia" thing going on. And it's only 200 pages. Great palate cleanser. They're not much alike except in the broadest terms, but would be a good double feature with Rejoice, A Knife in the Heart just for the compare/contrast of extraterrestrial benevolence.


Then I kinda zoomed through Ruin, even though it's the longest book in the series so far. Another improvement for John Gwynne -- partly because it's just at that point in the plot where things are turning, but also just fewer peccadilloes overall. Still maybe a little conservative for my tastes (I don't mean politically, I mean in terms of story), but I'm still very much (and increasingly) engaged. Going right into Wrath with nothing in between.

[Tiste Simeon]

I finished Magician by Raymond E Feist! That was a great book and I think I'll move straight on to Silverthorn.

[worry]

Finished Wrath. It was a pretty decent finale, though not the series high point (books 2 and 3 better than 1 and 4). This series might hold two Guinness (or should I say Gwynne-ess) records 1) most times a good guy gets captured and rescued; and most times a good guy is about to be slain when suddenly a sword is protruding from the baddy's chest from behind. Even for fantasy standards they both happen a confounding number of times. Nevertheless, still a very readable, often gripping action/adventure.story. I know there's a sequel trilogy so I'll be tackling that probably this year too.

[Tiste Simeon]

So I finished The Midnight Mayor, book two of the Matthew Swift series by Kate Griffin (Claire North). I'll pop some thoughts in the dedthread.

I then started and finished in the space of 24 hours "Dark Matter" by Blake Crouch. Haven't been that hooked by a book in a very long time! It's enough to make me want to get Apple TV too see how the adaptation holds up. Excellent sci-fi thriller.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 12 March 2024 - 04:35 AM, said:

Yknow how I reco'd that dinosaur webtoon comic and all of you immediately started reading it and became extremely addicted (except for all of you who ignored me because you hate dinosaurs and fun and, I dunno, freedom or something)?

Well, here's something else for you to ignore despite that I'm telling you its exceptional and you should try it: MIDNIGHT BURGER is a podcast production, full cast w soundtrack, about a mysterious diner that jumps between time and space. One day it's in 1800s Arkansas, the next an alien world with exactly one inhabitant, and so on. The staff consist of some dude who wandered in by accident, a cook with a wild backstory, a really angry physicist, a taco chef, and a sentient radio that mostly plays olde timey Christian revival tunes and occasionally predicts the future. Also, teleporting parmesan cheese. They appear somewhere, and inevitably someone shows up who needs help. Mostly. Sometimes they just need coffee.

The cast are great, they deliver at a level most podcasts wish for. The writing... seriously people, the blend of sf and humour and drama is exceptional. It's like peak Dr Who and Cheers with a dose of Sliders, Quantum Leap, and Highway to Heaven. The setup/payoff is masterful, the big moments HUGE. I just marathoned about 28 episodes, plus another six of the spinoff/prologue short series they do in between and I am loving this.

They're on the usual podcast sites, free w short ads, website is https://www.weopenatsix.com/ , totally worth some eartime.

Abyss, on 25 April 2024 - 02:00 PM, said:

...Also spent some time on THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES, a podcast horror series that is entirely too clever for its own good. ...

Abyss, on 24 May 2024 - 02:01 PM, said:

...Marathon'd a few more hours of THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES podcast audiodrama. Still great horror/suspense fun ...This podcast is completed and has about 200 episodes, and a sequel series still in progress, so it's a lot of goodness for the excellent price of free....

Guys... is it bad that i have a audiodrama/fiction podcast TRP building and it's becoming really big really quickly???

It's bad, isn't it?

....oh hell...

[Cyphon]

Midnight burger is ace. Listened on your reco and just finished the first season.

[Abyss]

Cyphon, on 13 June 2024 - 07:22 PM, said:

Midnight burger is ace. Listened on your reco and just finished the first season.

Isn't it great??????

S2 gets even crazier and more awesome.
I passed through a trunk sale the other day and someone had a few old style radios out and i was SO tempted.

[Mentalist]

Spent most of C-day out by the lake, and finally finished the 2nd Unhewn Throne book,

Guess I'll need to order BK 3 and Skullsworn once I'm back from the camping trip in mid-July.

Meanwhile, for light beach reading I'll probably marathon thru a re-read of the Kate Daniels books as some light popcorn

[Briar King]

Ok I guess I’ll take it if you’re ordering for me.

[JPK]

Briar King, on 02 July 2024 - 02:47 AM, said:

Ok I guess I’ll take it if you’re ordering for me.

Holy crap, it's BK! Good to see you pop in.

Been reading anything interesting lately?

[Briar King]

I’m just getting to WoT 14 on the nearly 3 year rereread. Once I’m finally finished I ll either be rereading Mistborn 2(got the last book but to long since I’ve read 1-3) or rereading Abercrombie’s 1st Law(got last trilogy finally but it’s been even longer since Mistborn 2 that I went through that) or Brown’s Lightbringer since I will not have to reread 1-5. My recall on that is still pretty high close to 4 years later. OR I will jump into these GGK…

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 24 May 2024 - 02:01 PM, said:

...
And now back into THE GIRL AND THE MOUNTAIN. The worldbuilding is being steadily layered in to great effect and i now care about these characters as much as i did the cast of Book of the Ancestor. Mark's skill is really on display here.

Just Finished that and THE GIRL AND THE MOON, bringing to a close the BOOK OF THE ICE trilo and Mark Lawrence's Abeth series. Very satisfying fantasy read all around, i truly enjoyed the cycle and the way the two trilogies tied together.

Also just finished SUICIDE KINGS, the latest Eric Carter Necromancer book from Stephen Blackmoore. This was the Graphic Audio full cast version i had been waiting for. Great fun book, i was worried the reset in the last book had taken some of the wind out of the series, but nah, the action, the witty dialogue, the violence, the drug use, the clever use of Mexican mythology in necromancy, all there and better than ever. To my very pleasant surprise, the next two books, CULT CLASSIC and HATE MACHINE, are both already out in audible narrator format, so two credits launched and yay, more fun ahead! ....sorry Graphic Audio but you snooze you lose (unless the narrator is bad but i think i recognize the name as good).

[worry]

By coincidence, I have been dipping my toe into GGK, if that phrase isn't too disturbing. Never read him before, but I'm now on book 3 of the Fionavar Tapestry. My impression of its rep is it's considered at the low end of his output, for maybe obvious reasons (debut series, Tolkien-derivative, etc.). Which may be true, but I'm liking it a lot and his prose even here is very, very engaging and impressive. I bought everything from this up through Lions, which seems to have the best rep.

[Abyss]

worry, on 03 July 2024 - 07:19 PM, said:

By coincidence, I have been dipping my toe into GGK, if that phrase isn't too disturbing. Never read him before, but I'm now on book 3 of the Fionavar Tapestry. My impression of its rep is it's considered at the low end of his output, for maybe obvious reasons (debut series, Tolkien-derivative, etc.). Which may be true, but I'm liking it a lot and his prose even here is very, very engaging and impressive. I bought everything from this up through Lions, which seems to have the best rep.

FIONAVAR gets a mixed reception, partly for being early era portal fantasy (involving Canadians dropped into a fae realm where they keep apologizing for stuff). Even so, and despite or maybe because of the sheer hubris of the Arthurian elements, it's very readable. I quite liked it. Among the rest of GGK's work, LIONS, SARANTINE, and ARBONNE have always stood out for me as excetional, tho i've enjoyed everything else of his with the notable exceptions of TIGANA, LAST LIGHT, and YSABEL (which, if you're a completist Worry, is a sort of epilogue to Fionavar). I have some of his more recent work in the TRPs.

[worry]

That's good to know about Ysabel. I do plan to go in published order, and he's got a small enough body of work that being a completionist seems very doable, though it'll take a few years.

You basically nailed the two things that would usually make me side-eye something -- portal fantasy, and slipping Arthurian stuff into secondary worlds -- but I gotta say, I like the way GGK handles both here. As far as Canadians go, I have no personal grudge against them. I'm always happy when Martin Short brings back Jiminy Glick.