[pat5150]

QuickTidal, on 02 September 2025 - 01:27 PM, said:

Sufficed to say this Green Rider fan is eating well at the moment. I know she usually stays locally in Maine near her cabin home, but I would love to see her come to Canada for the new book so I could meet her and tell her what her series meant to me during COVID when I got properly sunk into it.

I believe she attends Worldcon every year to be part of the annual Daw Books dinner. You might catch her there.

[Briar King]

Should be finishing up Dresden 9 reread today and starting 10.

[QuickTidal]

pat5150, on 02 September 2025 - 06:25 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 02 September 2025 - 01:27 PM, said:

Sufficed to say this Green Rider fan is eating well at the moment. I know she usually stays locally in Maine near her cabin home, but I would love to see her come to Canada for the new book so I could meet her and tell her what her series meant to me during COVID when I got properly sunk into it.

I believe she attends Worldcon every year to be part of the annual Daw Books dinner. You might catch her there.

As a Canadian, I will not be travelling to the States any time soon out of principle.

But maybe she'll come up here one day to Bakkaphoenix or some other speciality bookstore.

[Mentalist]

Took advantage of the long weekend to finally finish "The Lost Metal". Not bad.

Guess I'll do that Le Flambeur re-read now.

[pat5150]

QuickTidal, on 03 September 2025 - 11:32 AM, said:

As a Canadian, I will not be travelling to the States any time soon out of principle.

But maybe she'll come up here one day to Bakkaphoenix or some other speciality bookstore.

Just checked her website and she'll also be at the World Fantasy Con this fall. But it's in the UK this year, so a bit far for you. . .

[QuickTidal]

pat5150, on 03 September 2025 - 08:02 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 03 September 2025 - 11:32 AM, said:

As a Canadian, I will not be travelling to the States any time soon out of principle.

But maybe she'll come up here one day to Bakkaphoenix or some other speciality bookstore.

Just checked her website and she'll also be at the World Fantasy Con this fall. But it's in the UK this year, so a bit far for you. . .

Yeah. Oh well, one day hopefully. I truly think she's one of the best authors in fantasy today, and I'd love to tell her.

[Tiste Simeon]

QuickTidal, on 04 September 2025 - 11:54 AM, said:

pat5150, on 03 September 2025 - 08:02 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 03 September 2025 - 11:32 AM, said:

As a Canadian, I will not be travelling to the States any time soon out of principle.

But maybe she'll come up here one day to Bakkaphoenix or some other speciality bookstore.

Just checked her website and she'll also be at the World Fantasy Con this fall. But it's in the UK this year, so a bit far for you. . .

Yeah. Oh well, one day hopefully. I truly think she's one of the best authors in fantasy today, and I'd love to tell her.

Hmm the book is £0.99 on Kindle here... 🤔

[pat5150]

QuickTidal, on 04 September 2025 - 11:54 AM, said:

Yeah. Oh well, one day hopefully. I truly think she's one of the best authors in fantasy today, and I'd love to tell her.

I think she's pretty active on Facebook. It wouldn't be in person, but you could easily get in touch with her there.

[QuickTidal]

Tiste Simeon, on 04 September 2025 - 12:59 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 04 September 2025 - 11:54 AM, said:

pat5150, on 03 September 2025 - 08:02 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 03 September 2025 - 11:32 AM, said:

As a Canadian, I will not be travelling to the States any time soon out of principle.

But maybe she'll come up here one day to Bakkaphoenix or some other speciality bookstore.

Just checked her website and she'll also be at the World Fantasy Con this fall. But it's in the UK this year, so a bit far for you. . .

Yeah. Oh well, one day hopefully. I truly think she's one of the best authors in fantasy today, and I'd love to tell her.

Hmm the book is £0.99 on Kindle here... 🤔

The first one? Yeah, it's good. A Little formulaic as it was her first, but the series really finds itself in the 2nd and 3rd book, and the 4th and 5th books were peak fantasy for me.

[Tiste Simeon]

Yeah the first one. Might check it out on a QT recco.

[QuickTidal]

I also have an aesthetic reason to like them that's not associated with the story....all the books (hardcover anyways) are set in 12pt type...which is not the norm, and is a little bigger than average type size for hardcover books (I think it's usually 10pt, but I could be wrong)...it makes them blissfully easy on the eyes without seeming too big. I can't think of any other books or authors that do that (in fact some authors or publishers set them at like 9pt or 8pt in hardcover; a money/paper-saving endeavour that usually just serves to piss me off...I'm looking at you THE WILL OF THE MANY) and I know that it's Britain herself who makes it this way as she's commented on it before.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 04 September 2025 - 05:54 PM

[JPK]

Finally pushed through the rest of THE DAUGHTER'S WAR by Buehlman. Think this one lands as a 3* for me. I enjoyed the story that that was told but I also came in with higher expectations based on THE BLACK-TONGUE THIEF and the bits about The Daughter's War that are sprinkled through that book. Also, while I think the narrator chose a fitting accent for the character, I found it difficult to listen to in longer stretches. Though that one's definitely a preference thing.

Next up is Abercrombie's THE DEVILS. Between the buzz around here and the fact it's narrated by Stephen Pacey, I know I'm in for a good time with this one.

Still chipping at MADAME BOVARY as a daily serial read and I've also joined in on a discord read along for THE GOD IS NOT WILLING that is scheduled to finish right before NO LIFE FORSAKEN is scheduled to arrive, so I'm pretty happy with my current reads at the moment.

[Tiste Simeon]

I'm listening to Stone and Sky, the latest Rivers of London book and it's great! I know someone up thread was a little put out by the change in narrative as it flicks between Peter and Abigail, but after the first POV shift that is admittedly a little disjointed, I like it.

Abigail is a fun character with a great POV and is having a unique but linked adventure to what Peter is doing and I like the way they're tying together. The voice actor for Abigail is great, if not at the standard of Kobna Holdbrook Smith, but then I don't think anyone is so that's no great negative thing to my mind.

And on a personal note, having twin toddlers myself (though crikey they're nearly 4 so a bit older than those in the story) I found a lot of that side of things painfully, hilariously relatable!

[QuickTidal]

 QuickTidal, on 10 February 2025 - 03:12 PM, said:

I know Tiste said he DNFed RISE OF THE RANGER by Phillip C. Quaintrell, but I'm nearing the halfway point and I'm enthralled and enjoying. There's so many fun varying fantasy concepts at play: Humans and Elves at either war or distrust of one another verging on war, time travel, rangers, and knights, and Mages, oh my! Many fantasy beasties, kings, queens, and politicking, assassins and assassin-guilds, elf sex, vicious merpeople who demand "human" payment for god knows what purpose as a bargain to give ships better sailing to their destination, ancient ruins, a massive map with a thousand year history, magic weapons, crystals, and other items, well-rounded characters filled with personality.

It's just good, classic fantasy and I'm very much looking forward to finishing it and getting the next book in the series.

Update. This one got away from me in other reads since I was about halfway through in the spring, so I just got back to it to finish it off...and MAN as much as I enjoyed the first half of this book, the back half was even more enjoyable.

I'm totally in for the whole series now. Classic fantasy done right. Great heroic characters, and great evil ones and just a really cool built world.

Surprised this isn't better known.

[Tiste Simeon]

Maybe I should have given it more of a try. I had a limited time on KU and if something wasn't grabbing me I was ditching it quite quickly. This was just one of those casualties.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 19 August 2025 - 04:22 AM, said:

...now back to The 13th Paladin, ...
On to bk 8, FATHER OF THE MOUNTAIN. We're going to the Dwarven kingdom, i admit i'm kind of psyched.

And yeah, Just Finished, and that was a fun read full of Dwarfy goodness. The author even managed to surprise me a few times, and not just by describing a particular character as a 'bon vivant' full of 'joie du vivre'. Some great action scenes this time around, and he took max advantage of the mountain/caves setting.

On to (and now 37 chapters, approx 1/2 way in to) Wes Chu's THE ART OF LEGENDS. Thing i should have predicted... the early chapters around a certain character really weren't working for me because they so resemble a similar character in The 13th Paladin... it felt like i was rereading an early book in that series and it wasn't catching me.... then... gloriously we switch over to Qisami, and Sali, and wild crazy wuxia style fight action and ahhh yes, muuuuuuch bettter.

[amphibian]

Every so often, a fantasy series or book creates someone that is iconic for me - Anomander Rake as the sad hero, Karsa as the undeniable force learning what it means to operate in civilizations, Maroto as the lunatic barbarian, Drizzt as the god blessed sword fighter.

Qisami took over assassin lady in my head much more than Apsalar or Surly.

I have signed hardbacks of all three Art books and soon I'll read the third one. Very much looking forward to it.

[QuickTidal]

Crossposted self-reply from the Buying thread:

QuickTidal, on 30 January 2025 - 05:26 PM, said:

I didn't buy it, but Dan Brown announced a new Langdon book.

THE SECRET OF SECRETS (which is a terrible title...but apparently based on a letter from Aristotle to Alexander The Great, so at least he didn't make it up himself?)

And like the glutton for punishment I am, I'll probably read it (even though the synopsis sounds like every other Langdon book by Brown, and even though I didn't like the last two much) because I'm still chasing the DAVINCI CODE high I got as a 20-something reading that book...sigh.


Anyways, linky.

Ugh. I made it about 40%. That's it. I dunno what happened, the first three Brown books were great, but everything since then has been middling (THE LOST SYMBOL) to downright bad (INFERNO)...this fall in between that, but yeah it's not good and it's VERY paint by numbers. And unlike James Rollins works of similar airport thriller brand where you can root for and enjoy the characters....Robert Langdon remains an old fuddy-duddy who falls ass backwards into the answers...and never steps out of America or Europe ever...

Don't bother. It's not even worth a library borrow.

[Abyss]

amphibian, on 16 September 2025 - 04:29 AM, said:

Every so often, a fantasy series or book creates someone that is iconic for me - Anomander Rake as the sad hero, Karsa as the undeniable force learning what it means to operate in civilizations, Maroto as the lunatic barbarian, Drizzt as the god blessed sword fighter.

Qisami took over assassin lady in my head much more than Apsalar or Surly.

Glorious character, arguably my favorite in the first book. Her arc in the second wasn't as much fun, i found it (mostly) predictable, but she is so back to form in LEGEND i have to resist jumping to her chapters.

Quote

I have signed hardbacks of all three Art books and soon I'll read the third one. Very much looking forward to it.

Meant to ask you where/how you got those?

[Abyss]

Tiste Simeon, on 05 September 2025 - 05:14 PM, said:

I'm listening to Stone and Sky, the latest Rivers of London book and it's great! I know someone up thread was a little put out by the change in narrative as it flicks between Peter and Abigail, but after the first POV shift that is admittedly a little disjointed, I like it.

Abigail is a fun character with a great POV and is having a unique but linked adventure to what Peter is doing and I like the way they're tying together. The voice actor for Abigail is great, if not at the standard of Kobna Holdbrook Smith, but then I don't think anyone is so that's no great negative thing to my mind.

And on a personal note, having twin toddlers myself (though crikey they're nearly 4 so a bit older than those in the story) I found a lot of that side of things painfully, hilariously relatable!

In retrospect i should have moved to these ahead of Art of Legend to break up the 'young male chosen one' run. Am very looking fwd to reading this.