Malazan Empire: polishgenius - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

I started Blue-Eyed Samurai, Netflix's animated samurai revenge series. First two episodes, it's very good. Whole lot of style. Recommended.

The first special was tons of fun. Exactly what the show needed to start back.

Continuing my Victoria Goddard journey with The Redoubtable Pali Avramapul, second in the Red Company reformed series that is one branch of the sequels to Hands of the Emperor.


I am increasingly in frank awe of what Goddard is achieving here, because I've read three books and they're all delightful but they're all different. This one is partly a sequel to The Return of Fitzroy Angursell, but it's also in part a prequel that reframes certain scenes in both of the previous books from a different character's perspective before moving on and seeing how that character deals with the changes happening. Which makes it a whole third style- a much more character-driven book than Return, which was basically an old-school series-of-adventures derring-do novel, but with more introspection than the conversation-driven epic of Hands.

And she continues to create the feeling of fond nostalgia for books I've read since childhood, even though I only started reading them last year. Which is a neat trick.

This one also made me more directly interested in the previous books, since Hands of the Emperor while designed for new readers entering into the world was like the 12th actual book in the series or something. I'd intended to read them anyway of course, but this one was the first that actively went 'come on you know you want to'.

Shame to hear you don't like Wonder much, Cause. I'm loving it. I get the criticism- it's not very difficult- but in what it is aiming to do I think it's great.

I've been describing it as a comedy routine with game mechanics as the lines. So many of the levels are basically 'setup/punchline' in design. Whether that will work for many replays I dunno but on a first play it's adorable.

Also adorable: the online multiplayer aspect, with players journeying levels together and helping each other out with secrets and stuff.

polishgenius, on 14 October 2023 - 06:52 PM, said:

Currently enjoying the rising sense of doom over a crowdfunding campaign. This book is fun.