Fingers crossed for the surgery! That's very sad that you'll have to miss out :/ Well, at least you didn't get hit with this bs during the trip?
Rinn
joined 2 years ago
Life has been busy, which means that I've mostly switched into maintenance mode and just read a lot of fanfiction (easily digestable, right there on my phone, familiar characters and tropes - perfect for turning my brain off for a bit). I can't quite decide what "real" book to start next - considering When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain.
Finished The Broken Earth trilogy - it was very good, but I was a bit meh on some worldbuilding choices in the 2nd one (which by neccessity carried over into the 3rd book). 1st one was the best.
Then I took a dive into fantasy YA: Vespertine by Margaret Rogerson (trainee nun uses an evil spirit to protect her convent, gets possessed and they go on a journey together to uncover a conspiracy) and The Scarlet Alchemist by Kylie Lee Baker (dark historical fantasy set in China, very hard to give a good one sentence summary). Scarlet was probably objectively better/more interesting but I liked Vespertine more, it was just pure fun (extra points for no romance and having a neurodivergent protagonist).
Then I reread one of my old favourites: Empress of Salt and Fortune. I gotta finally get started on the next one in the series. Good week for reading overall!
The whole trilogy is like 50% in second person, actually :P (well, I don't know about book 3 yet but if the current trend holds...)
Huh, thanks for the warning about Harrow, haven't had the chance to dive in yet - I'll give it a shot anyway but I like to be prepared for surprise 2nd person.
Finished The Fifth Season, enjoyed it so much that I have jumped straight into book 2 - The Obelisk Gate. So far I like it slightly less, but it's still very good. It's interesting to see an actual book written at least partially in 2nd person - I'm an avid fanfiction reader and the application of 2nd person in fanfics is... usually really clumsy, so it's refreshing to see that it can be used to great effect.
Currently on a bit of a reading binge (check out my comment from last week for short reviews of new-to-me stuff) but I'm mostly just doing re-reads. The theme seems to be "good people reluctantly do good things and are unhappy about it". First I went through the first 2 Murderbot Diaries novellas, now I'm doing a full re-read of Naomi Novik's Scholomance trilogy (I maintain that the first book is the best one but they are all quite good). Planning to start The Fifth Season when I'm done, haven't read this one before.
Eyyyy, I love Spinning Silver (and Naomi Novik's later works in general, I'm meh on her Temeraire series). Added Seven Moons to my TBR based on your previous comments, looks very interesting!
I've read it 2 months ago - it was really cool and it was an easier read than I expected, you have to be focused while reading but don't actually have to worry all that much about missing some small details or whatever. Just go with the flow, parts of this book are intentionally written to make your eyes glaze over. There's plenty of stuff to overanalyze for weeks if you really want to understand everything, but it works fine for a single casual read. Wasn't all that scary either (but take that with a grain of salt, I'm basically immune to most horror media).
Mini reviews of everything I've read while lying on a beach for a week:
Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman - YA fantasy - don't get spooked by the YA tag, this book doesn't pull its punches. It's about Tess - a depressed alcoholic mess of a girl (who has been through some traumatic shit) deciding to screw everything and start over by going on a journey to find the World Serpent. The focus is firmly on Tess, finding out what exactly happened to her, and her inner journey, with some bits of intriguing background worldbuilding. Philosophically it's nothing new but the overall message of "just keep going" resonated with me quite a bit (enough that I've saved some quotes which I rarely do), and the writing is really good. The plot is not fully wrapped up and I've put the sequel on my to-read list, but the emotional journey of the main character (aka the actual most important part of the book) feels complete, so this can be treated as a standalone. Can heartily recommend.
Even the pagans knew: you will wander the dark places under the earth, but you will come back with the sun.
The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling - sci-fi/horror - a caver takes a suspicious but very well paying caving job to fund her obsession with finding out what happened to her mother. Her handler turns out to have an even deeper obsession with finding out what happened to her parents in a deep and dangerous cave. This is basically two unhealthily obsessed people + claustrophobia: the book. Fun enough if you want to read about intensely flawed and unlikeable people (which tbf I do like that), but overall I expected more... idk, everything? The blurb made me think that most of the horror would come from Em (the handler) being a controlling asshole while Gyre (the caver) is deep underground and reliant on her for everything, but that kinda fizzles out very quickly. In conclusion: nothing special, not scary enough, but the characters are fairly entertaining trainwrecks.
Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather - sci-fi novella - nuns travelling the stars on a living starship. Just... how cool is that premise, huh? The plot is a bit tacked on but I enjoyed the characters a lot - good people doing good things despite the hardships is something to enjoy after all the years of grimdark we've been subjected to in fiction (thankfully that has been petering out for a few years now). There's (obviously) a lot of grappling with your faith and stuff going on - nothing that deep but the circumstances elevate it. Very fun, quite emotional, short, and to the point. Apparently the sequel isn't all that good.
We should go because I would want someone to come for us. We’re all just scattered, lonely specks out here, unless we try to be more. We shouldn’t be brutal just because the universe is.
Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman - historical fiction/horror - a knight-turned-brigand and a girl who can see angels go on a mini-Crusade against the forces of Hell in France. During the Black Plague. Fun times. This author is really good at literary body horror - I've read one of his newer books (The Blacktongue Thief) and that one was even better, but this one has the setting working overtime for it. It's... basically a redemption/fatherhood story with a lot of gruesomeness + cool historical touches? It switches very rapidly between slice of life/travelogue in plaguelands, and devils out of medieval manuscripts doing horror things. I liked Blacktongue Thief more, it's much more polished + has enjoyable dark humour, but this one has a cooler premise. Can recommend either of them in a heartbeat - just, uh, all the content warnings.
Catharsis by Travis Bagwell - litRPG - it's a very competent litRPG. That's... basically all I can say, litRPG is not a deep or varied genre and something of a guilty pleasure for me. Guy gets bullied at school, guy starts playing a new VR game and becomes a badass in it and takes revenge on his bully because he is smart and ruthless and all the while numbers are going up. There's cool fight scenes, and an evil and intelligent protagonist (but not actually evil because it's explicitly just a game). It's really good for what it is. It's fun. ¯\(ツ)/¯
On holidays rn so finally some time to read (and I don't have my laptop with me so I can't just default back to the life devourer known as Baldur's Gate 3), I've started Tess of the Road - it's technically young adult fantasy but it's been unexpectedly heavy and serious right from the start (with the main character being pretty much a depressed alcoholic at 17 years old). I'm enjoying it (the book, not the alcoholism).
My favourite tactic is based around Hunger of Hadar, a Warlock spell that creates a zone that a) deals damage to everything in it at the start and end of its turn; b) is difficult terrain (aka slows everything down); c) blinds everything in it; d) best of all, has no save. Plonk it down in the middle of the enemy team, use another control spell to slow everyone inside even more, use shove/repelling blast/whatever to push anything that's made its way to the edge back to the middle. Wait for everything to die, rinse & repeat.
But the greatest cheese in the game must be casting darkness (or shooting arrow of darkness) on your own party. As long as you're inside the cloud you are basically untargettable by spells and ranged attacks - and the enemies don't seem to be smart ebough to be throwing Fireballs on just any weird clouds they see. On your turn you just need to step out, cast/shoot, step back in. The only way they can get you is if they come inside the cloud with you (aka in range of whoever is on blender duty, Lae'zel or Karlach like this posting a lot), and the AI gets a bit confused when it can't see you so it's not a sure bet that they'll even try. It's a thing of beauty.
Out of nowhere I dove into Tarot: History, Symbolism and Divination. I'm only interested in the first two of these keywords so I probably will drop it once it gets into the more mystical stuff, but the history section has been fun and interesting so far. Especially the long, long chapter which could be titled "how French occultists were wrong about everything and making shit up all the time". Petty drama in occult communities is always entertaining, and historical occultists are no exception.