Category: Books

Jade City by Fonda Lee, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ 3 Comments

The jade city is a place where a small group of people can use the local high-grade Jade to obtain superpowers. Most people, including the foreigners, cannot use jade without losing their minds or can’t sense it at all. The power makes them greedy and hungry for more.

Two jade-controlling gangs are about to clash and break the long-lasting peaceful rivalry in the city. We’ll see the development of the conflict from the point of view of various participants – the old generation, the new generation, the power hungry, and the one who succumb to the greed.

Jade City, like many other POV books, introduces lots of context switching and is a slow read. My copy traveled to Blagoevgrad, Kyoto, and Lisbon until I finally completed it. It’s hard to say if all POVs served a purpose. I think most did.

4.5*/5 – I liked it but it took effort to complete.

October in Books

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

First time this year, a monthly recap post with only 5 books. 4 were good, and 1 was okay.

Best

  • Kings of the Wyld by a wild margin. The book felt like a mix between LOTR and Ready Player One but with a much broader variety of creatures, like Centaurs, Kobolds, undead, humans with wings and so on.
  • Top Secret Twenty-One – a bubblegum. Stephanie Plum catches some scary people.
  • Bookshops & Bonedust – Travis Baldree scored another win, kind of related to Kings of the Wyld by the type of intelligent creatures who participate
  • Son of a Liche – the continuation of Orconomics felt much more interesting and balanced than the first part but it still feels too long

Worst

  • Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edogawa Rampo. The book is not bad but it felt slow.

Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

Clay Cooper is a retired mercenary, part of a group of 5+1 named Saga. His band was once the best group, known for defeating countless monsters, even a dragon. The plus one is the bard, which Saga could not keep alive, so they had to replace him or her so many times that the band members don’t even remember the individuals. Until one day they met an undead bard.

This book shares a world with another 2 series I recently read – it has the similar swarm of different fantasy creatures from Orconomics and Legends & Lattes. It has bands and heroes, harvesting monsters for profit. But it also has the epic-ness of LOTR (and its overall general structure), and the drama of Ready Player One.

Most characters both positive and negative (who aren’t bards) are nearly immune to anything the author can throw at them. This makes the story more like a fairytale than an actual fantasy. But it’s cool and somewhat balanced. A reader should particularly like it if they’ve not read any of the books I mentioned earlier.

5/5, I like it and recommend it but you need to have zero expectations of realism. Realistic it is not.

Next books on my shelf

~ Veselin ~ 2 Comments

5 books I would normally not buy and one I would normally not read.

Starting with Kings of the Wyld this evening. Time will tell if Wyld is a name or some sort of tragedeigh.

I have something like airline miles that turned out to be usable for books. I generally prefer e-books but some of the local publishers started making really nice and pleasant copies. I’ll post details when I get to the individual book reviews for the books that are worthy.

Feeling ❤️

Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ 5 Comments

Viv is a powerful orc who wants to be a mercenary but somehow ends up in the bookstore business.

Legends & Lattes showed us Viv at the end of her career, tired of killing, and really motivated to run her own business. Bookshops & Bonedust shows us Viv at the beginning of her career, as motivated to run her own business as the other Viv. Why did she ever become a mercenary? That’s unclear. She can do it in book 0.1, there’s no point to pursue a career of head cutting somewhere between book 0.1 and book 1. Her motivation is unclear and her path is circular. We’ve now seen the beginning at the end, and they are the same point.

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree is a bubblegum, the easiest type of books to read. I struggled to reach the end but I appreciate the sweetness of the story, so for the purpose of this blog, it gets the middle score – 4/5.