I think my annual goal was a bit too modest.
Reading Challenge
Tag: book-blog
Thraxas by Martin Scott
Imagine a fantasy world with taverns, elves, orks, bands, guilds, priests, and corruption. A mixture of Tolkien, Pratchett, the dark part of the Middle Ages, and an exploitation version of Conan. In that world, there’s an overweight battle mage who works as a detective but not too hard. He’s drunk half of the time and dedicated the other half when he’s short on cash to support his drinking habits. Feels like he’s intoxicated in the way Jack Reacher would have a toothache – more of a nuisance than an actual weakness. His action style and vision are more of a Bud Spencer or The Mountain rather than a guy with poor health and addictions. If I could imagine one present-day celebrity as Thraxas, that would be Eddie Hall.
Thraxas has a superhuman sidekick. Makri is a former undefeated gladiator who works as a waitress and wears revealing clothing. She has impossible sword and axe skills and studies hard to get admitted to the university. Thraxas has no purpose in life or goals. Makri has a purpose and several very ambitious goals. In a sense, despite being described as a sidekick and only having a small part of the page time, she’s the true main character of book one and is far more appealing. You can’t like Thraxas but can love Makri.
5/5, Goodreads
PS. I already completed book 2 and have ordered books 3 and 4 but I feel book 2 deserves a separate review.
Do you believe in fate
Daily writing prompt
Do you believe in fate/destiny?
I think life is a game that favors people with ambitious goals. Some people may have better cards or natural advantages or disadvantages. No matter what cards are dealt, a person with a goal is more likely to reach that goal than a person without it. A person who works relentlessly to climb Mount Everest is more likely to get there than a person who plays Fortnite in all of their spare time. The Fortnite player may one day win a Fortnite tournament while the mountaineer probably won’t do it.
Here’s what I wrote about The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle on Goodreads (btw, that book was 5/5):
…excellence comes with the right kind of practice. You need to challenge yourself and keep doing whatever you are doing over and over until the brain wires properly.
Work hard. Be nice. Baby steps. Praise for effort. Self-discipline. Make it fun. Did I say be nice? Repeat.
myself
Stephanie Plum – books 4 to 6
I keep reading the Stephanie Plum series. My original plan was to get to book 5 but I’m going to extend that to book 10. The series keeps being cool and I consistently award high scores.
Stephanie Plum is a headhunter who does more and more PI work and less and less headhunting. She somehow manages to trigger events that lead to flying dead bodies and crashing criminal enterprises. She’s far too lucky though, the cars would always explode when she wasn’t inside and the bullets would miss. I think this is turning into a main positive feature of the series – you can rely on her having some Ring World-style extreme luck and that it will all be okay.
There’s a lingering love story between her and a few gigachads. Janet Evanovich doesn’t let that stand in the way of a good thriller. It’s more of a reminder that Stephanie Plum is a human and has feelings than an actual love story. Both men I’ve previously described as translucent – they are like imaginary resource-rich and powerful genies, essences of some dominant male-ness, and are almost as good as ghosts. Unlike these two, all the other characters, new and recurring, keep being fresh and vivid.
Thanks to this series (and blogging about it), I’m on track to have my best month for reading in years.
White Sand vs White Sand Omnibus
These two books have the same name. Goodreads says the big one contains the small one and the small one is supposed to be volume 1. The beginning of Omnibus looked familiar (I just started reading it). However, the illustrations are not the same as before. The style is different, the table of contents is different, and it just doesn’t look like the same book at all. Looks like a rewrite rather than a combined edition. I’ll post an update once I read the new edition and get a better sense of what’s going on.
I liked the style of the previous one, it was very Dune-like. Hope the new one is also good. My first impression of the Omnibus is that it is heavy, I wish it was an e-book.
Veselin.blog 