Tag: fantasy

City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

I started my review of the last book by comparison to other books. I’ll start this with a quote.

I learned very early on not to speak to my folk from on high, but to get down with them, beside them, showing them how to act rather than telling them. And I suggested that they should do the same with one another: that they didn’t need a book of rules to tell them what to do and what not to do, but experience and action.

Robert Bennett builds not just a fantasy world but a wisdom system for his series. It doesn’t need to be correct, to be appealing.

The gods were killed 80 years ago. With their deaths, most of their miracles vanished as well, including a large number of buildings from the sacred city of Bulikov. Eighty years later, the gods are forbidden. They can’t be mentioned, studied, hinted, their religions practiced, and the leftovers of their miracles cannot be used. People pretend they never existed, or at least most people.

Someone is breaking these rules. A top spy, the mighty Shara, is sent to Bulikov to figure out the conspiracy. Who killed the expert of the divine past, Efrem Pangyui? Why? Why do miracles still exist?

Dense and likable characters, a rich world, and an endlessly long ending, just like The Tainted Cup. Would I have been able to read this book if I hadn’t read The Tainted Cup? Unsure. But it’s a clear 5*/5 and a great fantasy. Ending with a quote as well.

Forgetting… is a beautiful thing. When you forget, you remake yourself… For a caterpillar to become a butterfly, it must forget it was a caterpillar at all. Then it will be as if the caterpillar never was & there was only ever a butterfly.

My May in Books

~ Veselin ~ 6 Comments
Wrapping up the month with 8 books.

Best

  • Dragonfired by J. Zachary Pike – rich in ideas, full of intelligent creatures, and an epic conclusion of the trilogy about the dark profits. It has cobolds and everyone is greedy, except maybe Gorm Ingerson.
  • Silo by Hugh Howey – a mechanic has to survive in a plausible post-apocalyptic anti-utopia where all remaining humans are stuck in a bunker and tied in lies. I should’ve blogged a book review about because I really liked it, it had this Andy Weir feel I love in books. However, I never got to it. Maybe I’ll write one once I complete book two, which is already at home.
  • Necromancer by Gordon Dickson – I awarded 3 stars to it but it has an AI that kills all human creativity. It was a great visionary idea for a 1960s book I was surprised to find there, between the future full of old tech. It is one of the main risks I see for humanity when adjusting to the LLM boom.

Worst

  • Think Twice by Harlan Coben – after my repeated failures with Lee Child, I start wondering if I outgrew the entire genre. Jack Reacher turned into Steven Seagal, and now Myron Bolitar and his buddy Win are turning to Paw Patrol. I can’t read another one that silly and think about getting rid of my Harlan Coben shelf like I did with Lee Child. It will open space for gems like the next one.
  • Don’t look back – a gamebook that got a well-deserved average of 2* on Goodreads. It was silly in a very disturbing way.

Both books had a moment where the main protagonist just enters a room, kills 3-4 NPC characters, and leaves the room without ever mentioning that again. I should’ve awarded both with 1* for being disturbing and 0 for their editors, if they had any.

Other

  • The Golem and the Jinni, Diablo, and Bion 3 were fine. I may read the continuation of Diablo because it may have necromancers, the continuation of Bion to support the publisher, and would not read the continuation of the Golem and the Jinni. I think the story concluded well and should remain like that in my mind.

Books I Read in April

~ Veselin ~ 3 Comments

April was not a great month for reading for me. I missed the first 10 days and then read a few short ones for the number. Nevertheless, some mind blowing books came out of it. Few but good.

Best Books

  1. Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir – the sad story about necromancers who face too much magic and a universe that’s 10K years after the apocalypse. I think some love is lurking in there but it’s not a romance. It’s deeply touching, well written, engaging, interesting, and memorable. It was by far the best book I read this month, and I keep thinking about it.
  2. Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams – a former director from Facebook reveals dark secrets from her past work. Mixed feelings here. Her story is awful and at the same time, the genie is not going back to the lamp.
  3. Harrow the Ninth by Tasmyn Muir. A book where the imaginary and the reality are so mixed that I needed Wikipedia to explain the events to me. However, despite the 4*, I feel this book was far more memorable than the next books on the list that I can forget quickly. I plan to get the 3rd part as well but maybe after a break.
  4. The Narrow Road Between Desires – Patrick Rothfuss is a modern classic with his incredible skill of arranging small and tiny events into a larger puzzle. I’d say, a good member of the Cozy Fantasy family.
  5. Cursed by Alex Kosh – 5* but pretty much unavailable anywhere, I was the lucky first reviewer on Goodreads. And also, thematic, it is about ghosts and in line with Gideon, Harrow and the unfortunate sixth book.

Worst Book

  1. Five Broken Blades – ironically, almost identical plot with Gideon the Ninth, which I liked so much. The story is about 6 (no kidding) people trying to assault an immortal king who is both the enemy and the ally. However, unlike Gideon the Ninth, it’s constantly annoying, and none of it makes sense. For example, why 5 blades if it’s about 6 people, and why broken, if nothing is broken? The book doesn’t answer. Maybe the sequel will.

The Trials of Koli by M.R. Carey, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

I’m not sure how I feel about M. R. Carey’s work. I purchased five books by this author. Two are fantastic 5⭐ sci-fi, one was a 1 ⭐ DNF. Now comes The Trials of Koli, my fourth out of five.

Published in 2014, it’s a book about the survivors of a terrible war that changed the ecosystem. The trees are on a hunt for people, the animals are insanely dangerous, and old drones are still flying and killing people. The much larger populations of the past couldn’t resist all of that but the barely existing current populations seems to holding, although still in a decline. It helps that most of the old drones broke down or ran out of ammo.

The book is engaging, the trope is a form of the leaving-the-small-village-to-discover-the-world, well known from LOTR, The Wheel of Time, and so on. The type of demons out there are not unheard of either, we’ve seen them in The Mist, and The Finisher, and maybe even The Day of the Triffids.

What makes this book unique? Not sure, maybe nothing. But it is very interesting and sucks you in, you want to have more of it, and when you reach the end, you want to start reading the continuation immediately.

The two main characters, Koli and Spinner, are well-developed, though some of the supporting cast feels less successful. The story features two AI demigods—had they existed 200–300 years earlier, they might have either prevented the apocalypse or ensured its total devastation, leaving no survivors. In that sense, The Trials of Koli falls short when compared to The Book of Koli and the more recent Infinity Gate.

That’s enough for 4⭐/5. Looking forward to reading the final chapter.

Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

A fantasy world with multiple types of sorcerers, various races, demons, necromancers, and a living sword similar to Kamigoroshi and Nightblood. On top of all that, we have pirates, airships, and fighter planes. Almost like One Piece with aircraft. How cool is that?

Ketty Jay is a plane-aircraft carrier, though it’s more of a dirigible by description. The crew consists of fugitives, people with guilty consciences, or both. Over the course of 530 pages, we get to learn about their sins and weaknesses. Even though they are murderers, thieves, and generally unpleasant people, they somehow manage to stick together. Chris Wooding gives us one or two explanations for why that is, but overall, the crew’s loyalty probably needs more exploration in the sequel.

The captain of the Ketty Jay is Darian Frey. He’s a selfish smuggler and pirate who has the habit of making terrible mistakes. He makes a big one and the book is about his attempts to fix it. We will learn that this was not his first blunder, not even the biggest one. The blunder is that he trusted the wrong person who set him up for a trap. Frey is in a need of retribution. However, Retribution Falls in the book is some Tortuga-like pirate city that makes no sense in a world with fast-moving aircraft, and the Dorian Frey’s retribution is just a coincidence.

The book is long and feels a bit sluggish at times. I could only manage a few chapters at a time before it somewhat hooked me. After that, it was okay—still close to the kind of stories I tend to DNF.

I think a 4*/5 rating is fair for a unique world (5/5), a relatively original story, and a solid group of misfits weighed down by a bit too much detail and some plot holes (2/5).

I plan to read the sequel, but not right away. Currently reading another book by M. Carey and it sets the bar too high.