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.
Last month I made an off-by-one error and posted the list on August 30th, leaving a day not covered. The Troll Mountain was read on August 31st. So technically, I read 9 books last month but this post will cover 10.
Best books from last month:
Dodger – there are books you can imagine when you close your eyes. The imagination takes you to a warm place. Dodger has that feeling. I gave it 5*, and it sits like that.
Bion 1&2 – looking forward to book 3, which is supposed to be 70% complete, according to the publisher
The Sunlit Man – Brandon Sanderson got a boost by the nice cover and illustrations
Worst book:
The Sum of All Men – I gave it 4/5 but all that I remember in the weeks following the completion of that book is the horror of the main magical skill. The forceful extraction of people’s skills. I wouldn’t touch the continuation with a flagpole.
Found this gem on Facebook. Fresh humor on yellow pages that barely hold. I enjoyed it very much. Not sure if it can endure another read without starting to fall apart. But the book was cool, well written, short, and brought me good memories.
I finished the monumental Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo yesterday and my original plan was to blog about it today but then I read the above book to fix the my tastebuds. The Goblins deserve a post, and the Six of Crows can be left to less critical book bloggers.
3 people died over the last years in a small but flourishing Australian town. It’s all written off as accidents but a body is missing and Aaron Falk will start digging. Most of the book it’s not even clear he’s investigating. He doesn’t do much other than enjoy the hospitality of his friends, and whenever he notices something, the writer doesn’t tell us what. However, he’ll find clues and solve all of the cases. It’s all hidden in front of our eyes.
The big issue? This town is way too good. Can Aaron go back to the big city as a federal agent after seeing how all these people live?
I give it 4*/5 and despite the sub-optimal score, I enjoyed it and would read a continuation if one is ever written.
The shelf naturally formed with other low-stress books like Travis Baldree’s Legends and Lattes, two Brandon Sandersons and 3 gamebooks. I have some reading ahead of me.
When I write book reviews, I often mention the level of realism. Imagine a scale from 0 to 10. 0 is complete BS, things that can’t happen, heroes that can’t exist, and a path from start to finish that’s like a fairy tale. 10 is a boring autobiography by a boring person who doesn’t lie to put themselves in a good light. Realism is not required to have fun, a good story can be 0 or 10 on the scale.
Let’s rank some pop culture on the realism scale.
0: Avengers: End Game – a complete disconnect with reality, written entirely to be like that. The characters are only visually human
1: Star Wars Episodes 4-6 – a complete disconnect with reality but some of the characters make sense, like Jabba the Hutt. I’d put here most of the fantasy I read like Thraxas, Joe Abercrombie, Raymond Feist, the LOTR universe, Robin Hobb, Brandon Sanderson, Harry Potter
2: Matthew Reilly, often featured here, writes about cars flying at a speed of 700km/h and crashing with no harm. Not far off from F1, although the characters are inhuman. I feel like he deserves the number 2 spot for himself.
3: Stephen King plugs in plausible humans and outcomes in impossible fantasy settings. His work is incredible and diverse work but let’s average it to 3. 3 would be fantasy with a possible story or with possible characters but maybe not both
4: The Foundation, Andy Weir – the classic sci-fi where the people look real and the events could eventually happen
5: Song of Fire and Ice – lots of that happened in medieval times, or at least people imagined it did. Not the dragon eggs but the other stuff that fills 95% of the pages. Realistic fantasy, dystopia
6: Alexandre Dumas. The Three Musketeers has a solid foundation in reality and the characters are likely based on real humans, perhaps from later periods
7: Cinderella. That probably happened and was later decorated with some magic
8: OMG ❤️, Stephanie Plum, Harry Bosch’s universe, Harlan Coben, the true crime stories
9: Historical fiction, books like Wolf Hall that are as connected to the real events as they could be, autobiographies with some level of commerce
10: Boring autobiographies
On that scale, Jane Harper enters the territory of boring autobiographies. There’s “No way” and “Oh, that’s why, yeah, damn”. Reading it is like reading the continuation of Cinderella, the happily ever after where the prince turned into a king, and the king was drunk and cheated.
So, I won’t tell you what the Force of Nature is about, but it’s sad and depressing in a beautiful way. Do not touch if you want an orthodox crime story.
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