A good book. A shockingly horny book. Perhaps the horniest high fantasy book I've ever read. It ended on something of an anticlimax, and the whole stoA good book. A shockingly horny book. Perhaps the horniest high fantasy book I've ever read. It ended on something of an anticlimax, and the whole story seems to weave back and forth without really building to anything or knowing where it's going, which was well-executed if deliberate in its attempt to embody the randomness of adventure and life on the road.
Wolfe can turn a phrase. I wrote down, "Flowers are better theology than folios."
I'll eventually read the rest of the Books of the New Sun, but I'm not in any particular hurry....more
No idea how I ran across this one but deeply glad I did. 5/5 perfect score because it's too short for anything to have gone wrong. Gallen the mercenary once did work for the church, but then he was excommunicated because he smoke too tough, his swag too different, his bitch too bad. Not a lot of character development was available in 52 pages, but it was made pretty clear that Gallen had done a bunch of things he wasn't proud of in the service of Mother Church. Deeply relatable to us all, I'm sure.
Nowadays, Gallen doesn't take church jobs. Nowadays he leads a band of charming sociopaths identified primarily by their choice of weapon. This is how you know the story was actually about a D&D one-shot and not legitimate historical fiction, because if it were the latter, Gallen's band of brothers (and sisters, as lampshaded on a number of occasions to hit the inclusivity quotas required of 1370s Bohemia) would have weapons that cooperated with each other. A bunch of spears and shields for a tasteful phalanx or tortoise formation, or a couple greatsword/warhammer bruisers to dispatch knights and a backline of archers to deal with anybody who didn't need to get untinned to access the meaty filling. Instead, everyone has one of everything from the armory section of the Player's Handbook. I don't begrudge Kristian this. Variety is the spice of life.
The writing style walks the knife's edge of purple prose but manages not to nick itself. The story starts gritty and gets grittier. The reason I'm giving it such a glowing review (yes, this is glowing) is how much it reminded me of the Broken Empire trilogy by Mark Lawrence. I love grimdark, but sometimes it's nice to lean all the way into the grayscale brutality of a Nietzschean, amoral world, and most grimdark has the good sense not to take itself too seriously. The Broken Empire stands on the business the whole time, and so does Hellmouth, no matter how over-the-top the setting is getting.
Psychic nuns, decapitated monks, dark rituals, a derelict church carpeted with fresh entrails and human excrement, leading into an acid trip Dawn til Dusk cannibal demon orgy and the appearance of Satan the Devil himself. The story ends with the narrative suddenly splintering, but in fairness, how else could it have ended? Where do you go when Satan the goddamned Devil is center stage and flexing on your fresh-hatched one-shotter antihero?
I am absolutely going to read the rest of Giles Kristian's stuff, and you probably should too, if you like your historical fiction dripping with an unsustainable quantity of Sam Raimi black metal splatterpunk gore....more
Stop at the beginning of the crystals chapter and it's a good little book. Talks about the placebo effect and how it tends to be at least as effecNah.
Stop at the beginning of the crystals chapter and it's a good little book. Talks about the placebo effect and how it tends to be at least as effective as real effects. Meditation is scientifically sound, probably millions of studies by now demonstrating that it works. Trapped and released emotion? That's the premise of therapy, bubba. HELL yeah. Let 'er rip. Nature exposure? We know nature makes you everything that Daft Punk sang about in Harder Better Faster Stronger. We know putting down that damn phone and going outside is good for us.
Reiki? Uhhh sure, okay. Sounds plausible. Touch and positive regard are good for us, and reiki is almost both of those things.
But from crystals on it's just whispered affirmations in the dark. Yammering about crystallic resonance and PSI and consciousness - here's a rule of thumb for you, if you hear someone start speculating wildly about what consciousness is and what it means, you're dealing with a kook. Actual science knows zip about consciousness. It's one of the last big mysteries. Hamilton tries to dress it up as if he's doing something mathematical, likening his goofy meanderings about emotional gravitation representing holistic consciousness to the actual theory of relativity, but it just doesn't stand up to scrutiny because we don't and will never have a scale to measure "emotional closeness". This dingus is trying to structure an argument for the existence of magic and psionics using a currently nonexistent scale that quantifies love. How many love units represent an empirically testable level of interpersonal connectivity? How do you measure a love unit? Oxytocin content in the brain tissues? How you gonna standardize that, considering the levels of variation across individual neurochemistries, to say nothing of the fact that our best instrument for oxytocin is bloodwork?
The equation means nothing because every factor he wants to consider is entirely made up. It's not science. It's not even pseudoscience. It's word salad. And as a repeatedly professed scientist, he knows that. So is he a con man, or is it denial?
In the words of William James, who cares? The well's poison all the same. If you want to believe in magic, believe in magic, but don't pretend you believe in magic because it's scientifically sound. There's nothing wrong with having faith....more
The book is about power and its misuse. It's an exploration of how people undeserving of authority flex it as a balm for Everyone is so terrible. Wow.
The book is about power and its misuse. It's an exploration of how people undeserving of authority flex it as a balm for their own shitty little tormented egos, and the long term damage it does to the people around them. Which it will! They're like a plague.
It's also about objectification of women, and womanification of objects. Most of which are made of wood. The slavery arc ties back in to each of these things but in separate and unexpected ways.
The book is objectively good, just not my genre or my taste. I was on the hook for the Assassin's books and, since they're all part of the Elderling chronicles, my plan is to make my way through them in order of release like I did with the Saxon stories. Problem is I've got like 7 more novels about shipping manifests and BDSM to clear before I see Fitz again, and honestly, Fitz was the worst part of Fitz's narrative.
Still, in terms of sheer craft, Hobb's got it on lock. I'm in it to win it....more
Beautiful wrap-up to the series. That was the only way it could have ended for Fitz, and everyone's way better off for it.
The series was phenomenal, Beautiful wrap-up to the series. That was the only way it could have ended for Fitz, and everyone's way better off for it.
The series was phenomenal, moved me almost to tears on more than one occasion. A little dragon-heavy for my tastes but that's more about me than the novels. I've always been into high fantasy, and I always check out a little when the dragons check in. Couldn't tell you why. That's only one reason that Oblivion was so much better than Skyrim....more
Tremendous book, tremendous series. Up there on my list of favorite high fantasy novels. I normally stick to gritty sword and sorcery genre fiction, wTremendous book, tremendous series. Up there on my list of favorite high fantasy novels. I normally stick to gritty sword and sorcery genre fiction, wherein the grizzled barbarian chieftain protagonist has to come out of semiretirement to stop some sort of apocalypse or other. This wheels hard in the other direction, and I expected to mind, but I really didn't.
I would put it on par with Rothfuss or Lynch, except Hobb finished the book....more
I made it through the first chapter, which discussed Backster's jankily-controlled studies about how plants can senseWhat did the CIA do to you, Pete?
I made it through the first chapter, which discussed Backster's jankily-controlled studies about how plants can sense the death of brine shrimp and the mixing of yogurt across extradimensional and nonlinear space. I thought that was fucking psychotic, so I googled around a little bit.
Unlike "The Hidden Life of Trees", which is a dry, slightly saccharine expose about the cool science surrounding what I can only describe as "tree culture", the Secret Life of Plants is pure wishful thinking. Botanists absolutely panned it.
A double standard, I know. If doctors pan a book on nutrition, I'm more inclined to read it. But if botanists pan a book about plants? I can't follow the money to anything. It's probably just a bad book....more
A tremendous start to a tremendous series, which departs from party line fantasy fiction in a crucial way: my man Fitz is not good at anything.
Every oA tremendous start to a tremendous series, which departs from party line fantasy fiction in a crucial way: my man Fitz is not good at anything.
Every other major high fantasy or sword and sorcery series I've read, the protagonist is distinguished by his being an absolute savant at something, which becomes a lever used to turn the established order on its head.
In Scott Lynch's perpetually unfinished works, it's lying. In George RR's perpetually unfinished works, it's martial prowess of some kind. In Patrick Rothfuss's perpetually unfinished works, it's everything. Kvothe was a Mary Sue self-insert who couldn't fail at anything except financial budgeting. In Peter V. Brett's honorably completed works, it's sheer anger toward demons. This is also true of the Doom franchise. In Brandon Sanderson's rapid-release works, it's eating coins. In anything by Joe Abercrombie, it's ruthlessness. Think of a character. Logen, Farrow, Byaz, Mercato, Shivers, Black Dow, Coska, anyone who survives more than 10 pages does so because they are, or become, ruthless.
I could do this all day. My point is, there's a specific thing in the protagonist that sets them apart from others, that they grow and hone and refine, which allows them victory over the forces of evil or forces of lawful neutral or whatever the bad guys are.
In macho chest-beating genre fic, it's a skill or talent that the Picaresque hero has to grind into usefulness with blood, sweat, and tears. In gooshier romantic or YA fantasy, it's some inborn trait determined by their bloodline or parentage that later shows out as they become The Chosen One, the Boy Who Lives, Queen of the Faerie Court, etc.
In this masterpiece by Robin Hobb, there isn't a special thing. Fitz sucks at everything.
Don't get me wrong, his special birth affords him a number of dubious advantages that keep him from being true riffraff, and he's taken under the wings of several well-developed and likable characters, each masters of their respective crafts. All attempt to teach Fitz how to be good at something, to no avail. He's a bumbling schmuck with poor emotional self-regulation and he's just awful at everything he tries.
Heroically, Borrage and Chade and Verity and, to a lesser extent, Patience and Hod and Galen and a sequence of farm dogs, they all try to teach him how to stick to something long enough, and try hard enough, to improve at it. Stubbornly, Fitz refuses to advanced beyond mediocrity in any skill, trait, or ability.
This is not to say he is not capable of them! In fact, he is outfitted to, like Kvothe the Arcane, become an unstoppable wizardmaster of everything, as his super special royal bastard blood ensures that he is able to both Skill and Wit (clairvoyant telepathy and worging, respectively). He can probably scry too. Why not?
But he won't let himself get good at the Wit, he gets the Skill beaten out of him by his anemic sadist Snape surrogate, he's bad at fighting, at lying, absolutely terrible at long-term planning, abysmal at talking to girls. It's implied that he was passable at tending horses, but even then, he was rapidly replaced by someone better as soon as he stepped out.
Despite these obvious and myriad character flaws, which I might contemptuously judge as a lack of work ethic or courage in a living, breathing, real life human, you're really pulling for Fitz. You want him to get his finger out of his ass and score a couple wins. You want him to smack Regal down. You want him to win Molly back. You want him to exhibit competence in something aside from poisoning junkies, and yet, he refuses.
If he took a fraction of the willpower he exerts in ensuring he remains bad at everything, and pointed it toward getting kind of good at something? The Farseer series wouldn't need to be a trilogy. We'd have this boxed up and ready to go in 80 pages.
Abercrombie will always be my #1, but I think Hobb is my #2. I can't put these books down. I haven't torn through a series like this since the First Law....more
Druss the Legend! Seven feet tall, stronger than God, slightly mean to everyone but nobody seems to mind because he's so good at murder. Did you know Druss the Legend! Seven feet tall, stronger than God, slightly mean to everyone but nobody seems to mind because he's so good at murder. Did you know they promoted him to Captain of the Axe? No, not any sort of military. The weapon. The entire axe hierarchy consists of Druss, who is captain.
He and his pals who he's mean to get trapped in a fort that's definitely going to fall because of the Mongolian Horde. They're called something else, though. The whole book, it keeps saying, "the fort is definitely going to fall. We can't hold out. We're one old man and a bunch of farmers and thieves against the entire Mongolian Horde."
And yet, somehow, it still comes as a surprise.
Don't read this as disparagement, the book was great. Most surprising, I think, is that it was laugh out loud funny, pretty much the whole way through. You don't get that all the time in sword and sorcery. They tend to take themselves too seriously. And make no mistake, Legend took itself mighty seriously, but the banter was choice.
I got here by way of "Since you liked The Blade Itself, you might like..." and you know what? Close enough. I feel disingenuous giving it four stars instead of five, because it was a genuinely good read, but a man's got to have standards and five star books are the ones I want to read again as soon as I put them down. I could give Legend a minute before another run-through....more
Great book, capping off a great series. Felix still isn't as likable as the autism-coded engineer from the first of the Siege novels, but he's close. Great book, capping off a great series. Felix still isn't as likable as the autism-coded engineer from the first of the Siege novels, but he's close.
Twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern. Here's the pattern cemented into place by the third offering of the series:
Picaresque, self-effacing male protagonist who acknowledges he lives in a crapsack world and has made the best of it, within what he supposed to be the limit of his gifts.
Something catastrophic happens (a siege, the assassination of a really cool gladiator, and a global genocide, respectively) which forces the protagonist to start lying his ass off. He discovers this works very well, and continues to do so until he is elevated to a position far beyond what he believed to be the limits of his capacity, at which point he learns there are no limits to his capacity because he is highly intelligent and, turns out, a really skillful liar.
A shrewish, sociopathic, unlikable woman follows him around, psychologically abusing him at every turn. She is incapable of kindness. The closest she comes to kindness is disparaging, dismissive pity. This woman is often reminiscent of his mother, who is even worse. The protagonist is madly in love with the woman. No one can ascertain why. This love is never consummated and the romantic arc never resolved, because the protagonist is functionally sexless (figuratively in the first two novels, literally in the third).
At the conclusion of the novel, the world is changed forever by this expert liar's actions, but continues on, in its way. In the next book, the liar is assumed dead. His name, if it was ever known, is immediately forgotten.
Absolutely masterful. If you're into low fantasy (George R.R), period fiction (Bernard Cornwall), or grimdark (Joe Abercrombie), you've gotta read these books. ...more
Excellent book. Love this guy. Four stars only because I read the previous book in the Siege series and I liked the protagonist more.
K.J. Parker speciExcellent book. Love this guy. Four stars only because I read the previous book in the Siege series and I liked the protagonist more.
K.J. Parker specializes in lovable scamp antiheroes who, by sheer vim, accidentally become emperors for a while. Also, they don't know what sex is. They blunder through the process of righting wrongs and making the empire a better place for everyone, really executing the criminal underground in droves and paving the roads, right up until they don't any more. The first guy, a surly engineer, handed authority over to the military as soon as he could, and good riddance.
The second guy, the protagonist of this story, he hands it off to... well, I'm not going to ruin the surprise. Certainly worth the read.
Aw, heck. Take the five stars! If only for the ending that I just refused to ruin....more
Narby is endearing enough at the jump, bungling his way through anthropology with a respectful if starry-eyed appreciationWhat a goofy son of a bitch.
Narby is endearing enough at the jump, bungling his way through anthropology with a respectful if starry-eyed appreciation of the populations he's living among. This turns quickly, when the shaman gives him ayahuasca.
He talks about subsequent obsession with detaching from the Western, scientific approach to empiricism in favor of believing in magic snakes because it is only through fully believing in magic snakes that the real eyes can realize real lies. He locks himself in the basement and listens to "discordant music", presumably noise and radio static, looking for patterns. He walks around at night with a tape recorder, fervently debating with himself. He loses touch with his family and isolates himself from all his friends, becoming nocturnal as he pores obsessively over dated occult texts.
Most clinicians worth their salt would look at that and ask about a family history of paranoid schizophrenia. Narby clarifies that shamans have always been falsely accused of mental illness, for it is only the REAL eyes whomst can realize the real lies, and the real lies in question are: "The world is made of something other than snakes".
This is bad faith for comedic effect. He's a little more lucid than that. Not much. He never comes out and directly says that he thinks spirits are communicating through us by the vector of DNA, but it's strongly implied. The problem is he doesn't understand DNA very well, or Darwinian evolution at all, and tries to leverage that lack of understanding as evidence that all the world is set into motion by astral serpents, and we are the mere receptors of their whims.
He does not address whether or not this theory allows room for free will. He does suggest that the activity of the unconscious mind is placed there by the spirit realm. Maybe I'm a reductionist square, or a Romantic square, or some sexy combination of the two, but this desperate attempt to inject spiritualism into biology seems to rob humankind of heart and soul by giving all the credit for human inspiration and ingenuity to curiously absent spirit guides, many of which are "lower" animals, who, despite their incredible wisdom and advancement, have not developed a method of communicating with us unless we're tripping absolute balls on jungle poison.
I'm as misanthropic as the next sexy reductionist Romanticist, but if we're not wise enough to formulate these ideas and understandings on our own... and we need to receive them from animal guides, who do have the knowledge... but we ourselves ARE animals... why are we the only ones incapable of independent generation of this hidden wisdom? Why are we special in the other direction, in that we suck so bad?
Pick a lane, my man. I commune with the giant glowing bat in my dreams too, and he gives fantastic nutritional advice. Keep your worlds compartmentalized. To live in accordance with nature, there'll be a ton of contradictions. That's what makes it nature....more
Great translation, great read, tour de force, et cetera. I haven't read any Arthurian stuff since high school, barring Bernard Cornwall and T.H. WhiteGreat translation, great read, tour de force, et cetera. I haven't read any Arthurian stuff since high school, barring Bernard Cornwall and T.H. White, and you can't put them alongside Tennyson. That said, I forgot the vibes. I was surprised by how well that A24 movie captured the vibes of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
However. There was too much goddamn alliteration. It's distracting and not as cute as you think it is....more
Really good, profoundly fun subversion of the usual imperial high fantasy novel. Orhan is the hero, but he is a coward without any visible redeeming qReally good, profoundly fun subversion of the usual imperial high fantasy novel. Orhan is the hero, but he is a coward without any visible redeeming qualities. He is picaresque in the extreme and does not, in fact, believe he possesses redeeming qualities, though this doesn't bother him. Just the way things go.
He is happy being a downtrodden street-rat wretch, and has repurposed himself as useful to the imperial bureaucracy by building bridges and speaking many languages, which means he gets paid, though not much. He is racismed against often. He doesn't much mind that, either. Just the way things go.
Orhan is disconnected and emotionally dissociative, though he identifies as a coward. His internal monologue is charming because of its brutal directness. He keeps saying he doesn't recognize social cues, but he does. He just doesn't care about them. The matter-of-fact way he realizes he had emotional responses, like hitting people or coming to bat for his various damsels in distress (capable all, and very few of whom are in any distress that he was not directly responsible for) is the driver for most of the book's humor.
Dissociation is the theme of the book, in fact. Orhan has cut himself off from all humanity, and reintegrates easily and into a leadership position, though he doesn't understand how or why because what he understands is medieval physics. The city itself is cut off from the world by the siege, and Orhan's childhood friend is trying to bull his way in and kill everyone, a tasteful microcosm for Orhan's own self-imposed isolation, which itself was only broken in his childhood, and by the same friend. The two of them play a RTS with other human lives and neither think much of it. A lifetime of having smirking nihilism beaten into you will do that.
The book is sardonic and grimdark, which, absolutely chef's kiss. I was on the fence because of how it got blasted in so many reviews, but the things they were whinging about were the same things that I tend to appreciate in a piece of literature, and I'm glad I followed through out of pure spite. Can't wait to read the next one....more
Up there in the list of best fantasy books I've ever read. I regret not reviewing it when I first finished it, but now I'm halfway through the sequel Up there in the list of best fantasy books I've ever read. I regret not reviewing it when I first finished it, but now I'm halfway through the sequel and I don't wanna run my mouth and risk blurring the narratives. Suffice to say, it was a masterpiece, and the second one's even better....more
I read it a long time ago and somehow didn't review it. It was real good.I read it a long time ago and somehow didn't review it. It was real good....more
Love when they kill gods! Just love it. More books should end with gods being killed. More books should start with gods being killed! And you know whaLove when they kill gods! Just love it. More books should end with gods being killed. More books should start with gods being killed! And you know what? There's no upper limit on it. The higher the deicidal register, the better the book.
Immensely satisfying how they dealt with the svengali swords, too. I'm a barbarian boul in my blood, and it's clear that Shel shares my overwhelming contempt for wizards. ...more
I was told it would be sword and sorcery. It's not, but that's okay. It's gritty high fantasy that reads like a novelization of a lovingly handcraftedI was told it would be sword and sorcery. It's not, but that's okay. It's gritty high fantasy that reads like a novelization of a lovingly handcrafted D&D campaign. Or Pathfinder campaign, I suppose.
It felt a little like he slid into home at the end there, with the story accelerating as it reached its terminus. Nothing wrong with that, either. The characters were fleshed out and believable, and everybody was driven by their actual intrinsic motivations, which you don't always get, especially when you sign up for Conan-knockoff pulp.
See, that's what keeps it from being sword and sorcery. Everything is cut and dry. The protagonist is an antiheroic force of comparative good, because the antagonist is an undead necromancer slavemaster with a name like "Tchronk o' the Worms". Aching God had elements of that kind of moral chiaroscuro -- there's no doubt that Auric is the good guy -- but he's webbed up in all of these petty political disputes and grappling with his own PTSD, which Shel writes masterfully. And that's boots on the ground. 25 years of psychotherapy, you're basically PTSD's neighbor. I've been at it for five, and I can vouch that what he describes for Auric is dead-on what it would be like if a valiant old buck adventurer actually got good and traumatized for the first time in his career, even if it took some dark and hongry god reaching into his skull and swishing things around to do it.
I liked the structure of the pantheon, too, how all the gods are constantly squabbling off-camera and how most of the medieval normies consider piety distasteful and embarrassing.
I walked in here thinking I'd give it 4 stars, but I can't. It's a 5 star book. It was really, really good. Like if Abercrombie (my favorite author, highest praise I can give) took himself a little more seriously and was obsessed with tabletop. I'm working my way through the sequels now....more
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