Tag: Fantasy

Books

Book 660: Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower #6) – Stephen King

Geoff W

This series might be getting a little too meta for me.

Don’t worry, I’m going to finish it. I mean I’m thousands of pages in and only one book and two novellas left, but seriously this book definitely messed with the idea of reality in a way that pushed multiple fictional worlds into what I’m assuming is supposed to be our world because Stephen King exists in it, but he might exist in all the worlds because he’s the storyslinger. So. Many. Confusing. Thoughts.

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Books

Book 656: The Invisible Library (The Invisible Library #1) – Genevieve Cogman

Geoff W

Why is it every time I say I’m not starting a series, I accidentally stumble into one!? I picked this up when we were visiting the UK last summer because it sounded interesting and there wasn’t a mention of a series anywhere on the cover/back blurb. But of course, as I’m drawn in I realize it’s going to be a much larger story than one book can contain and I find out it’s a six book series, SO FAR. There’s at least one more unpublished. BAH!

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it and am looking forward to reading the rest of the series over time, but I really didn’t want to jump into another unfinished series. I don’t know why, but I’ve become the person who likes to know there’s an ending and that I can reach that ending. This is across all my media these days, not just books. but I don’t want to go on and on about that, so let’s talk about this book.

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ARC, Books

Book 649: A Hero Born (Legends of the Condor Heroes #1) – Jin Yong

Geoff W

I was already thinking about requesting this on NetGalley when I received an email from the publisher, so I thought “why not?”* I might’ve been sucked in by the advertisement that this was the Chinese The Lord of the Rings, but I can neither confirm nor deny that. (It totally was—we all know it.)

I wasn’t sure what to expect going in to the book, I honestly kept putting it off because I assumed it would be way too hard to read. When I started the book to find dozens of pages of prologue, character lists, and historical information I started to get worried this was going to be more tome-like (i.e. Dickens; This was also initially published serially in a Hong Kong newspaper) and less like the martial arts movies that made huge splashes in the late-90s/early-00s in the US (think “Hero”, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, “House of Flying Daggers”, etc.).

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Books

Book 614: Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower #5) – Stephen King

Geoff W

In general, I am LOATHE to enjoy a book as slow as this, let alone a 7(+) book series, but this one is good, really good.

I think the biggest issue I have with this book is how quickly it ended. Some of this is of course due to the Amazon Kindle flaw of telling you have 8-10% left in the book when really you have 1-2% and the other 8-9% of those pages are bonus content. But, the rest of it has to do with this having the first true cliffhanger in the series. [This might not be true as I can’t really remember the endings of the others, just they all blend together.]

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Books

Book 613: A Conjuring of Light (Shades of Magic #3) – V.E. Schwab

Geoff W

Disappointment doesn’t even begin to cover my thoughts on this. Did it end the series well enough? Yes. Did it inspire me to read more of Schwab’s writing? No. Am I even more concerned that she is being compared to Diana Wynn Jones? YES.

A Gathering of Shadows and A Conjuring of Light aren’t so much book two and book three of the Shades of Magic trilogy as they are part one and part two of book two of the Shades of Magic duology. All three of the books in the “trilogy” take place in incredibly short amounts of time with a four month gap between one and two/three.

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