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Post by tuigirl on Jul 18, 2022 21:41:15 GMT
Continuing Dan Abnett‘s Inquisition series with „Pariah“. I love that this book is told from an outsider perspective and shows how utterly terrifying for example Ravenor is when he comes down at you ( and you have no idea who and what he is). I again admire all the world building and the believable characters. No idea why I waited so long to continue reading the series. But this way, I get to read 3 whole books all at once- As soon as I finished „Pariah“ , I will continue with „Penitent“.
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Post by relativetime on Jul 26, 2022 0:25:27 GMT
Finished The Eye of the World last night - what a fantastic book! It's just about everything I've been craving from a book since finishing Lord of the Rings. I feel like it took some of the things Tolkien did and improved upon them - I like the more direct presence of the main antagonist throughout the book, I liked the unique but easy-to-understand magic system.
I loved his more egalitarian approach to gender in his world too. Lord of the Rings sometimes felt like it pushed all of its non-male characters to the sidelines, which definitely wasn't the case here. All the characters were great really - I loved the dynamic between the Emond Fielders and the subtle humor spread throughout. There was like one character relationship I thought seemed a little rushed, but it was overall a small blip in an otherwise very smooth reading experience.
Next up, The Great Hunt.
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Post by relativetime on Jul 31, 2022 18:36:30 GMT
Finished The Great Hunt last night! Another fantastic book and my favorite type of continuation of the story. My favorite storyline was easily Rand’s. The character growth here is exquisite and it all culminated for me in the most exciting way at the end. I also loved all the scenes with the Aes Sedai and just finally getting to explore more of what they’re about and the different factions within. Nynaeve gets some of the most interesting chapters getting to experience that. Verin and Hurin were my two favorite side characters in this book in a book just brimming with excellent side characters. There were only two instances in the entire book where the dramatic irony was a bit too much- how could they NOT have seen what was going on! - but thankfully they were more than made up for by just how excellent the rest of the story was.
All in all though, just a thoroughly excellent read. Good grief Robert Jordan knows how to conclude these books while also building up into the next book! I’ll definitely be moving onto The Dragon Reborn later today - can’t wait to get started!
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newt5996
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Post by newt5996 on Jul 31, 2022 19:21:34 GMT
Finished The Great Hunt last night! Another fantastic book and my favorite type of continuation of the story. My favorite storyline was easily Rand’s. The character growth here is exquisite and it all culminated for me in the most exciting way at the end. I also loved all the scenes with the Aes Sedai and just finally getting to explore more of what they’re about and the different factions within. Nynaeve gets some of the most interesting chapters getting to experience that. Verin and Hurin were my two favorite side characters in this book in a book just brimming with excellent side characters. There were only two instances in the entire book where the dramatic irony was a bit too much- how could they NOT have seen what was going on! - but thankfully they were more than made up for by just how excellent the rest of the story was. All in all though, just a thoroughly excellent read. Good grief Robert Jordan knows how to conclude these books while also building up into the next book! I’ll definitely be moving onto The Dragon Reborn later today - can’t wait to get started! The Dragon Reborn is kind of the last one where there’s a big conclusion where you could stop, with Shadow Rising on the scale ramps up big time and is more open ended (and you start getting massive 100 page prologues)
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Post by Digi on Aug 2, 2022 15:13:21 GMT
Have finally finished reading through Phase I of the Star Wars: The High Republic novel/comic multimedia project. There were times when it was incredible, and times when it was absolutely dreadful, but on the whole I'm glad it exists and has created and filled in a whole new era of the GFFA. Keep doing what you're doing, Disney/Lucas Licencing.
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Post by shallacatop on Aug 2, 2022 17:12:51 GMT
Have finally finished reading through Phase I of the Star Wars: The High Republic novel/comic multimedia project. There were times when it was incredible, and times when it was absolutely dreadful, but on the whole I'm glad it exists and has created and filled in a whole new era of the GFFA. Keep doing what you're doing, Disney/Lucas Licencing. I’ve stalled on Midnight Horizon for a couple of months now. I just can’t get on with the prose style at all. It’s odd because I didn’t mind Older’s other work for the project. Really interested to see how Phase 2 will pan out. Hopefully will have some connective tissue to what’s been established whilst expanding on the actual era, as at the moment it’s a very specific story with a large amount of characters. It’s been fantastic though.
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Post by Digi on Aug 3, 2022 0:15:45 GMT
Have finally finished reading through Phase I of the Star Wars: The High Republic novel/comic multimedia project. There were times when it was incredible, and times when it was absolutely dreadful, but on the whole I'm glad it exists and has created and filled in a whole new era of the GFFA. Keep doing what you're doing, Disney/Lucas Licencing. I’ve stalled on Midnight Horizon for a couple of months now. I just can’t get on with the prose style at all. It’s odd because I didn’t mind Older’s other work for the project. Really interested to see how Phase 2 will pan out. Hopefully will have some connective tissue to what’s been established whilst expanding on the actual era, as at the moment it’s a very specific story with a large amount of characters. It’s been fantastic though. Oh really? Interesting, I blew through Midnight Horizon in about a day and a half, couldn't put it down. For me the most challenging entries were Light of the Jedi and the audio drama, Tempest Runner. With LotJ it felt like it was taking forever to get to the point, and I just didn't care much for any of Tempest Runner. I think Cav Scott probably wrote a decent script (we know he can, after all!) but it was really dragged down by subpar voice acting and completely uninspired sound design which made it difficult a) for me to even tell when flashbacks were happening; and b) to actually stay interested in listening to it at all. I'm very curious how they go about Phase II as well though. From what I understand it's going to be a step back about a century prior to Phase I, and I just....don't know how you do that when so much of Phase I was utterly dependent on the brand-new emergence of the Nihil threat.
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Post by shallacatop on Aug 3, 2022 6:42:06 GMT
I’ve stalled on Midnight Horizon for a couple of months now. I just can’t get on with the prose style at all. It’s odd because I didn’t mind Older’s other work for the project. Really interested to see how Phase 2 will pan out. Hopefully will have some connective tissue to what’s been established whilst expanding on the actual era, as at the moment it’s a very specific story with a large amount of characters. It’s been fantastic though. Oh really? Interesting, I blew through Midnight Horizon in about a day and a half, couldn't put it down. For me the most challenging entries were Light of the Jedi and the audio drama, Tempest Runner. With LotJ it felt like it was taking forever to get to the point, and I just didn't care much for any of Tempest Runner. I think Cav Scott probably wrote a decent script (we know he can, after all!) but it was really dragged down by subpar voice acting and completely uninspired sound design which made it difficult a) for me to even tell when flashbacks were happening; and b) to actually stay interested in listening to it at all. I'm very curious how they go about Phase II as well though. From what I understand it's going to be a step back about a century prior to Phase I, and I just....don't know how you do that when so much of Phase I was utterly dependent on the brand-new emergence of the Nihil threat. It’s interesting how it can vary from person to person, isn’t it? I’m glad Midnight Horizon is the one I’ve stumbled on anyway, as it’s the very last of the Phase, so I’ve already formed a very positive opinion of the initiative. I would’ve liked to have seen Trail of Shadows become the young adult novel and Midnight Horizon become the comic miniseries. I adored Light of the Jedi for setting the seeds and building up the dread, but I get where you’re coming from. My slight issue was that it took a long time to get back round to each set of characters, as there was so much to juggle. I couldn’t get into Tempest Runner on audio (fortunately only used a free Audible token) after 30 mins, so I waited for the script and it was a much better experience. I think it sort of wraps up very abruptly, but the journey is great and I’ll be waiting for the scripts for all the future audios. I’m hoping Phase II will have enough connective tissue to seed some events from Phase I, and we know that Porter Engle, Yoda and something linked to The Leveler will appear. So I think we may get an expansion of the era that also pads out the ongoing “present” story. It’s only going to last a year and two waves anyway, so if it’s not to our tastes we can get back in later in 2023, at least.
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Post by Digi on Aug 3, 2022 13:16:36 GMT
Oh really? Interesting, I blew through Midnight Horizon in about a day and a half, couldn't put it down. For me the most challenging entries were Light of the Jedi and the audio drama, Tempest Runner. With LotJ it felt like it was taking forever to get to the point, and I just didn't care much for any of Tempest Runner. I think Cav Scott probably wrote a decent script (we know he can, after all!) but it was really dragged down by subpar voice acting and completely uninspired sound design which made it difficult a) for me to even tell when flashbacks were happening; and b) to actually stay interested in listening to it at all. I'm very curious how they go about Phase II as well though. From what I understand it's going to be a step back about a century prior to Phase I, and I just....don't know how you do that when so much of Phase I was utterly dependent on the brand-new emergence of the Nihil threat. It’s interesting how it can vary from person to person, isn’t it? I’m glad Midnight Horizon is the one I’ve stumbled on anyway, as it’s the very last of the Phase, so I’ve already formed a very positive opinion of the initiative. I would’ve liked to have seen Trail of Shadows become the young adult novel and Midnight Horizon become the comic miniseries. I adored Light of the Jedi for setting the seeds and building up the dread, but I get where you’re coming from. My slight issue was that it took a long time to get back round to each set of characters, as there was so much to juggle. I couldn’t get into Tempest Runner on audio (fortunately only used a free Audible token) after 30 mins, so I waited for the script and it was a much better experience. I think it sort of wraps up very abruptly, but the journey is great and I’ll be waiting for the scripts for all the future audios. I’m hoping Phase II will have enough connective tissue to seed some events from Phase I, and we know that Porter Engle, Yoda and something linked to The Leveler will appear. So I think we may get an expansion of the era that also pads out the ongoing “present” story. It’s only going to last a year and two waves anyway, so if it’s not to our tastes we can get back in later in 2023, at least. Yeah you know, I didn't even think of that. I enjoyed it as a comic series but as a book...definite possibilities!
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Post by tuigirl on Aug 8, 2022 18:27:36 GMT
OMG. So someone recommended to me I check out the books by Simon Stålenhag. I am not sure how to describe this.... it is a mix of post-apocalyptic short story/ novella writing, short texts, paired with the most amazing awesome mind-boggling weird art paintings. Truly out of this world. I am not sure? Is this art? Science Fiction? In any case, the paintings are haunting, creepy, stunning, some of them are dark and depressing, but all are truly unique. Very interesting way of story-telling. I got "The Electric State" and "Tales from the Loop". Sadly, the books are not exactly cheap, so will have to save up for the others (although the last one sounds even more haunting and depressing). Definitely worth checking out if you are into the weird and wonderful and not afraid of dystopias.
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newt5996
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Post by newt5996 on Aug 14, 2022 23:55:08 GMT
I reread Eragon by Christopher Paolini, a book I quite enjoyed as a kid though as an adult looking back a lot of its flaws show, though not as much as some would have you believe. It's still a story that has a lot of potential to build and do interesting things (the link below has some fuller thoughts) and I hope the Disney+ adaptation makes some changes to the first book especially to make it work jacoblickliderreviews.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-inheritance-cycle-eragon-by.html
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Post by relativetime on Aug 16, 2022 0:53:14 GMT
I finished The Dragon Reborn a few days ago and now I’m about 250 pages into the fourth Wheel of Time book, The Shadow Rising. Still very much loving this series!
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Post by newt5996 on Aug 17, 2022 13:53:53 GMT
I finished The Dragon Reborn a few days ago and now I’m about 250 pages into the fourth Wheel of Time book, The Shadow Rising. Still very much loving this series! Shadow Rising is often considered to be the best book, youre going to love it.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 24, 2022 19:21:18 GMT
Been reading volume 5 of the Sailor Moon manga. Been very enjoyable so far.
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Post by Kestrel on Sept 25, 2022 15:01:12 GMT
Just wrapped up A Memory Called Empire and started the sequel, A Desolation Called Peace. Which, ironically, seems to be mostly about fighting a war.
Really loved the first book. It's space opera very clearly inspired by Asimov's first Foundation book -- following a new ambassador as she arrives the the capital of a powerful galactic empire. Very refreshingly, for modern genre fiction, there's no split perspective, so you see everything from the ambassador's point of view. Lots of fun twists and turns and politicking. If y'all like space opera and/or "imperial fiction" (think Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, Goblin Emperor, Legend of Galactic Heroes, etc.) you should definitely give it a read.
So far Desolation is also very interesting, but splits the story up into multiple POV characters, and tells a bit more conventional of a story -- there's a new emperor in charge and a new war to fight, against suitably weird aliens.
(One thing i really like about this setting is that the Teixcalaan Empire is a huge superpower, but there are other human states in space, as well as various alien powers, all coexisting (relatively) peacefully.)
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Post by fitzoliverj on Oct 8, 2022 18:26:30 GMT
"The Monarch of the Glen" by Compton Mackenzie. Blimey, that Sunday night tv show bears NO resemblence to the book! Even the character names - the one thing that was supposed to have been used - were changed!
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Post by grinch on Oct 8, 2022 18:58:17 GMT
"The Monarch of the Glen" by Compton Mackenzie. Blimey, that Sunday night tv show bears NO resemblence to the book! Even the character names - the one thing that was supposed to have been used - were changed! Funny you should mention that, they’ve accidentally started repeating it!
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Post by timleschild on Oct 8, 2022 19:05:13 GMT
"The Monarch of the Glen" by Compton Mackenzie. Blimey, that Sunday night tv show bears NO resemblence to the book! Even the character names - the one thing that was supposed to have been used - were changed! Funny you should mention that, they’ve accidentally started repeating it! accidentally?
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Post by grinch on Oct 8, 2022 19:09:51 GMT
Funny you should mention that, they’ve accidentally started repeating it! accidentally? Typo. Should have been ‘actually’
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Post by nucleusofswarm on Oct 10, 2022 18:35:25 GMT
The Hobbit. I quite enjoyed it.
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