Richard Raley's Blog, page 46

Real Review: Kingdom of Gods by N.K Jemisin

[image error] Link:  Kingdom of Gods
This has always been a series of books where there is an odd mix of things I liked and things I didn't like about it. Shadow god tentacle sex...didn't dig it. I also think all the arguments against them, be it the stylistic choices of the prose or the lack of depth when it comes to world-building, are justified. However...there was still something within those first two books that I found enjoyable. In "100k" I enjoyed the creation mythology Jemisin wove together and in "Broken" I thought a blind character was a nice change of pace.

Here in "Gods"...everything began well.

I read that first page, saw that Sieh was the main character and thought...this could be great! A child god...I won't have to deal with the romance elements. A child god, two children...this is probably going to be a Peter Pan like tale about the nature of adulthood and parents and it will tie into Itempas gaining back his place since that's been the main plot in the series...and...and...

So WRONG.

Sieh turned out to be a horrible character. Experiment Failure. Hit the waste disposal alarm. He's all over the place, he doesn't feel like a god...or even a fully realized human, there are still romantic elements and all Sieh's thoughts about how children think and act and behave different than adults during those romantic scenes was frankly...ewwy.

Not only is Sieh all over the place but the plot goes with him, never spending enough time in any place long enough for the reader to settle into it. Emotions fly up and crash-land, plots are forgotten and brought back. The villain is never given the time he needs to be considered a real threat and here all the gods running around really does work against building any type of suspense. The pair of romantic interests are never given a reason why they have affection other than they seem like they're supposed to. Characters pop up and disappear, pop up and disappear. The Itempas Problem is a footnote to Sieh's problems instead of front and center.

Not outright horrid but not good and probably too many mistakes to be average, two and a half stars.

Real Review: Infidel by Kameron Hurley

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Link:  Infidel

It got better.

All the world-building and morally grey characters I loved in the first novel are just as good as before and all the problems I had with the plot are...GONE. Without having to dish out epic size awesome amounts of world-building Hurley gets to instead spend more time on fine tuning pace and plot and there's tons of pay off here. A quick, engaging, twisting read.

But don't think the world-building just went away. No, we get a whole new ride in our amusement park. Tirhan is kind of the Jerry Springer of our Bugpunkian world; it's polite, it wears a suit, and when it seems like things are getting boring in the war department it throws in a chair to spice things up. Add in some familiar refugees, some new shifter tricks, EVAL sand, and a group of rogue bel dames for plot stewing. The chair isn't even really needed for plot purposes, but it does prove Nyx can kill people with just about anything.

There are some brutal, Wow Out Loud moments in "Infidel". Go check out "God's War" if you haven't and get this one at the same time. This series is only getting better.

Four and half stars.

Real Review: Infinity Blade: Awakening by Brandon Sanderson

Link:  Infinity Blade: Awakening
Don't buy this. Don't read this.

Not something you usually say atop a four star review but it's the truth. It's for your health. What we have here is a novella set between two video games and if you do read it you might get a case of what literature doctors call Acute Blue Ball-itis. It's a technical term.

Until Brandon Sanderson decides he's going to write a full novel on how the story ends, don't read it. This is the single reason I've marked it as four stars and not five stars. Other than that...it's great. I read up on the video game and all I can think is: how do you turn such a simple video game into such a deep well-developed fantasy world?

Brandon--Aww Shucks--Sanderson, that's how.

Four stars...cuz of the technical term...

Real Review: God's War by Kameron Hurley

Link:  God's War
Are you tired of farmboys?

Do you feel like if you read about another Great Evil that you might do yourself bodily harm?

Tired of swords and horsies, are you?

Good! Welcome to "God's War". There are bugs and holy wars and untypical characters inside its pages. The world Kameron Hurley creates is definitely New Weird and also in that wonderful gooey center where you can't decide if it should be called Sci-Fi or Fantasy. It has the best worldbuilding of any debut that I've read this year.

This world of bugpunk magic and boxing, of sands and war-torn wastelands, of matriarchal and patriarchal societies, of the different ways religion can turn based on the same text....of, of, of...this world held me from beginning to end. There's lots of `ofs'. There's a lot here to sink your teeth into.

The only reason I'm not giving it Five Stars and screaming "Debut of the Year" from the top of my surgically implanted lungs is that the plot was very unsure for the first hundred pages and then very all-over-the-place in the last fifty.

Still...I really liked it. I'm looking forward to the next novel in the series. Sadly I don't get to say that enough with new Spec-Fic writers. Check it out!

Four stars.

Real Review: Star Wars Ascension by Christie Golden

Link:  Ascension (Star Wars)
I once wrote a review wondering if "Shadows of Mindor" was the best Star Wars novel ever written. Some agreed. Some don't agree. It was an honest question about a book I liked by an author I greatly respect.

I am not asking a question here.

Statement, Meat-Bag: This is the worst Star Wars novel I've ever read.

I don't care anymore. You've broken me, Del Rey or Golden or whoever is really responsible for this. I don't care about Luke Skywalker. I don't care about Ben or his Sith buddy or Jaina or Jag, etc. I really really don't care about the Galactic Alliance or its fifty million Chief of Staffs. I really really really don't care how many times Coruscant has been conquered...AGAIN. Through misuse of the last eight novels in this series you've made me dislike them all. I'm pretty much done with them. Something I never thought possible. I survived the saggy area of NJO. I survived "Planet of Twilight" and Kevin J. Anderson and "Crystal Star"! I survived all the weird bug stuff and flow-walking...

"Ascension" did exactly like its name suggests and it rose on up to the top of that "Fate of the Jedi" heap to become the cherry on top. Illogical characters, dull prose, error after typo after error. Christie Golden has no idea what she's doing and the editors...if there are any...didn't even bother to try to mold it into something worth presenting to the fans.

This was rushed or just thrown out there, I don't know which is worse, but I know "Ascension" is thee Worst.

One star.

Real Review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

[image error] Link:  Ready Player One

I don't know if I have much to add that hasn't been said by the bijillion reviews this book has gotten. I'll just agree that I come down on the side of those who very much enjoyed the read for the great nostalgia popcorn that it was. "Ready Player One" is "Night at the Museum" for geeks, especially 80s geeks. I myself am more of a 90s geek but the five-year-old in me remembers some of the other awesomeness that happened to him. Though I must admit the novel lacked in shoulderpads and some of the other...bad parts...of the 80s.

Writing wise...you aren't going to be wowed. It's extremely didactic, the characters and plot go as you expect them to. "Ready Player One" lightly touches on some issues like over-population, corporation control, and internet alter-egos, but all of it is only the merest touch before we get back to all the "War Games" and "Monty Python" quotes. Boy might also get girl...or maybe boy might also get 40-year-old guy living in mother's basement as the joke is told and retold.

Don't expect high art; read fast and don't look behind you, Don't Panic, and you'll probably have a good time with this one.

Three and a half stars.

Real Review: One Salt Sea by Seanan McGuire

Link:  One Salt Sea
There comes a point in every series where so many things have happened to get us here that the author just needs to trust the reader to remember or know some little fact without the info-dump. I'm pretty sure we've reached it with the October Daye books.

This could have been a good novel in the series...but there was just way too much info-dumping. Info-dumping about previous plots, info-dumping about character relations, info-dumping about magic, and info-dumping about the different types of fae. That's some serious dump...

Take away that big dumpy problem and "One Salt Sea" is good if not the best we've seen from the series. The plot was interesting, I liked it. A war...a new bunch of fae and kingdoms to check out. Saltmist has potential going forward... Characters? Kind of blah. I mean...same good stuff as we've seen before: Toby visiting the same places, calling the same people. But she's Toby and you got to love her gumption. I don't like Conner, never have liked Conner, and think he's probably 99.999% responsible for the blah.

A good outing dragged down by info-dumps, below the highpoint of "Late Eclipses".

Three stars.

Real Review: Snuff by Terry Pratchett

Link:  Snuff
Terry Pratchett is the most consistent writer to ever work in the fantasy genre. He has for decades, pumped out novel after novel of exceptional quality. I'm sad to say that this has come to an end. Some have called Pratchett's latest entrees into the Discworld mythos uneven. Moments of the same quality fans expected and others where the magic just seems to be absent, the words streaming along without any heart.

"Snuff" is not longer just uneven as can be said about "Making Money" or "Unseen Academicals". "Snuff" is instead...just plain odd.

The writing feels blocky. The dialogue is labored. The jokes just fall flat. I didn't laugh once...a first for Discworld. Actually...I rarely even enjoyed the novel. It felt like work to get through. The characters were hollow...Vimes felt...weird. The other guards felt tacked on. Exposition was explained and reexplained. The same jokes were told twice or even thrice.

Worst of all...I skimmed.

This probably hasn't been a very helpful review. I've written probably a thousand words that I've promptly backspaced out of existence. It's a hard to say bad things about an author you love, especially an author who has always respected the readers as much as Pratchett has.

But...got to tell the truth. Didn't like "Snuff". Will not reread "Snuff". It's hard to think of a Discworld novel I dislike more.

Two stars.

FYI, Little King Henry is Free On Amazon

"Little King Henry" joins "Prime Pickings" to be free on Amazon.  Generally these things run for about a month from what I understand, so get them while you can.  "Prime Pickings" should just about be up.

Little King Henry by Richard Raley on Amazon
Prime Pickings by Richard Raley on Amazon

Real Review: Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence

Link:  Prince of Thorns
Here we have another "Debut of the Year". Fantasy publishers...please stop with that promotional tactic; I'll speak for the whole fanbase: we're sick of it. We don't believe you anymore. Too many of them have turned out disappointing or just outright bad. How about you let us decide what novel is the "Debut of the Year" and stop telling us?

/off of soapbox.

Is "Prince of Thorns" thee one? The "Debut of the Year"? Does Mark Lawrence get a cookie?

No...

Is "Prince of Thorns" good?

Yeah, kind of...

It had some things I didn't like: the age of the main character just isn't believable and seemed like it was there for cheap shock value. It believes that GRITTY IS GOOD, but gritty is neither good nor bad, it's only gritty. As always with a novel using two stories at two different times you have to be sure that both of them are equally good or else the reader will skim...I skimmed the flashbacks here.

It had some things I liked: the world was a future Earth screwed back into a medieval world by catastrophe. I'm always a sucker for those tales and some of the stuff here was pretty good.

It had some things I didn't like about the things I liked: the priests speaking Latin of all languages...the world being so easily medieval instead of even more of a mix than Lawrence showed us.

It had some things I liked about the things I didn't like: despite the age thing I routed for Jorg because as awful as he is...the antagonists are worse.

So no, not DOTY, but not bad.

3 stars.