Fantasy Buddy Reads discussion
Archive [Retired Book Clubs]
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RETIRED THREAD: Vagabond Treehouse Book Club
What do you think of the narrator for Skulduggery? I put the omnibus on Audible Wish List. heh
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The narrator changes around book 5, I think... one narrator did books 1-4, another did 2 of the books between 5 & 7 I think, and 3rd narrator did 6 & 8+, I think, looking at narrators earlier when you first asked... overall, the narration feels pretty consistant, from what I remember...
The cast of characters in this are weird/quirky and distinctive, and the narrator has pretty good voices for them...
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Also... seems more like the first narrator does 1-4, a onetime narrator does 5, 3rd narrator does 6-9, and a new narrator might do all of the new arc...
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The audiobook for The Free Bastards comes out on 9/28th!"
I'll need to continue with book 9, soon... book 8 solved current problems with bigger problems, leading into the finale... so much to resolve, another 18-20hr book, I think... and after 5 books of slapstick comedy, it was kinda nice to see the ol' failed Zombie King get some redemption as a hero, if only to one damsel in the big fight...
Relentless - I got about halfway and had to skip to a less sad story. Iain, I dunno how you were able to listen to the whole story & not get sad. Joe (view spoiler) is pretty darn upsetting in how well it's done. I'm sure I'll be fine once I get to the turning point, but it's a total bummer.
As for Empire of the Vampire, I had to double check if it's considered YA. LOL It's not. It's like a tone down Anne Rice story. I've gotten about 30% into it, but I'm not quite in the mood for weird 1st person to limited 3rd viewpoints.
I'm glad I'm not to the second Joe Ledger series yet. Not sure I could handle something that sad right now.@Soo - I'm half way through Night's Gift. It's been a fun little adventure so far. Definitely not complicated as it's aimed at a young audience. I don't mind :) I will say it's been a long time since I've read a book with a psionic character. It's taken half the book for him to be able to really unleash his powers and its worth it.
Good ole fun is nice to throw into the mix. =)I re-read The Vanishing. It's a solid, HEA romance with a bit of a mystery. I enjoyed it the first time I read it. The re-read was nice, but not as exciting as the first time around. I did the re-read because I snagged book #2 during a sale. =D
Whispers by Dean Koontz was a surprise because it's totally a romance! lol That's the kind of story that I would imagine romance authors would have wanted to write. A serial killer creeper crime case and down to earth couple that fall in love. That one was not light hearted as an overall arc, but the fact that it had contrasting scenes (happy, sad, calm, sadistic, etc) made the story better. Ironically, it made it an ok thriller/crime story, but a great romance.
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Mr. Right was a rewatch… really fun one with Sam Rockwell and whats-her-name from Pitch Perfect…
I think it caused the oldie recommendation, Gross Point Black with John/Joan Cusack, Minnie Driver, Dan Acroyd… hitman’s high school reunion…
As a contrast, I'm trying to read comics with some sort of comedy or romance. Even with that, Relentless is pretty dark.
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So exciting yay for the series? =)In the trend of lighter fair between Relentless, I finished Something #1. I can see what people are saying about the book. More bad than good, but as a fan of the story world that Dakota Krout has created, it's a nice addition to that. I think I've read most of the core books. Within the meta world stuff, really fun. As a new series starter, it needed more work to flesh out the characters more.
In the end, it was fun and I like the Murderhobo character a lot. He's batty crazy, but I think he can wean himself back towards sanity. Not sure if that'll happen, but I can hope? Heh
Now listening to The Last Human. The writing flow and narration by Bahni Turpin makes me think of Alexander Kane or A. Lee Martinez type of story. The aliens and tech are weird and quirky. The main character has whatever condition where she doesn't think of herself as human because she was raised as an alien. Thus alien envy, etc.
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In the trend of lighter fair between Relentless, I finished Something #1. I can see what people are saying about the book. More bad than good, bu..."
It's complicated... when I'm reading them, they're easy to read in 2-3 sessions... but when I'm not, it's been easy to delay... taken 6 months to read 4 books...
Part of it is spoiling too much reading all the blurbs and checking out the spotty wiki... wiki doesn't have all the info, tho...
Biggest surprises in book 4 were how many characters were killed off, and that epilogue where a character survived...
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Seems like the only way for the baddie to be impactful is for it to be someone Sandman Slim knows… 2 options are a friend or his dead archnemesis… the one who got him sent to hell in the first place, that he dealt with twice already, including the Eldritch Gods trilogy… can’t remember if he’s somewhere he can come back from, tho… altho I guess anything’s possible in fiction…
Ok back home! Started Cork#4 yesterday on flight home. Only a couple hours in and so far so good.
Well it was mostly work but met some old military buddies so was kinda nice to catch up. Nice being home tho. Texas is way too hot for me.
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I had a feeling he was leaving it open to continue in the future, at around 90-95%, and by 99% he made it super explicit...
At least it ended on a different note than the last 3 trilogies... (view spoiler)
Hopefully when he decides to continue, it'll be more satisfying than some OTHER revivals (Black Jewels)
Wait, without spoilers, it ended in a way that he can go back to it? I'm gonna be bummed when I read this book. *grumble grumble*
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I'm gonna be bummed when I read this book. *grumble grumble*"
Yea... for sure, he can return... and he pretty much swears he will, in-character, too... for a minute, it seemed final, but then the last last scenes happened...
And on top of that, the resolution of this story felt a bit defeatist, rather than the usual expectation (in Urban Fantasy) of some hijinks solving things with minimal consequence...
I wasn't sure if you'd read this yet or not when I commented before, but there's really not much more I can say without spoilers... lots of spoilers...
It's a short book, so it shouldn't take you long, when you get to it...
When I say I enjoyed the book, I mean the first 80-90%, which is basically normal Sandman being Sandman stuff... especially with the narrator/character voices we've gotten used to... I could listen to that stuff forever, I think... and Fuck Hollywood was a great normie character to bounce Stark's craziness off of... half the stuff she doesn't believe at first, the other half she thinks is awesome/badass... and Stark half-heartedly tries to shield her from the worst of it... but Stark sucks at keeping people isolated from his shit...
Empire of the Vampire - Boy that took forever for me to read! I listened to the whole thing at least 3-4x. It was like an Ann Rice novel without the deep dive of emotions, politics, culture & characterization. It has those elements, but it's like the light version. Ann Rice is interesting, because her writing can really make you live within the story world and super grossed out, hate, empathize with the characters or events. Robert Heinlein is the first writer that comes to mind when I think of books with elements that can make my brain spin and think of way out of the norm stuff. Followed by Rice and a few other authors.
Narrator is fine but the guy's accent doesn't fit the story. That made it hard to stay within the story for me. Followed by a bunch of other things that made the overall story have a passive presentation.
I'll read the next book, but I'll probably wait for a sale to pick it up. I wasn't entirely thrilled by the book. Also, it needed more kickass fighting? I like the bookcover. I wanted the story to have cool fights. There's fighting, but I can't say there was one amazing fight sequence in the whole thing. =P
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ANYWAY... from the blurb, I expected a different story, but now that I'm in it, the MC has been roped into impersonating Jacques McKeown again by the same blackmailer from the first book, this time at Jacques McCon, a convention for the star pilot/author... hosted by the entitled rich kid from the first book... to steal a cure to some poison/disease for the blackmailer's friend... I'm sure it won't go as planned...
LOL I like how you ended that with "I'm sure it won't go as planned..."Yeah, I think it's interesting when I re-watch a show and note the younger version of actors from whatever I'm watching in the present. Though, I'm seriously slacked on watching shows/movies. Heh
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Yeah, I think it's interesting when I re-watch a show and note the younger version of actors from whatever I'm watching in t..."
I watched a bunch of hitman romcoms recently... Mr. Right, Gross Pointe Blank, then I found one with Dave Bautista on Amazon called My Spy (he's spying on the widow of a person of interest and gets blackmailed by the 9 year old daughter that catches him spying... 9 year old starts orchestrating a romance between Bautista and mom... Kristen Schaal is great in it, too)... then I found just a spy comedy called The Spy Who Dumped Me... Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon get caught in a conspiracy when Mila Kunis is dumped by spy boyfriend, then the spy dies and Mila Kunis has important intel in his things... end up going all over Europe trying to stay alive...
Ended up on Alias when I ran out of actiony movies I wanted to watch on Hulu/Netflix/Amazon...
Woohoo! Sandman Act II is out now. I'll re-read Act I and dive into 2.
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Yeah, but now it's out and I can listen to it. =D Woo!
Re-read of Act I was fun and I love the way the huge narration cast makes the story come to life.
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Well I finished The Night Agent and The Ranger. Both were paperbacks I owned so I am slowly working toward my goal of reading through them. Overall each were decent thrillers. The Ranger by Ace Atkins reminds me of a less enjoyable Jack Reacher. I give it some leeway because its the first book of the series. However, the pacing was off, parts seemed rushed, and the character development could have been better. I wanted to care about the main character and sidekicks more but author just didn't deliver. I will probably continue if the books are avail at library.
Other great news (not) is my 3 year old and wife both have Covid. Yay! Wife was vaccinated too. So far I am couch living and hoping not to catch it. Wish us luck!
Keeping your family in my thoughts for a speedy recovery. Hang in there!
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Brian wrote: "Other great news (not) is my 3 year old and wife both have Covid. Yay! Wife was vaccinated too. So far I am couch living and hoping not to catch it. Wish us luck!"Aw, good luck!
Soo wrote: "Brian wrote: "Other great news (not) is my 3 year old and wife both have Covid. Yay! Wife was vaccinated too. So far I am couch living and hoping not to catch it. Wish us luck!"Aw, good luck!"
Thanks Soo and Narika. Everyone is doing well so far.
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Brian, do you remember what you enjoyed about Red Sparrow? Got it from the library, and it has the worst pacing and awkward writing. It doesn't help that the narrator sounds bored from start to finish.
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When Callum the butterfly came barging into the cathedral during the final battle, and the Butterfly King was like “Callum, you sonuvabitch!!!”, even Phil Thron laughed in the bloopers, lol…
That scene was kinda like in Shawn of the Dead, when they’re making action movie music and keep cutting to the slow zombie groaning… but with a butterfly…
Soo it’s been awhile. I remember Red Sparrow was recommended to me by a good friend and was way better then the movie. Strong female protagonist who suffers through some harsh training in Russia to become a spy/asssassin. It’s a slow burn but I liked the series.
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These are actually some of the stories I remember the most... the time Miles has to solve an infanticide in the Vorkosigan rural town area... the time he saves a human/animal hybrid and recruits her... etc...
I just read that last week or so. It's a nice mix of how he deals with different situations. =)
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Mission Impossible music is another fun thing to theme that butterfly scene in Sidekicks Initiative to, in my head...
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Gray Man is more of a pinball thrust into events... and they never go off smoothly... you also can never quite tell how a Gray Man book will play out... altho you can make some assumptions, when non-intelligence personnel are introduced and given POV chapters, that they'll intersect with Gentry at some point... seems to be playing out in my current book, and giving an idea of how things will resolve in Gentry's favor... reading blurbs, I know that after this book (view spoiler)... so everything has to resolve, somehow...
Timelord Iain wrote: "I find the Gray Man books to be more nailbiters than Orphan X... Orphan X generally feels more in control...Gray Man is more of a pinball thrust into events... and they never go off smoothly... y..."
I am a big fan of both series'. I also like the Ben Coes (Dewey Andreas) thrillers as well. I am currently reading a stand alone Hour of the Assassin. About 120 pages in and its a pretty good one if you can ever find it at the library.
Fantasy Buddy Reads
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Authors mentioned in this topic
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