Vagabond Treehouse ~ [Fall 2025: World of Chains #1-3 (Wayward Bard) | The Perfect Run 1-3 (alternating)] Showing 1,701-1,750 of 2,531

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

The Queen's Weapons surprised me...

As much as I hated The Queen's Bargain when I read it on release and abandoned the series, it wasn't as bad on re-read when I knew what to expect (but wasn't great either, with annoying characters/plot developments)...

In alot of ways, tho, Queen's Weapons redeemed it for me, and redeemed Twilight's Dawn, and created the groundwork to tie this series off in a more satisfactory way, as long as The Queen’s Price doesn't screw it up... will find out next month...

Been finishing the Black Jewels BR with Nirkatze, after a holiday break... then returning to the 3rd Kushiel trilogy in March/April/May...

I know I'm not the only one that abandoned Black Jewels when it revived itself with books 10/11/12...

[Soo]

Iain, can you listen to Chirp audiobooks on other audiobook reader apps or just website and Chirp app?

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

I think you need to use app… it goes to 3x speed so I havent tried to download mp3s externally very hard…

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

From what I remember, the one time I tried downloading the files the way I do on Audiobooks.com, I think Chirp does alot better at hiding your files behind obfuscation, and literally splitting the books into chapters... I think you'd need someone with a bit more tech savvy to maybe build a python code to impersonate the Chirp app, to download your library to your PC... that would be something done from the Command Prompt / Windows Shell, tho...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Soo wrote: "Iain, can you listen to Chirp audiobooks on other audiobook reader apps or just website and Chirp app?"

This reddit thread has solutions... halfway down the page, they got the Chirp converter working again, 5 months ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/audiobooks/c...

https://github.com/Bostwickenator/ch.rip

The GitHub repository explains everything you have to do to install, download, and repack your audiobooks for easy transfer to a mobile device/app of your choice...

As long as you're comfortable following instructions (I do it all the time when looking for groupsourced solutions to my problems, but it can be scary if you have no coding knowledge...

[Soo]

Thanks for looking it up! I did a quick search online, but wanted confirmation.

I used to do that stuff all the time, but stopped a while back because it's time consuming. Large part of the reason why I've settled into Audible and KU. It's not access in a way I like, but it's all in one place and enough work arounds to make it affordable (as long as I read a lot).

Good to hear on Black Jewels. I've enjoyed that series from the get go and it was upsetting for the writing & quality to flop. Never good to a beloved series & characters + world come across and old & tired.

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Hope I don't oversell it... there are some valid review complaints floating around about pacing/etc... (Part 1 is basically fan service, then the first 75% of Part 2 is the main plot, then the last few hours is the longest denouement ever)...

As Nirkatze noted in the BR thread, in some ways the series could have ended here and been fine, since so much was resolved, if not completely played out...

[Narilka]

I'm in the group that wishes she'd left the series alone and not restarted it. i DNF'd The Queen's Weapons.

[Soo]

I got these on a whim cause they're cute.

[Nirkatze]

Bishop still delivers enough comeuppance for me to happily read her books, even if I grumble about Polka-writing (two steps forward, one step back).

Those are super cute cups! I love the multi-functional lids.

[Narilka]

Those mugs are adorable.

[Virginie]

Super cute mugs <3

[Soo]

Black Jewels was a unknown gem of a series when it first came out. I've been reading the series since I found the first book in the bookstore way back when it was first released. I love the complex characters and emotions. Sadly, that complexity is not as well done and some world setting elements are not as consistent in the newer releases. A big bummer when you're a fan.

I mean, I've re-read the first few arcs a few times and like how I'd have slightly different responses to it each time.

These mugs are fun! Sadly they are not the best quality but will be fun to use for a while.

The yellow puppy one is a series and I picked the one where he is taking a pic cause that's me. LoL always taking pix. 😆

The rounded circular design for the yellow cup is cool! The way the lip curls in makes it so you can easily sip and not burn your tongue.

I also get a funny visual of me making smooch kiss face cause that's kinda how I feel my lips adjust to sip from the mug. Ya know where you see a baby and adult is all like, "You are so cute! Kiss kiss!"

🤣🤣🤣

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Been a week or 2… time to go rogue again… listening to Heart of the machine… book 4 of the Terminator LitRPG I keep mentioning… fun times…

[Soo]

Woo Rogue! I've been stuck on rogue mode for years.

😆🎵🎶🎵🤭

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

I’m more Sport Mode ;)

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[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Forgot mobile ruins quotes in img src… I posted link to get my point across just in case anyway

[Soo]

Here ya go. I think it's user error. 🤭😜

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

It’s not mobile makes quote curve

[Soo]

I did that on my phone. Could be the browser you use. Try out Brave.

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

It’s probably autocorrect being fancy

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

And finished... this was kind of a transition book in the series... most/all allies learned the MC's nature as a dungeon/hero hybrid, MC ended her Primary Directive to return to Earth, and some other closure... also learned alot about the deified race that runs the LitRPG system in the Isekai Dimension... and things escalated on that front... need to find out when book 5 is coming out...

Skipped the entire final hour / chapter... that's how long the stat sheet has become... but this series does it right, and puts the stat sheet in it's own chapter that can be skipped... generally happens 1-3 times per book...

ETA: The New Dawn -- 4/8/25

Double Edit: Amazon blurb calls it the Final Installment... solid ending then... not too surprised... Icalos actually has a number of Royal Road fictions, including some connected to this world...

I think Faceless Minion is a complete story that's been available on KU for a year or 2... hopefully it gets audio when Terminate the Other World finishes... it's set on Earth that the Terminator MC of the other series came from, and follows a faceless minion of other villains whose secretly a mastermind in his own right... also a bit of a Redshirts / Below Decks situation...

The author's current ongoing project is Bee Dungeon, which has nearly 200 chapters from the past 2 years...

A dungeon core novel. But with bees. A bee dungeon, if you will. Oh, and something about a young man finding his place in the world and maybe learning about the deadly calamity that threatens all of humanity. But mostly the bee thing.

The Bee-ginning: A Dungeon-Core LitRPG comes out March 11th...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

I feel like so many of my favorite new LitRPGs of 2024 are slowing down their release schedule in 2025... probably catching up to their Royal Road content and running out of content they can release fast... still sucks, when you got 3-4 books in 2024, and the next one isn't due until August already...

Only one I can think of with alot of releases on the schedule is Xkarnation's Reborn as a Demonic Tree...

Daily Grind has no news on book 6 yet, Heretical Fishing 4 is late August, I know I'm forgetting a couple...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

As I've realized I have like 5k pages of free space in February, if I continue to maintain over 700 pages/day, I suddenly have alot of room in my reading schedule... skimmed my unread audiobooks on Audible, and downloaded a half dozen to try in the near future... maybe even some today, since I don't feel like I need to be 100% caught up on BRs:

Isaac Steele and the Forever Man
Reborn as a Demonic Tree 2
Amelia the Level Zero Hero Book 3
Transistor
The Sundered Realms
Milk Run
Mother of Learning: ARC 1
Only Villains Do That

[RachelG.]

I'm going to be finishing Reborn as a Demonic Tree 1 later today if you want to buddy read #2 I have a copy available from now until 2/15.

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

RachelG. wrote: "I'm going to be finishing Reborn as a Demonic Tree 1 later today if you want to buddy read #2 I have a copy available from now until 2/15."

Serendipity... we can discuss it here... I read #1 back in November I think, and shared my thoughts solo here... and there's a bunch more entries coming out this year that we can read... I think #3 comes out Feb 25th... #4 comes out May 13th, and #5 comes out June 24th...

[Soo]

Happy Year of the Snake 2025!

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Happy New Year, Soo...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Cleared all my January books except Way of the Argosi and Royal Tea Service...

SO... off to read something from my list... and I picked The Sundered Realms...

Might have been a mistake, if only because Casey Blair is also the author of Royal Tea Service, so I'm stacking books from the same author, but it's one of the blurbs I bought on a whim during Black Friday... it's tagged Romantasy, and some think the romance is too PG/Juvenile, but I'm more intrigued by the worldbuilding anyway...

To me, I thought the blurb sounded more sci-fi, with a multiverse of portals, but there's no cute term for SF Romance, I guess...

The magic system is also basically coded algebra, it sounds like... math problems with umlaut-type inflections...

[Soo]

lol So does it make it good or bad?

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

I haven't had any problems with the story so far... about 20% in... not sure if this is the start of the series or a standalone... it might just be standalone...

Tea Princess Chronicles is a trilogy with some companion novellas...
I think this Sundered Realms might be standalone...
The Sorceress Transcendent sounds similar, but is just a novella...
Take Back Magic + Take Back Demons + Take Back Worlds is a rapidfire UF trilogy that came out last fall that also sounds similar... more multiverse and demons, at least...

Only Sundered Realms & Tea Princess 1-3 have audio so far...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

I'm going to read The Agartha Loop: Book 1 at some point... it's yet another Ravensdagger series, so for now I'm saving it as a BR, since we're already planning our 2nd Ravensdagger series in March/April...

This is the audiobook cover for book 1, and the first/only cover I ever saw until recently:



Then I was on Goodreads recently, and saw the original ebook cover:



Something about the human model and white teeth just seems jarring to me, compared to the audiobook cover... they're otherwise super similar...

Book 2 has an ebook and no audio, yet, and rides the TitRPG trend a bit more (I just coined that term :D ):

[Soo]

LoL that middle pic is just bad art. The boob covers may atteact dudes that enjoy LitRPG. Or whoever that enjoys boobs on cover. 😆

[Nirkatze]

@Iain--if you freed up that much space, think you'd come back to the Tad Williams BR?

[Soo]

I had hypothetical plans on making Korean lunar new years celebration dishes, but I holed up during the snow & ice phase for the last few weeks and didn't get stuff to make the diahes.

Had to do a general restock grocery shopping, but didn't make it to Hmart. 😆

So, I tried out this dry Mandarin Sesame noodles, made beef stir-fry with some Chinese style seasoning and added cherry tomatoes + sweet & spicy jalapeños.

A little more fancy plating & mellow coffee to cheer the start of Wood Snake year.

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Nirkatze wrote: "@Iain--if you freed up that much space, think you'd come back to the Tad Williams BR?"

I've thought about it and I dunno... I have room, but it would fill most of it... Stone of Farewell + Green Angel Tower are basically 100hrs audio combined...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Finished Sundered Realms... romance was definitely the weakest part of the plot to me... there was so much going on with the fractured realm (which actually turned out to be more of a single world splintered along leylines into multiple dimensions separated by demons, due to a past calamity, I think (if I got the lore right)...

So there wasn't much time for a believable romance at the pace Blair chose to go with, I think... FMC was sheltered/trapped most of her life, MMC is described as evil in the blurb, but is really just more of a beleaguered leader trying to keep his realm from falling to demons... super rushed romance that felt mostly like instalove... there was relatively explicit sex before the end, so that PG comment was a bit off before...

And then, the book didn't resolve as much as I expected... I thought this might be a standalone but it's definitely the start of a series... alot more left to do to Unsunder the Realms... not sure if it'll be the same characters or a new couple in the next book, tho... it's been 18+ months since book 1 came out, and author has been writing/starting other series I mentioned before with similar demonic themes and sorcery...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Nathan Lowell has been following in my reading footsteps lately... not surprising, given the types of stories he writes...

I was looking for news on Wizard's Cat, the The Wizard's Butler sequel, and read some of his old newsletters... and since September he's read Wandering Inn 1-14, Beware of Chicken 3-4, and Heretical Fishing 1-2, probably 3 this month... his newsletter gives news on his current writing, backburnered series, and the reading he does to keep the writing juices flowing...

Also, it seems he's been struggling the past couple years, to write like he used to, since battling cancer in 2022, but is slowly rebuilding routines... so I'm hopeful for future releases... and still have some old books of his to read still...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

I read Isaac Steele and the Forever Man at work today, and already gushed on it a bit in the Mystery Book Club thread, so I won't rehash that as much here... but when the story started talking about World War 5-6, I kinda laughed a bit at work... WW3 is so last century :D

The book gave me so many vibes for people finding out secrets in bunkers (the What If? Marvel cartoon series, and the Jason Bourne movies), when the book wasn't being a sci-fi noir mystery with sound effects...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Read the first 25% of Transistor... adds alot more magical/mythology to a series already full of superheroes... now there's archangels/nephilim/demons, dragons, etc...

Paused and read 10% of Milk Run... narrated by Soo's favorite, Emily Woo Zeller... alot of political intrigue thrown at you fast to start, and I just realized Dark Knight Station: Origins is a standalone in the Solar Clipper megaseries... came out in 2021, tho, so I'm still reading in the right order...

[Narilka]

Timelord Iain wrote: "Nathan Lowell has been following in my reading footsteps lately... not surprising, given the types of stories he writes...

I was looking for news on Wizard's Cat, the [book:The Wi..."

I think we'll see the Wizard's Cat eventually. His blog post made it sound like he's figured out the direction. Fingers crossed it stays that way.

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Agreed... I only check on it once or twice a year, generally...

[Narilka]

In Scalzi news, Old Man's War 7 was turned in to the publisher last week. This week it has a title, a cover and a release of Sept 16 - The Shattering Peace



I dropped out of OMW on book 4. Not sure if I want to try again or just see how you all enjoy book 7 first.

[Soo]

Timelord Iain wrote: "Read the first 25% of Transistor... adds alot more magical/mythology to a series already full of superheroes... now there's archangels/nephilim/demons, dragons, etc...

Paused and r..."

😆

Emily Woo Zeller is so weird! Sometimes amazing narrator and other times can put you to sleep.

[Soo]

Narilka wrote: "In Scalzi news, Old Man's War 7 was turned in to the publisher last week. This week it has a title, a cover and a release of Sept 16 - The Shattering Peace



I dropped out of OMW ..."

Woo! I'm in. Have you tried to listen via audiobook?

Part of the downsides to Old Man's War is the time between releases and it's very old school space adventure in narrative voice. I enjoy the series and really like the way each book makes the setting more developed by the characters events.

Like some of the books are episodic or string of shorts connected and others focus on a main character.

[Nirkatze]

I'm excited that OMW7 has a cover and solid date! We'll need to schedule that BR once it gets close enough we won't anger the thread gods.

@Narilka--do you remember what made you feel like tapping out on? during? before? book 4? The last few books seem to be fairly divisive per reviews (and I can see why), but they're my personal favorites, so I'm curious.

Glad to have those Nathan Lowell updates! One of these days I'll give his Solar Clipper books another try...

@Iain--I'm glad you have enough wiggle room in your schedule to keep leaving interesting paving-the-way new book tidbits for us! Wouldn't want you to feel pressured to read something that takes that away. Though if you do decide you want to give Osten Ard another try at some point, I'm enjoying enough I probably wouldn't mind a reread again in the future.

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

I think OMW7's date has been locked in for awhile... I had it in my new release list for September 2025, afaik... had to hit that 20th anniversary deadline...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Nirkatze wrote: "I'm excited that OMW7 has a cover and solid date! We'll need to schedule that BR once it gets close enough we won't anger the thread gods.

As much as I love Buddy Reading, I think I enjoy my books more, when there's wiggle room for me time, so while I might end up reading Stone of Farewell at some point, no guarantees on Green Angel Tower...

[Timelord Iain, Tech Support]

Over halfway through Milk Run… kinda feels weird how similar this feels to the main series, considering it’s about smugglers and ne’er-do-wells… still enjoyable, tho…

[Narilka]

Nirkatze wrote: "I'm excited that OMW7 has a cover and solid date! We'll need to schedule that BR once it gets close enough we won't anger the thread gods.

@Narilka--do you remember what made you feel like tapping..."

When I saw that book 4 was a rehash of book 3 from a different POV is when I exited the series as, in general, I'm not a fan of this. I was definitely tired of it by book 5 of Stormlight and it was only in prologues lol I also wasn't excited that books 5 & 6 were interconnected short stories. I would love to see more from the original crew but it looks like this one is from a different POV too. I'm leaning towards following the BR and waiting to see how you all react.