Joe Kessler > Recent Status Updates

Cliopher sighed. “It is so much harder to stand up for a small, nearly frivolous thing. It is far easier, at least in imagination, to stand up for the great things.” He smiled wryly at the room. “One thing I have learned is how rarely we get to stand up for the great things. Or rather: how rarely we know we are standing up for the great things."

“Glorious One, you have always sought to govern by wisdom, not rule by fear. You do not use fear of violence, whether physical or magical, to rule. There are more subtle forms of fear, and it is one of these this proposal seeks to address—economic control. My question for you, princes of Zunidh, is whether you are so weak as rulers that to give your people freedom from that fear will ruin you?”

“The vast majority of people wish to have meaningful lives. They wish to live well—to do meaningful things. If we give them all the opportunities to do so, and take away the fear that they will have nowhere to go, nothing to eat, nothing to support themselves with—the world will change.”

"Joan felt, so acutely, that the incurable problem with life was that... she could not have toddler Frances and fifth-grade Frances at the same time. She could not meet adult Frances and have a moment to hold baby Frances all at once... But to love Frances was to be always saying goodbye to the girl Frances used to be and falling in love again with the girl Frances was becoming."

BIG parental feels there, yeah.

“I may not touch you. I may not kiss you or embrace you or grasp your arms or your knees or your feet as I can all my cousins and aunts and uncles and friends. I may not lay my hand on your shoulder when you are sad or clasp your hands with you when you are jubilant... but my lord, my ... Tor ... if you were my brother or my cousin I could not love you more.”

I don't ship it but I don't NOT ship it if you get me

"I have never seen you in your own country before, among your family, at home. I had not realized how much you missed them, how great a sacrifice it is for you to live so far away."

“My lord, my vocation is to serve.”

“I have been showing you another aspect of myself this journey. I did not realize until just now that you have been showing me another aspect of yourself as well.”

"I suppose we always hope that those closest to us can see into our hearts—but unless we invite them, or show them in words or deeds, how can they?"

"The trouble with pretending to have no emotions beyond a vague benevolence is that after a while you start to believe your lies. But that I do not display my emotions does not mean I do not have them."

“We are also speaking of a man whom we both love for his own sake, a man who, it is conceivable, might sometimes wish to do things with his own hands, for his own pleasure, simply because he is a man and it is an ordinary human joy to do such things.”

"He picked up the Ystharian history and sat down, and quickly became absorbed in its accounts of unbelievable inventions and even more unbelievable political experiments."

Okay, that's definitely more hilarious on this reread now that I know Ysthar is just modern Earth!

Dedicated to Ken Kessler (no relation)

"Viewed objectively, it could be the most momentous impact event since Adric hit Mexico." Okay, RUDE

This book is interminable. Thank goodness the rest of the trilogy is by different authors.

I need way less of this:

"Past, present and possible run parallel. Now here, Now there and Now just across the stream. Here there is rubble, somewhere there is a building. Crumbled dust is also solid. But the ripple shifts Time into a new channel, making memories into imagination, and a mockery of plans. A blank page to start a fresh tale."

And way more concrete specifics, please.

That's the most creative death for a vampire I've ever seen, wow

Sinners (2025)

This is one of those weird books that delays a pretty obvious revelation until the story's almost over for some reason.

This is like... Hell Followed With Us meets Killing Eve.

"This was the same mistake so many humans made, believing someone would leap over trauma when it hurt them badly enough. That wasn't how it worked, and the monster knew it. All Shesheshen could do for Homily was to be patient with her, and make space for her, and eventually, one day, behind her back, eat her mother."

‪This might be a 5-star read?? I am LOVING it so far.‬

Love this characterization of the Doctor: "Outwardly a clownish eccentric, a genius in human terms, but that was just the bit you were allowed to see... Ace had had the chance to look closer, and through the occasional cracks in his veneer, she glimpsed a darker, huger intellect. It seemed very alien, detached and powerful, as if the Doctor was just something the intellect went about in." Yeahhh, that's my boy lmfao

"I am like a ruined piece of parchment scrawled over and over again with your name, so many times it has become illegible."

Are we ever going to get more information about the Great Game? Or how the story is continuing on after it?

"The dreams weren't the gunshots from the past. They were from the future, from now." fuck offfffffffff