Nate > Recent Status Updates

Experiencing horrible mixed emotions as I go through this series. They're impossible to not keep reading but when I run out of them very soon I'm gonna be super depressed.

Somehow Dudley's new/old habit of kicking the gong around has done little and less to chill him the fuck out. Also, I have no idea what Ellroy was smoking when he included that bizarre Betty Short connection.

Bummed at the lack of Pierre Bondurant cameo action so far, and I can't say I'm ever looking forward to getting back to Kay's diary entries--but Dudley's antics are just so goddamn Dudley that it makes up for it. He makes Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant look like fucking Serpico.

Sci-fi parallel of real life Byzantine general Belisarius named Raj Whitehall sets out on a mission to reconquer the Civil Government's lost territory and fight off the Islamic hordes on the planet Bellevue. Bellevue was once part of a spacefaring empire but was thrown back to 19th-century equivalent technology when said empire dissolved in fusion warfare. And there's horse-sized savage dog cavalry.

:D

Okay, I know everyone and their mom hated Alfred but I miss his crabby ass. He was a great foil for Uhtred and their love/hate codependent relationship provided great moments of verbal sparring.

I was helping my parents move and one of my family members threw my paperback copy of this into some random box now 100+ miles away, when I had like 200 pages left.

A classic piece of Uhtred blasphemy here, as he speculates that Loki made Christianity up when all the gods were hanging out bored and drunk. Of course, he did make a list of the handful of priests (shout outs to Beocca and Pyrlig) he's liked. The old man is positively tolerant at this point.

This book is just pure fun. Endless shit talking, riding at a full gallop around Mercia and Northumbria, and killing huge Scandanavian warriors in single combat because it's good for your career and is just generally a good time.

So far this has very much been more of an outright war novel than the previous books, except trading the finally-beaten Danish hordes for new and interesting invading groups like the Norse and the Uí Néill.

The twin-souled, life sucking Silverfox drops SERIOUS fucking knowledge on the Four Founding Races, yet gives us jack shit on the maddeningly mysterious Assail. This is why St. Alia Syndrome characters drive me nuts. That said, this shit is fantastic.

Would y'all disagree if I called the siege of Capustan the epic fantasy Stalingrad?

Totally lost as to how a certain antagonist in this series is still alive at this point. I feel like he's been around gleefully fucking with Uhtred for like seven books now, yet manages to survive the inevitable bloodbath that ends each volume. Shades of the major-league creepy Obadiah Hakeswill...

Trotts throws the dice among the White Face Barghast while Septarch Kulpath's army and the Tenescowri trap Gruntle and Stonny Menackis with the Grey Swords in Capustan. Man, even brief summaries of this stuff reeks of epic. Also, ancient undead dinosaurs with sword arms.

We sat in silence. Geese flew above us, their wings beating the morning. A flurry of rain spat past. One of the corpses farted.

Ah, that classic Cornwell atmosphere. It's like coming home.

Some fucking muppet on Amazon just spoiled this for me so I'm just gonna read the new Cornwell.

Fuck all the other gods, all you need is Burn and K'rul.

Straight up ashamed that an English dude knew that the Miranda rights debacle was spawned in my hometown and I didn't. I let you down, America.

Haven't been a huge fan of the early Child novels thus far, but I'm rapidly running out of mid/late period stuff. It's interesting that Reacher is not his usual nomadic hedge knight self and is actually in a meaningful relationship (with a character from a previous book no less; the lady from Tripwire.)

For some reason, I COMPLETELY fucking forgot that there were any Darujhistan characters in this. It's also hilarious how a dude like Kallor with one of the most ridiculously epic of resumes is still only second string to Caladan Brood.

Unfortunately Child failed to stump me with the "ominous, secret contraband" plotline, which is really bad because I've figured out probably two percent of the mysteries I've read before the big reveal. Oh well. He did include a scene of Reacher manfully resetting his own broken, near-torn-off nose so there's that.

The scene where Tool makes arrows for Toc the Younger is awesome. Ancient undead craftsmanship is my shit.

You know an epic fantasy author isn't fucking around when the prologue of one of their books is set "298,665 years" before just the start of the actual story's CALENDAR. The prologue to Deadhouse Gates is unforgettable but I think this is my favorite prologue from all of the Malazan books I've read so far. Shit is mind-bendingly ancient and alien feeling.

I think what makes the incredibly scary and dramatic battle scenes in this book so convincing is that the person we experience them through has no control over anything. He's just a measly dried-up historian. Not a commander or even a particularly skilled soldier. He has little idea of what's going on and gets what idea he does have from word of mouth. It's like if Livy was actually in the Third Servile War.

Just came to a slow realization I've been pronouncing Duiker's name incorrectly in my head.

Kalam thinks about Kallor in the Imperial Warren. That fucking guy...

Reacher hit bad man. Bad man fall down.

This book is like a big, bloody snowball that Erikson pushes off a high cliff, then allows to grow and gain speed until it knocks you the fuck out and leaves you with irreparable psychic wounds.

So far this has seriously been like David Lynch directs a Reacher movie. A very Twin Peaks atmosphere with the "small town with malevolent secrets" plot and bizarre scenes like with the space age motel with its weird orange-haired innkeeper or when Reacher finds the stoner in the corn fields who insists he heard the ghost of the missing girl at night.

These books have very little educational value, are predictable and a little more testosterone-laden than I usually like--and I never want to stop reading them.

One comforting aspect of this series is that humanity still has a proclivity for blowing shit up, which is helpful with all the deadly magical stuff going on.