The Primal Hunter 5 by Zogarth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Super fun. Not only are we getting a GREAT alternative to the standard tournament trope with a treasure hunt, but we get a couple of the most epic battles in the series (so far).

Classic. Really fun. I couldn't set the book down. LitRPG at its finest.

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The Primal Hunter 4 by Zogarth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Still a standard big-scale LitRPG that's very much a solo-leveling bunch of goodness, but here's where it really excels: it's also grounded. It has some cool moral conflicts. But most importantly, it's great on the animal friendship angle. :)

Leveling up is always so damn fun.

In this case, it's truly solid and quite beautiful. I always thought First Defier and Randidly was pretty great, but this definitely has its own unique spin.


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The Primal Hunter 3 by Zogarth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Things are really shaping up in a fun way. Purpose. Friends. An endless parade of super strong monsters he really, really shouldn't be trying to take on. And snark with his god-friend. Heretic, indeed. Muahahahahaha

This particular volume has some pretty great pacing and developments. And animal friends are pretty damn great to make it super easy for us readers to sympathize even more with the MC. It's a no-brainer. One might say it's instinctual.

I do like how the settlement is handled, the way it is growing. Never outstaying its welcome in the text, while being meaningful.

I'm looking forward to see how far this'll go.

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The Primal Hunter 2 by Zogarth
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Quite enjoyable. Loner who becomes insanely powerful is a very, very common theme in these kinds of books, of course, and this one excels at it. But more importantly, I find it fascinating to see real friendships arising, too. Not just with a god or two, but with regular folk who just happen to stumble in upon your forest sanctuary or annoying, head-pecking birds. :)

Who says you have to be a loner as a primal hunter?

Oh, and the mulled vodka is to die for.



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Glory Road by Robert A. Heinlein
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Re-Read 3/28/26:

I'm reading this mostly because I insisted to myself that I'd read ALL of Heinlein's works in publication order and this one's number came up.

Here's my new reaction: The first part of the novel is a VERY grounded Isekai novel. It's actually rather great. Vietnam war, being wayward, getting sucked in by a mysterious girl, and WHAM--adventure, fighting, magic in a world without high-tech and can't even support high-tech.

Later, it feels like a cultural relativism novel. The sexism is progressively annoying, but the core of cultural relativism IS pretty damn good and modern. So, it's weird. The adventure is almost cartoonishly basic but the conversations are amusing. The characters (aside from the sexism that both sides appear to enjoy, regardless,) are also pretty fun. Contradictions, no?

But you know what really breaks this novel for me?

The execution of the last third of the novel. High tech society. Sure, it's Heinlein playing with Clarke's adage, but I found myself rolling my eyes with the story-logic of it all. Sure, I COULD forgive it for being another embodiment of adventure, but as an all-out cultural relativism romp, but the worst dangers aren't swords and knives or teeth, but accepting your mate for who and what she is.

I'm being generous.

But honestly? I still didn't like it. Just a few too many squirmy bits I was forced to accept. At least Stranger in a Strange Land led us gently into truly interesting topics.


Original Review:

Re-reading my least favorite of Heinlein's works, because who knows? Maybe an older eye can shed some light upon this most shameful of tales rife with sexism, unabashed fantastical thinking (that works because this is a fantasy), or the fact that there *might* be a good reason why Heinlein only wrote one fantasy novel.

Results of my analysis are pretty much the same as when I was a kid. Odd, that. I mean, sure, there's the fighting of dragons and lots of really cool swordplay, geometrical magical symbols and magic flying everywhere, and adventure, adventure, adventure, and while none of that is particularly noteworthy in a world literally overwhelmed with such things, there is a certain odd quirk to this novel that at once feels way out of place for a fantasy novel and later how it becomes almost the entire focus.

It's a book about relationships.

Not heroism, guts, luck, or doing one's manly duty.

It's about getting in the girl's pants, discovering that she's playing him for the same reason, marrying her because of a sense of "that's what men do", learning she's a galactic empress in a high-tech interstellar kingdom, learning he's filthy rich, and then, even though he's "wildly in love" with her, gets bored within months and drops her to go back to earth and act like a screwed-up war vet, all the while obsessing over her, the fact that he'd just given up high-tech immortality and endless wealth, and he dropped her all because she's freaking old, too, and it doesn't even matter if she looks like she's in her early 20's and she's an empress that has been ruling for a long time. He's upset because she went out to sow her wild oats, and he was the result.

Wild sexism is rampant throughout this novel. Absolutely. All on his part. He's pretty much the perfect example of "do as I say not as I do" idiocy that men tell each other about the women in their lives, and because this is a poor fantasy because it is just as fantastical to see this dipshit as a lady's man that all the chicks flock to, it IS a condemnation of such thinking, too.

I mean, I think I'd have preferred to have read the book from Star's PoV, not Scar's. After all, she's out there playing the game and even offering this dipshit not just the world but her wonderful self, endless wealth, immortality, and the respect of a whole empire for the heroic deeds that he (and she) accomplished. She played the game as only a smart and sexy woman of 1964 could play it, hamming it up for the benefit of the idiot male and giving him what he expected at every turn. All she really wanted was fun and companionship and a bit of love. She'd already had three children and 50 born ex-vitro. She has experience, she's smart, and she's bored.

It's just a shame that we had to follow along with this asshole, instead. If the novel had been written the way that Heinlein had written Maureen from Sail Beyond the Sunset, this novel would probably be a long-enduring classic. But it wasn't.

I did like the full synthesis of other-universal conditions that changed the laws where certain tech isn't feasible but magic is. This makes the novel Science-Fantasy rather than standard SF, but I have no problems with it. It was nominated for the Hugo in '64 and Way Station won instead. That was a smart move. Way Station was awesome. :)

I knocked off a star from my original review for all the reasons listed. It may be unfair to judge a work that is of its times this way, kind of like judging the men in Mad Men in the early 60's for their behavior by our standards, but it is what it is. *shrug*

Let's see how some of my better-beloved Heinleins will hold up! :)

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The Primal Hunter by Zogarth
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

These kinds of books are really appealing. They're absolutely formula, but it's a kind of formula that I love. Isekai'd protags joining a system where it's kill or be killed and the point is to level up yourself and your skills so you don't get squashed. It's simply SATISFYING. Power fantasy.

So what makes this different or better than all the rest that serve exactly this function?

Archery and poison. And, of course, being a primal hunter. Bigger, badder baddies need only apply.

In the meantime, being an introvert with some geeky habits really pays off.

What else do we need?

It's written well and it's fun. That's what we need, and that's what we get.

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No Longer Allowed In Another World, Vol. 1 by Hiroshi Noda
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Muahahahaha this happened to be funnier than I thought it would be. I'm reminded of Dazai from Bungo Stray Dogs, but distilled down to the true essence.

Weak, eternally suicidal, and always looking for a double suicide--in the Isekai.

And yes, all the women are idiots for falling for him. But then, isn't that also reality?

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ONE PIECE 114 by Eiichiro Oda
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Rocks and God's Valley.

Seriously hard hitting story here. And not just because of the Domi Reversi, but for the fact that powerful entities can just treat coveted countries like play things and hunt the regular people like sport.

And the fact that this is art imitating life is not lost on me. Or on anyone.

Beautiful backstory. But painful.

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The Grinding by Matt Dinniman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If the cover doesn't give it all away, then I ought to confirm that, yes, there is a LOT of big monster action in this book. All made up of people. Tons and tons of people. In fact, if you want a great grindy and bloody horror novel, this does it well.

But that's not ALL it is. In fact, it being a love story for the ages is ALMOST as good as the wickedly funny reveal that explains ALL of what this is.

I couldn't stop chortling. But no reveals. Just know it's pretty damn great.

(And I do need to remind ya'll this is an early novel by the same guy who brought us Dungeon Crawler Carl.)

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ONE PIECE 113 by Eiichiro Oda
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Really dark turn here. All the happiness of the previous volume just got flipped in a moment.

But if that wasn't bad enough, we get some great dark history with Loki's story... and Rocks. I still can't get over how Rocks is Blackbeard's dad. I can't wait till I see God Valley. :)



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Awaken Online: Crucible by Travis Bagwell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow.

This one blew me away. I'll just say ignore the somewhat slow beginning because after it revs up, it just doesn't stop until the very end. Massive changes, great LitRPG callouts, additions, subversions, and plot/character inclusions.

But better than that, it's hella smart, emotional, and one GREAT heist with so many pieces.

That's kinda weird to say about some kid that has become the greatest undead boss/enemy of an enormous online world, right? But it's true. And it's super easy to root for him now. He's made so many great friends, and did it the hard way. With honesty.

That's probably the biggest crucible of all. You know, second to the enormous freaking undead stronghold. One or the other. :)

I honestly couldn't stop grinning through a GREAT deal of this novel. That should say everything.

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Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

What this book does well: a lived-in dystopian future where the seas have risen and agro-industry behaves like mobsters.

What it excels at, if you want it: sisterly drama masquerading in part as a thriller, an adventure, which often veers into boring dystopia, bean hating, and relationship angst.

Which is fine. If you want boring dystopia, that is. The future is very much what we already live in, including near-company-towns, debt, extortion, and corruption. There's some action, but honestly, I lost a lot of interest at the end of part 1 with the loss of my favorite character.

Alas. It's on me tho. I honestly loved the author's harder SF. This one just wasn't quite for me.

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First Mage on the Moon by Cameron Johnston
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have two things I want to make very clear:

This was a very moving and satisfying tale of achievement and grit and intelligence.

It also has one of most disagreeable openings I've ever read.

Now, to be doubly clear, I loved this book. It had a ton of great realism, hate for the gritty reality of war, and sheer, unbridled optimistic enthusiasm for a dream of something more even in the face of VERY little support or understanding or even a realistic outlook of surviving the great endeavor.

Indeed, it reads like the fantasy version of America's own space program at its very inception, only much more grueling and not sponsored by even a fraction of the people's good will. Indeed, it was a grand deception all done for the sake of truly fleeting glory--and it makes the novel feel like a book of true heroism in the face of insurmountable odds, but doubly so.

I loved it.

I rather HATED the opening, though. It really put the grimdark on the END of the novel before we even got a glimmer of hope or joy. Yikes. But damn. By the time I got a third in, I had to stay up all night reading it and it brought me a lot of joy. What a mess of contradictions, no? But maybe that's just me.

The best part of this book is the intelligence and idealism spitting in the face of so much horror. If you need that in your life, I totally recommend this book.

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Breaking the Dark: A Jessica Jones Marvel Crime Novel by Lisa Jewell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I don't know what I was thinking when I picked this up except that I was always a fan of Jessica Jones and I thought, "Why not?"

I DIDN'T realize this was written by a super-hot new mystery writer who's flying high in sales. Until just now. After reading it.

Well, mystery solved why I enjoyed the pacing and the plotwork so much, right? The superhero aspects are downplayed, which is the best part of JJ anyway, and it was pretty damn thrilling to discover just how odd and strange the story turned out to be.

I had a great time. I think I might take on the other upcoming marvel novel mysteries if they're anything as good as this.

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Judicator Jane 7: A LitRPG Adventure by Brian Rouleau
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is almost a pitch-perfect example of a concept taken much farther than it ought to have been taken.

I was sucked right in, tho. Indeed, I couldn't put it down for the life of me. I needed to have the full breakdown, the full conclusion, the total blast-out of Legendary classes. There was nothing in this or any LitRPG world that could have prevented me from sitting it out.

But this? I simultaneously want to think it's an utterly RIGHT ending for Pogg and I also want to think it's a total cop-out.

Fair enough. Considering all that has come before. The humor IS there. So is the serious aspect. It's perfectly in line with the premise. Blind justice and all. Without leading with actual blindness, mind you. That would be a step too far.

But honestly? The whole luck and justice thing MAY have gotten too muddled at this point. Each weakens the other unless the whole concept we need to rely on is the System itself. And if that's the case, then it's all suspect. Times ten.

I'll continue with #8 because it answers THAT particular question, but this one, for all I was actually glued to it, kinda left a bad taste in my mouth.


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ソードアート・オンライン 20: ムーン・クレイドル [Sōdo āto onrain 20: Mūn Kureidoru] by Reki Kawahara
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This one reads as one huge side-story, honestly. One that gives Tiese and Ronie a lot more page time, but a weirdly one-note one when it comes to Kirito. I think their comments about his language could have gone over fine once or twice, but it feels like it was constantly happening here. And there really wasn't any kind of growth. For anyone.

That being said, we get to see more of the Underworld and that was fine as far as it goes.

The plot, tho? Well, it feels rather skipable. It was probably my least favorite story in all of the light novels. Alas.

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Flybot by Dennis E. Taylor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If any of ya'll are looking for a Bobby ver 2, then don't.

There IS some fun dialogue sequences that absolutely go nerdy in a very fun way, but it is NOT the primary mode of this novel.

IF, on the other hand, you're looking for a snappy and interesting modern-day technothriller featuring people in over their heads with AGI, with a pretty balanced look at what AGI might actually mean or act like in a glorious blow-out of practical jokes leading up to mass tragedies, then you're absolutely looking in the right place.

And interestingly enough? The paperclip problem has been DEBUNKED. Wooo! Finally. No more paperclips. ;)

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BORUTO―ボルト― 7 ―TWO BLUE VORTEX― by Masashi Kishimoto
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm excited as hell again. So many people are again willing to help Boruto, be it half-willingly or not. But they ARE helping. Enemy of my enemy, and all.

But that isn't even the best part. The action sequences and the mini-reveals are brilliant. Both for Himi and Boruto this time. I'm really enjoying the hell out of this.

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BORUTO―ボルト― 6 ―TWO BLUE VORTEX― by Masashi Kishimoto
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

All Right!

That turned out awesome. Sarada is really stepping it up, and Boruto himself is crazy cool again.

The amount of reversals in this manga is pretty insane. Fortunately, it IS damn thrilling.


Wow, Sarada. Wow.

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BORUTO―ボルト― 5 ―TWO BLUE VORTEX― by Masashi Kishimoto
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Catching up with the manga. I stand behind it. It's much more advanced in story, consequences, and scale to the rest of the earlier Boruto and Narutos.

It DOES have its faults, but really, it's all a matter of perspective. It's building something big and it still needs to pull off one hell of a hat trick... and at this point, it's a matter of faith for the reader.

That's not to say it won't happen. But if it does? I'm going to be pretty amazed. For now, patience. The Divine Tree needs to grow.



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God's Junk Drawer by Peter Clines
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There are just a few things I can say about this without spoiling it, so I'll just mention it reminds me a lot of Riverworld with a splash of a (by now) common SF subgenre I see all the time now that (without spoiling) is a clear favorite for Big Reveal SF these days.

Old example: Dark City. New example: Halcyon Years.

Only, in this case, we're doing Lost World and Arthur Conan Doyle and trauma therapy.

Not bad, mind you. But I think I appreciate it much more AFTER the big reveals.

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Judicator Jane 6 by Brian Rouleau
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Out of hell, alone, almost friendless, on the opposite side of the world, we've got new peoples to judge, sea creatures to eat you, massive human populations to free from slavery, and the omnipresent need to get back across the world to defeat the prophesied hero of light.

How silly, no? Also, not a bad adventure. Looking forward to the next.

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Judicator Jane 5 by Brian Rouleau
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well now, welcome to hell. It's a fine place to practice unity.

I enjoyed this more than I thought I would after the turnaround in the last book. Fortunately. But the OP leveling is real. Very, very real.



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Judicator Jane 4 by Brian Rouleau
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Good novel all the way up to the end. But that kind of showdown? I know it is fully set up from the start, but damn... it's annoying. I did enjoy everything else.

Funny bits when people don't know who she is. Deception bits that win wars. All that is pretty great.

But when you get this far and the "baddie" is being manipulated that hard instead of just being pleasantly surprised (my personal hope), it just feels like a setup for a tragedy.

These books have never really been that. So, yeah. I'm annoyed. Not enough to quit. I have to know what happens, of course... but still.

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Judicator Jane 3 by Brian Rouleau
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pretty interesting worldbuilding regarding the System and the intelligent races within it. Getting to know the elves makes them a bit less stereotypical than you might expect, but beyond that, I love how Jane's Consequences are coming back to bite her. Far-reaching, indeed. But best yet, I love how she deals with her own mistakes head-on.

This class could REALLY be a true nightmare for all peoples, no matter if it's all about justice. Just goes to show, its all in how you use it.



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Judicator Jane 2 by Brian Rouleau
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Great start in the first book. The second isn't nearly as funny because it's necessary for characters to grow and not just be wildly OP for hardly any reason. Especially since this IS a LitRPG where leveling is everything.

But I DID enjoy the weird juxtapositions and the heavy reliance on Wisdom versus Justice. It's refreshing.

Subverted expectations are also pretty great, too. :)

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Judicator Jane by Brian Rouleau
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A fun, different kind of LitRPG. Instead of fighting, or any kind of fighting for our Jane, it's a hilarious take on min-maxing. I immediately fell in love with the setup. And with everything that happened soon after, it's absolutely absurd and I loved it.

In fact, I couldn't stop chortling whenever high-level characters built up their fears of the demon army. The terror of the demon lord.

I could almost see a little sweat drop down Jane's brow each time.

Delightful. Utterly delightful. And how she goes around leveling up in her particular way? I swear it's like we're watching Domino from Deadpool 2.

If that tells ya'll anything at all.

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Butterfly Effects by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Interestingly, we get TWO main PoVs in this. Antimony and a greater amount of Sarah. As far as I can tell, this is a break from previous installments. We generally keep things simple. But here, I suppose it's kinda necessary to have a new queen be both the heroine who saves herself AND be the one needing to be saved.

That being said, it was pretty fun. We go off-world again and see ALL the wasps in their natural territory and make new friends along the way. And, very nicely, we get a wrap-up for a poor character who's had it pretty bad up till now.

Well worth the wait.

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Installment Immortality by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

More Mary. Which is never a bad thing. But ghost babysitter turned major hero that got herself scattered to the winds and needing a new deal with the crossroads COULD have turned into something rather big.

As it is, it's a lot about wrapping up the post-lives of some other ghosts, more Covenant crap, and grief.

The grief, I get. A lot has happened in 14 books. But I also want to see some serious growth with all the setbacks, too. There is some, mind you, but this particular book isn't my favorite. I'm looking forward to the future, however.

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Hell's Heart by Alexis Hall
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Funnily enough, I haven't read any of Alexis Hall's other novels, but I've heard of them. Wild romance. Well, here's some great news, romance fans: this will wrap a hand around your neck and pump away at you, too, for this novel can honestly claim to be a wild, obsessional, utterly MAD and tragic romance.

And it also has lots of sex.

Let's get real here. I've read a couple of great SFs that do real homage to Moby Dick, even brilliantly, like Delany's Nova. But this one? It's probably one of the closest translations to the original, only done up as a crazily-sexed sapphic self-destructive ride in Jupiter's lively kaju-infested ocean, complete with massive amounts of fanaticism, profit-insanity, madness-ichor...

and pure, pure obsession.

I'm a fan of the original novel, so I'm telling you that I'm mightily impressed at the SFnal scope (cyborgs, poverty dystopia, and wild leviathans) overlaying such a beloved classic.

It's rich. And wild, I say. Wild.

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The Faith of Beasts by James S.A. Corey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Dafyd has really grown into a complex and compelling character for me. I feel the true horror of the human captivity, the scale of the loss and what they have to do to survive, but for me, Dafyd hits the hardest of all.

It's the overwhelming nature of the Carryx empire. They just don't care. They're the ultimate totalitarian boss who can't be bothered to know your name or whether you need time to grieve or eat or sleep. It just needs you to be useful, to breed, and bring forth something useful to their war effort or you'll be written off. Fired. You know... as a race. Set on fire as a race.

It really puts everything in a truly bleak light. But survival does what survival does, right? And when survivors actually make a little headway under the yoke of an alien empire, who's to blame them if they start feeling like they ought to have a little reward or think they have a little power just because they're finally BEING useful?

But that's just it. We're just animals. Beasts. Only as good as we are useful. And perhaps... we're only useful in a certain way.


This novel really made me feel. It took me through so many stages of grief, but for humanity itself. Denial, bargaining, rage, depression... and even acceptance.

This is some serious SF, but I won't deny that it's some hard stuff. Hard stuff to process. It's not light in the slightest. But it IS very good.

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Sweet Harmony by Claire North
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As I read this, I saw nothing but our very real dystopia of debt and health care. And of course, that's entirely the point, dressed up in nanotech health services and a beauty-industry on much more than standard steroids.

It is, of course, a Claire North novella, and so it is also, of course, hard-hitting.

All those bad choices are far less of a real issue than the system that sucks you and and sucks you dry on the promise. And oh, the promises are everywhere and hard-baked into society's expectations. No worse than needing to get more and more expensive clothes to be on the good with your peers, and infinitely worse because the debt directly affects not just your health, but your senses.

It's rather rage-inducing. But so very plausible.

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The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Huxley.

Of course, it would take a phenomenal writer of his caliber to spearhead the romance of the '60s, the American Enlightenment, the spiritual revolution that eventually went nowhere because that's humanity.

And yet, it was a good dream. A dream of artists and changing one's perceptions with or without hallucinogens, of touching the true nature of reality, of getting down to the true platonic idea. Of seeing the terrain. And not just the map.

No matter who you are, it's still a worthwhile read, if not just for its place in history, then for its place in developing human consciousness.

It's something we've just about lost.

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The Merge by Grace Walker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I honestly wanted to love this. I love some good body horror as SF, after all. It's a thing.

And making it be a thing between mother and daughter, combining the two together, is a true Freudian nightmare--dressed as a good societal thing. Or husband and wife. Or father and daughter. It's just... so... ICK.

That's what makes for a good dystopian SF horror, right? The ick factor.

But sadly, early on in the read, it became ALL TOO CLEAR that the true horror was gaslighting. It's bad enough, of course, or in some ways, the true mark of our society. Gaslighting, propaganda, lies, lies, lies dressing up the true evil.

And the horror is that we're all fooled into walking off that cliff. Over and over and over.

So why am I just giving this a three star?

Because I was thrown out of the story by how stupid everyone is. Put simply, I tore out my hairs.

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The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances by Glenn Dixon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

To be honest, I asked to read this only on the strength of the title and the hope it would be lightly diversionary. The hope that it would be something more--rather than exactly like--a Readers Digest novella on the level with dogs-eye PoV of small household grief-and-family-tragedy-processing.

But here we are.

The smart appliances ho-hum and feel for their people. There's even a Lassie moment or two and we get all nostalgic for To Kill A Mockingbird and if you're lucky, there's even some literary mirroring if you're paying attention.

I'm not saying this is a bad book. It IS light and it IS diversionary, but it'd be best read if it had come out 60 years ago.

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Secondhand Luck by Kim Harrison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pretty decent continuation of a new UF by one of my favorite UF authors.

Specifically, I really enjoy the evolution of the magic rules here. I thought I had a pretty good grip on it from the first novel, but I really appreciate how everything keeps breaking and getting fixed again in the middle of mystery, a dangerous magical stalker, growing friendships, and just trying to do the right thing.

In other words, doing all the things that good UFs do. Plus, it gets into the magical weeds in a fun, fun way.

You can say it's Plucky. ;)

I'm definitely going keep following this.

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The Demon King by Peter V. Brett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Oh lordy, I really fell apart while reading this one. Excellent on every level. Gold-standard epic fantasy.

Maybe it's a bit of the weight of all the history of the the Warded series and a great deal about the fact I've grown to love these kids so much, but being cut off from everything they knew and having to to navigate their way around a foreign country with very alien ideas and ideals, let alone technology, would have been enough for any standard fantasy novel.

It would have been enough to satisfy me.

But instead, Brett went all out and gave us not only a fantastic build-up, making me love all large cast of characters and their complicated setup, but really throws it all into the real shit AND we have to deal with some truly brilliant fights. And the scale? Never fear.

It's DELICIOUS.

This is and continues to be one of my all-time favorite fantasy series. Creative, clever, rich, rich, rich.

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The Hidden Queen by Peter V. Brett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Fantastic fantasy.

Sure, it absolutely builds on the great Warded Man series, but directly follows the events of The Desert Spear, which continues with their kids. It's not only a worthy sequel-series, it's absolutely rich in great characters and even more rich in magic, worldbuilding, and action.

The action isn't immediately obvious until much later, but frankly, I don't care. These kids have to deal with so damn much. Rich arabic-type culture and also a fresh medieval culture trying to work together, duels, very interesting intersex normalization subtext, power dynamics, and so much more. Like musical harmony. Or super-sensitivity masquerading as introversion. Or just plain oldschool perception-dynamics.

There's a glut of things to love in this novel, and the cliffhanger at the end is fantastic.



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The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I think this one is almost as good as Anubis Gates. It's weird, but I really got into this.

Sure, I love myself some Byron and Shelly and Mary Shelly antics as much as anyone. It's GOTHIC LITERATURE, people. Hell, this one is a hell of a lot more gothic than the original gothic stories. Death, being haunted, like seriously haunted by lovers over years and years, of serious family drama, of darkness and noble friendship and seriously erudite learning and poetry all mixed into one of the best historical fantasy period pieces I've read in years.

And how it's driven by a very clever take on lamias/vampires, with equally clever readings of the bible and more ancient histories, and the depth of Power's worldbuilding in general to make the tale shine?

Totally gorgeous. Heads and shoulders above anything else out there. Most are amateurish compared to what Powers can dream up.

His works are truly something else, and at this time in his career, at the end of the 80's, he's in prime shape. Seriously recommended.

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Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I think this book might be my second favorite of the series.

It's not because I particularly liked the five egotistical scientists who created a whole ecosystem out of whole cloth on their particular alien world. I didn't. In fact, it's super easy to loathe them. And for very good reason, it turns out.

It's not because I think those in the Society, the one made up of many kinds of minds and aliens working together toward an accommodating, positive end, is such a fantastic politicized end I just have to spout hundreds of great things about it to anyone who could be bothered to sit still for it. Or complain about how it's still a FORCED creation by Kern's virus, or how unrealistic even that would be--if it wasn't for the fact that THIS NOVEL specifically addresses that and a handful of other rabbit holes in such a clever and clear way that I was forced to re-evaluate all of my earlier dismissals.

I love this novel precisely because it touches on so many great SFnal concepts, be it forced Darwinian concepts or the Game of Life writ VERY large on a VERY large canvas, to the impermanence and faulty nature of memory, to self-hood in wildly different matrices, or how massively different cultures (Stomatopods!) can STILL find a way to work WITHIN vastly different conceptual fields than their own.

Or I could just point to the time-hopping structure of the plot, all weaving together a picture both wonderful and strange and gorgeous and terrible, point at the wild cast of characters on every side, and just sit aghast at what became of them all at the end.

And make no mistake: Tchaikovsky weaves it all together in a very cool way and the ending is wild. Like, top-SF wild.

I 100% recommend. Perfect for all of ya'll who like to make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven.


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Realmbreaker by Actus
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Definitely feels like the peak of the series. Anything else after this needs to be from other's PoVs.

Our heroes just got way too-powerful.

But as for it being, fundamentally, a buddy-buddy novel, it's pretty damn good. No complaints. Friends who kill massive armies together, stay together.

The romance aspect of these books are rather... muted. But whatever. It's nice reading about an uncomplicated romance that's akin to another bromance--without complications. That's the nice part.

Of course, when you're almost dying every day, it's the little things that count.

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Dawnfall by Actus
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Truly fun if what you want is a series of training montages, OP power development, and friendships.

There really isn't anything in terms of grand arc plot stuff, but after having walked the void with a significant upgrade, it's a quite well-deserved kind of vacation. Full of pain and suffering that somehow equates to bright joy.

You know, because you're doing what you love. :)

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