3.5 rounded up

This did improve. Character arcs continue, Ferro is still an absolute unit and a boss. Much more happens with the whole escorting magi stuff than expected. Even Jez whatever becomes more interesting, switching places with the torturer guy, who has the boring end of the stick, this time.

You can hardly call it a plotty novel. But it does strike a much better balance between character growth, action, and plot beats. The characters make sense. There’s only one exceptionally trite thing that occurs near the end. Because it’s dark fantasy it’s even more dumb, and weirdly, doesn’t really impact anything much, so I don’t really get why it’s there. I’ve already started the third and it may as well have never occurred.

Other than that, though, hopefully the third navigates to an interesting ending, considering it delights in denying catharsis in the manner of all dark fantasy. Oh magical macguffin eh, think again! Like this character do you, well, I must plot their death! It’s all well and fine, but it’s no where near blowing me away. One thing that is unique, is the ability to insert good humour into the genre. I’ve not yet come across that, and somehow it works really well here.

This moves along nicely, which was a better experience, for me, than the previous one I tried, Life After Life (I think?). I usually don’t get along with child perspectives but this was quite well done. I can’t say I ever really got too attached to any one character but the writing was strong enough that I didn’t mind that, and I was curious enough to pick it up daily.

There is a rather large plot beat that feels like it’s almost just a footnote, which felt a bit strange. Though, in this section, toward the end, lots of life events are truncated like that, almost like an epilogue. It was just a bit jarring because of how much weight very small plot beats get across the book. The families… eccentricities, I guess, often are normalized by the narrator because, well, they have been, but it also feels like the story itself doesn’t have any real emotional heft to it in the end because the narrator has the detachment, most of the time, so I adopted it as well, as the reader. It is similar to going to museum, for me. I don’t really tend to connect with historical items and curious beyond passing curiosity, before they’re forgotten, probably forever. Probably that will be the same experience with this book. Not a bad thing, but not enough for an exceeded expectations fourth star, either.

A pretty standard middle book affair, for better and worse. Another semi cliffhanger ending and big battle, character work being slower than the first instalment, and less plot beats, overall.

I can see why people enjoy this series but for me it hasn’t gripped me all that much. I only have these first two books as well, so I don’t know when/if I will finish it.

It’s better than standard fantasy. The villain is more complicated to a degree and the world feels a bit different, more Norse. It’s just not enough to put it up to exceeding my expectations as a rating, since the dialogue and major plot beats feel really standard, and I don’t particularly care about battles and what not, and have no large attachment to any one character.

My first Gwynne, and probably the wrong starting point, I’m guessing, since it feels like it’s winking and nodding to something I was completely unaware of. Apparently there’s a series before this one.

However, it is still pretty fun. Warrior winged angel type people and multiple POVs serving as a setup to a larger conflict around the major factions.

It’s relatively strong at character interiority and especially at battle scenes, which feel kinetic and interesting, rather than super heroic and bombastic. The realism makes it convincing.

The dialogue and overall plot is more serviceable than anything, but this is commercial fiction, so I’m fine with that. Annoyingly, when I bought this and the sequel on an audible sale, I thought it was a duology and not a trilogy. This did make me want to keep reading though. Can’t ask for much more than that.

While the gamut of each instalment is somewhat uneven, the macro story that comes together was near perfect, for me. Unlikable, sometimes abhorrent characters, biting wit and humour, tap into a surprisingly relatable human experience. It takes something extra, typically, for me to care at all about rich people, and this has “it”. All good fiction tends to be about many things, so much so that when people ask what it’s about, I tend to shrug and say Everything, because narrowing it diminishes it.

There’s a pleasant symmetry that comes together from first to last books as well. The ending fits what it is. It becomes more funny, somehow, despite it becoming more heartbreaking, as the vividness of which a particular character is drawn, and is one of the closest things to as vile a person as I could imagine. Fitting that he be in the 1% then, but not exclusionary to it, since everything that makes him terrible could be found in another man of another background, but there’s an extra dash of disgust when there’s a helping of privilege and lack of accountability.

Patrick too, has a surprisingly engaging arc, despite the matter-of-fact writing style that cuts and splays every character. No one is safe from the writer, least of all Patrick. The psychology behind their behaviour is tragic because the reader gains so much insight about them they will never achieve. The reality of a person is in so much of what their perception is by others, which is why a more solipsistic work centred on Patrick and company wouldn’t work.

After reading the incredible Into the Blue by Chisholm I managed to get ahold of this as well, and I’m glad I did! Another interesting, immersive dialogue musing on both the struggle of authenticity in creating music (and art, generally), and the dynamic between the artist and (the incompatible) society where the art is being created.

When a musician is given the “gift” of a trumpet that seems to unlock or tap into his talent, suddenly his life careens into danger. He can no longer sleep, as he’s being followed. People near him end up dead when he plays. But he can’t stop playing, as his dream of hitting the big time continue, so long as he keeps playing.

The subplot, which seems like it taps into a collective unconscious and a… cult? I guess? That makes the story more fantastical and escalates the stakes, was less interesting to me than the core of the story. Though, I do like the underbelly of it, allowing the notions around what it means to play music and how it is in dialogue with other musicians—the catastrophic stakes felt like it somewhat took away from those core ideas, rather than emphasized it. But… in comics, stories that do not have fantastical or scifi elements tend to do really poorly, so I can see why it’s there.

This work being a stepping stone to the aforementioned Into the Blue (an all time favourite of mine), makes a lot of sense, well worth reading, and is neat to situate in the Chisholm overall canon. Glad I found a library copy for sale online.

This isn’t as polished as you might expect but it was better than I’d expected from a debut amateur effort, too. It’s also actually post-cyberpunk, in that it neatly demonstrates how mainstream culture co-opts everything dissimilar from it, diffusing it.

When the U.S. passes a bill that places all information in its borders as censored by the government, a would be revolutionist attempts to wake up some of the population with pirate broadcasts.

The art style looks like old zines and fits the subject matter well, but it also doesn’t do all that much work. Similarly, the plot gets the job done, but just barely. Some things are retread upon. It’s very simple. But it is certainly still relevant to now and situates in the cyberpunk canon very nicely, since what happens in it is, essentially, what happened to the movement itself. Thankfully, since people contribute to the genre it never by any stretch died, though. Only the movement itself did. What goes on similarly parallels this story.

It is also really short. A full third of this is bonus materials, so heads up there.

3.5 rounded up because of the positives.

I’m pretty pleased with the overall quality of the collection. I only had to skip one story, from Connie Willis, that was a bit too YA for me. Otherwise I remember buying this for the Gaiman and Flynn ones especially, which are great, and I believe you can get elsewhere now anyway. But I’ve had this waiting on the TBR as one of the oldest added, so I wanted to get to the other stories as well.

The Bast one, from Rothfuss was alright, but reminded me why it’s not something I would like as I’ve grown up. And the Martin one, I just do not care for his writing or GoT, so that wasn’t a draw.

There are so many others and I didn’t annotate unfortunately, but thought the overall quality was fairly high, when it was something that interested me. It’s just hard to give the book 4 stars when most are fun but forgettable.

I’m not sure how far I made it into this, but put it down because the matriarchal society it envisioned was deeply unconvincing after the first few chapters. Very cookie-cutter, let’s just reverse some of the socialization of women but also keep our dated notions around how men are socialized in a patriarchy, justifying it as some kind of biological incentive. How sexualization is abruptly and sustainably cringe-worthy as well.

For all that, I liked the prose work and would have read on, if not for issues that undermined every aspect introduced so far.

This went by much more fast than I thought it would. Though the scope of the plot was myopic and straight-forward, the interiority of the anxiety ridden main character did a good job of keeping and ramping up tension. The parts where it was contrived felt alright to me as well, since it’s from her perspective, which is clearly altered due to her health. As someone now medicated for their own anxiety, if you expect people to think and act rationally, or interpret, to some degree, what others are doing, rationally, that’s not how it works. It’s one of the reasons why simply pointing out solutions or the problems themselves tends to be highly ineffective.

It was easy to feel for the MC and the world building was interesting, but not new. I probably would have liked this even more had I read it closer to release, since now the ideas behind the sustainability and in general, technologically, feel fairly old hat.

Very curious as to where the series goes from here. Originally picked it up because the sequel is an often labelled as cyberpunk, and I have an ongoing interest and project, where I read through a lot of that subgenre. (Even if quite a few books shelved as such end up not actually being so.)

3.5 rounded up