syllareads's Reviews (951)

So perhaps I made the mistake of starting both the Wheel of Time and Malazan: Book of the Fallen at the same time and what about it?

There are fantasy books like WoT, where the reader might get overwhelmed by the number of names but where the unknowing protagonist saves the day by acting as a bridge between the knowing cast and the reader.
Then there is Malazan, a book that bothers with explanations exactly zero but drops bombs on you like "oh, hey, here's a god" and "also, there's Elder Races that are literally thousands of years old, bye!"

You absolutely cannot expect any help from this book whatsoever and yet I love it.

Gardens of the Moon is the first book in the Malazan - Book of the Fallen Series by Steven Erikson, and, as I already mentioned, it's a lot. The world feels unbelievably old, partly because of said Elder Races, partly because there's just so much history connecting the entire Malazan Empire, there's so much history with the Ascendants (a title the Gods in this series carry...ascended from what though??) and generally, there's just. so much.

What struck me as fascinating was that mostly, things seemed to happen to the protagonists instead of them making things happen - often, meetings happened by chance (Hah!) or opportunities presented themselves to the cast from out of nowhere. Missions and dreams seemed to carry the plot as much as anything live humans did (I bother with this distinction for...reasons). There's something incredibly old and loaded behind the arguably young cast (in comparison; most of the cast is anywhere around 30 and....40? 50? I have no idea honestly) and I'm intrigued to find out more about it!

All in all: Malazan is imo far more complicated at first glance than WoT; my two comparisons for the two series, at least for the way they work, would be Eragon for WoT (yes, obviously WoT is far older and also far larger than Eragon but the unknowing protagonist is a trope Paolini uses well in his series!) and The Black Company for Malazan; both of the latter are very much in medias res books about a battle-weary people stuck in an endless war between their lords and whatever else there is in the world. I have to say, I'm connecting easier to Malazan than I did to the Black Company because there's at least some explanations here and there but so far, I think I can say with confidence: I don't get it and I will not get it until I continue on.

And I can't wait.

Thank god I'm done with this book.

To be clear: this is not meant to say I hated it, I just started this as an audiobook and I'm so slow when it comes to those it's actually ridiculous lmao. Thank god I bought the paperback and read the last 100 pages or so Like That or else I might have died. 

Moving on!
Even though I've read a ton of fantasy ever since I was a wee child, I have never before touched The Wheel of Time, which is arguably one of the biggest classic high fantasy sagas there is. Well, here I am, remedying that! After...years and years but shhh.

The Eye of the World is book 1 in the 14-book series and thus, the journey begins. I wasn't too sure what to think of it at first (which, again, was mostly due to the audiobook - the narration itself was beautiful, but my auditory processing sucks ass) but the characters managed to grow on me fairly quickly, especially after they were split up during their journey - a moment I highly appreciated, as it gave each of them their time to shine and established a clear and distinct narrative voice for each of the three boys, Mat, Perrin, and Rand.

I've heard a lot of people say this series is pretty dense but so far, I haven't been running into any problems there. Sure, the names can be a lot but the perspectives help with that as well; we're getting to know the world mostly through Rand's eyes, a farm boy from Emmond's Field, making this first book reminiscent of younger books with a similar style (See: Eragon). It's a well-known technique at this point that works wonderful: exposition feels less like dreadful slogs, since the characters are not telling us information but the poor sod who had to leave his peaceful life for an adventure he definitely didn't ask for.

All in all, Eye of the World was a nice start for me and I'll be looking forward to the rest of this series!

The saga continues!

The Name of all Things continues in the same way as Ruin of Kings - by two characters alternating in telling a story that has already happened while the actions surrounding it takes a backseat until the very last moment. I was prepared for it this time so either I'm taking it better because of that or because there's less K and T names in this part of the story now... either way, I was having a blast again! A few minor things I wasn't happy with:

1) Since most of the book was dedicated to what happened during the first book but with different characters (Janel and Qwon instead of Kihrin and Teraeth) and not most of these main characters meeting, their bonding moments fell a bit short to me. I want more, damn you, book - I understand the way you work but I would like some more of the surrounding action please!

2) I noticed this in book one as well, though it didn't feel quite as...strange as in this book, so maybe it again has to do with the way the narrative situation works in these books but the last few chapters (so basically, where all the present action took place) felt incredibly weird compared to the rest of the book. Maybe because the narrative frame was missing and it wasn't a report anymore but actual action unobserved by most except the reader and our omnipotent overt narrator, Senera? I have no idea. I just know I wasn't entirely feeling it.

3) Again, same as the last book, though not in that capacity: A lot of tell since it's mostly how the narrative works. Janel's and Qwon's perspectives during the storytelling did work quite well for me, though! 

Apart from that...well, what can I say? Our second snarky, this time also incredibly bitchy narrator (I love her), more characters that are exactly as gay and dumb as the ones from the first book (I love my children but also please someone save them) and a rich worldbuilding that is even more expanded on since we're getting entirely new perspectives from a different culture this time!
I was really intrigued by the whole "Mare vs Stallion" thing the Jorat had going on. It took me a while to get used to it because I automatically assumed it was simply... a fancy way of calling a character gay in a fantasy setting. However, both a friend and the book itself made it clear to me that that is simply not the case; this is most definitely not a 1:1 translation of any Western gender concept. It is, in fact, far more fascinating than that! Mare/Stallion refers to someone else's political gender, for a lack of a better word, so essentially, how one handles oneself in political and day-by-day situations. Mares are easier to submit, easier allow others to lead outward while they focus on the situation back at home whereas Stallions strut around and take situations into their own hands, overpowering other forces in the process if necessary. Referring to Janel, a Stallion but also a woman, as "she/her" is entirely accurate and has nothing to do with invalidating her gender because she doesn't mind and is quite comfortable with the situation - it's others who want her to submit and fall back into the role as "Mare" because it suits them. Some Jorat apparently do want to change their sex to align it with their gender in this way that a woman is usually also a Mare (but not always) but not everyone feels the need to bother with that, and it's fine.
It was thoroughly fascinating to read, to be honest!

All in all: this was highly enjoyable, the entire book is basically gay snark and I can only recommend it to people who are as fascinated with how authors craft new fantasy settings complete with new ways of viewing gender norms as I am.

I finished this minutes ago and I am feeling...exceptionally fragile.

The Fifth Season is the first book in N. K. Jemisin's trilogy "The Broken Earth" (a series that earned her 3 Hugo Awards consecutively, and I am only beginning to understand why that is) and it begins as slowly as one would expect from a first book setting up even more to come. By the end of those roughly 450 pages, that slow pace had turned into an avalanche of happenings and (in my case) uncontrollable tears.

Jemisin's worldbuilding is immaculate. The deep lore (called "stone lore") surrounding the series' characters, the way she effortlessly weaves in talks about food supplies, the way of life for the people, while not making it sound like a particularly boring lecture, the Fulcrum and its practices....I found myself engrossed in this world, unable to put the book down at any point. Painful parallels to our real world, woven into the fabric of a story of loss, regret and finally, rebellion, broke me along with the pain these characters carry all on their own - I couldn't stop myself from falling in love with them if I tried. And I didn't particularly want to, truth be told.

I don't even want to ramble on about it too much - it's a beautiful piece of art. Read it. Listen to its tales, cry your heart out as we follow Essun, Syanide, Damara...as we follow all the ones whose voices have been silenced by the Guardians. As we follow the ones for whom feelings are a luxury they cannot afford; as we observe the lives of those who are not allowed to have one to begin with.

This was one of the easiest 5 stars I ever gave a book this entire year.

Ah, yes, my first endeavor into a new High Fantasy series, complete with a set of "WHAT" and "Who are you again" and the ever-present "oh my god what is happening".

The Ruin of Kings is the first book in the 5-book series "A Chorus of Dragons" by Jenn Lyons. It's fabulously red, nice and thicc and there are more names with T and K in it than I care to count (they have their reasons to be this many, but there's still so many, help my soul). The story-telling format itself is also rather unique - the entire story is two stories within a story, narrated by two individuals more or less after almost the entire events of book one have taken place. This makes for an intriguing premise since we already know what the end result will be - we just have no idea how things went tits-up in the first place. Also, has anyone ever told you they know your own life story better than you, and then played fetch with you and a recording stone? Because it's also quite amusing for that to happen on the sidelines.

The book itself (and its 3, yes you heard me correctly, 3 narrators) tackles a lot of heavy topics in the span of almost 700 pages, including but not limited to a character telling another one off on-page about how murder is okay but incest is where they draw the line because what will the children think (this is a direct quote and that is all I'm saying). There's much to explore in this world, anyway; slavery? Sure! Prostitution? Absolutely! Shackling someone's soul so you can have absolute control over them, why not. And most of this is achieved in the first few chapters no less!

As much as I enjoyed and snorted at the shenanigans, I have to say that this book lacked a bit of emotional depth for me. This might partially be because the character name situation wasn't just your usual High Fantasy hijinks but the author actively made it worse for beginners by including a lot of resurrection and soul shenanigans that I, for the life of me, couldn't accurately follow. This means that every conclusion characters arrived at had to be spelled out for me to understand why which in turn made it really difficult to connect emotionally with a lot of scenes. The snarky sass most of these adorable assholes possess didn't help; it might have been a coping mechanism, it might have been something else, but most of the time, emotional scenes didn't do it for me because the characters themselves weren't "convincingly" emotional to me. 
(It was pretty damn funny most of the time tho).

TL;DR: Ruin of Kings is a great first book to a series that highly intrigues me (yes, partly because it is gay, and partly because all of my favorite characters so far are little shits) and I do recommend it; I can understand, however, if the unfamiliar narration style or the general lack of a lot of heartache turns some people off. I'll definitely be continuining on with the series, and I'm looking forward to more little shit moments, particularly by Teraeth - he's my son okay!!

The second book in the Millennium series, this time in an English translation instead of a German one! Right off the bat, I noticed some clunky phrasings and weird mistakes that I'm jotting down to translation errors instead of anything else - I have no way of actually looking this up though since I, unfortunately, don't speak Swedish (the original language). Despite that, it was a pretty enjoyable read with some sentences that made me scream in delight at the author's inclusion of them.

The Girl who Played with fire takes place about a year after the conclusion of the first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Again, we follow Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander into a new case both of them are thrust into - one because he works with a reporter whose case might or might not have gotten him killed; and one because her past is running to catch up to her.

Some things about phrasings in this book made me squint a bit ("dyke" as a word exclusively used for "lesbians" for example, some unfortunate phrasings about mentally ill people) but overall, this was yet another hit for me. Larsson has a way with social problems that makes it clear what his opinions were of that before his untimely death in 2004. He's sure to frame police officers not as the angels or simply hardworking people other criminalistic novels like to do, but as people; people who can be as flawed as some of the people they're chasing, if not more. I have to say I have to laugh at people criticizing exactly this move; to me, book one pretty much sold Larsson's healthy hesitation when it comes to "the men of the law". Both of his protagonists are either neutral towards the police force (Blomkvist, tho he does express some disdain towards the police and their attitude towards "amateurs" looking into cases), or outright refuse to seek help with them (Lisbeth, whose stance towards the system is made crystal clear in this book). The fact that people still expected this book to then show police officers only from their best side is laughable to me.

I am not sure what to think of the ending itself - it felt a bit abrupt and I'm honestly stumped as to

how Lisbeth survived that??

I am however very much looking forward to book 3, which I bought a used copy of just yesterday for fairly cheap. Larsson's characters have endeared themselves to me even more now that I read book 2, and I can't wait to meet them again!

I have to say, though: I'm not the biggest fan of his action scenes (which might also be why I didn't like the ending that much). Larsson excels with his quieter scenes and his social critiques throughout his novels; action isn't his forte imo. Nonetheless, 4 stars seems adequate enough for the entire book (and so far series)!

Ooh this one is a difficult one to review and judge... I did my best here but it did not make the job easy!

Rule of Wolves is the latest and so far last installment in the Grishaverse by Leigh Bardugo and it was...everywhere at once. And not always in an entirely good way.
The stakes have slowly been raised throughout every single book we've read so far and while this last book is thus a bit of a chonker, it was imo still not enough to adequately portray the plot's complexity - either that, or Bardugo's books just do not work for me if the stakes aren't really that personal anymore.

Let me explain.
Six of Crows was, essentially, a book with high personal stakes and not much else. The world isn't going to end if the Crows don't manage to break into the Ice Court (possibly), but they will get persecuted for it. It's a fun adventure that nonetheless sets your heart racing, you get gripped by every character's backstory and their motivation to trudge on despite everyone dead-set to stop them in their tracks. 
And it worked. Bardugo works exceptionally well with multiple POVs and their unique voices and troubles, and the fast-paced and action-packed adventure of 6 people crazy enough to steal the moon if only it weren't so far away was a raving success.

Rule of Wolves, on the other hand, is essentially a High Fantasy Politdrama... and apparently, those do not work for me when it comes to Leigh Bardugo.
Instead of personal stakes we have entire countries at stake here. Instead of just juggling different personal perspectives, we essentially have POVs representing their countries or at least a fraction of it. We get introduced to new characters we didn't really get time to care about (I surely didn't. Mayu who?). The ensuing battles are a chore to read about, and when Bardugo dropped the Crows into it somehow, it managed to feel WORSE - like she was trying to remind everyone what we loved so much about SoC. Which, sadly, worked about as well as you'd expect (not at all for me).

Unlike some reviewers I've seen on here I can say that I AM a fan of the end - it works really well for me! You want to know why? Because it again focuses far more on characters and their individual choices when put before some hard choices in their life. Which is precisely what drew me in again.

I am not sure if I disliked parts of the book so much because it's so different from SoC or because it's truly not working for me like this OR because I'm used to Politdrama in High Fantasy taking up far more space (I'm sorry but less than 600 pages is not going to do it for me when a lot of these conflicts have never been properly set up and introduced to the audience; read: me). The personal connections I had to the characters saved a LOT, especially in the end and in those quiet moments Bardugo excells at - but overall, sadly, this was not what I wanted it to be T.T

This was a reread for me so I sped through it at the speed of light to get to the second book in this trilogy, Rule of Wolves. I think I gave King of Scars a 5 star during my first read but my second read makes me want to deduct one star - it was still a very good read imo but it left me to desire something else from it I didn't get in the end.

This book follows well-known characters from the Grisha trilogy and one of our main characters from the Six of Crows duology, Nina Zenik. Thrust into the role of a king for a land on the brink of one catastrophe after the other, Nikolai Lantsov wrestles with far more than just his everyday share of problems ranging from petty noblemen to Ravka's empty coffers. The war has left his scars on him, both physically and mentally - and there's this tiny thing about him turning into a monster in the night, scaring goose herders shitless and almost killing his only loyal friends. Zoya Nazyalensky, Grisha and general to a crumbling throne, is one of those loyal friends, her memories of the past as sharp and jagged as a knife's edge in her mind - for she fears that forgetting will make her fall for another man's lies again, and again. Nina Zenik has travelled far to lay her love, Matthias Helvar, to rest in his own country - but on the way there she discovers something she cannot let go, as much as she would perhaps like to.

Bardugo's perspectives are always a joy to read, her characters' voices as distinct as humanly possible, her descriptions sharp and accurate. Nikolai and Nina were two of my favourite characters from previous installments in the Grishaverse to begin with and Zoya grew on me (even on my first read) of this book - my sympathies did not diminish during my reread. It was fascinating to read about how differently these three main characters handle grief and memories of the past. 

The one thing that I found a bit lacking (which I might have missed the first time around due to sheer excitement lol) was the ending itself - some parts of it felt a bit too hastily done without too much love and I found myself not being as emotionally invested in it as I would have liked. Still, I enjoyed the book almost as much as I did the first time around, and I cannot wait to start Rule of Wolves to finally get to the (as of now) end of the Grishaverse!