yumdirt's Reviews (310)

Probably closer to a 3/5 than a 4/5 but I am a sucker for a shot of undiluted fantasy. This book is a rich, chocolate cake. It's dryly humorous, incredibly dense, gorgeously-worded, massive in scale, and sometimes annoyingly busy with that long cast list. Nonetheless, this absolutely ripped. A city-sized bar-fight accumulating mass and momentum to involve every power player that the fantasy genre offers; it's a tableau of many creative twists on typical "D&D" clichés, so many you may start to take notes. But it was almost like I could hear operatic, cinematic metal chugging while wizards disintegrate each other, thieves backstab, gods mingle in affairs and possess mortals, demons wreak havoc, dragons scorch earth, sentient swords trap souls, and oh- then we also have a squad of Regular Guys, chock-full of the indomitable human spirit. I only recommend this if you're well-read in fantasy, because this will not hold your hand. Fourloko to a medieval peasant and so on and so on

This has torn me to pieces. This might be a half-smile but my face is damp and my eyes are red.

I did not read 500 pages just now. It's half pictures (which is the appeal) and then from there it's two-thirds French and German translations of the English essays for each artist. Another coffee-table titan from Taschen. I love you Julie Bell and Boris Vallejo ❤️

"Language was just difference. A thousand different ways of seeing, of moving through the world. No; a thousand worlds within one. And translation – a necessary endeavour, however futile, to move between them."

What an ending! I eagerly devoured this and love it in the end, but all throughout I was left wanting further depth to Robin's friends, to silver-working, and to Robin's overall arc. He glimpsed one opium den, and immediately knew the full scope of global imperial horrors. It felt a tad over-puppeteered (I find it hard to word this feeling) but I do see how it pushed along the narrative, kept it tight and fast-paced. Getting our central cohort stuck in Canton would've probably bloated this book to a less-approachable length. I'm willing to overlook most of my gripes because this was so unique, so bold, so readable. Anthropology was one of my first college majors and linguistics has been a lifelong love. I hope more people get ahold of this. Learn a new language! Take your whole life, take a year. Start small, but do start!

"It was dead quiet in his mind. He rarely thought of anything that was not at hand. Years vanished under a weightless present. Through countless frosts and thaws, he walked in circles wider than nations. And then he stopped."

Diaz has evoked a Western fable ridiculously tangible, begrimed, and painful. Håkan, our haunted Swedish pilgrim, half-exists as a lost boy desperately seeking purpose and experience. The other half gets torn, chapped, and eroded into a beastly Paul Bunyan analogue. Here's a new American who unknowingly had the audacity to walk East – against the current of the American Gold Rush (and who couldn't, wouldn't speak for himself).

The unforgiving American West as an extension of our growing, decaying, breathing body. A disjointed, backtracking Odyssey that's confounding in its structure but just so assured, well-researched, and memorable in its individual moments. The writing is beautiful and, I think, successfully conveys how time and isolation can truly drive you mad. How old are we? The earth will swallow us. It's almost comforting. (Chapter 20 deserves an award on its own)

Paced well, structure is airtight, and it reads like butter on a pancake. The Classic High Fantasy tableau on display and all the shoelaces are TIED (but not with a double-knot). The underlying championing for both truth and storytelling within this adventure is quite endearing. The women in this story 100% dominate my focus and sustain an overwhelming majority of quality character moments. Coming from the dude-fest duo of honorable thieves from Riyria Chronicles and Riyria Revelations, this is a much-welcome addition. The limited third-person narration (as always) makes for fun moments of description; when flipping into a chapter where a different party first sees someone we've spent plenty of time with but never actually visualized, something about that is so fun.

This is the start of a "new" (2016) series from Sullivan, and although it's all released and waiting for me, I'm starting to see the cracks in my love. I may currently just be more-so in a mood to be challenged. As polished as this series undoubtedly is, I will come back at a later date.

These characters are similar to those three protagonists in Riyria, just kinda muddled up and swapped around with new names and origins. In defense of this, I find it appealing and heartwarming to think on how all the worthwhile values of heroes are cyclical (this takes place 3000 years before Riyria if I'm not mistaken). I'll always need those heroes and plights to fall back on.

It's close to an extra star rating but I just don't give a hoot brother. The casual analysis of behavior and speech and posturing among friends/strangers is nice - there's some well-worded meat there, but it just doesn't bloom into something too illuminating. The metafiction, as in our semi-biographical narrator, completely deflated this for me. I recognize it, I just don't find it interesting or endearing. As a reader, please don't chitchat me or explain the chapter I just read. Maybe I'm not in a good mood for small talk tonight.

Lupine proto-American backwoods folkloric, with a dash of mournful lite-horror

The way Alys' cloak of feathers and claws are described immediately made me think of a design for a piece of clothing in Elden Ring! The Raptor's Black Feathers, while comprised of a half-cape amount of black feathers over a typical black cloak, has the item description "A ritual implement for transforming into a Deathbird, it only by imitation." This connection may be miniscule but knowing GRRM helped write the backstory for the world, maybe Miyazaki and the team at FromSoft did a deep dive of his work beforehand?

This is a lovely, morbid folktale regardless.