YouKneeK’s 2018 SF&F Overdose Part 3

Note: This is Part 4. I forgot to change my title. :)

Here’s one more 2018 thread for the last quarter. A longer introduction with excessive detail is in this year’s Part 1 thread, but here’s the short version:

• I read mostly science fiction and fantasy, with a heavier emphasis on fantasy.
  
• I tend to read slightly older books versus the newest releases.
  
• I hate spoilers. Any spoilers in my reviews should be safely hidden behind tags.
  
• I prefer to read a series after it’s complete, and I read all the books pretty close together.
  
• I’m 43, female, and live in the suburbs of Atlanta, GA in the U.S where I work as a programmer.
  
• My cat’s name is Ernest and he’s a freak.

I'm currently working my way through Robin Hobb's Realms of the Elderlings series. As of December 9, I've finished the first three subseries (Farseer, Liveship Traders, and Tawny Man) and have just started the Rain Wilds subseries. I'm taking very short breaks between each subseries to read one or two unrelated books. I had read the first three trilogies around 2011 and was re-reading them so everything would be fresh in my mind before I moved on to the new-to-me books. Now that I'm reading Rain Wilds, I'm in new territory.

2018 Reading Index

Clicking on the Date Read will take you to the post containing the review.

   Date Read/
 # Review Link	Title				Author(s)		
 1 2018-01-03	The Anubis Gates		Tim Powers
 2 2018-01-13	A Crown of Swords		Robert Jordan
 3 2018-01-15	Armada				Ernest Cline
 4 2018-01-22	The Path of Daggers		Robert Jordan
 5 2018-01-30	Winter's Heart			Robert Jordan
 6 2018-02-07	Crossroads of Twilight		Robert Jordan
 7 2018-02-10	The Adventures of Tom Sawyer	Mark Twain
 8 2018-02-14	New Spring			Robert Jordan
 9 2018-02-22	Knife of Dreams			Robert Jordan
10 2018-02-27	The Gathering Storm		Brandon Sanderson
11 2018-03-09	Towers of Midnight		Brandon Sanderson
12 2018-03-18	A Memory of Light		Brandon Sanderson
13 2018-03-19	Fahrenheit 451			Ray Bradbury
14 2018-03-24	Good Omens			Terry Pratchett and 
						Neil Gaiman
15 2018-03-27	The Fifth Season		N. K. Jemisin
16 2018-03-31	The Obelisk Gate		N. K. Jemisin
17 2018-04-05	The Stone Sky			N. K. Jemisin
18 2018-04-08	Among Others			Jo Walton
19 2018-04-12	Lord of Light			Roger Zelazny
20 2018-04-15	The Last Policeman		Ben H. Winters
21 2018-04-18	Kindred				Octavia E. Butler
22 2018-04-22	The Summer Tree			Guy Gavriel Kay
23 2018-04-27	The Wandering Fire		Guy Gavriel Kay
24 2018-04-30	The Darkest Road		Guy Gavriel Kay
25 2018-05-08	The Iliad			Homer
26 2018-05-19	The Passage			Justin Cronin
27 2018-05-24	The Silent Tower		Barbara Hambly
28 2018-05-27	The Silicon Mage		Barbara Hambly
29 2018-06-01	Alif the Unseen			G. Willow Wilson
30 2018-06-03	Brave New World			Aldous Huxley
31 2018-06-09	City of Stairs			Robert Jackson Bennett
32 2018-06-13	City of Blades			Robert Jackson Bennett
33 2018-06-17	City of Miracles		Robert Jackson Bennett
34 2018-06-29	1Q84				Haruki Murakami
35 2018-07-01	Annihilation			Jeff VanderMeer
36 2018-07-04	Authority			Jeff VanderMeer
37 2018-07-07	Acceptance			Jeff VanderMeer
38 2018-07-11	Touch				Claire North
39 2018-07-15	Altered Carbon			Richard K. Morgan
40 2018-07-19	Blood Song			Anthony Ryan
41 2018-07-25	Tower Lord			Anthony Ryan
42 2018-07-31	Queen of Fire			Anthony Ryan
43 2018-08-18	The Count of Monte Cristo	Alexandre Dumas
44 2018-08-22	The Moon is a Harsh Mistress	Robert A. Heinlein
45 2018-08-25	The Quantum Thief		Hannu Rajaniemi
46 2018-08-28	Watchmen			Alan Moore
47 2018-09-01	A Natural History of Dragons	Marie Brennan
48 2018-09-02	The Tropic of Serpents		Marie Brennan
49 2018-09-05	Voyage of the Basilisk		Marie Brennan
50 2018-09-06	From the Editorial Page of the	Marie Brennan
		Falchester Weekly Review
51 2018-09-09	In the Labyrinth of Drakes	Marie Brennan
52 2018-09-11	Within the Sanctuary of Wings	Marie Brennan
53 2018-09-14	The Power			Naomi Alderman
54 2018-09-17	Assassin's Apprentice		Robin Hobb
55 2018-09-22	Royal Assassin			Robin Hobb
56 2018-09-29	Assassin's Quest		Robin Hobb
57 2018-09-30	The Willful Princess and the	Robin Hobb
		Piebald Prince
58 2018-09-30	Words Like Coins		Robin Hobb
59 2018-10-03	Songs of Love Lost and Found	Various Authors
60 2018-10-06	The Martian Chronicles		Ray Bradbury
61 2018-10-14	Ship of Magic			Robin Hobb
62 2018-10-21	Mad Ship			Robin Hobb
63 2018-10-30	Ship of Destiny			Robin Hobb
64 2018-11-03	The Inheritance & Other Stories	Robin Hobb and 
						Megan Lindholm
65 2018-11-04	Much Ado About Nothing		William Shakespeare
66 2018-11-07	Macbeth				William Shakespeare
67 2018-11-11	The Neverending Story		Michael Ende
68 2018-11-18	Fool's Errand			Robin Hobb
69 2018-11-22	Golden Fool			Robin Hobb
70 2018-12-01	Fool's Fate			Robin Hobb
71 2018-12-06	Broken Monsters			Lauren Beukes
72 2018-12-10	Dragon Keeper			Robin Hobb
73 2018-12-15	Dragon Haven			Robin Hobb
74 2018-12-20	City of Dragons			Robin Hobb
75 2018-12-23	Blood of Dragons		Robin Hobb
76 2018-12-25	Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang	Kate Wilhelm
77 2018-12-29	Fool's Assassin			Robin Hobb

And here are the reading stats my Access database is currently spitting out.

Review: Songs of Love Lost and Found by Various Authors



First, the disclaimer: This is essentially a romance anthology, and I’m not a fan of romance novels. I’m also not that crazy for the short story format, although sometimes they make a nice change of pace in small doses. So why on Earth did I read this? I read it for the Robin Hobb story which is set in the series I’m currently reading. Since there are only five stories in the anthology, I’m just going to write a brief review for each of them.

The Marrying Maid by Jo Beverley
This one was… bizarre. For reasons explained (eventually) in the story, Rob must marry and have sex with a pre-determined woman before his 25th birthday or he and his entire family will die. At the beginning of the story, he finally finds the correct woman, Martha, when his time is almost out. Even if I was a fan of romance stories, I don’t think I would have enjoyed this one. The desperation of Rob and the reluctance of Martha made the story uncomfortable, and not at all romantic. 2 stars.

Blue Boots by Robin Hobb
This was the story that I read the anthology for. It’s set in the Six Duchies from her Enderlings series, but familiarity with the series isn’t needed to understand the story. Somebody unfamiliar with it probably wouldn’t even realize it was set in a larger series. It’s a fairly straight-forward romance, with some of what I would consider to be typical romance tropes. The romance took place between characters who barely knew each other, so I never really bought into it. It’s written well enough, so I might have enjoyed this more if I was a romance reader. I think Hobb is great at writing characters, and that showed in this story. However, it really didn’t add any new depth to the Six Duchies setting for me. 3 stars.

You, and You Alone by Jacqueline Carey
This was the story that made me sit and stare at my Kindle for a minute after I finished it. I think I liked it, but it was tragic. The reader knows it’s going to be tragic from the very beginning, so that wasn’t surprising, but I actually got a little invested in the relationship in this one. I think what really helped this one feel more real was that the story takes place over several years and we see their ups and downs. There’s also a little more to this story than just romance; there’s a tiny hint of political intrigue as well. I haven’t yet read Carey’s Kushiel series, but it’s been on my to-read list for a while so I enjoyed getting a taste of her writing. I’m pretty sure this was set in that series, because I recognized some proper names from the book titles. I occasionally had the feeling that this story had a lot more meaning and relevance to a bigger picture than what I was grasping due to being unfamiliar with the setting. I’ll have to re-read this once I do finally read the series. Oh, and my read of The Iliad earlier this year paid off because there were a few references to it. :) 3.5 stars.

Under/Above the Water by Tanith Lee
This story didn’t do anything for me at all. I’m not entirely sure why, but I didn’t buy into the story and I didn’t feel any connection to the characters. I can’t even think of more to say than that, which in itself probably speaks best for the lack of impression this made on me. 2 stars.

Demon Lover by Cecelia Holland
In the first paragraph of this story, a demon is essentially trying to rape the main character. So my initial reaction was, “Oooookay…” But actually, once it got started, the story captured my interest. The romance didn’t have a lot of substance nor did it have much appeal but, by this point in the anthology, I wasn’t really expecting it to. I think short stories are probably not the best vehicle for believable romances. Not for what I as a reader would consider believable, anyway. I might have been interested in a longer version of this story with more focus on the other aspects of the setting aside from the romance. 3 stars.

So those star ratings average out to 2.7, which mathematically-speaking should be rounded down to 2.5. However, I’m going to round it up to 3 based on two things: 1) the strength of the Carey story which I did debate giving 4 stars and 2) an acknowledgement that I really wasn’t the right audience for this anthology, and I knew that going in but chose to read it anyway.

Next Book
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. This will be my brief Hobb break, then I’ll move on to her Liveship Traders trilogy.

>4 YouKneeK: What you need is a troubador to sing these stories to you outside your window at midnight. I'm SURE you'll love them then ;-)

>5 BookstoogeLT: LOL, I’m sure that would make all the difference in the world! I’m not sure if it would be a good difference or a bad difference, but it would definitely make a difference…

>5 BookstoogeLT: What, and get Ernest competing!

>4 YouKneeK: That first story highlights some of the issues I have with the romance genre: the pre-destined lovers trope where one person is reluctant. To me, it comes across as coercive at best, thinly-disguised rape fantasy at worst.

>7 Maddz: LOL :)

>8 Maddz: Agreed, that’s very much how this story came across.

Here’s the latest ambiguous news about the Wheel of Time TV series for those interested.

>10 YouKneeK: Is that really ambiguous? I guess because there's no dates or cast or anything? Moiraine's point of view is as good as any for the beginning of the story, but they'll have to switch at some point.

>11 Karlstar: What seemed ambiguous to me was just the implication that the first season would focus on Moiraine, when she’s really more of a question mark in the first book. Even though she plays a large role, the characters aren’t sure what her motives are and she seemed to me like she was often in the background rather than as a central figure. They didn't explain anything tangible about how they plan to handle it, which I'm sure is the point because they want us to be curious and watch and see. Which I am, and I probably will.

I wonder if they’re going to incorporate some New Spring flashbacks into the first season to better flesh out her character, her motivations, and the Aes Sedai in general. That might be an interesting way to do it, and I guess it would be harder to fit that material in later in the series so they might as well do it early. Or maybe they’re over-emphasizing her role as a marketing tactic to interest women viewers.

Huh. If the Game of Thrones TV series can successfully switch POVs through each episode, I don't see why Amazon can't manage it with WOT. I admit it's been years since I read it but isn't the series more of Rand's story?

>13 Narilka: That’s how the first book read to me – mostly focused on Rand, although we also get to know Mat and Perrin pretty well, and Egwene and Nynaeve to a lesser extent. It became more of an ensemble as the series went on, but I don’t remember Moiraine ever having many POV sections, with the exception of the prequel.

For a large portion of the first book, the main characters are all together anyway, so I don’t really grasp what would make the TV show seem to focus more on Moiraine than anybody else. Unless they’re changing the structure of the story a bit. I wouldn’t necessarily mind it if they do it differently from the books, I’m just curious what exactly they’re planning to do. :)

>12 YouKneeK: >13 Narilka: >14 YouKneeK: Very good points! I seem to remember that the term 'inscrutable' and other similar descriptions were applied to the Aes Sedai over and over and over. Moiraine in Book one was more like an undeniable force of nature than a character - they did what she said and resented her for it. There's a lot of great possible material with Moiraine vs. Nynaeve, Egwene and of course - Lan. If they are going to stress Moiraine, don't they also have to have Lan as a central character? If they reduce him to just a bodyguard, I may hate the show.

>15 Karlstar: I agree about Lan! If Moiraine has a greater focus, I hope Lan will also.

>15 Karlstar: Also a good point.

I wonder why they chose Moiraine as the focus. If it's just a woman's movement thing then Egwene or Nyneave make more sense based off what I remember of the early story. Guess we'll have to see how the show develops. It's early yet and all decisions may not be final. Or maybe like >12 YouKneeK:, they're going to start with the prequel book instead which makes Moiraine a better choice.

>17 Narilka: The youngsters are just that in book one - lots of potential, but still kids, which makes Moiraine the only 'leader' around. It can't be Tam or Matt's father. The other leaders develop fast though and they'll have to spend time on the Aiel and Lan and the White Tower, etc. I would think they will pretty soon develop a very GoT feel with the PoV jumping around. At least I hope so, it is the Wheel of Time, not Shannara Chronicles!

Review: The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury



I hadn’t known this before I started reading it, but The Martian Chronicles is sort of a cross between an anthology and a novel. It’s a series of related short stories, told in sequential order and more-or-less forming a larger novel-like picture when read together. Each story focuses on different characters for the most part, but there are a few characters who show up and/or get mentioned in more than one story. Most of it is set on Mars, a populated planet that, in the beginning, hasn’t yet had contact with Earth.

The book starts off with some of the weirdest first contact stories I’ve ever encountered. At this point, I was really enjoying the book. It was a little disturbing, a little creepy, and at one point very funny. (I guffawed when the second expedition ended up in a Martian insane asylum. Then it went back toward the side of disturbing when they were all shot.)

Once we got past the first contact stories, things didn’t feel as unique or interesting to me and I started to lose interest, although there were a few stories that did capture my interest again. That’s hardly Bradbury’s fault, since I’m sure his stories were all new and fresh when they were first published, but that was my reaction. As is common in the older science fiction classics, this one paints a very bleak view of humanity and almost all the characters seemed a bit bizarre to me.

There was one thing that didn’t make sense to me at all, which I’ll have to put in spoiler tags: I didn’t understand why all the humans who had colonized Mars rushed back to Earth when it was clear Earth was about to destroy itself in a war, even to the point of taking all their children with them. I would expect the opposite to happen – for people on Mars to be glad they’d gotten off Earth while they could and to stay right where they were. If it had been me, I might have tried to get nearly-empty rockets sent back to Earth to rescue loved ones and others, but I wouldn’t have gone back myself to die with them. Especially if most of my family was already on Mars with me, which seemed to be the case with many of the people by that point.

So this was an interesting book, and I really liked some parts of it, but other parts didn’t hold my attention as well. I’m going to give it 3.5 stars and round down to 3 on Goodreads.

Next Book
I’m headed back into Robin Hobb’s Realms of the Enderlings series with Ship of Magic, the first book in the Liveship Traders trilogy. I’ve been really looking forward to reading this one again. I remember enjoying the whole trilogy, but I remember much less about the story and characters than I did the first trilogy. I suspect I probably rushed through it a bit, because I do remember that I was anxious to get back to the characters in the Six Duchies.

>19 YouKneeK: With regard to your second spoiler, I would suggest that Bradbury was old enough to know what the British evacuees did in World War 2 -- remembering that the book was published in 1948. The kids evacuated from London just before the 1940 blitz were essentially all back home by the end of the year.

ETA: It wasn't just kids. Adults from all over the colonies, especially those in Africa, streamed back to UK in droves to stand beside their loved ones.

>20 hfglen: Ahhh, thank you, it does make more sense in that context.

>20 hfglen: But Bradbury was an American, with 200 years of striking out on ones own and pioneering behind him.
Did he live in Britain during that time? Otherwise I don't see how that can come into his thinking. Unless...

Bradbury regarded The Martian Chronicles as kin to the Greek Myth, in that context, tragedy makes sense.

He seems to me to be a writer who observed human nature well, so whether he was American or not, he had surely seen how people behaved during a time of great threat to their land and nation. Never having experienced the like, it's hard to imagine how I would behave. I know I would hate being separated from my children during a time of danger, but I would want to make them as safe as possible. I can't see my nation, or even my town where I grew up having that same pull on me. Is that because I am an American, or is it because the world has changed and attitudes have shifted?

Wasn't I reading recently about a novel set on Mars where that same issue came up? Meaning complete war breaks out on Earth and the colony on Mars has to figure out what to do about it? Ah yes, Retrograde by Peter Cawdron. I bought it for my husband on the recommendation that it was "Andy Weir-like."

I could see Bradbury being influenced by the news he heard from other countries, regardless of how he felt about the actions taken. He might have included it in the story because it struck a chord with him and he admired it, but he just as well might have included it because he thought it fit in well with the madness most of his characters exhibited throughout the whole book. I did get the impression that WWII influenced the stories, but I’ve never been strong on history and didn’t know/remember what the people in the British colonies did.

So I can buy into Bradbury writing it that way based on real-world events, but not from the perspective of story realism. Mars was distant enough that it was unlikely the war would come to them. I would also think the type of people who chose to leave Earth and go colonize another planet would be predominantly independent people who were more strongly invested in the new life they were actively building for themselves than the old life they had left. There was implication in at least one of the stories that many people went to Mars due to disillusionment with how things were going on Earth, so surely at least that segment of the population would have chosen to stay. Instead, it seemed like everybody left except people who were so isolated that they missed the news until it was too late.

>24 YouKneeK: His short story included in The Martian Chronicles There Shall Come Soft Rains is a story that hearkens back to the fear of nuclear weapons in the wake of Hiroshima and World War II. Burned in my brain forever.

>25 jillmwo: Yes, that was one of the memorable ones!

I think I've owned a copy of The Martian Chronicles for over 40 years, but I have no memory of reading it. Thank you for reminding me of its existence.

>27 clamairy: Ha, maybe you can read it on the 50th anniversary of your ownership of it? :) I did think it was worth the time I spent reading it, even if I wasn’t completely blown away by it.

>28 YouKneeK: I think that would only work if I could recall exactly when I acquired it. :o) My best guess would be in the mid to late 1970s. I ditched (donated) a bunch of my yellowed paperbacks before I moved, though it almost broke my heart to do it. That one survived the culling.

>29 clamairy: Yes, I suppose a definitive acquisition date would be required! On that train of thought, I often wish it had occurred to me earlier in life to keep track of owned/read books. I know I read much more when I was younger, sometimes a book a day in my teens and early 20’s, but now I often wonder what on earth all those books were that I read. :)

>30 YouKneeK: I know exactly what you mean! Wish I'd done the same.

>30 YouKneeK: & >31 Narilka: I didn't start keeping track until the mid 1980s when I was in my mid 20s. Though I'm sure some slipped through the cracks. I can only deduce what I read before that point if I owned a copy or subsequently bought a copy. The rest are lost to history...

>32 clamairy: You figured it out fairly early in life, at least! And long before sites like this made it a more common thing to do.

>29 clamairy: >30 YouKneeK: When I was younger I read many, many books from the library. Over time I think I've added a lot of the memorable ones to my library. There's a few series I think of from time to time that I don't have, but my wife keeps telling me I don't need to own ALL the books. There's also a few books that you folks review or mention and it reminds me that I read that book, but don't have it, which means I actually borrowed it from someone. Those I try to go get a used copy. It might be nice to have a list of what I have read but don't own though.

>34 Karlstar: LOL, what? Why ever don’t you need to own ALL the books? :) The majority of my reading when I was in my teens and 20’s was from the library also. The school library in my teens, and the public library in my 20’s. I was reading different types of books back then that I’m not so interested in now, but I do wish I could remember all the books I read.

Review: Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb



This is the beginning of the second trilogy in Robin Hobb’s larger Realms of the Enderlings series. As with the first trilogy, this was a re-read for me. Unlike the first trilogy, my memory of the story and the characters was much fuzzier. I remembered a few of the characters and events and the rest of it slowly came back to me as I read.

These books are set in a separate area of the world from the Six Duchies of the first trilogy. They’re close enough to be aware of each other, but far enough that there isn’t much interaction between them. The main premise affecting this story is the concept of liveships. These are ships made out of wizard wood in the Rain Wilds, and they are sentient. They don’t truly come alive until three generations of the family that owns them has died on them, but they have an underlying awareness and connection with their family even before then. After the third generation dies, they become fully aware and can talk to people through the figurehead attached to the ship.

Unlike the first trilogy, this one is told in the third person from the perspective of a variety of characters. I enjoyed all the POVs, although there were some characters and storylines that I liked more than others. The over-all story is very interesting, and the different POVs allow for a variety of different types of storylines. There are adventures and struggles aboard a variety of ships including trader ships, pirate ships, and hunting ships, as well as adventures at port towns. There are financial, political, and parenting difficulties back home in Bingtown. And the world’s brattiest teenager. There’s Paragon, an abandoned liveship who still seems to get a surprising number of visitors, both malevolent and friendly. There are the mysterious serpents who are seeking something, but even they don’t really understand what they’re seeking. There’s a lot going on, but it’s all related and slowly starts to form a larger picture.

I really enjoyed this series the first time I read it, but I suspect I’m appreciating it more this second time around. The first time, I had been very anxious to get back to the characters from the first trilogy who also feature in the third. There’s definitely something to be said for re-reading a familiar story at a more relaxed pace.

The following spoiler tags contain spoilers for both this trilogy and the following Tawny Man trilogy. Please don’t read them if you haven’t yet read the first 9 books, unless you don’t care about spoilers.
I especially enjoyed paying more attention to Amber during “her” all-too-brief appearances. There are so many clues that I didn’t pick up on the first time I read this, and her somewhat cryptic conversations with Paragon have a lot more meaning when you know who she is. Since the Fool is one of my all-time favorite characters ever, I especially enjoyed it when she showed up on the page. From my vague memories, I think she plays a somewhat larger role in the later books so I’m looking forward to that.

When I read this the first time I did eventually figure out who she was, but I think it was toward the end of the trilogy. I had read some comments online indicating there was a major character in this trilogy from the other two trilogies, otherwise I don’t know if I would have ever figured it out. As it was, it took me a long time because I didn’t realize it was somebody in disguise. I kept waiting for them to show up in a more obvious way. I can’t remember exactly how and when I figured it out, but maybe I’ll remember when I get to that point.

Next Book
Mad Ship by Robin Hobb, the second book in this trilogy.

>36 YouKneeK: Regarding your spoiler, and marked for the same reason, I accidentally read these books out of order, starting with the Liveships trilogy and then doing Farseer. Reading them this way I had the same but opposite experience, discovering that Amber appeared in the first series too :) And then having it confirmed again in Tawny Man. So much fun!

>37 Narilka: That's the order I read them in - I was hooked by the paperback covers for the Liveship trilogy.

>37 Narilka: Ha, sounds like it’s fun no matter what order you read them in! :)

>37 Narilka:, >38 quondame: I “bought” Assassin’s Apprentice when it was offered for free on the Kindle, so that helped me get started in publication order. And it’s a fine example of why it pays for publishers to offer the first book in a series for free since it led to many full-price purchases. :)

>39 YouKneeK: I hadn't heard anything at all about these books or even the author until a couple years ago when someone in one of my challenge groups assigned Assassin's Apprentice to me. Every time I read another one of the series I still feel like I owe Brenda a big favor for turning me on to these books :)

>40 Darth-Heather: Wait… you were in a challenge group where other people could tell you what to read? LOL, that sounds like it could be entertaining! Was that just one challenge prompt of many?

That specific challenge was called "Secret Santa" - once a year each participant was assigned another group member to give recommendations to. We had to browse our assignee's library and see what they like and then recommend at least three books. All the recommendations I received were spot-on.

Another similar challenge is the "Blind Date With A Book", which is still ongoing in a private group. Each participant recommends two books per month, and then a randomizer assigns each of us one of the recommendations. This can be hit-or-miss but it's fun to try.

I've picked up some great suggestions this way and been introduced to a lot of new authors and some genres I hadn't explored.

>42 Darth-Heather: I can see the appeal of that! I’ve never participated in challenges because I just want to read what I want to read when I want to read it without any additional complications, but I have fun reading about the challenges other people participate in. Maybe someday I won’t have quite so many things on my list that I really want to read, and then I’ll be more open to giving them a try. The random element of letting somebody else choose a book for me would probably appeal to the part of me that likes to go into books blind.

Review: Mad Ship by Robin Hobb



Mad Ship is the second book in the Liveship Traders trilogy, which is the second subseries in Robin Hobb’s larger Realms of the Enderlings series. As with the previous books, this was a re-read for me, and I continue to enjoy the process of re-reading them very much. Especially the parts that are more meaningful when you know a bit more about what’s yet to come.

I did find this book a little bit slower than the first. This was mainly due to a storyline that sometimes felt tedious. I was much more interested in the other storylines. The less-interesting storyline seemed to take up less page time toward the end which helped. I’m going to give this 4.5 stars, same as I did with the first book, but this time I’m going to round down to 4 on Goodreads instead of rounding up like I did before.

The below spoiler tags contain spoilers for this book.
The less-interesting storyline for me was the one that focused on Kennit, Wintrow, Etta, and Vivacia. I just got a little tired of all the angst and misconceptions. This may have been exacerbated by the fact that I remembered a lot of this storyline from my last time reading this.

I enjoyed all the other storylines though, aside from tiny annoyances here and there, like Brashen and his cindin. A lot of answers were provided to the underlying plot with the serpents and the liveships. I had remembered bits and pieces of it, but I couldn’t quite remember how it all connected, so now that picture is much more clear in my head. The section where Wintrow helped free She Who Remembers was one of the few Wintrow sections that I did really enjoy.

Malta, who I thought was just completely annoying in the first book, became more interesting in this one. Throughout most of this book I still didn’t like her, but I was interested in her part of the story and her behavior was less annoying. Toward the end, she finally started to show some sign of growing maturity and the ability to take actions that would benefit others even at risk to herself. When she started making more intelligent decisions for the sake of her father, I still didn’t consider that to be a personality improvement. She was still acting selfishly because she wanted to rescue her father for her own sake so he could make everything better in her life. But when she went to the cocooned dragon and made a bargain with her partly for Reyn’s sake, that was when I started to give her a little respect. I also enjoyed seeing her compare the Satrap's behavior with her own past behavior. I don’t remember her storyline that well, so it will be interesting to see how she develops in the final book.

Next Book
Ship of Destiny, the third book in this trilogy.

>44 YouKneeK: Malta goes on one of the most amazing character arc's of any character I've read in recent memory. Truly wonderful writing.

>45 Narilka: I’ve been surprised by how little I remember her part of the story. Hopefully it will stick with me better after this re-read.

>YouKneek You don't find that means it wasn't that memorable or good in the first place?

>19 YouKneeK: >22 BookstoogeLT: >23 MrsLee: Thanks to you folks jogging my memory, I re-read Martian Chronicles. First off, it has to be read in the context of when it was written - the late 1940's. Their understanding of Mars was very different than what we know now, its hard to believe they once thought Mars would have a breathable atmosphere, even if by then they suspected there was no surface water. Second, the in the context of the writer, Bradbury seems to me to be primary a novelist who just happens to set his stories in a 'science fiction like' setting. I enjoyed it, even the uncomfortable parts (credit to the author) but it is really, really dated. A bunch of stories about what are primarily the bad parts of humanity.

>48 Karlstar: Do you have an earlier or later edition? If Way in the Middle of the Air is included, it's an earlier publication as that story was left out of later editions.

>47 Karlstar: Sometimes, but not always. Sometimes I get really invested in one plot thread in a story to the point that other threads don’t take on as much importance in my head as they probably deserve and so I don't remember them as well in the long run. With these Hobb re-reads, I’m definitely seeing some of that at play and it’s been nice to re-read them with a more relaxed mindset. I’ve also occasionally found that I remember sections I really disliked better than sections I moderately liked, because of how much the disliked sections annoyed me.

>48 Karlstar: Yeah, I can usually ignore the outdated science in some of those older classics. I definitely agree about how much it focused on the negative aspects of humanity, maybe because of the WWII influence.

Review: Ship of Destiny by Robin Hobb



This was the last book in the Liveship Traders series, which is the second subseries in the larger Realms of the Enderlings series.

I really enjoyed re-reading this. There were several parts that I had forgotten, and other parts had a lot more meaning to me now that I have more knowledge of the over-all story. I expect that a lot of the Rain Wilds-related stuff is laying the foundation for the Rain Wilds subseries which I haven’t read yet, so I paid extra close attention to all of that and I’m very much looking forward to getting to that point in the series.

There isn’t too much else I can talk about without spoilers, so I’m going to put the rest in tags.

Spoilers just for this Liveship Traders series:
I enjoyed all the storylines in this book. I thought the Wintrow/Vivacia/Kennit/Etta storyline got a little tedious in the last book, but they got less page time in this book and the pages they did get seemed more interesting to me. Of all the plot threads, though, I think I was always most interested in what was going on with Althea/Amber/Brashen/Paragon. I was very interested in the dragon/serpent plot thread.

If there’s one thing that really started to grate on my nerves, it was the way everybody always assumed the worst. If a character was missing, everybody assumed they were dead. If two characters were in love, there was sure to be some misunderstanding. In some cases the doubts were reasonable, but it sometimes seemed like not one of the characters had heard of optimism or hope. It got to the point where I was rolling my eyes every time some character unequivocally assumed the worst again. Reyn was convinced Malta was dead. Keffria was convinced Malta, Wintrow, and Kyle were all dead. After Kennit tried to sink Paragon, Brashen was convinced Althea was dead and Althea was convinced Brashen was dead. Reyn was convinced Malta hated him after seeing him without his veil. Malta was convinced Reyn would hate her once she saw how her appearance had changed. Brashen was convinced Althea was leaving him for the Vivacia. I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few other examples, but you get the idea! I don’t remember being bothered by all that the first time I read it, but maybe it’s a trope I’ve lost patience with over the years.

Spoilers for not only Liveship Traders, but also the next series, Tawny Man:
I loved, loved re-reading all of Amber’s scenes with the knowledge of who “she” really was. That was the best part of this series for me, even if it was a relatively small part. There were so many clues and double meanings to enjoy. One thing I noticed this time around is that there was a point after Kennit set Paragon on fire and left it to sink when he was speculating that Althea was surely dead, because he found no living or dead women on Paragon. But Amber was still on board, so I wonder if Kennit saw him and recognized him as a male.

I’m still partial to the Fitz subseries, but one thing I really like about this subseries is that the ending feels more upbeat and hopeful than those of the two Fitz subseries I’ve read. It’s also interesting to compare the effect of the perspectives used for the different subseries by the same author. With the Fitz books written in the first person, I was far more attached to the characters and invested in what happened to those characters. With the Liveship Traders written in the third person from multiple POV’s, I did care about the characters, but the attachment wasn’t as strong. On the other hand, I thought the world felt a little richer since there were so many different plots in different areas. We learned more about what was going on everywhere and saw several characters’ different perspectives on things, so it just felt like a more fully-fleshed-out world to me.

Next Book
The Inheritance: And Other Stories, a collection of short stories by Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm, two pseudonyms for the same person. I believe it has three short stories set in this series. This will be the last of the shorter works I plan to read that are related to this. After this, I’ll take a short Hobb break before moving on to the Tawny Man trilogy.

I saw in you list that you read The Fionavar Tapestry trilogy earlier this year, and as I wasn't around back then I'll offer some commentary now instead ;-)

I came to Guy G Kay through a GD group read of Tigana, ages ago, and went on to read A Song For Arbonne and Lions of Al-Rassan before deciding that I should tackle Fionavar. Not least because Fionavar, or Finavir, gets mentions throughout these other books, as some kind of mystical distant long ago realm.

In comparison to the other books by him that I had read then the Fionavar books has the feel of a scientific project, an academic exercise - "let's see if it is possible to write within this style". Not a total waste, but even though I am a rereader I will never pick those books up again. Ever. Ysabel, too, felt contrived to me (this is also the case with Last light of the sun, if anyone would ask me).

I do recommend his other books, though, so don't let Fionavar deter you!

>52 Busifer: Thanks! :) Your description of Fionavar as feeling like an academic exercise is a good one. There were parts I really liked, but my overall impression of it wasn’t that great. I actually have read a couple of his other books. Tigana was my first also, back in early 2016. Then I read The Lions of Al-Rassan in 2017. I really enjoyed both of those.

I hadn’t realized that connection of Fionavar/Finavir being mentioned in some of his other work; that’s interesting! I’ll have to watch for it when I read his work in the future. I seem to cycle back around to him about once a year, so I’ll likely try another GGK book in 2019. Probably Under Heaven.

As far as I remember it Under heaven had no Fionavar references, but Arbonne, Tigana, Lions, and maybe the Sarantine mosaic as well (I don’t remember for sure) do.

It’s quite a feat, I think, that despite me not liking five of his books, combined with the fact that I’m not that interested in the fantasy genre, that he’s one of my favourite authors.

>54 Busifer: I tried the Fionvar ones but had such a tough time getting into the first one that I put it down after 50 pages. I had been wondering if I'd missed out on something, especially since I adored Arbonne, Tigana, Al Rassan, and especially the Sarantine books. I now feel a little better about it, knowing that you guys have had a similar experience.

I have several others on my wishlist, with high hopes that I will enjoy them. has anyone read Children of Earth and Sky or River of Stars?

>55 Darth-Heather: I had River of Stars out of the library some time ago. Failed to get into it and skimmed much of it. Ended up a DNF. I concluded that his Chinese-based books are much less successful than the "Mediterranean" ones.

>55 Darth-Heather: I agree with >56 hfglen:, though I finished and enjoyed, eventually, Under heaven. River of stars I started, but never finished, though not for entirely the same reasons as hfglen: the book coincided with all those real-life things that triggered my GD hiatus, much of which also meant that I didn't read anything much.
I intend to pick it up again, eventually, but am yet to do it.

My personal favourite is Al-Rassan, maybe because I've travelled the region tracing both Moorish conquest and the reconquista - I have a special interest in the Moorish influences on philosophy, medicine and religion in medieval Europe.
Which might explain why his Mediterranean resonate more with me, over all.

I didn't enjoy Ysabel at all, though, but it has to be clarified that urban fantasy doesn't work for me. As an example I tried the Dresden Files, starting with Storm Front, for example, and the James Quill books, starting with London Falling, and neither did it for me. Modern day vampires and zombies are out of the question. I surprised myself by enjoying Jon Courtenay Grimwood's Assassini trilogy, though, starting with The Fallen Blade, but that one has vampires in medieval Venice, so... somewhat kin to Kay's Mediterranean stories, in a way.

What I'm saying is, I'm not the best judge of some genres :D

>57 Busifer: I haven't read a great deal of UF, with the exception of the brilliant Charles deLint. His urban settings are wonderful.

>58 Darth-Heather: I dove into Charles de Lint's UF ten or twelve years ago, and read almost everything he had written up until that time as soon as I could pull it from the libraries. The closest to UF that I had read up until then were the Mercedes Lackey collaborations about motorcycling elves.

>58 Darth-Heather: Ah. Maybe I should try something of his, then. Thanks for the recommendation.

>60 Busifer: certainly worth a try! I can recommend Jack of Kinrowan, The Blue Girl, and Moonheart as good starting points. I'm sure others can give other recommendations. He has a graceful and lively writing style that I really enjoy.

>60 Busifer: >61 Darth-Heather: - My first Charles de Lint was the novelette Riding Shotgun in the collection
Flights: Extreme Visions of Fantasy - it is a ghost story where the living are the scary ones. It ties in indirectly to the ghost elements in his Newford series, but totally stands on its own. Another stand alone that I like is also another ghost story The Mystery of Grace.

>54 Busifer: That is impressive that you like him so much even without being much of a fan of fantasy. :) As a fantasy fan, one of the things I really like about him is that he can satisfy my epic fantasy cravings in just a book or two. I do love a good long, rambling epic fantasy series, but sometimes it’s nice to get it in a shorter form and then still have time to read other things.

>55 Darth-Heather: My understanding is that River of Stars is in the same setting as Under Heaven, but set a few centuries later. I’ll likely read that one directly after I read Under Heaven.

>57 Busifer:, >58 Darth-Heather:, >59 quondame: I much prefer other types of fantasy over Urban Fantasy myself, but to be fair I haven’t read that much of it. I did really like War for the Oaks by Emma Bull. I guess Robert Jackson Bennett’s Divine Cities trilogy (starting with City of Stairs) could be considered UF, and I liked that a lot too. I’ve never read de Lint, but he’s on my radar from previous discussions so I’ll give him a try eventually.

>63 YouKneeK: One of the reasons for me liking him is that he is reasonably well researched. Some of his books has a very specific setting, such as Al-Rassan, or the Sarantine Mosaic, borrowing generously from known history and with fantastical elements at a relative minimum. It might be epic fantasy, but it’s also a historical retelling, with some artistic license allowed due to the choice of genre.

I have a hard time with any plot that depends heavily on inexplicable supernatural beings that saves the day (or destroys it) but have no issues with magical systems that work consistently, as long as the plot has at least one more dimension beyond the swineherd one.

I love de Lint as an author, but it's fair to say that not all of his books have the same resonance. The Newford books are much more rooted in the real world and have a darker, grittier feel. His earlier urban fantasies are closer to the modern trope but much better. You may find the books set in Ottowa and the surrounding area to be more accessible than the Newford books - Greenmantle, the afore-mentioned Moonheart, Spiritwalk, Westlin Wind, and Yarrow. While they form a linked series, it's not necessary to read the earlier books as they're all stand-alone. I particularly like Greenmantle.

>63 YouKneeK: Your description of the City books as Urban Fantasy startled me because I've always considered UF as set in some version of our modern times, so that the True Blood series would qualify even if the setting was rural, but the other world fantasy would even if most of the setting was urban. However, I then realized that I'd never classified Tim Power's books with modern settings as Urban fantasy, though really they do fit the my definition - but aren't like anything else out there.

>64 Busifer: That makes sense. I mostly just want a logical, coherent world, regardless of genre. I enjoy magic and, to some extent, powerful beings as long as they’re portrayed consistently, preferably with rules and limits, but I get annoyed when previously-unsuspected powers or beings save the day at the last minute. Or, in the case of science fiction, when some previously-unknown piece of technology or feature of technology saves the day.

>65 Maddz: Thanks for the de Lint suggestions! Moonheart is the one I had made a note of in the past as a possible good starting point once I finally get around to him.

>66 quondame: Yeah, when I read those books, I never thought of them as urban fantasy at all. It wasn’t until today when I was skimming through the list of books I’d read to try and refresh my memory on UF I’d liked that it hit me that they would probably count if one takes the term “urban fantasy” literally. After I had that thought, I checked on both LT and GR and saw several people had tagged it that way. I’m really bad at labeling subgenres, though. I don’t fully grasp all the distinctions people use, and no two people seem to completely agree on any of the definitions anyway. For the most part I don’t bother, although they can be useful sometimes in discussions. I keep my tags/shelves extremely simple with just high-level genres like fantasy or science fiction.

And I had completely forgotten The Anubis Gates until you mentioned Tim Powers. That seems like something I would consider UF, but maybe not since nobody seems to have tagged it that way. In any case, whether it’s UF or not, I really liked it. :)

>49 ScoLgo: How about that, I guess I have an earlier edition, mine does have Way in the Middle of the Air. I'm wondering now why it was left out later?

>67 YouKneeK: The Anubis Gates is still my favorite Tim Powers book - I was a Regency geek at the time, but it gets so funny! But I wouldn't call it or Sorcery and Cecelia UF, more Historical Fantasy. I guess many of the wilder west books I'm reading are historical fantasy as well.

>55 Darth-Heather: I haven't gotten to River of Stars yet, but I really enjoyed Under Heaven. It was a little harder to get into as I'm used to 'European' fantasy, but it was worth it.

>68 Karlstar: I don't claim to know the real reason but it may have had something to do with what is described by this article...

>69 quondame: Tim Powers is one of my favorite authors. While I can see the UF aspects of his work, (they are, after all, mostly urban-based and are definitely dark fantasy), I think the more accurate descriptor is Secret History; Take all the known facts around some historical setting... Populate it with real people from that time... Then add fictional characters interacting with supernatural forces that then drive a fantastical narrative that 'explains' the actual reality and... voila! Secret History! No one does it quite as well as Powers, IMHO.

>71 ScoLgo: Oh yes, Tim Powers is the master of secret history, though not his latest Los Angeles set ghost powered novel. That's pretty much noir UF. But most interesting fantasy books can be classed in multiple ways.

>72 quondame: Ooohh... you've read Alternate Routes already?!? I have a copy on the TBR shelf but am holding off starting it until I finish several other planned reads. It does keep giving me the 'come hither' glance every time I walk by... :-D

So cool to find another Tim Powers fan here on LT! Any other similar authors/books you might recommend?

>73 ScoLgo: You know there isn't anyone like Tim Powers, but there is Gene Wolfe and Charlaine Harris's An Easy Death is a bit of a departure from her norm.

>74 quondame: Too true - he is one of a kind. I read American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett a few months ago and, while it was not Powers, I felt a few echoes of his style in the narrative. I enjoyed the book and plan to try more Bennett in 2019. Will probably dive into The Divine Cities next as my library has them on Overdrive.

And yes, I'm a big fan of Gene Wolfe... I read through all 12 Solar Cycle books this year, (the New Sun books were a re-read while the rest were my first time through). What a great ride! As I was finishing the Short Sun books, I ordered copies of Lexicon Urthus and Gate of Horn, Book of Silk for when I re-read again.

>73 ScoLgo: The Drawing of the Dark was the first Tim Powers I came across, and have got most of his books now. That is most definitely a Secret History or Historical Fantasy. Ash: A Secret History (which I have in both the omnibus ebook and individual paperbacks) is another (although that verges on Alternate History). Both are quite gritty and dark (Ash more so than TFDotF). I do find most historical fantasies nowadays are really urban fantasies or paranormal romances in a historical rather than a contemporary setting.

>71 ScoLgo: Ah, understood and I can see both points. For a story written in the 50's, I would commend Bradbury for his stance against those evils. I have had Anubis Gates on my wish list for ages, time to move it up on the priority list.

>75 ScoLgo: Have you read Gene Wolf's The Knight & The Wizard? For some reason the language, especially in the former rewired my brain and I kept re-reading it for about a week. It seems to be like other fantasy books, but it really isn't.

>76 Maddz: I wish Mary Gentle was more prolific. I love the strange familiarity in her books and her angled attitudes. Are you referring to all the steampunk vampire/were series as UF dressed as HF? Have you read The Silvered? I would enjoy more like that!

>77 Karlstar: Enjoy!

>78 quondame: Not yet. I've been meaning to for quite a while but my library only has The Knight on Overdrive. You got me thinking I should read them soon though so I just ordered from Abe Books. Both titles, in hardcover, delivered for <$8.00 total! My next Wolfe is likely to be The Sorcerer's House. I plan to follow each chapter with a listen to Alzabo Soup's analysis. After that, I will either read The Knight & Wizard books or the Soldier of Sidon trilogy - but none of that is likely to happen before 2019.

>76 Maddz: I enjoyed The Drawing of the Dark! Thanks for the Mary Gentle link. My library only has two of her titles available though so I will have to check the used shelves for the Ash book...

>77 Karlstar: The Anubis Gates was my first Powers. Not a bad place to dip your toes with his oeuvre, IMHO.

>62 quondame: >65 Maddz: I have only read one de Lint book to date... Svaha was a very good read for me. I really need to pick up more de Lint soon!

>51 YouKneeK: Getting back on topic... I read the first Fitz trilogy this year and thought they were rather great. I am more of a sci-fi reader than fantasy but these books are well-written with complex enough characters, (although I felt the bad guy was insufferably lacking in nuance), that I was drawn in early and my interest was held until the end of book #3. I fully intend to embark on the next trilogy early in 2019 so am following - and enjoying - your reviews here. I am not clicking any of your spoiler links though! ;)

>79 ScoLgo: It’s all on topic, as far as I’m concerned! :) I’ve enjoyed reading the discussion.

I’m glad you enjoyed the first Fitz trilogy! I think character writing is one of Hobb's greatest strengths. I do definitely agree with your spoiler comment, though. I would very much enjoy hearing what you think about the Liveship Traders trilogy when you get to it.

>78 quondame: It's because she's not a well person following a road traffic accident. She suffers from chronic pain, which (although medically controlled) does muck up her concentration. (http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/intmg.htm)

Re the UF as HF, it often seems to come across as a common theme. I will admit to having a weakness for it, especially in a Regency setting, but it can get a bit on the cutesy side. I assume by The Silvered you mean the Tanya Huff book not the Tunnels & Trolls supplement? Yes, I have the hardback (no, I have not played T&T - I started with AD&D 1st Edition). My favourites though are the Sorcery and Cecelia series, and C J Stevermer's A Scholar of Magics and the sequel. Another good one is Stevermer's The Serpent's Egg although that's really a fantasy not a historical fantasy. Patricia Wrede's Frontier Magic series is good too, although really set in an alternate universe.

>79 ScoLgo: Check for the individual books as well: A Secret History, Carthage Ascendant, The Wild Machines and Lost Burgundy. I warn you that the omnibus is a massive tome even in paperback. You might be better off getting the ebook (https://www.amazon.com/Ash-Secret-History-Gateway-Essentials-ebook/dp/B00F50ET66/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1541199292&sr=1-1&keywords=mary+gentle)

Everyone talking about Powers is great. I had great success with the Anubis Gates and On Stranger Tides, which I read years before it was shoehorned into the Pirates of the Carribean franchise, was a lot of magical fun. The Stress of Her Regard almost made me go depressive and put me off reading more of his stuff. It was tough!

>81 Maddz: I think I'd heard that. So many authors have lost productive years or even their lives to health issues. It grieves me enormously.

Yes, Tanya Huff's The Silvered, sorry I wasn't watching my touchstones, dropping them fast and furious as I was!

I read all those but The Serpent's Egg. Isn't any story with magic or dragons sort of in an alternate universe.

>82 BookstoogeLT: A good match to On Stranger Tides is Pirate Freedom

>83 quondame: It's obscure, yes, I think it was one of her first books along with the Alchemist series Death of a Borgia and The Duke and the Veil. I had that and the first of the Alchemist series for a while, went to visit a secondhand SFF book shop in London, noticed a market stall selling secondhand books and checked it out, and found the second Alchemist book.

Review: The Inheritance & Other Stories by Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm



This is a collection of ten short stories by Megan Lindholm and Robin Hobb, two pseudonyms for the same person. Seven of the stories were by Lindholm and three by Hobb, but Hobb’s stories were longer and actually took up slightly more pages in the book. I won’t review each story; I’ll just write about some of my general impressions and note a few of the stories that stood out.

This was my first time reading anything written under the Lindholm pseudonym. Lindholm and Hobb really do have distinctive writing styles, at least going by this collection. Lindholm’s stories were shorter, maybe a little less introspective, but more likely to contain commentary on society. They were often told in a very conversational style, almost as if the main character were sitting across a table from me and telling me the story. Also, her stories contained an extraordinary number of dead cats. I’ve never seen so many dead cats in a single book before. Hobb’s stories were much meatier and tended to hold my attention better, partly because I became more invested in her characters. She also seems to be a bit kinder toward cats.

I enjoyed reading all of Lindholm’s stories but, due to their shortness, they probably won’t stick with me as well. However, I don’t expect I’ll forget The Fifth Squashed Cat anytime soon. It started off funny, and I chuckled my way through the first few pages, but then it got very, very gross and disturbing. I liked Silver Lady and the Fortyish Man quite a bit, and also Strays.

I enjoyed Hobb’s stories the most. They were all set in her Realm of the Elderings setting, but would stand alone just fine. Homecoming was probably my favorite, by a small margin. It told the story of the first group that tried to settle in the Rain Wilds and really added a lot to the back story from the Liveship Traders series. The other two didn’t add as much to the world-building, but did make use of the world-building that had already been done. One thing I noticed was that each of her stories in this collection had a selfish, unpleasant male antagonist. They each felt at least a little bit Kyle-like to me, for those who have read the Liveship Traders series. That aspect of the stories started to feel a little repetitive, but the stories held my attention well enough that I didn’t mind much.

Before each story, the author wrote a short introduction that explained a little bit about what inspired that story or how she came to write it. Happily, she managed to do this without spoilers, and I really enjoyed those introductions and the little bits of insights they offered about the author herself.

Next Book
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare. It’s time for my fourth quarter classic selection. :) Based on my unexpected success with Hamlet last year, combined with it being such a fast read that I almost felt like I was cheating, I decided to read two Shakespeare selections this year – a comedy and a tragedy. This one is of course the comedy. I’ll follow it up with Macbeth for the tragedy.

I’ve just recently realized that somehow, for reasons I can’t begin to comprehend, I had gotten it into my head that the Hobb series is Realm of the Enderlings instead of Realm of the Elderlings. This makes no sense, because the Elderlings are mentioned quite often in the books, and I knew they were Elderlings. What’s an Enderling? I have no idea, but I mistyped the series name in every single review I wrote since starting this re-read.

I guess I have some editing to do! I’ll edit the reviews I’ve posted on the book pages here on LT and on GR, anyway. I may leave them alone in my threads here, if only because I’d also have to fix all the pictures and it hardly seems worth the time. I may just leave them as a testament to my strangeness. :)

>86 YouKneeK: "Enderling" 1. One of Ender Wiggin's partially natural descendants 2. A fan of the Enderverse

>87 Karlstar: Ha, that would definitely bring new meaning to the series. :)

Review: Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare



Much Ado About Nothing is one of Shakespeare’s comedies. I didn’t have any previous familiarity with the story, and this was only my second Shakespeare read since highschool about 25 years ago, the first being Hamlet last year.

This play is sort of a two-for-one deal on romance. You have one couple who other people are trying to tear apart, and a different couple who a different set of other people are trying to bring together. I enjoyed it, but not quite as much as Hamlet. I found the story to be a little predictable, and I was also less invested in the characters.

Claudio got on my nerves a bit and Hero barely seemed to have any personality, but I did like Beatrice and Benedick. The scenes with Dogberry were a hilariously fun surprise. I was laughing hysterically at some of the things he said. If it hadn’t been for the commentary that I was reading simultaneously with the play informing me that he was mistaking his words, I think I would have been much more confused by his scenes and might have missed out on that fun. I could have thought it was my understanding that was at fault, since I’m still a bit shaky on understanding all the language, especially those words that have a different meaning today than they did in Shakespeare’s day. The unfamiliar words are actually easier to understand, because I have many years’ practice in understanding unfamiliar words based on context. The familiar-but-different words are trickier for me since I’m more likely to automatically read them with the modern meaning without thinking about it.

Almost immediately after I finished reading the play, I watched the Kenneth Branagh version of the movie. After I read Hamlet last year, watching a couple of the movies afterward added a lot to the experience. This movie was pretty fun. My main complaint is that the scenes with Dogberry, while somewhat funny, weren’t nearly as hilarious as they were in my mind while I read the play. I was disappointed in that because I’d really been looking forward to seeing how that was played in the movie. Don John was also played too over-the-top for my tastes. Otherwise, my reactions to the characters in the movie were similar to my reactions while reading the play, except that I liked the prince, Don Pedro, very much in the movie whereas he didn’t make much of an impression on me in the play. The actor gave him much more presence.

Next Book
Macbeth by William Shakespeare. I read this one in high school but, aside from being able to quote a few lines that we were required to memorize, and a vague memory of witches, I really remember nothing about the story.

>89 YouKneeK: I had the same rating as you for this play. I apparently really loved the Beatrice-Benedick couple and thought they were Shakespeare's "liveliest couple" since Petruchio-Katharina from The Taming of the Shrew and were better at wittiness and disdain to one another. I'll have to find time (and motivation) to watch film adaptation of this play.

Look forward to seeing your thoughts on the Scottish play.

>90 mattries37315: They were definitely pretty lively! I loved their sarcasm and jibes. :) It’s really difficult for me to find time for movies. Or, at least, it’s difficult to find time that I’m willing to give up for that purpose. It seems to be worth the time for the Shakespeare plays, though. I think several people in this group suggested I do that when I first read Shakespeare last year and I’m glad they did. I was interested in watching the Whedon adaptation since I'm more familiar with the names involved, but decided against it for now since it appears to be a modern adaptation and I wanted a more traditional one. Maybe someday I'll give it a try. There's still a version of Hamlet I was interested in watching that I never got around to also.

I do think I’m going to stubbornly stick with reading the play first before watching the adaptation(s), though. Originally I thought I might try it both ways and see which I liked best, but I really like having my own unique version of the play in my head before I’m influenced by other people’s interpretations, even if my own interpretation is less experienced/educated.

I probably won’t get a real start on Macbeth until tomorrow, but I was paging through some of the introductory material and noticed that the witches were called the “Weïrd Sisters” on the character list. So now I know where the title Wyrd Sisters came from. :) And the first line, “When shall we three meet again?” is also very familiar. I knew there were a lot of Macbeth influences in Pratchett’s Witches subseries, so I look forward to catching a few more things like that. The introductory information about what was going on in history when Shakespeare wrote this was also interesting, although I stopped reading as soon as it moved on to plot-specific info, so there are probably more insights I’ll have to wait to read after I finish the play.

Out, damn'd spot! out, I say!

>92 suitable1: Ha, that must be one of the familiar phrases I can look forward to finding in Macbeth? :) That's been one of the fun things about reading Shakespeare – catching familiar sayings and learning their original context. I didn’t catch as much of that in Much Ado About Nothing, but Hamlet was chock full of it.

>93 YouKneeK:

All these years, I remembered it from high school as "Out, out, dammed spot!" Maybe it was changed in a re-release?

>94 suitable1: From what I’ve read in the introductory information in each of the plays, there were different versions floating around out there even back when they were originally published, so I guess it’s possible you read a different version? I did a quick search for the word “spot” in my Kindle edition and it does have just the one “Out” in my version.

>89 YouKneeK: I think I enjoy Much Ado more than you, but primarily I focus on Beatrice-Benedick more :) Have fun with Hamlet! Yep, that's a famous line in >92 suitable1:.

>96 Narilka:

And we're not talking about coffee!

>96 Narilka: Thanks! :)

Does anybody have any opinions/suggestions for which Macbeth movie to watch after I finish reading the play? After some success with the Branagh versions of the last two plays I read, I looked to see if he did Macbeth. He did, but it doesn't appear to be available on Amazon at all. My public library doesn't have it either. I don’t know if it’s on Netflix, but I don’t have Netflix anyway and I wouldn’t use it enough to justify signing up for even just a month.

Amazon does have several others. I’m leaning toward the 1971 movie, but still undecided. I saw the following available for streaming:

• An adaptation starring Patrick Stewart which would be very tempting, but it looks like it’s a more modernized version and I’d prefer something more traditional, at least for the first one.
  
• The 1971 movie directed by Roman Polanski. The reviews I skimmed made it sound like this one is done well and more traditional, so this is what I’m leaning toward.
  
• A 2015 movie directed by Justin Kurzel. The reviews I skimmed seem mixed. I was afraid to read them too closely for fear of spoilers when people discussed specific scenes.
  
• A BBC television version from 1983.
  
• A 1979 version starring Ian McKellan.
  
• A few other random versions that didn’t seem to have many reviews and/or seemed to be more unanimously disliked.

>98 YouKneeK: When I read Macbeth a few years ago, I watched several versions, some of which were just weird. Sadly I can't remember which ones they were. I also had the pleasure of watching a live play done by one of our local colleges. It was in a smallish room, done in the round, with the audience almost in the player's laps, or perhaps it was the other way around, since the audience were the ones sitting. The made it spooky, surreal, and bizarre, yet it still had the spirit of the play. It was so dark, with mostly red lighting, that it was difficult to tell what was going on at times. Good fun though.

When you have read the Scottish play, and you have watched at least one version, I highly recommend the audio version of Macbeth: A Novel by A.J. Hartley.

>98 YouKneeK: There’s always Throne of Blood, directed by Akira Kurasawa. Weird, but it’s very watchable. Kurasawa did a couple of Shakespeare adaptations Ran is his take on King Lear.

>99 MrsLee: That sounds like a great experience! One of these days I’ll have to try to get to a live performance. There’s some sort of “Shakespeare Tavern” in Atlanta. I don’t know much about it and have never heard anybody talk about it, but I think that’s just because I don’t know people who have any interest in Shakespeare. It looks like they do regular Shakespeare performances (as one would expect, given the name), and some other classics. I don’t see Macbeth on the calendar, but it looks like Hamlet is playing next spring. I’ll have to do more research.

>100 Maddz: Thanks! I missed that one since I was just searching for the Macbeth title.

>98 YouKneeK: Before I read Macbeth, I first heard the "character" was from the Disney animated series Gargoyles in the mid-90s who was featured as an immortal anti-hero. Several Shakespearean phrases were used throughout his appearances. I then read the play as a senior in high school, it was the first time I did compare and contrast between the original source and an "swerve" adaptation of that original source.

I also agree with >100 Maddz:'s suggestion of Kurasawa's Throne of Blood.

>102 mattries37315: Interesting, I'd never heard of Gargoyles. I imagine that would have made the play more appealing in high school, recognizing references and having a little more familiar context.

Thanks for the additional recommendation for Throne of Blood! I looked it up and it does look interesting, although being set in Japan may make it less traditional than what I’m hoping for as my first movie selection. I’d like to fit in more than one adaptation though, if not all of them right away, so I'd like to try it eventually.

>100 Maddz: I didn't know about Throne of Blood - thanks for the tip!

Because we are on the subject of Shakespeare, and you have read this particular play, I wanted to share this clue from the recent Halloween Treasure Hunt on LT. It gave me a laugh, never having compared these two works before.

"It’s "Lion King" with people
Frail and human as we can be.
A ghost, a skull, a prince yelling:
"Get Thee to a Nunnery!"

Hamlet? (Which makes me think of the marvellous opera Verdi never wrote, as pointed out by Anna Russell: there should be one called Prosciuttino.

On the topic of The Scottish Play and its international progeny, has anybody else ever heard of uMabatha, a retelling of the story by Welcome Msomi, set in 19th-century Zululand?

>103 YouKneeK: Weirdly, this just popped up on my Facebook feed about Gargoyles. I skimmed over it, I didn't notice anything about Macbeth yet but I haven't watched the little view they have about the show either.

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/an-oral-history-of-gargoyles-disneys-groundbreakin...

>105 MrsLee: Ha, yes, I gave a quick glance at the clues when they were posted. Basically I read them all once, and followed them if I knew right away what it was. I’m terrible at those kinds of things so I only got a few, but that one made me laugh too and I recognized it instantly. Reading Shakespeare pays off again! ;)

>106 hfglen: Not I, of no surprise to anybody. :) Have you read it? I’d be curious how it differed from the original version.

>107 mattries37315: Funny timing. I did a Ctrl+F on the article and they did mention Macbeth a good ways down, although not in much detail and only in reference to scoring a particular episode during a dramatic moment.

I finished the play this morning before I left for work, which was a complete surprise. I thought I was just going to sneak in a scene or two, and suddenly there I was at the end. I had misremembered what percentage the commentary started on; I thought it was 10% later. I'll gather my thoughts together and post a review a bit later.

Review: Macbeth by William Shakespeare



I read Macbeth in high school about 25 years ago, but I had no appreciation for Shakespeare in my ignorant youth and so it didn’t make any impression. I remembered nothing of significance about the story aside from the existence of the witches, so reading this now was almost like reading it for the first time.

I think this one is much better watched than read. The story was interesting, but it seemed like a large portion of it was intended to happen through the actors’ actions and reactions rather than being expressed in words, so it felt like a very bare-bones story. Since this is a tragedy, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that people die. There is fighting and murder, but that understandably consists more of actions than words, so the events happen very quickly in terms of word count. Several of the deaths also seemed very sudden, with few words either leading up to it or in reaction to it. In Hamlet, I felt the emotion and the drama pretty clearly even while just reading it, but this wasn’t as true for me with Macbeth.

The play also didn’t have as much of the sarcasm, wit, and humor that I enjoyed in both Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing. It’s darker and more serious, which will probably be more easily appreciated in a visual form. Unlike the other plays, there weren’t any characters that I particularly enjoyed reading about. Malcolm seemed interesting, but we didn’t really get to see much of him. It will be interesting to see if I feel differently about the characters after I watch one of the movie adaptations. I do plan to watch one in the near future, but it will be a few days.

I may sound like I didn’t like it, but that isn’t true. I was able to imagine the actions and reactions happening between the words, and I did enjoy the story. It just wasn’t as satisfying to read as Hamlet or even Much Ado About Nothing. I did enjoy parts of the commentary in my edition very much because it added a lot of context in terms of the historical backdrop of the play. At the risk of horrifying everybody with my ignorance, I didn’t even know Macbeth was a real person, although the real history is different than how it’s presented in the play.

Next Book
The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. I know nothing whatsoever about it, so I look forward to being surprised. After this, I’ll be headed back to Hobb’s world.

>109 YouKneeK: You never watched the movie version of the Neverending Story? And you grew up in the 80's?

The more I'm reading of Shakespeare, the more I want to watch it instead of read it. I just keep forgetting that they are NOT novels but plays...

>110 BookstoogeLT: Nope, not that I remember, anyway! Maybe I’ll start reading the book and discover that it’s really familiar, but I didn’t watch many movies or much TV in my youth.

I’ve seen a lot of people make the argument that Shakespeare is better watched than read, and they’re probably right. I do still think it’s fun though to read the play and imagine things in my own head, then watch a movie and see what the directors and actors did. And they're such quick reads.

I vaguely think we might have already talked about this, but I can’t remember… Do you think you’ll fit in any of the movies or anything in the near future?

>108 YouKneeK: It's in isiZulu, not a language that I know more than a few words of. uMabatha decides, after much the same agonising as in the Shakespeare version, to do away with uDingane, who is closely based on the historical individual I've linked to. When the play was first produced in Johannesburg it was a great nine-days'-wonder for the fashionable to be seen at (not me; I was an impoverished student at the time), but it seems to have rather vanished without trace after a London season.

>111 YouKneeK: I believe we have talked about this subject before. But with months and months between Shakespeare reads for either of us, I'm not surprised I've forgotten exactly what we've said.

As for the movies, I highly doubt I'll make time to watch them. For me it is just becoming more and more about the words and screen time takes away from that. The visual/aural medium just is losing its appeal to me...

>112 hfglen: Interesting info, thanks!

>113 BookstoogeLT: Yeah, that makes sense. I find it really difficult to justify the time for TV/movies when I'm more interested in working through the long list of books I want to read.

Review: The Neverending Story by Michael Ende



I grew up in a bubble, and then I moved out of that bubble to live under a rock. So, I had never read this book, I haven’t seen the movie, and I was completely unfamiliar with the story. I think I would have loved this as a child. As an adult, I was a little less enthusiastic. I liked the beginning, and the end, and parts of the middle, but I also thought it often grew tedious.

The main character is Bastian, a young boy who stumbles into an old bookshop by accident and sees a book that attracts him so much that he does something he never would have considering doing before. He steals the book. After his crime he feels like he can’t go home, so he hides in the attic of his school and reads. It's about a fantastical world called Fantastica that is dying because its ruler, the Childlike Empress, is sick and nobody knows why or how to cure her. The empress sends a boy named Atreyu on a quest to find out how to cure her. As Bastian reads, the line between reality and fantasy starts to get blurry.

I really enjoyed the concept of the story. In many ways, it reminded me of the Wizard of Oz books that found their way into my bubble when I was a child. There is a lot of traveling around, meeting strange and fantastical creatures, seeing weird landscapes, and having adventures. This is what started to feel tedious to me, so maybe I don’t have quite as much patience for aimless wandering and random encounters as I did when I was younger.

In the Wizard of Oz books, however, there’s more of an emphasis on the main characters helping others and trying to make their lives better while also learning to tolerate other people’s quirks. That’s how I remember them, anyway. In this book, I got pretty annoyed with Bastian and his many bad and self-absorbed decisions. Starting from when he was afraid to enter Fantastica and give the empress a name because he was afraid they'd be disappointed by how he looked. I mean, people were suffering and disappearing and turning into lies that affected the human world left and right, and he decides to drag things out for the sake of his pride. Admittedly he was very young and there were additional circumstances that could be blamed for some of his later bad decisions, but it made it difficult for me to sympathize with him. I did really like the ending, though.

Next Book
It’s time to head back to Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings series with the Tawny Man trilogy, starting with Fool's Errand. This is the 3rd subseries, and the last set of books that I had already read previously.

Review: Fool’s Errand by Robin Hobb



Fool’s Errand is the first book in Robin Hobb’s Tawny Man trilogy, which is the third subseries in her larger Realms of the Elderlings series. This is the last subseries that I had already read in the past.

I enjoyed this just as much as I had remembered. It starts to tie together things from both of the previous subseries, and it was fun to reread it and see those connections so clearly. I really don’t remember if I caught all the connections the first time I read it or not. My memory of it was surprisingly fuzzy considering how much I remembered loving it the first time. There were some scenes that I remembered as strongly as if they were real memories of things I had witnessed, but a lot of the plot details had faded away. This made for a fun combination of revisiting favorite scenes while still being surprised by some aspects of the plot. In the earlier books there were a few things that started to grate on my nerves here and there, but I really can’t find anything to complain about in this book. I enjoyed it straight through.

I have a few more specific and very spoilerish comments within the tags.
One of my favorite scenes in all the Hobb books I’ve read so far is the reunion between Fitz and the Fool that takes place fairly early in this book. I enjoyed that entire 100-page sequence where the Fool is hanging out at Fitz’s cabin with him and Nighteyes while Fitz tells the Fool (and the reader) what he’s been up to since they last saw each other at the end of the first trilogy. The role they played through the rest of the book was both amusing and frustrating, but I loved how much of the Fool there is in this book as compared to the first trilogy.

One of the most painful parts was of course Nighteyes’ death, although I did very much like the way it was told. Oddly enough, I had completely forgotten it happened in this book. For some reason I thought it happened later in the trilogy. As events led up to it, I started to realize it was going to happen a lot sooner than I had thought.

Another thing I had completely forgotten was that Fitz ended up on Others’ Island for a while. I remembered the crown and the feathers and most of the details surrounding that quite well, and I remembered that Fitz had been the one to find the feathers, but I hadn’t remembered where he found them. Even after I read it, I didn’t remember having known that, so I wonder if it went over my head the first time I read it. I can’t imagine how it did though, because it’s extremely obvious. Maybe I just did a very thorough job of forgetting so that I could have the fun of rediscovering that connection. :)

Next Book
Golden Fool, the second book in the above trilogy.

>116 YouKneeK: That might be my current favorite across the whole Realm of the Elderlings. I still need to read the final Fitz and the Fool series though.

>117 Narilka: It’s really such a great one. I was visiting with family in the Chattanooga area over the past few days and I kept wanting to go back to my hotel so I could read my book. :)

>118 YouKneeK: LOL I hope you also made a visit to McKay's while you were there! Even though you don't read many dead tree books, it's worth a stop :)

>119 Narilka: I've actually never been there, but someday I'll have to make the time!

>120 YouKneeK: You were in Chattanooga and you didn't go to McKay's?!

>121 mattries37315: I know, right!!! And has never been....

>121 mattries37315:, >122 Narilka: Technically, I wasn’t in Chattanooga; I was about 30 minutes north of it. But I did drive through it, so I guess that’s not much of an excuse. :)

Review: Golden Fool by Robin Hobb



Golden Fool is the second book in the Tawny Man trilogy, the third subseries in the larger Realms of the Elderlings series.

Much like the first time I read it, this trilogy has successfully lured me into spending more time reading each day than I normally would. I’m still not sure exactly why but, as much as I enjoyed the first two trilogies, this is the one that really sucked me in completely both the first time I read it and on this re-read. I’m enjoying the story all over again, partly because I had forgotten a lot of the plot details, although they started coming back to me as I read. I also think I’m getting a stronger picture this time around of just how much this trilogy ties together elements from the previous two and, although I have not yet read the next series, I can anticipate how some of the events in this one will likely tie into it.

And here are my spoiler-filled comments…
I adore Fennel, Jinna’s cat, even though he barely gets any page time. I think he made me laugh more this time around because I could see some of my own cat’s personality in him. I burst out laughing when I got to the section where Fennel was evicted from Fitz’s lap and said, “Imbecile. The cat was comfortable.” My cat gets evicted from my lap fairly often, because his tolerance for sitting in my lap usually outlasts my tolerance for sitting in one place. Now in my head I call myself an imbecile on his behalf every time this happens. ;) I was ambivalent about Jinna, but I wanted more Fennel.

The new characters in this trilogy are fun to read about. Although Hap got on my nerves in this book, I enjoyed seeing Fitz react to Hap’s decisions and look at his own comparable behavior in the first trilogy in a new light. I also really liked Prince Dutiful in this book. He was a bit annoying in the first one, but he starts to mature. Thick is also a fun character, and I enjoyed seeing Fitz attempt to deal with him and seeing Thick become friends with Dutiful. I also enjoyed seeing Fitz reluctantly take on the role of Skillmaster, and seeing Dutiful’s limited coterie slowly form.

I did dread the scene with Jek which leads to the quarrel between Fitz and the Fool and their extended estrangement. That was all as painful as I remembered. On the other hand, knowing already how that would play out in this book left my mind freer to focus on other aspects of the plot better than I probably did the first time around.

Next Book
Fool’s Fate, the third book in this trilogy and the very last of the Hobb books that I had already read previously.

I just read that Margaret Atwood announced yesterday that she’s writing a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale as per this Twitter post. It’s due out in September 2019. I read the original book for the first time in late 2016 and enjoyed it quite a bit. I could see where there’s room for an interesting sequel, so I’ll be keeping an eye out for it.

As far as my current reading, I’m about 77% through my book but I’ve been forced, kicking and screaming, to really slow down on my reading this week. I’m on call for work and it’s month end, so I’ve been pretty busy. I’ll likely finish it this weekend.

>125 YouKneeK: And next month is Christmas and New Years. I'm already planning that my reading schedule is shot down :-)

Does the double dose of holidays affect you or not?

>125 YouKneeK: End of month plus on call? That's a double whammy.

>126 BookstoogeLT: For me, the holidays actually represent extra relaxation time. I usually do one family visit around the holiday season, and this year I went up around Thanksgiving. I had also driven up a couple weeks before that to watch my cousin in his college play, so I’ve done my familial duty for the season and I'm sick of driving up and down I-75! :) When I was growing up, neither parent had family close enough for regular holiday visits to be practical and I was the only child. We almost always had quiet holidays at home with just the three of us, so I think that’s partly why I prefer my holidays to be quiet, relaxed affairs in my own home. I plan to just enjoy the extra time off and do my own thing, for the most part. Do you have a bunch of boisterous family gatherings in your near future?

>127 Narilka: Ha, yeah. :) But I’ve come to almost appreciate the weeks like this one when I’m just doing my own on call rotation. I’ve been supporting two newer team members all year with their on call rotations, and that takes up a lot more of my time. They both require a little more hand holding than I would like, and one of them is particularly bad in that regard. Sometimes a problem I could have resolved by myself in 5-10 minutes will take over an hour of forcing them to think through the problem and look at the data to understand the issue and figure out the solution. I try not to give too many spoon fed answers, because they can't learn a set of step-by-step instructions to resolve most of our issues. They have to understand the underlying processes and use common sense to figure out solutions for each individual problem. So I'm trying very hard to teach them how to think through things on their own, but I don't feel like I've been very successful. Their rotations are coming up in the 2nd and 3rd weeks of December, so the next few weeks will probably be a bit torturous. But at least I shouldn’t have to do too much support over the holidays, so the break after the on call weeks will feel all the more glorious. :)

>128 YouKneeK: Yeah, our whole immediate family is getting together before and after Christmas. No kids for any of us siblings though and since the youngest of us is over 30 I suspect it will be a much more sedate time than when we all were younger.
Thankfully...

>129 BookstoogeLT: The lack of kids should definitely help. The few times I’ve gone to gatherings with extended family, there were a lot of young kids. They were entertaining, but overwhelming. I hope you all have a great time!

So Shakespeare doesn't stack up against Robin Hobb...
:o)
He certainly isn't as readable, that's for sure!

I can watch Shakespeare but I haven't tried to read his plays since grad school. For me personally reading plays is not a great substitute for watching them live or even on the screen. It's almost like reading a musical score instead of listening to a piano concerto.

I do love Robin Hobb, though. :o)

>129 BookstoogeLT: >130 YouKneeK: My kids are old enough that the holidays doesn't impact my reading much, but my annual family visit will put a dent in it. On the other hand, I have about 2 weeks of vacation I have to use by the end of the year, so more reading time!

>128 YouKneeK: That sounds on the frustrating side. I hope the new team members start to get into the swing of things soon. Yeah, being able to troubleshoot effectively is a skill that takes time and practice.

>131 clamairy: Ha, not really, although it probably isn’t a fair comparison given the format differences and my own preferences. I like your music analogy; that's fitting! I still haven’t gotten around to watching a Macbeth adaptation. I meant to do it over the Thanksgiving holiday, but I blame Hobb.

>132 Karlstar: Nice, I hope you enjoy your remaining vacation! I’ve used up the last of mine, not counting a couple “personal days” that I usually don’t use. I get 5 weeks per year and I used to wonder how I would ever use that much vacation, but I’ve found it’s quite easy after all.

>133 Narilka: I hope so too, thanks! :) It's been well over a year, so my patience is wearing thin.

>134 YouKneeK: I have six weeks of paid vacation but would prefer ten to twelve weeks. That would work just fine to cover the periods when work is slow: I'm a consultant, work as a researcher within the "experience design" field in IT, and ten weeks each year amounts to the time my employer urges me to "take time off if I can" because business is slow.

(In Sweden people are generally off work for about two weeks around Yule and New Year's, and then a week in February (when all schools are closed), five to ten days around Easter, and then six weeks in summer, plus a one week November break during All Saints and Halloween. Not everyone are off during all of that time, but enough for business to slow down markedly...)

>135 Busifer: When business is slow and you’re out of paid vacation, are you forced to take non-paid time off?

It’s not too common to take two weeks off at a time here. It’s somewhat discouraged, at least where I work, although I have a lot of colleagues with family in India, so they do take two weeks for family visits since the travel itself takes up so much time and is so exhausting. New employees only start with two weeks of vacation, but I think now they give the third week much faster than they used to. Maybe after only a year. The rest of the weeks take some time to earn. The 5th week is the current max at my company, and was only introduced a couple years ago. I think it takes 15 years to earn it, but I had already been with the company over 20 years when it was introduced.

Most of my team takes off either the week before Christmas or the week between Christmas and New Year’s. I actually kind of like working those weeks, because I enjoy the quieter office. As long as there aren't too many unexpected problems, I get time to catch up on back burner projects and work on things that may be less urgent but more fun. I usually have to do at least some work during the last few days of the year anyway. I support the warehouse management software for a large manufacturing company and some of our distribution centers work until midnight on New Year’s Eve, or until they’ve shipped their last order. It’s supposed to be “all hands on deck” in our department whether you’re on vacation or not, and I’d rather take my vacation during a time when I can be completely on vacation.

>136 YouKneeK: That's not legal, not if it's just a short period, say, during summer, or so. Employees are humans with a right to be able to plan their lives, and businesses has to organise accordingly.
It probably can happen, under certain circumstances, but not as a rule. If the business is seasonal, as is usual in the hospitality industry, contracts are per season.

In Sweden 5 weeks of paid vacation is mandatory for everyone who is employed on what we call an open-ended contract (no agreed end date), and the employers has to allow three consecutive weeks of leave in summer. Beyond that there are many variations. IT consultancy firms, for example, earn money from clients paying for the work of their employees, so we tend to have less vacation weeks than anyone else. I earned my sixth week after being employed for 10 years + being above 40 yo. I know people in other industries who got six to eight weeks of paid vacation almost instantly.

Of course there are ways and loopholes around these rules, and the gig economy has arrived in Sweden, too. If you look at it from a financial aspect any company that can't afford to pay out all outstanding vacation time for all employees at the same time is deemed financially unsound and has to declare bankruptcy. So quite a few companies have tried to find ways to circumvent the rules. This is frowned upon and most employees expect their vacation and their labour rights.

I used to enjoy working during traditional holiday periods earlier, for much the same reasons that you name, but since our son was born I save my vacation days for school breaks, which is when everyone else is off work too ;-)

Well, since being made redundant end January 2017, I've probably worked 52 weeks (9 months at Tower Hamlets, 3 months at Islington) as a contractor, and I switched to permanent at Islington last Monday. I won't get much leave out of the 25 days + Bank Holidays as it'll be pro-rated for the rest of the FY and I'd like to keep a couple of days in hand in case of emergency (Margaret is on the waiting list for her cataract - estimated time is 9 months but she could get called in at any time if there's a cancellation and she's the first person they can get hold of).

My current plan is to take 4 days over Christmas - Christmas Eve, the Thursday & Friday of Christmas week, and New Year's Eve. My manager is agreeable to me working the rest of New Year week from home, and I'll probably do the same for part of the week before Christmas. It depends on how my rail and parking season tickets slot in. My current rail ticket expired yesterday, but my parking has a week to run; I want to get them into phase and buy my annual tickets starting Jan 8th. Unfortunately, the broadband is limited at Margaret's so I daren't work there as I could be needing to transfer large Excel files around (all bets are off though if there's another major provider failure).

Either way, my next bit of leave will be after we've submitted our major statutory return at the end of May - normally, I'd take time out at Easter, but I can't this year as my manager will be away visiting family in Malaysia. I expect to take extra time around the late May Bank Holiday weekend. Then it'll be 2 weeks in August as I'll be going to the Dublin WorldCon and we'd like to do some touring.

>137 Busifer: Ah, that’s great, it sounds like employees in Sweden are fairly well protected. I have noticed that vacation time seems to be much more generous in European countries than it is here, at least in those countries where I’ve had the opportunity to discuss it with people. Being able to take three weeks in a row would be wonderful for travel. One could combine multiple destinations into one vacation and still have time to see them at a reasonable pace and save time and money over all. On the other hand, I do enjoy spreading my five weeks out at semi-even intervals through the year, because it seems like there’s always a vacation not too far away to look forward to. If I had that option, maybe I would do the three-week thing every two or three years.

>138 Maddz: Congrats on the switch to permanent! Being able to work from home around the holidays is a nice option, especially given the commute time it will save. Working from home a day or two per week is permitted in my department throughout the year, although I personally don’t take much advantage of it. I enjoy the time it saves, but I feel more productive and focused when I’m in the office.

>139 YouKneeK: It took ages to get a reference from Cambridgeshire. Apparently, they got a new HR system after the redundancies, and of course my details were archived on the old system. So instead of just looking me up and getting the reference off, they had to ask HR to send my details, which meant extracting them from the archive, which meant asking IT to do that. Of course, they didn't mention that to Islington or to me - so I was being badgered by Islington HR as they hadn't had a reply from CCC, and I was following up, but it wasn't until I go in touch with someone else that I found out what was going on.

I like working from home - my manager has to ring me up to ask me questions, so she saves them for a batch or emails me (which I can safely ignore for over an hour because of the dire version of Citrix we're using means I keep the window minimised). Otherwise, sometimes I feel she's bothering me every 5 minutes which is a pain when I'm trying to work out what's going on in a query or building a series of variables. Even wearing a pair of headphones doesn't always help. The other great thing is that I have iTunes playing - I have an old iPod Classic which means wired headphones. I have enough wires and stuff on my desk without adding more...

Of course, it helps not finding out at 4 pm the day before my 'at home' day that my manager can't go to a meeting so is sending me instead. Luckily, I have no meetings on Monday so can work from home then. It did mean I had to travel 5 days last week which was very tiring especially as I'm coming down with a cold.

>140 Maddz: Traveling while sick is the worst. Traveling is tiring to begin with, so it makes the recovery more difficult. I hope you’re feeling better soon!

I’ve had managers like that in the past and the constant interruptions always drove me a little batty. Happily, my current manager is much more hands off, which is what I prefer. One of the other managers on the team is one of those people who cannot sit quietly. She must be constantly talking. When she's in the office, she spends about 15 minutes of each hour asking everybody around her random questions about whatever task she’s currently working on and the other 45 minutes of each hour telling non-work-related stories. Meanwhile, the people who report to her can’t get their assigned work done. As soon as I hear her come in, the headphones go in. But she works from home a lot and travels on business quite a bit, so that helps.

Review: Fool’s Fate by Robin Hobb



Fool’s Fate is the last book in the Tawny Man trilogy, which is the third subseries in the larger Realms of the Elderlings series. This is the last of Hobb’s books that were re-reads for me. I have never yet read the remaining two subseries.

This book is very taxing on an emotional level. It’s one of her longer books at over 900 pages, and the second half is pretty much just one big series of climactic events. It’s an emotional roller coaster, and very stressful if you’ve become as attached to the characters as I had. I really think I’ve gotten a lot more out of re-reading these, if only because I already knew how things would turn out and was able to read them more calmly and focus on all the details.

This trilogy is my favorite out of these first three, although I think one would definitely need to read the first two to fully appreciate the depth and connections found in this one. Its ending was terribly frustrating to me the first time I read it though, in large part because I didn’t know more books were planned at the time I read it. I still found it frustrating this time around, but I was better prepared for it. I’m hopeful (while also being scared!) that the last trilogy will end in a way I find more satisfying.

I have a few more comments with some major spoilers in the spoiler tags.
One thing I’m pretty sure I never caught during my first read of these books is that Fitz actually encountered his mother and never knew it. In this book, he has a memory of being called Keppet by his mother, which is the first time we’re really told what his original name was. After seeing that, it occurred to me to search for that word in all text on my Kindle to see if it was mentioned in any of the other books. It brought up results in Assassin’s Apprentice, where a Mountain woman in Buckkeep Town kept yelling Keppet at him. He didn’t understand what she meant, and somebody else restrained her and he went on with his business.

During this re-read, I had been terribly bothered that I couldn’t remember how things turned out with Icefyre – whether he was killed or freed or what. This is a major plot point, and will undoubtedly have repercussions for the next subseries, so how could I not remember? I was therefore somewhat anxious during this re-read to find out what happened. Once I got to that point in the book, I was pretty sure I understood why that aspect of the story didn’t stick with me. I had already been worried about the Fool’s fate from the time he prophesied that he would die on the island in the previous book. I also believed this was the last of the books, so I was really worried about what would happen to the Fool in this book and his part of the story was my biggest focus. Then the whole climactic sequence with the dragons happened while the Fool had last been seen chained to the stone dragon, slowly being forged. I have no doubt my mind was more on the Fool in the ice caves than it was on what I was reading at that point.

This really is one emotional book, especially in the second half. It didn’t bother me nearly as much this time around since I knew what was coming, but I was a wreck the first time. Between the Fool’s torture, Burrich’s death, and then Fitz finding the Fool’s dead body, I was devastated. And then I was ecstatic when Fitz brought the Fool back to life. But then he’s in so much agony, both physically and mentally. And then there was the Fool’s decision to separate his path from Fitz’s which, while his reasoning was logical, was terribly painful to read about. It was a really great conversation though, and I was able to appreciate it more the second time around. Their lack of closure due to the unintentional parting when Fitz gets trapped in the skill stone for a month, and knowing that the Fool had to leave Buckkeep without being entirely sure whether Fitz was even still alive, was a huge frustration to me the first time.

I was pretty annoyed with their story being left that way, and the “happily ever after” type ending with Molly and her kids was kind of like a slap in the face because I had never been invested in that relationship. I felt like it was founded mostly on angst, physical attraction, and lies and didn’t have any real foundation. That’s not to say it couldn’t turn into a more genuine relationship, but it never felt like that had happened yet. So the first time I read this, not knowing that there would be more books, I was pretty unhappy with that ending. I had felt like Hobb was going for the traditional “and the guy gets the girl” ending, which didn’t work for me. I’m still nervous about what Hobb will do to these characters in the last trilogy, but knowing there are more books makes some of the stuff in this book easier to swallow.

Next Book
Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes. This will be my first book by Beukes, and I know nothing about the story, so I look forward to going in blind and finding out what I’m getting into. After this, I’ll continue with the Hobb books. I’m looking forward to starting her new-to-me books and being back in unfamiliar territory.

>142 YouKneeK: Broken Monsters is the only one of her's I've read, and while I didn't hate it, it didn't impress me either.

>142 YouKneeK: That is a LOT of spoiler territory :-D

>143 quondame: It seems that, among the people I know who have rated it, this is another one of those books with a wide range of opinions. This makes me all the more curious. :) I still haven’t started it yet, but I plan to get a little bit of reading in before bed.

>144 BookstoogeLT: Ha, I did get a little carried away!

>141 YouKneeK: What I find trying is the constant brain reboot it involves because she's usually asking me about something completely unrelated to my current task - I have to disengage mentally from what I'm doing, figure out what she wants, then try and pick up the thread of what I was doing again. It's distracting at best when I'm variable building for table outputs (create a single variable in first cell in table - R1C1, copy the formula, create variable for next cell along and edit one condition - R1C2, and keep on along the row, go to next cell in column 1 - R2C1, and edit different condition), but if I'm working on a report with multiple data providers, complex internal linkages and data flows, it's a real pain and I run the very real risk I miss something.

>146 Maddz: I have similar problems with interruptions. If I’m doing something I find easy or tedious it’s not too disastrous, but I have to take some extra time to make sure I know where I left off and get back into the rhythm of what I was doing. If I’m in the middle of a major analysis, reading journals and joblogs and code and trying to understand how some bad thing happened, or writing some complex code of my own, or anything that requires me to keep all the threads of my thoughts together, an interruption can cause a serious setback. Either way, I hate being ripped away from what I’m working on when my brain is fully engaged in it. It’s like being interrupted in the middle of an exciting part of a book and then trying to get back into it with the same level of engagement after the interruption is over.

If I’m doing anything complicated, I type myself notes as I work because interruptions are guaranteed. My boss may be good at leaving me alone, but some of my other colleagues and internal customers are not. IMs are heavily used/abused where I work, so many of my interruptions are actually from people who aren't at the same location as I am. I can't ignore them, because sometimes an issue will come up that is genuinely more urgent than whatever I'm working on. If I’m debugging or analyzing something, I keep an outline summarizing what I’ve found and where. If I’m writing code of my own, I usually outline what I need to do before I start, edit it if I think of new things while I’m working, and mark off things as I complete them. No matter what I’m working on, if I think of something important I need to do but can’t do right that minute, I type myself a quick note on my running document. Otherwise I might get distracted and forget before I can get to it, and not having to try to remember all my random thoughts makes it easier for me to focus on the current piece of my task.

>147 YouKneeK: Fortunately (she says) IMs aren't a problem at the council - currently we use Skype. However, this may change - in the coming year there's going to be some major IT upgrades in terms of the stack (hopefully this will translate into hardware as well - try finding 32-bit versions of software that'll run under Win 7). The intention is to use MS Azure. As long as I can work from home on the Mac and don't need to lug a laptop home every day (too many stairs), I don't care - as long as it's better than Sharepoint.

Fingers crossed, we've made it quite clear we have to use Excel to ensure interoperability with our stakeholders and central government (as in this is what you will use to submit your returns - nothing else will be accepted), otherwise we'll get lumbered with Power BI only (no, I'm not going to try to use Google Sheets - I've heard horror stories about that). The consultant was basically saying we must not copy & paste between programmes and certainly not into Excel.

We will be going to an internal data warehouse, but that probably won't happen until too late to build the returns for next year, so I'm building from scratch in Business Objects. That has 2 advantages - firstly, it's a good backup, and secondly, I can figure out exactly what needs to be extracted and how it needs to be linked and transformed.

>142 YouKneeK: Yeah, that is one emotional roller coaster of a book. Gotta love Hobb :) I was very upset with the "happily ever after" ending too. It just didn't feel in line with the rest of the series. And I really wish Fitz would find someone other than Molly.

>148 Maddz: I hope the upgrades end up as an improvement overall.

>149 Narilka: Regarding your last spoiler sentence, you and me both! :)

>136 YouKneeK: Your vacation plan sounds identical where I work. Its a big company with a three letter acronym name.

>151 Karlstar: My company is also large (Fortune 500), but it’s a two-word name, no acronyms. :)

Hah. I'm with a global three letter acronym in IT.
In my experience rather a lot of employee stuff (vacation rules, sick days, etc) is down to local labour law.

D E C ?

I feel like we’re inventing some sort of new Where-Do-You-Work game. :)

I have to share the latest freakishness that is my cat Ernest. As some of you may remember, he likes to open the drawers and cabinets in my bedroom and office furniture. He's been doing this for at least a couple years. He recently expanded his furniture-opening repertoire to the bathroom and, unfortunately, the kitchen. Needless to say, I don’t want a cat traipsing through my kitchen cabinets, so I may have to consider the childproofing route if he doesn’t get bored of it fast.

The other night, I heard him opening random things in the kitchen. I ignored him, because this is the fastest way to make him stop doing something. If I yell or make loud noises to try to scare him off, this makes it an even more fun game. He runs away and then sneaks back to keep doing it. The noises stopped a couple minutes later, and I kept reading. A few minutes later, I went upstairs to take my shower and do the other things I do to get ready for bed. By the end of my routine, the cat hadn’t materialized. This is very unusual; he’s always hanging around if I’m moving around doing things, and he often sits on top of the bathroom door while I’m in the shower. I think he enjoys the steam, and I know he enjoys the nearby heater vent during the colder months. I started looking for him and couldn’t find him in the usual spots, so I tried the sure-fire way to get him to come to me which is to open his toy drawer. He didn’t come, so I knew he was trapped somewhere.

I went searching through the entire house, opening doors to closets and the laundry room and any place I might have had open that he could have slipped into when I wasn’t looking. That’s usually where he is on the rare occasion he gets trapped. Still no cat. I saw he’d left some kitchen cabinets open, so I checked that he wasn’t in there and closed them, and now I was starting to get pretty worried. He’s not a very loud cat, so he can be shut up somewhere and I may not ever hear him. I must have gone through the whole house 5 times, including re-opening the kitchen cabinets in question and looking in them again. Finally, I was standing in the kitchen trying to think what to do next, and I heard a little tiny meow. I started opening everything in my kitchen. I finally found him inside of an empty kitchen drawer. And oddly, considering I was looking for him, I screamed when I opened the drawer and saw a furry thing moving around. I guess he had opened it, crawled in, and maybe his movement while he was scrambling around doing stupid cat things caused it to close on him.

>155 YouKneeK: Great cat adventure - could the cat have made his way into the closed drawer by going into an open drawer and though the inner side or back of the cabinet? I know that's how snakes hide.

>155 YouKneeK: I'm laughing, but I know how terrifying it is. I lost mine today for about 3 minutes, and I knew one of my doors had been wide open for a bit while I was carrying in some shelving. So I was relieved to find her sleeping on the bed in my spare bedroom. I did find one of mine sleeping on a stack dinner plates in a cabinet a decade or so ago. :o)

>153 Busifer: Would those 3 letters be IBM?

>158 Karlstar: Nope. My employer is Canadian...

>156 quondame: He has squeezed into some surprisingly small spaces before, but I didn’t see any entry points that he could have used. The drawer itself has pretty high walls on all four sides, and there’s very little gap between them and the “ceiling” of the drawer. I also didn’t see any holes at all in the cabinets he’d opened that could have led to somewhere else. The bedroom furniture on the other hand has enough of a gap that he can open the drawer and then squeeze back behind the open drawer. I’m always afraid to close the ones he’s left open if I don’t know exactly where he is lest I squish the cat. He does find it strangely entertaining to chase his tail in small spaces like drawers, and it doesn’t take too much effort to close the kitchen drawers.

>157 clamairy: Oh, that would have been a very scary 3 minutes! I’m glad she didn’t get out. I’m pretty paranoid about mine getting outside. There’s way too much traffic in my area, and I think we have leash laws that apply to cats also. LOL about sleeping on a stack of dinner plates, that would have been cute. :)

>160 YouKneeK: While we were doing some construction in the basement, our new cat climbed up the framing into the ceiling, then into some plumbing runs and decided to stay up there for a week! Darn cats :).

>155 YouKneeK: Ha! Silly Ernest. Will he decide that hide-and-seek is fun and start doing it all the time?

When I first adopted Reuben & Cherise, they had been rescued from a hoarding home and were very skittish. Cherise got comfortable fairly quickly but Reuben was scared of everything and found hiding spots in my house that I didn't know existed. He even climbed the curtains and pushed his way up above the suspended ceiling panels.

I just overfeed them until they are big - they don't get up to the kind of antics that little skinny cats do :)

>155 YouKneeK: That is a fun cat story, but for me, what stands out are the words, "empty kitchen drawer." Wow.

>163 MrsLee: Ha! I thought about that as well!

>162 Darth-Heather: Ah, you like round kitties! My Belle is a little chubbier here than she used to be. I think it's because she had three floors to explore before, and here she's mostly confined to one. The boxes I haven't emptied are all stacked in the basement, and I don't think it's that safe for her to be jumping on them.

>155 YouKneeK: Silly kitty! I am so glad mine have not figured out opening cabinets. That would drive me nuts lol

>161 Karlstar: Yikes, that would have freaked me out! Was he/she able to get water from there? That seems like too long for a cat to go without food or water, but I guess it would come out if it got desperate enough.

>162 Darth-Heather: That’s funny (well, maybe not so much for you!) that Reuben climbed the curtains. My ceilings are boring, but I could see mine climbing the curtains just because they were there. When I first got Ernest, I had been thinking about getting curtains. I quickly gave that idea up after I got to know him.

>163 MrsLee: LOL, I only have the one empty drawer, but I definitely don’t have your cooking skills. I generally think of cooking as an unpleasant chore to be minimized, so I probably have a lot fewer supplies than you do.

>164 clamairy: She might knock off some of the higher boxes and “unpack” for you if they aren’t still all sealed up. It counts as unpacking as long as the stuff is out of the boxes, right? :)

>165 Narilka: It can get exasperating sometimes! :) On the other hand, it forces me to keep my cabinets and drawers organized since he kindly opens them for the cat sitter when I’m out of town. I wouldn’t want him showing off my hidden messes…

>166 YouKneeK: We were fairly certain she came down for food and water at night when no one was around. We left tuna out to entice her, but she kept going back. By then I'd opened up the wall, and the ceiling looking for her. I finally put a shorter ladder under the hole in the ceiling and made it too hard for her to get back up there.

>167 Karlstar: Ah, that does make sense. Poor scared kitty!

Review: Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes



Broken Monsters is a bit difficult to define. It reads a lot like a police procedural, but without some of the typical tropes. There are fantasy/horror elements also, but they’re in the background throughout most of the book. I liked the writing style, but I was only moderately interested in the story through the first half. Halfway through, I became much more interested.

The book opens up with Detective Gabi on the scene of a newly discovered dead body. Or bodies. It’s not quite your typical murder. This is revealed on page 3, so I don’t consider it a spoiler, but I’m going to put it in spoiler tags for the sake of anybody who doesn’t want to read a description of a dead body. Or bodies. The “body” is the top half of a ten-year-old boy attached to the lower half of a deer. It’s not really a mystery though, because we’re introduced to the killer pretty early. We slowly learn his motive, which is where the real mystery is. The story is told from a variety of POVs, and most of their individual stories don’t seem very related at first, but of course they all eventually connect into the main storyline. Some of those characters were more interesting than others, and one of them (Jonno) was really, really annoying. It was after all the threads started connecting that I became more interested in the story.

The writing style is slightly terse, but not as dramatically terse as I’ve often seen in other police-procedural-type stories. The detective is happily not much of a stereotype either. For one, she’s a female. She’s neither an alcoholic nor a walking chimney. Although she is divorced, she has a teenage daughter who lives with her. She isn’t pursuing a case she’s been told to drop; everybody else wants the case solved too. I actually liked her character pretty well and her chapters were some of the ones I found more interesting.

There are some gruesome things described in this book, and some people might have trouble with it, but this isn’t a book where the gore is described in loving detail. It was described just enough for the reader’s imagination to run with it, and I didn’t feel like anything was gratuitous. The ending was a bit weird, but not so weird that I lost interest and couldn’t buy into it. There was a little bit left unexplained, with the tiniest hint of “is it really over?”, but it wasn’t too bad on either count.

During the first half of the book, I would have rated this at 3 stars. I enjoyed the second half at a 4-star level. I’m therefore going to give this 3.5 stars and round up to 4 on Goodreads.

Next Book
Dragon Keeper, the first book in Robin Hobb’s Rain Wilds subseries, and the first of the Realms of the Elderlings books that won’t be a re-read for me. I’m really looking forward to getting into new territory. Although this series has four books, it’s still the shortest of the five subseries in terms of page count, by a small margin for the first subseries and by a larger margin for the others.

Review: Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb



Dragon Keeper is the first book in the Rain Wilds series, which is the fourth subseries in the larger Realms of the Elderlings series. It’s the first book that I hadn’t read previously, and I really enjoyed being in new territory within this world.

The story starts off a little slow with the author introducing her characters and letting the reader become a part of their lives before all the action starts. Not that this book ever gets really heavy on the action, but the tension does build and there is plenty of stuff going on. I enjoyed it from the beginning, but my interest grew as the story progressed. There is no ending or sense of closure whatsoever. There isn’t a huge cliffhanger, but nothing was resolved and there were several things that happened near the end that left me anxious to find out what would happen next. I was already planning to read the series back-to-back anyway, but I finished the book too late last night to start the next one, so I’m going to have to wait aaaallll the way until I get home from work today before I can continue the story!

The format is similar to that of the Liveship Traders in that it’s told from the third-person perspective with a variety of POVs. I think the characters in this series may be the least likeable of all the series so far. They’re certainly flawed. There was only one POV character that I liked without reservation (Thymara), although I did also like several of the secondary characters. My opinions and sympathies for the other POV characters fluctuated a lot as we learned more about them and as I saw them through different characters’ eyes including their own.

My edition had a character list at the beginning of the book, so I read that first thinking it would be immediately relevant. It actually represented several things that didn’t happen until quite a bit later, so I had some regret over reading it. Not all of the names stuck in my head after reading the list, but a few did and it spoiled some of the suspense I might have had otherwise about how certain things would turn out. It wasn’t anything major, but I think it would have been better placed at the end of the book and at the beginning of the second book to serve as a review. The characters were easy to keep straight without the list anyway.

I have several rambling and spoilerish comments for the spoiler tags…
I thought the story really picked up once the dragon keepers were identified and the expedition got underway. I enjoyed it from the beginning, but that was when I really got wrapped up in it.

Alise is a sympathetic character to some extent, but she was really frustrating to me. She was naïve and weak-willed. She did at least assert herself on occasion, but it was usually in the form of an emotional outburst rather than a logically-reasoned argument, and that put her at a disadvantage to some of her adversaries. I was so mad at her when she confronted Hest about his infidelity and told him what her “proof” was. First, she should have waited until she had more tangible proof, because she didn’t have anything that couldn’t be easily explained away. Second, she never should have told him what her proof was when she confronted him because that made it easy for him to shoot it down. And of course she proved her ignorance even before that by using a female pronoun. If she had been vague enough to leave him worrying about what she knew, he might have made mistakes or been more manipulatable.

I also couldn’t identify with Alise’s attitude that her only options in life were an unwanted marriage or being a burden on her family for the rest of her life. She did finally ask herself why she had believed that, many pages after I had already been asking it. I could see how her upbringing and her experience made it difficult for her to consider other options, and I’ve known people like her, but it’s an attitude that really goes against my grain.

Sedric… ugh. In the beginning I wanted to see him as a sympathetic character because at least he seemed to have some compassion for Alise, even if he was partly responsible for her problems and too much of a coward to tell her the truth. I disliked him more and more as the story progressed. Occasionally I would start to feel a little sympathy for him again, but then it would be ripped away shortly thereafter. I hated him by the end, when he wounded a sick dragon to get blood and scales to sell. I am curious though to see what the repercussions of his tasting the dragon blood will be, and which dragon’s thoughts he heard in his mind at the end there.

I’m curious if anything will come of the letters between the Keepers of the Birds in terms of the larger plot, or if those sections just serve as a way to keep the reader informed of the larger events back in Bingtown and Treehaug that we would otherwise be ignorant of with no POV characters there.

Next Book
Dragon Haven, the second book in this series.

>170 YouKneeK: For your sake I am glad you are enjoying Hobbs' stuff so much, but I am glad I am not following you on a blog. I would have had to check out for a couple of months. All this Hobbs is killing me :-D

Is Hobbs done in this universe or is she continuing to write more?

>171 BookstoogeLT: I think she’s done, although I haven’t researched what she’s working on now. But I’ve been thinking, since you enjoy Hobb reviews so much, maybe I’ll jump straight into a re-read after I finish. Just for you. You were encouraging re-reads on your blog a while back, right? ;)

(Don't worry, I think that would be too much even for me!)

>172 YouKneeK: * promptly disembowels himself with a dull spoon *

Why a spoon?

>174 Karlstar: Because the shame of suggesting a re-read of these particular books is so great that a knife just wouldn't cut it (ahahahaa). A dull spoon is more in line with the amount of suffering needed to cover such a dishonorable suggestion from me

That, and years ago, it was the worst thing I could think of when I saw the original star wars recently released to dvd and they "updated" Anakin Skywalker's ghost in Return of hte Jedi to Hayden Christensen. George Lucas was lucky that month that I didn't live near him. So now, it has become my guiding light for any action that needs expiation.

>175 BookstoogeLT: I thought maybe you were quoting from Robin Hood. :)

>170 YouKneeK: You enjoyed that one more than I did, mostly because it was all set up and just as things really got going it ended. It really is one where you need book two immediately :)

>177 Narilka: It really was a lot of setup. I enjoyed that part but now that I’m reading the second book I almost feel like I should rate the first one lower by comparison. I’m only 30% in, but I’m enjoying it so much.

I was all excited to come home from work and read today, then all Hell broke loose about 1 minute before I normally leave and kept me there a couple extra hours. I did finally manage to make it home, but there was a new issue by the time I got home. It’s funny how we can have days of quiet and then all the problems happen at once. :)

>178 YouKneeK: Hate when that happens at work! And they tend to come in groups like that.

Nothing says you can't go back and rate the first book lower later. I've had that before, when after thinking about a book more I bump up or down the rating.

>179 Narilka: It’s tempting, but that would lead to madness for me as I know I would end up changing ratings constantly, so I've tried to avoid it. I’ve more-or-less made myself happy by saying my rating is my “first impression” rating, giving me a snapshot of how I felt immediately after finishing. I did really enjoy it, it’s just that I’m enjoying book 2 better. Sometimes I have to remind myself that it’s a rating system, not a ranking system. :)

Review: Dragon Haven by Robin Hobb



Dragon Haven is the second book in the Rain Wilds series, which is the fourth subseries in the larger Realms of the Elderlings series. I really, really enjoyed this book. I liked the first book a lot, but this one was even better. It forcefully grabbed my attention and refused to let go. Work ate into my reading time more than usual this week, and I was very annoyed at that. Don’t these people understand that I have dragons to worry about? ;)

Whereas the first book felt like it ended right smack in the middle of the story, this book had a lot more closure. There is more story to be told, and I really look forward to reading that story, but I was also happy to see several plot lines wrapped up nicely. I realize now that both books were published in 2010, so maybe they were originally intended to be a single book.

The character list that I felt was spoilerish for the first book is repeated, but this time all the info it presents was already revealed in the story from the first book so it’s safe to read for the strongly spoiler-adverse.

A few more comments in the spoiler tags…
I think the part of this story that made me more anxious than anything else was Relpda, the copper dragon. I was so worried about her fate! I actually had to stop reading due to a work issue right at the point when Sedric was waffling about whether or not to help Jess kill her. Talk about torture.

On the other hand, I was never in much suspense as to the fate of Heeby and Rapskal. For some reason I saw that one coming from the moment they were lost, that Heeby would have learned to fly and that they went on to Kelsingra. My prediction was that everybody else would find them when they got thre. I was a little off there, but close.

I think it’s been clear from the first book that Mercor used to be the serpent Maulkin, even though it hasn’t been explicitly stated yet. What I’m wondering is whether Shreever and Sessurea survived to become dragons. We know they made it into cocoons, at least. My best guess is that Shreever is Heeby and Sessurea is Sestican.

Thymara is still my favorite POV character. She’s prickly, but at least she considers the consequences of her actions and doesn’t just heedlessly do things just because she wants to. That’s more than can be said for a lot of the other characters.

Sedric did get some redemption in this book, but I still don’t care for him. He’s made so many bad decisions, that I tend to see his better behavior as being the result of Relpda’s and Carson’s influence rather than a true change in himself. The book does imply that his recent attitude is more like what he used to be before Hest changed him, but I'm skeptical. Either way, he's too easily influenced by the people around him. I'm waiting to see how he behaves in the rest of the series before I make any final judgments.

I really look forward to finding out what happens next, now that they’ve found Kelsingra.

Next Book
City of Dragons, the third out of the four books in this series, and I think the shortest of all the Elderlings books at a mere 433 pages.

Review: City of Dragons by Robin Hobb



City of Dragons is the third out of four books in the Rain Wilds series, which is the fourth out of five subseries in the larger Realms of the Elderlings series.

Although I enjoyed this book, I thought it was the slowest of all the Elderlings books so far. The first half was the slowest and then it started to pick up for me in the second half. There were some interesting discoveries and there were a few moments of excitement, but not as much as in the previous books. A few additional POVs were introduced, although with less page time as compared to the regular POVs. Some of those were quite interesting, but one of them was a little tedious.

I don’t have much more I can say without spoiler tags, so on to the spoilers. Note that there are a handful of spoilers here for previous books from the other subseries also. I didn’t think I had much to say about this book, but I went off on my usual tangents once I got started…

One of the two slowest parts for me was the early exploration of Kelsingra, particularly from Alise’s POV. There just wasn’t a lot going on there, and there wasn’t much new described that hadn’t been described previously and more engagingly in previous books and in the short story Homecoming. I did get excited when Alise found a statue of that girl the Fool had been during his vision with Fitz back in Assassin’s Quest. I was also happy to see the reference to the broken glass and table in the map tower from when Verity and then Fitz were there. The city exploration got more interesting to me after Sintara woke it up, and I look forward to finding out what else they discover in the next book.

The other slowest parts were the chapters from the POV of Hest. At first I was happy to see he was a POV character in this book, because I’d been curious to get inside his head. His head is not a great place to be in, and he’s a very tedious and obnoxious character. This shouldn’t have been surprising, I guess! Fortunately there weren’t too many pages from his POV, and it’s pretty clear they were necessary to the ongoing story. I very much look forward to the confrontation when he catches up with Alise and Sedric.

I also wasn’t thrilled with the whole thing between Thymara and Rapskal. I liked Rapskal well enough in the previous books, but not as a romantic interest for Thymara. I didn’t like the way he manipulated her by tricking her into sharing the memories in the stones, and his personality really started to grate on me in this book. I’m getting a little tired of the Thymara/Rapskal/Tats angst, really. Of the two guys I like Tats better, but I’d be just as happy if not happier to see Thymara successfully assert her independence and not choose either of them. The more they pressure her, the more annoyed with them I get.

I did enjoy the section with both Malta’s and Selden’s POVs, and I was also generally happy to learn what was going on back in the cities. Selden didn’t get much page time at all, but I’m looking forward to finding out what happens to him in the next book. The sections where Malta went into labor and was kidnapped by the Chalcedeans were probably the most exciting parts of the book to me. I’m also looking forward to seeing her and Reyn get to Kelsingra where they’ll discover just how much the dragons have grown. And it looks like Tintaglia will be headed that way also. It will be fun to see her reaction to the dragons too.

One thing I’ve been wondering is how the dragons’ growth reflects on the Fool’s efforts in the Tawny Man series. He risked everything and went through so much misery in his quest to ensure Icefyre was released from the ice so he could mate with Tintaglia and bring dragons back into the world. From what I remember, the visions of both the Fool and the Pale Woman implied that Icefyre’s survival was critical to the return of the dragons. And yet it seems like the dragons that hatched in the Rain Wilds are well on their way toward becoming flying, mating-capable dragons. Unless we find out they’re sterile or something. I guess it’s also possible that, if Icefyre had not survived, Tintaglia would have stayed with the dragons. If she had, they might not have been motivated to try to get to Kelsingra, especially since Tintaglia had gone there before and found the city to be dead and probably would have discouraged the idea. The exercise from that journey, the dragon warming spots they found on the way, and the warm baths in Kelsingra all seem to be chiefly instrumental in strengthening them. Still, I'm hoping there will be a more satisfying explanation.

Next Book
Blood of Dragons, the last book in this subseries.

Review: Blood of Dragons by Robin Hobb



Blood of Dragons is the last book in the Rain Wilds series, which is the second-to-last subseries in the larger Realms of the Elderlings series. I enjoyed this book a lot. It didn’t quite grab me and refuse to let go like the second book did, but it still held my attention pretty strongly. I still like the trilogies with Fitz and the Fool best of all, but I enjoyed this series about equally with Liveship Traders.

I was happy with how all the different plot threads were wrapped up. There were some long-awaited scenes that provided satisfying closure to certain storylines, and I was left with a good sense of how the future looked for all our main characters and how larger events going on in the world might be impacted.

I have a few spoilery comments for the spoiler tags.

I was particularly happy to see the confrontations between Hest and Alise and Sedric. I thought Sedric particularly shined in his confrontations with Hest, especially when he stood up for Alise without prompting and didn’t flinch from acknowledging his own mistakes. I was happy to finally see him show some real strength of character. I was kind of amused when Hest was eaten by Kalo, although that’s a bit worrisome if Kalo is going to make a habit of eating humans that annoy him. I did like that nobody really knew or cared what happened to Hest in the end. He was no longer an important person in anybody’s life.

If I have one complaint about this series, I think it would just be that I got a little tired of all the pairing off. It seemed like every female who showed up in the story got paired off with somebody. I guess it may have been an intentional theme, since there has been a lot of focus not just in this series on the dragons mating and perpetuating their species. In this series, that was extended to the Elderlings and some of the regular humans. I think it made some parts seem a little slow though, as I was never really invested in any of the relationships and so occasionally found them tiresome if they were dwelt on for too long. The only one that really got annoying to me was the Thymara/Tats/Rapskal angst, though.

I hope we’ll get some sense of how the events in Chalced at the end of this series affect the larger world in the last trilogy. If I remember correctly, the end of slavery was one of the things the Fool was hoping his actions would bring about. The dragons’ attack on Chalced, initiated by Icefyre, seems like it might achieve that result if Chassim rules Chalced as dramatically different as I expect she might.

Next Book
I’m going to take a brief Hobb break before finishing up the final trilogy, just long enough to read Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm. I don’t know anything about this book but judging by the title I’m going to guess it’s an environmental dystopia. I look forward to finding out if I’m correct and/or discovering what it’s really about.

>183 YouKneeK: Sedric went on quite a character arc. He reminded me of Malta in that regard as to how changed his character was from beginning to end. The Rain Wilds were the only books in the Realm of the Elderlings that felt almost YA and I think that may have been due to all the angst/romance you pointed out.

>184 Narilka: I can definitely see that comparison. I hated both Malta and Sedric quite passionately in their early books but came to respect them eventually. It was fun to see Malta and Reyn look back on her childhood behavior a bit in this series. I can also see the YA feeling, especially with the Thymara/Tats/Rapskal love triangle.

Review: Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm



This book starts with an environmental apocalypse. Due to radiation and other environmental issues, humanity and animals are becoming infertile and crop failures are causing famines. The rest of the book is about how a group of survivors try to ensure humanity’s survival, and the consequences of their chosen method. Since this book is so short I hate to give away many details and spoil the discovery of reading it for oneself, but I’ll put a more tangible explanation of what the book is about within the spoiler tags. Cloning, not just of livestock but also of humans. The idea is that, after a certain number of clones, fertility will start to increase again to the point that natural births will be a viable lifestyle again. However, the clones see their reproductive method as an improvement and have different ideas, and there are a lot more of them than there are of the original humans.

I liked the story, but I also grew restless with it pretty often and I took more breaks from reading than I typically do. It isn’t slow-paced, though; it covers a lot of ground in a short, 250-page book. I wouldn’t have minded a little more detail, but I think we were told enough to convey the important parts of the story. The author uses the third-person omniscient perspective, especially in the second and third parts of the book. That’s the only type of perspective that really bothers me when I encounter it, although I did eventually adjust to it. It did simplify things a bit to know what everybody was thinking at the moment it was relevant. I expect it wouldn’t bother me as much if I encountered it more often because I would be more used to it, but it just feels wrong to me to hop heads so frequently even when it’s perfectly clear whose head I’m in.

This book was published in 1976 and it had a very 60ish “free love” type of feel to it. Nothing is described graphically or in any detail except maybe in one spot, but there are many casual mentions of everybody having sex with everybody, usually in groups. It fits fairly well into the story and the society portrayed, but might be off-putting to some.

I’m not very strong in the natural sciences, but the science presented in this book felt a little hand-wavey to me. I was skeptical as to how realistic it was even for the time when it was published, but I was mostly able to just accept it as a vehicle for the author’s story. I did occasionally get pulled out of the story by some of the psychological aspects that seemed a little too extreme to be realistic.

There are some interesting ideas here, and the story is told well. If I were being more objective I would probably give this 3.5 stars, but my subjective enjoyment level stayed around 3 stars and that’s what takes priority for me when I rate a book.

Next Book
The final trilogy in Hobb’s Realms of the Elderlings series, starting with Fool’s Assassin. For anybody who hasn’t already noticed and might be interested, @Narilka just recently started this trilogy in her thread and we’re going to discuss it a bit there while we both read. The more the merrier! :) (@BookstoogeLT, I just know you’re dying to join us in discussing your “favorite” author…)

>186 YouKneeK: Free love and hippies and clones, oh my! Goodness, sounds like a book to send me into a frothing rant or three!

And yes, I will be following that discussion so closely that you couldn't insert a piece of floss between me and it. Honest *crosses fingers behind back*

>187 BookstoogeLT: LOL :)

I finally got around to watching a movie adaptation of Macbeth after reading the play early last month. I watched the 1971 version since it seemed the closest in portrayal to the original play out of the versions available to stream through Amazon. It did fit my memory of it quite well, although I definitely like it better when I watch the movie adaptation directly after finishing the play like I did after reading my previous two Shakespeare plays. Next time, I’ll try to time things better.

I think I may just not be a big Macbeth fan, though. After I read it, I mentioned that it was clearly meant to be watched rather than read since so much of the meat of the story is action and reaction and this made the written play feel a little too bare-bones. And yet I have a somewhat opposite complaint about the movie in that, with all the action and reaction added in, the story seemed way too drawn out. I'm not really sure why it doesn't appeal to me more, but I much preferred Hamlet.

I know they're quite edited versions of the original plays but I love BBC's The Hollow Crown series. One film/episode each for the plays Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI (two episodes), and Richard III.
Watching those it is easy to understand why Shakespeare has survived all these years; he had some special insights into what power do to/with a human.
I think that can be said for most of his plays, but these in particular.

>190 Busifer: I’ll have to keep series that in mind once I get to those plays.

Just popping in to wish you all the best for the festive season and the new year. I see I have to dodge Hobb reviews, since I'm supposed to be doing a group read of the Elderlings series.

>192 humouress: Thank you, I hope you have a very happy holiday season! How far has your group read gotten with the series?

>193 YouKneeK: Thank you.

I, personally, have stalled on Ship of Magic; I remember I loved it the first time and couldn’t wait for the next book but was disappointed in the direction on of the plot lines went and I think that’s what is holding me up.

As a group we got through the first Fitz trilogy and I think some people have finished the Ship trilogy but I think we’ve kind of agreed to take it easy. (Initially it was supposed to be one book every couple of months.)

>194 humouress: Sorry if you've told me this before, but how far did you get with her books when you read them previously? I ended up enjoying my re-read of the Liveship Traders series quite a bit, partly because of the things I already knew from the next trilogy which I had also read previously.

It seems difficult to keep people together on such a large series when everybody has a different reading pace and different preferences for how close together they read series books. It's fun to have a place for group discussions though, even if people are at different points. A group I’m a member of over on Goodreads also started reading these books not long after I did. Their schedule is officially one book a month which was too slow for me, but I've enjoyed reading the discussions. I think they’re supposed to be somewhere in the Liveship Traders series now, but it seems like people are pretty much all over the place.

>195 YouKneeK: Goodness, I can’t remember properly myself what I’ve read now; I’ve had most of the books sitting staring at me since they came out. I think I must have read the first three sub-series and made a start on ‘Dragons’ but not got further than the first book, at best.

>190 Busifer: >191 YouKneeK: I purchased The Hollow Crown on DVD maybe 10 years ago and really enjoyed it, in fact Sean Connery (pre-Bond fame) as Hotspur is one of the most memorable things about the series IMHO.

>197 mattries37315: Oh, we're not talking about the same version, though now I need to find the Connery one! The one I'm talking about is relatively new, aired 2012 (first cycle) and 2016 (second cycle), and has Ben Whishaw as Richard II, Jeremey Irons as Henry IV, Tom Hiddleston as Henry V, Tom Sturridge as Henry VI, and at last Benedict Cumberbatch as Richard III.

>198 Busifer: That is quite a cast.

>199 Narilka: ...and then I haven't mentioned any of the supporting cast. Sophie Okonedo, Judi Dench, Michael Gambon, John Hurt and Patrick Stewart, just to name a few of the more known actors. Sally Hawkins, Andrew Scott.
Not that the cast as such is any guarantee for a good experience, but in this case I think they d rather well :)

I do recommend it.

>198 Busifer: & >200 Busifer: Why do I not own these? I had better get busy trying to find them.

>198 Busifer: Don't ask me why I confused BBC's Shakespeare's An Age of Kings with The Hollow Crown. I have seen the first cycle of The Hollow Crown via PBS, I enjoyed Irons as the older Henry IV and Hiddleston's Henry V but I agree the editing of the adaptation was noticeable.

>201 MrsLee: I think you'd enjoy them!

>202 mattries37315: I think adapting the plays to a serialised TV format, ie not televised plays but modern TV, forced some creative editing. I do think they pulled it off, with honours. But then I did survive Peter Jackson's LoTR films ;-)

Review: Fool’s Assassin by Robin Hobb



Fool’s Assassin is the first book in the Fitz and the Fool, the very last subseries in the larger Realms of the Elderlings series. I really, really enjoyed this book. As with the best of her books, it kept me anxiously reading to get answers to various questions and to find out what would happen next. I hated having to put the book down. There was actually one night when, after forcing myself to stop reading so I could go to bed at a decent hour, I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about the book and feeling impatient to keep reading so I could get the answers I wanted. I managed to restrain myself and go back to sleep, but I was very tempted to start reading in the middle of the night.

As with the first and second Fitz trilogies, a significant amount of time has passed between the previous trilogy and this one. Unlike the previous trilogies, there are actually a few time jumps within the book itself, around the beginning of the story. It was a little unsettling to me at first just how much time was passing, but I think it was necessary and felt right for the story.

Hobb introduces some new characters and, as usual, does a great job making them live and breathe like real people. One of them is a very important character and doesn’t show up right away, but she was a great character that I became attached to quickly. Hobb also, as usual, created some characters that I enjoyed hating. :)

And the ending… I’m not sure how people who read this when it was originally published survived the wait for the next book. Seriously, has anybody heard from these people or are they off gibbering in a padded room somewhere? A few questions are answered by the end, but there’s still a lot left hanging and a bit of a cliffhanger at the very end. I’m glad I can go straight on to the second book.

The rest of my comments will have to go behind the spoiler tags:

The most torturous aspect of this book was waiting almost until the end for the Fool to show up! He’s my favorite character, even more than Fitz, so I was very eager to read more about him and hadn’t expected to have such a long wait. It was also difficult to read about all the horrible things he had been suffering over the years. I’m glad I hadn’t known in the beginning that he’d barely be in this book or I might not have gone into it with as much enthusiasm, but the book was still awesome even without him. I kept expecting him to turn up around every corner though, and I created a ridiculous amount of suspense for myself just wondering when that would happen and imagining how his arrival might surely fit into the next chapter.

I really liked Bee. At first I was alarmed to see a second POV character, but I hadn’t gotten far into her first chapter before I was attached to her. As soon as we learned that the unexpected son wasn’t Fitz as originally believed, I suspected it would probably be Bee despite the apparent gender mismatch. I had a lot of theories behind that, and my desire to find out if any of my theories were correct was another thing that kept me turning the pages. I loved her encounter with the Fool and I’m excited for them to meet again and for everybody to understand exactly who everybody is. Unfortunately, I suspect it will be a long time until that happens since Bee has apparently been kidnapped by the Servants. I’m sure this will make Fitz more enthusiastic to comply with the Fool’s request to assassinate the Servants, though…

I really liked Perseverance and the way he treated Bee. I hope he continues to play a role in the second book. It looks like he’ll escape since Bee hid him with her cloak, so I imagine Fitz will encounter him and Perseverance will be able to give Fitz enough info that he can deduce who kidnapped Bee. Fitz can be really blind to things sometimes, so I wonder how long it will take Fitz and the Fool to puzzle out that Bee is the unexpected son, especially since the Fool thought he just dreamed that encounter.

Shun was obnoxious, obnoxious, obnoxious. I would be happy never to see her again, but I assume she will survive the raid on Withywoods to annoy me again since so much setup was done for her character. On the other hand, I was expecting more development for FitzVigilant but he was apparently dead at the end, unless it turns out he was only badly wounded and he survives somehow. I wouldn’t miss him either. I felt sorry for him at first, but hated the way he acted.

Next Book
Fool’s Quest, the second book in this series. ASAP! :)

>204 YouKneeK: Love your review :)

>205 Narilka: Thank you! :)

>204 YouKneeK: I think I survived as sane as I started by picking up another book and turning the pages.

>207 quondame: I’m happy to hear from a survivor of that time. :)

I’m about halfway through Fool’s Quest and I think it’s safe to say I won’t finish it tonight, so I’m going to go ahead and post my year-end stats along with some random commentary. Thank you to everybody who has joined me in discussing books and other things this year; the conversations are what make this thread so much fun to maintain. I hope everybody has a wonderful 2019!

General Reading Stats
I read fewer books in 2018, but more pages. This is because I read several tomes this year, including 13 books with > 800 pages. The longest book was 1Q84 at 1332 pages.


Decades
I find it interesting to see what decades I read from throughout the year, and also to see what the median year (shown above the graph) is. This year I had a much higher percentage of books read in the current decade than I normally do. In 2018, 47% of the books I read were published on or after 2010. By comparison, only 21% of the books I read in 2017 were published on or after 2010. I didn’t read any books published in the current year, though.


Star Ratings
The below chart shows that I’m probably overly generous with my star ratings. I didn’t give five-star ratings with wild abandon, but I did give a lot of 4.5-star ratings. I read a lot of great books this year though. Epic fantasy is my favorite, and I got an extra dose of that between finishing up Wheel of Time at the beginning of the year and reading most of Hobb’s Elderlings books toward the end of the year. There were quite a few random other enjoyable books throughout the year too, so maybe it isn’t quite so surprising that my average rating was so high.


Shelves/Tags
This chart is the justification for my thread title. :) 93.5% of what I read this year was SF&F. I do tend to read quite a bit more fantasy than science fiction, so the below fantasy-heavy results are consistent with previous years. This is partly because the science fiction I read is often standalone works whereas most of the fantasy I read is part of a series. I have a few science fiction series I want to try fitting in next year though, so maybe that ratio will get a little closer in 2019.


Authors
Finally, we have the author charts. The genders aren’t honestly something I make any effort to keep equal, although the numbers are better this year than they have been in previous years. What I really care about is trying different authors, regardless of gender. As a latecomer to the SF&F genres, I still have a lot of authors to catch up on, old and new. This year, I tried 30 new-to-me authors.

Nice stats!

That is a lot 4.5's, for sure. It looks like your 5stars were pretty up there too, percentage wise. Of course, your average rating reflects that.

Congrats!

>210 BookstoogeLT: Thanks. :) Yeah, I think a lot of the 4.5 and 5 stars came from series reads which makes some sense because I wouldn’t have kept reading the series if I wasn’t enjoying them. But I’m not sure I would still give all of those books such high ratings if I were to go back and re-rate them based on how well they’ve stuck with me.

>190 Busifer: and >191 YouKneeK:, I wanted to enter a very late recommendation for The Hollow Crown. Benedict Cumberbatch did a really plausible Richard III.

>212 jillmwo: I’ve made a note on the spreadsheet where I muddle out my classic selections to remind me I need to check that out once I get to those plays.