YouKneeK’s 2020 SF&F Overdose Part 1

Happy New Year! I look forward to maintaining another reading journal thread for 2020 and having lots of discussions about books and other things. :)

Here’s some basic introductory info:

• 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 spoiler tags.
  
• I prefer to read a series after it’s complete, and I read all the books pretty close together.
  
• I’m 44, 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.

For anybody wondering, Ernest has now activated the Roomba more times than I could possibly count. This is in addition to his long-standing antics of opening drawers and cabinets, climbing ladders, breaking knick-knacks, and sitting on top of doors. He's the most hilarious, energetic, and cat-like cat I've ever had, which is why I tend to call him a "freak".

2020 Reading Index

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

   Date Read/
 # Review Link	Title				Author(s)		
 1 2020-01-06	This Alien Shore		C. S. Friedman
 2 2020-01-11	Honored Enemy			Raymond E. Feist and 
						William R. Forstchen
 3 2020-01-15	Murder in LaMut			Raymond E. Feist and 
						Joel Rosenberg
 4 2020-01-19	Jimmy the Hand			Raymond E. Feist and 
						S. M. Stirling
 5 2020-01-25	Jane Eyre			Charlotte Brontë
 6 2020-01-31	Talon of the Silver Hawk	Raymond E. Feist
 7 2020-02-02	King of Foxes			Raymond E. Feist
 8 2020-02-07	Exile's Return			Raymond E. Feist
 9 2020-02-09	Ubik				Philip K. Dick
10 2020-02-15	Flight of the Nighthawks	Raymond E. Feist
11 2020-02-18	Into a Dark Realm		Raymond E. Feist
12 2020-02-23	Wrath of a Mad God		Raymond E. Feist
13 2020-02-25	Memory of Water			Emmi Itäranta
14 2020-03-03	Rides a Dread Legion		Raymond E. Feist
15 2020-03-06	At the Gates of Darkness	Raymond E. Feist
16 2020-03-13	The Diamond Age			Neal Stephenson
17 2020-03-16	A Kingdom Besieged		Raymond E. Feist
18 2020-03-21	A Crown Imperiled		Raymond E. Feist
19 2020-03-29	Magician's End			Raymond E. Feist

Last year I wrote a big post about my reading plans for 2019, but I really haven’t had much time to even make plans for 2020. I do have some mostly-solidified plans for this year’s classic selections. I may post something a little later when I have more time.

Meanwhile, this thread is now open for discussion, but it may be a few days before I have a review to post for 2020! I just finished a book late yesterday and haven’t yet started my next book, This Alien Shore by C. S. Friedman. I'm hoping to start it soon after making this post.

>3 YouKneeK: Happy New Year! I've read some C.S. Friedman, I'm quite fond of the Coldfire trilogy, have you read those?

Happy New Year and happy reading!

I'm very interested in your thoughts on This Alien Shore. I'm fond of her other works so curious if I should give this a try too.

Best wishes for a great 2020 with lots of enjoyable reads.

>4 Karlstar:, >5 Narilka:, >6 Peace2: Thanks, and I hope all of you have a great 2020!

>4 Karlstar: No, this will be my first C. S. Friedman read.

I’ve only had time for a few chapters of This Alien Shore so far, but it started off really interesting so I’m looking forward to having more time to focus on it.

Happy new year! I hope it brings you some great books. Looking forward to following your reading and to hearing more about Ernest's antics!

I really enjoyed This alien shore when I read it a few years ago. I strongly disliked Black sun rising though, and haven't tried any of her other books.

>8 quondame: Happy new year!

>9 Sakerfalcon: Thanks, happy new year! I can all but guarantee Ernest Antics at some point this year. :)

Oh, I've meant to get to This Alien Shore for ages. I'll look forward to your review.

Happy New Year. I enjoy lurking on your thread. ;)

>11 libraryperilous: So far it’s very good, but it’s still early so my opinion may change drastically. :)

>12 majkia: Happy new year! I enjoy having you lurk (and also post) on my thread! :)

Happy New Year, and Happy New Thread! May all your book choices be fruitful in 2020.

>14 clamairy: Thanks, happy new year to you too and best wishes for 2020!

I finally sat down and thought through some of my reading plans for 2020. This is all tentative and subject to change, but I have fun plotting out what I’m going to read and then seeing that list of things to look forward to as I go through the year.

My scheduling tactics are pretty haphazard. I basically pick out a few series I’ve had on my TBR list, usually focusing on the ones where I already have the 1st book on my Kindle. Then, between each series in my schedule, I add a standalone book, also usually one that’s already on my Kindle. When I’ve scheduled a longer series, I’ll also sandwich some standalones in-between every few books to give myself a short break without completely losing my immersion in the series. I also try to read one classic book per quarter, plus two Shakespeare plays since they’re fast reads. So, once a quarter I use one of my standalone slots for that quarter’s classic selection(s).

My chosen standalones get swapped in and out constantly; I rarely stick to my original plan. I’m better at sticking to my series picks and my classic picks, but those can change too. I never share my specific schedule since it shifts and changes so much, but below are some of the things I’m pretty sure about. Opinions and comments are always welcome! Just no unhidden spoilers, please. :) I’m one of those people who won’t even read a book blurb before I start a book; I like to go in as blind as possible and be surprised.

Classic Selections
Here are my tentative plans for 2020’s classic reads. I've made six selections.

1st Quarter
1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. I’ve mostly been avoiding the classics that I suspect will be more romance-y, but this book is at the very top of the 100 World Classics list I originally pulled off LT for inspiration, so I’ve decided it’s time to cross it off.

(Side note: I’m not reading exclusively from that list, but I do scan it when I’m looking for ideas. It’s not entirely a coincidence that most of this year’s choices are near the top of that list!)

2nd Quarter
2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I’d originally scheduled this for 2019, but Connie Willis’ To Say Nothing of the Dog made me curious about Three Men in a Boat, so I swapped it out in exchange for that.

3. The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare. When I was in high school, we watched a college presentation of this play that was hysterically funny, so I’ve always remembered it fondly. I expect that will color my reading of the play. I’ve put it off for a while in favor of choosing comedies I was unfamiliar with, but I’ve been wanting to read this.

3rd Quarter
4. Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. I’m going into this one with some trepidation! I don’t know a lot of people who have read it, but I haven’t seen many favorable comments among those who have. I plan to read it in the original Middle English, but I did spend a little bit of time browsing through some pages using the “Look Inside” feature on Amazon and it didn’t seem too terribly difficult to interpret. I found an edition with some of the less-obvious words translated in the margins, plus it has some more extensive footnotes, so I think I’ll have what I need to understand it. Worst case, there’s always Google.

I chose this one because I want to read Dan Simmons’ Hyperion series, and I’ve heard it called “Canterbury Tales in space”. I therefore thought it might be worthwhile to fit this in before I read that so I can better appreciate whatever it is that makes people say that. I planned to read Canterbury Tales eventually anyway, this is just motivating me to do it sooner.

4th Quarter
5. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. This is mostly a completely random choice. I vaguely remember reading it in school, in 7th grade maybe? But I remember nothing about the play.

6. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. I’ve been putting this one off for a while because even I know this story and it’s not one that appeals to me, but it’s time to get it over with!

Series Selections
Over the past few years, I’ve chosen one large series to read each year. Last year’s choice was Raymond E. Feist’s Riftwar Cycle which has about 31 books and almost 14,000 pages. I’m usually closer to the end of my chosen series by the beginning of the year, but I’ve only finished 17 books on this one so I still have quite a ways to go! I think it may take me at least until April to finish. This includes time estimated for reading standalone books in-between each subseries.

I never intended to pick a large series for 2020. Starting this year, I wanted to focus on fitting in some of the medium-length series on my list instead, the ones I never seem to get to but really want to read. I guess I’d consider a medium-length series to be between 4000-7500 pages. I originally thought I’d squeeze 2 or 3 in this year, but with the Feist series taking so long, I’ve only added one medium-length series to my schedule toward the end of the year. One of my other series choices does get pretty close page-count-wise. If nothing unexpected happens, I’ll try to fit more into the schedule in 2021.

After I finish the Feist books, I have a few small series scheduled that I have low expectations for, meaning I might decide not to continue the series after the first book if I don’t enjoy it very much. Plus several standalones, of course. I won’t bother listing any of that because it’s highly subject to change. I mostly picked things that I expected to be very different from the Feist series so I could thoroughly cleanse my epic fantasy palate.

Because after that palate-cleansing period, one series I’m quite determined to read in 2020 is Brent Weeks’ Lightbringer series, now that the final book is published. Even though it only has 5 books, they’re fairly long, adding up to just under 4000 pages which makes this an almost-medium-length series. I think I might get to it sometime in the summer.

Also, as mentioned in my classics section, I want to read the Hyperion Cantos series by Dan Simmons, after I read Canterbury Tales. That will probably be next after the Brent Weeks series. That one’s only about 2300 pages.

Finally, toward the end of the year, I’m hoping to finally get to Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Universe. I’ve wanted to read it for a very long time, but I just haven’t managed to fit it in. At about 6500 pages, it’s one of the main series I had in mind when I decided I needed to make a better effort to fit in some of the medium-length series on my list. I’ve seen all sorts of mixed reviews about it, so it may turn out this isn’t something I’ll enjoy, but I suspect I probably will.

Conclusion
That was way more words than anybody needed to read from some random person on the internet, sorry! :)

>16 YouKneeK: Jane Eyre was a pretty standard 'O' Level set book when I was at school; I didn't like it much - I preferred Jane Austen as an author. I recall it was my sister's set book, whereas I had Pride & Prejudice. The BBC did an adaptation a couple of years ago.

I read The Great Gatsby some time back - I think over 20 years ago now. You know, I've never read The Canterbury Tales at all - it was 'A' Level Eng. Lit. in my day. I know bits and pieces. Back at the convent I recall one of our art projects was a mural along a corridor illustrating The Canterbury Tales. You're brave to read it in the original!

Tennessee Williams hasn't come much in my way. I recall the film of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (I watched it with my mother years later).

Re your series, I've got the initial trilogy in Kushiel's Universe, but I've not got into the others. It's not everyone's cup of tea. I quite enjoyed them - the first one is reminiscent of A Song for Arbonne which I think you've read?

For the record, Jane Eyre is the kind of "romance" that even I like. And you know my feelings about romance.

Best of luck with Canterbury. I tried to read it back in my bibleschool days and I made it through but don't remember much beyond that olde english was a lot harder than I thought. I had a side by side comparison (olde english and modern english) so that helped. I don't know if it will help with Hyperion, but it can certainly only enrich your read. And Hyperion is a great book too! :-D

And hurray for the Lightbringer series! I'm just not going to say anything because I enjoyed it so much.

>17 Maddz: I was never exposed to Brontë or Jane Austen at all in school. Pride and Prejudice was actually the very first classic I chose a couple years ago when I started fitting classics into my reading schedule, mainly because I hear Austen favorably mentioned so often and I had never read her. I did like that one pretty well. I’m glad to read you enjoyed the first Kushiel trilogy! A Song for Arbonne is one of the GGK books I haven’t gotten to yet.

>18 BookstoogeLT: Bookstooge-approved romance, that’s promising! ;) I was very happy to see your high rating for the last Lightbringer book.

For Canterbury Tales, I’m hoping it will help that I’ll go into it prepared for it to take some extra time and effort. I tend to do better with difficult books when I’m prepared for them to be difficult. I’m definitely going to try to pick a relatively distraction-free portion of my life to read it in, if I can manage it.

To date, Jane Eyre remains the only book I ever have physically thrown across the room. I Dorothy Parkered that sucker. (To be fair to it, I was full of teenage hormones and had just finished After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie.)

I have plans to read Romeo and Juliet soon. It was the Shakespeare play I least liked in high school, but I'm 41 now. I wonder if I will feel more sympathy for the teenage egoism and paranoia. I'm old enough now to understand that the true tragedy of the play is that they are too young to know they can wait. I reread Macbeth in 2019 and was astounded at how sympathetic a character I found Lady Macbeth.

>16 YouKneeK: I remember enjoying Jane Eyre when I read it in school. It's been so long now that I don't remember much of the plot. I'm definitely curious to see how you do with Canterbury Tales. It's one I've been too intimidated to try. I read the first Lightbringer a couple years back, realized he was taking forever to finish the series, so put them aside. I'm planning to try them at some point so looking forward to your reviews :)

>16 YouKneeK: >17 Maddz: The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales was the only matric set work I could bear to look at afterwards. (Edwin Drood put me off Dickens for life.) But then we had a new young English teacher straight out of college, who understood teenage boys. It makes a huge difference, especially after his **-faced predecessor.

>20 libraryperilous: Uh oh, maybe I should wrap my Kindle in some sort of padding when I read Jane Eyre! ;) I’ve never actually read or watched Romeo and Juliet, so it’s possible the play will hold some unexpected surprise for me, but my expectations are pretty low. I read Macbeth in 2018 and was somewhat lukewarm on it, but I really enjoyed Hamlet which was my first attempt at Shakespeare as an adult in 2017.

>21 Narilka: Huh, so you read Jane Eyre in school too? As an assignment? I was thinking maybe it was more of a UK thing, but if you read it for school then it just lends credence to my growing theory that I somehow missed out on a lot of typical U.S. highschool reading curriculum. :) I feel like I've been waiting forever for the Lightbringer series to be finished! It had been on my radar because I really enjoyed his Night Angel series, the one that starts with The Way of Shadows.

>22 hfglen: I quietly educated myself on what O levels and A levels were after reading >17 Maddz:, but my Googling is failing me on “matric set work”? Is that just another way of saying university course work, or is it something different? The teacher definitely can make a difference in how tolerable a subject is, though!

>23 YouKneeK: Oh dear, the South African education system. Apart from a few private schools that operate a "sixth form" (mine was not one), the final year of school corresponds roughly to your 12th grade. The school-leaving exam is called matriculation (matric for short) and may or may not allow university entrance. The English syllabus (likewise Afrikaans, Latin etc.) sets various items of Classic Literature on which the student is examined -- usually enough to kill any interest in Good Literature. These are generally studied across 2 years, corresponding to 11th and 12th grade. I was lucky with Chaucer, unlucky with Dickens. And I fully agree with you about the teacher, pausing only to note that this is one place where paper qualifications don't matter a tinker's cuss.

>24 hfglen: Ah, it makes sense now, thank you for explaining!

Happy New Year! You manage to be more organised in scheduling your reading, and read more than I can keep up with on LT, but I'll check in from time to time looking for inspirations.

>24 hfglen: In the UK, matriculation is enrolling in a university - but the usage is limited to Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrews, Edinburgh and Durham. I seem to recall my mother talking about matriculation - but she may have been talking about her father who read medicine at Emmanuel pre-WWI (did his clinical work at St George's). It's possible she was eligible for matriculation herself but her grandfather refused to pay for university for her (her father died when she was 8) and in those days you paid to go to uni.

>23 YouKneeK: Yes, Jane Eyre was assigned reading. So was The Great Gatsby and at least four Shakespeare plays, one of which Romero and Juliet. I grew up out west so perhaps that's the difference?

>26 reading_fox: Thanks, happy new year!

>28 Narilka: Interesting. Although we did do a few Shakespeare plays, we didn’t do Romeo and Juliet or the other books you listed. You’re probably right that it could be a regional difference. I did also go to a Baptist-based private high school, so I’ve wondered if some of the typical high school classics were deemed inappropriate for some reason. If so, it might be more clear when I read the books in question.

I read Jane on my own in HS, and then it was required for one of my college classes. Or maybe it was grad school? Either way I was not as enthralled the second time around. But then I listened to it when I was in my 40s and I enjoyed it immensely. I think you'll take some pleasure in it.

Jane Eyre reimagined as an AITA inquiry. \The link goes to Twitter.\

>31 libraryperilous: That is funny. And the comments.

>32 quondame: I particularly liked the smoke detector advice.

>30 clamairy: Thanks, I’m getting more curious to give it a try with all the different opinions and experiences with it!

>31 libraryperilous: I’ve made myself a note next to the book in my schedule to come back and click the link after I’ve finished reading it. I don’t want to risk spoiling (or warping) my first ever read of it. :)

Jane Eyre and The great Gatsby are two of my favourite classics. I will be interested to see what your reactions to them are. I've never liked Romeo and Juliet, probably due to reading it in high school. Thankfully we didn't do many of the classics in school so I got to discover them for myself.

>35 Sakerfalcon: I’ve actually been surprised how little I remember from most of the classics I did study in school, with some exceptions. Considering how unreasonably long (or so it seemed to me) we spent studying each book, I would have expected them to stick in my memory more. Mostly I just remember them as “torturous” or “not torturous”. Some of the “torturous” ones, after reading them as an adult, have left me surprised that I didn’t enjoy them more in school, but teachers can beat a subject to death that one might otherwise have enjoyed if left to their own devices.

>36 YouKneeK: Hear! Hear!

I believe J.K. Rowling has forbidden school study of the Harry Potter books for this very reason. She is on record as not wanting potential readers' interest in reading beyond those books killed by over-analysis.

>37 hfglen: Ha, that’s funny, I hadn’t heard that. Although I’m rather skeptical as to her power to enforce such a thing, I can very much understand why she’d want to.

Review: This Alien Shore by C. S. Friedman



This Alien Shore is a standalone science fiction book. I'd read probably 25% before I suddenly realized I was reading a cyberpunk book and actually enjoying it. It’s obviously cyberpunk from the beginning, really, it’s just that the tone is so different from most I’ve read and I hadn’t paused before then to try to categorize what I was reading. Some of the main characters are different from what I typically expect in cyberpunk, the politics and philosophies are also pretty different, and the world-building is different. I often feel like authors of cyberpunk overdo their world-building in an attempt to make it “punky”(?) enough, ending up with a big mess that is neither coherent nor logical. I really liked the world-building in this book. It was creative and detailed and, best of all, it made sense.

In the beginning, we’re introduced to a teenage girl named Jamisia as her tutor comes to help her escape an attack on her home habitat. There seem to be a lot of mysteries surrounding Jamisia, one of which is that there’s apparently something in her head that people want and she doesn’t know why. She has to flee by herself, and people who are a lot smarter and more experienced than she is are trying very hard to find her. This isn’t the entire story, and Jamisia is only one of several POV characters. The book alternates between her story and another plot about a computer virus that’s started killing spaceship pilots.

Despite being published in 1998, this didn’t feel dated to me. The only piece of technology that broke my immersion a bit was the wellseeker. Everybody apparently has a wellseeker inside of them that monitors their vital signs and offers to provide them with chemicals to help stabilize them. For example, if they’re scared, it can give them a sedative, in appropriate amounts to take the edge off depending on just how scared they are. I sometimes got distracted wondering about the logistics of that, which weren’t discussed at all. How do all these fluids get replenished? How much can the wellseeker hold and how often does it need to be replenished for the average person? Is information tracked when an individual’s wellseeker gets replenished? If so, that information would surely get leaked or hacked on occasion and used against a person by their political enemies.

I was completely captured by Jamisia’s part of the story from the beginning, but my interest fluctuated with the more traditionally cyberpunky parts, at least in the first half. A little bit into the second half, the pace really picked up and I was engrossed by all the chapters. I debated a bit between 3.5 or 4 stars, but I think I enjoyed it enough to give it the full 4.

Just a few more random comments for the spoiler tags:
For some reason split personality stories have always appealed to me. I especially liked that Jamisia could communicate with the other personalities and that they had to work together and share her body using their different strengths. I also liked that, while some of her personalities were quite smart, I didn’t feel like any of them were over-the-top, unrealistically smart or skilled. I loved that the author didn’t go for the stereotypical ending where the individual personalities all merge and live happily ever after. I didn’t really expect that to happen given the themes in the book, but I would have been very disappointed to be wrong.

I did think it was a bit stereotypical that the belligerent protector-type personality manifested as a male. Girls can be belligerent and protective too, and it’s not like Derik seemed to have any special fighting prowess when he was in control of the body. He was still hampered by Jamisia’s lack of strength and didn’t seem to have any special tricks that females might learn to use against a stronger opponent.

It was also a bit too convenient maybe that the chips given to Jamisia by her tutor only revealed things slowly enough to keep the suspense going, but I bought into it within the context of the story.

Next Book
Honored Enemy by Raymond E. Feist. This begins the “Legends of the Riftwar” subseries, by which title I assume the books will be set during the first subseries but maybe focusing on other characters.

>39 YouKneeK: It's been a while since I read This Alien Shore, and I don't recall much about the story. The wellseeker may not require replenishing - it may be working using one's own neurochemicals and hormones. So in the scared situation, it may be working to damp down the response, or in a flight situation it may be boosting adrenalin production.

I think when I read it, I thought it SF rather than cyberpunk. In all honesty, I preferred the Coldfire Trilogy.

>40 Maddz: That explanation actually would probably have worked quite a bit better for me. I’d have paused a moment to wonder whether things could really work that way and then, knowing very little about physiology, I would have shrugged my shoulders and moved on. :)

The book expressed it differently though, referring to injecting sedative or releasing a dose of sedative or other medications. There was one spot in the book, maybe the only one that made any reference to the idea that this stuff has to come from somewhere, where a character has just allowed his wellseeker to “release a drop of the proper medication into his bloodstream” and then thinks “he’d have to make sure he had enough sedative compounds for future use.”

>39 YouKneeK: Doesn't sound too bad. I think I'll keep an eye and grab it if it goes on sale.

>42 Narilka: I hope you enjoy it if you get a chance to read it!

>16 YouKneeK: I grabbed Jane Eyre at my local used bookstore (bargain price but good condition...I assume they had too many), so I'll be interested what you think.

>44 mattries37315: Have you ever read it, or are you still working on fitting it in for the first time now that you have a copy?

This isn’t book related, or even cat related, but I just had to share my amusement. My mom has, just a few minutes ago, discovered the voice recognition option when typing e-mails on her tablet. I am now getting e-mails that make absolutely no sense. :)

>45 YouKneeK: Never read it. It'll go somewhere on the list in the next few years. Though next year all read of Jane Austen.

>27 Maddz: In my mother's day, in the UK, you did not collect separate 'O' and 'A'-levels. Instead your school leaving exam was called matriculation. You took papers in various subjects, some at main (roughly corresponding to 'A'-levels) and some at subsidiary (a bit higher than 'O'-levels). You could also sit a subject at main, but be awarded a pass at subsidiary level. Some subjects were compulsory, at least at subsidiary level. You needed a certain number of passes to matriculate, which qualified you to go on to university. If you did not pass enough papers, you got nothing.

The concepts of "school leaving exam" and matriculation as "entrance requirement for university" were not really distinct because only grammar schools had sixth forms, and staying on at school past "school leaving age" generally meant that you were intending to attempt university.

Otherwise you left at the school leaving age, not necessarily directly into employment, but probably into a college course teaching practical skills relevant to intended career.

It was only as the minimum school leaving age was raised that leaving school with qualifications that were intended to be final became more normal.
----

>16 YouKneeK: I read Jane Eyre when young and loathed it, having seen a stage play based on it. Really, really disliked the man she falls for. Maybe I would feel differently now, but it was just too depressing, in demonstrating how thoroughly most women were screwed in that era.

On the other hand, I love the Canterbury Tales. Each tale told by a pilgrim is written in a different style, matching the different personalities of the pilgrims - who are introduced by character sketches in the Prologue.

I read it in the original form. I find modernisations lose the different speech rhythms that are so much part of the characterization of each pilgrim.

I would strongly recommend interspersing a tale at a time between your other reading.

>48 -pilgrim-: Hmm… I rather like the idea of interspersing the tales in Canterbury Tales between my other reading instead of trying to plow through it all at once. I’ll give that some more thought as I get closer to the 3rd quarter. Thanks for suggesting it!

>48 -pilgrim-: That would fit. She left school in 1938 or 1939, and ended up at St James' Secretarial College in time to be evacuated to Dorset at the start of the war. Then she was called up and went into the Wrens where she was trained as an electrician (having a good standard of education).

Review: Honored Enemy by Raymond E. Feist and William R. Forstchen



Honored Enemey is the first book in the Legends of the Riftwar subseries which is in the larger Riftwar Cycle. The books in this subseries are all co-written with a different author and, at least going by this first book and the title of the subseries, it appears they all take place during the time span of the very first book (or set of books depending on how you read it), Magician. This book is co-written by William R. Forstchen, an author I’m not familiar with.

The story focuses on original characters that I don't believe we've seen before. The only familiar characters I noticed were during the prologue. The story is pretty heavily focused on battles and enemies and vengeance. There is definitely more content to it than that, but these things are always driving the story. Both the story and the characters took some time to grow on me. I found it pretty tedious early on, and didn’t care much about the characters at all. My interest slowly picked up after the Kingdom soldiers and the Tsurani started working together against the Moredhel.

I couldn’t tell a dramatic difference in the style of this book with Forstchen as a co-author versus the style when Feist writes alone, aside from it being more battle-focused than his other books usually are. Maybe it also had a little less humor, at least of the sort that made me laugh, although I did still laugh a few times. I thought it was a pretty solid story. It held my interest after the slow start, and there were some good moments in it that I really enjoyed. It just didn’t hold anything particularly special for me, so I’m giving it 3.5 stars but rounding down to 3 on Goodreads.

Next Book
Murder in LaMut by Raymond E. Feist and Joel Rosenberg, another co-author I’m unfamiliar with. This is the second book in the above subseries.

>51 YouKneeK: This sounds incredibly familiar but I have no record of ever reading it. Maybe I've just read synopsis throughout the years and assimilated it into my general store of book lore :-D

There are several Joel Rosenbergs, but this one (I think) is a B list fantasy author who has written enough so he's well known enough among circles of voracious fantasy readers. Maybe a B Minus author? :-D

>52 BookstoogeLT: It was a kind of generic story, so maybe you've read something similar? I can’t pinpoint another book I’ve read that’s specifically like it, but it seemed like I’d read similar books before. It did have some tropes that I have a soft spot for though, so I enjoyed it anyway.

I’m 25% into the Feist + Rosenberg book and my feelings on it are pretty lukewarm so far.

I’m wondering if this subseries is the low point. So far, I would consider it skippable, not that I would have taken such advice if anybody had given it to me. I’m holding out some hope for the 3rd book, Jimmy the Hand, based on the title. The co-author for that one is S. M. Stirling. I read his Nantucket trilogy a while back and liked it pretty well, although I was getting a bit tired of it by the end.

>46 YouKneeK: I get similar texts from my older sister. Most of the message will make perfect sense, and then there will be a phrase that is just downright ridiculous. I love it!

>51 YouKneeK: I skipped this subseries entirely, I guess because of the co-writing? On the other hand, I'm a fan of Joel Rosenberg's other novels. So far, I'm intrigued by your reviews, not yet to the point of putting them on my wish list.

>54 clamairy: Haha, my mom was astonished that the voice recognition was inserting the spaces for her between words. The first sentence I received from her had the word space between every word, because she was saying “space” when she wanted a space. And it only got more strange from there!

>55 Karlstar: I figured since the books co-written with Janny Wurts were so great, that maybe these could be too. This subseries isn’t exactly bad, but they definitely aren’t his best.

>48 -pilgrim-: Yep, Rochester is a boorish jerk, and Rivers isn't any better.

>53 YouKneeK: I've been intrigued by Stirling latest, an alternate history of WWI with a female spy. But Stirling is one of those Sad Puppy adjacents, and I'm not sure I trust him to write a female character well.

>50 Maddz: That's amazing.

>57 libraryperilous: S.M. Sterling's women characters in Emberverse were mostly kick ass leaders, but a bit on the overdone side. But then his men were too.

>57 libraryperilous: I ignore the awards and therefore I also ignore the puppy stuff, and I assume our no-politics rule keeps it from being discussed much here, so I have only the vaguest idea what sort of expectation that might give you. However, I don’t recall having any issues with Stirling’s portrayal of women in the Nantucket series. What I remember was pretty similar to what >59 quondame: described, so maybe that’s his general style.

Review: Murder in LaMut by Raymond E. Feist and Joel Rosenberg



Murder in LaMut is the second book in the Legends of the Riftwar subseries, a trilogy of books co-written with different authors and set during Feist’s original Magician. The co-author of this book is Joel Rosenberg, whose books I’ve never tried.

I’m hoping this was the low point of the larger Riftwar Cycle series, because I found it pretty boring. There just isn’t much going on for most of the book, at least not that interested me. Had I been invested in the characters, I wouldn’t have minded if the story was light on action or events, but I didn’t care for the characters either. I didn’t dislike them, but there wasn’t anything about them that grabbed me.

The title of the book implied to me that this would be a murder mystery, or something similar. I therefore expected the murder to happen or to be discovered near the beginning of the book and I expected the rest of the book to involve piecing together clues and/or dealing with the aftermath. That’s not how this book flowed at all. I often enjoy having my expectations thrown off and being surprised, but that didn’t do anything for me this time. We start off learning about a character who seems to have had a set of unlucky accidents, and some people think they might be more than just a coincidence. They assign three mercenaries to guard him, and those are the characters we follow for most of the book. There isn’t actually a “Murder in LaMut” until (putting the % in a spoiler tag for people who don’t want to know) 74% into the book! Since the title proclaims there’s a “Murder in LaMut”, it wasn’t a surprise and felt very anti-climatic when it finally happened.

I’m not even a huge fan of murder mysteries, but I was so happy that something finally happened and it was finally time for our characters to solve the mystery that I found the rest of the story more interesting. However, I was pretty annoyed at the end. An innocent man was killed for the murder because the people investigating didn’t bother to be sure of their facts and missed the extremely obvious fact that the victims were drugged. Admittedly, the completely wrong people were put in charge of the murder investigation, so it’s not surprising they bungled it.

From the author’s notes at the end it sounded like the three mercenary characters who featured in the story were based on characters from Rosenberg’s own work. Someone familiar with his work and those characters might appreciate this more than I did.

It wasn’t a horrible book, but my attention wandered a lot and the ending was a disappointment. One thing I did enjoy was how the author(s) phrased some things. I chuckled several times when a turn of phrase struck me funny. I’m giving this 2.5 stars based on my low interest in the story, but rounding up to 3 on Goodreads for the humor.

Next Book
Jimmy the Hand, the third and final book in this subseries.

>61 YouKneeK: Yep, B-minus author for sure. The dreaded 2.5 star, completely middle of the road, nothing really good, nothing really bad. Sounds like the Rosenberg I've read :-D

Hope Jimmy the Hand is better. On a side note, I had no idea that S.J. Stirling was a Steve Stirling. I've always just known him by his initials.

The More You Know.... *star swoosh*

>62 BookstoogeLT: I think Rosenberg is not one I’ll be seeking out to try his solo work anytime soon!

Thanks, I only had time to read one chapter of Jimmy the Hand last night, not enough to make any judgements, but so far it seems better than the last book.

>61 YouKneeK: >63 YouKneeK: You should give Rosenberg a try some time. Some of Rosenberg's solo work is good. Unfortunately, from your review I think I see a problem. Towards the end of one of his series, he apparently decided to develop his own Three Musketeers type characters. I never thought it went well. He stapled them on to an existing plot instead of giving them a plot of their own and then sent them off on separate sub-plots and it never came together.

That being said, I always thought his Keepers of the Hidden Ways series was excellent. The Guardians of the Flame series starts out well, but after the first 3 books falls off a bit.

>64 Karlstar: Thanks! Maybe I’ll give him a try sometime if the opportunity presents itself.

Review: Jimmy the Hand by Raymond E. Feist and S. M. Stirling



Jimmy the Hand is the third and final book in the Legends of the Riftwar subseries that takes place during Feist’s original Magician novel. This one is co-written with S. M. Stirling. The story is set shortly after Jimmy and Arutha’s first encounter during Magician, starting right around the part where Arutha and Anita are escaping Krondor by boat and Arutha tosses Jimmy his rapier.

I liked this one much better than the last two books! Jimmy is one of my favorite characters, so it’s hardly surprising that I enjoyed a story featuring him, but I also really liked some of the other characters created for the story and I enjoyed the story itself. It was far more interesting to me than either of the previous two books and it held my attention from beginning to end.

There are some pieces that seemed a bit too coincidental and/or too much of a stretch. These things might have been plausible within the context of the story, but they nevertheless stretched my belief a hair past the breaking point. Elaine’s body is in a room that’s trapped in a pocket of slowed-down time so that she won’t die while her husband and the magician try to find a way to heal her. Yet somehow her mind manages to escape her body and observe things going on in the castle in real-time and she can communicate with the children in real-time. Ok, maaaaybe if she’s somehow projecting her consciousness outside her body and far enough away to escape the time trap it might make sense that she can do these things, but it seems like it would take time for her to accomplish that and the time spent while her consciousness is still within the time trap would translate to a lot of time passing outside of it meanwhile. Yet she seems to pop in and out frequently, sometimes just a few minutes later, to observe and try to assist the children. We were also told that she was losing consciousness for days or even weeks at a time, and yet she conveniently manages to regain it frequently for the sake of the story. Also, everybody in the surrounding area believes Elaine is dead, and yet her husband brought in healers over a period of time to try to help her before he gave up and turned to dark magic, so surely word would have gotten out that she was still alive.

My complaints were pretty minor things though, and I enjoyed the story overall. I don’t really think this subseries added anything critical to the main series, so one could skip it without missing out on anything important if it doesn’t sound appealing. Each book stands completely separate from the others in the subseries, so one could also just pick and choose the ones that sound interesting. I liked the first book reasonably well after its slow start, and I liked this one quite a lot, but I wouldn’t have minded missing the second one.

Next Book
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. I’m going to get my first quarterly classic of the year finished nice and early.

>66 YouKneeK: Glad you enjoyed this one better. I like S. M. Stirling's own novels, I'll have to pick this one up.

>67 Karlstar: Thanks, I hope you enjoy it too if you do!

>66 YouKneeK: I'm going to try that book. Mostly because Sterling is the co-author. He tells terrific adventure stories.

>69 2wonderY: I would be very interested to read what you think. Are you keeping a thread somewhere for 2020? I found your 2019 thread by looking at your profile just now, but I found that one a little too late.

>70 YouKneeK: I will continue to post in the Green Dragon when I'm reading SF & Fantasy. My full reading journal is HERE. Will be glad to see you there.

>71 2wonderY: Thanks for the link!

Review: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë



I know this is a much-beloved book, but I had very mixed feelings about it. There were parts I really enjoyed, but there were other parts that made me think it was never going to end. I liked Jane quite a bit and some of the other characters too, but others annoyed me.

When the book begins, we meet Jane Eyre at the age of 10. She’s an orphan living with an aunt and cousins who despise her and treat her poorly, and nothing she does seems to please them. At around 25%, the book jumps forward 8 years. I’m not describing large segments of the plot to avoid spoilers for anybody who doesn’t know the story already, but the adulthood years include some romance and a tiny bit of a mystery.

I loved the first 25% or so when Jane was still a child. It reminded me of the kinds of books I ate up as a young child, featuring a mistreated and/or misunderstood child who suffers hardships but perseveres and eventually finds friends and self-respect. Come to think of it, a lot of epic fantasy starts off with similar tropes and that’s my favorite subgenre, so I guess that’s just a thing I like. I very much sympathized with young Jane, but I also appreciated how the adult Jane narrating the story would sometimes interject with some rational adult reasoning that went beyond the hurt of the child and showed some understanding of what the people who caused her pain were thinking.

I was still interested when we jumped forward 8 years, at least for a while, but I found the entire romantic segments of the book to be horribly tedious and frustrating. For characters who seemed willing to speak their minds freely, it seemed they intentionally tortured themselves and each other needlessly with a lack of directness and with contradictory statements. Of course, that’s a common trope in romances, and it’s one of the big reasons I’m not a fan. I do understand that the social conventions of the time may have tended toward less direct speech to begin with, but the characters in this book were actually far more direct than I expected them to be, at least until indirectness was needed to drag the story out. Either way, this isn’t intended to be a literary analysis and the point of my review isn’t about what I might have thought if I’d read it when it was published in 1847. My review is about what I thought when I was reading it in 2020.

Another frustration of mine, particularly but not only during the romantic segments, was the way the characters went on forever saying the same things. They repeated themselves over and over in as many different ways as they could imagine. They would say something, and then they would say it again with different words but perhaps more dramatically. O how the circles of their words went ‘round and ‘round! See what I did there? Yes, it was somewhat like that, but much longer.

There was a point closer toward the end where things got interesting again and my interest was held pretty well until the end, although not with quite the same intensity as it was held during the beginning. I didn’t dislike the ending, but I did roll my eyes a bit at the inevitable convenience of it all and the main part of it was easily predicted. I didn’t feel like the romantic aspect of the book had much substance, but the book itself wasn’t without substance. There are many theological discussions, discussions about how to handle adversity and how to deal with people who treat you unfairly, reasons for marrying or not marrying, etc. One may not agree with everything as it’s presented in the book, but there’s some great discussion fodder there for people who are willing to move beyond gushing over (or complaining about) the romance. I can see where this could be a good selection for literature classes or book clubs.

Even though this review is overly long already, I have some additional comments for the spoiler tags.
I felt dread when Jane’s bridal day approached. Blatant foreshadowing about the split chestnut tree and the letter Jane sent aside, it was only 60% into the book and I wasn’t sure I could endure things going horribly wrong and then the remaining 40% being filled with more angst. Happily, I was far more interested in the story shortly after that when Jane left Thornfield Hall.

I very much disliked the way both Rochester and “Saint” John thought only of their own desires and assumed that just because they had found a solution that perfectly suited their own needs that it must be acceptable to Jane also and couldn’t possibly have any negative effect on her. Their behavior was much the same in that regard, the only difference being that the reader is expected to feel sympathy for Rochester because he and Jane are in love. Trying to manipulate somebody you supposedly love and not considering the impact your actions might have on them seems even worse in a way. Rochester did admit his mistake by the end, but not until after he got what he wanted.

Next Book
Talon of the Silver Hawk, the first book in the Conclave of Shadows subseries in the large Raymond E. Feist series I’ve been reading. After the previous 7 books which took place earlier in the series, I believe this will move forward in time after the Serpentwar Saga, based on the series title which was mentioned at the end of that subseries. I’m looking forward to seeing where Feist takes the story next.

>73 YouKneeK: Your review makes me want to throw Jane Eyre into my reading mix to see what I think of it now :-D
Do you think you'll read any more by the Bronte sisters or was this experience enough for quite some time?

I read Talon of the Silver Hawk. I liked the duology but the 3rd book brought my opinion of Feist right back down to where it was before I read it :-/

>74 BookstoogeLT: It would be interesting to see your current opinion! I’ll likely try some other works from the Brontë sisters eventually. Definitely not this year and probably not next year, but maybe the year after. I’d like to read Wuthering Heights which I know nothing about but see mentioned often. Do the other sisters have a similar style?

>75 YouKneeK: I've read Wuthering, Jane and Villette. Honestly, I couldn't have told you that separate people wrote them. But Villette is the only one I've ever re-read.

>74 BookstoogeLT: I would have said that they share the overheated prose aspect that you mentioned, but the sisters differ very much, in terms of the themes and attitudes from which they write.

May I recommend to you both The Brontësaurus by John Sutherland, which I was reading this time last year (and reviewed in my first thread)? It's a rather whimsical reference on all things Brontë by an academic with an impish sense of humour, and captures quite succinctly such things as the differences between the sisters' outlooks.

>77 -pilgrim-: Is it easy to read non-fiction? I have a really hard time getting into non-fiction and usually have to have a goal in stepping into that genre.

>75 YouKneeK:, >77 -pilgrim-: Yeah, I'd agree with 'overblown' stylistically, but I think it seems to be fairly common to Victorian authors (honestly, you'd think they were paid by the word and double for obscure synonyms ;) )

I know in general I find the Victorians sententious and moralising, but to a large extent it was the fault of the era - reading for pleasure without a desire to improve oneself seemed to be considered sinful.

>76 BookstoogeLT: Villette wasn’t even a familiar title to me. I’ll have to get that one on my radar.

>77 -pilgrim-: Thanks for the recommendation. When I read a different Brontë sister’s work, I’ll have to try to watch for the different attitudes. It’s possible that the “overheated prose” will overshadow things for me though, like eating two different dishes with the same brand of hot sauce poured over them.

>79 Maddz: Haha, I did feel at times that the author was just making her characters repeat themselves to add more words. I thought some of the moralizing was interesting just for the sake of considering it from a more modern perspective, when it didn’t go on too long or too repetitively. I'm more surprised this wasn't covered in my high school curriculum now that I've read it.

Maybe I ought to try to fit in Wuthering Heights next year while I’ll hopefully still remember Jane Eyre well enough to compare the styles better. I guess if I keep putting off the “romancy” classics, I risk ending up with nothing but that left on my list. I'll give it some thought.

>80 YouKneeK: Villette is also a romance, so be aware :-)

>81 BookstoogeLT: Haha, I figured. Thanks for the warning! ;)

>81 BookstoogeLT: Wasn't considered a bit racy or am I thinking about another title?

>78 BookstoogeLT: Yes, The Brontësaurus is very easy reading. Although John Sutherland is actually the Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at Oxford in his "day job", here he wears his academic credentials very lightly.

What we are talking about here are entries, usually 1 or 2 pages long, tackling often quirky aspects of the Brontë's lives and works (Emily Brontë's treatment of her dog being one example). It is arranged like a reference book, and good for just dipping into for an entry or two, if there isn't something that you particularly want to look up.

I also recommend his Puzzles in Classic Fiction series of books, such as Is Heathcliff a Murderer? and, appositely here, Can Jane Eyre Be Happy? - each of which consist of around 10 chapters, each covering a different book. Each essay is really best read if you already know the book, but contain very much the sort of discussions that we have here in the GD. (Henry V, War Criminal? is also good fun if you love Shakespeare.)

>83 Maddz: I'm guessing you're thinking of another one? At least there was nothing in it that I remember that could be classed that way even for Victorian lit. Unless it was so small that I never noticed it but it was a thing back then?

>84 -pilgrim-: Thanks. Maybe someday ;-)

>85 BookstoogeLT: Having read in @Bookmarque's thread how American humour varies markedly from state to state, I should probably add that much of Sutherland's humour is distinctly British.

>85 BookstoogeLT: The one I'm thinking of had the heroine as a governess in Brussels, being seduced and abandoned... It's possible I'm thinking of something else?

Checking the plot summary in Wikipedia, it seems the plot is similar, but not close enough. (And I thought, urgh! The self-sacrificing theme is too much.)

>86 -pilgrim-: Good to know. Sometimes British humor really works for me (the tv shows The IT Crowd had me rolling while Monty Python left me very meh) and other times it doesn't. I haven't a real rhyme or reason for my own reactions so I always feels like I'm just rolling the dice :-D

>87 Maddz: That plot sounds extremely familiar, but I don't think it was Villette, as the heroine keeps her virtue (from what I remember) Are you perhaps thinking of Moll Flanders? Except that that novel doesn't take place in Brussels. Maybe it was Villette and the reference was just so tangled that I completely missed it. That has been known to happen to me ;-)

>88 BookstoogeLT: You may be relieved to know that Monty Python leaves me cold too.

The type of humour that I was referring to here was more the P.G. Wodehouse dry wit variety.

>73 YouKneeK: Are you saying you could sum this one up as a novel version of Cinderella?

Talon of the Silver Hawk is where my interest picked up in this series and kept me going until the end.

>90 Karlstar: I can see how my vague description of the plot may have made it sound like that, but I really can’t see many similarities with Cinderella aside maybe from the very general concept of having an unpleasant adopted family. And (vague spoiler for where the story goes at about 25%) she has very little contact with that unpleasant adopted family past the age of 10. Jane especially has a personality that’s absolutely nothing like Cinderella as I’m familiar with the character.

I’m only 40 pages into Talon of the Silver Hawk, but I’m quite interested so far.

>89 -pilgrim-: I'm a Brit, and Monty Python usually left me cold as well.

I've never gone much in for surreal or slapstick humour - I much prefer wordplay, so I like things like Round the Horne and the 'Carry On' films ('Infamy, infamy! They've all got it in for me'). The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was another favourite (to the extent I was mouthing the dialogue ahead of the film soundtrack).

>89 -pilgrim-: >92 Maddz: I never cared for Monty Python either (but then I’m only half a Brit, and I think of myself as Australian anyway). Don’t forget the Goon Show.

>89 -pilgrim-: I'm currently working my way through the Jeeves omnibus books and I have to say, Wodehouse has me in stitches almost all the time. So that is a great referral as far as I'm concerned :-D

>88 BookstoogeLT: >92 Maddz: >93 haydninvienna: Some Monty Python is hilarious to me, some is just odd. Things like the Pet Shop skit, the Viking spam skit, most of Holy Grail I find very funny. Some other stuff, not so much.

>93 haydninvienna: The Goon Show was more my mother's time than mine, but she was living in Cairo when it was broadcast (she might have heard it if it was on the World Service, but given the trouble my parents got into with their radio she may not have admitted listening). We didn't come back to the UK until the early 60s.

>95 Karlstar: About the only Monty Python skit I recall laughing out loud at Was The Exploding Blue Danube. Still, I liked The Goodies. Less surreal, but very witty slapstick.

>92 Maddz: Ah, you had to do that - come out with perhaps my favourite line from the entire "Carry On..." series!

Your sense of humour sounds like a pretty good match for mine. "The Goodies" were my preferred form of slapstick too - do you remember the noble martial art of Ecky Thump?

>97 -pilgrim-: Yup, along with Kitten Kong. I also recall The Benny Hill Show from that era although Mum thought it rather risqué for a young girl.

>98 Maddz: My parents felt the same way - that doesn't mean that I won't have that tune running through my head for the rest of the day...no... it's now being overtaken over by, "Ernie, the Fastest Milkman in the West"...

Hmm. When I referred to "British humour" in >86 -pilgrim-:, I was thinking of the dry wordplay of Wodehouse and Noel Coward.

But now, here we are, cluttering up YouKneeK's thread with our reminiscences of 1970s wackiness.

>99 -pilgrim-: GD threads are celebrated for going off at a tangent.

Running off on that loose tangent starting at "British humour" English humour shows often fare well in Sweden, with people loving all of it, whatever it is. This leads a lot of us to think that Sweden and the UK are fairly similar to each other, which in turn leads to various cultural clashes when the two meet...

>99 -pilgrim-: I'm always happy to host tangents. It gives my thread something to do during the days between reviews. :)

>75 YouKneeK: Belatedly chiming in here to say, don't overlook Anne Bronte! The tenant of Wildfell Hall is a passionate, angry book that was considered shocking in its day, not for raciness but because it supports the right of a woman to leave her abusive husband and take her child with her. If you don't like romances this is the Bronte novel to read.

Harking back to your reading from last year, I finally managed to finish Embassytown. I've been reading it on and off since before Christmas - and it's a second attempt. This is one of a pile of print books I am working my way through deciding whether to keep them or not. Unfortunately, much as I like Miéville as an author, this one gets a thumbs down.

I found this rather a difficult read; not because it was told in the first person, nor because of the difficult concepts, I just thought the middle of the story went on too long with not very much happening. The first section setting up the world-building was fine; the end section dealing with the aftermath was fine, it just seemed the middle was a piece of extended scene-setting written in real-time.

>103 Sakerfalcon: Thanks for that, I wasn’t sure what the other Brontë sisters’ most well-known works were, so I’ve added that to my list for Anne Brontë. That does sound like it has a good chance of appealing to me more.

>104 Maddz: I’m glad you came back to post how it went! And also glad that you made it all the way through this time, but sorry you didn’t enjoy it much. It did have some pretty slow stretches.

>103 Sakerfalcon: Exactly. Her writing is
far from the "he's mysterious, he's brooding, he is perhaps violent when drunk = he is sooo romantic" subtext that I associate with Charlotte especially.

>105 YouKneeK:, >106 -pilgrim-: This now-classic cartoon sums up the Bronte sisters' attitudes to men (at least as perceived through their fiction) perfectly! It makes me laugh every time I read it.

>107 Sakerfalcon: Hark, A Vagrant is almost as good as Cyanide&Happiness! :-)

>92 Maddz: I've always preferred Black Adder to Monty Python. Especially the first season's brilliant final episode—the theme song's reprise sends me into hysterics each time I listen to it.

ETA: I'm not a fan of any of the Brontës, but I do agree with >103 Sakerfalcon: that Anne unfairly is overlooked.

>107 Sakerfalcon: Haha, sounds like I'll definitely have to give Anne's book a try!

>109 libraryperilous: Yes! Black Adder! Much funnier, in every way!

>109 libraryperilous:, >111 Busifer: My problem with Black Adder was Rowan Atkinson. I do not find him funny at all.

>112 Maddz: On the whole I agree. But compared to the shouty performance of a lot of the others (Miranda Richardson and Rik Mayall in particular), he did say least have some moments.

I like Atkinson but found I preferred the first seasons style more to my liking. Once Atkinson moved into being the main character with more "bravo" (for lack of a better word) I just didn't enjoy the show quite the same...

Review: Talon of the Silver Hawk by Raymond E. Feist



Talon of the Silver Hawk is the first book in Conclave of Shadows, yet another subseries in the very long Riftwar Cycle by Raymond E. Feist. After the previous 7 books which had returned to some earlier time periods in the series, this book resumes our forward chronological progress and is set about 30 years after the Serpentwar Saga.

This was a solid, entertaining read. It mostly focused on brand new characters and less familiar settings. I really liked the characters, including the main character, Talon. Talon was maybe a bit too talented with too many different types of skills to be completely believable, but I enjoyed him and his story anyway. This book didn’t hold anything groundbreaking or unusual for epic fantasy, and in fact it depended on several tried and true tropes, but Feist writes them well and I never lost interest.

I had been hoping to see some follow-up with Jimmy the Hand’s grandsons, Jimmy and Dash, but the 30-year jump in the time frame means we skipped over the events I’d been interested in seeing at the end of the Serpentwar Saga. The characters were briefly mentioned, but not seen. I don’t know if we’ll get to see more of them in later books, but I get the impression from the subseries titles of the remaining books that we probably won’t go back in time to fill in any of that 30-year gap unless there are some flashbacks. In any case, I also look forward to seeing what happens next with the characters introduced in this book.

Next Book
King of Foxes, the second book in this subseries.

>114 BookstoogeLT: Yes. The first season is my favorite. I think the series works better with Blackadder as the dim one. The other seasons are more standard (and snobbier) in their comedy, and, as >113 -pilgrim-: notes, there was much screeching.

>112 Maddz: I'm only familiar with him from Blackadder. I've not seen any of the Mr. Bean show.

>111 Busifer: I still can't believe they got away with the series' ending.

>117 -pilgrim-: I find Mr Bean completely unwatchable.

>116 libraryperilous: As opposed to >117 -pilgrim-:, I really like Mr Bean. But I think his humor appeals more to the 14 year old boy inside me, so your mileage might vary :-)

Review: King of Foxes by Raymond E. Feist



King of Foxes is the second book in the Conclave of Shadows subseries within the larger Riftwar Cycle series by Raymond E. Feist. The story continued to focus on the characters introduced in the first book and moved forward with the story begun there.

This was another solid, enjoyable read. I really don’t have much to say about it that I didn’t already say about the first book. I was actually surprised that most of the plot seemed to have been wrapped up by the end even though there’s one more book in the trilogy. There were some revelations near the end that seemed likely to be setup for the next subseries, but maybe we’ll learn more about it in the next book too. Also, the thing that happened at the very end of this book combined with the title of the next book does give at least a hint as to what the next book might be about. I’m looking forward to finding out what happens next.

Next Book
Exile’s Return, the final book in this subseries. Only 9 more books in this series left, including the one I’m reading next, totaling less than 4000 pages. That’s still quite a bit left to go, but it feels like I’m on the home stretch since I started with 31 books and almost 14,000 pages ahead of me!

I’ve never watched most of the shows you're talking about, but I did have my first exposure to Mr Bean this past Thanksgiving. I was visiting family and they put it on after dinner. We didn’t watch full episodes; it looked like they were selecting truncated clips that were about 10 minutes or so. The one involving the diving board was moderately amusing, but I didn’t care for the others. It was ok as a distraction from boring family conversations, and better than the extremely boring parade they usually have on TV when we have Thanksgiving there, but not something I would choose to watch on my own.

>119 YouKneeK: Yep, this was really a duology. Exile's Return is more of a gap book bridging this to the next series.
And good job on barreling your way through this series. 9 more books doesn't sound bad at all :-D

>120 YouKneeK: Mr Bean definitely isn't for everyone. I haven't watched it recently (as in, the past decade), so I don't know if I'd even enjoy it now :-)

>121 BookstoogeLT: Thanks, yeah, it had just hit me that I only had 9 books to go and I suddenly felt like I was practically at the end. Comparatively speaking, anyway! :)

There were definitely mixed reactions to Mr Bean among my family members watching it for the first time.

>115 YouKneeK: >119 YouKneeK: Glad you liked both of those! While I missed the old characters and the old locations, it was nice to get a change of pace here and see that he was still capable of doing some decent world building.

>121 BookstoogeLT: Did you actually finish this series?

>123 Karlstar: I gave up on Feist (again) after reading Exile's Return. It wasn't exactly a bad book, but I was just so disappointed that it really turned me off.

>123 Karlstar: Thanks, I think I’ve enjoyed the change of pace too.

Review: Exile’s Return by Raymond E. Feist



Exile’s Return is labeled as the third book in the Conclave of Shadows trilogy, a subseries of Feist’s larger Riftwar Cycle. Unlike his other subseries, this book did not bring the current storyline to a clear conclusion. It ended not exactly with a cliff hanger, but with a looming (if not unexpected) problem revealed right at the end of the book plus a major unresolved mission.

For the most part, I enjoyed this story as much as the previous two in the trilogy, although it really veered off on a different path. The second book had wrapped up the main story surrounding the main character of the first two books, and this book has a different main character, one we have some reason not to be very fond of. He isn’t an unsympathetic character, but I didn’t warm up to him as much.

I thought the story was pretty interesting. It started off as one thing that I liked and that was told well, but I wasn’t sure I wanted an entire book of it. Before I could get tired of that, things got a bit stranger, even a tiny bit creepy for a brief time, and my interest grew. Then we started to learn how that fit into the bigger picture and that was interesting too, and there was some good action at the end.

I wasn’t quite prepared for the incomplete story after all the previous subseries had ended more conclusively. For me it’s not a big deal since I’m reading the whole series more-or-less all at once, with usually just a single-book break between each subseries. Still, it left me undecided on whether to take my usual between-subseries break after this book or jump straight into the next subseries while I still have the momentum going. I decided to go ahead and take my break anyway, but I’ll use one of the shortest standalone books on my list. If I had it to do over again, I’d have taken the break after the second book and then gone from this book straight to the next subseries. There are only 3 subseries left to go, and I’m wondering if the next two will both end in a similar way. Hopefully the last one won’t! The title of the very last book certainly sounds final.

Next Book
Ubik by Philip K. Dick. This will be my third PKD book. The other two were Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and The Man in the High Castle, but it’s been close to 3 years since I read either. I had mixed feelings about both, but I enjoyed the former the best of the two. I know nothing about Ubik, but I expect much strangeness if my experiences with the previous two are any indicator!

>126 YouKneeK: The complete change in characters, plot and cliffhanger'ish ending really, really, really annoyed me when I read this. While I gave it 3 stars, all I remember is the annoyance. That shouldn't be what an author is aiming for.

Glad that you enjoyed this a good bit. Sometimes I wish that authors would realize their readers are people too and not just cows to be milked.

Looking forward to what you think of Ubik. I'm not a big fan of PKD but for some reason I really enjoy reading reviews by other people about his books.

>127 BookstoogeLT: Moo. ;) I think the inconclusive ending would have annoyed me a lot more if I spread my series reads out more normally, or if I had been reading them as they were published.

After the first 20 books, the expectation had been set pretty firmly in my mind that each subseries would tell a complete story that feels wrapped up by the end. I don’t mind that it didn’t, but only because I’ll be getting back to it in a few days anyway.

>127 BookstoogeLT: I agree with about half of that. :)

>126 YouKneeK: Glad you enjoyed Exile's Return, when I read it, I looked at it as a promise that there was more to come and big things too. Also looking forward to your thoughts on Ubik, since I haven't read that one either. :)

I don't remember, are you buying all these Feist books? Paper or ebook if so?

>129 Karlstar: I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what comes next with the series.

I’m buying them all as e-books. When I first read them in my early 20’s, I had borrowed them all from the library. I moved out on my own when I was 20 and had very little disposable income, so I discovered the public library was a cheap way to entertain myself and I didn't buy books for several years.

Now that I do have disposable income, I figure it’s time to give some money to the author who got me addicted to fantasy in the first place. :) I did get several of them on sale though from picking them up in advance when I saw sales over the years since I always intended to do this re-read on Kindle someday.

Review: Ubik by Philip K. Dick



Ubik is a very strange book, but it’s safe if you read it as directed: Pour yourself a nice cup of Ubik and put on your favorite fuzzy Ubiks, then curl up in your Ubik while reading Ubik on your Ubik.

Seriously, it was a strange book. It was a very fast and entertaining read, but every time I thought I had started to make sense of what was going on, there would be a new twist. I love that kind of thing, but I do want it to all make sense in the end. At the time I finished the book, I didn’t think it did. By the time I finished writing this review, I changed my mind. I have great doubts that the author intended things in the way I decided they worked out, but I ended up mostly-satisfied with the story.

I was initially going to rate it at 3.5 stars and round down to 3 on Goodreads, because it was entertaining but I thought it had too many plot holes to feel satisfied by it. Now that I’ve decided I’ve reconciled most of the plot holes, I’m going to give it a solid 4 stars. I also really enjoyed how it made me think. I had fun trying to puzzle everything out, regardless of whether my solution was the “correct” one. I suspect PKD didn’t really have a specific solution in mind and just added lots of twists to try to confuse his readers and let them each form their own interpretation.

I have a whole bunch of rambling thoughts for the spoiler tags about what was or was not really going on, ending with what I decided was the “real” explanation.

It was hinted relatively early that Runciter was the only one alive and that everybody else was in half-life at the moratorium. The biggest problem I had with that theory, when I believed it was the correct one, was the question of how one man in hostile territory could manage to get all of those bodies onto an elevator, then onto a moving walkway to get back to the ship, then placed into cold storage before he was stopped. And could he really have operated the ship by himself? In the version of the escape we saw where it was only Runciter who was dead, it took at least four of the inertials on Runciter’s team to collaborate on operating the ship.

At the very end, when Runciter finds the Joe Chip coin, hinting that Runciter’s apparently in half-life too, that was a big “Huh?!” moment for me. Was the entire team dead including Runciter, or was only Runciter dead after all? If the entire team was dead, who took them to the Moratorium when they were in enemy territory? Why not just kill them permanently? If Runciter really was the only one who died, were all his attempts to help his people only in his imagination since they weren’t really in half-life? I find that unlikely because we spent so much time in Joe’s POV, and Joe learned some things that Runciter didn’t seem to know, so it’s hard to buy into the idea that Runciter imagined everything we saw from Joe’s POV. I think it’s most likely that they all died, including Runciter, and Hollis’ team took them to the Moratorium because they wanted to extend their suffering, knowing the experience would be unpleasant and frightening and that they probably wouldn’t survive long.

Another thing that has to be reconciled somehow is “Matt” and “Bill”. Several members of the team said they dreamed about them just before the mission. Jory, who’s in half-life terrorizing his fellow dead people, claims he sometimes goes by the name “Matt” or “Bill”. So it seems pretty obvious that those things must be connected, but are we supposed to believe he somehow communicated with them in reality from half-life to give them dreams? But why? Maybe Hollis’ team knew about Jory and triggered those dreams. But again, why?

Actually, after all this rambling, I think I’ve thought through a theory I like pretty well that fits most of the plot elements. It isn’t perfect and still has some holes, but I can live with it. I think Hollis’ team recruited Jory, maybe because he had certain attributes that Hollis’ team had learned made somebody strong in half-life, able to dominate or “eat” other people’s consciousnesses, then killed him to put him in half-life. We’re told somebody was paying a lot of money to keep Jory at the moratorium and out of isolation, so that could have been Hollis’ group. They probably put him in the moratorium with Ella intentionally, either to reduce her half-life time and hinder Runciter’s decision-making, or to learn secrets from her about her husband and his team. Probably both. What they learned may even have helped them create the plot that Runciter fell for. Hollis then killed Runciter and his top team, even Pat who had been in league with them as indicated, maybe because Hollis thought she was too dangerous. Hollis had them all taken to the same moratorium to let Jory torment them, and maybe because he wanted Runciter and his team to have a chance to fully understand how well Hollis had tricked them. Everything that proceeded from then on was “real” in the sense that Runciter and his team were all real people with real consciousnesses, but they were in half-life and didn’t know it which is why everything was so bizarre and inconsistent. Runciter may not have been connected as directly to the rest of his team in the moratorium, which could explain why he was only able to communicate in limited ways and why his experience (believing he was the only one alive) differed from his team’s experience. It’s still a mystery to me why Runciter’s team would have been dreaming about Matt and Bill before the mission, though.

Next Book
Flight of the Nighthawks, the start of the next Feist subseries, Darkwar Saga.

>131 YouKneeK: And this is a prime example of why drugs are bad :-D

>132 BookstoogeLT: Haha, my school's anti-drug campaign when I was a child worked very well on me already, but I wonder how being required to read this book would have affected that.

By the way, I have news on the Ernest vs Roomba situation. Ernest has won the war. The Roomba is now locked up in another room. :)

On Saturday, he activated the Roomba six times. On Sunday, he activated it twice before 6am. At the time, I was desperately trying to get some work done for which I had a limited window in which to do it, so that was the last straw. The cuteness factor is now (mostly) gone, and I was starting to rant and rave at the Roomba. I’d tell her to go home, and she’d dock, empty her bin, and then emit a cheerful tune as if she’d just accomplished something amazing. This led me more than once to snark at her, “Stop sounding so pleased with yourself. You just allowed yourself to be controlled by a cat.” When you not only talk to inanimate objects, but you repeat yourself to inanimate objects, this is not a good sign.

>134 YouKneeK: Technically, it's not really inanimate. I mean, it does get around, right? ;)

Seriously though... I have no experience with roombas. Is there no option to turn off notification sounds?

>135 ScoLgo:
Animate = possessing an animus/anima (which roughly translates as "soul")

I would really worry about the concept of roombas having souls.

Vive lingua latina!
:-p

>136 -pilgrim-: Haha - true! I guess I was thinking in terms of synonyms for inanimate such as, "lifeless, inert, and motionless."

People do tend to anthropomorphize objects, (and animals), imbuing them with human qualities that are in fact not extant.

But yes, on the flip side, one of the antonyms for inanimate is definitely "living" so, point taken.

>136 -pilgrim-: Vivat, please. Otherwise, I agree.

>138 hfglen: Indeed it does, Hugh. It does not really need me to enjoin it to.
(But I still wrote 'a' instead of 'e', so messing up the imperative. I will correct.)

>135 ScoLgo: I guess that’s one way of looking at it! I don’t know if notification sounds can be turned off, but I wouldn’t want to. The sounds aren’t the issue, it’s the activation by the cat. I like the notification sound after a normal cleaning operation because it lets me know if it’s just recharging or if it’s really done. An “I finished my job” sound after the Roomba has gone about 2 feet and then been sent back home, on the other hand, is adding insult to injury. It of course doesn’t know the difference between a real job and a cat-initiated job; it only knows its job is done.

What the Roomba really needs are parental controls, and it doesn’t have them. There are actually quite a few pet owners and parents who have similar issues when one Googles for info about it. If I had an older model where you remove the dust bin to manually empty it, keeping the dust bin out would prevent it from running and I could put it in when I was ready to use it. Those older models never worked well on my upstairs floor though; I actually have one downstairs that works fine there but is pretty worthless upstairs.

Locking this one up is an ok solution, though; I can always open that door and let it run from there. I was just too lazy to move it until I got annoyed enough.

>136 -pilgrim-: Haha, if I thought my Roomba had a soul, I think I would be a little creeped out! And I would feel pretty bad about letting my cat torment it for all these weeks.

Only enspirited if you've breathed into it.

>134 YouKneeK: That's hilarious :) Ernest 1, Roomba 0!

>141 2wonderY: Haha, I will make sure not to breathe too closely to the Roomba in that case.

>142 Narilka: LOL, yep! :)

Review: Flight of the Nighthawks by Raymond E. Feist



Flight of the Nighthawks is the first book in the Darkwar Saga, the third-to-last subseries in the very large Riftwar Cycle.

I had mixed feelings about this one. Sometimes it held my attention very well, but at other times I had trouble focusing on it. Part of that could be outside distractions, but those distractions were no worse this week than they’ve been in recent weeks, so I don’t think so. All the books have had recaps to some extent, but they seemed especially tedious in this book. Whenever I caught myself staring off into space and thinking about something else instead of reading, I almost always returned my attention to my book to find myself reading some sort of recap. I imagine people who had a longer wait between books, especially those who read this series over many years as it was originally published, may have appreciated them more. I, however, have read these first 24 books within the past 6 months so the details are still pretty fresh in my mind.

Aside from the recaps, which were especially prevalent in the tiresome scenes with the magicians, most of the story held my attention pretty well. Feist used a lot of familiar plot devices and character types which I tend to enjoy, but there wasn’t anything really new here. I didn’t feel like any real progress was made in the overarching plot, and the end was kind of an “ugh, not again” moment, but maybe I’ll feel differently by the end of this trilogy.

I’m going to rate this at 3.5 stars since I was entertained for the greater portion of it, but I’m rounding down to 3 on Goodreads due to the frequent feelings of repetitiveness and sameness.

Next Book
Into a Dark Realm, the second book in this trilogy.

>144 YouKneeK: So, I went over to your review to thumbs up it and imagine my surprise to find out I had read it too! I do NOT remember reading this or writing that review, at all. However, the little I put down makes a re-read/continuation of the series an impossibility for me now. No way I'm going to eat week old porridge!

I can't remember, at what point did/do you get to "new to you" books in this series?

>145 BookstoogeLT: Haha, just heat it up and maybe add some extra water and it will be fine! ;)

The 16th book I read was the last of the ones I’d read previously, so the past 8 plus the 7 remaining are all new to me. Chronologically speaking, I'd read up through the Serpentwar Saga. In publication date order, I'd read up through the first 3 Riftwar Legacy books (the ones based on the video games).

>144 YouKneeK: I had exactly the same problem with this one. It just felt like a re-run of old plots. Luckily, it gets better.

>147 Karlstar: So far I’m agreeing with you; this second book is holding my interest much better.

Review: Into a Dark Realm by Raymond E. Feist



Into a Dark Realm is the second book in the Darkwar Saga, the third-from-the-last subseries in the very long Riftwar Cycle.

This was much improved over the previous book. In that one, I got bogged down with what felt like an excessive amount of recaps and also a bit of tediousness from an overly-familiar storyline. The story in this book was far more interesting. There were several storylines going on with frequent POV changes, and I enjoyed most of them. There was one POV (Tad, Zane, Jommy, etc.) that seemed a bit superfluous, but I enjoyed it, so I didn’t mind. I especially enjoyed the storyline with Valko on one of the Dasati worlds. It was fun to read about a culture and character that was quite a bit different from Feist’s usual style. Even the parts focusing on the magicians, which usually seem to be the least interesting parts to me in each book, were quite interesting at times.

This book leaves a lot of things left hanging, so I look forward to seeing what happens in the next one. I have mixed feelings about Macros being back, but I’m curious to see what he brings to the table. I mostly just have some reservations about the holes in his memory which make it a bit too convenient for him to know the things he needs to know to move the story along and not know the things that would help move the story along too quickly.

Next Book
Wrath of a Mad God, the final book in this trilogy.

>149 YouKneeK: I am choosing to break my reading rotation for March (yes, I know it's only February but I'm usually 2-3 weeks ahead) and have read one particular series start to finish. While I really enjoy it, I'd forgotten how exhausting it can be to stick with one author for several weeks. How do you do it with these big series? I know you take little mini-breaks by reading other books, but my goodness, reading 3-5 Feist books in a row?

You should enter the Book Olympics or something :-)

>150 BookstoogeLT: Haha, I often wonder how (most of) the rest of the world does the opposite! ;) I really don’t know why I so rarely have trouble with burn-out. The knowledge that I’ll be sticking with a series straight through until the end does influence my decision about whether to keep reading it or abandon it, so I have to like something quite a bit to read the entire series, but I know you and others get tired of a series even when you really enjoy it, so I don’t think that explains anything.

I think I just really enjoy being immersed in a single setting, my world away from the world, for an extended period of time. With a really long series like Feist’s, I definitely reach a point where I start looking forward to finishing it and moving on to the other new and exciting things on my agenda, but not so much that I no longer enjoy reading it. It also feels weird when I do finish – almost like I’ve moved and left all my close friends and familiar settings behind.

I’ve also never liked having things hanging over my head, in a variety of contexts. It bothers me more at work (I’m one of those people who never let an assignment slip through the cracks, even if the person who gave it to me has forgotten all about it) or in my personal responsibilities, but I think it affects my reading to some extent too. I’ve never been able to forget that I had this half-read Feist series from 20 years ago that I wanted to finish someday, and once I started it I just wanted to keep going until it's finished.

Review: Wrath of a Mad God by Raymond E. Feist



This is the final book in the Darkwar Saga, the third-to-last subseries in the very large Riftwar Cycle. 26 books down, 5 to go!

I had mixed feelings. There were a lot of parts where I was very interested in what was going on, and there were a few parts (particularly during the battles) where things felt a little tedious. A lot of big stuff happened and there were some interesting revelations that tied back to all the earlier books, much of which I had mixed feelings about.

Most of what I have to say about this book needs to go in spoiler tags:
Even though many people will survive and have the chance to make a new home for themselves, I hated seeing the destruction of Kelewan. I especially hated that the Cho-ja died with their world.

I was really sad that Nakor died, but it was interesting to finally get some explanation about just what was up with him. I’m not so sure what I think of learning that Kalkin has been manipulating Pug’s life from the start. It wasn’t a surprising revelation, there have been plenty of indicators that the gods were manipulating some of the major players, but I’d rather the characters had been acting completely on their own initiative. I do think Pug and others probably would have made similar decisions on their own if given the chance, so that keeps me from being very frustrated, but finding out a character has been manipulated all along by some more powerful entity is a plot trope I’ve never been too fond of. I feel the same about prophecies, for similar reasons.

At this point, the series seems to be getting more heavily focused on Pug. I like him, but he’s never been a favorite character. Even though he’s been one of the few constants throughout the entire series, my interest is usually more focused on the less-powerful characters who drive most of the action. The scenes with the long-lived magic users have a tendency toward boring dialogue, with characters reiterating things we already know from previous books or even the very same book in order to build up to new and often scanty revelations.

I like Pug’s sons Magnus and Caleb quite a lot, and I very much liked Nakor, but I’m not a big fan of Miranda. In this book in particular, she kept flip-flopping between being excessively quick-tempered and illogical (her normal state) and being excessively dependent and needy. I particularly didn’t understand why she didn’t take the message about evacuating more seriously or make a more serious attempt to get the ball rolling. She just moaned about how she wished Pug were there to help her and made a few half-hearted attempts to get countries on Midkemia to accept refugees that they obviously couldn’t support. I mean, she didn’t even make the most obvious attempt of going to that bar in the Hall of Worlds to ask around if anybody knew a good world for a few million people to be evacuated to. She didn’t try to organize people in advance so they would be ready when the rest of the details were worked out. She didn’t seek out help from other magic-users, like the Cho-Ja magicians. Even if they weren’t willing to leave their world themselves, they might have been willing to help everybody else leave it. Nothing significant happened with the evacuation until Pug showed up with all the solutions.

I’m rating this at 3.5 stars, but this time I’m rounding up to 4 on Goodreads because it did hold my interest well and moved the plot along significantly. I look forward to seeing what happens in the next subseries.

Next Book
It’s time for my next between-Feist-subseries break. I’ll be reading Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta. I don’t know anything about this book or the author, but based on the title I’m expecting this to be one of those environmental apocalypse books that makes you drink a lot of fresh water and take extra-deep breaths of the fresh air when you’re outside. :)

Edited to fix improperly formed IMG tag.

>152 YouKneeK: has Pug moved into Macross territory level of power?

>153 BookstoogeLT: Hmm, maybe? Maybe not. How’s that for a decisive answer? ;)

I find it difficult to answer because they’re both so crazy powerful, except of course when being too powerful would end the story too fast. Plus (fairly large spoiler for this book, mentioned with more detail than I had put in the spoiler section of my review) this book tells us Kalkin/Ban-ath/the Trickster god has been manipulating and helping both of them from the beginning, so to some extent their power seems less relevant to me now.

>154 YouKneeK: Yeah, once gods get involved, human power levels are kind of irrelevant aren't they?

>155 BookstoogeLT: Yep!

>153 BookstoogeLT: I think that's answered later in the series. There's a lot of very high power stuff going on as it starts to wind up.

>157 Karlstar: With only 5 books left in the series, I guess Feist better get a move on! :-)

Review: Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta



I went into this book blind, knowing nothing about it other than the title which screamed to me “environmental apocalypse”. That wasn’t far off, although I guess it’s more dystopian than apocalyptic. Water resources are limited as one would expect by the title, and access to them is strictly controlled by the military.

Sometimes these types of books feel tedious to me because they tend to have similar themes and plots. I really enjoyed this one, though. There were some gaps in the world-building that I wanted to see defined more clearly, and there were some plot points that were a stretch, but they didn’t hit any of my particular pet peeves. Since I was enjoying the story so much, I was mostly able to overlook them.

This book has the type of writing I imagine many would describe as “beautiful”, or “poetic” maybe, or some such adjective. That isn’t something I really have a proper appreciation for, especially if the writing is so flowery that it’s not clear what the author is trying to convey. That wasn’t the case here, though. The writing was clear and the story was interesting. I also liked the characters and cared about what happened to them, although I didn’t necessarily identify with all their choices.

This is one of those books where the story begins with the almost-end and then goes back and spends the entire book telling about the events that led up to that point. Since the reader has that end in mind the whole time they’re reading the story, I think most people will know what’s going to happen long before it happens. (The following spoiler contains vague reactions to the end but no specific plot details.) I expected to hate the ending, and it was definitely bittersweet, but I really liked the epilogue which revealed answers I didn’t think we were going to be given.

One great thing about this book was that it was very light on romance. There are some implications of one depending on how you read things, but it’s easily overlooked rather than the author hitting you over the head with it like many do. One can read as much or as little into it as they want to. I chose to read more into it than I might have otherwise because it helped me understand how Noria and Sanja could possibly have been so careless about keeping the hidden spring hidden. I read it as them being distracted by each other, experiencing some rare carefree moments at the hidden spring and forgetting to be careful of the outside world. Their carelessness was one of the more difficult plot points for me, although it was irrelevant in the end anyway. I had more difficulty understanding why the officials didn’t just follow Noria to the spring sooner (or her father when he was still alive) since they knew it was there somewhere.

So I guess it wasn’t a perfect book, but I found it easy to pick up and difficult to put down.

Next Book
Rides a Dread Legion, the first book in the Demonwar Saga, the second-to-last subseries in Feist’s Riftwar Cycle.

>159 YouKneeK: That is one CREEPY looking cover!

>159 YouKneeK: I really liked this book when I read it a couple of years ago. I agree with your description of the prose style; it was a pleasure to read.

>160 BookstoogeLT: The UK cover is very different:
I think it captures the dreamy, poetic nature of the book and the strong connection to nature that is a core theme. But perhaps it is a bit bland and might not stand out in a bookshop as much as the US image.

>161 Sakerfalcon: I like that cover much better. Not that I'd read this book either way, but I'll take generically beautiful over creepy any day! :-)

>160 BookstoogeLT: Haha, it is a little creepy. It’s also confusing, because the main character has dark hair, so I have no idea who this strange girl is who usurped the limelight on the cover.

>161 Sakerfalcon: I think that cover fits the book much better!

>159 YouKneeK: OOOH, I do love dat apocalyptic fiction. Might have to add that to my Amazon wishlist to snap up if it goes on sale.

>164 clamairy: This one was more dystopian than apocalyptic I think, but I'd love to read what you think if you try it! I caught in on sale for $1.99 last June (U.S. Amazon e-book), so hopefully it will go on sale again.

>165 YouKneeK: Uh oh, I kept looking at your review thinking it was interesting, but then you said 'dystopian'. Like >164 clamairy: I'm more a fan of apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic stuff, so now I'm having 2nd or 3rd thoughts.

>166 Karlstar: I too enjoyed A Memory of Water. I gave it 3.5 stars, (which I translate in my mind to 7/10).

I think it would be fair to categorize the story as both post-apocalyptic and dystopian. It is post-apocalyptic in the sense that climate change has severely impacted how people live, with resources - especially water being extremely scarce. It is dystopian in the sense that the local government/military runs things in a very draconian manner. Again, especially when it comes to the allocation and use of water.

>167 ScoLgo: Sounds a bit like Octavia Butler's The Parable of the Sower

>168 clamairy: Wow! I would have never drawn that comparison but yes, in the sense of being both dystopian and post-apocalyptic, I see it now that you have said it. The stories themselves are completely different though. Butler, (one of my favorite authors), paints a darker and much more brutal picture while conversely ending with more hope for the future, (at the end of the sequel anyway).

>169 ScoLgo: Butler is awesome, and perhaps I'll just read more of her stuff while waiting for this one to go on sale. (I have a bunch on my kindle because I snap it up whenever it goes on sale.)

>166 Karlstar:, >167 ScoLgo: It’s possible (or likely) that what I consider apocalyptic isn’t the proper definition that most people use. When I think of apocalyptic, I think of a disaster that is in the process of (apocalyptic) or already has (post-apocalyptic) completely broken down society so that it’s more of a survival story, with maybe small pockets of people banding together, but nothing organized on a large scale. The stories I think of as apocalyptic usually don't have any method of global communication due to technology having completely broken down. (Broken down versus being restricted by authorities is an important distinction in my mind between apocalyptic versus dystopian.)

Dystopian I think of as a type of story where there may or may not be a global catastrophe such as water scarcity, but organized society still exists and the problems are either caused by or made worse by the way the people in charge handle it. In those stories, I usually expect there to be more widespread dissemination of information, but that information is controlled by and/or censored by the leaders.

So those definitions may be wrong, but I'm mentioning them to explain what was in my head when I said A Memory of Water is more dystopian than apocalyptic in case it makes a difference in whether people want to read it. :) As for me, if I were asked to choose between the two, I prefer dystopian stories. I’ve enjoyed some apocalyptic stories, but if it’s too much of a survival story then it gets tedious to me – a constant repetition of searching for resources and/or running away from danger, finding resources and/or a safe haven, something going wrong and having to go off searching/running again, etc.

>168 clamairy:, >169 ScoLgo: Parable of the Sower is actually on my tentative reading plans for later this year, maybe around May. So it’s good to know per >169 ScoLgo: that the stories are completely different! Otherwise I might have pushed it out a bit to avoid having too much sameness in too short of a time. (I skipped that spoiler, but have made a note on my reading schedule to come take a peek after I finish reading it; thanks for spoiler tagging it!)

>171 YouKneeK: I'd say I agree with your definition of dystopian and apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic. I actually prefer the latter as I really enjoy the putting-things-back-together aspect.

>171 YouKneeK: I'm curious about Parable of the Sower. I've never read anything by the author before and that one comes up in my recommendation lists fairly regularly. I'll be interested in your review when you get to it.

>172 Karlstar: That makes sense. I think I do enjoy the putting-things-back-together also when the emphasis is heavier on that aspect.

>173 Narilka: I’ve had mostly good experiences with Butler. The first of her work I tried was the Xenogenesis trilogy (starts with Dawn) and I really loved that. I also liked Kindred a lot. I wasn’t so crazy for Wild Seed, but I think a lot of my trouble there was because I read it too soon after Xenogenesis. It was a completely different type of story, but it had some similar themes and a less intricate and less interesting (to me) story.

Review: Rides a Dread Legion by Raymond E. Feist



Rides a Dread Legion is the first book in the Demonwar Saga duology, which is the second-to-last subseries in Raymond E. Feist’s very, very long Riftwar Cycle.

I had similar problems with this book as I did with the first book in the previous subseries. I struggled through the first half due to how much recapping took place. We have new characters who randomly pause to muse over known history or legends for the sake of reminding the reader about events in previous books, and then we have the even more blatant recaps from the old and familiar characters as they remind each other about things they all experienced, or recollect those things in their heads.

Since I usually read series books close together, I’m not the best person to judge how much recapping is too much, but this seemed like way too much to me. For readers randomly jumping in at this point, the story makes enough sense without knowing all the nitty-gritty details of the back story. For readers who have read those previous books, part of the fun of reading a series is catching and understanding all the connections between books for yourself without having them spoon fed to you. At least, that’s part of the fun for me. I do accept that tedious recaps are one of the downsides of the way I choose to read series books, but Feist seems to have taken it to an excessive level in some of his later series starter books.

The second half did really pick up and the book introduces some interesting new things. I had a lot of real-world distractions going on while reading this, so I think that partly explains why I had so much trouble powering through the recaps. Once the story picked up and there were fewer recaps, it held my interest far easier despite the same amount of distractions. I’m looking forward to the second book as I expect it to be less recap-filled and more focused on the story introduced in this book.

I have a couple comments with a pretty big spoiler for the end of this book:
Miranda and Caleb died at the end, so it was a pretty sad ending. I won’t miss Miranda; I found her irritating. I felt bad for Pug and Magnus though. I was sorry to see Caleb die because I liked his character even though we haven’t seen much of him lately. Unlike Nakor’s death in the previous book, these two deaths came as more of a surprise to me. I expected them to die eventually, I just wasn’t expecting it to happen right then. Of course, you never know when an apparently-dead character will show up again. However, this seems to be a continuation of the fulfillment of the warning Pug received many, many books ago (and that has been repeated in nearly every book since) that he’d have to watch everybody he cares about die. So I’m not really expecting any reversals and I am expecting more deaths.

I'm getting a teensy bit tired of how every series tells us that the things our characters thought were going on in the previous series weren’t actually what they thought. It seems like there’s always some new player who’s really manipulating everything, including manipulating the previous subseries’ new player who our characters incorrectly believed at that time was “really manipulating everything”. It’s getting to the point where I laugh every time it happens. :) I wonder who will really, really, really be manipulating everything by the end of the whole series! Maybe we’ll find out Pug has an evil twin.

Next Book
At the Gates of Darkness, the second and final book in this subseries.

>175 YouKneeK: Macross the White is the REAL badguy and he's the cause of the entire universe ;-)

>176 BookstoogeLT: LOL, that explains so much! ;)

Review: At the Gates of Darkness by Raymond E. Feist



At the Gates of Darkness is the last book in the Demonwar Saga, the second-to-last subseries in the very large Riftwar Cycle. Only 3 books left.

This was better than the previous book, where I complained that the large amounts of recaps in the first half became tedious and boring. This book had minimal recaps and more action, and I did enjoy the story, but for some reason I never became as engrossed in it as I have with many of the other books in the series. I did enjoy it, though. There were some interesting new characters and situations introduced, and more questions raised that I look forward to seeing answered in the final subseries.

Major spoiler for the previous book, not so much for this one: I guess Feist felt the need to keep an irrational, temperamental female around. After killing off Miranda in the previous book, in this book we get more Sandreena. Yay.

I’ve started to feel a slight bit exasperated when certain writing tactics Feist likes to use show up repeatedly, so maybe I’m finally starting to experience this mysterious author fatigue that some people talk about! This was book 28 of 31, after all. I’ll probably go into a little more detail on his general writing style and what I liked/disliked if I have the energy for it when I review the final book. I’m rating this one at 3.5 stars, but rounding down to 3 on Goodreads.

Next Book
The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. I read Snow Crash just over a year ago, originally with the intent to follow it up immediately with this book because I believe it’s supposed to be set in the same universe many years later and I already had it on my Kindle. However, I was only moderately interested in Snow Crash and didn’t feel that eager to read another right away, so I decided to put it off for a year. And here I am. My expectations are a bit low, but maybe I'll have a super productive weekend because I won't feel like reading much. :)

>178 YouKneeK: I reached author fatigue with Robert Feist long, long ago.
Diamond Age is the most fun of all the Neal Stephenson I've read, and I've pretty sure I've read almost all of them. It ultimately doesn't really make much sense to my mind but it is such a fun, wild ride.

>178 YouKneeK: Glad this keeps rolling along for you. I also find it wicked interesting just how well your system works, for you. I'm pretty sure we've talked about this, but how long did it take you to find/create this systematic reading style?

For some reason I was thinking Diamond Age was part of a trilogy, but upon looking at the wiki, it does appear to be a standalone. Makes me wonder how that idea got stuck in my head.

>179 quondame: Hmm… fun sounds promising, although I tend to get very annoyed if I think a book doesn’t make sense by the end. I haven’t started it yet, but plan to this morning after I finish my morning computer stuff.

>180 BookstoogeLT: The part about binge reading a series is something I’ve always done from my earliest reading memories, if I had access to multiple books in a series. As a child when I had less control over my access to books, I read whatever I could get my hands on, so I did still read a series if it was unfinished, but I liked reading related books when I could. As I got older and started reading more recently-published things, I’d get the new books as they were published, but often re-read the earlier books first. I noticed that I enjoyed series books less if it had been a long wait since reading the previous book.

If anything is new, it’s this business of adding “break” books in the middle. I think that started in 2016 when I tackled Discworld, which I wanted to read in smaller doses since it’s pretty silly. After that, the idea of taking brief breaks while reading a long series grew on me. They help me feel like I’m making progress on other things on my list and getting a brief change of pace while not straying away from the series too long to be able to fully appreciate subsequent books. They also let me post some other reviews that might be more interesting since I’m sure it’s very boring when I’m posting nothing but reviews about books in a series that somebody isn’t familiar with for weeks or months at a time.

>181 YouKneeK: Thanks :-)

>181 YouKneeK: Most Stephenson nonsense is more to do with not really working a believable background reality to the story which has a perfectly comprehensible surface plot and resolution and characters. It's something I've never known anyone else to be bothered by, so maybe it's just me.

>183 quondame: Ah, ok, that makes sense. Once in a while that will bother me, but I think it depends on how much I’m enjoying the story itself and/or whether some aspect of that background reality is particularly annoying to me.

>184 YouKneeK: There's some really interesting aspects of Diamond Age. Not sure the story is one of them, but it is a fun ride.

>185 Karlstar: I’m a little less than halfway through and I’m actually enjoying it quite a bit more than I expected. It’s not exactly a page turner, but I like it more than the other two books of his that I’ve read.

Review: The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson



This is the third Neal Stephenson book I’ve read, the first two being Zodiac then Snow Crash. I seem to end up somewhat lukewarm on his work, but I liked this the best of the three. It held my interest better and I enjoyed the story more, or at least parts of it.

The story has a lot going on, but the part that interested me the most was the Primer, a sort of computerized, interactive book that bonds with whichever young girl it’s given to and adjusts its stories to be relevant for that girl, changing its difficulty level to be suitable for her age as she grows up, and even teaching her how to read if needed. An illegally-made copy of the book falls into the hands of Nell, a young girl in an abusive situation, and has a major impact on her life. There’s a lot more to the story than that, but it would be hard to explain the other parts without spoilers and most of them tie to the primer in one way or another.

The parts featuring Nell were my favorite, both the “real” Nell and the fictional Nell inside the primer. I was also interested in Hackworth’s story in the first half, but then things got a bit too strange for me. The political stuff with the tribes as well as some other parts of the story didn’t hold my interest well, even though I often enjoy political parts when they’re prominent in other books. I guess the way it was written here just didn’t connect with me.

I often felt like events were too coincidental, and sometimes characters made choices for no logical reason that I could discern and/or intuitive leaps that seemed unrealistic. However, it’s possible that this was at least partly only my perception rather than reality. I found myself paying less attention to the details than I usually do when I read. Sometimes the author went off on detailed tangents that were just not at all interesting to me yet contained important plot elements, and I had trouble staying focused in those parts so I may have missed connections that I would otherwise have caught.

I’m rating this at 3.5 stars because there were times, usually during Nell’s POV, when I was riveted by the story. I’m rounding down to 3 on Goodreads because I definitely didn’t enjoy this on a 4-star level.

Next Book
A Kingdom Besieged, the start of the very last trilogy in the Raymond Feist series I’ve been reading for months. The last couple of series starters were overloaded with recaps, so I expect similar frustrations with this book.

>187 YouKneeK: So do you think you're done with Stephenson?

>188 BookstoogeLT: Not quite, because I have Seveneves on my Kindle. I’ll probably read that in a year or two, and then I’ll probably be done.

>189 YouKneeK: Good luck. I tried Cryptonomicon and just gave up. I figured Snow Crash was my outlier book with him and have called that good enough.

Here's to hoping there are very few recaps in your next trilogy. Do you think he also used them to pad the word/page count?

>190 BookstoogeLT: Thanks! Hmm, maybe, but at the rate he was churning out stories I would be surprised if he couldn't find some side stories to pad the page count with if it had seemed necessary. I've wondered if he thought his readers had holes in their heads, or if he writes his recaps the way he likes seeing them written when he’s reading books, or if somebody advised him he needed more recapping, or what.

On the other hand, they might have seemed perfectly normal to everybody who read them over a period of years and they’re just sticking out to me because I’ve now seen the same things recapped so many times in a short period of time.

>191 YouKneeK: Maybe the recaps were written with readers joining mid-series in mind? It would be an odd thing to do now, but not when each book was first published.

>192 -pilgrim-: It’s definitely possible. I noted the possibility in >175 YouKneeK:, but also noted that I thought the story would make sense without knowing all the back story.

My opinion is that bombarding a new reader with too much back story from previous books is more likely to turn them off than to make the story more accessible, while also frustrating existing fans. For the new reader, it makes for too much exposition about things they aren’t invested in. I think brief and subtle references would be more helpful – enough to provide clues about the important bits and maybe tempt them to read the earlier books. That also ought to be enough to jog the memories of existing readers who have let more time pass between books.

>189 YouKneeK: You might want to try Cryptonomicon. I've recommended it to several people and they loved it. It is nothing like Diamond Age or Snow Crash.

>190 BookstoogeLT: I still haven't figured out what you do like! What didn't you like about Cryptonomicon? I know it is long, but that hasn't stopped you before.

>194 Karlstar: I am trying to find my review here on LT. I've found the book but can't find an easy way to get to my review without scrolling through pages of other reviews. Give me some time and I'll post my succinct 27 word review ;-)

I "think" this is the link?

Bookstooge's Cryptonomicon Review"

And it doesn't even have spoilers!

>194 Karlstar:, have you checked out my 100 Books link over on Wordpress? I put 50 books I loved and 50 books I hated. It's in a nice little sidebar for ease of access. See if that helps any?

>194 Karlstar: Thanks, I’ll keep that one in mind if I want to try one of his books that might work better for me.

>195 BookstoogeLT: I don’t know if there’s a faster way, but when I want to re-read my review about a book that’s being discussed on LT, my usual route is to: 1) Click the touchstone which is usually provided in the conversation then 2) Click “Edit your book” along the left-hand menu. Your own review shows up there. I don’t think there’s a way to get a link from there, but the below tactic for finding somebody else's review would work if you search for your own review.

To quickly see somebody else’s review, I click “show all” under the reviews so that all the reviews are on the same web page, then hit Ctrl+F and search for the member name whose review I want to see. You may have to hit Enter or use the navigation buttons to cycle through the search results, because the first hit may be on your “friends” or “interesting libraries” list rather than on the review itself.

That’s what I usually do when I finish reviewing a book – I look at the people listed on the friends/interesting libraries lists on the work page, then use the above tactic to find any reviews they may have written. It’s not as convenient as having them automatically grouped in their own section like on GR, but it works pretty well for me to quickly see all the reviews that people I know on LT have written.

That Ctrl+F tactic may not work great on slower internet connections though, if the book has a lot of reviews. And it probably won’t be much help to anybody not using a PC. There should be equivalent method to Ctrl+F on other devices, but it may be more trouble than it’s worth, especially for people who hate typing on mobile keyboards as much as I do.

>197 YouKneeK: I was afraid of something like that being the solution. I realize LT isn't geared towards the social side of things, but still, this just seems excessive. Oh well, thanks for confirming what I was afraid of :-/

>198 BookstoogeLT: I guess because I have a pretty good internet connection and I type fast, it's a fast process for me so I don't mind it much. But even though there are many things I prefer about LT versus GR, I do prefer the way reviews are laid out on GR since that's zero effort versus a small amount of effort. :)

Ctrl+F is a wonderful thing, though. I use it when I'm researching a solution to a problem at work, to quickly find the relevant section of text in a long web article. I use it in my LT thread when I'm trying to find a conversation I remember having, or I search for my own name in somebody else's thread to remind myself what conversations I've had with them, or I search for other information I remember seeing in a thread. I use it in a recommendation thread if I want to see if somebody else has already suggested a book before I post my suggestion as if it were some great new idea. It works in other software too. I could write an entire essay on the many wonderful uses of Ctrl+F. ;)

>189 YouKneeK: Seveneves is the Stephenson I like the least. Even Cryptonomicon makes more sense, which is saying a lot. I have read the trilogy System of the World and others too.

>200 quondame: Uhoh. :) I keep putting Seveneves off because it’s pretty long (880 pages) and my reaction to his work hasn’t been very enthusiastic so far. Even Diamond Age, which I liked pretty well, felt long at only 500 pages, and I wouldn't normally consider 500 pages to be long.

>195 BookstoogeLT: From a work page, simply click/tap the number of reviews in the header. That will load the reviews page with yours at the top, (if you have written one for that book).

EtA: At the time I wrote this post, Cryptonomicon had 240 reviews. That number is a link to the reviews page.

>202 ScoLgo: Thanks. I tried that and while my review comes up in its own little space, there is no way to actually link to that. I still have to go searching through all the reviews themselves. It's no biggie, as this about the first time I've ever wanted to link to my review here at LT :-D

Seveneves was dire. Reamde however is terrific.

>203 BookstoogeLT: You are just going to have to do the ctrl-F thing! Might be my favorite keyboard shortcut.

>203 BookstoogeLT: Too true. It's weird LT does not provide a link with the top result. As stated in >205 Karlstar:, you have to search the page for your username to get to the link icon. It only takes a second or two, even on mobile, (no Ctrl+F on mobile but most devices provide a 'Find in page' function somewhere).

>204 Jasper: I haven't read Reamde or Seveneves yet. From comments others have made, I would suggest that @YouKneek try either Anathem or Cryptonomicon before Seveneves. Anathem is a stand-alone while Cryptonomicon is followed by The Baroque Cycle prequels, (eight books in three large volumes!). Both Cryptonomicon and Anathem are a lot longer than The Diamond Age - but what other Stephenson books are not? ;)

>204 Jasper: LOL, this is not encouraging. Also, it seems all the ones I don’t have on my Kindle are the ones people recommend. :)

>205 Karlstar: Woo hoo, another Ctrl+F advocate!

>206 ScoLgo: Since I already have Seveneves, it will be my next Stephenson book even though it seems pretty disliked. I prefer not to let my unread books pile up too much. (Not that they actually pile up, seeing as how they’re all digital, but they pile up in my mind.) After that, if I decide to make a 5th attempt at Stephenson, I’ll try one of the books people have been more positive about in this thread. I’ll get it from the library, though, and I shall not ever again be tempted by any more Stephenson Kindle sales. :)

Cmd-F on the Mac. The most useful keyboard shortcut there is.

>207 YouKneeK: I hear you! I picked up a hardback of Seveneves at a used book sale. It's in absolutely new condition and only cost $1.00. It's been sitting on the shelf for a while now glaring at me, (but that glare is lost among all the other neglected books sitting next to it... ;).

I'm hopeful my expectations will be sufficiently lowered by all the negative reviews that by the time I read it, it won't seem so bad. I hold the same hope for you.

>209 ScoLgo: Haha, glaring books can be very scary! Thanks, I do often find that lowered expectations are helpful, as well as being prepared for a more difficult read so that I'm more careful about the timing of when I started it.

>208 haydninvienna: Oops, I'm sorry, I almost missed your post. Cmd/Ctrl/Whatever+F users unite! ;)

>209 ScoLgo: I have Seveneves in my TBR on the Kobo. It's something I haven't read yet. I did enjoy Anathem but it's a bit maths geeky as is Cryptonomicon.

Deleted because it was essentially a repeat of my post in 211, reposted when I thought that one didn’t go through. LT got a little wonky for a few minutes.

>212 Maddz: I’d love to hear what you (and @ScoLgo) think of Seveneves if you get to it before me – especially whether or not you think it’s as bad as everybody says. :) Of the people I know, both here on LT and on GR, their ratings are all over the place.

Review: A Kingdom Besieged by Raymond E. Feist



This is the first book in the very last subseries of Raymond E. Feist’s Riftwar Cycle. I went into this with low expectations because the last two subseries starters were full of recaps that kept putting me to sleep. Happily, I didn’t have that problem with this book at all. There was some recap info, and some of it was provided more than once, but it came in both briefer and less frequent doses and so it never got tedious.

I enjoyed this. It’s full of a lot of the things Feist does best – camaraderie, adversaries banding together to fight a common enemy, a young man unexpectedly thrown into a leadership position and taking charge against overwhelming odds, etc. There admittedly isn’t anything particularly new here, but it was kind of a comfort read with so many of the things I enjoyed most about the early books appearing in slightly different forms here as the series approaches the end. I expected this last subseries to be depressing given some of the often-repeated predictions and the title of the last book, and it will probably get there eventually, but this book was fun.

Feist does like to recycle his character types by introducing descendants of old favorite characters from the early books who have some remarkably similar personality traits and skills. I do usually like them, although they never quite recapture the magic of the originals for me because they aren’t the originals. And then there are the characters who keep showing back up in new and strange ways… I hope Feist can make it make sense that Nakor and Miranda’s “memories” appear to be living in demons. I guess it will turn out to be something the gods did again. I wasn’t particularly thrilled to see Miranda again, but I did love seeing Nakor show back up.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I’m rating it at 4.5 stars which is probably a little generous since I don’t think this story is going to stick with me for the long haul, but mostly it’s just based on the enjoyment I got from reading it. I’m rounding down to 4 on Goodreads.

Next Book
A Crown Imperiled, the second book in this trilogy, and the second-to-last book before you all can stop seeing Raymond Feist's books reviewed on my thread constantly. :)

>215 YouKneeK: I think this summed up a lot of Feist's work nicely - "it was kind of a comfort read with so many of the things I enjoyed most about the early books appearing in slightly different forms here as the series approaches the end."

Some new stuff, a lot of familiar people and places, as the scale of everything slowly creeps up to Armageddon levels.

>216 Karlstar: Yeah, this definitely isn’t a series that pushes boundaries and has twists and surprises around every corner, but what he does well, he does well. :)

Review: A Crown Imperiled by Raymond E. Feist



This is the second-to-last book in the Chaoswar Saga, as well as the second-to-last book in the entire Riftwar Cycle. One book left!

I enjoyed this. There are a lot of interesting storylines in this subseries, although it didn’t hold my attention quite as fully as the previous book did. This one had some slow spots, but not too many and they never lasted too long. I really don’t have anything to say about the book though – a lot of things are left hanging at the end, so I need to find out how everything will be resolved before I can form any opinions about anything. I’m really looking forward to reading the final book and learning how everything gets wrapped up.

Next Book
Magician’s End, the very last book in this entire Raymond E. Feist series.

>218 YouKneeK: I hate when a book can't be talked about on its own, even if it is part of a series. It always has struck me as the author writing one big massive book and then just taking a knife, closing their eyes and cutting down at random and saying "Voila, a trilogy is born!"

I am really tempted to try to read this entire series but my read of the Serpentwar Saga in the 90s really, really,, really soured me on Feist and I'm not sure I can get over it.

>219 BookstoogeLT: If nothing else, the early books are probably worth a re-read. I definitely saw problems with them that I didn’t notice when I was in my early 20’s and brand new to fantasy, but I can see why it sucked me in back then. It has a lot of things that appealed to me both then and now.

I think the Empire Trilogy is the only subseries I'd recommend unreservedly to fantasy readers today though, unless they already enjoyed 80's/90's fantasy in which case they had probably read this anyway!

>219 BookstoogeLT: Feist did not go the Jordan route and write 1000 page novels, instead he split them up into smaller works. Which method is better? I'm not sure, when I read them I always thought the Feist books were the right length, but as you said, at the end they are really part of one long series and not an individual book. I don't really remember individual events from these books, which supports your point, but that didn't bother me. Better this than Rothfuss or Martin.

>220 YouKneeK: Does that make these really pulp fantasy? Slightly longer than the 60's and 70's stuff, like Moorcock, where they really are 'serial' novels? Maybe that was a style in the 70's and 80's, but now we have giant doorstop versions of the same thing, just fewer overall books?

>221 Karlstar: I really haven’t read enough pulp fantasy to feel confident that I’d recognize it if I read it. Or maybe I have (especially if Feist counts), and just didn’t know that’s what I was reading.

Here are some random numbers to support your point on the page counts, this huge Feist series really isn't that many more pages than WoT, despite being twice as many books:
  Wheel of Time: 15 books including the prequel, about 12,400 pages.
  Riftwar Cycle: 31 books, about 14,000 pages.

I can hardly believe you are almost at the end of your Feist Odyssey! You are right, dividing the series into many smaller books does make it seem more daunting than fewer larger books. Of course, I suspect the smaller books are around the same price as the larger ones (in print anyway) so even if the time investment is similar, the cost difference between the two would be significant.

>223 Sakerfalcon: Neither can I! :) You’re right about the cost, I bet. I haven’t taken the time to add up what I paid for the Feist books versus Wheel of Time, but I have no doubt it was a good bit higher. I think most of the Feist books were a bit cheaper (I bought them on Kindle), and some of the subseries were quite cheap with costs ranging from around $2 to $5 per book, but there were a lot priced more in the $7 to $9 range so it did add up across so many books.

>223 Sakerfalcon: Good point on cost. I think the Feist books were cheaper in the hardcover editions, but not enough to make up for the fact there are twice as many. However, it is easier to put out $18 for a book in hardcover than $28, at least for me.

>200 quondame:+laters (yes I'm just catching up on this thread). I loathed Quicksilver "Rubbish. Very slow plot driven by turgid characters. The insight into history starts interestingly but become increasingly unreadable. I only finished it in the mistaken hope that something worthwhile would happen. " which was the next one his I read after Diamond Age. I Loved DA, clever and intricately wrought throughout, only the ending didn't quite keep pace with the rest of it. It remains in my eyes the best of NS. But a very marmite book some do love it.

Reviews: The easiest way from a book page is to goto book details. Your review is right there. However I don't know an easier way to get to friends' reviews, let alone people you 'know' withwhom you don't have an offfical LT connection.

I'll be very interested in ME stands up on it's own without having read the rest of the series, as I loved the beginning, but only read random ones inbetween none of which captured the same joy (except Empire of course).

>226 reading_fox: I don’t think I’ve used the book details menu option. I like that format better for a quick view of my own review, so I’ll try to remember to use that instead of the “Edit your book” option I was using before when I just wanted to quickly glance over my review. I don’t see a link on that page either though, for the cases when one wants to grab a link to their review to share like @BookstoogeLT did, so I guess we still have to use the method for searching for our review as if we were searching for somebody else’s review to get the link.

Regarding Magician’s End, I’d say probably not on its very own. The previous book, the middle book in the trilogy, had a lot of cliffhangers and this book picks up where that left off. I think you could probably follow the story, but it seems like it would be hard to build up any investment in what’s happening if you weren’t there from the start of the arc. The last trilogy read together would probably stand on its own well enough, if you just go with the flow of the current story and don’t worry too much about how and why some things have changed from earlier books. The biggest arcs that cross the entire series are that of the magicians and the progression of enemies revealed in each subseries which in some ways remind me of the old children’s book, A Fly Went By, although I expect it won’t end the same!

I’m still working my way through the very last Feist book. I doubt I’ll finish it today, but tomorrow is a possibility.

Meanwhile, I’ve been enjoying the warmer weather in my area because I’ve been able to sit out on my deck a bit and read, something I always miss during the colder months. Today I had this lady keeping me company while I was reading – from a safe social distance, of course.

(This is apparently a green anole. I had to Google “green lizard in Georgia” to find out, because I’ve never been good at identifying various wildlife specimens.)

>228 YouKneeK: What a cutie!

>228 YouKneeK: Oh, I love it! Was it shy? Was your kitty watching it through the windows?

>229 haydninvienna: I was disappointed that she had moved on by the time I went back out for another reading session. There are a lot of homes in my area, so I guess she had other people to visit! Maybe she’ll come again. I’ve lived here for 8.5 years and it’s the first time I’ve noticed a lizard visitor.

>230 clamairy: She seemed shy and stayed well out of reach. She was on the gutter a few feet past the railing of my deck, so I had no way to reach her or I probably would have tried to coax her onto a hand or arm. I was calling her “little guy” until Google informed me that the males have more color around their necks. Hopefully I didn’t offend her. (I was only calling her this inside my head, but I’m pretty sure she heard my telepathic thoughts.) When I Googled, I also learned that apparently some people keep them as pets and they can be tamed with frequent (and careful!) handling. I’m sure things would not go well for any lizard if I brought one into the house. The cat was napping at the time, but I’m not sure he would have noticed her since she was so still, and she was pretty far away from the windows.

>131 YouKneeK: It's lovely. I hope that you find more of them, but not so many that you feel overrun. Yes, if you brought one inside I'm sure it wouldn't survive long. Not much would, I suspect.

We have giant 'cave crickets' here now. (They weren't in the area when I moved off the island in the late 1980s.) They don't get into my house often, but when they do all I find is 'parts.' (They're also called spider crickets and camel crickets. They don't make any pleasant noises like field crickets.)

>232 clamairy: Sounds like a kitten I shared a house with once - we had 2, Muffin and Simon. Muffin was a confident, rambunctious black and white, Simon was a timid and shy tabby.

Once day, a massive spider ran across the sitting room and sat on the hearth rug daring us to move it on, so we set Muffin on it. Muffin took one look and bolted - he must have been an arachnophobe. About 10 minutes later, Simon wandered in, saw the spider and spent the next 30 minutes playing with it around the sitting room, before killing and eating it on the hearth rug, but kindly leaving us the legs...

>233 Maddz: Oh man, now I'm going to have nightmares!

>232 clamairy: I had never heard of cave crickets. (Or spider crickets or camel crickets.) I googled them and the picture I got was slightly alarming and looked more like a spider than a cricket to me! Which I guess explains the “spider cricket” name. As a child, in second grade I think, my class kept crickets as part of our science studies. I’ve always rather liked crickets ever since then, at least the normal kind. I think it might take me a while to warm up to a cave cricket...

>233 Maddz: LOL, that’s funny how differently Muffin and Simon reacted. My cat will play with bugs, but he doesn’t usually manage to kill them and I’ve never seen him eat one. I may never have given it enough time, though. I always end up feeling sorry for the poor traumatized bug and either catch it and throw it outside, or kill it and put it out of its misery, depending on what kind of bug it is. Fortunately my current home doesn’t get that many bugs inside. I probably see box elder bugs more than anything, because I have a boxelder maple tree directly outside my home. Those I catch and toss outside. (The bugs, not the trees. The trees generally stay put.)

@Maddz, how are you and Paul doing?

>235 YouKneeK: We're fine, we've almost finished inventorying the SFF books, logging Paul's books and de-accessioning most paper books we now have as e-books. There's now a large stack in the porch to be disposed of once the charity shops re-open (unless the postie or the meter-reader snaffle them first). We no longer have books sitting on top of bookcases nor in piles waiting to be put away, and there's actual space in the bookshelves! I still have to check the books in the attic though - a lot probably have been disposed of already.

All this was part of clearing out the family room to give us plenty of space to work. Both our jobs involve confidential data (not that either of us would understand the other's data but I do go into social care user records to check data). I might switch the tables round - Paul is using the smaller table in front of the window which has the iMac on it as well, and I'm using the larger. It would probably be a good idea to swap them round; Paul then has the larger across the width of the room at the end, and I have the smaller along the length of the room by the door.

I've also caught up with laundry; the weather last week was sunny so I was able to put a wash out in the morning and bring the dry laundry in at teatime (as in dry enough to be put away). Yesterday the weather broke, so the last wash is airing in the utility room; we got it in just before it started raining properly so it was still a bit damp.

I managed to get out on Friday morning to do the weekly shop - normally the store opens at 7 am, but they're now reserving the first hour for NHS and care staff, and vulnerable people. I got there at 7:45 and there was about 20 people ahead of me in the queue to get in; by the time I got in, there were at least that many behind me. There were a few things I couldn't get there (or forgot to put on the list), so I expect we'll walk into the market tomorrow morning for our daily exercise which covers 3 allowable reasons for leaving the house: food shopping, daily exercise and medical reasons (I need some hydrocortisone cream for an eczema flare-up and Morrisons doesn't have an in-store pharmacy).

Otherwise, things are nice and quiet. How are you and Ernest doing? He must be ecstatic to have you about all the time...

>236 Maddz: I’m glad you’re both doing well! I bet there is a lot of cleaning and organizing going on around the world about now.

Ernest and I are doing pretty well. He’s taken to sitting in my lap during part of my workday, which is nice up until the point when he randomly decides it’s time to act like a proper cat and attack the human. Then he gets evicted. I’m still staying as isolated as possible, although I’ve had to go out a couple times. I’ll probably do a grocery store run next weekend as I’m starting to get low on several things, which will be about 3 weeks after my last grocery trip. I’ll use my store’s pickup option, which I’d been doing long before the virus outbreak anyway, so I won’t have to go into the store.

>237 YouKneeK: That’s lucky - all our local delivery or pick-up slots are fully booked. Hence arriving at the store first thing. It would be useful if they could set up a web cam to monitor the length of the queue... We’d only be shopping for fresh foods going forward.

The worrying thing is Paul’s mother. She’s in her 80s and lives on her own. We had hoped that Paul’s brother would camp out there for the duration, but he came down with gastroenteritis before the lock-down and didn’t make it over there in time. Luckily she has very supportive neighbours, and hopefully we can register her as vulnerable and she’ll food parcels delivered.

>238 Maddz: I hope Paul’s mother will be ok and can get food delivered, and I hope his brother is feeling better soon if he isn't already.

A web cam would be a great idea. I’m really glad you mentioned your local pickup slots all being booked. That hadn’t been an issue here a couple weeks ago, but I just went to double check my local grocery store and their pickup slots are booked until Thursday. I guess they’re getting overwhelmed here too, something I definitely should have expected but failed to think about. I’ll have to get my order placed today for next weekend. I had been slowly adding items to my cart as I thought about them, but hadn't planned to officially place the order until later this week.

Review: Magician’s End by Raymond E. Feist



This was the very last book in the entire 31-book Riftwar Cycle that I’ve been reading for months! I think it was a mostly-satisfying conclusion. There weren’t any big surprises. Not everybody comes out alive at the end, which also wasn’t a big surprise. There were some slow spots, but it mostly held my attention well.

As I had mentioned in some of my reviews, the early books in this series are the ones that introduced me to fantasy as an adult and got me addicted to the genre. This was 20+ years ago when I was in my early 20’s. At the time, only about half of the books had been published and I never went back to it after reading everything that was published at the time. I now have a lot more fantasy under my belt, and can see some of the flaws in these books that I didn’t notice back then, but I still really enjoyed going back and revisiting this series, and this time seeing it through to the end.

There are certain things the author does a really great job writing, and they tend to be the types of things I enjoy in stories. He does a really great job of writing noble, loyal characters who are trying to do the right thing and will sacrifice for the greater good. He also does a great job of writing camaraderie between characters. Although his books aren’t uproariously funny, they do have a smattering of humor, particularly in the dialogue, that helps make them enjoyable to read. He does a good job of writing battles so that they remain interesting and not too repetitive, and a pretty good job with political intrigue as well.

There are also things the author isn’t so great at writing. Females and romantic relationships would be high on that list. Although he occasionally managed to make his females interesting, for the most part I found them generic. In his earlier books especially, female characters showed up mainly to support the men and to give them somebody to occasionally glance longingly at, or to worry about, or to admire. In later books some of his females took on a little more personality, but they had a tendency to be either super sweet and supportive, or temperamental and irrational. There was also a frequent implication that anybody who wasn’t married was really a miserable person who hadn’t found their true reason for living yet. I found it particularly frustrating when a favorite character who had been living a full and productive, if rather dangerous, life as a single male suddenly encountered his soul mate (whom he promptly got engaged to later that day) and we were told he’d actually been miserable all this time and only now was he truly happy. Blech! :p

An exception to my above comments about his writing of females is the early trilogy he co-wrote with with Janny Wurts, the Empire Trilogy, beginning with Daughter of the Empire. It has an awesome female main character who was well-developed and interesting, and I thought it probably had some of the best over-all writing in the entire series. I would recommend that subseries to fans of epic fantasy without reservation, whereas I would be more reluctant to recommend the rest of the series unless the person were fond of older, classic fantasy and had minimal expectations for well-written females. The first subseries is still my favorite of his solo work though, so it would be a good place for readers to start to see if his writing style works for them. The trilogy co-written with Janny Wurts is the second subseries but doesn’t rely on knowledge from the other books so one could also jump straight into that.

In his first few books, he created some characters I love and whom I’ve remembered fondly for the past couple of decades. However, quite a bit of time passes throughout the overall series. Old favorites die and new generations are born. When it comes to a long series, I think I prefer the type that stays with the same characters from beginning to end. The newer characters never quite gained the same level of investment from me as the original characters did, although I did very much like many of them. There are some powerful/magical characters who show up in most of the books in one way or another, but these weren’t the characters I was the most attached to and their parts of the stories were often the parts I found less interesting. Those parts often got a bit too philosophical/mystical/monologue-y for my tastes.

The author does tend to recycle similar storylines and character types throughout his books. Since a lot of these were things I liked, it didn’t bug me too much, but sometimes I felt like he was trying to recapture the greatness of his earliest characters by creating descendants of those characters who had similar traits. That always fell a little flat for me and just made me miss the originals more. There was also an attempt to make each subseries even more “epic” than the last one, with each threat or source of problems from the previous subseries actually being caused by some bigger threat in the current subseries. By the end of the entire series, I was having “A Fly Went By” flashbacks – where the fly is being chased by the frog being chased by the cat being chased by the dog, etc. However, I’m pleased to report that the series did not end with an (um, spoiler for “A Fly Went By”?) innocent lamb with its foot stuck in a can.

Although I normally prefer to read a large series as close to straight through as possible, I think even I would have benefitted from spacing this one out a bit more, especially in the last few subseries. Despite feeling a bit of series fatigue by the end, I did really enjoy reading these books. In many ways they were comfort reads -- I knew what to expect from them and could count on certain things that I would enjoy.

Next Book
Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein. I’ve read a couple of his other books, but this will be my first time reading this one.

>240 YouKneeK: I was just laughing my way through your review. Made for a fun time :-D
I was wondering about trying this series, but after this book and all the little things you've mentioned through the various reviews, it seems safer to just stick with Magician and leave it at that.

As for the Empire trilogy, by him and Wurts, I just put that up on my blog, so it's fresh on my mind. My impression was that Wurts did the heaving lifting in regards to writing (it really reminded me of her first War of.... series) and that Feist gave some ideas and his name on the cover. Good books for sure!

I really enjoyed Starship Troopers. It was a lot deeper than I was expecting. I hope you enjoy it and that you don't watch the movie for quite some time!

>241 BookstoogeLT: Haha, it would have been fun (at least for me) to see what you made of it on a re-read, though!

Regarding the Empire trilogy, there was some info on LT about it -- posts 49 and 51 by Janny Wurts at this link. It sounds like it was a true collaboration, although it seems likely she did most of the character development for Mara since he never managed anything like that with a female character on his own.

>240 YouKneeK: Thanks for sharing your views on all of these books! I enjoyed the reviews. I'm also looking forward to your review of Starship Troopers.

>241 BookstoogeLT: I was going to try and talk you into reading the next two books after Magician, but then I remembered your objections to Thomas. Still....

However, you saying 'deep' and Starship Troopers in the same sentence almost made me laugh out loud. :) Don't get me wrong, I love Starship Troopers, but I've never heard anyone say that before!

>243 Karlstar: I've read the original trilogy several times (own them in hardcover) and I like them. But the stuff after that? It really turned me off.

As for Starship Troopers, are you in the camp that Heinlein was being tongue in cheek with the book?

>243 Karlstar: Thanks!

>240 YouKneeK: - does this bring the series to a definitive close? Does it feel like an ending to 30 previous books with everything firmly wrapped up?

>246 reading_fox: Everything from the previous books was wrapped up well, I think. There was some sense at the end that some of the remaining characters would have new adventures, so I felt like there's material there to spur a new subseries if the author decided to go back to it, but I think that's often true at the end of a series and I wasn’t left feeling like more was needed.

>240 YouKneeK: Congrats on finishing! That is quite an achievement.

>248 Narilka: Thanks!

>244 BookstoogeLT: If you don't mind, I'll wait for YouKneeK's review of Starship Troopers! I wish I had that available for a quick re-read.

>250 Karlstar: Good call! I'm getting ahead of myself :-D

>250 Karlstar:, >251 BookstoogeLT: Don’t let me stop you – if you put it in spoiler tags I’ll come back and read it when I’m done. But after is fine too. I'll definitely be interested to read your thoughts once I finish! :) My weekday reading has gotten very slow, so it will probably be at least a few days before I finish even though it’s short. It will also probably be in a new thread because I plan to start a new thread tomorrow.

On a completely unrelated topic, it's been a while since I've posted an Ernest Shenanigans picture. This particular shenanigan is nothing new or shocking. He’s been doing this for years, but it occurred to me to snap a picture when I was greeted by the below sight this morning.

This is my dresser. He opened the outer cabinet, then he pulled the drawer out, then he crawled back behind the drawer to watch me from hiding. All the better to plot my demise, I guess, as cats do. Sometimes he does these things in the middle of the night, but this morning he courteously waited until I was already stirring. This picture is also making me realize I need to remember to dust INSIDE the cabinet next time I dust… yikes!

Ernest is way too smart! I'm so glad my cats haven't figured anything like that out lol

>252 YouKneeK: It is always amazing to me how clever and strange cats can be.

>252 YouKneeK: What a lovely piece of furniture (cute cat too), but what can it mean that there is available space on a shelf and a drawer?

>253 Narilka: It can definitely be troublesome at times, although also a source of amusement!

>254 Karlstar: Ernest believes he fits the first description but not the second. I’m confident he fits the second, but not so sure about the first – I think it’s more dumb luck and stubborn persistence. He sure has more dumb luck and stubborn persistence than any other cat I’ve ever had, though.

>255 quondame: Thanks! I literally spent years looking for bedroom furniture I liked, and that’s part of what I finally ended up with. I actually used to have stuff in that section of the dresser, but I got tired of having to repeatedly pick it up off the floor due to a certain pesky four-legged creature. ;) He leaves the stuff in the other drawers alone and just clambers over it, but for some reason he chooses certain parts of my furniture and insists that they be kept clear for his own nefarious purposes.

>252 YouKneeK: Ernest would appear to be, if not the actual Rum Tum Tugger then certainly a disciple.
"He likes to lie in the bureau drawer,
But he makes such a fuss if he can't get out.
Yes the Rum Tum Tugger is a curious cat ---
And it isn't any use for you to doubt it:
For he will do
What he do do
And there's no doing anything about it!"

>257 hfglen: LOL, I can definitely see the resemblance, at least personality-wise! However, Ernest is partial to lying behind the bureau drawer, which I think means he's improved upon Rum Tum Tugger's habits. It prevents me from shutting him in, because I can't shut the drawer if he's behind it.

(Although I can squish him a bit... but being a well-trained human, I never close a drawer that I didn't just open myself unless I have him in sight and know he's not behind it. It's harder to see him behind some of the other drawers that don't have such a big gap at the top.)

>252 YouKneeK: My very soul loathes the spoiler tag, nay, it recoils in unspeakable horror! A veritable abomination it is!

Yeah, I think I can wait :-D

I've never been a cat fan (or any animal to be honest), but almost without fail, if there is a cat in the house I am visiting, who does it go to? Not Mrs B, who loves them, oh no....

>259 BookstoogeLT: LOL about both the spoiler tags and the cats.

Cats are perverse creatures! Mine usually shows up in my lap not long after I sit down in my loveseat to read, but he likes to pretend he’s not heading for my lap when he and I both know better. He’ll jump up on the loveseat, look at me, then pretend to walk to the other side as if he’s going to sit in the other seat. Then he slowly ambles back over my way as if he wants to make sure I understand he’s only grudgingly agreeing to sit in my lap, and only because there isn’t a better one available in the other seat.

>260 YouKneeK: He could be expecting you to move to the other seat so he can sit on your lap there...

>261 Maddz: It’s possible, but he’s a pretty big fan of his human sticking to the same routine and habits, and I always sit on the same side. I went through a phase for a while where I was sitting and reading on the couch downstairs more, and he rarely sat in my lap while I was down there even though I was pretty much in the same position.

Hullo. Your book reviews caught my eye, and this has been on my TBR list for some time, just never enough interest to get it. Thank you for pushing me to commit. I dove into Mona Lisa Overdrive when it was released and have been a mild fan of cyber punk since. Thank you, Michael

p.s. hope you make it through Canterbury Tales ok! That was my AP English subject book one year, and it was a torturous dissection of the language of old English. Easier to read than immanuel Kant though!

>263 MJPete: Thank you for taking the time to comment! The book that’s been on your TBR, which one is that? For a minute I didn’t even realize what thread I was in and thought you were talking about Parable of the Sower, which was the last book I’d finished. :)

Thanks for the good wishes on Canterbury Tales, that third quarter is rapidly approaching! I think spending a year dissecting any single book would probably drive me crazy. My read-through probably won’t do proper justice to it, though.

>264 YouKneeK: Ooh.. cyberpunk, I bet you're talking about This Alien Shore? I'd love to hear what you think of it when you read it!