Where are you in fantasyland? August 2024

I'm in Vegas with the Dark Fae in The Vicious King while I wait for the last Discworld book I need to get here.

I've just woken up with the Witch King and am not sure exactly where we are yet.

Just returned from a postapocalyptic US Southwest troubled by gods & monsters, in Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse. I thought it was very good -- of course, I love that genre of action/suspense supernatural fiction - Harry Dresden, Anita Blake (first few, before it descended into an obsession with S&M erotica), etc. They're potato-chip books for me.

I'm now back in Earthsea with The Other Wind by Ursula Le Guin

Now in 16th century Ireland, in Flint and Mirror by John Crowley. Mostly an historical novel with touches of Crowley-esque fantasy (Dr. Dee, faerie mounds, magical mirror). Wonderful evocation of Irish resistance to English colonialism. As always with Crowley, beautifully written & imagined.

Am in modern London, with Lockwood & Co, investigating the Creeping shadow

In Brattleboro, VT exploring The Ten Thousand Doors of January.

I'm heading to Roshar for The Way of Kings.

Back in Ankh Morpork for the invention of the railway in Raising Steam.

I'm in an alternate England with the book eaters.

Reading The god and the gumiho by Sophie Kim, where a gumiho hates coffee but works in a coffee shop, and the god happens to also be a police detective.

In a donut shop in California looking at the Light from Uncommon Stars, and I'm confused about what subgenre I'm in, but loving every minute of it.

I just finished Words of Radiance. Very good. Stormlight is clearly a flawed series (very long, drawn out conversations, awkward romances, pacing issues), but I like it, warts and all! The uneven pacing and extensive exposition sink you deeper into the world (despite the occasional eyeroll and some page-skimming). Now that I have read two books in the series, Brando Sando reminds me more and more of Peter F Hamilton who is one of my favorite Science Fiction authors. He also writes bloated doorstoppers, but I love them.

On to Oathbringer.

I just spent time in Oluwan City with Small Sade and some other folks, including an intelligent gecko, in The maid and the crocodile by Jordan Ifueko. This is a standalone book set in the same world as the Raybearer books but several years after Redemptor ends, so it's still a place in transition. Not without a little magic, though. The main character has visible differences and also happens to be a sin eater, among other things.

I'm heading back to the Discworld with Witches Abroad.

I'm back in Valinor & the Elder Days, having started my first reread of the Silmarillion in 14 years. (By comparison, I read LOTR four times in the same period; having slowed down since my early years with LOTR, having read it almost nonstop from 1960 - 1970 and many times since then.)

It's time for a new thread, but my recent reading has been mostly a loooong march To Green Angel Tower that is entering its third calendar month now. I'm enjoying the book, but it is somehow really slow reading for me.

I did take a break from it while I was on vacation for a few weeks, and during that time I solved a Murder at Spindle Manor and took one last trip with Eugenides in The Return of the Thief.