Tag Archives: Review

Breadknives and BS

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Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I didn’t know what to expect with this entry into the world of Legends & Lattes. I hadn’t read anything leading up to it, nor did I read the back cover copy. I enjoyed the first one, and the second one was ok. I have been leaning toward ‘cozy’ lately and this seemed like it would fit the bill.

It is still cozy… but there’s a lot more action and a lot more peril in this one than in the previous entries. The whole thing is a very interesting take on adventure. It starts without intention to adventure, morphs into a mid-life crisis and wraps up as something I can’t really identify.

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

I wanted to empathize with Fern more than I could. Going from the position of ‘I have everything’ to ‘I can’t be here anymore’ seemed very abrupt. Running away from your problems is not a heroic thing, and I generally have a lot of problems with that. I think if there was some return to wrap up the story that was more than ‘I am broken and I won’t be here anymore’ it might have been better? Just abandon your pet? I’m shocked more people aren’t upset about that. Come back to your friends just long enough to… make yourself feel better about what you did?

I’m sure there’s a part of this that’s supposed to be a happy ending where Fern is off with the unintentional bad guy that she thought smelled good – but I just don’t see it. Maybe it’s me?



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Black Leopard, not read wolf~

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Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


I put this work into the same category as I do many other works that win awards for reasons beyond my understanding. I don’t get it. I am clearly not the right audience for this work. Part of my dislike is the writer’s style. Part of my dislike is the sexual violence. Part of my dislike is the main character… I just don’t connect. I gave this more than one shot, but just never got past about chapter 4 or 5.

I will say this title did provide for interesting discussion among the members of our club. Interesting discussion is about as far as I can recommend it.



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Something I did not add to my Goodreads review is the artwork I created based on whatever inspiration I could find in the portion of the book I did read. The visuals of this mystic tree and following various forms of a being through the mist did help me create this work. It was also nice that I got some small amount of feedback on the art. IF I can create something and it provides enough of a mood or a feeling that you are compelled to comment that’s a good sign.

Small and Angry

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The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I don’t know if 3 stars is enough ~ I think 3.5 is closer to where I am. This was a smoothly written book with very believable characters. I did enjoy it.

I wonder if it is more of a character study than an adventure story? This is part of my hesitancy with the full on liking. The characters are great but this feels like a small piece of something much bigger and it doesn’t seem like we’re getting more than “hey, this was our adventure”. Even when I read the teaser for the next book, it seemed like this one was just done. The next book doesn’t seem to have any of the same people.

To be entirely fair, I do like stand alone books. This is fantastic for that, but there are a number of things that I wanted more of and questions that I didn’t think were answered. Still good.



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Reading Statistics

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I posted up a summary of a decade of reading last year. I am not a spreadsheet person, nor did I make a graph but I did lay out the numbers. I averaged just a little over 22 books a year during that time. Pretty close to two per month.

This year I made it to 19 (20 if you count the one I’m reading right now because it will probably be done by the end of the week). All things considered, not a bad amount. The month to month has understandable gaps, and some of the selections I made were decidedly shorter than others, but they were still books and they still counted as reading.

If I stated some kind of goal or set out to specifically read any number of books for the coming year I think that would turn something enjoyable and relaxing into work. As if I just had to get to that next or last book to make a quota. I do things like that (personal goals that mean nothing to anyone other than the voices in my head) but I think for relaxation time it would become a problem.

I’m pretty sure I’ll hit 11 in the coming year, as that’s how many meetings of Watch The Skies we’ll have and we pick a book each month, but beyond that I just hope the book selections I get will be really good stories. I want to have a book that I sneak a peek into while I’m on a break at work. I want a story that inspires me to go and create fan art for it. That’s the sign of a good year of books in my mind.

How did your year of reading go?

Old Man Indeed

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The first time I read “Old Man’s War” was back in 2009. I checked the date on Goodreads… and I suspect I was lucky because I don’t think I started posting books there much earlier than that (although it’s shocking to me that I’ve been posting to Goodreads for 16+ years at this point).

I had a very positive review at the time and it was very focused on the action. I complained about the 150ish pages of set up.

I saw that the latest in that series was published a couple of months ago. It’s the seventh! book in the series – he must be doing something right. I thought I’d dive back into the series and see about cruising through a nice space opera with some action and plenty of fun stuff to read. I picked up a new copy (e-reader this time partly for convenience and partly because I coudln’t find the other one) and dove in.

To carry forward the diving analogy… I dove into the shallow part of the pool and it didn’t end the way I thought it would.

The part I didn’t remember was the basis of these stories is that the military uses old people. The ‘magic/science’ allows all the knowledge and experience to be swapped into a new, supercharged body that is built to fight. That also means the characters in the stories have a ton of life they have lived… and lost.

The book opens with the main character visiting the grave of the woman he’d been married to for decades who died after having a massive stroke.

That just crushed me. I had to stop almost as soon as I started.

When you read a book matters so much. All the other parts, the style, the characters, the plot are the core but the timing is everything. Back in ’09 I gave no thought to what that meant. I wanted to push past all that ‘old man’ part and get to the war part. Well, here we are 16 years later and the ‘old man’ part is intensely difficult to read. I did finish the reread of this one. The book is still good, but it’s not the same excitement driving work that I read earlier in my life.

I still like the book. I’m not nearly as enthusiastic as I was. I struggled with the main character seeing his wife so clearly in others in so many places. I see the found spirit part but I don’t think I believe it. Maybe if I read this again in a decade or so it might be different, but I don’t think I’m going any further with the series right now (or maybe ever). We’ll see how the timing works out in the future.

Book Review Catchup Post

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Keeping up with things lately has not been easy. It was never “easy” but less so in recent months. I hadn’t actually stopped reading, I just haven’t had the emotional space to write down reviews of books I’ve finished. There are a handful that I’d like to track, so I’ve added them to Goodreads. I’m not going to try to link each of them individually here, nor will I have deep reviews for all of them but I did want to land them where I can track them.

Assassin’s Quest (The Farseer Trilogy, #3) by Robin Hobb (3 stars)

I pushed through and finished the series. I can say I ‘liked it’ but I did not love it. It ended, but somehow it just didn’t feel right to me. I’m glad I finished the series.

Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1) by Rebecca Roanhorse (4 stars)

It was really good to see a fantasy work set in something NOT medieval Europe. It’s well done and I will likely pick up the next book in the series.

Fevered Star (Between Earth and Sky, #2) by Rebecca Roanhorse (3 stars)

I continue to like the concept of non-Europe based fantasy. This book was good and the characters continued to be solid, but when I hit the end I just didn’t have the same drive to get to the next book. We’ll see if I wrap it up at some point.

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn (The Library Trilogy, #1) by Mark Lawrence (2 stars)

There was a lot of potential here and I was really drawn in at the start. The longer I read, the more I was hoping for certain things and not getting them… then things just got weird. That’s good – weird is good – it just wasn’t weird that worked for me.

Glory Road by Robert A. Heinlein (1 star)

I realize there are a lot of fans out there that will not like a one star review for this classic. There are some I have spoken to who read this in their youth and remember it fondly. There are some who continue to reread this as a ‘true classic’ that they really enjoy.

I didn’t read this as a youth, and reading it now with a more modern view… didn’t do it any favors. I suspect if I had picked this up when I was 14 I would consider it one of the best ever. Looking at it now? It is dated, male-centric and just not the exciting adventure everyone seems to think it is… at least not to me. I didn’t even make it to the end.

Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk (3 stars)

A wizard private investigator in Chicago on the outs with the official wizarding organization…

I really had to struggle past the direct comparison to Harry Dresden as a starting point. It’s likely not fair, but it’s definitely something people will see right away.

I am not a fan of Supernatural (TV series) but others have told me there is a heavy influence in the book for that as well.

In the end I read the whole thing rather quickly. I struggled with the ending, but then it was as advertised in the title… even though I knew the end.

The Spellshop (Spellshop, #1) by Sarah Beth Durst (4 stars)

This book is exactly the warm, relaxing cup of hot chocolate the author wanted it to be. Charming characters, low stakes (that seem more so) and lots of positive thoughts. If you’re looking for a cozy, I absolutely recommend this.

The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I liked this story as much as I liked the first book. There is an attachment, but not nearly as much as I thought there might be, to the first book but this definitely stands on its own.

I will say that when I finished this, directly on the heels of the first one I may have felt like I’d eaten too many sweets. Even saying that, if you’re looking for a cozy, this is also on the recommended list.



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Solo Game

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Sometimes taking the time to play a game is just the sort of rest and recuperation one needs. Sometimes when you need this, there’s nobody else around, making the game options limited.

At a recent board game day in my local community I picked up a single player game. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I figured I’d take a shot. The creator seemed like a local person and the game looked well put together. The game is called Eleventh Beast. This game is set up as a solo monster hunting game set in London in the mid 1700s. I’d only ever “played” pick your own path style single player games, so I wanted to do this one right.

I grabbed the printable map and tokens from the website. I cut out the tokens, grabbed the required dice and a deck of cards with the jokers taken out. I dug up some mood music to accompany my solo game. Note paper at hand, I cracked open the pamphlet and started in on the rules. I also felt some extra ‘flavor’ was in order so I put on some music as a background. I recommend the soundtrack to the old movie “Gothic” if you can come up with it. Really felt like it fit with the game – and ends with a tune declaring that the devil is an Englishman.

The rules made sense, but there wasn’t any… cushion for first timers I guess is a way to say it. I had to just start and figure it out (play fast, make mistakes – a common refrain among our friends). Having said that, it didn’t take long to figure it out. There are only 15ish pages to the whole thing and it’s pretty straightforward once you get started. Rolling dice, placing tokens and pulling cards I worked my way through my first game. I won by defeating the monster with only one wound on my tab.

It is a neat concept. Random card pulling and dice rolls give the action a little bit of unpredictability. It was easy. I’m afraid that I did something wrong as it seemed both shorter and easier than it was described. Part of that might be my lack of detail in the notes department. I could see where the flavor would really work for somebody who wanted to invest in it, but once I figured out what I needed for each step, my notes became a short hand code. It has a level of replay ability, but now that I know what I’m doing it would be a quick hit whenever I wanted to play a solo game. If there were a rule I would change or add, I think it would be a randomization factor for the monster and the player tokens after an attack is resolved. Basically once I’d collected a handful of rumors that turned out to be true (and therefore tools) I stood on the monster and duked it out until I rolled to win. I think pushing the monster and the hunter to random spaces would add to the challenge and allow for a little more strategy.

It was a fun diversion and I’m really glad I took the chance and picked it up. It’s on the shelf, ready to go (with far less prep) for the next time I feel like a solo game.

Singing

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A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I got this selection picked for my local book group. There was some (gentle) pushback almost immediately. “A book featuring a pandemic? Really?”

I have to say that was the least interesting part of the story. It was a major factor, but the characters were written with such depth and reality it overcame any lingering issues from the actual pandemic (at least for me). There was also a terrorist aspect that gets overlooked because this book was actually written before the pandemic.

I had the opportunity to speak with the author (briefly) at a recent convention. She was great. She pointed out to me the one thing she “missed” in her predictive aspects were masks / facial covers. The rest of things were absolutely worth looking at from a fictional standpoint. I don’t believe “missing” something like that when creating a dystopian future is a bad thing at all. There were all sorts of opportunities to see how the musicians were the engine of this story.

I’m not a musician, nor can I create music in any form really – but this story just spoke to me of the reality of how a creator feels and the need they have to express that creation. I recommend this book – you should go buy one!



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Summer Tree

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The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


There were a number of very interesting parts to the world building here, and a handful of distracting things as well.

Matt the dwarf… was one example of the struggle. There were anachronistic aspects like the naming convention that distracted from just flowing with the story. Given the original copyright for this is from the mid 1980s, there were other things from that time that really showed through in the story. There were at least two instances of very casual misogyny – and possibly more – that stood out when reading this with a modern eye.

Having said those things, this is still of the ‘sword and sorcery’ genre that I loved so much when I was younger. My own sense of nostalgia carried me past a lot of things that might stop other readers.



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Old School Fantasy

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Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This was not the first time I’ve read this book. I picked it up and got it via Kindle for this read through for both convenience and saving my old paperback I plucked off the shelf from back before Y2K.

I remember reading it and being very taken with the story. I related to difficult choices and bad results. The fantasy aspects were a bonus – and it was less ‘action’ oriented than some of the other things I’d read.

On this re-reading I found that I could still relate to difficult choices and bad results, but the political aspects of the story were more clear to me. A friend also pointed out that this story was (vaguely) around the same time / trend as when game of thrones came out.

This is still a really good fantasy story with interesting world building. A little slow for my taste – and it wraps up ‘a’ story, but not the whole story. Traditional fantasy trilogy stuff.

Clearly I liked it to a greater degree than many books I’ve read recently. I went out and got the second one!



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