zeph1337's reviews
320 reviews

The Olympian Affair by Jim Butcher

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adventurous funny mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

So I’ve probably already cooled down a little on the series. It was still overall an enjoyable read but not nearly as much as a breeze as the first book in the series. To be fair I tend to be pretty biased towards the first books in a series as I just really like the feeling of discovery and just getting into new stuff in general. Also I mentioned how much timing mattered, as I’ve just come down from finishing a long epic series (Malazan) and that just gave it an extra dose of refreshment, if that makes any sense.

I feel like the series relies a bit too much on its pretty long action sequences and they just tend to get tiring at some points. Another slightly negative aspect was that my favorite part about the first book (pretty much everything surrounding the cats and just Rowl in general) had more of a side quest feeling in this one. Yes it looped back around into the main plot towards the end but I just wanted more time with that set of characters. 

On the positive side: I liked the, I think you can call him, main protagonist, ship captain Grimm, a lot more in this one. He just had plenty of really cool, funny and just badass moments and now I’m really rooting for him. 

We also got introduced into a new POV who was this high society older lady that had to deal with a lot of social scheming, politicking and stuff like that and I thought she was just kind of meh. There was a lot of fun interaction with by far the most socially awkward character in the series though and those parts were hella fun. 

In terms of plot this book was an improvement over the first one which wasn’t hard since it was very light on plot. There is a compelling Mystery being developed here and I am curious about future installments within the series. The epilogue did a really good job of making me intrigued about what’s to come next.
The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher

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adventurous funny tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Something new this year, quarter stars! 4 Stars is a good book for me and this one was just slightly above that. It probably also came at the exact right time after finishing Malazan and yearning for something lighter to read. 

This was my first non Dresden Files book by Jim Butcher and it was very enjoyable. Compared to Dresden the tone is much lighter and it tends to be action and adventure and combining all that with a steampunk setting just felt like the right change of scenery. 

The characters are a bit YA-ish. There are a lot of teen characters that maybe are a little too competent in what they do but that didn’t bother me and it feels like they all fight a very specific and fitting role within the story. The main protagonist, a ship captain, also was compelling but didn’t really stand out compared to similar types of characters.

The main source of humor is a civilization of cats that co-exists and communicates with the humans of this world and just getting to discover their society and what they think about the humans in general was a total blast. The author definitely has some sort of cat trauma and gets to express this a lot here. Plus one of the main POVs actually is one of the cats and he is absolutely hilarious. 

Plotwise the book is very light and not too exciting but that didn’t really bother me. I was looking for a popcorn-y read and that’s exactly what I got. So if you’re looking for a light action focussed book with lots of cat jokes, look no further!
The Crippled God by Steven Erikson

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I’m kind of dreading writing this review. It might just be the feeling that this long 10 book journey is now over and a certain feeling of burnout that comes after concluding a very long piece of media but I think it is also because I was expecting to get one of my favorite books of all time here and I just wasn’t feeling that. 

Maybe I was just building up too much hype in myself in deliberately making this my final book of the year. Like some sort of “crowning reading achievement” for an awesome year with lots of great stories. And this in itself put me in a bit of a reading slump, not really wanting to pick up the book a lot of the time, but when I actually did I still felt good that I got over myself, if that makes any sense. 

But then we got to the actual conclusion and that final part has truly been something special. Especially the final two chapters certainly lived up to all the hype (hell, chapter 23 might be one of my favorite single chapters I’ve ever read) and all of that was just really epicly grandiose and during all of that we still get time for so many small and deeply moving character moments, it is just that the journey there wasn’t always great.

Some of this might have been due to the pacing. Was already not loving that as much in the previous two books and this one managed to feel even slower (until we got to the convergence). 
The biggest issue though was just that one story line that felt almost entirely disconnected from the rest of the book. It was the continuation from what were already my least favorite arcs in Reaper’s Gale and Toll the Hounds and all of that came together with a big conclusion in The Crippled God. And yes all of this gave us some pretty epic sequences with lots of vivid imagery that probably would come out amazingly on a big screen but I just felt very low investment with all the characters present there and the amount of time we spent with this story made it feel even worse.  

There is also the fact that my favorite character of the whole series (if you read my reviews, you know who that is) had very little screen time in this one. However his one big scene was super emotional and led to arguably the most epic sequence in the entire series. So that makes up for a little bit of that. 

I might have also found my new favorite character duo within the series, who played probably the most crucial role in the culmination of chapter 23. Their journey through this book (and Dust of Dreams as well) has been so good and I love their constant bantering even when looking into the face of certain death. Speaking of a great duo of Malazan marines, I also have to get a quick shoutout to two bridgeburners that we first met in Gardens of the Moon and came back together for the epic finale. There are just too many great characters duos / relationships to name in this series and the final two books especially made the best Malazans ones truly shine.

I have to make a point about all the internal military stuff we are getting. It has totally become even more of the focus with the final installments of the series and up that point it hasn’t really bothered me but in this book it feels like a drag sometimes. Like can’t we just move along with the plot? Also some major characters within the Malazan army just felt frustrating. Like deliberately confusing without some real clarification / resolution of their motivations/plans or you know others just being plain huge assholes (although that one got a very cool reason for being kept around and it ended up being a highly emotional scene). 

I much more enjoyed the additional bits of worldbuilding we got, mainly that we finally met the last of the ancient races and getting their POVs has been really intriguing. I mean they are pretty evil but you can certainly see where they are coming from. But also getting some obvious villainous people was also a little bit appreciated especially with how Erikson likes to subvert expectations by just shining light to a different side of the story so many times. And yeah the amount of POVs in general we get in this book is just mind bogglingly crazy and just full of surprises. 

So yeah I am a little torn about this book. On one hand it is full of heartbreaking moments (gotta highlight the one where two groups of people crossing a desert meet), epicness on a scale that this series hasn’t seen before but also tons of little moments that make you choke up or shed a tear, but also it was a drag sometimes and there was that huge disconnect with one part of the story.

For now I am settling on a score of 4.5 and as for ranking within the series I think I am putting The Crippled God somewhere in the middle just below Toll The Hounds. While I had similar issues with that one, I love the setting of Darujhistan and the book just felt more focussed and had some of my favorite characters of the series around.

So that leaves my final series ranking:

  1. The Bonehunters
  2. House of Chains
  3. Reaper’s Gale
  4. Midnight Tides
  5. Toll the Hounds
  6. The Crippled God
  7. Deadhouse Gates
  8. Gardens of the Moon
  9. Dust of Dreams
  10. Memories of Ice

I will eventually come back to Malazan to start reading all the other novels and I am already curious about an eventual reread (of the main series) in a few years, but for now I think I want to stick to lighter stuff for a little while. For now I am off to watch the Wicked musical movie to clear my mind a little bit. 😀
Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson

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adventurous emotional inspiring tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Longest single book of the year! (Not counting Wandering Inn here) Was it also the best one? I think I can answer that with a clear no, it might not even make the top 5. But did I have a great time with this book? Hell yeah, I did! And that’s what matters in the end.

The fifth book of The Stormlight Archive is the conclusion to the series’ first major arc and at that it is quite differently structured than all the previous books in the series. The book is split up into 10 days that lead up to the biggest confrontation that decides the fate of the whole planet. Within those 10 days we had a lot of different plot lines going and more POV characters than ever. All of those lead to a very different pacing than you are used to with the series. Multiple POVs within a chapter, lots of swap and so forth. Don’t get me wrong Sanderson still takes his time sometimes (wouldn’t be half a million words if otherwise) and it could probably be trimmed down with more editing but there is also just so much happening and I still just enjoy almost every minute I spend in this world. 

As someone who didn’t like how slow especially certain parts of Oathbringer felt, this much faster pacing felt welcoming but on the other hand it kind of lessened the amount of emotional impact the many mini climaxes had. It just felt harder to get invested into every single plot, when there was just so much going on and we were hopping around constantly. 

Let’s quickly mention the plotlines and characters which were my favorite. You have to put Adolin at the forefront here. There were just many really emotional scenes and his kindness and straightforwardness comes along so well and everyone just needs to have a friend like him. The flashbacks of this book focus on Szeth and they have been some of the best we have seen in the whole series and how they come in contrast with the present plotline is also expertly done.

I also love Shallan, I have since the beginning of the series, and while we might not get as many of her signature quips here, she really gets to be a badass in this book and there is also obviously Pattern who is just my favorite of all the Spren. 

To round up the major characters we also have Dalinar and Kaladin who both get really great continuations (and conclusions) to their arcs that have been building for so long. 

And that leads me right to my favorite part, the Sanderlanche aka Day 10! I thought this climax for the first arc of the series was nothing short of incredible! I just couldn’t put the book down for ~3 hours and just read it all in go and there was finally all the emotional payoff that might have been lacking a little in the other 9 parts. 

Another point I have to bring up is how increasingly Cosmere aware these books are becoming. In the past that was done very subtly but here you get thrown on the head with it (pretty much from the prologue) and I really like it! I think it’s just cool when you can say “Hey, it's this kind of magic from this other planet” or I know “this character from this other series” or I can see how Sanderson is setting up something that happens in another book and so forth. I really like to discover all these things and I like how it’s all connected.

Let’s also quickly address the major criticisms I’m seeing. The simple writing / modern prose and Sandersons humor. Prose just isn’t a big deal for me. Yes I can appreciate if a sentence looks pretty and eloquent but I also don’t really care if it’s not that. It’s been a while since I read a Stormlight book but this book also didn’t feel different in terms of writing than the previous books, so no complaints here. As for the humor: Yes, Sanderson tends to rely a lot on cringy dad jokes. Are there better, more elaborate types of humor? Certainly! Does he still get me to chuckle a lot? Yes! I may be a simpleton but these are just facts. 

Overall what matters most is that I had a very much enjoyable reading experience with this titan of a book. It certainly was the most hyped book of the year and if you just look at it in terms of that it probably was slightly disappointing. I expected to be completely over the moon like I was the first time I read The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance and that just wasn’t the case. But I was still always very eagerly picking it up and just having a great time with it!
Demon by Rob J. Hayes

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dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

This was easily one of my least enjoyable reading experiences of the year. I did not hate the book, in fact I read this as part of a book club / buddy read and I think I was the most positive voice inside that group but I really had a hard time connecting to almost anything within this book.

The whole setting and plot feel very stereotypical and bland. There are not really any memorable characters aside from the protagonist who makes for a mildly compelling character which gets explored through her relationships, strong will and ability to ask the right questions (sometimes). She is the glue that holds everything together, does a good job at it and is probably the best part of the book.

The whole thing is supposed to be very dark and bleak and in parts it succeeded at that but in others it just comes around as very comical. It also ends up being probably unintentionally funny at times. 

I’d like to draw a comparison the another book I read this year which also leaned pretty hard into the “Torture / Mysery Porn” and that was Kingdoms of Death. And well, where Ruocchio succeeds in making you really damn uncomfortable all the time, leading up to points where you just have to stop reading because you are so overwhelmed and shocked Hayes almost completely fails in that department. The stuff our protagonist has to go through is shocking to begin with but it quickly loses its impact and just gets jumbled together in this dull mush. 

I get that this book is only supposed to be a small part to this really big saga consisting of three trilogies and if you have a little more context to the world and the whole history of it might make it a lot better but I feel like as a standalone novel it just mostly fails. 

It is a pretty short book but also on the other hand it felt too long for the story it was telling. I get that you are telling the backstory of this probably very crucial character for the whole saga but man it was just pretty boring at times and felt like it could have been wrapped up way more quickly and still having the same impact. 

The ending was pretty cool but I don’t think that will be enough for me to go forward with this series. I heard good things about Rob J. Hayes as an author and this is my first book of his but I’ll probably have to look at some of his other series to make a judgement call. 
Mother of Learning: Arc 4 by nobody103, Domagoj Kurmaić

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adventurous emotional funny mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

The series comes to an end with a very satisfying conclusion and as I am a sucker for good endings, this was my favorite of the series. 

This book had me surprised at how quickly we actually entered the endgame and as a result previous issues I sometimes had with the pacing disappeared. 

The book gave us lots of cool callbacks to past events, many heartfelt moments, beloved returning characters and a really cool and creative ending sequence that had me surprised and kind of contained its own little Mystery to unravel. Really fun stuff!

The reveal regarding the big villain of the series felt pretty underwhelming (mainly because of a somewhat underdeveloping of said character) but it at least gave us an excuse for most of the major characters to come together. Also I thought that the final battle dragged a little too much. We certainly had a lot of cool moments there but it kind of boiled down to too much action all the time and I got a little bored there occasionally.  

Overall the series was a blast. It might not reach the highest of highs but it was consistently very entertaining throughout the whole series and you really grow attached to these characters. 

I will totally keep recommending these to anyone who even remotely thinks of experiencing a Progression Fantasy story. Also people with a knack for wizard school stories should probably take a look at this. And if you are a fan of audiobooks on top of this, what are you waiting for?

Maybe this will convince you:
I have been praising the audiobook narration in each of these reviews and this time I wanna point to another fact the narrator mentioned in the afterword of the series that kind of blew me away. I did not know this beforehand but it certainly shows: Basically the series being made into an audiobook was a huge passion project for Jack Voraces! 

He contacted the author directly and asked if he would be fine with Jack starting to narrate the books and from that they basically made their own little web series / podcast and recorded the first version of the narration. Much later when they were already nearly done with the whole series they made a deal with Podium audio for an official recording and release: Simply incredible! 
False Value by Ben Aaronovitch

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funny mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

After the series reached a big climax with the last book this one was very much more focussed inwards. There is a lot going on in Peter's personal life and it felt nice to take a little breather.

The case of this book sees Peter going undercover into an IT / tech company and as someone who works in IT myself, this was quite a nice surprise. He is surrounded by a bunch of nerdy and fun characters, there was a lot of cool insight into the just established insanity that are office jobs, and it kind of made me feel right at home and gave me a lot of chuckles. Also there have been quite a lot of opportunities for Aaronovitch to flex his nerd creds and any book that is able to accurately reference modern board gaming immediately gets a big plus from me.

However the case itself felt fairly straightforward and aside from the general technical themes there was just not a lot there that was able to impress.

The author tried something different in the beginning where we pretty much got thrown right into a new setting and then we had a few alternating flashback chapters that explained how we got there. I found this to be a little more interesting than the linear storytelling of the rest of the novel and was a little disappointed when it already ended after just a few chapters. 

I am probably sounding way more negative than I should be, so let me clarify. I truly enjoyed this book, it was just way more about the themes, the humor and the characters that resonated with me. So even if the plot in general might not have been that great, I still had a lot of fun with it. 
Dust of Dreams by Steven Erikson

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

So yeah, penultimate Malazan book! The end is rapidly approaching (well for the main series, I know there is tons of supplementary material :) ) But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s talk about Dust of Dreams first.

I am having a little bit of mixed feelings about this one and the last time I felt something like that for a book in this series was with Memories of Ice. There was a lot to like/love here: Lots of new things that were just very intriguing from the get-go, just the reaping of rewards from previously established character bonds / storylines and also a pretty crazy ending! However there was one whole part of the book that was painful to get through and definitely hampered the whole experience for me. Let’s walk through it:

The first two parts of the book felt truly great to me. I thought they were just really well balanced with all these different looks and settings and emotions and everything. Yes, there is some truly dark stuff but it is also put into contrast a lot when you switch the scenery afterwards and you get some very humorous scenes for example. Like I said: balance. That was my main takeaway from the first of this book. All the storylines put you in very different emotional states and all this combined made for a truly great experience.

There is for example this new storyline that gives us a deep look into this truly alien civilization and it’s just captivating. There are these tribal people that are just really disturbing and brutal, we get a true Horror story with these new child characters, a big Mystery in this dream like sequencing with ghosts / dead characters, we also get a lot of humor with our favorite Letherian duo (although not in their best form in this book I must say!) and we have the Malazans / Bonehunters around that always give those feelings of camaraderie and bantering and just great characters (I think especially our mage characters stand out in this one!) in general. I didn’t really mind those characters that basically just went from point A to point B and were already my least favorite part about the book they first appeared in, Reaper’s Gale. 

But then we get to part three and it just felt like all this nice balance was just lost. The whole thing was very bleak, some parts of it felt like they were just super obtuse for the sake of it and yeah truly horrible things happen in this part. But that wasn’t even the worst part of it. Yes, reading about that one event was absolutely horrible but I get that it does serve a purpose in the grand scheme of things and we get some cool (and in some ways even more disturbing) payoff for it within the same novel. The main focus of this part was this conflict between these two tribal people and both of them were absolutely awful folk in their own way and I just couldn’t bring myself to care about either of them. So yeah a fourth of the book being a slog is sadly not very cool.

Thankfully it came back strong with the final part. I already mentioned the crazy ending (and everything leading up to it was very exciting) and yes far from everything is resolved but that’s what the next book is for. 

I also wanna mention the amount of exposition we get within this book. Pretty uncharacteristic for Erikson but hey its book nine out of then, maybe it is finally time to explain some things. xD It was very much appreciated and soaked up greedily. In the same vein another highlight of this book was all the scenes where we just get a bunch of super powerful, ancient elder gods scheming, bantering and foreshadowing things to come. Great stuff!

This book had lots to love but also a part to hate. Overall I think I will rank it towards the bottom of the Malazan novels. Maybe just above Memories of Ice. 

I’ll be doing a quick pit stop to read Wind and Truth (Stormlight #5) and then I’ll be back for The Crippled God. Maybe even a little sooner if I don’t end up loving Wind and Truth but I think chances of that are slim.
Mother of Learning: ARC 3 by Domagoj Kurmaić

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adventurous funny mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

These continue to be my current favorite audiobooks. I’d say this one probably was my least favorite of all of them but if so it is just by a tiny margin. It is certainly the one where the inherent repetitiveness of the time loop was felt the most. At times it does seem to drag a lot and the big fetch quest we got at the end of the recent volume only extends this feeling.

So what worked about this book? First of all I loved that we got another main character tagging along. Obviously this characters’ existence was long known but having him more involved and working alongside Zorian was truly joyful. Their very different personalities work super well together and I just loved them solving problems together and it feels like they just make each other better people in general. Plus the secondary character is very funny and had me chuckling a lot. The series is still single POV which is a good thing (especially for an audiobook) but they just have great dynamics.

There also have been good parts about the huge fetch quest mainly because it is used to explore the world more. And also getting to new regions is a great opportunity to introduce new characters or some we only have known by name so far and I really enjoyed this part about it. 

The continued unraveling of the series main Mystery has also been really intriguing and every time we get a chapter where that is the focus I am highly engaged. 

This volume ends on a banger and there was no way that I wouldn’t immediately jump into the next (and final installment) after that, so good job on that I guess!

I also have to shout out the continued awesome narration by Jack Voraces. He did have lots of opportunities to voice non-human characters in this one and it’s always so cool hearing him do a new voice, aside from the million other very distinct voices he already does of course. I think his narration style can truly be compared to the likes of Andrea Parsneau, who imo is one of GOATs in audiobook narration. Haters call what they accomplish “overperforming”. In my opinion it just shows the passion, love, appreciation and general investment into the series and their work and I absolutely adore it. 
The Fury of the Gods by John Gwynne

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adventurous emotional fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

It pains me a little to write this but I mostly just did not enjoy this book. This is a huge shocker for me since I ranked its predecessor Hunger of the Gods as one of my top 5 books of last year. 

Now it’s been almost two years since I read that book and I realize that taste can change but it was still baffling to me how hard of a time I had getting into this book.

It totally started out on the wrong foot right from the beginning. I remembered the predecessor ended on this big gut punch and thought that this a crazy move but then it became very apparent early that what I thought occurred in the climax actually wasn’t the case.

So with that already constantly nagging in my mind it made it even harder to get into the rhythm of the book. This book is very action heavy and I certainly have discovered that I am just not the biggest fan of action in my books. Saying that sounds kind of wrong because great action sequences usually are highlights in books in general but there needs to be a balance. You also need quieter character moments or humor or basically anything else that isn’t action to keep you grounded. And this book kind of felt like a giant mess that just stumbled from action sequence to sequence. 

Yes, John Gwynne is a great action writer and his battle descriptions are just very vivid and get you “in the zone” but maybe slowing down a little bit making the book longer or as a result maybe even not ending the series in a trilogy would have been a better move.

It could also be a mood thing because I am enjoying my other current read (Dust of Dreams) so much more and at least so far this book has been much much more quiet and reflective (except for the Horror and disturbing shit that’s going on there). Treating Fury of the Gods as a side read might have been a mistake but well what’s done is done.

Another thing that was a huge disappointment was the appearance of the titular character on the book cover. I remember being hype seeing that cover for the first and man how much of a total letdown this has been.

The book definitely had its moments there were some very cool battles and I thought the main character arcs concluded in a satisfying way that got the emotions rolling (although way too many revenge arcs that kind of jumbled all together - at least it felt like that). 

So yeah it all could very well be a me problem and I don’t want to fault the author for anything here, especially since he mentioned having a hard time writing this after the tragic death of his daughter. You have to respect and commend him for bouncing back after that and I still wanna shout out much for love for all his work!