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Finished reading:
The mysterious education of Nicholas Benedict by Trenton Lee Stewart. I liked it, on the whole. The middle third sort of floated away a bit, and I'm not sure the book needed to be as long as it was, but it came back down to a satisfying, pleasing ending. I'm not as keen to hunt out the second in the series with the first and the prequel being as unmoored as they were, but glad I read them. And hey, finished something, again! \o/
Currently reading:
The lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. This has been on my radar since forever, and the universe nudged me to find it again recently ("Warning," someone plugged it on one of my DnD group chats, "will make you want to play an entire party of rogues." Which is honestly on my DnD bucket list.) So I thought I'd download the Amazon sample and buy it from my local bookshop if it was actually as good as people said. When I searched for it on my Kindle app, it promptly downloaded the entire book onto my phone? Apparently past-me bought it years ago? So, that's a win.
As a first novel, I'm very, very impressed. It's slightly over written, but only barely, and the teasing out of the unanswered past questions is enough to keep me reading, rather than annoyed. At page 100 or so out of 500, the establishing work has been amazing, and I'm moderately interested in the emerging plot. It's also – with deliberate background casualness – featured one of the briefer but most harrowing torture sequences I've ever read or seen, and that I'm still thinking about, a day or so after reading it. Welp. Still reading.
Up next:
The witch's kind by Louisa Morgan
This was one of the books that made the shortlist from the feel-good fantasy novel list, and is waiting for me as soon as my next-next book shows up at my local bookshop for posting.
With Witchmark the writing was solid, but I wasn't hooked. I bought it anyway, because surely, surely good enough was close enough, and it was going find my interest…it wasn't, and didn't, alas. The witch's kind is hopefully going to be the flip side of that – the writing read much closer to self-published, but when I finished the sample, I wanted to know what happened next. So I'm hoping my gut will steer me better this time.
The mysterious education of Nicholas Benedict by Trenton Lee Stewart. I liked it, on the whole. The middle third sort of floated away a bit, and I'm not sure the book needed to be as long as it was, but it came back down to a satisfying, pleasing ending. I'm not as keen to hunt out the second in the series with the first and the prequel being as unmoored as they were, but glad I read them. And hey, finished something, again! \o/
Currently reading:
The lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. This has been on my radar since forever, and the universe nudged me to find it again recently ("Warning," someone plugged it on one of my DnD group chats, "will make you want to play an entire party of rogues." Which is honestly on my DnD bucket list.) So I thought I'd download the Amazon sample and buy it from my local bookshop if it was actually as good as people said. When I searched for it on my Kindle app, it promptly downloaded the entire book onto my phone? Apparently past-me bought it years ago? So, that's a win.
As a first novel, I'm very, very impressed. It's slightly over written, but only barely, and the teasing out of the unanswered past questions is enough to keep me reading, rather than annoyed. At page 100 or so out of 500, the establishing work has been amazing, and I'm moderately interested in the emerging plot. It's also – with deliberate background casualness – featured one of the briefer but most harrowing torture sequences I've ever read or seen, and that I'm still thinking about, a day or so after reading it. Welp. Still reading.
Up next:
The witch's kind by Louisa Morgan
This was one of the books that made the shortlist from the feel-good fantasy novel list, and is waiting for me as soon as my next-next book shows up at my local bookshop for posting.
With Witchmark the writing was solid, but I wasn't hooked. I bought it anyway, because surely, surely good enough was close enough, and it was going find my interest…it wasn't, and didn't, alas. The witch's kind is hopefully going to be the flip side of that – the writing read much closer to self-published, but when I finished the sample, I wanted to know what happened next. So I'm hoping my gut will steer me better this time.