Fantasy

I should be reading in Chinese or about stoic philosophy, but The Blade Itself is… distractingly enjoyable.

** Murder, Magic, Malaise ** If Romantasy is court intrigue with a swooning heartbeat, this is its jaded sibling: Mysterantasy—suspicious deaths, arcane trickery, and protagonists too tired to care. Din, a detective who’d rather not chase another corpse, moves through a world where power, like rot, is ambient. His weariness isn’t melodramatic. It’s the flat exhaustion of someone who’s seen too many patterns repeat. Solving murders feels increasingly pointless. The system remains: “And the drop of corruption that lies within every society shall always persist.” ...

** 1st Book of 2025: Entirely Forgettable. ** Read through this in one sleepless post-surgery night, and it just felt like a draft of a side-plot from a Stormlight Archives. There’s not much new in the premise of trying to escape dawn, and many other authors have tried to take on stories of mobile cities with much more success. The references to the rest of Stormlight Archive are vague enough that without wikipedia or a recent reread, you’re going to be hard pressed to link this to anything meaningful. Apparently I even reading the entire main series of Stormlight Archive isn’t enough, I should have read Dawnshard as well. ...

** Private Property is my Safe Word ** I have a rule in Sci-fi: If main characters engage in taboo sex while discussing esoteric politics, I’m out. Based on the fast pace and historical bent of Iron Widow, I wouldn’t have guessed the need to invoke this rule, but alas. Most of the pages are like an Ayn Rand novel without an agenda, deliberating personal property vs. private property, fictional revolutionaries vs. reactionaries as well as over-enforcement and the masses vs elites. At the same time, a romantasy relationship develops between Zetian, who spends most pages raging or pouting, and what seems to have been the true brooding main character of the story, Qin Zheng. ...

Heat Before Serving There’s a limit to how much grimdark fantasy I can take, and Best Served Cold found that limit. The book begins with echoes of Victor Hugo—a sense of grand tragedy and sweeping revenge—but quickly settles into a relentless bleakness where nobody is allowed a good time. Not even a little bit. Part of my struggle might have been circumstantial: this was a book to fall asleep to, and fall asleep i did many times. I experienced sections out of order and never quite found my footing in the story. But even discounting my non-ideal reading experience, I lost steam. There are only so many partially failed assassination attempts you can read before fatigue sets in, physically and mentally. ...

Author: Joe Abercrombie Score: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Completed: January 1, 2025 Last edited time: January 11, 2026 7:41 AM Status: Reviewed Type: Book Cards on the Table The Devils sits halfway between the grimdark First Law trilogy and the gamified chaos of Dungeon Crawler Carl. It may have been deliberate and more popular, but is not entirely to my taste. The book leans hard on the found-family dynamic. The result is serviceable cohesion rather than earned intimacy. With a large ensemble, the book prioritizes interesting combinations of characters over sustained attention to any one of them. That tradeoff makes sense in a long-running series; it’s harder to pull off cleanly in a single novel. The focus fragments, and no single arc quite takes hold. ...

Somewhere between a fairy tale and a clothing brand.

**Will ** you read of the Many Tropes? Will of the Many fills its checklist of sci-fi and fantasy tropes, better than even a fan-fic. Orphaned✓ teenage✓ boy✓ finds himself unexpectedly whisked away from his mundane job✓ to an elite academy✓. There, he ascends through the ranks✓, unveils heretofore unknown skills✓, and aims to dismantle the corrupt system responsible for his parents’ demise from within.✓✓ The academy’s culmination is a battle royale✓ graduation✓, where treachery is guaranteed✓ and even the teachers flout the rules.✓ Let’s not forget the forbidden ruins ominously linked to the world’s end.✓✓ ...

** 剧情盔甲后的很 (The Plot Armor is Too Thick) ** 在第一个阶段，Talon的家和朋友都被灭门了。所以在这个故事中他好像一块白板，他的性格可以为了剧情的需求而改变。 绝大部分的故事是描述Talon经过秘密社团的培训：怎么用剑、怎么做菜、怎么做爱、怎么感觉到魔法的反应、怎么模仿王室成员等等。他开始用这些能力的时候，只有几个章节描述他怎么用他的百花齐放能力。 不过，我喜欢读关于学习的书，因为这个故事类似于自己的生活。 在这本书的后面，最让人感到麻烦的方面是Talon看起来无敌的。他的剧情盔甲太厚了。 ** 2023的第94书 **

For the first few chapters, I thought the gaps in character and world building were intentional. But after the romance went from clumsy to 21st century teenage hormonal awkward, and the challenge course was ripped straight out of Ninja Warrior I doubted whether there was anything holding the gaps together. After a few GR reviews and plot summaries, it seems there isn’t. So thank you goodreads community for saving me from the other, banal, 80%.