Christopher Keene's Blog

Here’s the original post: https://fantasyandanime.wordpress.com/2017/01/30/sasuke-uchiha/

Feel free to read the comments for some glorious salt farming.

Now my follow up. An imagery conversation with a fictional character so many are so willing to defend to death (literally if he actually existed):

“Itachi, why did you massacre the entire Uchiha clan?”

“Because I don’t like war, and they were forming a coup, and three of the four elders told me to.”

“And you saw no other way to prevent that? Say, I don’t know, exposing the coup? Convincing your father there’s are better ways to cause change? Kill the elders pushing for this massacre even? Perhaps doing what every other clan does short of massacreing everyone? No?”

“Nope, had to kill everyone.”

“And you don’t think that’s at all extreme and may have far extending conserquences, like, I don’t know, your little brother trying to take revenge on you or the whole village because three of the four the elders told to do it?”

“Had. To. Kill. Everyone.”

Oh boy, here I go publishing again.

“You were too young to remember the last plague.” Hurried burials marked by sticks and rocks covered the church cemetery, next to which a mountain of corpses filled a deep pit. “After it’s over, this is all that’s left.”

This one’s an epic genre crossover of grimdark fantasy with a sprinkle of romance and poison.

https://books2read.com/u/mv9Y88

Blurb: “Holt Gnarl is a professional poisoner, wandering from master to master, perfecting his deadly trade.

When the Duke of Midair’s heir is poisoned, Holt heads north to find a rare flower that is the only antidote. Besides the brutal conditions, highwaymen, and mountain beasts, he rides into a plague sweeping over the countryside.

Worse still, the duke’s daughter, Riva, has followed him, set on seeing his task completed. To keep her alive, he must teach Riva what he knows, introducing her into the morally dubious world of poisons and poisoners.”

As the 1st book in The Toxicology Trilogy, I really want to say: ‘EVERYONE in this group will enjoy it!’ but there’s only one way to know for sure. Please let me know!

I generally don’t write poems as a rule, but here’s one inspired by The Witcher:

In the mountains, thunder crashes.
On the track, the hunter collapses.
He was sent to slay a beast but is sure to die in the storm.
Yet the beast he seeks carries him to a cave so he can get warm.

Awakened by the beast drawing on the cave wall,
the hunter is frightened by a thing so tall.
He slays the beast but then is fleeced
when the old woman who requested its head
only pays half of what the wanted poster said.

The hunter accepts, but instead of embarking,
returns to examine the beast’s cave markings.
They tell a tale of a beast who was a farmer once,
cursed by a witch to become a beast every month.
The hunter returns to the witch, but not to ask for his due.

“I’ve come here, witch, because my next job is you.”

Rewritten entirely from reader feedback and reviews going back 5 years, given a fresh cover, re-edited by a traditional publisher for the rest of the series and an upcoming audiobook, and checked by over 50 beta-readers, you won’t read a more polished LitRPG than this baby. https://amzn.to/3pCE5jf

Blurb: Noah promised himself he would never play the world’s most popular MMORPG—the Dream State. He’d already lost too many friends to the addictive virtual world.

But after a devastating car crash leaves Noah paralyzed, he’s forced inside the game. The Dream State not only provides a connection with the outside world but also keeps his brain awake long enough for his body to heal. Dying in the game, however, could send Noah into a coma forever. To stay safe, he must remain in the lower levels, far away from the most dangerous monsters and players.

Meanwhile, doctors grow concerned when Noah’s girlfriend, Sue—who also sustained serious injuries in the crash—seemingly fails to connect to the game. When a mysterious avatar suggests to Noah that the last remnants of Sue’s consciousness are being held prisoner in the highest level, Noah decides to risk everything to save her.

Y

i know I know, I’m late to the party but better late than never.

Loved this show. Intense, thoughtful, great characters, animation and hype as music from Yuki Hayashi. Even the dub was great! I was going to write review but then my parter pretty much summarized my thoughts in her recent post on anime we’ve been watching.

Go read her post for further thoughts, and follow her too. God knows she posts more often than I do.

https://hdwoolf.home.blog/2021/05/23/anime-recommendation/

Also, want to know what the title of this post didn’t show up?

Because wordpress mobile interface sucks balls now. Let’s see if the overlords pick up that slander. If so, oi, wordpress, fix your fucking title shit on the mobile interface!

Every time I read a series where the books decline in quality with each new release (and there have been a lot of them lately), it makes me appreciate the few series that remained consistent in their quality, or better yet, get better with each book! As you read a series, you can almost see the difference between the authors who are sick of their world and are just beating money out of a dead horse, and the authors who are still truly excited and engaged by it, and it shows in the quality of their writing and plotting.

A “Series Breaker” is a book (or books) in a series that is so bad that it breaks a series quality so much that it makes people not want to read that series anymore. The point of this post is to list every fantasy series I’ve read that DO NOT have a single Series Breaker in them, where the quality is either consistent or actually improves with every book. Note the “or” because having both is impossible.

Considering how disappointed readers have been with the quality of current on-going fantasy series, this list is a life raft for those who want to avoid the feeling of forcing yourself through the pain of reading a book you really don’t want to but feel you should because you enjoyed the previous entries in the series. I really feel your pain, which is why I put the completed series first. And for those wondering why a certain series is missing, just ask yourself if the series is as good after books 2 or 3; that’s why.

Fantasy series that have ended and didn’t drop the ball once:

1. Book of Words by J.V. Jones

Take a massive standalone book that you think is just awesome, then break it into chunks that have good story arcs with satisfying endings. Is it still great? Yes? Then it’s a miracle and one that Book of Words achieves without even trying (and yes, I actually asked the author if she originally intended to write this as one big book and she said she didn’t, so yeah, without trying).

2. The Dagger and the Coin by Daniel Abraham

Five books, and although the fourth in the series was the closest, none of the books dropped the ball. That’s right, there are better and worse books but not a single Series Breaker, and even the worst book of the series is still better than the best book in most series and was definitely made up for with its series finale, which I can say was both conclusive and very cathartic. Honestly, his other series, The Long Price Quartet would be on this list as well if the final book, which felt like an epilogue, didn’t drop the ball.

3. The Greatcoats by Sebastien de Castell

Confession, I actually prefer the characters in this series over the ones above, but it’s at number 3 for one reason: where it peaks. Although books 3 and 4 are great and still better than most series finales, if they don’t rise above the previous, in this case, the phenomenal book 2, it’s much harder to insist someone finish it compared to if the ending is the best part (but they should because it’s still amazing compared to most series out there!)

Fantasy series that haven’t dropped the ball yet but still could:

4. The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher

To use an analogy, The Dresden Files is like an Olympic sprinter who stumbled on his second step (book 2) but then took off like a rocket (book 3) and each subsequent book has been overtaking runner after runner (and there are A LOT of them) until he was tied neck and neck with The First Law series (which I love more but can see more reasons other people might not). To clarify, book 2 is not a Series Breaker, but it is the worst in a long series of crazy-good books.

5. The First Law by Joe Abercrombie

If there was a graph showing the quality and enjoyment had by Joe Abercrombie’s books, it would look like a horizon line of overlapping alps. Sure, there are peaks and valleys, sure, some have higher peaks than others (usually the second book in each of his series IMO), but I’m prepared to die on the hill plastered with the two claims “no author does character as good as Joe Abercrombie” and “Joe Abercrombie hasn’t released a single bad book” and that includes his YA Shattered Sea series.

6. The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss

It’s all riding on book 3, The Doors of the Stone, and if a decade isn’t long enough for a great author to make the final book in a series incredible, then no amount of time will and we have waited a decade in anticipation for it. God forgive me if anyone read this series because it’s on this list and we still don’t have the third book in the next few years. If anything this entry needs a warning for those thinking of beginning it: Wait until book three is out!

Fantasy series that fumbled the ball without dropping it:

7. Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne by Brian Staveley

This is one of those “it’s great once you’ve finished it” series. You may think that one of the books (particularly the first one) dropped the ball. I assure you, it didn’t. Like all great books, The Emperor’s blades slowly build what needs building for the conflict in the rest of the series, which is all the epic and deep and painful as you could want. The reason this goes above the later two is because the 2nd and 3rd book were the best.

8. Powder Mage by Brian McClellan

There’s a trend with the last three, that being they are all military fantasy. What can I say? Military fantasy has a way of keeping consistency, almost like the books are organized and regimented and uniformed like… well, like a military. Powder Mage is by far the purest of these. It’s as military fantasy as you can get with ranks and flintlocks and wars and gods of wars. Like the last military fantasy on this list, the finale was the weakest, but it never dropped the ball.

9. Age of Iron by Angus Watson

So yes, military fantasy, like the former and latter, but unlike its neighbors, Age of Iron is not musket and flintlock fantasy, but classical historical fantasy set when Rome invaded Britain before it was called Britain. Again, the third book is the weakest but still great, again, great characters and magic… it’s a good thing I’m running out of compliments because my last one in this list is bit of a copout.

Fantasy series that I haven’t finished but haven’t failed me yet:

10. The Shadow Campaign

That’s right. I’m breaking my own rules for this list. Because I haven’t actually finished reading this series yet, but if you’ve gotten this far down the list, I consider this an ominous foreshadowing for what the end of this series could be like. So far it hasn’t dropped the ball, and as soon as it does, I will remove this series from this list… because I have integrity…

I’m enjoying it and the audiobook reader is the same person who read the Dagger and the Coin, so even if it is bad I will still enjoy his dark chocolate baritone. I’ll probably review it when I’m done if it turns out to be really good, but considering how infrequently I post on this blog, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

So just note that the list of over, but there is one other series I think doesn’t drop the ball and that’s the Red Rising series and the Bobbiverse books, but they are technically sci-fi so I didn’t include them. You understand.

Headcount time after the great blog-post drought of 2018-2019.

Fantasy and anime has basically become a ghost blog to promote my books (which is fine because most of them are fantasy and sci-fi/anime-like), but to prevent this from being too Lazcentric, here are some things which I want to put out there as being amazing.

Entertainment

Superhero deconstructions have surpassed the Watchmen with the second seasons of the Umbrella Academy and The Boy’s assisting a returns to form. Speaking of Watchmen, is the question of classics? What’s a classic? A classic is something old that you can show someone now and just by watching it, they understand why it was so popular way back when. Examples of this are shows like Sopranos and Twin Peaks, which I rewatched recently.

Honestly, I’m having trouble giving the same status for Avatar the Last Airbender. It seems a bit immature, like it was written for children or something. Same goes for most thing that directed at kids, becoming more propoganda for ideology driven Amerocentric preachers.

Polical Humor

Been getting into a lot of arguments with those types. No likelihood of changing their minds, but good fun all the same. Can someone please explain why the prejudice + institutional power definition of racism isn’t geographically dictated? Because if it is the solution to all racism would be to move to another country where you’re not the minority.

Here’s my joke for that: How do we stop white people being racists? Move to Africa.

Or better yet: When was Hitler not a racist? The moments before he conquered a country.

Still needs work but you get the point.

[image error]Here’s my new book; it launches today. Monster battles in a fantasy world – a short summary.

Here is a link that I hope you will go:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B085M5M6PP/

And here’s a puff quote from an author you might know:

“War of Kings and Monsters is a fast and compelling read with lovable characters and a well-drawn premise.” —M. L. Spencer, author of The Rhenwars Saga

I’ve added the cover to give this post spice.

I think you’ll agree it turned out quite nice.

Although this rhyme’s intended as a marketing ploy,

The book itself, you’re sure to enjoy.

Don’t trust my words?

You’ll just have to see.

You now know where to find it, so that’s it from me

For anyone familiar with my Top 50 Fantasy list, you would know that my Top 10 are what I consider my ‘Must-Reads’, so it’s a little difficult as time goes by to see my opinions on what my readers must and must not read shift slightly.

In order to make such an important transition go smoothly, I thought would do a post explaining why I’m adding, removing, and shifting some of these books, and so I don’t confuse people, I’ll start with the ones I’ve recently removed and added.

[image error][Removed] The Kingkiller Chronicle

Why:

There is a condition for Kingkiller’s removal, and if met, it may return to my top 10. That condition is a 2020 release date for book 3. If not, bon voyage. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder… until it doesn’t and it instead grows bitter and apathetic. I read Wise Man’s Fear in 2012, with which it shot to 3rd place in my “must-reads” list, but has lost a rank every year Rothfuss has failed to produce the final book. However, if book 3 comes out in 2020 and is decent, who knows? I may return it to its rightful place.

[image error][Removed] The Lightbringer Saga

Why:

Ever since winning the David Gemmel award for Book 2, it has been all downhill for this series. Talk about blowing your load early, not only did the later books have difficulty holding my attention, I barely cared at all when I heard that the last book, The Blinding White, is being released in October. You know your series has lost relevance when it’s readers reaction to its final book is “Meh.” But because I can’t see into the future, there is also a condition for this removal. It all hinges on the quality of book 5.

[image error][Added] Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne

Why:

As I covered in my review of this series, I was rather impressed with the level of depth and thought that went into the world and characters. In that review, I said this book wouldn’t be in my top 10, but that it would be very close. However, until I have read the final books in the series above, this will be the place holder until they have met the conditions or I read another book that outdoes it. For this reason, Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne holds an extremely tentative #10 spot.

[image error][Added] The Greatcoats Series

Why:

As I said in my Best Sequels post, although book 1 felt like multiple premises crammed into one novel, the second book was so good it shot straight to #9. By the time I was reading the third book I was really enjoying myself, and with how high the stakes were in book 3 was dubious about the final in the series. Once again, it’s surprised me, still out-doing the first by increasing the stakes for the characters internally rather than externally as all great stories involving escalating conflicts should. An easy MUST-READ.

Honestly, for my 8-4 rankings, these five books have been shuffled about these spots for the past 3 years and can shift at a dime depending on my mood. So, given my mood now, here’s how they hold up (which could change at seconds notice):

8. Vicious (as a standalone, not a series)

7. The Lies of Locke Lamora (as a standalone, not a series)

6. The Book of Words (as a whole series)

5. The Dagger and the Coin (as a whole series)

4. The Dresden Files (as a whole series)

[Shifted] The Way of Kings

Why:

If you would just click the link of the book title you would quickly catch on to the fact that I had been experiencing a little of the Brandon Sanderson mania. I mean seriously? 10/10 for Words of Radiance, what was I thinking? My illusion was shattered thankfully by book 3 in the Stormlight Archive, which although still great, awakened me to a few of the issues I had with the rest of the series, mainly that it is a series with the quality of each book being completely reliant on the sequels, with book 3 ironically bringing to #3.

[NEW TOP FANTASY]

Clearly, this is Heroes Die and The First Law Series. However, where Heroes Die is a shoo-in for my #1, being that, in my mind, it’s standalone with completely optional sequels that one is free to ignore, I am terrified of the next book in The First Law Series, A Little Hatred. So far I have enjoyed every Joe Abercrombie book I have read and if this happens to be the exception, changing my list now might have all been a waste. This is why I’m writing this post now, to record this to myself to help future me to Update the list given the conditions above and whether or not A Little Hatred is good or not.

Only time will tell.

[image error]

Super Dungeon Series