David’s Comments (group member since Jan 28, 2011)

David’s comments from the Beyond Reality group.

Reading https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5... by Shannon Chakraborty. It's the final book in the Daevabad trilogy and the whole trilogy is utterly wonerful

I adored this book. I laughed, I cried. It had echoes of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and Good Omens, both of which I also love. It's a book primarily about prejudice, and sometimes it's a not so subtle attack against prejudice, but the occasional lack of subtlety didn't bother me at all as the characters were so wonderful you just wanted to know them and be with them

Reading this and LOVING it. It has a feeling of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children about it

I finished reading Dominion by C J Samson yesterday but didn't have time to post on the February thread before it locked. It was a fascinating alt history novel - what if Churchill hadn't become British PM in 1940. Loved it, but he does wear his politics on his sleeve rather so you'll probably not like it if your politics are different from his!

Further to my last point above, I found this on Wikipedia: ..."Red's letters were written entirely by Gladstone, and Blue's by El-Mohtar; although they wrote a general outline beforehand, "the reactions of each character were developed with a genuine element of surprise on receiving each letter, and the scenes accompanying [the letters] were written using that emotional response"."

I really enjoyed this book. Thanks Beyond Reality - I would never have read it without you. Absolutely right - you don't need to understand the world, and don't waste time trying to, it's the love story that's important. What wonderful characters Red and Blue are. And the letters!! Just loved them, both for the content and the ingenious way they wrote and sent their letters. A quick note on the brevity of the novel - it didn't need to be any longer. I like books where authors can get their point across in less than a thousand pages!
Interesting that this book was basically a dialogue via letter, and I guess that being co-written, the method of writing the book reflected the central premise.

Just finished this. FIrst time reading it too - not quite sure how it's taken me this long to know about these books - thanks Beyond Reality!!
I loved the trilogy, although I had to re-read the first book immediately after finishing it as I was conscious I had missed loads, and I feel a little the same about the third book too. The middle book is much more straightforward. Some of this is due to the lyrical, poetic writing - which I love btw, some of it is due to her sparse style, which again I really appreciate. Nice to have a fantasy author who doesn't think you have to have 1000 pages in order to make your point.
I loved Raederle, and the fact that the middle book was her story. I was a bit disappointed that not as much was made in the third book of her heritage. I was expecting it to create many more problems for Morgon than it did! I loved Morgon too - "they were promised a man of peace", and boy he was that! And Deth. Well, I know spoilers are OK here, but I still can't bring myself to outline all his various guises. I think I worked out his main guise about 10 pages before it was revealed. I adored that bit between him and Morgon at the top of the Wind Tower.
I agree with Kathi about the uniqueness of the various lands and their rulers. Wonderful characters. My favourite part of the first book was his visit to each one in turn.
Thanks again for bringing this series to my attention.

I finisihed this one last night and now starting on the last one. I loved this book. I re-read the first before reading it, to get myself into her lyrical dreamy style, and that helped I think. I love Radaerle. Such a strong characgter, and the thought of how her magic and Morgon's will interact in the third boook is very exciting! Can't wait :)

Yes I missed that too! I remember wondering why Deth went so suddenly still - and that quote makes it all completely clear! I think I'd assumed that Deth knew about Morgon before that!
I just finished re-reading this before going onto Book 2, and I really do like it. SImplistic in style yes, but no bad thing that. And short! Yet she gets it all in. No chapters and chapters of the journey - some other fantasy authors could learn from that.
And yes, it certainly does have a dreamlike quality.

Re-reading the first one first, should be starting on the second within the next couple of days

Just finished Arcanum Unbound, a set of novellas by Brandon Sanderson. Absolutely fantastic, one of my books of the year. I've read a couple of his books so far, and this one will prompt me now to read everything he's written.

Yes, I missed the Six Duchies too when first started reading this one, but in the end I think I enjoyed this trilogy the most of all.

Only just realised that we were doing a series read on this. These are some of my all time favourite books. I re-read all 13 books last year when the final one came out. I still think this first trilogy is the best of the lot though. What Fitz has to go through in the course of the three books is just incredible. Thank goodness for his support network, especially Nighteyes and Kettricken. They are the two who seem to love him with no bounds, whereas all the others - Starling, Kettle, The Fool, Verity, Molly and Burrich have their own agendas.

After finishing Assassin's Fate in June, I'm now re-reading all 16 books in Robin Hobb's series. I've read the Farseer trilogy and am now reading the first book in the Liveship Traders series. Just LOVE these books!

Kathi wrote: "Good to know, David."
Don't get me wrong Kathi, it's not Erickson - it's much shorter, the plot is less convoluted, there's none of the humour, more questions are answered than with Erickson, and the younger POV is irritating, but it's still a good read, a page turner, great extra information on a vital point in Malazan history, and some of the characters are great. And more than anything, it's lovely to be back in the Malazan world.

Just finished reading Ian Esslemont's Night of Knives - I wanted to read some more Malazan stuff before the Book of the Fallen fell too far out of my memory, and I have to say, I absolutely LOVED it.

Thanks Kathi - that makes lots of sense :)

Well my first thought is "what shall I read now?!" I've been reading this series for 15 months now. Part of me wants to go back and start re-reading Gardens of the Moon straightaway, but I won't - although I will at some stage, for sure. So should I read an Esslemont book? And if so, which one?
The things I loved about this series were:
The humour. It was great anyway, but sometimes it was even better because of what it was surrounded by.
The characters. So many of them, and so wonderfully drawn.
The epic climaxes to many of the books.
The relationships. So many wonderful duos.
Things I didn't like:
Not a lot, although some of the sexual violence didn't appeal.
Didn't like the way the Forkrul Assail were hardly mentioned in the first 8 books, and yet they ended up the big bad.

It was interesting, and perhaps inevitable bearing in mind how many characters there were, that there were so many loose ends. You didn't know who were going to be involved at the bitter end, apart from obviously the Bonehunters - although even there, you didn't really clock that they were the central characters until about half way through the series. I was delighted that certain characters like Kalam, Ganoes, Whiskeyjack ended up so important at the end.
Some characters I missed - I kept expecting Silverfox to make another appearance and felt that her story wasn't finished. I wanted Kalam and Barathol to meet up. I was expecting Karsa to have a much bigger role (although I guess killing a God was pretty big), particularly bearing in mind how central he was to the middle few books. I thought Kruppe would have a bigger role to play too - I wondered if he was an Elder God like Bugg. I still wonder that!
Overall, it's probably the most satisfying fantasy series I've ever read, and thanks so much to this group for causing me to read it :)

Goodness me what a conclusion!
Just fabulous.
Loved the Korlat and Whiskeyjack stuff.
Very happy about Crokus and Aspalar and Hellian and Urb.
Hand my hand over my mouth when I thought Tavore was going to kill Ganoes. Thank goodness she didn't. That would have been too much to bear.
Didn't quite understand Cotillion killing(?) the Crippled God. I was confused about how that fulfilled what they needed to do.

Kathi wrote: "What role do the Bridgeburners and Tavore have to play? They didn't survive the Glass Desert for nothing"

This was my first thought after finishing chapter 23 as well. I was assuming that Tavore would be up there with Reverence fighting over the heart, but no - it was an alive Hood and two cattle dogs!! So what role do the Bonehunters have now? Can't wait to see.

Karsa killed Fener! Why?!

How did Hetan get there? Did Toc have something to do with it?

Possibly the funniest part of the entire 10 book series, and there have been some real laugh out loud bits for it to compete against, was Brys being read aloud the letter from Tehol. I was crying with laughter.