Sherwood Smith > Recent Status Updates

Continues to be awesome

Absorbing!

Could not read for a while as only had one eye (one swollen shut due to a tangle with a garden hose and the hose won). Keeps getting better all the time--I cannot predict where this is going, and it's so imbued with period thinking and graceful writing

If you've ever seen the unicorn tapestries, you will understand my trepidation at starting this book, but oh, I'm so glad I did. Absolutely wonderful world-building, and does justice to some fascinating medieval women . . .

Reading time has been curtailed but sneaked some in a waiting room yesterday. I'm more and more intrigued by the system voice . . .

Stopped short of Stormwatch Citadel: next reading chance!

I love the snark in the System Voice, and there's so much imagination here . . .

Reading snips and bits while on the fly--good character stuff!

Off to a terrific start! Deeply satisfying (and intriguing) first arc . . .

Whoa. Things are HOTTING up!

Oooh! The unexpected appearance of some...problematical characters from earlier in the story arc. And some horrible discoveries about the orc enemies....Aderyn is being tested to the max...

I recently began Matt Dinniman's Carl books, so I have something to compare this series to! Carl is funnier, but also far more violent and gross. Though this one does start off with a bang--Adaryn is now general of an army fighting orcs! The usual good character building and the snarky AI keep mt zipping along!

The second half is really stretching it, though the research continues to be superlative. But I really did not want to know this much detail about distant relations, bound together by the frequent repetition of "wild."

Overuse of the word "wild" becomes increasingly teeth-gritting. And, sadly, the chapters less interesting, outside of the evidence of Looser's sublime skill at digging for minutae in the records that other scholars have overlooked. I may disagree completely with some of her conclusions, but the initial facts are intriguing.

Even when I flat-out disagree, Looser is always fun to read. I find her at her best when she really digs in on contemporary lives and lit.

I wish there was a bit less click-baity dragging in of "wildness" though, but that's a small creeb. It probably breezes right by on the audiobook.

Whoa...we are definitely setting up for the race to the end...

One thing I'm enjoying the heck out of is the evolution of the computer voice for the System. The info dump for the various orc classes had me cackling.

Whew, things are hotting up!

I love training and testing montages, especially when we see how far a character has come. So satisfying, yet sets up for challenges to come....

We're off to a great start--love the worldbuilding, and we're back with my favorite POV, Aderyn, as she has to truly become a Warmaster...

Quest fantasy has been a tough sell for me when it's on-the-road hardship broken by monster fights and unloading reams of bad poetry. This story 's on-the-road hardship is woven with good character dynamics, making it interesting, and some tiny glimpses of the numinous as well as mystery. Just what I like!

Started over lunch, must fight to set it aside. Already I love the characters. Great sense of the world and its history.

Love the interesting twists on "The Chosen One"--and the dragon quest. And the System continues to make me cackle.

Really enjoying this installment: not only the inventiveness of the challenges, but the evolving character dynamics. And the system's commentary at the end of descriptions keeps cracking me up....

Wow things got complex. And painful. And wonderful...

Still thoroughly enjoying...

I really appreciate the balance of character development with action.

I really like this new setup. How many unexpected twists in all these dungeons...

More LitRPG fun--and a new twist. We meet Aderyn's brother, who holds out an interesting and tempting prospect: a competition that will net them gold, and by the way, nobody dies. It'll be easy! It'll be fun!

*cue JAWS music*

I really like the character evolution so far...