Rinaldo > Recent Status Updates

So bonkers so far. While Jade City was quite intimate, Jade War scales up the stakes into a dizzying geopolitical tangle, in a really, really great way. Seeing how the cast grows and responds to the growing stakes is quite interesting.

Another interesting note is the exploration of national and diaspora identity, especially with Kekonese-Espenians, and how other cultures utilise jade.

So far so good. It is among the best paced books I've ever read. Fonda Lee is a master of keeping tension, while sprinkling the pace with almost slice of life bits. There's a bit of over-telling but even the infodumps are interesting.

Chapter 25: something about this chapter just resonates with me. Kaladin's struggle and pulling someone out of the darkness of depression and isolation, finding new purpose, mental health treatments, etc.

It just hits the right notes for me.

The Venli & Leshwi sections are absolute amazeballs. The Singers/Listeners lore is a treat for worldbuilding freaks like me.

Corban's story's a bit meh

Veradis' and Kastell's are slightly more interesting

I can't put this book down for some reasons though, it's a real page turner

Welp the entire Trifecta subplot turns out to be a red herring apparently. Super meh .

I swear to god if this doesn't end with Rin burning half the world I would rate this book a bloody one star. Her getting outsmarted, betrayed, and caught while being powerless is getting awfully boring.

The fact that Rin kept failing to deliver satisfying revenge or at least a fatal, killing blow to the right revenge targets makes this series absolutely frustrating to read 😡😡😡

This book single-handedly threw me to 2-month reading rut.

The plot itself is great and I find the river military campaign fascinating. However, it follows conventional grimdark trope where shitty people being constantly shitty to each other. It's doubly frustrating since Rin's hands are constantly tied so she simply keeps reacting (or not reacting) to circumstances around her.

Ugh I know the weird naming convention is coming but I find it super jarring anyway.

Imagine if your MC is a farm boy named John who was raised with his foster brother Diego in their native fantasy kingdom Albion. John went to the Albion capital, Qinglong to study at a military school. There he met a spoiled rich boy Arthur Pendragon.

It’s so bizarre and all over the place.

Mixed feelings so far. On one hand, this book does offer some interesting & timeless themes, especially the cautionary tale against anti-intellectualism & the dumbing down of society.

On other hand, like so many classic Western SF like Brave New World & Foundation, it relies a lot on (now) tired tropes: such as oversimplification of the society, hysterical wife, woman in the fridge, and elitist moral high ground.

Super good stuff. The other day I read a thread on transgressive SFF on r/fantasy. This might qualify.

After 5 books finally the endgame goal for our main characters is dropped. Not that it's a bad thing, I just find it interesting that it takes quite a while. John Bierce is surely improving with every new book. The dialogue and pacing are fast improvements from previous books so far.

Takes me forever to hit the halfway mark but the worldbuilding is so much fun. The concepts of lich-city, demesnes, and mangrove affinity are surely mind boggling.

I love when discussions about magic intertwine with the world’s culture, history, and linguistics

Normally I'm sick and tired with usual fire magic and standard fireball but Bierce made fire magic fresh again.

Hardboiled is kinda interesting. While it's as atmospheric as other Yoshimoto stories I've read, this one downright supernatural, with a touch of sinister eerieness. It does offer an interesting outlook for life: a hardboiled one, a life full of weird fascinating things and without regrets. Morning always comes.

It all starts to make sense and by gods, the implications are both brilliant and horrible.

Yeh, this is as gory, bizarre, gritty as it goes. Except for the grim morality, this has been my jam so far. A bit weird since I'm not normally into body horror and gore, perhaps because it's written rather than drawn/animated? Anyways, the worldbuilding is top notch: meaty version of Machineries of Empire's voidmoths meet Empress of Forever's singing ships, with a healthy dash of The Broken Earth's biopunk.

Well isn't this precious. Anne is a highly rootable but flawed character. Her vivid imagination is adorable but she does need to tone down the ramblings a wee bit.

Isekai meets cultivation meets base building meets min maxing. So many cool things already, I’m fully sold.

It's surely a neat plot twist/reveal which ties several plot threads together. At the same time, it also requires so many expositions it leaves me a bit unsatisfied for now.

I'll be more than happy if this book turns out to be a 100% feel-good lighthearted slice of life fantasy, but of course things have to go bad don't they 😔

I dig the rich depiction of NY immigrant communities in this book, especially Syrians and Jewish. Wecker managed to convey the minutiae of bakery, tinsmith, coffeeshop; the many layers, textures, and flavours of the community (also often accompanied by quirky or eccentric local characters). In some ways, this reminds me of P. Djèlí Clark's books.

It's not a bad book. It's just despite the fascinating Mexican Jazz Age setting and Indigenous mythology bits, this book still relies heavily on typical YA story beats: a plucky country girl discovers power/magic then travels in a series of fetch quests with a powerful man who happens to be her romantic interest.

Rather than pure wuxia, this read like wuxia meets Quentin Tarantino heist. Lots of fun and that p*kimak bomb was utterly delightful.

So Dragonfly is easily the strongest story in this collection. It ties up the threads from other stories in this book, even from The Farthest Shore and Tehanu. Unfortunately, it ends in some sort of cliffhanger.

Yeah, 4 stories so far and they've been painfully mediocre for Le Guin's standard. They're way too mundane and unimaginative for fantasy, and not so much deep character studies either.