Phillip > Recent Status Updates

Seating himself, Dr. Apolisi took a neat metal container from the table and snapped it open with a wrist-flick, disclosing a row of expensive cigarettes. "May I tempt you?"
Yuri waived aside the offer. "Not today. But thank you."
"Scotch?"
"Russian. But I will also decline drink."

I was about this far done with this book when I decided to look up the author on Wikipedia and saw that he was the guy who started the "Sad Puppies" thing with the Hugo awards a while back. Not a fan of that group, so it's definitely coloring my feelings for this book, which I'm still enjoying (nothing world changing, but fun) in spite of that.

Bleh.

This is the second book that I've read this year titled King of Ashes.

Started this yesterday and I'm flying through it. I struggled with the first book but this has hooked me, and I can't point to any reason why. I guess I just know the characters now.

I really, really love this book.

This is so good, on the one hand I want RJB to write whatever he wants but also I just want book after book in this setting with these characters.

I have an odd tic where, if I see a character reading a novel in a show or movie that I'm watching, I want to know what it is. More often than not it fits the character and/or production, and sometimes I find something that I want to read.

Early in the first John Wick, when he takes his car to the closed air strip to drive around, the guy that lets him in is reading this.

I fully expect that this will be stupid.

I'm enjoying this quite a bit, but it just had the most egregious "hero sneakily overhears the villains discussing every aspect of their plans" scene I've ever encountered.

Absolutely loving this. It's a dark sci-fi murder mystery set in 1997 where the world's basically the same as ours, except secretly the US Navy has a well-established space fleet that can travel into deep space and "deep time" that's tasked with preventing the Terminus, the end of humanity in the future, that occurs at a changing date that keeps getting closer to present day.

This is not really grabbing me and I liked Player of Games. Giving it a little bit longer but this is feeling like a potential DNF :/

"He deserves death!"
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”

This Tolkien guy was a pretty good writer.

"Like most forms of corruption, it began with men in suits."

I am going to need more people to read this please and thank you.

It's a fast moving heist book in which a low-level Yoruba god of nightmares, employee of the regional Spirit Company, Shigidi, falls in with a succubus, Nneoma, to go freelance. They're recruited to retrieve a mystical artifact from the British Museum.

Somewhat similar vibes as American Gods but so much more interesting to me. Loving it.

Giving myself whiplash reading this one after Station Eleven.

So long though

This is wonderful. I think I might've liked The Blacktongue Thief a little more, but we'll see where this ends up going. Need to read the rest of Buehlman's novels ASAP.

It's nice when you can tell that you're going to absolutely love a book from the first paragraph.

I decided I'm gonna switch to reading this. I am very lost getting through this as an audiobook.

It's been several books since I've read a good traditional (e.g., vaguely Medieval-ish bildungsroman) fantasy and this is completely that and is checking all the boxes I wanted it to.

One chapter + a bit in and I already love this, mostly due to the rich hints at worldbuilding that RJB is so good at doing without getting in the way of the narrative. Vaguely Victorian/Regency-ish biopunk technology? But the plants are hostile? And there's seawalls and the name of the series mentions Leviathans? So like Agatha Christie writing Pacific Rim meets Annihilation?