drews

Gardens of the moon by Steven Erickson
I picked up this book as part of the Read along on Mike's book review YouTube channel and likely never would have gotten around to it if not for that.

Many People have found this book at least to be confusing and difficult to follow the story line. I will say that I can understand why that is the case. While I did not find it too difficult to follow there are a lot of characters to follow so keeping track of who is doing what can get confusing at times.

This is a world at war with the malazan Empire and one city (Darikjostam) is left for the Malazan empire to conquer and only one stands in his way Lord of the moon's spawn Anomander Rake

It seems however the Gods are also getting involved in the war as well and have their own plans and agendas

The magic system is pretty basic, sorcerers, allomancers, sorceresses etc.. and I found the world of Malazn to have a very dark shadowy feel which I love! The Shadow hounds particularly peaked my interest and I have no doubt that they will make an appearance in other novels of this series as well

My only real nitpick is the Jaghut Tyrant. The payoff for this characters story arc was not really there in terms of the set up for me, lest I get into spoilers I will leave it at that

I will have a full video review on my YouTube channel in the next few days https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkUMtTLktLQ9BrbI0LRJVdg so check that out if you want

Khraen is a man who has no idea who he is. pulled across the world in search of the pieces of his broken heart literally. He has lost everything and seeks to regain what he has lost and to learn about who he is and where he came from.

This is a story full of demons, dark occult sacrifice, wizards and undead nercormancers in a compelling dark occult world. Khraen's story in the 1st 10 pages had me hooked and it was hard to to put down. This is the 1st in a series and I will for sure get the rest at some point

great read all around

This is the 1st Neal Asher book I have read and am glad its a stand alone, which works better a intro to his works.

Weaponized is a scifi story with big ideas. Those big ideas are however nothing new or orginal which is why I did not rate it higher. memory wipes, genetic engineering, AI controlling society, human augmentation etc... nothing that has not been explored in scifi before.

That being said it does exlpore the question of at what point do we cease to be human. When does Genetic engineer and bio tech augmentation cross the line into something beyond or not human any more. Certainly a good question and one that I beleive philosphers will struggle with for yrs to come.

Ursula is our main character who struggles with that exact question as she leads a colony in a fight for survival against 2 enemies determine to destroy her and end her mission.

I dont have alot to say but I did enjoy the book, the ideas and the characters were ok, I didnt feel much in the way of connection with the characters as it was more the plot that kept me reading and I enjoyed it enough that I will probably check out more of Neal Ashers books in his polity universe or otherwise.

Sanderson is essentially a Auto buy for me. This book and collection of short stories is no different. One thing I like about short story format is its a great way to explore concepts and ideas without needing a fully fleshed out narrative, characters or world building. A good short story will feel complete but leaving you asking what if?

Sanderson acomplishes this with these short stories within this book. While some are simply conceptual tales others like moment zero have more thought out plot and narrative to them.

Some like I hate Dragons are just funny really with quirky magic like the ability to hear grammar in speach. IE hearing the difference between their, there, they're

Pritty much every story here falls in the realm of scifi, from matrix style vr to time travel, aliens and zombie apocalpyse these stories are all around fun times which I enjoyed.

Thisi s the sequel to Caleb Carr book The Alieniest and to be honest I did not like it as much as the Alieniest

From almost the start we knew who the suspect was so this story was more of a process versus mystery not much different in that sense from the Alienist.

Personally I just found the whole court room drama thing kind of meh for the most part, and investigation methods were not exactly legal eithier lol,

not a whole lot to say but meh, the ending was just ok, and maybe its not being overly familiar with the time period but it was worth a read once, but that is about it.