Jasher Drake
was so fun to be in the world of the howling again - really love the way brandner writes these books!
although it's more or less just a little barebones revenge tale, it was still super nice to catch up with karyn and chris again. could give or take the side characters though and found it so funny that we're fully introduced to karyn's new family only for her to ditch them the first chance she gets hahahaha. what was the point?
really great werewolf scenes throughout the whole story too. chris and his big silver serving tray knife fight at the end was a highlight - what a guy.
such a frustrating read - thank you meredith hambrock!
hated the main character jessamyn with all of my being... and yet somehow found myself rooting for her by the end. was i going crazy too? did the nonstop narcissistic, unreliable narration actually start getting to me?? she's so tragic and messy and constantly devastating - every time something started to go right for her, it quickly all fell apart. so called friends and family shown to be frauds. and yet... she's a horrible, horrible awful person, right? right??
hambrock honestly works wonders here. makes such an annoying, self-absorbed character feel so compelling. the sister gorgeous audition scene totally blew me away and so did how the whole book plays with perception. we never really know if what we're reading is true, if the side characters are actually how jessamyn sees them, or if she even has the talent and star power she thinks she does. that audition, and the whole finale, gives just enough of a glimpse into reality to keep you wondering.
overall felt a bit too similar to other stories we've had lately like pearl, saint maud etc. but the sound of music backdrop was super fun and the light horror aspects towards the end absolutely ruled.
very glad it's over haha - definitely need a shower after living in jessamyn's life for this long.
might be the biggest barsoom boy on the planet rn - absolutely loved every second of this one! edgar rice burroughs is back with sci-fi ideas so out there for the 1920s that it's insane. we've got a new human protagonist ulysses paxton stepping in for john carter and the whole story style completely swerves away from big martian battles into this wild little tale about a ragtag crew of body-swapped nobodies.
the meat of the plot sees ulysses become an assistant to this mad scientist/brain transplant guy who's casually swapping brains between different bodies and wants to train ulysses up so he can one day move his own brain out of his decrepit body and into a fresh new one. but then ulysses catches feelings for this ugly old lady who actually has the brain of a hot young barsoomian local in her and he's like “no wait i love you but before we get married we're going to have to get your brain back into your original body because there's no way i'm marrying a wrinkly ol' crone”.
from there it just spirals. brains getting tossed into the wrong bodies, people waking up as the opposite sex, martian monkeys with the brains of men, legendary assassins brought back to life with new hearts, a whole society of wacky religious fanatics duped into believing their 100% fake god is 100% real.
burroughs frickin' does it again.
builds a world and a story so wildly original and full of bizarro sci-fi charm that i'm completely in awe. am i ever reading another series again??
perfect little cautionary tale about how pursuing pleasure above all else only ends in pain for yourself and the people around you. in awe of how barker manages to crawl under your skin - not just with unimaginable, otherworldly hooked horrors but with the darkness and depravity everyday life sometimes holds too.
definitely adding more clive barker to my to-read shelf asap and also gonna start reading more novellas! very very impressed by how fleshed out this felt for something so short.
a big ol' celebration of the world of dragonlance and all the characters we've come to love from it! such an interesting twist to take us back to the first book of the whole series and play it out as an alternate reality take.
dragons of eternity does so much for tanis, who was always the boring generic hero of the books. here he's forced to make some tough decisions, able to come face to face with failures from his past and ultimately becomes maybe my favourite character in the whole party??
same can be said for destina, the new protagonist first introduced to us in this trilogy, who completely comes into her own by the end of the book, and again has to step up and grow from the annoying selfish brat she was in the beginning.
completely in awe of weis and hickman tbh. i first blew off this trilogy as an uninteresting retread of the older stories, but it becomes something so special and brings this whole world full circle. tas gets great moments to shine in the first book, raistlin and sturm bring so much depth to the second, and tanis and kitiara bring it all home here - it reinvents them all, feels like a reunion between old friends, and has me itching to reread the older stuff.
as every kender will tell you, no road is ever old, and krynn definitely feels brand new once more.
best stormlight book by far! focuses on a small scale siege scenario and sprinkles a little courtroom drama into the mix.
love how much time is devoted to both kaladin and navani while all the other less interesting characters are pretty much resigned solely to supporting roles this time around. it was really appreciated after the previous few books felt too wide in scope and had too many story arcs to keep track of - meant it was seldom that anything actually connected or left a lasting emotional impact.
so many moments in this book truly truly wrecked me and i'm thankful the story made space for them. my biggest issue with this series boils down to the fact that the story has gotten so huge and epic and i'm glad this one went back to a bit of single location intrigue filled with all the political backstabbing i've been missing since the way of kings.
such a fun read! quick little treasure hunting adventure/mystery that introduces some really interesting things into the cosmere. rysn may be one of my fave stormlight characters of them all now, and i appreciated the effort put into making the lopen at least a little bit likeable.
begs the question, should every sanderson book be 300 pages long?
found it a real real slog to get through most of this, and honestly should've probably rated it 2 stars, but storms - sanderson got me with that finale.
not a fan of how characters are treated in this book though. they're pulled from scene to scene and place to place with no real rhyme or reason or personal urgency. people are killed off without satisfying arcs or any redemption, while others never seem to face consequences for choices made in previous books.
still find the shallan personality split stuff infuriating too, and i don't understand why so much time is spent on the shallan/adolin/kaladin drama when there's not even much there to devote time to.
dalinar's backstory was eye-opening and i love how it changes how we view him as a person, but i kinda wish at least some of it was left to the imagination. we've been told time and time again about the deal he's made and the things he's lost - do we really need to see the whole scene play out at this point?
in the end though, i did enjoy the journey. seeing the radiants on the field together was worth the wait, and i'm really engaged with the questions being asked about morality and right and wrong. i hope we get more of that going forward and maybe even switch back to focusing on a core few characters rather than this ever-expanding cast we don't care that much about.
five different godzilla fans showcase their art styles while each tackling the prompt of ‘godzilla in hell' in strikingly different ways. love the concept more than the actual execution of some of these stories, but the artwork pops and i really enjoyed the wild and wacky places these issues go. i mean, godzilla taking on angels, demons, god and the devil before coming out the victor?? insane stuff. so cool that people can play with these out-there ideas.
such a cool idea to bring together all of these iconic monsters and weapons and story beats from 60 years of the godzilla franchise and to show them all through the eyes of one character as he grows older.
the red and blues pop, spacegodzilla goes hard, and the anti megalosaurus force rules. an awesome little comic!
had no clue that this was basically just an additional chronicles book! loved having the gang back together, there's some really great stuff with both kitiara and tasslehoff specifically. and that final moment in the inn of the last home?? goosebumps. fist pumps. teardrops.
raistlin's story is definitely the main focus though and it's pretty astounding how much weis lets you get into his head this time around. everything about his personal story and advancement through the mages of high sorcery was perfect... up until the actual test which was a huge anticlimactic bummer. throughout the whole dragonlance series you're told how harrowing and soul-destroying and physically devastating it was for raist, which i felt nothing of here.
perfect little book outside that ending though!
genius of sanderson to flesh out stormlight side characters with their own novellas, and the everstorm is such a dope backdrop for this story but it just feels super underwhelming imo! last few chapters rock but there are so so many more chapters beforehand where nothing much really happens apart from pancake after pancake being eaten by an annoying little girl.
this book had some serious highs! love how sanderson builds up to the epic battles, specifically the big arena showdown and the whole finale in this one. but tbh the book felt pretty bloated overall.
kaladin's still my fave, but some of the earlier chapters with him and adolin and shallan always switching pov are so stormin' infuriating. i get the whole clash-of-personalities thing, but it got old real quick, especially when so many more interesting story elements were glossed over instead.
the world-building still takes my breath away however, and i found myself really falling head over heels for the interludes this time around, such a neat way to expand the wider world as the story rolls on.
