Sean

I’d enjoyed the first three Wax and Wayne books, but The Lost Metal really elevates the series, delivering on the set-up work of the first three in a very strong way. The stakes have gotten bigger with each book in the series and this one is back to Cosmere-wide scale. But even with that, it stays grounded in the same lovable characters and their personal motivations and challenges. In particular, Wayne gets a fledged out backstory with real emotional depth that makes the ending hit incredibly hard.

This book was generally informative, but also quite scatterbrained. As someone who actively works with a conservation herd, I wish it had more lessons that could be applied to future bison conservation work. Maybe the problem is that, so far, conserving large herding animals globally has been mostly unsuccessful, but I wish the emphasis had been more on the few things that have gone well rather than the endless train of missteps in the last hundred years.

Books don’t get any more emotional than The Road. The setting itself sets the mood right off the bat with everything coated in ash, not even a sign of life in the forests, and just a long lonely road cutting its way through the gray, post-apocalyptic scenes. Every step of the man and the boy’s journey down the road is full of despair. It really makes you wonder how they keep going. And yet, when I finished the book, I realized that even in the most desolate atmosphere imaginable, the relationship between the man and the boy keeps hope alive and as long as they have each other they simply have to keep going. They’re everything that’s good about the world and somehow made me come away from such a depressing book feeling hopeful.

I have no idea how I hadn’t read Into Thin Air before given how often I read Into The Wild when I was younger, but I’m happy to have rectified that error now. This is such a deeply emotional story. Especially in the last hundred pages, detailing the summit push, I felt like I was living every harrowing step right along with Jon Krakauer as the joy of achieving that dream turned to a literal horror movie. I teared up at multiple points; especially the confusion over Andy Harris’ demise, and Rob Hall talking to his wife on the sat phone while stranded and on the verge of death. This story is the ultimate reminder of how small humans truly are when faced with the power of mother nature and why, no matter how hard we try, it can never be tamed.

Kelsier’s aura remains unmatched. This was just fun to relive era 1 from a very different point of view.

The bands of mourning leveled up era two in a lot of ways. I found myself caring about the characters more deeply, in part because their motivations and insecurities are much more developed. This book also sets up potentially world altering circumstances to come in book four that make it feel more like era 1. Lastly, I’m always a sucker for books where characters travel to new and interesting places and was very happy to see this story move out of Elendel.

I really wanted to love this book, but clearly, since it took me two months to read, something didn’t quite click. The book is written as though you’re in the audience of a play watching the story unfold on stage, with occasional fourth wall breaks. I’d never read something written this way and maybe that played into my struggle with this. Despite the bad rating, I wouldn’t tell someone to stay away from this book. There are a lot of really cool elements to it, particularly in the worldbuilding, and I could see some people finding an instant connection to the story and flying right through it.

When an author telegraphs the end of a series in the first chapter of book one, it feels like that ending will inevitably be disappointing. That was not true in this case. Ruocchio sticks the landing gracefully. Shadows Upon Time raised the stakes with every chapter. There was incredible action, political intrigue, and philosophical musings in nearly every chapter. Sun Eater is one of a kind. With this final book it has confirmed its spot in the very upper echelons of all the series I’ve ever read.

Shadows of Self felt a lot more like Mistborn Era 1 than Alloy of Law did, which makes me more excited about where this series is going. I enjoyed the larger scale of the conflict and its ramifications on the world. The characters also bring a more light hearted vibe than most of Sanderson’s books. It’s always a good time when Wayne narrates a chapter.

The Alloy of Law was a fun switch-up from Brando. There’s nothing happening on a universe-scale, or world shattering events going on in the background. It’s really just about meeting new characters, seeing how Scadrial has changed since era 1, and a little bit of cops and robbers action to keep things interesting. I liked the dynamic between the three main characters a lot and am excited to keep exploring their stories.

Cabin has instantly become one of my favorite books ever. It’s equal parts funny, inspirational, and emotional. I loved reading about Patrick growing as a craftsman in a way that shows me it might be possible for me to do something similar. Each chapter is its own cabin-related anecdote which combine to convey a deep sense of place and emotional connection to the tiny cabin at Wits End. Everyone would be lucky to find their own version of Patrick’s Cabin.

This was disappointing, considering how great the other two Priory books are. Samantha Shannon might not be cut out for the shorter format. When books are this short I expect every page to pack a punch and for it to have a defined goal. This did neither of those things. Rather, it was like a full-length novel packed into a quarter of the pages, with a quarter of the impact. It’s still worth the read if you loved Priory because it adds some context to what’s going on at that time, but is definitely the weakest of the bunch.

"No one gets what they deserve" was a quote from multiple different characters throughout The First Law Trilogy and it couldn't sum up the conclusion to the series any better. The trilogy has seven main characters, none of them are clear-cut good or bad guys, but the ones that lean bad ended up in positions they wanted, but didn't deserve, and the ones that lean good ended up in terrible situations. That made for a frustrating, but fitting end to this trilogy, where nothing ever seemed to go right.

I found rating the series interesting because none of the three books were five stars, but I still feel like the series as a whole was a five star series. The whole was greater than the sum of its parts. The characters are just so interesting to read about, and just about make up for the predictability of the plot. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this series and am excited to dive back in to this world sometime in the future.

I was first gifted The Blade Itself about five years ago, but hadn’t picked it up until last week. Boy was I missing out. I can’t remember the last book that grabbed hold of me this quickly. This book has the most eclectic cast of characters. Each of them is extremely flawed, with colorful backgrounds that are revealed piece by piece through the book, and yet by the end of the book I couldn’t help but root for(or vehemently against) every one of them.

I only gave it 4.5⭐️ because this book, ultimately, felt like a long prologue without a true payoff. A lot of my favorite series also start that way, and the groundwork laid in The Blade Itself was spectacular, so I can’t wait to say Abercrombies second act.

Tress is a whimsical and lighthearted, joy of a read. There was nothing groundbreaking in here, and that’s ok. Sometimes it’s nice to read a story about (mostly) good people going on a quest and learning more about who they are.

Bonus: I love a good cosmere connection and this one had plenty of fun ones.

Blood Over Bright Haven was an enjoyable read, with fast-pacing, an interesting magic system, and some important themes, but lacked some of the nuance and character work that could have really elevated it. The ending of this book carried it by making some early moral debates tangible through Sciona’s actions.

Sciona is one of the most frustrating main characters I’ve read. Despite being a brilliant mage, she doesn’t have any sense of logic or emotional intelligence. At times she had me wanting to rip my hair out. I know her naïveté was necessary to enable her journey and it pays off in the end, I just didn’t enjoy the experience of reading about it. Thomil on the other hand, was a very solid side character, mostly because of the way he would argue with Sciona. I even found myself rooting for them to have a romance in a way I rarely do.

This may not be ML Wangs best work (it’s hard to live up to sword of kaigen), but it solidified her as an author I’ll be eagerly awaiting more from, and is a book I would definitely recommend.

Boys in the Boat had a huge impact on me when I first read it almost ten years ago. It was a big part of the reason I started rowing and taught me a lot when I was in a very impressionable stage of life. Coming back to it now, at the same stage of life as the guys in the book, I look at the stories in a new light and hope that they can have a similarly positive influence on me now. That may not mean picking rowing back up, but at its core The Boys in the Boat is a story of being a young man finding his way through tough times and whether I go to the Olympics or not (probably not lol), I can still apply lessons from Joe and the gang to my current situation.

Disquiet Gods is quintessential Suneater at its best. It is the first book in the series that retraces the events of earlier books, but does it in a way that makes those events all the more impactful in reflection. The politics brought back memories of Demon in White, and are an aspect of the series I wish was more prominent. The second act of the book, on Sabratha, gave me all the supernatural worldbuilding I’ve come to love about this series, combined with a bit of horror through contact with The Watchers and the Cielcin. It felt like a combination of Demon in White and Kingdoms of Death. And the ending was a direct callback to the last third of Howling Dark, when this series really started to have an impact on me. I’d been waiting for that to happen and worried that the foreshadowing of it might reduce the impact. Boy was I wrong. While I’d say this is my third favorite book in the series, the ending of it was probably the best. We’re so close now to the fateful events on Gododdin that are revealed on page 1 and have been built up to for six books. November can’t come soon enough…

Ashes of Man was a letdown as far as Suneater books go. Each of the last four books have expanded upon the world, plot, and characters in major ways. This one felt like replaying the hits. It’s the same characters, with even Hadrian not undergoing much development (until maybe the very end), same plot devices, an impossible mission, followed by a huge culminating battle, and mostly planets and groups of people that have made appearances already.

🚨SPOILERS🚨

What really disappointed me was Valkas death. Valka had grown into a character I absolutely loved. Her relationship with Hadrian, her cool half-computer brain and everything she could do with it, even the way she connected with Gibson and other side characters were some of my favorite parts of the series. It’s foreshadowed throughout the book that she’s probably gonna die at the end, so I was ready for a massive emotional impact or a dramatic death. It didn’t give me either of those. She just kinda dies. It felt like a disrespectful write-off of a key character. In the manner of her death she gets reduced to little more than any other side character Hadrian cared about, which is not what she’d been at all. The fallout from her death, specifically hadrians reaction, ended up as the part with big stakes and impact on the story. Ultimately, setting up what feels like the very end of this long saga, now that Hadrian truly has no one left.

Demon in White leveled up from Howling Dark in a lot of ways. There were five distinct acts and each of them delivered what they were meant to. It started by adding genuine political intrigue by having Hadrian tangle with the emperor and make strong friends and stronger enemies at court. That was a completely new element. The battles with the Cielcin were as scary and epic as always. I wish Dorayaica had been a bit more involved given how much it’s built up as the true enemy, but it’s set up for more from it going forward. Finally, the academic and then quest parts of the book that went together were spectacular. Particularly the supernatural contact with the Quiet was a stunning scene that marked a real shift in who Hadrian is and will be. He’s still ridiculously dramatic about literally everything but now I feel like he’s earned it given everything he’s been through and the level of power/respect he’s cultivated amongst humanity.

Somehow this series just keeps getting better. The emotional impact of this book was off the charts. To see what Hadrian goes through, what he’s reduced to, was jarring. And the ending…holy shit. That’s how a battle should be written. Then what happened next added a completely new emotion to the story that topped it off perfectly.

This was an inspirational story of what it means to connect with a place and be physically and spiritually immersed within it. It changes the way I want to think about time spent in the mountains. I also might just have to run away to the Sierra to get even a fraction of what Stan and co have experienced there.

Howling Dark takes a major step up from empire of silence in terms of the scope of the world and the relevance to the bigger story. The worlds they visit in this book are wonderfully weird, exploring what it even means to be human in the far future, while still working towards the goal of making contact with the Cielcin. When contact is made eventually, it feels like the true start of this series. The entire negotiation drives home the major differences between humans and Cielcin before culminating in an incredible battle scene that seems like it will have major impact going forward. The concept of The Quiet, this almost supernatural group of beings, is probably my most pressing question going into book 3. They’re clearly pulling some strings and have a vested interest in Hadrians success.

The main reason this book isn’t five stars for me is they skipped an entire book in between 1 and 2. The first 200 pages of Howling Dark are talking about this campaign they’d been on and all the crazy events that happened, but we don’t get to see any of it and so the first part of the book just doesn’t have the impact it should. He clearly wanted to emphasize the found family aspect of the Red Company but didn’t do enough to develop the side characters to make it hit hard. I really hope book 3 continues developing Valka well and adds some more interesting secondary parts.

Empire of Silence is epic sci-fi, very much in the tradition of Dune and the later Enders Game books(some of my favorite of all time). It’s written as Hadrian’s memoir, thousands of years after the events of the first book, and is constantly dropping hints about what’s to come in the future as Hadrian evolves into this emperor/deity who is retelling his own story. This book is full of his personal philosophy and the phases of it each teach him some new lesson, in an almost religious way. Until the end when he meets the Cielcin, it doesn’t feel like the events of this book have major stakes for the story at-large outside of evolving Hadrians character. The most interesting part is the Cielcin, how unknown and inhuman they are, and how the majority of humanity views them compared to how Hadrian does, feels like the foundation of the series going forward and I’m glad I got to read about Hadrians first encounters with the aliens he’s so obsessed with. Knowing where the story goes makes me so excited to know how it gets there. This book itself wasn’t that great, but the world it builds and the future it sets up is what has me hooked.

Where the Water Goes is written as someone who doesn't know anything about the Colorado River going on a source-to-sea trip and learning the basics of an incredibly complex network of legal, social, and environmental factors dictating how water is supplied to essentially the entire southwestern US. It did an excellent job explaining everything the author saw on his trip, however, I went into the book with a solid understanding of the majority of these systems already and so didn't gain as much from it as I would have. If you're at all interested in learning about the Colorado River, this is definitely a good place to start and will make you want to know even more.