Discuss and rate the last thing you read

[Hawki]

Sonic the Hedgehog: Volume 2: The Fate of Dr. Eggman (3/5)

Sonic Boom: Volume 1 (3/5)

Sonic Boom: Volume 2 (3/5)

I read these three graphic novels in one go, so I'm reviewing them together...sort of. The two Boom graphic novels go hand in hand, so I'll get to them first.

They're...okay. Much of the humour relies on breaking the fourth wall to the extent that Deadpool would blush. The type of fourth wall breaking that has the characters, among other things, grabbing onto their own speech bubbles to save themselves. If you like Sonic Boom (the cartoon series), you'd like this, probably. If not, it won't convert you. As someone who does like Sonic Boom, I did like this, but I'd say the humour landed about 70% of the time. That left 30% of the humour not landing, including Eggman utilizing the same robot over and over, Knuckles being way too stupid for his own good, even for the standards of the cartoon it's based on, and...yeah. Light fun. Bitterly pokes at the wound that there's a gap for the Worlds Collide/Unite arc that due to the copyright BS with Archie Comics, Ken Penders, and Sega, is practically impossible to get a hold of now without spending a small fortune.

Anyway, let's move onto 'Fate of Doctor Eggman,' which is in the IDW continuity. You might recall that I reviewed Volume 1 awhile back with very tepid thoughts. The dialogue was simple, the story was simple, and while issues 1-4 did form back-to-back continuity, the entire thing felt like an exercise to introduce the characters, even though everyone should be familiar with them by now (and even if they aren't, the series is continuing from where Forces left off, so if you're not already into Sonic, you're going to have a hard time here). Still, issues 5-8 improve in that the dialogue is better (slightly more serious, more use of dry humour), and mostly better plotting. Key word on "mostly" however, because there's a bit of a disconnect between issues 6 and 7, like we missed out some stuff in-between. Like, for instance, "Eggman" is revealed at the end of issue 6, even though we know it can't be him, and he's revealed to be Metal Sonic close to the start of issue 7. Like, usually reveals are left to the ends of issues, not just a few pages in. Similarly with Whisper - she's presented as a mysterious force in issue 8, and has her identity revealed in the scope of the same issue. Considering that we had 6 whole issues of teasing Metal Sonic up to this point, that Whisper's reveal is so anti-climactic feels off. Still, it's an improvement over the previous volume.

 

[09philj]

The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

Before I can talk about The Player of Games, I have to talk about The Culture. The Culture was Banks's big idea, a fully automated luxury space anarchist society that underpinned nine of his thirteen science fiction novels. The Culture's organic members are all genetically enhanced to be able to live for about four centuries and can voluntarily secrete a large variety of drugs from glands in their bodies, among other improvements. Sentient AI are also Culture citizens, and range from drones, which are small hovering robots at least as intelligent as a human, to minds, which inhabit infrastructure like ships or space stations, and are many, many, many times more intelligent than a human. Minds are responsible for the vast majority of work done in The Culture, which they can achieve either through direct control of the hardware they are wired into, or with non-sentient drone workers. The Culture do not live on planets, instead living on densely inhabited, city-like spaceships, or less densely inhabited giant ring-shaped space stations called Orbitals. Culture citizens are free to spend their lives engaging in whatever activities they choose, with artistic and recreational pursuits being the most common, sexual promiscuity is a social norm, and citizens can have their sex or physical form altered to whatever they want essentially whenever they want, with most changing sex multiple times over their life. All dealings with other civilisations are done through the organisation Contact, from diplomacy to warfare, with the subdivision Special Circumstances taking care of espionage and meddling in the affairs of other planets. There's definitely no Prime Directive here. Most Culture novels centre on the work of Contact or Special Circumstances. The Culture is a utopia, but there's lots of scary shit outside it.

Jernau Morat Gurgeh is one of the finest organic tabletop game players in The Culture, a position which has left him rather bored as there's no game he cannot win. However, he's soon tricked and blackmailed into taking Special Circumstances up on an offer to visit the Empire of Azad, a civilisation which controls several planets but is significantly less advanced than The Culture, to play their game. The social status of everyone in the authoritarian and militaristic Azad is determined by their ability to play the fiendishly complex game, which is so intrinsic to the empire's identity that it is also called Azad. The winner of the final game becomes emperor, although Gurgeh is told not to expect to get that far...

The Player of Games is a great work of science fiction. Banks brings both the Culture and Azad to life in a way that makes them both feel real in spite of their alien natures. The narration is third person, but tied very closely to Gurgeh's perspective, which Banks uses to allow the reader to view it's negative aspects in the same abstract way Gurgeh does, which really amps up the shock value of the tour of the depths of it's depravity taken at the end of the second act. Like most of the Culture novels, it raises questions about the morality of the way Special Circumstances operates, which rarely fails to benefit both the Culture and the societies it interacts with, but also make Section 31 from Star Trek look like goody two shoes. The Player of Games is also a good introduction to the Culture universe, since it concerns a relatively small scale story told from the perspective of a Culture citizen, and spends a fair amount of time showing what life in the Culture is like before the plot really kicks in.

 

[Agema]

What Matters Most - James Hollis

This is a psychology book about finding meaning in your life (I am, I think, going through a bit of a mid-life crisis). It's full of beautiful ideas, thought-proking commentary, brief but instructive case studies from the author's practice, to help you look at your life in different ways and explain why you may not be finding satisfaction. And it's proper psychology, not crass mind/body/spirit mumbo-jumbo. On the other hand, it doesn't actually provide you with answers. I kind of knew this - psychology is about helping you find answers rather than just giving the answers to you, because only you can truly find your own answers through self-examination. And it is sparking ideas for me how to think about my life differently and what to do with various things going on in it - there can be no higher recommendation, I suppose. It is good to be reminded that often what holds us back most is ourselves, that we can have unnecessary fears and anxieties and repeated behaviours that prevent our progress; that we can set ourselves objectives which for which the rewards are, deep down illusory and will never truly sate us.

 

[Hawki]

Fine, more graphic novels. Because right now I'm into junkfood rather than proper meals.

Sonic the Hedgehog: Volume 3: The Battle for Angel Island (3/5)

Of the IDW series, vol. 3 is better than volume 1, but it's no volume 2. What we get is basically three issues worth of fight scenes, plus one issue that exists solely to prop up the next arc.

But, okay, sure. Fight scenes, I can live with. I'll take Sonic fight scenes than...other fight scenes, that I'll get to later. But the problem is that the fight scene in question is cribbling heavily from Sonic Heroes, and makes no effort to hide the fact. So, basically, if we think of Dreamcast-era Sonic, we get the least compelling final battle (narratively-speaking) used as the basis for a near rehash of said battle. Only without the rock music. And blackjack. And hookers. And...well, least Amy's far better in this version than the Segaverse, but even in that realm, Boomverse!Amy beat her to the whole "character improvement so you're no longer insufferable" thing. On the flipside, y'know when people complain about there being too many Sonic characters? This kind of exemplifies that, because when you've got this many characters involved in 3 issues of near-constant action, there's only so much available time to flesh out their personalities. Some fare better (e.g. Tangle), others don't (e.g. Whisper).

Then there's the setup. Dr. Starline. Some guy who idolizes Eggman, who restores his memories (if you're asking for even a hint of the ethics involves in erasing Eggman's false personality here, you're not going to get them), and is basically "why yes, I will start working for you, and give you the Chaos Emeralds, and we'll be BFFs." Oh, and Sonic lets Metal Sonic go, and it's because of that that Eggman's memories are restored at all. I...like...what?

So, the arc is okay. But still not good. Volume 2 was close to being "good," but even that didn't manage it. And yet, people love the IDW series from what I can tell, while throwing shade on the Archie series. And all I can say is that whatever its flaws, the Archie series was far more compelling than anything IDW has produced thus far.

Halo: Collateral Damage (2/5)

Remember what I said about fight scenes up above? This is one of them.

The artwork is bad. Canon-compliacne is wonky, because the Spartans are using tech that feels way too advanced for the time period they're in. The plot is basically every Halo trope thrown together (Covies attack, Covies after something, stop Covies, something about sacrifice, blah blah blah) into a three issue series that thinks it's more insightful than it is. Like "collateral damage" is the theme, as in, collateral damage will be incurred as the cost of war and oh God, gag me. Comic, you're not deep for referencing potentially deep themes. Either engage with them or don't.

So, what we have is three issues of fighting, and fighting, and fighting (bored), and speeches (bored), and fighting, and fighting, and BORED! Dear god, there's entire pages where we've got nothing but non-stop action and it's just...so...boring. It doesn't help that the Covenant is portrayed as an unthinking horde that attacks through weight of numbers, which...isn't what the Covenant is. Even in the games, the Covies at least understand the value of cover FFS. But no. We get our fights, we get our speeches, and BORED!

Next...

Halo: Lone Wolf (3/5)

Lone Wolf shares some of the sins of Collateral Damage, but it's not nearly as egergious with them. The art style isn't ugly for one thing. And while the characters aren't really compelling, Linda's at least...somewhat engaging, but that's mainly because she's an established character. Why she goes alone is something the comic never even properly explains, but yay, survivours, Covenant, AI, mcGuffin, etc. It's Halo tropes recycled again, but not so egregiously as Collateral Damage. I really don't know why at this point why the Halo EU is so set on telling stories in the past rather than the present - certainly I've focused on that with the Halo stuff I've written, what with Cortana and the Created - but when I consider the divisive reaction to Halo 5, and that Infinite apparently wants to move away from it, then it does make sense. Granted, that does indicate that the Halo fanbase wants the same stuff recycled over and over and...oh God, I've become an old man. But still, there was no reason for Halo to continue after Reach, and the one interesting thing it did with H5 has been left out in the rain, so if the EU won't touch that, all it's got is old ground to go over.

On the other hand, we do get to see kid!Linda. And kid!Linda is cute!Linda. So, there's that I guess. But I have to admit that if not for a pre-existing character being a protagonsit, Lone Wolf would be even further down in my estimation.

Oh, and Outpost Discovery exists in-universe, and it's totally propaganda. Like, seriously, am I the only one who notices that every time there's a "Museum of Humanity" or something similar in the Halo universe it's basically the UNSC promoting itself? Anyone?

 

[Agema]

The Plague Stones - James Brogden

I quite like James Brogden because he writes stories based around Birmingham (UK) and area, which is part of the country I'm very familiar with. This is the third book of a type that are based around (sometimes local) folklore and myth, following Hekla's Children and The Hollow Tree. These three books are basically horror novels, although not particularly scary. The themes are very much of recurrent or persistent, ancient evil. He wrote some other more fantasy-orientated books previously, although still mostly set in the "real" world.

Toby, a young teen to some less-than-affluent parents, is attacked in his house when his parents are out. This spurs his parents to accept an agreement to take over a distant relative's tenancy of an old house run by a housing association, with a very accomodating, even suspiciously so, board of trustees. Of course, it all turns out to be much less attractive than getting a free house. The trustees are actually a very old society holding back a centuries-old curse from their community, and Toby and his family are the new, unaware recruits...

Brogden is perhaps happiest writing about people rather than horror, and the characters are well constructed. His style is pretty simple and effective, and it reads easily enough - despite being ~400 pages, it flies by pretty swiftly. Of the three, the Plague Stones is I think the weakest (Hekla's Children is notably superior and even quite genuinely unsettling), although even still it's a nice enough book. By no means great literature, but a pleasing enough read.

 

[Agema]

Permafrost - Alastair Reynolds

First up, this is a novella, clocking in at about 160 pages. It's a time travel novel about a bunch of scientists and their guinea pigs in a post-apocalyptic world were some rampant biological process (perhaps a rogue bioweapon) in the mid-21st century has ripped through the earth's ecosystem, leaving humanity with nothing to eat. However, scientists have formed a way of transporting matter back in time, and are sending back the consciousnesses of a small team to "nudge" a tiny change that will allow humanity to save themselves.

It's pretty hard SF, there's at least some proper sounding-physics to explain time travel (the author had a distinguished career in the field prior to becoming an authot), and it also details the concept of paradoxes and how they resolve. Obviously given the length, it's not high on character development, and the plot rolls along nicely enough. Reynolds well amongst the top SF authors writing today, and he's high accomplished at shorter stories as well as full novels, so this is a pretty good blast.

 

[Agema]

City of Lies - Sam Hawke

Apparently Sam Hawke's debut novel - enthusiastically hyped as Robin Hobb mixed with Agatha Christie. I'm not convinced the former is a recommendation, and the latter is just misleadingly flattering as the mystery throughout the core of this novel is really just your bog-standard finding out what's going on "mystery" route a thousand fantasy novels have already trodden.

So two early adults, whose names I've already forgotten (they are that memorable) have been trained as poisoners, and when the capital of of their nation is unexpectedly besieged and its leaders murdered, they have to both save the city and their friend the heir to the "throne", and find out what machinations have brought about this state of affairs. Cue several hundred pages of mediocrity. And I know the protagonists are young, but dear god, surely nobles brought up in the palace with the job of protecting the national leader and the world of subterfuge, who should be intimate with politics, can't be quite so naive.

Plot holes abound. This book is frankly annoying in the way that the plot seems to resolve on all manner of chance encounters and occurrences. Nor are aspects of it remotely convincing: at some point we're expected to believe that the leaders of this rather small state are somehow entirely unaware of the practices of their (culturally and religiously different) peasant majority. Really? Some case is attempted to explain a disconnected ruling elite, but it's wholly unconvincing. Put it this way, if your peasants can turn up some people who are basically mages... how the hell do you miss that over the last 300 years?

Anyway, this is apparently the start of a series. Odds of me reading the second are not high.

 

[Agema]

One Way - Simon Morden

Frank Kittridge is a middle aged convict with a life sentence offered a once in a lifetime opportunity - stay and rot in prison forever, or become a colonist of Mars, building a base for a corporation that NASA will later occupy. Needless to say, he signs up. However, after his training and once he gets there, seven other convicts offered the same deal and an overseer, they start dying one by one. One of them is a murderer... but who?

Let's get right down to the obvious of the core mystery. If you haven't worked out who the killer is by the time the third corpse turns up, god help you. And frankly, you should have a better than even guess before any of them are dead. Nevertheless, it's a good enough read. Alongside the mystery you get to read the general SF stuff about how the base is constructed and operates. It's also making a bit of a scathing comment about corporate activities - each chapter starts with a corporate communique that fills in some of the background of how this Mars mission developed and was run.

So I came out of this with a pretty positive view. I enjoyed it, even if the central mystery was a little weak.

 

[Hawki]

The Wolf is Not Invited (3/5)

So yes, this is a children's book. The author actually moved into my street and I mentioned that I worked in a library. She gifted me the book with the request that I donate it. So, I'm doing that, but I took the chance to read it myself.

It's...okay, I guess? I'm not saying this as an adult reading a book for children, I'm saying it as an examination of its morals. Basically, dog and cat are friends, cat meets cat, goes out with cat, doesn't want dog, dog goes out with dog, cat finds other cat is a *****, cat comes back to dog, dog and cat become friends again. Um...yay? It's kind of weird that *****!cat is only mentioned as being mean in a single page (outside her initial spurring of the dog), and the moral seems to be "some people are jerks, stick with your real friends?" Which, okay, fine, but still...I dunno. Maybe it's because I'm a cat rather than a dog person.

Anyway, it'll be out of my hands soon regardless.

 

[Agema]

Hangman's Gate - R.S. Ford

Second book in the War of the Archons trilogy. Basic set-up, without too many spoilers in case you want to read bk. 1, the Archons (gods, effectively) exiled themselves from the world of men into another realm because they kept getting everyone killed in wars for dominance. Unfortunately, some have broken back through, to restart their lust for power, intoxicated by the thrill of mortal worship. Others of the Archons, plus a cast of humans, are striving to stop them. We get to see the continuing adventures of mercenary Josten Cade and farmgirl Livia Harrow from the previous book, plus a bunch of (mostly) newcomers.

So, pretty basic fantasy fare. R.S. Ford is the same Richard Ford who wrote the Steelhaven trilogy, which was decent. He's pretty competent, if unexceptional, and everything about this book is decent without being great. That's about it. It's like spaghetti and meatballs for dinner: good, solid, middling fare to digest frequently and contentedly in-between the really good stuff.

 

[davidmc1158_v1legacy]

Back into the non-fiction pool.

Comrades: Brothers, Fathers, Heroes, Sons, Pals by Stephen E. Ambrose [1999]
A collection of essays focusing on male friendships, how they can form and the strengths they can provide, this is a short but interesting book. While Ambrose collected his essays around a select few that centered on his own life, the range of his subject material tends towards military history n general and American history more specifically. For a historian's work, it is a bit indulgent, but I can recommend it.

The Summer the Archduke Died: On Wars and Warriors by Louis D. Rubin, Jr. [2008]
Another collection of essays, drawn from the author's previously published critical book review work, this selection revolves around the ending of the first World War and how it led directly into the second and the resulting effects that came from both to change the social fabric of the nations involved. Also a recommended work, but a bit narrow in its focus so it might not appeal to everyone.

A Brief History of Afghanistan by Shaista Wahab and Barry Youngerman [2007]
This work is by no means a deep-dive into the subject, but it does give a pretty good overview of the region in central Asia, how it has come to be the way it is and how its history has shaped the various groups, ethnic and otherwise, that live there. If the work has any major shortcoming, it is that the authors (having written the material in 2006 and earlier) were operating on the assumption that the American occupation of the country was very likely to result in a viable and somewhat stable nation-state free of the Taliban. Sadly, hindsight has shown that such optimism was misplaced. While I can't recommend the author's hopeful views of what was supposed to come in the (their) future, the discussions of the various tribal group's histories, the interplay between them and the nature of how rulers have always had to balance regionalism, nationalism (such as it was) and localism at all times was certainly an illuminating thing.

Now, I just need to plow through the remaining 50 or so books I have piled up. A friend has run a new-and-used book store for several years in town. Unfortunately, she and her business partner have decided to close up shop and I purchased just a few books from them to help clear the shelves. Still find it depressing to think of their store closing down. (OK, now I've bummed myself out. Where did I put that Lewis Black comedy book I bought from them? I need a light and funny read now).

 

[Hawki]

The Wraith is a Superhero (3/5)

So, yes, this is a children's book. It was on sale at the library I worked at as someone had scribbled on it. Since I'm currently working on a Wraith story for Trinity Comics (yes, the same story I mentioned ages back), thought I'd get it.

It's...fine, I guess? I mean, it reads as a children's book, and functions as 50% children's book, 50% "here's the superhero cast that you can read when you're older." Y'know, like a lot of superhero chidlren's books.

Question is, how does the real deal function?

The Wraith (3/5)

How it functions is this - not the first Wraith book chronologically, but the first one published. And it's...well, it's not great. If anything, 3/5 is probably a bit too generous for it. Credit where credit is due, having read Vendetta (set later and written later), the author did improve later, but here, it's pulp fiction dialled up to the max. Where protagonists and anatagonists alike chew the scenery, with the antagonists having the motivation of "I'm evil," and protagonists having the motive of "I'm good." Really, this is better suited fro a comic than a written work, and having read the graphic novel adaptation of the original novel, I'm inclined to agree. Honestly, the best thing about the novel is that it gave me good material - a guide to what I should do when writing for the section, while giving me ideas for what I can do differently.

 

[Agema]

No Way - Simon Morden

Sequel to One Way (see above). Frank Kittridge, isolated ex-con on Mars, is now presented with a whole host of new survival challenges. Not to give away too many spoilers, the boog tagline asks "What if he's not alone?", and I guess that rhetorical question tells you most of what you need to know.

So a few hundred pages of much the same. This is an inferior sequel, where it retreads much of the style of the previous without the same charm or freshness, and Frank himself is far more conpicuously made a "hero", not always in the most convincing of fashions. Meh.

 

[Agema]

The Edge - Tim Lebbon

Another book in a series, this time the third in Lebbon's "Relics" series. Lebbon is a horror author (with occasional forays into fantasy horror). He's pretty good, I guess.

It's the continuing stories of Angela and her boyfriend Vince, who have both been sucked into an underworld where creatures of myth called "The Kin" still exist around the edges of modern human society, and where people in the know hunt them, for fun or for bits of them called relics, some still bearing magical power. In this third book, Vince is trapped in a way I'm not going to explain so I don't spoiler the second book, and Angela is looking after her niece. She is drawn by her nymph friend Lilou into investigating a once-flooded valley that has recently drained... what terrors will emerge from the once-submerged land? Meanwhile, other Kin plan to return to the world in force, and reassume dominance over humankind.

This, again, is diminishing returns territory. It's okay, passes the time, but nothing more. May as well read it if you enjoyed the two before.

 

[Hawki]

One Way - Simon Morden

How would you say it compares to The Martian (the book, if you've read it)? I've seen some people making comparisons as a sort of "Martian, but with a killer on Mars."

 

[Agema]

One Way - Simon Morden

How would you say it compares to The Martian (the book, if you've read it)? I've seen some people making comparisons as a sort of "Martian, but with a killer on Mars."

I'm afraid I've only seen the film of The Martian.

If the book of The Martian is like the film, I think the similarity is very likely to be superficial: basically, someone trying to survive on Mars. But really One Way is a murder mystery novel set on a Martian base, where The Martian is (pesumably) more a hard SF novel exploring how science can do stuff.

 

[Hawki]

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic: Siege of the Crystal Empire (4/5)

Someone, at some point, said that the MLP comics could get away with stuff that the show couldn't. I forget who that person was and when it was said, but I never had any trouble believing that. I mean, the Sonic the Hedgehog comics got away with much darker stuff than what the games ever delved into, so why not MLP? Well, having read this comic arc as part of 'research' for an MLP story I'm doing, I have to say that John/Jane Doe was correct. Because if nothing else, the design of the umbrum themselves in this arc is high octane nightmare fuel.

That aside, the arc is mostly solid. Mostly. Has a good mix of humour at the start, action in the middle, plenty of worldbuilding, and character development spread throughout. Not that said development is done well all the time, as Radiant Hope is...okay, there's nothing wrong with her character inherently, but there's a sense that the writers are really trying to build up the sympathetic backstory thing. So much so that it feels overblown. Also, not that I'm complaining, but in a series that champions redemption, it's kind of odd that the umbrum are presented as being entirely irredeemable, while changelings (also featured here) do get their redemption. Oh, and Chrysalis is here, and despite the umbrum threatening to destroy everything (and ergo, rob the changelings of their food source in the process), she hates Twilight so much that she's quite happy to say "you're screwed, have fun" and fly off. I mean, damn...

However, then there's the fourth issue, where the foundations of the first three aren't quite met. Because in the space of issues 3 to 4, we're led to believe that the empire is enslaved, a resistance is formed, and said resistance comes back just in time to save Twilight and Cadence from execution. This doesn't feel like the climax of an arc, it feels like the climax of a much longer arc. Okay, those things aren't contradictory, but still, issue 4 is the weak link. Because it's visually the darkest issue (wasteland, slavery, etc.), but then the comic remembers that this is a comic based on a setting where the "magic of friendship" is a literal force, and has a final battle that's mostly played for laughs. Fun fact: no-one can die in the comics as a mandate from Hasbro (but being petrified and shattered into pieces is okay). And speaking of that, Sombra. Sombra is...I dunno. He was a weak villain in season 3, and while this comic does give him a sympathetic backstory and a redemption at the end of it (framed in the context of nature vs. nurture, fate, destiny, etc.), it doesn't leave as much impact as it was aiming for. I'm not going to hold season 9 against it (where Sombra is evil again for no reason - well, no in-universe reason at least), but, yeah. I've said elsewhere that giving a villain a sympathetic backstory doesn't automatically make the villain sympathetic themselves, and this is kind of similar. Just replace "sympathetic" with "interesting."

Still, it's a solid arc all round. And if anything, makes me have more gripes against the IDW Sonic series. I know that Hasbro and Sega hve different mandates, but it's jarring to see one series with anthropomorphic animals (Sonic) play it so safe, while another series (MLP) takes risks and pushes the boundaries of what it can get away with. And you'd think that those things would be reversed, but meh.

Oh, and the canon meant I had to revise my own story. Bastards.

 

[Agema]

Empire of Silence - Christopher Ruocchio

Hadrian Marlowe is a young minor aristocrat in the Sollan Empire. The book takes the form of Hadrian retelling his story as an autobiographical record of his life; we are thus told right from the start that Hadrian has ended up destroying a sun and billions of lives in contravention of orders to end a war, and is widely reviled. The story, thus, is how he got there.

This is grand space opera, and there's a lot of worldbuilding here. The basic background is that the Sollan Empire is the largest human polity; it is neo-feudal, xenophobic and somewhat technophobic (especially with regard to computers and AI), with a quasi-religious order called Chantry overseeing correctness of thought and deed. It is at war with the only other advanced alien race humans have ever encountered, the Cielcin. Hadrian's father is a cold and pragmatic man, who attempts to force Hadrian into Chantry; Hadrian instead chooses to flee and lead a life according to his own principles. This first book covers his exceptionally rocky start - he seems to find wherever he goes, he does not have the freedom he craves.

I would say in many ways this book bears a close feeling to the fantasy novel The Name of The Wind (Patrick Rothfuss) in style and set-up. I strongly suspect it also bears a significant debt to Dune (Frank Herbert). I'm not sure I liked its main character. He's obviously designed to be a flawed but admirable character, although he is flawed in ways that often seem designed to be underlying positives - doing the wrong things for the right reasons - which I often find a little cheap. A very substantial cast of characters revolve around him in greater or lesser depth, they're all fine. It's well enough written, albeit with a gentle pace.

It's a fairly hefty tome and I can imagine the faint of focus struggling to get into it, but it's worth sticking with and rewarding enough, even if it falls short of brilliance.

 

[Hawki]

I would say in many ways this book bears a close feeling to the fantasy novel The Name of The Wind (Patrick Rothfuss) in style and set-up.

So, the protagonist is an insufferable Gary Stu?

I'm not sure I liked its main character. He's obviously designed to be a flawed but admirable character,

Well, that's better than Kvothe at least.

 

[Agema]

So, the protagonist is an insufferable Gary Stu?

I don't know I like that term outside a fairly narrow remit.

I don't know whether it's author wish-fulfillment, or whether he's just playing too safe on the virtuous hero trope. Lots of heroes are basically dull as dishwater honourable types, who screw up but always because they're nice (naive) people trying to do the right thing who don't have the callousness or slimy, political nous that would get the job done but leave a sour taste in the mouth. I think often it makes for a weakness when it comes to creating interesting characters when an author wants to make them too likeable.

Well, that's better than Kvothe at least.

Kvothe annoyed me. He's just good at everything and conveniently encounters everything that makes the plot roll along. I think at some point in book two (!), Wise Man's Fear, he finally encounters something he's not totally brilliant at. Kvothe is at least slightly unlikeable as a smug arsehole. I think back and even stuff annoys me like the enticing but conveniently inaccessible inamorata, etc. Feels a little contrived.

Incidentally, do you get the feeling hardly anyone on here reads apaart from us?