Fall, my favorite season and continuing pandemic hell part 30095
- Wicked Saints by Emily A. Duncan
- The Shadowed Sun (Dreamblood Book 2) by N.K. Jemisin
- The Fires of Heaven (Wheel of Time book 5) by Robert Jordan
- Some of the Best of Tor 2019 (short story collection, about novel length)
- Vincalis the Agitator by Holly Lisle
- Diplomacy of Wolves by Holly Lisle
- Vengeance of Dragons by Holly Lisle
I can tell it was a rough month because I didn’t read much and abandoned some of what I did read half-finished. Best of Tor 2019 didn’t deserve that treatment and I’ve since picked it back up to finish, but Wheel of Time, oh, Wheel of Time…
See, the thing about Wheel of Time is that it sounds much cooler as a Blind Guardian song. I gave it a shot because it keeps getting talked up as a fantasy classic despite its age, as part of my determination to read some of the genre classics I’ve managed to miss. The first book was all right, decently entertaining if nothing groundbreaking; books 2 – 4 were erratic and got to be a slog, but I got through them. Book 5, though… nope, I’m out. I watched the story bloat creep in through books 2 – 4, I tolerated the winding plots and contrived rom-com misunderstandings, I tried to see good points about the protagonists, and book 5 blew basically all of that. Especially the one scene, which somehow managed to be the worst execution of that fanfiction trope I’ve ever seen despite being in a published “classic” book. Nah. I’m going to go read something else that doesn’t involve watching Jordan remember how to write Nynaeve in real time.
Aerugoblog 