Matt

Islam has become a subject no one anywhere can afford to ignore any longer. Although discussion of it has certainly increased in the West, all too often the debate is ruled by racism, ignorance or, most often, politically correct dogma.

As a woman who grew up under Islamic oppression, once a true believer and member of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, who through rational thought and a desire for freedom and equality transcended the totalitarian ideology she was brought up with, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is uniquely qualified to make us aware of the threat that Islam poses to human rights everywhere. I cannot applaud her courage enough.

This book should be required reading for anyone who wishes to have an informed opinion about Islam.

Stunning not only in its complex & imaginative world making (which we already know from Perdido Street Station) but also gripping for its risking-the-world events of insane scale, its moments of shuddering (gotta say it, Lovecraftian) horror, and characters of such depth and emotion and their constantly shifting relationships, I plowed through The Scar, almost incapable of putting it down til I'd finished it. I can't imagine it's possible that you wouldn't enjoy it.

This is a remarkable book.

It's not often that I start a book and think, “I've never read anything like this before.” I love that feeling. It's not so much that the story is crazy original - don't get me wrong, it's excellent - but it's HOW it's written that stunned me.

This book switches constantly between 1st, 2nd and 3rd person perspectives. It jumps from one time to another, to another, and back. It wraps a story inside a story inside one or three other stories, and bounces freely between them all.

That sounds confusing, yeah? I'll admit it does take some getting used to, but once you do, it flows smooth as silk, and you begin to realise that Jiminez is juggling 20 very sharp knives, he never once cuts himself, and it's pure joy to watch him do it. I'm floored that this is only his 2nd book.

If you're looking for a comfy, typical fantasy story structure, keep looking. But if you're keen on a unique storytelling experience, look no further. I'll be surprised if this doesn't end up as my Book of the Year for 2023.

Yeah, as expected:
https://youtu.be/cwfEYt0egKw

A short, fairy tale style read, but the old school kind of fairy tales where Hansel & Gretel murdered the witch at the end. Four separate but connected stories, one for each season, take us through some rather dramatic developments in Albadone.

I enjoyed this, and would've rated it a 4, except for a couple things: it felt perhaps too short (204 pages), so I ended up caring less for the not very deeply developed characters than I think the author intended. Also, it could've benefited greatly from an editor. Numerous plainly wrong uses of words and phrases - “stood to his feet”, using “donned” as an adjective, etc. - as well as the unnecessary italicisation of so many words, bumped me out of the story regularly.

I was looking forward to this book. So many rave reviews, a very high score on Good Reads, positive reactions from some booktubers I respect.

I only finished it out of stubbornness, and perhaps some misplaced hope.

The first half reads like a lot of YA fare: challenging coming of age, childish rivalries, training to become something powerful, discovery of mysterious background. A mix of somewhat interesting and boring seen it 1,000 time before.

But halfway though, the protagonist, a girl named Rin, becomes a complete idiot. Basically everything that happens from then on – all the problems Rin encounters, the deaths of various people you'd care about if they'd been written with any depth, and some truly catastrophic world events – all come down to her remarkably stupid decisions. And by the end, she's become one of the worst people in the entire world, and is not only completely unrepentant, but has a plan to do even worse.

2 stars is generous, and I'll definitely be giving the rest of the trilogy a miss. Why would I want to spend any more time with someone like Rin?

NO BOOK I've ever read was as hard to put down as this one, but I doubt I mean that the way you think.

I vaguely remember DNFing it a decade or more ago, and recently got the idea to try again thanks to numerous YouTube book reviewers. And it's got a huuuge fandom. And one of my favourite fantasy authors loves it, and even finished the series after Jordan's death. All good reasons to give it another go. I went in really wanting to like it.

I'm a quarter of the way through.

As a big Tolkien fan, it seems... quite familiar. Rural idyll. World ignorant bumpkins. Wise wizard. Gruff Ranger. Flight from dark riders. Companions with M and P names. A “city” where you can't trust anyone except the bumbling innkeep. I can only assume this continues.

After 200+ pages, I'm not particularly interested in any of the characters, and the heavy-handed exposition and foreshadowing has left me without a single question I'm excited to see answered. That many pages should be more than enough to sink at least one hook into my interest, but I'm frankly just bored.

And this goes on for 14 books, 4 of which are described by fans as “the slog”?

I read fantasy for fun. I don't want to spend my time on fantasy novels that are a “project” that requires “commitment” to get to a payoff ten thousand pages from now, (after “the slog”). I found the first quarter of the first book slog enough, and I WANTED to like it.

Hard to put down, because it seems so much like I should like it, but I just don't. DNF.

If you've read Fareseer, be aware this is a very different book and series. Not dissing the Farseer trilogy at all - I love it - but the complaints some people have about it - that it's slow, that there's not so much action, that the first person perspective is difficult - are all answered in The Liveship Traders.

This is simply an amazing book. I've just finished my 2nd read, and although I'd intended to do some useful things today, and finish it tomorrow, I was unable to stop. It's that engaging. Multi-POV and with plenty of edge of your seat action, Hobb still firmly reenforces her right to the crown as Queen of fantasy characterisation.

I strongly recommend everyone read The Realm of the Elderlings entire, and in order. However, if you've tried Farseer and weren't that into it, give this book a try. I find it hard to imagine you won't love it and eagerly dive into the rest of this trilogy.

It's been a long time since I was unable to finish a book. This was that book.

I suppose if you love selfish, arrogant, immature protagonists who refuse to learn anything from their experience, you'll love this. I don't and I didn't.

Being an optimist, I assume that the thoroughly unlikeable fellow eventually recognises the admirable qualities of his companions, discovers the hero within and sees some value in caring about anything but his worthless self, but I got tired of waiting for it and put the book down with relief.

Goodreads may need a “stopped reading” button for books like this. This being on the “Best of 2015” list renders the entire list useless to me, but the prominence of thinly veiled romance trash on the list had already raised a distrustful eyebrow anyway.

We all know you can't 100% depend on ratings and reviews, but if you need absolute proof, there's Uprooted.

It all starts off ok, and was more or less enjoyable until somewhere around the middle. Yes, the protagonist is the speshulest twee girl you can imagine (grind teeth and carry on), and the “Dragon” is an ass with few redeeming qualities (sigh), and the whole men's magic / women's magic thing is pretty damned heavy handed, but all around readable. Until the middle.

Suddenly everyone's a threat. Characters pop into the story, only to be randomly killed pages later, and I'm guessing I'm meant to care. And now they've moved there! And now they're somewhere else! And that happens! And Ms. Speshul is the bestest with magic ever! It doesn't make any sense, but she is, um, because! And the bad is soooooo bad! And, um where are they and what's going on? Oh look, sex! And boom, thousands die! Except for Ms. Speshul and her Dragon because... actually, y'know, I stopped caring chapters ago.

The worst thing about this thoroughly underwhelming book? My inability to DNF, and irrational hope that it would somehow be worth finishing. Trust me, it wasn't.

Be careful with this book.

If you love unambiguous morality, where white is blinding and black is despicable, where the good guys can in good conscience slaughter the bad guys, knowing themselves unquestionably in the right, Malazan may not be for you.

If you love knowing exactly how everything in the world works, because wise old men explain it all to ignorant young Chosen Ones in excruciating technical detail, leaving no mystery mysterious, Malazan may not be for you.

If you love following a troubled, complex hero through a world of 2D cut-outs that serve only to reflect or contrast with our hero's struggle, Malazan may not be for you.

If you love simple, tidy answers to complex problems, served up on a shiny platter with little need to think deeply about them, Malazan may not be for you.

Erikson's writing can take a bit of work. Tracking the many POV characters can take a bit of work. Keeping up with the shifting cast, locations and storylines between each of the 10 books can take a bit of work.

I said be careful with this book. If you stick with it, if you gather clues and hints about the world, the magic and the characters, if you learn to love an author who trusts your intelligence and spoon-feeds you nothing, if you allow yourself to be moved by his stunning, emotional prose, if you get to the end of the more than 3.5 millions words and can't wait to read it again, well, it may just change the way you think about epic fantasy as a genre. So be careful. You may come to see the genre as Erikson, and everything else.

Like any technology book, it's become quickly dated, but if you know nothing about interface design, especially for mobile, this is a great summary of the basic concerns.

I've been designing interfaces for a while, so only 3 stars, as I found myself skipping large chunks, but it's a good introduction to the world of (mostly iOS) mobile design.

I want to love this, wholeheartedly, without reservation, and just slam a 5 star on it and be done with it. It's awesome, in almost every way. Almost.

If only it were not for Adare.

Spoilers follow. You've been warned.

How can anyone who has supposedly studied everything and been raised in the utmost center of intrigue on the continent be so stupid and weak?

She has the treacherous bastard in her bed every night, and runs away on the very slim chance that she can gather a barely believable army instead of killing him when conditions are perfect for doing so. She then has the wished for army and a more or less undefended city (in book 2) but instead of taking it, she trusts the words of the bastards she has many reasons to believe have killed the rightful heir her brother, and marches off to do exactly what they want. Adare makes me grind my teeth until they ache. Ugh.

It's not that she does these things, it's that, the way she's written, I find it hard to believe she could be so completely idiotic. For contrast, Valyn getting disarmed by Ut near the monastery was a completely believable mistake. It was unclear what was going on, and him assuming Ut was on his side at the time made sense. But Adare is described as being educated and experienced in the life of the court, and yet every time she's presented with a problem, she walks into it like a wide-eyed, emotional child. Ugh.

Kaden & Valyn make their youthful mistakes, and somehow they're mistakes that I can swallow, but Adare always comes off looking like a hysterical and/or naive idiot. Is this a weakness in writing believable women? Is she just a Deus ex Machina character? I really don't know. But I somehow hope Brian reads these reviews and thinks about this. This trilogy is such a mass of awesomeness, with such a fatally flawed main character (of three), I only hope he gets this sort of thing right next time and totally rocks the 5 star review with his next books.

As always, crap is easy to ignore, but could've been perfect hurts. Brian, if you are reading this, you rock. Totally. I wouldn't care about Adare at all if the books were garbage, but they're so good that one of three protagonists that's an idiot is painful. Reread Adare, and get it right next time.

GotM is the best fantasy novel I've read in a long time, perhaps ever. I'm overjoyed that there are 9 more to go.

Some thoughts on what I heard about the series vs what I read:

- The first chapter was a bit overwhelming, and the language felt clumsy and confusing - I had to read a few sentences more than once to wring meaning out of them - and that fit what I'd heard. And it cleared up after the first chapter and is not at all representative of the rest of the book.

- People said Erikson throws a million characters at you and they're hard to keep track of. Pfffft. If you've read A Song of Ice and Fire, and managed to keep even half of the characters, families and relationships straight, GotM is a cakewalk.

- I'd heard that much of the world is obscure and unexplained. It is (so far). This is a GOOD thing. Tedious, multi-page info dumps (I'm looking at you, Mr. Jordan) are not how anyone speaks, and they're, well, tedious. Erikson explains enough to make sense, but not enough that you feel like an expert on this bizarre world you've just stumbled into, and has left me with quite a few nagging questions that keep me avidly reading.

- Specifically, the magic system. We all love a good magic system, and usually, some wise mage coincidentally lectures another character about how it all works, so we readers know. Here, magic is brutal, complex, and mysterious, and we see it happen, but rarely is it explained. There's obviously a system behind it, but it's not laid out in detailed exposition for us in the first book. I have QUESTIONS. Again, this is good.

- The story does indeed jump around a lot. This isn't “Chosen One and plucky companions seek McGuffin to save the world from Bad Guy”. It's a complex story, told masterfully, with dodgy good guys and sympathetic bad guys, where winning often means doing bad things for good reasons, and even after the victory, there's not much happily ever aftering. In this sense it's the most realistic, adult fantasy I've ever read.

- As a roleplayer, I was delighted to hear this all came about from a game Erikson was running, and I so very much want to play in this world. And that's the only thing that sucks about Malazan - there are no gaming materials for it. Considering the GotM came out over 20 years ago, this is confusing, sad and unforgivable. Okay, maybe not unforgivable, but c'mon.

Thank you Mr. Erikson, and and now onto Deadhouse Gates!

Review on my booktube channel soon...
https://youtube.com/@MattonBooks

A first contact story where humans are the aliens, told from the perspective of the hani - an all female starship crew of lion-like bipeds - with fascinating interspecies politics & intrigue, interesting ideas about alien cultures, and a cross species found family. Good fun.