Stromboli

Loa, pirates! 


Dark Sea's End wasn't quite as good as Kings of Ash/Heaven, but seeing as how those books both had a stellar book 1 to build upon, and were 2 of my favorite books of 2022, that is by no means a harsh critique of this one. 

Dark Sea's End was indeed an incredible return to the world of Ash & Sand, and I actually liked this one more than Ash & Sand #1 (Kings of Paradise), which bodes extremely well for the future of Beyond Ash & Sand.

I eagerly await more from Mr. Nell, this guy don't miss.

Every Silence Magic Trick consists of three parts, or acts. The first part is called The Pledge. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object - perhaps he asks you to inspect it - to see that it is indeed real.... unaltered.... normal. But of course, it probably isn't... The second act is called The Turn. The magician takes the ordinary something, and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret. But you won't find it, because of course, you're not really looking... you don't really want to know.... 

Rupert Degas sounds so uncannily similar to Steven Pacey that I had a lot of fun pretending that Kingkiller was some alternate timeline of First Law where old-man-Brogan Shinefingers owns a tavern and tells his story. That fantasy alone gave me a pretty decent amount of enjoyment out both books, and while I enjoyed NotW a fair bit (4.25), but WMF unfortunately felt more like the middle 1/3 of one giant book, rather than the middle book in a “Trilogy.” That enjoyment did actually continue for the first 40-50% of WMF, but by the time the ending finally came, I had mostly checked out. And then the ending itself came, which felt like the end of any other random chapter in the book, and then.... that was it. And that will continue to be it for....forever, probably.

I knew that going in, of course, so when I decided to try this “trilogy,” I was hoping to find that special... something buried in here that “everyone” else seemed to find that made reading these first 2 books worth the stonewalling, and I tried man, I really did. Silence just wasn't quite enough for me.

But you couldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough... you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act. The hardest part. The part we call...The Prestige.

I guess just wanted to be.....

Fooled. 

Maybe I was. 

I really wanted to love this book. I heard some people say it's a 5/5, and others say it's a 0/5. Unfortunately, it landed smack dab in the middle for me. 

Ultimately this was a mediocre book that was hindered further by an atrocious narrator. I only pushed past like 15% because I was reading it with 2 friends.

At 225k words, this book was the same length as Best Served Cold, and had roughly the same number of POV characters, so I feel like I can compare them a little here:

There is no comparison. 

I didn't care about any of the characters, story elements were dropped, the plot was generic and stretched out to fill pages, and while the narrator's “narrating” voice was actually quite pleasant, her voices for the male characters, dragons, and even one female character were just horrific.

She even managed to mess up a line in the last 10% that COMPLETELY changed the meaning of the sentence, and after a double take, I pulled up the ebook to check who messed up.

All that said, I did manage to enjoy the middle 50-60% somehow, the world was cool I guess? But ultimately I'm probably going to forget all about this one, except for the Emperor who was apparently from Texas.

If you've read The Final Empire (AKA Mistborn) by Brandon Sanderson, you've read this book. Outside of the school trope, the story beats are LARGELY the same. I mean, the main character's name is Rin....... Decent book, but overall it felt exactly the same as the aforementioned title, so it lost a ton of points. 

I feel like I need to explain myself with this one. I'd like to emphasize the fact that my review reflects my enjoyment of this book, rather than the quality.

In short:

I love the films, I've seen them hundreds of times, and Tolkein's flowery and elegant prose was more of a detriment to me as a result. This felt like a MUCH slower paced version of the film, which made it really, REALLY tough to get through.

I read them back in High School and decided to try again.

This novella had all the makings of a run-of-the-mill Haunting story, except.... the “house” that's haunted is actually tram car that operates using the mechanics put in place by a Djinn, who came about when a guy in the 1870s opened up a rift between Cairo and a magical dimension, that led to a magical industrial revolution for Cairo, which then became a world super power as a result. And while all of this is happening, Cairo is voting on whether to legalize women's suffrage. 

So.....  

Classic story, 
Dope world building, 
Big recommend. 

Gasoline.

A condemnation of Racial Oppression, the Patriarchy, and the Religious State wrapped up tightly in 500 pages that I blew through quicker than any book I've read with my eyeballs in probably 10 years. And that's to say nothing of the world building, the characters, or the unique and awesome magic system!

I didn't cry at any point tho so no 5 stars I'm sorry.