Aaron
I was first introduced to Larry Correia through his Monster Hunter International series, which I love. A noir detective, even a magical one, didn't interest me. Fortunately, this isn't noir.
Hard Magic has great pacing, exciting action, and interesting characters. It also has a very cool magic system, well done alternate history, and blimps. And not your boring goodyear variety, cool blimps!
I'm excited to read the rest of the series.
Spellbound ups the stakes in a big way without going overboard. I think I like the Grimnoir Chronicles even more than Monster Hunter International. MHI is fun, but Grimnoir has more world building, which I love, and I feel like the cast of characters is more well rounded and developed. I'm looking forward to the last book in the series.
Short, but fun.
I love RPGs, so the concept was interesting. I wish that the there had been a little more to the plot and a lot more to the character development, but I'm excited to read the sequel.
The story was good and deserves four stars. The narrator had an odd rhythm that threw me off. It's really annoying that it's only an audio book.
The narrator of the audiobook was good, but didn't fit the young, brash protagonist, he also had an unfortunately strong love of the Shatner pause.
The story was overall interesting, but the first chapter was the best and the rest was almost entirely tell instead of show with a lot of summaries of things that happened. There was a whole heck of a lot of info dumps of world building, very little of it relevant. I like world building as much as the next person, but it has to be interesting for me to be, well, interested.
I read this because there is an interesting kid's RPG based on it and the book was free on Kindle.
The story is extremely short and comes to an end before it really starts. There are lots of interesting concepts that are introduced, but none of them are explored. With so many good YA novels available these days, I can't think of any reason to recommend this book.
The accent the narrator used for the main character almost made me stop listening. Otherwise, pretty good.
I don't know how much the TV series (which I love) colored my experience with the book, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was like listening to lost episodes of the show.
Listened as part of the Unfettered anthology.
Really short, not much to it. Maybe if I had read the series this would have been more interesting.
The humor and romance seems aimed at a young audience, but the tone of the story is jaded and pessimistic, and overall morose. Although, it does have a Happy Ending™.
A burly gun enthusiast writes an adventure novel about a burly hero that totes around big guns and kills even bigger monsters.
Too much fun to be a guilty pleasure.
Listened to the audiobook as part of the Unfettered anthology. An interesting story, I'll be looking at the series for sure.
Even though I'm not fond of villain stories, I really liked this book. That's mostly because the main character villains aren't particularly villainous. They participate in illegal activities, like theft, but still follow a moral code. I also liked that there were some pretty unusual super powers, but it never felt silly.
It's longer than an average novel, but the length feels right and the living is good.
I'm really looking forward to the next book in the series.
I loved the anime and I really wanted to love the books, but this volume finally broke me. And I'm going to start checking reviews for all the volumes before I read another light novel series.
The tone is grim overall. At best, it's frustrating or bittersweet. Despite some humor, and even liking the characters, I'd rather spend my time reading something else.
More over the top. Less interested in what happens next than I was after the first book. I'll still probably read the next one.
I just can't give this more than three stars, though something in me wants to. I had fun reading this book.
The author made a few logical leaps that I didn't follow, but that didn't throw me too much. The order and duration of events wasn't always clear and sometimes things suddenly took much longer or shorter times than they originally were said to take, e.g. things that had just been stated were a few minutes travel would be over an hour away just a paragraph later. A character takes off their helmet, then bumps it on the top of a door frame in the very next sentence. What most of the problems in this book boil down to is the lack of a really good editorial process.
A great take on Tolkien's world. I think this captures the feel of Middle-earth better than any system before it.
There are a few minor things I don't care for, like social introductions, but most of the rules are elegant and interesting.
It's a little difficult to adventure in the time period of the Lord of the Rings books, and that wasn't helped by the long delay in publishing adventures, but I still hope to get a full campaign in one day.