A Green Mushroom

I liked the Cosmere Collection a lot, but it's not going to be for most people.  The Cosmere is the greater interconnected universe that Brandon Sanderson has slowly been building in the background of a lot of his novels and novellas.  He's mentioned that they're all connected and only recently have some of the connections been mentioned in the text of his work. This is a short story collection all about that.  It's a series of short stories and novellas from his various worlds in the Cosmere. Some of them are brand new for this collection and some of them I've read before as stand-alones.  But, they're all good. If you've read the majority of Sanderson's work then you owe it to yourself to pick up this Cosmere Collection.  If you haven't read any of his work or only a few books then definitely skip this one for the moment and keep it in mind for later. But for the Sanderson fans out there, this one is great!

I don't have a ton to say about the novelization of Rogue One, but I did read it. Like most Star Wars movie novelizations it's essentially the movie in book form.  While books adapted to movies often work well it typically isn't as interesting the other way around.  But, I always read the Star Wars ones anyway just to get the bonus content and context to the universe. The Rogue One novelization has a few scenes that either were never in the movie or were cut from it.  It also fleshes out a lot of characters' internal thinking about events, which is something you almost never get in a movie. My favorite part is probably the admin documents used to break up the story randomly.  They give looks inside the building of the Death Star and inside the Rebellion.  It's just tiny vignettes but they're great! I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who isn't Star Wars obsessed in the same way I am.  But, I'm glad to have read it.  I always like lea...

Red Rising is a book I've owned for awhile but didn't pick up until very recently.  I probably bought it on sale because I've consistently seen it come up on lists of really good sci-fi.  Now I see why. The world of Red Rising is in a caste driven future where humanity has expanded to all around our Solar System.  The main character is a "Red", basically the lowest caste in the whole class system.  He's a helldiver on Mars that mines for minerals required to terraform planets.  His caste is being oppressed by the leader caste, the Golds.  You can see where this is going, right? I thought I could... and the first quarter of the book was predictable yet interesting.  But after that things get really shaken up.  So, if I've sold you on my slight info and two thumbs up alone... go buy it now and stop reading.  If not, I'm going to drop some spoilers to get you more interested. It turns out that Mars is already terraformed and so are mos...

Guards! Guards! was my very first Terry Pratchet novel.  He has multiple series that all gently interweave in the same setting and I was told this was a really good place to start. And I really liked the beginning of the book.  It was fun to figure out the setting and it was actually really humorous which isn't something I normally go for it books.  But in the first third of this novel it worked for me.  I also loved the ending and the way all the stories wrapped up. My problem was with the middle of the book.  I thought the whole novel could have been reduced in length by a third if a lot of the wasted time in the middle was cut out.  It's just a pacing thing. Now I'm thinking about possibly reading more of Prachet's stuff.  I just wonder if it's better paced than this book.  I can tell there are a lot of things in his writing that I like, so I should probably give him at least another novel to try to hook me.  I'm just not sure wh...

The Alcatraz series is the only writing of Brandon Sanderson's that I hadn't checked out.  I finally remedied that. Alcatraz vs the Evil Librarians is about a kid named Alcatraz who suddenly finds out he has magic.  It's very Young Adult.  I like Young Adult books when they're closer to the higher part of the Young Adult age range.  Alcatraz is near the lower end. I felt like this was a book that my kids are almost ready for, not one meant for me.  Although I bet I would have loved it if I was 11-13. I wouldn't recommend this one for adults but if you have kids just hitting the Young Adult reading age this one would be a great book to pick up.

I've had a bunch of time to listen to audiobooks lately between doing all the sidequests in FFXV and trying to get back into MMOs.  So much of that time doesn't require listening to in-game audio. I decided to finally tackle a bunch of audiobooks that had been sitting in my backlog for awhile.  These are books I picked up in sales or as part of deals so they were super cheap.  They aren't ones I spent a lot of money on so I didn't have to feel bad if they didn't click with me and I put them down without finishing them. I rapidly removed them from my backlog as I started bouncing off of them.  For a lot of them it was obvious why they ended up on super sale, they just weren't great.  But for a few others they were just books that didn't click with me.  They had too generic of a setting, started off with characters I didn't like, or just didn't get to the premise fast enough. It felt good to check off a bunch of audiobooks from my list and I did ...

The Blood Mirror is the latest (and second to last) book in the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks.  I've loved this series as a whole and I'm excited to get to the conclusion of that. With that being said, this book mostly feels like set up.  Where the first three books definitely lead into one another they are still each a solid narrative that has a satisfying ending.  They just have a tease of what's to come next.  The Blood Mirror feels like half a book that just ends.  It's a good half of a book but it doesn't have the typical arc I was expecting. I kind of wish that I had waited for the last book to come out and then read these last two together.  It seems like that's how they are intended to be.  They're definitely one story split between two books where the earlier ones felt like complete stories told in a series. I did like the book though.  It made me very excited for the next book and to read the conclusion of the series, when...

The latest Star Wars novel, Ahsoka, came out in mid-October and I finished it in two days.  I always love picking up the newest Star Wars book and it's been really fun keeping up with all of the new canon since Disney pushed the giant reset button on the universe. Ahsoka was an ok book.  It didn't blow me away with awesomeness but it wasn't bad either.  It will definitely be for some people and not for others. To me, it felt like a long story arc from one of the TV shows, Clone Wars or Rebels, that has been moved over into novel format.  It bridges the gap between those two shows and reveals what happens to Ahsoka during that time period.  For that, I love it, just because I always want to expand my Star Wars lore. But, I feel like it would have been better in show format.  I could easier see this as a bonus story arc in either of the shows.  It's probably a consequence of the main character being a unique character to Clone Wars and Reb...

I've read a lot of books this year, just like I always do, but none of them were truly fantastic.  Most fell into the mediocre to ok range.  A few were good and a few were total duds. That changed when I read Ink and Bone.  It's easily my favorite book that I've read this year so far.  I knew almost nothing about it going in except that I had liked some of the author's work before and by the end of the book I wanted to know what happened next!  Rachel Caine does a great job kicking off a new series with Ink and Bone. Ink and Bone is set in a world where the library of Alexandria never burned.  It continued to grow in both scope and power until it controlled all knowledge in the world.  All technological advancement had to come from the library and so this alternate timeline finds a much different world than the one we live in. The printing press has been suppressed and instead people have to check out books into "blanks" that function similar...

It kinda released under the radar but three new Harry Potter novella came out digitally about a month ago.  I read them all and enjoyed them a lot. They weren't full fledged stories but instead little vignettes about various events and people in the world of Harry Potter.  It helped flesh out a bunch of the characters that are key to the series.  I especially liked the sections about different subjects of magic and how they work in the world.  Things like getting all the details about what it takes to become and Animagus or finding out more about potion making were really cool. I've read some of the other short tie-in books before but these were much better.  I can easily recommend them to any fan of the series.

After failing to get into the Drizzt series I decided to pick up an old series I hadn't read in awhile.  Since I had recently re-read Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone I thought I would just dig back into the series. Between reading in my kindle app and listening via audible I've already flown through Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban.  Neither is quite as good as I remember from when I read them as a kid, but both hold up pretty well. If memory serves, then the series really picks up with Goblet of Fire and stays interesting all the way through the end.  I'll soon find out since the next book I have queued up is that one! It's been really interesting revisiting Harry Potter as an adult.  I first read these books as a teenager and enjoyed them a lot.  As an adult I can find more plot holes in them and pick them apart more critically but I'm still able to have fun with them and enjoy them for what they are.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a decent story, but it's not great. I'm wondering how much of my feelings toward this are because it's a play and only the script was released to the public.  I'm curious about how I would feel walking out of the play instead of finishing up reading the script. But, the script is the only thing available to me at the moment so that's how I took this story in.  For me, it relies too heavily on the "cool things" from all the past Harry Potter books and not enough on it's own original creations.  They have a whole magical world to explore and instead they revert to the things we already know. It's like being constantly nudged and winked at while saying "Remember this thing?  Hey! How about this thing?  Remember how much you liked this?" I'm hoping the writer just needed to get this out of their system to tie the original generation together with this new generation of characters.  Maybe th...

I finished up the second Drizzt book and already it's starting to feel like so many other generic fantasy stories that I've read. I thought that the Drizzt books might be a good place to sink my teeth into the greater world of Dungeons and Dragons lore but I'm starting to realize that these books would appeal to a fourteen year old me much more than they appeal to me now.  They don't seem like they're doing anything new or interesting. Being a completionist I will probably finish out this first trilogy of Drizzt books before setting them down.  I'm already two thirds of the way there so why not? This book, Exile, in particular finds Drizzt after he has rejected his heritage as an evil Dark Elf (Drow) and has gone a little bit feral in the underdark on his own.  He ends up making his first real friends and then spends most of the novel running away from the part of the Drow that are hunting him.  It's a direct continuation of the first book and ties...

I'm keeping up to date with all the new Star Wars novels and Aftermath: Life Debt is the latest. I think this book is better than the first Aftermath novel but it's still not great.  I just haven't been able to buy into any of the author's unique characters for this series.  Luckily, this book pulls in Han, Chewie, Leia, Wedge, and some others.  That helps it so much.  They're interesting and established characters where all the new unique characters feel like bland stereotypes. But the one thing this book does brilliantly are the interludes.  There are a bunch of them throughout the book and they give quick little vignettes about what's happening around the galaxy.  I found myself excited for each new one coming up. After finishing the book I think I can see where this series is going.  I'm fairly sure it's leading to the Battle of Jakku which is covered in Lost Stars.  It's essentially the last stand of the Empire before the galaxy fal...

I've been seeing a bunch of advertising for the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movie lately and I realized I had never read the book, so I thought I would fix that. It's a spin off book from the Harry Potter series and it's really short.  I read it in one sitting but I'm also sure adults aren't really the target audience.  But, it was interesting anyway.  The introduction and writing about the magical beasts in the world of Harry Potter was the most fascinating part.  The center part of the book that was a listing of the beasts and descriptions of them was less so, but still had some worldbuilding for Harry Potter. It actually inspired me to go back and pick up the first Harry Potter book.  I haven't read through the series since they originally came out so I thought it might be time to work through it again.  The first book is definitely rougher around the edges and more aimed at kids than I remembered.  But it should get better and a...

I've never read a Dungeons & Dragons novel before in my life but after watching a bunch of the D&D episodes of Acquisitions Incorporated they had a guest appearance of Drizzt and they all freaked out.  Since they're all people who's opinions I tend to like I thought I should check out the source material. That brought me to the first Drizzt book, and there are many.  This one is called Homeland and it's set in the Underdark in the city where Dark Elves live that starts with the letter M but I'll never be able to spell it from memory. It was a good fantasy book, but not a great one.  Nothing crazy or unpredictable happened but it also wasn't so formulaic that I was bored the whole time.  It really was a middle of the road fantasy novel. But, it got me interested enough in the character of Drizzt that I'll pick up the next book.  I just hope that he gets out of the Underdark setting and gets to go explore more of the world.  I would love to ...

I really liked Bloodline.  If you follow me you know that I read almost every Star Wars book that hits the market.  This one is right up there with the best ones I've read. And it didn't really surprise me that it was.   Bloodline is by Claudia Gray, the same author who wrote Lost Stars which is my favorite Star Wars book to date. Bloodline follows Leia sometime about half way between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens.  It fills in so much information about the politics of the New Republic, hints at the formation and structure of the first order, and let's us see a key point in Leia's political career.  It's a fantastic book to start bridging the gap between Episode VI and Episode VII. While I'd love to learn more about what Luke and Ben are doing during this time period I never felt like this book had to go there.  There are enough interesting events going on with Leia that I was captivated throughout. If you're a Star Wars fan I recomm...

This isn't the type of book I normally read or listen to.  I ended up mostly listening to this in audible format and I generally liked it. This is a fairy story.  It's about a girl who goes to fairy land.  I guess I haven't really read a fairytale or fairy story since I was a kid. It's a little bit all over the place with the random stuff that happens but at the same time it's full of interesting ideas and sets an interesting scene.  It probably helps that the author is also the narrator since she can read the book with the inflection she intended when writing it. It's kind of a weird one but it's good.  I liked my time with The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland.

Empires of EVE: A History of the Great Wars of EVE Online is the overly long title for the first EVE Online history book.  It's really cool! EVE has consistently been a game that I love to read about but can never actually manage to get into the gameplay of.  I've played a month or two here and there and it just never seems to grab me.  But, it's super fun to read about! In this book the author covers the major nullspace history and faction wars between the beta of EVE and around 2009.  He hints that there may be more books down the line but this one covers the launch of the game all the way through the first Great War. It's amazing how much thinking, planning, tactics, and spying go on in this game.  It's especially cool to see how each group adapts to changes and upgrades in the game as time goes on. If you're one of those people, like me, who love to read about EVE then definitely consider taking a look at Empires of EVE: A History of the Gre...

This is not my normal kind of book.  It's about Japanese ghosts and how they fit into Japanese culture.  I don't typically stray from fiction when it comes to reading for fun, but this one was cool! I found it because it's by the author that does Japanese cultural essays in Wayward, which is my favorite part about that comic.  It's actually the main reason that I still pick it up whenever a new issue releases. Yurei: The Japanese Ghost is all about Japanese ghosts and their evolution over the years.  It's a fascinating read and gave me a lot of cultural insight that I knew nothing about. Overall it's an interesting read, although it had some culture touch points that were hard for me to grasp as a Westerner.  But I got a lot of good information out of this book.  I would say if you're interested in either Japanese culture or ghosts in general you'll find something worthwhile in reading this.