Bookstodon

The Hero of Ages

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Good Morning Folks! I stayed up fairly late last night to finish The Hero of Ages, the final book of the first Mistborn trilogy. This was the first series by Brandon Sanderson I had read, and I guess I can now say I am a fan. When I get into a series, it is often because I fall for the setting more than the characters, but in this novel, it was probably a combination of the two. I genuinely like the characters in this series, and they will be characters that I remember for eternity. I do find the original artwork a bit jarring because this is not at all how I pictured either character. I never would have pictured Vin as Battle Ready Shannon Doherty, and I always pictured Elend as Edgar Figaro from Final Fantasy IV. I guess that is always the challenge with books… your brain associates images with everything that rarely matches up to the later visualizations. Given that I consumed these in digital form, I was not quite so confronted by a book cover at every turn to cement a specific impression.

This has been a bit of a wild ride as far as years go because I went from maybe consuming two books in 2022 to now having finished my thirty-fifth. It feels like in many ways I am making up for lost time, because while I have always loved books and bookstores specifically… I never really forced a place in my life to read. I always had something else that was going to take priority and the only other time in my life when I really voraciously consumed books was when I got into the Dresden series several years back. It is bizarre how the simple act of wanting to get a current Library card created this chain reaction of getting access to the Libby App and then burning through a chain of books.

While I really want to read the sequel series that takes place after Mistborn, I think I am going to dive into something a little bit more chill for the moment. I just consumed two multi-book epics back to back, so I think I need to read a singleton for the moment. Given that I started with Scalzi’s lighter fare, I plan on giving Starter Villain a try tonight. I have no clue how long of a read this is going to be, or more so how quickly I will move through it. It sounds great though, and I have seen a lot of folks giving it praise on the Fediverse. After that, I think my plan is to probably pop into the next book in James Butcher’s Unorthodox Chronicles series as it released on the 10th. The first book was a bit of a mess and took me a while to get into it, but once I settled in I enjoyed it enough to keep reading the series.

Some other books that I am looking forward to are Rubicon by J.S. Dewes, because while I would rather have the next book in The Divide series… I enjoyed those books enough to try out something else by them. I have no clue when Alecto the Ninth is going to release, but whenever it does I will likely drop everything else and switch over to that as I am very sold on that universe and more specifically the characters of Gideon Nav and Harrowhark Nonagesimus. I thought book three of Linday Ellis’ Noemena series would be coming out soon, but while the book has cover art and everything… it appears that maybe it won’t be released until next summer. We have no clue at all what is going on with the Dresden Files series and while there is a tentative title for book 18, I’ve not seen anything regarding potential release dates.

There is always the Iron Druid Chronicles series that I could return to as well, and absolutely intend to at some point. I enjoyed Hounded quite a bit in a very Not-Quite-Dresden-Files sort of manner, but I’ve just never actually gotten around to reading the second book. I know in November I will make a beeline for Bookshops and Bonedust the next book in the Legends and Lattes series from Travis Baldree. There is also a bunch of stuff from N.K. Jemisin and Sangu Mandanna that I want to explore as well. After that, I have a whole slew of books that have been orbiting in the back of my brain and can essentially endlessly keep pulling forward as needed. This year really has been the year of the book for me. As always though you can follow my journey over on Bookwyrm.

Post Series Sadness

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Good Morning Folks! I’ve been back in my happy place each evening of curling up on the sofa with my laptop and usually a cat and listening to an audiobook while I played copious amounts of Path of Exile. There is just something about having two different parts of me engaged at the same time that brings me joy. Mechanically I am happily grinding away at whatever objective I am focusing on in the ARPG, and then mentally I am having a story told to me. It brings me back to happier days as a kid of doodling while listening to storytime. Yesterday however was a bit of a sad day because I started the morning thinking that I would go home that night and start the next book in the Old Man’s War series by John Scalzi after finishing up the previous one Sunday night. Then I realized… I had no more books in that series. For whatever reason I was thinking that another “space opera” series by that author was connected.

That bummer moment however should not blunt the joy I felt consuming this series. Looking back at my Bookwyrm account, I started the first book on August 26th and wrapped up the last on September 17th. So that was most of a month of chilling out with an ARPG and a book and enjoying life. I guess really if you think about it there is a primary trilogy, a book that retells the last book in that series from a different perspective, and then two different anthologies fleshing out the world from a wide number of different but connected perspectives. Through all six books, a cohesive tale is told, even though no single book keeps the same central character throughout the entire story. This is legitimately my favorite part of the series. It is telling a story of a world more than it is telling a story of a single person, even though the same cast of characters keeps popping up regardless of the scenario.

In many ways, it reminds me of another obsession of mine from when I was a bit younger. I stumbled onto Santiago in a battered paperback form at a used bookstore in college and I mostly picked it up because I liked the cover and the “A Myth of the Far Future” tagline. To the best of my knowledge that “major motion picture” never happened. In truth, the novel was something like the 11th book in the “Birthright” series where Resnick created this entire universe out of disconnected novels. Each one focuses on a specific legend of the far frontier, so you might be hearing about a character in one book… and then pick up the next in the series and it is from their perspective. The thing is… Scalzi is just a better writer and gives his characters far more depth and personality.

I didn’t particularly care about any of the characters from Santiago or any of the other dozen or so novels I read in that series, I cared about the world. With Old Man’s War, I feel like I have a personal relationship with each character that the story focuses on. Even when someone seems outwardly evil, you find out that maybe there is a bit more behind that story. There were several times in the story where an entire alien race was considered to be the villain… but we as the reader were given a viewpoint into one particular member of that race to help explain their actions. This elevates the storytelling past hero/villain iconography to something grounded in experience and emotion. My sadness when I realized I was out of books… comes from the fact that I wanted to know more about these rich characters.

Before this year I had never consumed anything by John Scalzi, I am taking a break from his work and diving into another author that I had never read anything from. I am not entirely certain why I chose Mistborn over any of the other series by Brandon Sanderson, but I did and started it last night. It took me a few chapters to switch gears from space opera to fantasy thieves but I think I am on board now. I know absolutely nothing about this series other than the name that kept popping up periodically in my timeline. So far it reminds me a little bit of Locke Lamora, but not enough to shape my opinion. There are already a few characters that I like, and a few others that I dislike but I feel like that is probably intentional. The mythology of the world seems rich, so I am probably going to enjoy it. That is very much a thing for me… I need thick worlds filled with cultures and symbology to keep me going.

Anyways… time for me to wrap this up and move on with my day. If you have never read the Old Man’s War series by John Scalzi it is most definitely something that I would recommend. I am sure in another month’s time when I have consumed all of the books available in Mistborn series I will give you my opinions of that as well.