John Gwynne Archives - Tales of the Aggronaut

The Hunger of the Gods – John Gwynne

I’ve technically written a bit about this book in the middle of another blog post, but I opted to go ahead and include it in this run-down since it never quite made its way to a Book Talk series post. Once again I had every intention of starting the next book in the Iron Druid Chronicles series when I last posted in the Book Talk thread, but then my hold on this book came open and I dove straight into the second part of this series. It is rare that the second book in the series is better than the first, but I consider that to be the case with Hunger of the Gods. I think maybe this is a side effect of so much of the first novel setting the stage for the central conflict and introducing all of the characters, and this novel just being wall-to-wall plot navigation. Once again if you played a Nord in Skyrim… and really really enjoyed it… then this might be a book series for you. The third book is supposed to be coming out in October… as is seemingly EVERY series I am waiting on a book from. I know without a doubt I will be picking up the series and continuing forward with it. Highly recommend it, but it is a bit of a dense read given how much specific language is associated with their world, which you may not be familiar with unless you have a Norse fetish.

Legends and Lattes – Travis Baldree

Then after finishing Hunger of the Gods, I finally got that “light read” that I felt I needed to recover from the density of that world. Legends and Lattes is maybe my favorite book that I have read this year so far. It is a story of an Orc Warrior that decides to hang up their sword and introduce the world to coffee… a gnomish invention that no one has really heard of up to that point. A delightful read about friendship turning into family and whether or not destiny and luck are really forces in the world or something we just imagined along the way. Again the next book in this series I believe is coming in October, and of the wealth of things that I will have to choose from that month… this series is going to take precedence over everything else. I would die to protect Thimble, and after reading this… you probably would too.

Broken Earth Trilogy – N.K. Jemisin

A few AggroChat’s ago we had a quick topic at the end of the show discussing some of the books and series we had been reading. I talked about the Bloodsworn series and Legends and Lattes and Thalen talked about the Broken Earth series that he had started. His description was enough to interest me, and that night after the show I dove into the series and did not surface until I had finished consuming all three volumes. This is the story of an apocalypse, lived out through a culture… that is used to having apocalypses happen on a fairly regular basis so much so that they have a term for them… The Fifth Season. There are certain aspects of the series that remind me of Dune, or more specifically the Bene Gesserit but if they were denied their basic humanity and treated as property. The novel deals with some really dark themes about humanity, and what happens when a society ostracises an entire group of people.

The Fifth Season is one of those books that I feel like maybe it was originally going to be a singleton, and about halfway through the first novel it was turned into a series. The totality of the series was phenomenal, but only really the first book stands on its own as a complete work. The second and third outings only really serve to fill in gaps from the first novel and move the wider global story arc forward. There is a trick that the first novel does of shifting between timelines, and it was maybe the single best use of that mechanic… but also a trick that only really works once. The second and third novels are considerably more straightforward in the way that the narrative unfolds but ultimately needs to be. This is an exceptionally dense read, but once you get five or six chapters your brain adapts to its patterns. This book deserves the time you devote to it, and will ultimately pay you back for that attention.

Redshirts – John Scalzi

After reading through three dense novels… I once again needed a bit of a break. I had been holding Redshirts by John Scalzi in my back pocket for such an occasion and dove in happily. By the title and branding… you know without a doubt this is going to be a bit of a parody of Star Trek. I was expecting something light-hearted along the lines of Galaxy Quest, Orville, or even The Lower Decks cartoon. I did not expect this to be one of the weirdest meta-narrative rides taking common Science Fiction tropes and taking them in some truly odd directions. Like I finished the novel section… and it was pretty great… but then I read the Codas and lord some stuff happened. I enjoyed the book immensely but also I am not entirely certain this is going to be for everyone.

The Power – Naomi Alderman

Some time ago one of my friends suggested this novel, and I added it to my Library hold list. It was described as a novel where Women suddenly develop superpowers, which leads to a bit of a gender-flipped Handmaid’s Tale. They also warned that the novel was rather graphic at times… and I was thankful for that the first time I encountered a rape scene. I have to be honest… I am not sure if I enjoyed this novel or not. That is not to say that I don’t believe that it was worth reading, but it also isn’t going to be something I probably actively suggest to anyone who is not already prepared for this. There is an Amazon Prime series that is actively releasing episodes currently, and I expect that it probably going to sanitize things a bit. There are a lot of messages that one can take from this novel, but I think the most important would be that Power Corrupts, and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely. Twisted abuse of power is not an inherently gendered thing, just that one gender has traditionally held the locus of power in our society.

No Predictions

I wrapped up The Power last night, and usually at this point I would make some prediction about what novel I am going to start next. So far this has been wrong each time I have done so, and as a result, I am just going to skip this practice. I figure by tonight I will have chosen something, and that will be entirely dependent upon my options at the time and how fleeting they might be. Right now I am leaning towards Old Man’s War, but who knows where I will be by the end of the day. I am still wishing I had sorted out my Library Card and easy access to digital lending years ago because I have greatly enjoyed this year in reading so far.

Eighteen Books read out of my Twenty Books Yearly Goal

Good Morning Friends! This year has been extremely unusual in that I have been consuming more books than I have likely ever consumed in a single year before. Previously I needed to do a disclaimer because the year I burned through ten Dresden Files books in rapid order might have completed. However, now that I have reached the point where I have finished eighteen books out of my original goal of twenty books for this year… I am absolutely certain that I’m treading undiscovered territory. The weird part about this is that I have always loved books, and will never turn down a chance at going to a used bookstore. However my entire life I have struggled with some general feelings of anxiety over how slow I actually read. Granted I’ve not proved this wrong time and time again this year, but I still feel like I do not read anywhere near as fast as my wife does. She is I think on book 38 of the year for reference.

Libby App Screenshot showing three library cards on my account

This rapid transformation has been due to a few different variables clicking into place. Firstly we “discovered” the Libby App, or in truth were painfully late to that party. This gives you easy access to all of the books and audiobooks available in your local library collection. In my State there are effectively three Library systems: The Tulsa City-County Library, the Metropolitan Library System covering the Oklahoma City area, and the OK Virtual Library which allows smaller rural libraries that can’t afford their own access to sign on to a collective system. Recently we got the third of these accounts and now in theory have access to the collections of all of the libraries in our state. This has been deeply beneficial because not all of these accounts are created equal and some systems have had books that others did not. Even more common is that the hold lines for a given book may be shorter out of one of the collections than they are out of our “home” TCCL collection. Granted we are now also paying $50 a year for our OK Virtual Library account and $75 per year for the Metro Library account… but we figure the money goes to supporting the public library system in general which is another win.

The Kaiju Preservation Society – John Scalzi

When last I updated you on my book journey, I was about a third of the way through The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi. I have to say this is probably the best book I have read all year to this point, and it is very unlikely that another is going to dethrone it. It feels like the love of Kaiju seems to be one of the common GenX traits, and I grew up watching the original Toho Godzilla films broadcast each summer during “monster movie” weeks from my local “pre-Fox” UHF channel. Now I just desperately want the KPS to exist and for me to somehow end up as an IT Guy for it. This was precisely the sort of read that I needed following Red Seas Under Red Skies. The Locke Lamora novels are so dense with plot elements and I have never really understood the concept of a “light read” until this point, but I was desperately in need of it. I guess I should warn you that this is very much also a novel about the pandemic and how it changed society set against the pastiche of giant Monsters. There are just so damned many things I loved about this read, and I realistically burned through it in less than a week at my oftentimes sluggish before-sleep reading pace.

I only really know about this book series in the first place, because I have always loved Lindsay Ellis and her long-form video essays. While other YouTubers were securing book deals to talk about themselves… she pitched a handful of science fiction novels. Axiom’s End was excellent and I have described it many times as X-Files meets WikiLeaks meets E.T. but with a cast of adult characters. It is so rooted in the early 2000s internet nonsense that it was this weird delightful trip down memory lane, as well as setting up some of the more interesting extra-terrestrial interactions I had seen in a while. The problem with the first novel however is that Linsay is a researcher at heart, and the novel was so filled with random Apocrypha of the early 2000s, and random bits of information that take a while to click into place tightly.

The sequel is no different, including random screenshots at the head of some of the chapters of AOL chatroom-like interfaces with discussions related to the events of the novel. Thankfully coming off of the “light read” of KPS, I was ready for more nonsense detail and this book delivered. I’ve described this story as Enemy Mine meets Pretty In Pink meets the Iran-Contra scandal. Essentially we get to know so much more about the Amygdalan species, their cultures, and how widely different their personalities can be. There is a somewhat creepy relationship that bothered me a bit in this book featuring some sorta fucked up power dynamics, but if you can look past that the book is centered around a very imperfect human being trying to make the best of a sort of fucked up situation that they have been thrust into. I will absolutely read the third book which is set to come out later this year.

I have no clue who suggested this book to me, but it is essentially my first playthrough of Skyrim or at least feels a lot like that. In that very first playthrough, I was a Nord warrior that aligned himself with The Companions of Whiterun, and the whole dynamic of that group, feels deeply similar to the Bloodsworn from this novel. They are a band of warriors known throughout the land by their “Battle Fame” and one of the core characters is a former slave a “thrall” that just happened to find their way into the group. The novel shifts back and forth between a few perspective characters that weave in and out of the narrative and give us a view into different points in the plot.

I will say at the first… this novel maybe felt a little “Too Norse” for my tastes. I mean I have always loved all things Norse… but this was a lot and forces you to get used to a number of very specific terms for things. However about halfway through the novel my brain got used to it all and was able to spend less time trying to imbibe words, and more time focused on the story as it evolved. I am absolutely going to continue forward in this series, but I would throw it in the “heavy read” column and it was maybe a mistake rolling straight to this after Truth of the Divine. In truth, it was chosen in part because my hold came open and it was available. I think I am going to need some lighter fare for the next book.

So originally prior to divine into Truth of the Divine, I was originally planning on rolling into the second book of the Iron Druid Chronicles series. I think I am probably going to pick back up that plan because the first novel in that series was fairly light. I could use a bit of formulaic fiction for the moment to sink into like a warm blanket. Unless something changes and one of my holds comes open, I am likely going to start on this one tonight. It has been interesting how quickly this whole “always reading a book” thing has become a habit. I’m kind of mad at myself for not doing this sooner, but really… it is the easy access to books that have made the key difference. Then there is also that subtle pressure of knowing that once I start something… I have to finish it because I have a very limited amount of time that I can borrow the book. In past years I had a night table full of partially read novels, and being forced with a timetable helps me actually keep moving forward.

The only negative of this whole thing… is that I have all but stopped watching television or any of the big series. I have yet to start the new season of The Mandalorian for example, and I still need to sit down and finish The Bad Batch. It is like I have shifted all of my energies that used to rapidly consume series… to rabidly consuming books.