Good Morning Friends! It has been a bit since I gave an update on my reading journey, so I figured I might as well close out the week with one. At this point, I’ve read fifteen books and am currently working on my sixteenth. As sad as this sounds, this is more books than I have ever read in any given year at any point in my life. Traditionally I am at max a five-books-a-year sort of person save for that one year where I read ten Dresden Files novels back to back. I love books and I even love bookstores more, but I’ve never really carved out a place for reading in my life. My wife on the other hand reads every moment she has available so it isn’t like books are an uncommon objective in our household. However in the past, if I had time to fill, I would do it with games, movies, television, anime, or comics well before I would sit down and read a block of prose.
Now Audiobooks have helped a lot in this venture because I can play something while listening intently to the radio play happening in my ears. However, I’m now working away on my fifth actual book of the year so something seems to have clicked in my brain. I’ve said before that I always considered myself a slow reader in the past, but I’ve also noticed that this seems to no longer be the case. I’ve only been working on my current book for two nights and only then in an hour or two before I fall asleep and I’m already a dozen chapters in. Granted I have largely pushed aside everything but gaming from my normal diet of media and dove full-on into this experiment. At some point, I will probably pause these proceedings and catch up on things like my growing queue of Netflix and Disney Plus shows. For now, I am going full steam ahead and seeing how far I can get.
When last I talked about my reading journey, I mentioned that it was pretty likely that I would be starting Hounded the first book in the Iron Druid Chronicles pretty soon. I had this recommended to me by my good friend Lyle as a somewhat Dresden Adjacent series of stories. When I read through the Heroic Hearts compilation of short stories, there was a short story called Fire Hazard centered around the perspective of Atticus’ Irish Wolfhound companion Oberon. This gave me the impression that this series was going to maybe be a bit too “Captain Planet” for my tastes, but thankfully after having finished the first novel this was very much not the case. I am guessing the perspective of a dog sort of cartoonized the tale and sanded down the rough and jangly bits to smooth it down into a largely technicolor experience.
All told I greatly enjoyed this first novel. I like this setting and its take on the Druid and in large part the Fae. The character of Atticus O’Sullivan was largely enjoyable as well. It rode the line between having a being with immense power and trivializing every encounter. There were actual dangers and they get bonus points for looping in Witches, Werewolves, and Vampires without making it a setting ABOUT Witches, Werewolves, or Vampires. I get the Dresden Files reference because it does feel really compatible with that body of work. If you had told me that these two individuals inhabited the same space I would have probably believed you… other than some slightly incompatible bits centered around specific spins on how magic works in each world. Then again that could even be chalked up to just the perspective of each family of casters. I’m absolutely going to dive further into this series at some point.
In fact, I almost did dive into the second Iron Druid book and probably would have were it not for the fact that my Library Hold on the second book in the Gentleman Bastards series came open. Red Seas Under Red Skies is the second outing of Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen and it picks up pretty much immediately following the events of the first book with a very broken Locke convalescing very poorly. I am not entirely certain who told me this, but I had it expressed to me that the first book in this series was excellent and that they largely went downhill after that. I heartily disagree because if anything I like this second book considerably better than I did the first. Sure you have the same pattern of “Locke Plans a Big Heist and Things Go Horribly Wrong Until they Don’t” but the details are unique and nonetheless still enjoyable to experience.
I’ve never aspired to be a thief or a criminal mastermind, but I absolutely get why this sort of character is so fond by the fanciers of skullduggery. I think more than anything I enjoyed the introduction of some interesting crews of pirates, and honestly, I am hoping some of those characters show back up in the third story. Republic of Thieves is the next book in the sequence and it was released in 2013, and Thorn of Emberlain has been announced for years… with constantly sliding release dates with the speculative date of January 2021 long past. I am trying to set my expectations of this being a series that might be something I very rarely get to visit given the seemingly slow release schedule.
Truth be told, Locke Lamora’s books are so dense that I could not handle reading more than one of them in a row. They involve having to keep a bunch of characters and details in your head while consuming them, in order to try and keep the plot that often jumps around between time periods straight. This led me to my current book The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi. This was recommended to me by my friend Ace, but even before then I knew of its existence and the title alone would get me interested. I love “monster movies” in part because I grew up with a UHF channel that would play marathons of them during the summer months. Mothra is the queen and we should all bow down before her. I am not sure what it is but I think the love of Kaiju is a specifically Gen X trait, as most of my friends of similar age brackets also have a thing for them.
So far I’m about a dozen chapters into this novel and I am enjoying it greatly. I would classify this as a very light read, not getting bogged down in too much cryptic detail. Granted I am only a short way into the book as a whole so that might change, but if it does it will have earned it by giving me a long on-ramp of relatively chill prose. As is often the case I don’t want to talk too much about the details because my goal with my book talk posts is to not really dive too far into the story beats or risk spoiling anything. Suffice it to say however this is a book where Kaiju are very real and a group of scientists of assorted disciplines is studying them. Rather than seeing Kaiju in the trappings of a disaster movie, this is more of a clinical and scholarly setting, which I am enjoying greatly. Think of the corporation in Cabin in the Woods that maintains all of the Lovecraftian horrors, but instead this friendly group studies Kaiju. If that premise at all interests you then I suggest you give this one a look.
I don’t usually plan too far ahead, but at this point, unless something really shifts around and changes I am likely to dive into book two of the Iron Druid chronicles once I finish with my Kaiju friends. The only thing that would really change this is if one of my longer Library Holds come open, but so far that looks unlikely. They both estimate that it will be months before I see any of my holds. I’m not sure if anyone out there really cares about my reading journey, but considering it is part of my world at the moment it ends up presented in blog form. I am enjoying myself so I guess that is all that really matters.
