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kulrathknight

The Misadventures of Erik A.Dolgos

Hi, I'm Erik. I read mostly Science Fiction and Fantasy, sometimes classics. I'll read anything really. Recommend me stuff and I'll love you forever. 

Currently reading

Heldenhammer
Graham McNeill
Bleak Seasons: Book One of the Glittering Stone (Chronicles of The Black Company)
Glen Cook
The Guns of August
Barbara W. Tuchman, Robert K. Massie
Zulu Rising
Ian Knight
Three Years' War: October 1899-June 1902
Christiaan Rudolf De Wet
The Brothers Karamazov (Penguin Classics)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, David McDuff
The Republic
Desmond Lee, Plato
The Stand
Stephen King
House of Chains (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #4)
Steven Erikson
The Carnivorous Carnival
Brett Helquist, Lemony Snicket, Michael Kupperman

Divergent

Divergent - Veronica Roth Blah blah blah cast system, blah blah generic characters, blah blah blah limited world building blah blah sub-par romance subplot which was admittedly expected because its YA, and perhaps the worst ending to a book I have ever experienced.

That being said its not all bad. Some interesting concepts are explored, but it they are very brief. I feel like there could have been a lot of things that if changed slightly, would have made for a more interesting book.

The book itself is written simply enough for me to breeze through its 500~ pages in a few hours, but not to simply that I felt my IQ drop as I progressed.

The book is okay, not good, not bad, just okay. I'll probably read the next two books because this one was so easy, and because some resolution would be fantastic.
SPOILER ALERT!

Leviathan Wakes (Expanse 1)

Leviathan Wakes - James S.A. Corey I really liked this book up to the last 30 odd pages. I thought the characters written well, and most had depth and acted consistently. But I felt Miller's argument to Holden at the end shouldn't have been enough to change his mind, it lacked substance, it felt to me like Miller basically said "do it because reasons". Maybe it was Millers lack of a plan for what happened AFTER he found Julie and convinced her is what left me feeling so unsatisfied with the whole exchange.

Nagash the Sorcerer (Nagash Trilogy)

Nagash the Sorcerer - Mike Lee I think the way Mike Lee wrote this book was the best way it could have been done. Having this book be entirely from the point of view of Nagash would not have as effective at making us feel the atrocities that he committed, because this book was just as much about the fall of Khemri as it was the rise of Nagash. I know some people bemoan the description of Khemri culture, but in order for the reader to truly realize the horror of what he did you have see all the decadence and wealth and watch it be trampled under Nagash's feet in his ruthless rise to power. You have to see the crowded streets become empty as lives become his currency.

And you have to see it from other peoples eyes, because Nagash didn't care about the hundreds of thousands of people he killed to get what he wanted. The chapters we get of him showed us how twisted his mind was, how little regard he had for life he had, and how little he noticed the ruin he was causing. To much of that would have been boring to read, and we would have been jaded to the suffering of the Khemri people, but seeing the ruin that Nagash caused through the eyes of people who cared about the loss of life, who were enraged by it, kept this book from being just another book about the rise of a sociopathic tyrant, and turned it into not only the rise of Nagash, but the fall of the beautiful and rich culture of Khemri.

Spoilers:

Of course the culture doesn't completely fall, the good guys win, if only barely, and the other books have more of the fall of Khemri, but it doesn't completely invalidate my point, I don't think so anyways.