So lately I really seem to be picking books with really unredeemable characters (see my reviews for the Tales of the Ketty Jay series), and I’m struggling a bit. I read this book in the gym–I’m a nerd and reading while cycling/on the elliptical is one of the only things that keeps me from getting bored at this point–and some points were really exciting, but most of the time I just felt kind of… meh about it. Mostly this is because I found I didn’t care […]
A quick sojourn in the world of The Wheel of Time
A few caveats before I begin: I read this novella in the collection Legends, edited by Robert Silverberg (thus the confusing author/title data provided above.) It’s also where I first read The Hedge Knight (George RR Martin). Even though it’s a novella, I’m counting it as a book–partly because I don’t really want to read most of the other entries in the collection. Maybe the Le Guin one someday, if I read more of the Earthsea novels, and likewise King’s if I read the Dark Tower novels, but I […]
Quests for chivalry and loyalty in Westeros
This is a review for the audiobook version of the first three ‘Dunk and Egg’ novellas by George R R Martin, set about a hundred years before Game of Thrones. They come together in one file on Audible, which is quite nice and easy. Each novella is about 3-4 hours long (much easier to digest than the 33+ hours of A Game of Thrones, for example). The novellas are difficult to find on their own, coming in edited volumes from a variety of sci-fi/fantasy authors (at […]
Girl has to fall in love with boy, and kill boy, or girl gets killed
The premise of this book, as summed up in the title, is the ultimate quandary: Pyrre has to kill seven people, including her one true love, in order to pass her final Trial to become a priestess of the death-god Ananshael, or else she must die. The problem is, she has to fall in love first. As a priestess of Ananshael, death comes easily to Pyrre and her fellow priest-assassins. She sees the beauty in it, and after all, everyone must die someday. She does not […]