Weekly Roundup

This week I’ve finished two books, started one more and put out two blog posts. Read on to find out more!

Quick Book Review: How to Defeat a Demon King in Ten Easy Steps

For thousands of years, there has been a cycle: a Demon King rises and conquers, and a Hero is reborn a hundred years later to defeat him. Each time, civilizations are ground to dust beneath the Demon King’s hordes, but humanity has remained secure in the belief that a Hero of legend will always save them. There’s just one slight problem. It’s only been 23 years since the Demon King’s latest rise, and this time, he’s already conquered more than half the world. If humanity simply waits for the Hero’s return, there may be no world left for him to save.

And so, Yui Shaw sets out with an ambitious plan. A 10-step plan.

She’ll find a way to obtain the Hero’s legendary sword. She’ll earn obscure classes, gain levels, and increase her skills. She’ll travel to the meticulously-crafted dungeons that seem designed for one specific Hero to complete. And, if she’s truly (un)fortunate, she might even find a fairy.

She might not be a Hero—but if she can fake it long enough, she might still be able to save the world.

Summary: A funny, nerdy LitRPG in a mostly self-aware world. Great for fans of classic JRPGs or Zelda games.

Quick Book Review: Defekt

Derek is LitenVärld’s most loyal employee. He lives and breathes the job, from the moment he wakes up in a converted shipping container at the edge of the parking lot to the second he clocks out of work 18 hours later. But after taking his first ever sick day, his manager calls that loyalty into question. An excellent employee like Derek, an employee made to work at LitenVärld, shouldn’t need time off.

To test his commitment to the job, Derek is assigned to a special inventory shift, hunting through the store to find defective products. Toy chests with pincers and eye stalks, ambulatory sleeper sofas, killer mutant toilets, that kind of thing. Helping him is the inventory team — four strangers who look and sound almost exactly like him. Are five Dereks better than one?

Summary: Defekt by Nino Cipri is a story about belonging, corporate identity and animate furniture. It’s fun, touching and tense, with a clever and quirky world.

Weekly Roundup

My reading has gone relatively well this week, despite my strange mood. I’ve finished one book and one novella, and started two more. I’ve only posted one review this week, but my first review for SPFBO has gone live on the Fantasy Inn website!

Book Review: Age of Assassins

TO CATCH AN ASSASSIN, USE AN ASSASSIN . . .

Girton Club-Foot, apprentice to the land’s best assassin, still has much to learn about the art of taking lives. But their latest mission tasks him and his master with a far more difficult challenge: to save a life. Someone, or many someones, is trying to kill the heir to the throne, and it is up to Girton and his master to uncover the traitor and prevent the prince’s murder.
In a kingdom on the brink of civil war and a castle thick with lies Girton finds friends he never expected, responsibilities he never wanted, and a conspiracy that could destroy an entire land.

Summary: Age of Assassins is a fantasy novel with compelling characters, a familiar yet imaginative setting and a thrilling plot that builds to a solid crescendo.

Weekly Roundup

It’s been a less than productive reading week this week. My kids have been keeping me up later for various reasons, so my mental capacity for books is waaay down. I did manage to read a book though, and posted two reviews on top of that. Read on to find out more!

Book Review: City of Saints and Madmen

City of elegance and squalor. Of religious fervor and wanton lusts. And everywhere, on the walls of courtyards and churches, an incandescent fungus of mysterious and ominous origin. In Ambergris, a would-be suitor discovers that a sunlit street can become a killing ground in the blink of an eye. An artist receives an invitation to a beheading–and finds himself enchanted. And a patient in a mental institution is convinced he’s made up a city called Ambergris, imagined its every last detail, and that he’s really from a place called Chicago.…

By turns sensuous and terrifying, filled with exotica and eroticism, this interwoven collection of stories, histories, and “eyewitness” reports invokes a universe within a puzzlebox where you can lose–and find–yourself again.

Summary: City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer is a collection that almost defies explanation. It is a metatextual explosion of content detailing sordid events within and concerning the city of Ambergris – dark and funny, brutal to its characters, deep and complex in its history, a puzzle of narratives and in-world documents that answer questions with either horrors or more questions. It’s the most inventive thing I’ve read all year, and follows through with some gripping tales.

Book Review: The First Sister

First Sister has no name and no voice. As a priestess of the Sisterhood, she travels the stars alongside the soldiers of Earth and Mars—the same ones who own the rights to her body and soul. When her former captain abandons her, First Sister’s hopes for freedom are dashed when she is forced to stay on her ship with no friends, no power, and a new captain—Saito Ren—whom she knows nothing about. She is commanded to spy on Captain Ren by the Sisterhood, but soon discovers that working for the war effort is so much harder to do when you’re falling in love.

Lito val Lucius climbed his way out of the slums to become an elite soldier of Venus, but was defeated in combat by none other than Saito Ren, resulting in the disappearance of his partner, Hiro. When Lito learns that Hiro is both alive and a traitor to the cause, he now has a shot at redemption: track down and kill his former partner. But when he discovers recordings that Hiro secretly made, Lito’s own allegiances are put to the test. Ultimately, he must decide between following orders and following his heart.

Summary: The First Sister by Linden A. Lewis is an entrancing space opera, that manages to combine heavy themes with cinematic action, with a setting that tows a line between hard sci-fi and something more fantastical. Something about the writing pulled me in and kept me hooked, even if some of the setting elements didn’t quite work for me.

Weekly Roundup

This week, I finished two books and started too more. I posted a monthly roundup, and a review of a hotly anticipated book. Read on to find out more!

Book Review: The Splinter King

Potential Spoilers Ahead: The Splinter King is the sequel to The Black Coast. As such, the blurb for this book and the following review will inevitably have some level of spoilers for the previous book. I’ve tried to keep those spoilers to a minimum, but you have been warned.

THE WORLD FRACTURES AS A DEAD GOD RISES . . .

Darel, dragon knight and the new leader of Black Keep, must travel to the palace of the God-King to beg for the lives of his people. But in the capital of Narida, Marin and his warrior husband will be drawn into a palace coup, and Princess Tila will resort to murder to keep her hold on power.

In the far reaches of the kingdom an heir in exile is hunted by assassins, rumours of a rival God-King abound, and daemonic forces from across the seas draw ever nearer…

Summary: The Splinter King by Mike Brooks is a fun sequel that develops excitingly on the plot threads set up in the first book. There are more dragons, more intrigue, and more of the hopeful attitude that helped me fall in love with the series.