I didn’t go in to this book expecting to be disappointed (quite the opposite, in fact). It just worked out that way. Firstly, The Dragon’s Path is the first in a five book epic fantasy series. It’s a multiple POV novel, in the style of GRRM, although with only four POV characters instead of who knows how many at this point. The four characters are Dawson Kalliam (a noble who gets embroiled in political intrigue of the court), Cithrin Belsarcour (a young orphan raised as a ward […]
A Dance with Dullness
Wow. And I thought A Clash of Kings was rough going. This… was a slog. (Warning: there will be spoilers for books 1-4, or roughly seasons 1-4 of the show, but none for this particular book.) I could write, here, a plot summary, itself a thousand pages long, of how we ended up here and some of the precise things that happened in A Dance with Dragons, but when I really sit back to think, “What happened?” in this book, I am frankly not sure. […]
Welcome to the next installment of WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST READ. Pull up a chair, and have a seat.
So before we get to the explication of weirdness, a couple of things of note that might lend context to this review: 1. With the exception of 2013, I’ve read one of these books a year. I can’t handle more than one in a 365 day period. I think I skipped last year because I ran out of time and also I didn’t care. 2. I spent all of last weekend finally watching season one of Legend of the Seeker, the TV show made by Rob […]
Words are wind.
Well, here we are. By “here,” I mean the part of the books where the book readers all say GRRM’s editor settled in for a nice, long nap and hasn’t since reappeared. (Except she apparently does exist, and is awake, and is somehow okay with the idea of an eighth book?) Spoilers for the prior three books obviously follow. Given the grumbling over this book and its successor, I liked A Feast for Crows more than I expected to. Yes, certain words and phrases are repeated […]
Now I can be a Smug Book Reader too.
And I’ve finally caught up to Season 3 of HBO’s series and, according to the showrunners, informed most of what’s going to happen in Season 4. Who gleefully anticipated the Purple Wedding, y’all? THIS GAL! There are possibly spoilers in the rest of the review, though I’ve tried not to refer to anything too specific. Without a doubt, A Storm of Swords was my favorite so far of the ASOIAF series. Where, in the past, I frequently felt torn away from my favorite characters to […]
#9 Kushiel’s Dart: A new favourite for the bookshelf…
Phedre was abandoned by her family to the Night Court, where the religion-sanctioned courtesans live and train to fulfill the precincts of their pleasure-promoting god. Yet she is destined to tread a more unusual path: a scarlet mote in her dark eyes marks her as an anguisette, one who derives pleasure from pain. When she is adopted by Anafiel Delaunay, a prominent member of the royal court who realizes what she is, she is trained not merely for pleasure, but also as a scholar… and a spy. […]