Working my way through Red Sister by Mark Lawrence. My first try of him and I gotta say I'll be checking out the rest of his work. His rep made him sound too uber-grimdark for me, but that was wrong. It's dark, sure, but hardly breaking the Abercrombie scale. And it's just so, so well written.
Slow progress with it, though. In the middle of a house move and looking after my extremely pregnant gf + juggling work around her and the other kids has pushed reading time right down the priority list, sadly.
I picked up Red Sister when it came out because I enjoy the magic school trope and loved it! I’m not into grimdark so I’m glad I didn’t know anything about Lawrence at the time because I might not have read it. I enjoyed the whole series but I think Red Sister is the best.
I'm reading The Final Strife. It's a story about resistance in a world of a strict caste system, but it has a bunch of surprising plot twists & surprises. I'm enjoying it quite a bit!
I don't think you're hurting anything by rating accurately. I can understand wanting to boost (or maintain the score of) a book that has very few ratings, but once you hit a certain threshold, a single rating won't affect much. Ultimately, a 4-star rating can't drop the average below 4.0, so unless there's a subsequent slew of less-than-4-star reviews, it should still qualify for (what I imagine is) many people's criteria.
Personally, I skip reading 5-star reviews in favor of the 3- (and sometimes 4-) star ones, since they tend to be better about laying out a book's pros and cons.
If you could use fractional ratings (like 3.5), it’d be far less tempting to use 5 stars for excellent works and reserve that rating for masterpieces. Shame that we usually can’t do that.
The universe keeps finding ways to remind me to watch this show… It looks like it does the books justice which is all I could ask for, really, so I’ll get to it eventually. It’s kinda weird how little people talk about it considering it’s an HBO show, though.
In the middle of The Thief Who Pulled On Trouble’s Braids by Michael McClung. It’s okay. Not really wowing me, but inoffensive enough. I think hearing it was a SPFBO winner built it up for me much more than it should have been.
I tried reading They Mostly Come Out at Night by Benedict Patrick and I just wasn’t feeling it, something in the tone of the MC put me off. Similar problem with the protagonists in both these books, actually. It feels like snark is used as a bandaid to cover for a lack of personality.
I'm just done reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin, and The Fate of the Tearling immediately before. Starting with the latter, I liked the rest of the series, but disliked the direction it went in this last book; however, it did keep me invested right until the very last word (in the hope that things might take a different turn, admittedly). As for the former, I don't think I have much of an opinion. It just didn't deliver on what I was looking for.
What I'm looking for, incidentally, is quite a specific niche of fantasy stories centered on monarchies with a romantic-in-the-classical-sense portrayal. It's a high I got off The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold, and the original Valdemar series by Mercedes Lackey, and I've been chasing it ever since.
I just finished Sanderson’s Secret Project 3 (I know some people consider the title a spoiler).
Let me start by saying when I was about 20 chapters in, a little under half way, I was considering giving up and moving on. The writing was good, loved the world building and the mystery, hated one of the main characters. They were grating, annoying, and treated the other character in what I thought was a completely unbelievable and obnoxious way.
Now that I’ve finished it, it might be one of the best cosmere novels. Certainly one of the best non-series novels. The ending was perfect, the characters grew on me and became amazing. Loved it.
I wasn't considering DNFing by any means, I'm too big of a Cosmere fan to do that, but I have to admit, I also did not like the beginning. I was very bored by the exposition, and not compelled by the premise. But absolutely agreed with you that in the end, it was quite possibly my favorite Cosmere. Tress was holding that honor, and I think SP3 may have unseated Tress. My expectations for SP4 are unbelievably high now.
I recently finished The Serpent by Claire North, first novella in the Gameshouse trilogy. I really like stories following competitors in weird, unrealistic games as they try to out-mindgame their opponents (and the game itself), so this was right up my alley. Overall, I found it satisfying, and the next one is definitely on my TBR shortlist.
Caveats: unusual narrator style, fantasy elements are peripheral
Try if you like: political maneuvering, historical fiction, shadowy organizations
Currently, I'm 3 chapters into Heavy Time by C.J. Cherryh. First time reading the author, but I've heard good things. Not sure about it so far, though--the first chapter was great and reminded me a bit of The Expanse, but chapters 2 and 3 were super repetitive. Does anyone know if it picks up?
I was so so tired by the end of this series. I know exactly what chapter you mean and it's like it existed purely to destroy the last shred of my patience. Wish I'd stopped after the first two books with the short stories which I loved.
I absolutely would recommend the series as a whole. I would say read one of the first (chronologically speaking) books and see how you feel about it.
There is the question of reading order because there are three books which were printed after the Ciri ark series, and they happen prior to that ark. I had read recommendations to read them chronologically rather than in the order they were released, and I'm mostly very glad I did so. The only negative part of having done so is that I think the last book in the Ciri ark (which is the one I've complained about here) is the weakest of them all.
Get ready to look up medieval weaponry terminology if you do pick it up, however. Or just accept that you don't know what kind of weapon is being discussed. Also ready to read the word 'pirouette' endlessly. But it's a fun series, quick and light read, and I enjoy the bits of Polish/Slavic culture that shine through.
I've still got the 2nd Witness book to go and at first I wasn't sure I'd keep going, but something about that world, the pacing, the tone, atmosphere, etc. Really stays with me, growing in fondness the further I am from having read it. I didn't even know if I really enjoyed Goblin Emperor at first, now I think it's one of my favourite modern reads. Never really had a relationship like that before with a series. It's nice, kinda cozy.
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