Shaman’s Crossing — Robin Hobb

31 May 202110 July 2024 By 5t4n5

Shaman's Crossing -- Robin Hobb

How To Rule An Empire and Get Away With It — K. J. Parker

13 May 20217 July 2024 By 5t4n5

How To Rule An Empire and Get Away With It -- K. J. Parker The follow-up to Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City: which is a really good book. If you haven’t read that already then you really should before embarking upon this quest as this follows immediately on from that story.

And, seriously, once you’ve read and totally enjoyed Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City you’ll be very pleased to know that this is just as good as that was. K.J. is as brilliantly absurd in his story telling in this as the previous book.

Yes, the siege is still going on and nothing much has changed but, instead of our story being told by a disgruntled military engineer, we’re now treated to a story told by a disgruntled playwright who does some acting on the side — who is obviously much better at telling stories and also pretending to be people who he isn’t: now what could be better than that, eh?

So if you haven’t tried K.J.’s writing yet, these two books are a great place to begin. You’d have to be a proper grump not to enjoy them.

K. J. Parker’s Page Tom Holt’s Page

#fantasy #kjparker

Night Shift Dragons — Rachel Aaron

10 May 202125 April 2024 By 5t4n5

Night Shift Dragons -- Rachel Aaron What a thoroughly good ending to a thoroughly good trilogy. It’s been well paced enjoyment all the way through, written/edited really well, great characters and a really great location.

Rachel does hint at the end of the book that she’ll be bringing us more stories from the DFZ at sometime, and i for one can’t wait. This trilogy certainly leaves a need for us to head back there at some point just to find out how Opal and Nik got on in their happily ever after.

And while i’m waiting for more DFZ books, i’ve got lots of other books by Rachel that i haven’t read yet, so i’m looking forward to clearing them out of my to-read-pile fairly soon.

Keep well, folks.

Rachel’s Page

#fantasy #rachelaaron

Minimum Wage Magic — Rachel Aaron

10 May 202125 April 2024 By 5t4n5

Minimum Wage Magic -- Rachel Aaron The first book in the follow up trilogy to Heartstrikers. It does say at the beginning of this book that you don’t need to have read Heartstrikers to enjoy this trilogy, but there’s so much in this book that is predicated on what happened in Heartstrikers and i really think you’d be missing out on a whole lot of background and enjoyment if you didn’t read Heartstrikers first.

Plus the fact, Heartstrikers, although tedious in places, is a really good yarn and just worth reading for it’s own sake.

So, anyway, this trilogy begins a few years after the events of Heartstrikers and the DFZ is now relatively calmed down after all those shenanigans. Part of the being relatively calm is that the spirit of the DFZ has become rather strict on her tenants and anyone a month late in their rent gets their place cleaned out by “cleaners” and taken back by the DFZ to rent to someone else.

Basically, there are auctions twice a day for places to clean, and the cleaners go and bid for them. Whatever is in a place then becomes the property of the cleaner who wins the auction for it. The cleaner also has one month to get the place to the standards the DFZ sets to rent it out again. If it’s not fit for re-rental in that month the cleaner has to pay that month’s rent.

A bit like those people who buy storage units, but with magic traps and all kinds of other weird stuff lurking around.

This book is about one of those cleaners. A cleaner who owes a lot of money and who keeps winning auctions on places that fail to turn a profit.

But maybe, this one day, her luck is about to change and she can pay off her debts and be free. Or maybe not, you’ll just have to read and see.

It’s really good. And all those tedious bits i kept moaning about in the Heartstrikers books, the ones that kept slowing the pace down, well they aren’t in this book. And those tedious bits were my only complaint about Rachel’s writing before. So yeah, super good stuff and i dived straight into book 2, Part Time Gods.