What did you just read?

The Norman Invasion by Marc Morris - I read another book by Marc Morris called A Great and Terrible King which was very good, and so I picked this one up. Definitely a great 'story.' It is filled with great 'characters,' political backstabbing, battles, Vikings and extensive castle building. Marc Morris is an amazing writer of history, and the story of William the Conqueror is a compelling one, but I liked A Great and Terrible King more. I believe the main reason for this is because there is just more historical evidence with which Morris could flush out the 'story.'

Sharpe's Waterloo by Bernard Cornwell - I read this book last summer, when I was in Belgium to see the battlefield of Waterloo, but I think I appreciated it more this second time around. It is a super straightforward adventure novel with lots of sword-fighting and shooting, revenge, and fragile women. Just as Napoleon intended.

Void said:

God Touched (Demon Accords #1) by John Conroe - I'd give it a 3/5 I guess, because I actually sort of enjoyed it compared to the other ones. What books like this really do, though, is piss me off that people like Nebuchadnezzar /Richard Raley write books (The King Henry Tapes) that are vastly vastly better than this shit, but he doesn't get anywhere near the recognition. Maybe this Demon Accords stuff gets better as he writes more, but I can't see him approaching King Henry levels of entertaining.

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The first book is pretty bad, but they do improve, although IMO never above a 3.5 or so. Still decent popcorn action stuff. Despite the urban fantasy setup, I think the narrative arc of these is much closer to a superhero origin story. They certainly make a lot more sense that way.

From your comment on One Word Kill, I'd suggest skipping Limited Wish, as it has pretty much nothing to do with DND other than the title. I thought it was great, but it's certainly nothing like what you are after.

Ukerric said:

On my to-read-if-I-ever-manage-it pile (that still has like 30 books before)

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So I am just finishing up Children of Time... imo, this is a badass book. Like, really really badass, some of the best sci fi I've read. Kind of riding that line between entertaining and realistic and pure wtf techno magic. Very excited for the sequel.

slippery said:

First book way better than the second imo

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awww sad. Such promise in that setup.

chaos said:

awww sad. Such promise in that setup.

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It is still solid. The first was just so good.

Void said:

I will most likely finish the other two books, I just need to get my false expectations out of the way. As I said, it is a very good book, I was just expecting something totally different. No fault but my own there, really, because none of the descriptions or summaries say it is anything like what I was expecting, I just pre-supposed due to the title. And since I purposely don't read teasers and such if I already know I want to read something (as they often give away too much), I didn't even get those false notions wiped away before I started.

I do stand by my theory that he was influenced by Stranger Things somehow, though. Although I'm sure that now I'll find he actually wrote it 20 years ago or something, to make me doubly wrong about this whole series

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I felt the same, first one wasn't bad but just not "great" for some reason I couldn't place. I love everything else he has done so far, book of the ancestor is how you do bad ass women without any SJW feel and I cant wait for the girl and the stars but have been sitting on the last 2 of these.

Campbell1oo4 said:

A Great and Terrible King by Marc Morris

Details the life of Edward I also known as Longshanks, or the Hammer of the Scots. An amazing history book for two reasons; it is easy to follow, and the author tells a great story. I also enjoyed the concise way in which he describes English feudalism in the 1200s. I had no idea how complicated and decentralized it was. For example, there is one part in the book where Edward rides off to Wales to put down a rebellion. It takes about a year, and when he is done he returns to his court at Windsor. As soon as he is gone his borderlords start bickering with each other. How do they do this? They send armed gangs of men to the house of the other with the intention of burning it down. The book is filled with these little scenes and tidbits that make it such a fascinating read. I felt like I was visiting another world.

I found this book to be absolutely amazing and when I finished I went to amazon and bought another one by this fellow, this one about the Norman conquest.

Marengo and Hohenlinden: Napoleon's Rise to Power by James R. Arnold

Whenever you read about the Napoleon's coup it's always described as, "And then he took power." You rarely hear about the other two guys who selected Napoleon to be the poster boy of the coup, but were then pushed aside by his strong personality. This book helps elucidate some of those foggier moments of the end of first republic. All in all, I think it does an amazing job of outlining how Napoleon rose from a popular general to the First Consul of a republic that was no longer a republic. A dictator all but in name. Where this book fails is in the battle scenes. The author does a good job of leading you up to the very field of the battle, but then gets lost in the minutes. The names of both unit commanders and the specific geographically over which they fought all blended together. But as soon as the battle is over we're back into the good stuff; personality conflicts between the different generals (on both the French and Austrian side).

I have to say that I learned some very interesting things about 18-19th century warfare from this book. I'll try to be concise; Napoleonic warfare was less about destroying the enemy, than it was about scaring the enemy into running away before you got too scared and had to run away. It was, in effect, all a game of intimidation. In order to win this game soldiers were often dressed in gallant uniforms with tall hats or plumes. They would march with banners decorated with battle honors. Infantry would fire in mass to create a thunderous atmosphere, cavalry would threaten from the flanks as cannonballs whistled overhead. All together it created a frightening atmosphere for the common foot-soldier. With that in mind it makes sense that in the beginning of the book Napoleon stresses that marksmanship is not an important quality for a soldier, only discipline.

Another interesting thing I learned was the difference between the French and Austrian armies of this time. Kaiser Franz was a real paranoid guy, and routinely dismissed charismatic and successful generals from his service. This led the Austrian Army to be stocked with a bunch of old men who never made waves. On the other side, the French Army had been purged by the Terror. Many of the officers were young guys (almost all of them were in their twenties, I believe the oldest in the Italian campaign was 35 or 37). This led to a meeting of two different armies; one led by young guys who could think on their feet and the other being led by old men who had been trained to await orders whenever something on the battlefield changed. Seeing the results of Marengo and Hohenlinden, you can come to the conclusion of which system turned out to be the most effective.

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Man you really seem to enjoy Napoleonic era histories. There's so many out there, but especially in English we have this romantic, yet terrifying view of the Revolution and Empire period thats based on a few book written nearly 200 years ago. Personally i really enjoy that sort of "old encyclopedia Britannica" type bias in histories. it's better the fraudulent Neutrality you often see in modern history.


A still great book on the French Revolution is Carlyle's 19th century classic. The French Revolution

I find myself trolling older 19th and 20th century histories all the time. but this one is of course timeless for a few reasons. Dickens used it for all the background and scene details set in Revolutionary paris in a "Tale of two Cities" Secondly because for about a century or so it was shockingly popular and basically the basis for most 19-20th century educated people's view of the revolutionary and Napoleonic period.

A modern reader might feel it's a bit archaic. but you can really feel how dickens took so much from this book. At it's best It's like that fake Woodrow Wilson quote about writing History with lightning and at times i can't help notice my sinus welling up a bit as i can't read many pages without thinking of the last scene and monologue from "Tale of Two Cities" that final few peoples always choke me up whenever i think of them. If like me you really enjoyed "A Tale do Two Cities" this book is basically the history bookend fit and you need to read it.

There's so many great old histories. often as good, or better then modern day ones. Written by the absolute giants of their times just wasting around on the internet and often readable for free. Whats even better is these are "Histories" in the classical sense. Modern History has become so safe and drool it's slowly killing itself.

The Exploits of Baron de Marbot by Jean-Baptiste de Marbot

This book follows the military career of Jean-Baptiste de Marbot, who is referred to as Marcellin because everyone in France has 12 different names.

He starts off as a 16 or 17 year old kid on his way to Italy. Typical of France during the First Republic, he begins his military career as a common trooper, despite the fact his father is a baron of the ancien regime. During the first couple of chapters he is thrown under the wing of an ancient Alsatian sergeant named Pertelay, a man who spends most of his free time drinking, telling people to fuck off, and getting into fist fights with them when they don't fuck off.

I won't spoil the entire book, but Marbot sees some of the worst aspects of the Napoleonic Wars. He also undertakes some very brave actions such as saving a wounded enemy from drowning, protecting a general's son during a cavalry battle, and delivering a war declaration into the heart of Prussia.

I liked this book quite a bit, though it was an abridged version with notes. Sometimes I felt like the editor (a man named Christopher Summerville) failed to focus on the things that I really wanted to read about. He focused too much on the blood and guts of fighting, and not enough on the more human elements. If I wanted to see fighting I'd rent a war film. I'm trying to understand how these people lived their lives.

Also the last couple of chapters - covering the years 1814 and 1815 - felt really rushed. I felt like Mr. Summerville found these events tedious, and assumed the reader would as well.

Finished a cool collection of short stories from a bunch of authors:

Amazon product ASIN B0825H8H5T
My friend David Benem did a story in it, so I got it for that reason, but some of the stories are really good. There's a few that are subpar but overall really great reading.

Year One/Of Blood and Bone - Nora Roberts
I read these two in honor the Coronavirus ;p

An accidental blood sacrifice in a place of power returns magic, both light and dark, to the world, along with a rapidly mutating and extremely virulent form of SARS. The majority of the world's population dies off, and the survivors are torn apart as some people begin to mutate into legendary creatures, or gain magical talents.

The first book is viral apocalypse, fall of civilization stuff, and I thought it was good. The second book was more about the training of the 'promised savior' in a post-apocalyptic setting and I didn't enjoy it nearly as much. I will probably read the final book of the trilogy when it shows up, but I'm not excited for it.

Recursion - Blake Crouch
This was an interesting book with a surprisingly unique take on time travel. Sort of the opposite of Version Control, where noone knew what was changing - in this one, everyone affected by the changes gets memories of both timelines when the time traveler returns to the present, not just the time traveler. ( The traveler having a special privilege regarding memory is a usual trope of time travel, mostly for storytelling convenience ).

Unsurprisingly this quickly escalates to complete mayhem, especially among people who do not know who is doing it.

I liked this one.

Ancient Ruins trilogy - Benjamin Medrano
A demon is trapped in a soul-and-memory draining gem by a mage; and after millenia of being trapped, the gem is accidentally cracked, allowing the demon to escape and merge with a nearby magical seed. After years of drawing mana from the surroundings, she becomes something kind of like a dryad, with enough control over her surroundings that she is mistaken as a dungeon by the first people to stumble across her.

This was good fun. I liked it enough to read the two sequels in the series. There's a prequel as well, but I haven't read that yet. Some weird quirks of the author - most of the characters in it are either lesbians, sex slaves or rapists. No actual sex, but the author has some weird ideas about relationships.

The Land: Monsters - Aleron Kong
Also known as 'Richter walks down a tunnel'. Seriously - that's the only thing that happens in the entire book. He spends the rest of the time introducing and explaining elaborate new game systems. Still readable, but pretty much a crushing disappointment after how good the previous one was.

Privateer Tales 1-4 - Jamie McFarlane
Group of graduating students have their asteroid mining station attacked by pirates. During the battle they manage to disable one of the pirate frigates with ingenious application of common tools and objects, and end up laying a salvage claim on it. For not entirely straightforward reasons, the military ship captain that comes to investigate the incident ends up granting their claim, along with a letter of marque to fight the pirates.

This is fun, relatively low stakes stuff. The ship they have is kind of a shitbucket, but they decide to go into business as armed traders, with varying degrees of success. I will probably read these rest of these.

Vampire's Kiss - Ella Summers
Fantasy post-apocalypse setting - woman in search of her kidnapped brother joins the Legion of Angels, a xenophobic military force that can only be left as a corpse. Most trainees die during training, but those that survive gain progressively stronger magical abilities.

This had potential, but exceeded my maximum threshold for gushing about hot and angsty and brooding the romantic interest is. Will probably not read sequels.

Aspirant - Harrison Rex
Blue-collar worker wakes up after his accidental death to find he is in some futuristic rpg-like trial of some sort, along with a hot naked asian. Together they face life-and-death challenges and grow stronger as they triumph.

There was a fair amount of sex in this one, but the story and characters were engaging. Will probably read sequels.

Temple of Codicius - Max Whittaker
Wronged man on a mission of vengeance against the usurper king, enters the legendary temple of codicius to face it's challenges and claim the mystical artifacts contained within. Only the artifacts are hot women, and by claim them, he means fuck them - at great length and in excruciating detail.

This was tilted waaaaay too far to the porn end of the porn vs story scale. Did not finish.

Today I am Carey - Martin L Shoemaker
Caretaker android that was designed to emulate people to make dementia patients more comfortable develops a limited sentience. No-one understands why it did, and have no success in replicating it. After the android's primary patient dies, her children buy the android and keep it around.

There is no high-stakes action in this, it's mostly a story about family, grief, empathy and caring. It is strong in what is called 'the feels' ;p

I thought this one was really good. Will keep an eye out for this author in future.

Chilling Effect - Valerie Valdes
Reformed space pirate is blackmailed into working for the galactic crime syndicate that kidnapped her sister. To no-ones surprise, the jobs become increasingly sketchy and dangerous.

This was mostly serious, but goes for the amusement through absurdity, like the shipment of psychic cats, and what has to be the worst overreaction ever to being shot-down when propositioning a woman in bar.

Not great, but good fun. Will keep an eye out for sequels.

The Ruin of Kings - Jenn Lyons
This had an unusual story structure - it's a mind-reading shapeshifter forcing their prisoner to tell their story to a magical recording device. The prisoner begins the story when he was kidnapped and sold into slavery, and the shapeshifter objects and begins to tell his story from the point of view of other people from much further back. They alternate the two story threads and timelines.

It seems a bit wanky, like Westworld, but it worked really well in practice. It helped a lot that the plot was both tight-knit and convoluted - it was almost impossible to predict where things were going, even knowing what happened several years in the future, but everything made perfect sense in retrospect.

This was great, will definitely read sequels.

Delta-V - Daniel Suarez
Near future setting - cave diver James Tighe is enjoying his 15 minutes of fame after a daring rescue during an earthquake when he's approached by an eccentric billionaire who offers to pay him a $25k bonus to sign up with his harebrained asteroid mining idea. As time goes by, Tighe becomes increasingly suspicious that everything is not on the level.

This was interesting, all very near-future plausible tech and science. Some of the real world figures being put in with name changes was kind of distracting, especially when the author had one of his fictional characters school TotallyNotElonMuskReally in a live tv debate.

Ending kind of trailed off - I am not sure if there's any planned sequels but it was enjoyable enough I'd check them out if there are.

Spinward Fringe - Randolph Lalonde
Mind-wiped spaceship captain becomes an infamous bounty hunter until one last shady job pushes him over the edge into rebellion.

This was ok, but I didn't really care about the main character's tragic backstory and found it a bit boring. Won't read the rest.

One thing that bugged me was the idea that evil-corp(tm) would care enough about bad publicity that they'd carpet bomb someone for saying bad things about them, but at the same time give so little fucks about what other people think that they'd carpet bomb someone for saying bad things about them.

------------- Web Serials ------------------------

Mother of Learning
This web serial recently finished up, which entirely fixes the biggest shortcoming of this series - the glacial update pace. If you are interested in it but don't like unfinished things, now is your chance.

Unsong
This is a completed web serial. It has a pretty unusual premise - basically, what the world would be like if the Kabbalah was literally true. All evidence that contradicts it is actually part of an incredibly complicated cosmic machine that is simulating real physics etc, which is accidentally broken when apollo 9 crashes into the crystal sphere surrounding the Earth.

It's a mix of a pretty funny story, with a more serious story, some random insanity, a lot of biblical allusion and some philosophical musings. I quite liked it, although a lot of jokes and puzzles went straight over my head due to unfamiliarity with Judaism. Probably gets extra levels of entertainment if you are Jewish.

Metaworld Chronicles
Web serial - management consultant wakes up as a teenage version of herself in a world where magic has run amok, and humanity is limited to living in heavily warded major cities, with the rest of the globe being wilderness areas infested with various powerful monsters.

The writing quality on this is absolutely terrible, the characters are flat and one-dimensional, the main character is a terrible mary-sue, the dialogue is ludicrously overdramatic, the author keeps using words he obviously doesn't understand the meaning of, the world-building is lazy, and it actually gave me the literary equivalent of the uncanny valley effect, where he went into so much detail about Australian geography and culture that the mistakes were even more painful than if he'd just winged it.

Despite this, for some reason, I enjoyed it, and have read up to current. The writing improves over the course of it, but it is trash for a long time. If the previous list of faults don't scare you off, might be worth a read.

Unsong was great.

Wandering Inn is having a new mini chapter every day for a week. The author is a machine when it comes to writing chapters...