What are you reading in 2023?

[Ralif Redhammer]

Probably the most interesting thing I read recently was Akata Witch, though Every Heart a Doorway was interesting too.

Most of the rest have been nonfiction or just the latest in various series (i.e. Season of Skulls).

Every Heart a Doorway is spectacular. Akata Witch has been on my to-read list for a bit as well.

I finished reading Ortiz's Blazewrath Games. Pretty darn good, though I couldn't help but feel that it was hitting some YA fiction tropes that get hit a whole lot.

I re-read Le Guin's The Tombs of Atuan. As much as A Wizard of Earthsea gets most of the accolades, this book sure deserves its share, too.

I read Stephen Wendell's Blue Flames, Tiny Stars. It really paints the picture of what it's like to discover D&D as a kid with vivid paint. It's brevity, about 40 pages, holds it back, though, from getting deeper.

Now I'm reading Double Phoenix, a Ballantine Adult Fantasy release containing two novellas, one by Edmund Cooper and one by Roger Lancelyn Green.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

In addition to my reread of Discworld (it turns out I missed one, the first time around), I'm also doing a slow reread of Earthsea. I think I may have been too young to appreciate the later books the first time around.

 

[Alzrius]

Currently (slowly) working my way through 40 Years of Gen Con as part of my personal quest to read as much nonfiction as I can about our hobby and its history.

 

[Parmandur]

In addition to my reread of Discworld (it turns out I missed one, the first time around), I'm also doing a slow reread of Earthsea. I think I may have been too young to appreciate the later books the first time around.

That's what makes them classic children's literature: they stand up to time and evolve as understanding increases.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Every Heart a Doorway is spectacular.

I was surprised how much I liked it. I'd liked the idea of it, but I'd bounced off some of the authors other books so I thought it might be a repeat of the same.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Every Heart a Doorway is spectacular.

I was surprised how much I liked it. I'd liked the idea of it, but I'd bounced off some of the authors other books so I thought it might be a repeat of the same.

Hmmmm every other Seanan McGuire book I tried to read, I also bounced off, maybe I need to give this one a chance.

Talking of fairy-tale-inspired fantasy, a big shout-out to Naomi Novik's Uprooted, which is just amazing, memorable and kind of hot, and a big thumbs-down to her Spinning Silver which is both boring and features a bizarre apologia for landlords as "the real victims" and also very much not hot (bonus implication that you're anti-Semitic if you're not pro-landlord lol). Not Novik's first book to get into a needless and very strange defense of particularly acquisitive capitalism either! The Temeraire series eventually devolves from cheery Napoleonic nonsense into almost Ayn Randian idiocy but involving dragons. I don't want a dragon's opinion on economics, I particularly am not down with creatures that conventionally represent human greed at its worst lecturing me Gordon Gekko-style, but we're supposed to agree with them!* Can't we go back to the Napoleonic warfare? To Master & Commander with dragons? Apparently we could not. Still, Uprooted, forget the rest. Also weirdly it kind of seems like the Deadly Education series might be a counterpoint to her own earlier work, but I haven't read the third book because what if it isn't?

* = What next, a redux of Wall Street starring Smaug?

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Hmmmm every other Seanan McGuire book I tried to read, I also bounced off, maybe I need to give this one a chance.

Talking of fairy-tale-inspired fantasy, a big shout-out to Naomi Novik's Uprooted, which is just amazing, memorable and kind of hot, and a big thumbs-down to her Spinning Silver which is both boring and features a bizarre apologia for landlords as "the real victims" and also very much not hot (bonus implication that you're anti-Semitic if you're not pro-landlord lol). Not Novik's first book to get into a needless and very strange defense of particularly acquisitive capitalism either! The Temeraire series eventually devolves from cheery Napoleonic nonsense into almost Ayn Randian idiocy but involving dragons. I don't want a dragon's opinion on economics, I particularly am not down with creatures that conventionally represent human greed at its worst lecturing me Gordon Gekko-style, but we're supposed to agree with them!* Can't we go back to the Napoleonic warfare? To Master & Commander with dragons? Apparently we could not. Still, Uprooted, forget the rest. Also weirdly it kind of seems like the Deadly Education series might be a counterpoint to her own earlier work, but I haven't read the third book because what if it isn't?

* = What next, a redux of Wall Street starring Smaug?

Huh, I hadn't gone through her books with an economic lens, but an interesting take... I would assume if dragons were modern and could take human form they would 1000% be involved in high-finance (and crypto!)

If you are allergic to allegory, you may not like Scholomance III

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Dragons being into cryptocurrency feels like a great Shadowrun plot thread.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If you are allergic to allegory, you may not like Scholomance III

The first two have a ton of allegory so that isn't really an issue. If the result of the allegory though is something like "wealthy elites are actually the best people and we shouldn't be mean to them and should sympathize with their poorly-explained plight", then that is an issue, but on the other hand, that would be a total 180 from the first two, where they're literally getting people killed.

Huh, I hadn't gone through her books with an economic lens, but an interesting take... I would assume if dragons were modern and could take human form they would 1000% be involved in high-finance (and crypto!)

The real issue I have is that I don't think it's really conscious and considered, she's like, fumbling around and revealing a basically very teenage Randian-Libertarian kind of "philosophy" which she's then putting in the mouths of a couple of specific dragons (including the protagonist dragon, who is supposed to exceptionally smart by dragon standards). It also doesn't fit really very well with what's actually going on in the books - she has to contrive situations to make it even relevant and not just more waffle the protagonist dragon is talking. I think she's entirely forgotten that dragons are an allegorical creature representing the most reprehensible greed. Which is unfortunate.

Also really the Australia one is just extremely boring.

(I should point out it starts out with the dragons just demanding to get paid, which is eminently reasonable, but it goes on from there into rather murkier waters.)

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I was surprised how much I liked it. I'd liked the idea of it, but I'd bounced off some of the authors other books so I thought it might be a repeat of the same.

I think it manages to do what The Magicians series wasn't as successful at; it balances a post-modern take on portal fantasy while still embracing the genre.

Hmmmm every other Seanan McGuire book I tried to read, I also bounced off, maybe I need to give this one a chance.

It's the only McGuire series I've read, so I can't say how it compares to her other works.

* = What next, a redux of Wall Street starring Smaug?

Yes please.