What are you reading in 2025?
- Thread starter Elodan
- Start date
Katabasis by R F Kuang is very much what you'd expect from the author of Babel, Yellowface, and The Poppy War. It's very much based on Kuang's two obvious passions - debate and academia - wrapped in mythology and fantasy, coloured by her two years in Cambridge and Oxford.
Alice Law is a Chinese-American student of magic at Cambridge who decides to go to Hell to retrieve her PhD supervisor when he's killed in a magical accident, so that she can pass her PhD viva. So far, so one-liner. Law is very much a Kuang protagonist - apart from the obvious personal parallels to Kuang herself (currently doing a PhD at Yale), she has that teenage nihilism and single-minded obsession with being special and worthy that's very recognisable from her other books.
Despite this, it's probably the book of hers I liked the least so far (apart from The Poppy War books, which are basically "I just found out about the Opium Wars and the Japanese occupation of China RAARGH"), because Alice's insights into how terrible her life decisions to date have been come too late. The descriptions of academic Hell are... well-researched but not enough to have much charm. It's all very Ars Magica, honestly, and not in a good way. Lincoln in the Bardo this isn't.
Alice Law is a Chinese-American student of magic at Cambridge who decides to go to Hell to retrieve her PhD supervisor when he's killed in a magical accident, so that she can pass her PhD viva. So far, so one-liner. Law is very much a Kuang protagonist - apart from the obvious personal parallels to Kuang herself (currently doing a PhD at Yale), she has that teenage nihilism and single-minded obsession with being special and worthy that's very recognisable from her other books.
Despite this, it's probably the book of hers I liked the least so far (apart from The Poppy War books, which are basically "I just found out about the Opium Wars and the Japanese occupation of China RAARGH"), because Alice's insights into how terrible her life decisions to date have been come too late. The descriptions of academic Hell are... well-researched but not enough to have much charm. It's all very Ars Magica, honestly, and not in a good way. Lincoln in the Bardo this isn't.
trappedslider
Legend
Went to the library this week and checked out Dungeons and Dragons The Book of Dragons, and it's textured on the outside to feel like dragon scales
Gotta like that.
August was a month of really big books for me, four ranging from 27 to 47 hours. September has been a month of smaller ones, and heavy on nonfiction ranging from history to moral philosophy. We’ll see what October turns out to be.
August was a month of really big books for me, four ranging from 27 to 47 hours. September has been a month of smaller ones, and heavy on nonfiction ranging from history to moral philosophy. We’ll see what October turns out to be.
I just finished Rage - I only had about 20 pages left to go - and it had a truly gut-punch of an ending. So I'm jumping immediately into the next book, Relentless by Jonathan Maberry, and this time it's Joe Ledger and the Rogue Team International up against some cybernetically-enhanced super-soldiers. (At this point, I wouldn't care if the next set of villains was a cadre of six-year-old mimes - he hasn't steered me wrong yet and I think I'd buy anything with his name on it. Case in point, as I'm rapidly going to be running out of Joe Ledger books soon, I went ahead and purchased a five-novel zombie series of Maberry's, the Rot & Ruin collection, currently sitting on my "waiting to be read" shelf....)
But first, I need to find out what happens next with Joe Ledger.
Johnathan
But first, I need to find out what happens next with Joe Ledger.
Johnathan
overgeeked
Cheers to the Tin Man
Just finished Perry Rhodan #3, The Radiant Bell.
Only took me 1.5 hours but far too long to get that time in. The first 2/3 of this one was “As you know, Bob…” dialogue along with catch-up description and synopsis of what’s happened so far. The story, such as it is, centered around a constant bombardment of the Third Power’s energy shield. So constant the shield distorted, changed colors, and caused the power supply to nearly fail.
Khrest, the alien with leukemia, was unconscious for most of the story. The moment he woke, all the tension dissipated because he knew exactly how to fix the problem. The united humanity invented a new kind of nuke and dropped three on the alien research vessel parked on the moon.
Next up Perry Rhodan #4, Twilight of the Gods.
Only took me 1.5 hours but far too long to get that time in. The first 2/3 of this one was “As you know, Bob…” dialogue along with catch-up description and synopsis of what’s happened so far. The story, such as it is, centered around a constant bombardment of the Third Power’s energy shield. So constant the shield distorted, changed colors, and caused the power supply to nearly fail.
Khrest, the alien with leukemia, was unconscious for most of the story. The moment he woke, all the tension dissipated because he knew exactly how to fix the problem. The united humanity invented a new kind of nuke and dropped three on the alien research vessel parked on the moon.
Next up Perry Rhodan #4, Twilight of the Gods.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Just finished the Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi, a fast-paced novel about the adventures of a Persian Gulf pirate coming out of retirement during the Crusades. (The Crusades don't reach the region, but a crusader does.)
This is the kind of energy most of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies have been missing. It moves fast, has a good cast of characters you believe care about each other, despite being various flavors of scoundrels and outcasts, has prominent and interesting supernatural elements (including the obligatory crew of mutated pirates battling more human ones) without them completely dominating the story and it sets up a natural path to sequels that we don't need to see, but would welcome.
On top of that, it's full of Indian, African and Middle Eastern mythology, and features well-rounded Islamic characters, which is still a rarity nowadays.
A very fun book and it's going to make me look up the author's previous series as well.
This is the kind of energy most of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies have been missing. It moves fast, has a good cast of characters you believe care about each other, despite being various flavors of scoundrels and outcasts, has prominent and interesting supernatural elements (including the obligatory crew of mutated pirates battling more human ones) without them completely dominating the story and it sets up a natural path to sequels that we don't need to see, but would welcome.
On top of that, it's full of Indian, African and Middle Eastern mythology, and features well-rounded Islamic characters, which is still a rarity nowadays.
A very fun book and it's going to make me look up the author's previous series as well.
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