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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Retros_x" data-source="post: 9726880" data-attributes="member: 7033171">I think when the faffing around is actually the point, like in Jonathan Strange, its fine (but still a matter of taste of course). The faffing around is fun in itself in these books. But if its done like in Stormlight Archive where its just meandering thoughts and dialogues that are just boring repetitions...omg, I didn't knew that, but I remember when I was there so many young people running around in hogwarts outfits thinking there was a Harry Potter convention somewhere. This explains A LOT haha.I was on vacation too and read two books by John le Carre, "A Murder for Quality" and "The Spy who came in from the Cold".The former was a disappointment after the really intriguing first Smiley novel "Call for the Dead". I think the author described the book humble in his reflections 50 years later something like " a bad mystery with decent satire about the English school system. I think that is a fair assessment. The best part of the book is the author dunking on the school system in this afterword once again, this time as an old man in modern times. Its great."The Spy..." was absolutely fantastic! It increased the already bleak and oppressing atmosphere of the first Smily book and it delivers such a great narrative about the start of  institutional bureacratic manipulation, betrayal of morality, muddling of ideologies in the early cold war. I loved the disillusioned main character Leamas and his personal revenge. I also absolutely loved the brutal and dark twist and the ambigous ending. There are hints and implications about the truth of Smileys last words and the last events happening but it is nowhere stated explicitly. Smiley is only a background character behind the scenes here, but he got sooooo intriguing as a character to me. The prose is great too, brief and precise but stimulating and evocative at the same time. The characterization is subtle and masterful. This is 100% my jam and I am so excited now for the rest of le Carres bibliography. I've also read "Sixth of Crows" due to my SO recommending it 100x times to me - and I think I found it! I finally found the first YA-novel I actually liked. I tried several hyped YA books and basically did not finished a single one of them, but this one was actually good. Its a fantasy heist novel and it actually delivers on the heist (looking at you Sanderson...). The prose was simple, but sometimes a bit confusing - there were several times where I needed to read sentences multiple times because I did not understand the scene and what was happening especially in ways of spatial information. In general the plot is fun though and you don't need to read the Shadow and Bone books to understand what is happening (my SO said that these are not so good). The true strength IMO are the characters and their dynamics. They all have One Piece style tragic backstories, but have so fun interactions and dynamics, its just very entertaining to read and sometimes actually funny. I just enjoyed that a lot, good simple vacation read and I am definitely looking forward to the sequel. And last but not least, thanks to this thread I bought and started "The Raven Scholar". While I don't found the tons of exposition as elegant as other people I was definitely very intrigued after one specific early chapter - readers probably know which one I mean. I like the writing apart from some unnecessary explanations that seem to be unavoidable in fantasy nowadays. I am very interested in the setting and the characters and really look forward reading this now.</blockquote>

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