2016 Reading #42 to 44
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
I picked The Fifth Season up after it won the Hugo for Best Novel last weekend, and it did not disappoint. This is a powerful mix of character study and world building that reads like a more accessible take on something that Gene Wolfe or Jack Vance would write.
On the surface, it's about three women wandering around an ancient, half-ruined fantasy world beset by vulcanism and a weird form of geomancy. As with Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, however, there's a lot more going on, and Jemisin is very canny about how she teases out the connections between the characters and their world. She jumps about in time, shifts between third and second person, and (maybe?) slips in a narrator we can't quite trust along the way, but she never loses the reader or lets the plot slow down. That's nice work, and I can't wait to see what layers of the story she'll peel back in the next volume.
Claymore, Vol. 1: Silver-eyed Slayer by Norihiro Yagi
A bit of a generation gap reared its head here. My elder daughter has been tearing through this manga series about a lonely monster hunter, so I gave the first volume of a try. She's completely absorbed by it, but it's a bit too grim for me. Looks like I'm in the "just doesn't get it" generation now...
7th Sea Core Rulebook by John Wick
7th Sea was one of my favorite RPGs of the late nineties, with a rich fantasy version of Renaissance Europe as its settling and a commendable commitment to swashbuckling and sorcery. The only real weak point was the rules, which encouraged stunts and creative play but could get clunky at resolving what happens next.
This new edition of the game addresses that flaw, providing the same rich setting and a lighter rules system that does away with success rolls (you're going to succeed) and replacing it with an initiative system (but can you get it done in time, and what price will you pay to do it?). The setting is vivid, the writing rewards sitting down and reading straight through the book, hence this review, and I've already got a pile of notes for a future campaign. I don't know how it'll actually play until I sit down at a table with some friends, but with the right group of people this should be a lot of fun.