What Am I Reading Wednesday, January 27 2016

[hours_gone_by]

What I Just Finished Reading: Magic's Promise, by Mercedes Lackey. This is definitely the strongest book out of the trilogy. It's more plot and less character driven compared to the others, making for a much tighter story, without the major plot elements crammed in at beginning, middle, and end, as the other two books in the trilogy did. You

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

Glad to hear Alera is working a little better for you. Book 3 was a low point for me, I think, but I did thing it got better from there, yeah, so hopefully you'll find it the same. I'm trying to remember if anything really important happens in book 3 that you would miss out on if you did the Wikipedia thing... There's a reveal that happens in this book, which you may or may not have already guessed, so it might be fun to read just to see that happen in situ. Actually, two reveals, apparently, or a reveal and a realization. (Which is a reason you may want to not go looking for it on Wiki/TV Tropes, if you don't want to be spoiled for stuff prematurely

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I blow hot and cold on Isana. I can't quite put my finger on why. I should like her, but there's just something that puts me off a bit.

Sounds like there's more to it than I'd get using TVTropes or a Wiki then. Well, I have a library card and time, if nothing else! :) I keep expecting Tavi to have some sort of revelation and wind up with, like, super-control over furies or something. That could be The Last Herald-Mage bleeding through, though.

So far I think the book's leaning too heavily on fae-related references, and that Dresden Files and Wicked Lovely did blending with the real world better. But the protagonist just stopped being a fish, so we'll see.

[hamsterwoman]

I don't like Isana much (though normally I love healer characters), partly for spoilery reasons, partly for the way I feel she (and some other 'good guys' characters) get to kind of... have their moral cake and eat it, too, if that makes any sense -- like, the world Butcher set up is one with shades of gray, but a few characters are allowed to take the moral high ground and the narrative actually makes it so they do not suffer any negative consequences for it. Or when they don't take moral high ground, they still get to come across as good and moral. But anyway!

But the protagonist just stopped being a fish, so we'll see.LOL, it does pick up after that :) But in general, I agree. I like the integration of fae and real world in Wicked Lovely better, on the whole, and I think Dresden Files does a much better job with the mystery/PI aspect. I do think the Toby books are doing something unusual as far as urban fantasy-with-faeries goes, in that Toby is not an outsider narrator but someone steeped in the fae side of life (even though,

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I don't know if I've read anything by Holly Black, actually. (Long story short, money and my bank account were not friends for a long period of time, and the library's fantasy section isn't great, so I'm badly behind on a lot of modern fantasy.) I'll add Tithe to my 'want to read' shelf though. Thanks! :)