log(book)

The 29 books I’ve read so far in 2022 year in books

Cover placeholder for The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized.

The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized

by ErraticErrata · published 2015 · read 2022-02-06
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
More of the same, with the novelty worn off a bit. Some new interesting Roles (Bumbling Conjurer, Exiled Prince), and some hints at future escalation into less of the pedestrian wars with soldiers at borders and more of the world/universe crushing stuff. There's a lot of maneuvering against the protagonist's villainous nemesis, which I didn't really care about. But then, I didn't care about the big battles, either – I just hung around for the worldbuilding (which had some really good moments).

Cover of So You Want to Be a Villain?.

So You Want to Be a Villain?

by ErraticErrata · published 2015 · read 2022-02-01
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Web-serial that is generally not terrible! Takes place in a world with clear Good and Evil, with the protagonist an orphan in a country that was taken over by an Evil state. She starts her path to become a Villain to help her country, kinda? Complete with a mentor, a short stint at a school, and then some actual war. The morality on any of this is extremely iffy, but if you squint past that, it's decent enough fantasy fast food.

Cover of Shield of Thunder.

Shield of Thunder

by David Gemmell · published 2006 · read 2022-01-31
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Second part of the Troy series, and I'm a bit less impressed (but still happy to read on!). Three new main characters are thrown into the mix (Andromache's lover, plus Kalliades and Banokles), in addition to the already established Helikaon and Odysseus. Through their eyes, we also get more information about Hector and Achilles.

Cover of Ein Drei-Tassen-Problem.

Ein Drei-Tassen-Problem

by Stefan Winges · published 2014 · read 2022-01-27
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
Sherlock Holmes, just German and in the 1920s. If that sounds exciting to you, uh, here you go? I'm not kidding it's really straight up Sherlock, just in Cologne. There's a Mrs Hudson, the story is told from the point of view of his flatmate, a doctor returned from the army in the colonies, and they live together amid disputes about substance abuse in No 21B. Sherlock is talking incessantly about shoe soles instead of cigarette ashes, and they have to deal with a well-meaning but obviously wrong police officer, who invites them to the case only to not listen to them.

Cover of A Symphony of Echoes.

A Symphony of Echoes

by Jodi Taylor · published 2013 · read 2022-01-26
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
Sadly disappointing: Only the second book in a series that is currently up to eleven books and countless novellas, and it already feels like the series is out of ideas and just mushing things together. There are regular excursions (Jack the Ripper as weird monster hybrid in need of getting shot repeatedly), there are the enemies-in-time, there is the protagonist being temporarily Director of the institute in the future for a bit (!!), there is YET ANOTHER giant huge misunderstanding with her partner due to them not talking about things properly, going to absolutely ridiculous and uncalled-for lengths, then a Dodo hunt, and a bunch more side plots in case you were not feeling sufficiently entertained.

Cover of Captive Prince.

Captive Prince

by C.S. Pacat · published 2013 · read 2022-01-25
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Word to the wise: this is not an "m/m fantasy romance". It's m/m, and it's fantasy, but mostly it's … slavery harem smut? I don't even know. Wouldn't have thought twice if this had been on AO3, but billed as fantasy, the lack of any serious reflection on the horrors or downsides of slavery, rape and oppression is a bit stunning. I'm guessing this is like a small-scale Fifty Shades thing, where people enjoy the horny parts and forget to also use their brain when later recommending the story to people.

Cover of The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant.

The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant

by Drew Hayes · published 2014 · read 2022-01-24
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
Saying that the title has better writing than the rest of the book would be cruel and not quite true (but.) … I had hoped for better. This is basically a short story collection, taped together, which is always tricky because while your short story readers will want a basic recap of who's who and who did what, I really don't want that every 20 pages in a book.

Cover of Flight of Magpies.

Flight of Magpies

by K.J. Charles · published 2014 · read 2022-01-23
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
More from the ever-same dramatic duo with the uncomfortably unhealthy Ds overtones. An old enemy returns for lack of interesting new ones, a new ally spawns in just to be hot and awesome. If not for the overly yikes and predictable parts, I might be interested to see where the series goes after escalating towards the end, but I think I'll stop here.

Cover of Eaters of the Dead.

Eaters of the Dead

by Michael Crichton · published 1976 · read 2022-01-22
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
Surprisingly good: Crichton's version of Beowulf, told from the perspective of an Arab traveller who gets taken along on the famous journey. The book strikes a decent balance among several things: the voice of an old epos and modern pacing; displaying the clash between the two cultures while also being an adventure book; proposing plausible origins for the myth while also making them sound sufficiently magical. Neanderthals as the origin of Grendel were a particularly neat touch.

Cover of Creatures of Light and Darkness.

Creatures of Light and Darkness

by Roger Zelazny · published 1969 · read 2022-01-21
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Very Zelazny – I had hoped, after liking Lord of Light a lot, that something similar would work equally well. And it's somewhat similar, superficially. Egypt religion instead of Indian, but regardless, high-powered gods with their own agendas, all that stuff.

Cover of Das Paradies der Schwerter.

Das Paradies der Schwerter

by Tobias O. Meißner · published 2004 · read 2022-01-19
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Well, at least I'll learn to not trust /r/fantasy recommendations blindly. Praised as a really good piece of German Fantasy, where the author increased the tension by letting dice rolls decide the outcome of battles, I was cautiously optimistic.

Cover of Das Stunden-Buch.

Das Stunden-Buch

by Rainer Maria Rilke · published 1899 · last read 2022-01-18
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
One of my favourite pieces of poetry. Probably doesn't translate well (to English, to German that isn't steeped in religion, etc).

Cover of City of Blades.

City of Blades

by Robert Jackson Bennett · published 2016 · read 2022-01-17
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
City of Stairs was fun, and in a surprising way. To live up to it, the second part needed to be different – and it was, in a way. The narrative structure was a bit (very) close to the last book: civil servant gets shunted off to the continent, figures out that all is not as it seems, and that behind nasty local politics there is some old divinity, thought to be dead, is at work.

Cover of Leviathan Falls.

Leviathan Falls

by James S.A. Corey · published 2021 · read 2022-01-16
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
This is how The Expanse ends: not with a bang, not with a whisper, but with an appropriately depressing finale. It all wraps around back to the beginning, and it's just as bad as you'd think, and then some. How well this book will work for you depends pretty much on how much this series has hurt you in the previous books (as in: how much you love the characters). It's not the strongest book in the series, but it's a satisfying ending, and I didn't dare to hope for even that.

Cover of Son of a Liche.

Son of a Liche

by J. Zachary Pike · published 2018 · read 2022-01-15
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
Second part to the series started in Orconomics, this book toned down its predecessor's drawbacks … but also its features. It has lessed forced humour, but also less actually emotional content. It's told at a slight distance, and turns into a mediocre blob instead of Orconomics and its mix of really good and really meh.

Cover of Death by Silver.

Death by Silver

by Melissa Scott, Amy Griswold · published 2013 · read 2022-01-14
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
MORE gay Victorian (well, Gaslamp) magicians, will it ever stop? This one at least doesn't follow the cookie-cutter for the genre: no nobility, and magic is well-known and accepted, so there's an actual industry and civil services. Magic has actual rules, and a lot of it seems to be grammar-based, and people can, for example, take educated guesses about a magician's schooling (Oxford vs Cambridge styles) – but only guesses, not enough to be actually important clues, which I thought was a nice show of restraint.

Cover of Widdershins.

Widdershins

by Jordan L. Hawk · published 2012 · read 2022-01-13
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
Popcorn read: Victorian encounters with the paranormal continue, but this time it's in the US. A timid philologist from a wealthy family (have to do without nobility in the US, after all) meets a Dresden-style magician for hire. They need to solve a mystery that has its solution foreshadowed so strongly, I nearly couldn't see the text under all the shadow.

Cover of Salt Magic, Skin Magic.

Salt Magic, Skin Magic

by Lee Welch · published 2018 · read 2022-01-12
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
More Victorian urban history queer romance with an aristocrat with evil family and a lower-class magician – please somebody tell my why this is such a huge thing. I could do without the repetitiveness and the everything while just enjoying parts of the setting.

Cover of Between Copernicus and Galileo.

Between Copernicus and Galileo

by James M. Lattis · published 1994 · read 2022-01-11
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
I wanted to learn more about Christoph Clavius, the Jesuit who contributed significantly to the Gregorian calendar reform, which is a standing interest of mine. It turns out that this book intentionally avoids that topic, to talk more about cosmology and how the intellectual state of the art was just before Galileo happened to it.

Cover of Four Roads Cross.

Four Roads Cross

by Max Gladstone · published 2016 · read 2022-01-10
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
After reading Three Parts Dead in preparation, it was time to read this book – part five in the series that Three Parts Dead starts, but also the direct follow-up. I hadn't remembered the characters at all: Abelard, the mechanic monk, and Tara, the craftswoman who, in the end, decided to leave the industry and work for the Church of Kos, for little money, because she's needed.

Cover of Three Parts Dead.

Three Parts Dead

by Max Gladstone · published 2012 · last read 2022-01-09
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone was just straight up enjoyable Fantasy. We get magic, and gods, and … magic lawyers? Dabbling in magic means dabbling in contracts, so our protagonist has clients (or, well, her employer does), and there is a lot of quibbling going on – of the kind that can cost you your mind, or your life. And the God of Fire (and therefore steam) has an engine room and priests that are more techies than anything else – except that their maintenance and debugging cycles include prayers and worship as well as fixing pipes and monitoring heat output. Yessss. Take the phrase "theological engineering" and go read.

Cover of This Alien Shore.

This Alien Shore

by C.S. Friedman · published 1998 · read 2022-01-08
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Damn, this book could have been so good. But it falls into the trap of having extremely good worldbuilding and then being unable to back it up with an equally good plot. It's a shame, because the premise is so much fun:

Cover placeholder for Of a Linear Circle - Part IX - Serpent in the Grass.

Of a Linear Circle - Part IX - Serpent in the Grass

by Flamethrower · read 2022-01-07
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
The rest of this series was so good, but the last part just wasn't. It's backstory, in a way, but more importantly it sees itself as just backstory. Nobody gets any depth, everything is narrated as if this was the Silmarillion, family histories are recited as if we're in competition with the Old Testament … and then, emotionally important moments are skipped and mentioned in passing. Yikes.

Cover placeholder for Of a Linear Circle - Part VIII - The Second Wizarding War.

Of a Linear Circle - Part VIII - The Second Wizarding War

by Flamethrower · read 2022-01-05
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Series continues to be good, with a few caveats: Tons of side characters being treated well means massively slower story progress. General competency porn continues, but the Latin somehow got worse (while the complaints about bad Latin, in-text, remained), which is mildly infuriating. Somebody explain to the author what a Vocative is, please.

Cover placeholder for Of a Linear Circle VI.

Of a Linear Circle VI

by Flamethrower · read 2022-01-04
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
More side characters come in to get a role, which is oddly satisfying. The Latin manages to get worse somehow, and for a while, everything looks pretty repetetive, but then we get open war, so I won't complain too much.

Cover placeholder for Of a Linear Circle - Part VII - Exile.

Of a Linear Circle - Part VII - Exile

by Flamethrower · read 2022-01-04
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Novella, filling in some more backstory stuff. I'm not super well-versed in 14th-15th century Spain and France, so I spent half the time on Wikipedia. Generally entertaining, but too much is already known through previous and later story elements; and the author does not share Vonnegut's skill at telling you the ending, then making you care about how you get there. (Unsurprising and completely fair – asking for Vonnegut when reading fanfics is stupid).

Cover placeholder for Of a Linear Circle - Part V - Gryffindor.

Of a Linear Circle - Part V - Gryffindor

by Flamethrower · read 2022-01-02
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
More backstory, more carefully researched historical fiction. Well, some is inaccurate in minor details, but on the level of getting one of the historical lords of Orkney wrong, which seems to be a cruel thing to count against a fanfic. Thanks to checking the story, also need to complain about the list of English (Wessex) kings with creative names such as Æthelred, Æthelstan, Ælfweard, Ælfwynn, Æthelwold, Æthelhelm, Æthelberht, Æthelbald, Æthelwulf …

Cover placeholder for Of a Linear Circle - Part IV.

Of a Linear Circle - Part IV

by Flamethrower · read 2022-01-01
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
Back to the present timeline, this (long) part of the ongoing series proves fun, and dazzles with payoff. Plus, a new (mature, unexcited, beautiful) romance side-story. And then there's the extremely slow-building (4th long ) power gradient involving the British monarchy ffs (Elizabeth turns to Nizar. “Now then. What are your intentions regarding my kingdom, Lord Nizar?”).

Cover placeholder for Of a Linear Circle - Part V - Ravenclaw.

Of a Linear Circle - Part V - Ravenclaw

by Flamethrower · read 2022-01-01
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
This part of the series goes all in on historical fiction: It follows the backdrop of Rowena Ravenclaw, who is really called Hrodwunn of Hrabanklawa, Bavaria. We get some alright character building, and more importantly, some really fun historical fiction: Hrodwunn is friends with Theophanu, the wife of Otto II, and so her fate ist connected to the complex fate of the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire. It's well-researched and all kinds of fun (plus, part of it takes place in Quedlinburg).