Forward The Foundation

 Isaac Asimov wrote two prequels to the Foundation series in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  I just read the first, Prelude to Foundation, a few weeks ago, and now I made my way through the second one, Forward the Foundation.

I have to admit that I enjoyed the last one better than this one. This one was fun, but it felt like it was too long. Lots of writers have that problem. Rish pretty much complains about this with every book he ever reads. With some writers, it's less of an issue than others. Asimov has a very old fashioned and stilted style of writing. Even though this was written in the 1990s, it still felt as though it came from the 1950s to me. It was still a good book, but it didn't keep me turning the pages nonstop until I finished it. I was able to take it slow and read only when I had the time for it.

I think there are more Foundation books that I haven't read. Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth were two sequels that Asimov wrote in the early 1980s. I think I'll have to eventually get to those ones as well...although, I think I might reread the original series first, because it's been about 25 years since I read them last, and I don't really remember how they went, so going on to read the sequels might be silly and worthless if I don't.

The Empty Throne

I finished up my last book, and had nothing to jump into right away. I looked at Bernard Cornwell and found that the next audiobook in the Saxon Stories series didn't even have a wait. I could check it out immediately. So, I jumped in.

This one was funny. They started out with a bit of trickery. In the end of the last book, the hero of the book series seemed close to death, but I was pretty sure that he hadn't died. The book did end abruptly, though, so I thought maybe I had been mistaken. Cornwell started out the book with Uhtred's son as the point of view character. It seemed like maybe the torch was being passed for the rest of the series. Of course, it was a trick. I liked the trick a lot, though. Someday, I'll have to steal that. Fun stuff.

The book, as usual, was interesting and fun. It was easy to get through. The kind of book that made me become a reader in the first place, and I was happy to come back to it each time I got back in my car and the audiobook started up again. So, I guess what I'm saying is that I still recommend these books. Bernard Cornwell has yet to let me down.

The Mercy Of Gods

I love James SA Corey (that's the pen name of the writing duo, Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham). The Expanse is probably my favorite book series of the last ten years. I loved the finale of the story, but mourned when the world came to an end. So, the minute I heard that there was a new series by Corey, I jumped at the chance to get started on it.

I couldn't believe, therefore, that I didn't like it. I listened to the audiobook, read by Jefferson Mays, the same guy who did the Expanse books. I was hours in, and had yet to find anything that I liked. There were no characters I liked, no situations I liked, no storylines I liked...I was completely confused at how such a thing could happen.

I got despondent, and let my hold on the book lapse without finishing it. I went book free for quite a while, but then a month or two later, I finally got back to reading, and after doing that, I decided to give the book a second chance.  I mean, I'd quit the book right as the aliens invaded. The book was about to completely change, I assumed, so I ought to try again. Besides, it was James SA Corey!

Sadly,  despite the humans becoming slaves to an unfeeling alien race, the book didn't completely change. None of the characters became interesting. Nothing ever gave me that feeling that I couldn't wait to get back to listening to the book, that I hated having to stop and do things like go to work or feed myself or sleep. Books often do that to me, and those are the ones I remember fondly. Sadly, despite my love for The Expanse, I don't feel that way about this book. I slogged my way to the end of it anyway, because I'm masochistic or something. I should have given it up once and for all and let it go much earlier. I suspect I won't bother reading the second book in the series, but you never know...I mean, it's James SA Corey!

The Pagan Lord

I went back to this well for my next book. I love to have them there as a go to any time I need a palate cleanser. I keep running into books that don't excite me like I want them to, and Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Stories series always pleases. It's a really long series, but I'm getting closer and closer to its finale. I'll be sad when I've finally made it to the end of Uhtred's story.

I got the new Brandon Sanderson book on my Audible as well, but my son wanted to listen to it right away, so I let him go at it. I didn't want to be losing his place every time I listened. Listening at the same time just doesn't work.

So, The Pagan Lord it was. This one was very interesting, and took Uhtred farther than any of the other books up until now did. In fact, the ending was even a little bit ambiguous. I wasn't quite certain what had happened to our hero at the end. All the same, it was fun and satisfying. So far, not a single one of these books has let me down. They've been great all around.

Redesign

I just finished publishing my first novel, Sunny. When I was working on getting it ready, I did things my usual way, creating my own cover for the book, but I just wasn't sure what was best. I had a couple of options that I couldn't decide between. 

So, I asked Rish. He gave me his opinion, but it didn't satisfy me. I asked my daughter, who is the one who created the fairy picture for me in the first place, what she preferred. Well...she sat down at the computer and took over.

She thought it would be better if the background had a kind of gradient, and if the font was different, and if the title and the picture were embossed, and so on and so on. In no time, it was quite different. This was the final version.

Just the comparison of the two yellow backgrounds is enough to make me think, what the hell have I been doing all this time? I have no sense of design whatsoever.

I at least have enough of a sense of design to know that the new image is vastly superior to the old one I'd done. It got me wondering what my daughter could do if she took a look at my old covers for books that were already out. I thought Christmas Creatures was the most likely suspect. Here's what it looked like right now:

She went right to work again, and smoke started rising off the CPU as it tried to keep up with all her changes. She never does anything halfway, and after a long time messing with it, trying several options, and abandoning some ideas, she had a cover that now looked like this:

She also re-did the wraparound cover for the paperback and hardcovers for me.

Original:

And new version:

I bought an eBook about marketing self-published books, and one of the main things the author stressed was having someone professional design your covers. He harped on that over and over, bringing it up again and again across various chapters and sections. Looking at these two covers helps me to understand exactly what he was talking about. I can't afford to hire some professional to design my covers for me...but, I did sire one of those people. She seemed awfully amenable to designing covers. I guess I really need to have her sit down and do all my covers for me, it seems.

Project Hail Mary

After a couple of dour Richard Bachman books in a row, it was nice to take a break and try something else. This time around, I grabbed Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.

I wasn't prepared for this book. It turned out to be one of those books that I loved so much that I just wanted to be reading it all the time. Of course, I do almost all of my reading via audiobooks, so binge reading an audiobook is a different prospect. You can only listen to an audiobook for as long as your mind is unoccupied. If you do something too mentally taxing, you will stop paying attention to the book and find that you are lost and don't know what's going on, but because you don't have to sit on the couch looking at a book, you will find something to do. I think it's just generally more difficult to pull off.

I found that I was able to listen to my audiobook while formatting Sunny & Gray for publishing. That wasn't too much for my mind to concentrate on both. So, that was nice. I was able to get two things done at once.

The book was completely delightful, and not at all what I suspected it was going to be at the beginning. I won't talk too much about the plot to avoid spoiling it, but it's high-concept stuff (as my screenwriting teacher, John Lee, used to call it) and there are some very touching moments that will bring tears to your eyes even though the events are only playing out on the stage of your mind.

I loved The Martian by Andy Weir. Now, I've loved Project Hail Mary. I'm going to have to get Artemis, the one book he's done that I haven't read, and go after that one soon. This guy does good stuff.

Sunny & Gray

About a decade or more ago, I came up with an idea about a boy named Robbie who catches a dragonfly with a net, and when he tries to take the dragonfly out it panics and bites him. When he gets bitten, everything changes. His eyes are opened to a world that he never guessed existed. The dragonfly in his net is not a dragonfly at all, but a fairy in disguise. Humans aren't able to see through these disguises, but now Robbie can see the truth.

Robbie is enchanted and amazed by this new world, and spends all his time learning about it. He becomes friends with the fairy who bit him, bringing him into this new reality, and their adventure unfolds from there.

I posted the first chapter of this book on here all the way back in 2014, and I struggled my way through the story from there. I posted chapter two as well a few months later. Then, as was usually my problem, I couldn't keep at it. I never let it go, though. Several years later, I got back on the horse, and posted chapter three in 2017.

That was the turning point for the book and for my writing in general. It was the first time that I ever managed to start writing with any frequency. In 2017, I wrote every day for nearly four months. The majority of that time was spent on Sunny & Gray. I posted chapter four in March of that year, and I pushed onward until I finished the whole novel on, from my calculations, April 20th.

I remember that night, because I was so excited. I'd just written "the end" on my very first novel! I couldn't believe that I'd actually achieved such a feat.  I was now, officially, a novelist! I'd actually achieved something positive for once in my life! I felt like Fezzik in The Princess Bride. "Then I saw them. Four white horses, and I thought, there are four of us, if we ever find the lady...oh, hello lady!" I could just imagine Inigo Montoya smiling down at me and saying, "You did something right!"

Don't worry. I didn't let it go to my head. I stilll kept struggling. I lost my mojo with writing less than month later, and had to fight to gain it back over and over again...but something good did come from that day. I wrote a book. I wrote my very first full-length novel. 

It's been seven years since I finished it, and there have been plenty of struggles since then, but I'm finally in a position to put it before you and allow anyone who wants to read it to do so. That's right, Sunny, book one of the Sunny & Gray trilogy is available on Amazon.

I made sure to put all three formats, eBook, paperback, and hardcover, out at the same time this time. The audiobook will have to wait. My voice still hasn't come all the way back yet from when I was sick, so my audio production is falling way behind, but I'll get there. I think I'm going to try to really step it up over the next while once my voice returns to full strength.

I really love Sunny. I think it's a great book, and I hope y'all will agree. Check it out and enjoy. If you're wondering whether you would like it or not, read those first few chapters that I posted. That'll probably be a pretty good indicator.

Book two of the trilogy is already written, and I'll be preparing it for publication next. Book three still needs to be written, and I guess, depending on how the first two are received, I'll get that done in due time. It's one of my favorite worlds to visit, so I'll be happy to finish it off.

Blaze

This one has been on my shelf for a while, but I've never gotten around to reading it until now.

But, as I said in my last book post, all my Stephen King holds were coming in at once on Libby. So, this was what came up next. I should have found something else, especially considering that I disliked the Richard Bachman book I read last.

This one wasn't as bad. It wasn't good, but it wasn't that bad. Blaze is a bit of an homage to the Steinbeck novel Of Mice and Men. The main character, Blaze, is the Lennie of the book. He was abused as a child, suffered a head injury, and came out of it mentally disabled. His partner in crime...yes, the guy was named George...died a few months before the start of the book. The two had been planning their biggest hit of all, kidnapping a rich guy's kid and getting the ransom from it. But now, Blaze is left rudderless. He tries to pull the scam on his own, but he doesn't have the intellect to manage it.

The book is sentimental and cute, but not particularly good. It's not terrible or depressing like the other Bachman Books that I mentioned in my last post. This one was written by King in the early days of his career, but turned down by the publisher. He decided to put it out back in 2007 as a Bachman novel, but it doesn't really feel very Bachman-esque. Which made it a little more pleasant, but it did still have the sad ending.

I can't really say much about it. It's probably good that King didn't put it out as his follow-up to Carrie, because the best I can say about it is meh.

Roadwork

I mentioned in my last book post that I had gone through and placed holds on pretty much all of the Stephen King books that I had never read before.  They all started coming up available in the last few days for me...all at once. I had to push most of the holds off, and pick one to go with. The first one that came up was Roadwork, written by Stephen King under the name Richard Bachman.

I have to say that I'm not a huge fan of the Bachman books. I used to have the omnibus edition of those that they published a years ago called The Bachman Books. I thought I'd read the whole thing, but I never did get to Roadwork. I only read The Long Walk, Rage and The Runnning Man. I remember being blown away by the ending of The Running Man, considering that it was originally published in 1982 and made into a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1987. ***Spoiler Alert for anyone who hasn't read it*** It ends with a man purposefully crashing a plane into a building to kill the TV execs. That was almost twenty years before 9/11, but I never read it until after. They could never make an accurate movie rendition with an ending like that. Not anymore.

Anyway, it turns out there were four books in The Bachman Books, and Roadwork was the one I had missed. It may be that I did that on purpose. I might have grown tired of the cynicism and dour tone of those books. It seems like writing under a pseudonym gave King the freedom to be as dark and dreary as he wanted without any repercussions to his income.

Every one of those Bachman books were dark, depressing, jaded, and grim. Life sucks. It's not worth living. There is no meaning and there's nothing worth saving. It's no surprise that they all end with dour BD Anklevich-style unhappy endings.

Roadwork was another book in that same tradition. Because of that, it took longer for me to get through it than I had been doing. There was definitely less to get excited about and keep me coming back for more. Luckily, it wasn't that long, so I did make it to the end, but there wasn't a whole lot in it that I found to recommend.

It's kind of funny to hear a review like this from somebody such as myself. I've written too many dark and dreary stories of my own to be complaining about reading one, right?

Paper Copy

If you're like me, and you like to collect physical copies of books and display them on shelves to pretend like you're way smarter than you are, then you'll be excited to know that Rish Outfield now has a new book available in a physical copy. It's going to be so great to get one. People will think I'm smart enough to actually understand the intricacies and themes in these fancy story books. You can get them in paperback, hardcover, and eBook. I'm sure they will also eventually be available in audio, but that's always a big and difficult process, so it'll be a little in the future.

I mention Rish's book on my blog because...well, we're friends, but also, I had a big hand in creating the book. I helped him get the thing formatted, designed, edited, and so forth. So, the better it does, the better I feel about myself. And trust me, I could use a reason to feel good about myself. 

The book is a collection of the first five stories in the Lara and the Witch series, namely:

• "Like a Good Neighbor"
• "You're in Good Hands"
• "Made Just for You"
• "The People We Touch"
• "Here to Help"
  

It also includes a short little piece of flash fiction Rish wrote in which Widow Holcomb goes to a parent-teacher conference with Lara's teacher. That one is called:

• "A Short Interlude"

He also wrote author's notes for all the stories and a new introduction that starts the book off. It's really just too much. The guy is a prince to give you so much, amiright? For a little preview of what you get, here's the cover it comes with:

The book also has several illustrations inside, which is a new thing that we haven't tried in any of our books yet. I was thinking of doing it for my short story collections, but I never did pull the trigger on it, so this is the big debut! Here's a couple of the pictures you get.

Wouldn't you love to own a book with snazzy pictures like that inside? That's right. I said snazzy. I bet you haven't heard that word in twenty years.

Anyway, I figured I'd come on here and trumpet a little about Rish's book, because I know that he won't. Not that my added voice does a lot to amplify the message, but maybe one person that wouldn't have known about his book otherwise will, and that should be good enough, shouldn't it?

The Wind Through the Keyhole

After finishing up The Death of Kings and getting back on track with my reading, I was eager to get another book to read. I was talking with Rish a few days ago, and he was mentioning how surprised he was to realize that, even though he knew all about the book, he'd never actually read Stephen King's Duma Key. He's a huge fan of Stephen King, as am I, and he's pretty much read it all, but this one had escaped him somehow.

I confessed to him that I'd never read Duma Key either, and I thought maybe I ought to rectify that too. I got on the Libby app to check it out, but there was a line and I had to put it on hold. While I was at it, I figured I should go through the list of King's books that I hadn't read, and put those on hold as well. I almost always love Stephen King's books (aside from Cujo, which I've tried to read twice, but never managed to finish), so they probably wouldn't derail my progress (unless I tried Cujo for a third time).

I went through and placed holds on more than a dozen books, and the first one that came up as available was The Wind Through the Keyhole, a Dark Tower novel. I read the Dark Tower series through to the end, but Stephen King went back and added this novel into the middle of it in 2012, so I was able to revisit my favorite characters again in an all-new adventure.

Although it didn't turn out to be quite that. There's actually precious little time devoted to Roland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy. The story takes place in between books four and five, and our heroes are force to take shelter from a crazy storm that blows through Mid-World and kills pretty much everything in its path that isn't sheltered away very securely and warmly.

While they shelter, Roland decides to tell them a story from his past. He weaves the tale of the time he was sent to Debaria to catch a skin-man, which is a shape shifter akin to a werewolf but that isn't limited to just one creature. It can turn into various things. Weirdly, in the middle of this tale, Roland tells another story (we're going deep here. This is the Inception of The Dark Tower. It's a story within a story within a story), this one a tall tale or a myth about Tim, who has to deal with the loss of his father and save his mother from troubles that arise by going on a long quest.

It was an odd bit of framing to make our way through all these nested stories, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. Rish, I gather, is not a fan. Probably because there's no real consequence to the tale, since Roland and the others aren't really a part of it. I didn't mind it. I found it fun. 

Not only that, but I managed to make my way through it in only a few days. I stayed home sick from work last Wednesday, and while home, I decided to put up as much of my Christmas toy decorations as I could. I had the audiobook playing the whole time that I worked, and I burned through a huge portion of the book in that one day, only doing a tiny amount before on Tuesday and after on Thursday to finish it. That's always cool to jam through a full-length novel so quickly. It feels like an accomplishment for some reason.

My only gripe was that the finale of the story was kind of weak. Gunslingers are just to capable with their shots, so there wasn't a lot of drama about it, and, of course, since it's a prequel, there's no actual danger to the characters. That's the ultimate problem with prequels. We know damn good and well that the character is going to survive just fine.

It's already time for another book. This time, Stephen King's book that he wrote as Richard Bachman came up as the next thing available. So, in a few, I'll be back to talk with you about Roadwork. I thought I'd read all the original Bachman books, but this one doesn't sound familiar at all, so we'll see how it goes.

Death of Kings

I had a run of several books in a row that just turned me off. They didn't appeal to me in any way, even though I had reason to expect that they would. I was upset by this, and wondered just what the deal was. As usual, I figured it was probably me. There was probably something wrong with me. If everybody else liked these books, but I couldn't even keep my interest for a day, then I must be defective in some way.

I gave up on reading for a few months...to be fair, I gave up on writing and many other things during that time too. I was in a general funk. I have managed to pull myself out of that funk, though. I finally tried picking up some books to read again, and started with Isaac Asimov's Prelude to Foundation. 

While it wasn't a barburner that I couldn't put down for a moment, I still enjoyed it, and managed to make my way through it without having the time on my library book run out on me before I finished it. That was a big accomplishment for me after the last few books I'd tried.

Once I finished Asimov, I played it safe. I remembered one of my favorite series of books, and decided to get the next one of those. Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Stories book six is called The Death of Kings. I knew that one would appeal to me, so I grabbed that.

These books are just fun. They won't be for everyone. I think they're very male specific-type stories. They tell the tale of a medieval Saxon warlord living in the time of Alfred the Great, and detail his wars and conquests. They're mostly fictional, but there are snippets of true history woven into them as well. Most of all, though, they're fun. 

I always like them, and this time was no different. This time, I worked my way through the book quickly, in just a matter of days. Now I feel like I'm fully back in the swing of things. I can read again without getting totally bored and looking for something else to do. Maybe I just have to be more careful with what I choose to consume. It's okay to try things out now and then, but don't go overboard right away, because you just might cause problems if you do.

My Yearly Reminder

It's that time of year again, so I guess I need to remind you that I have an awesome collection of Christmas stories assembled for you to make your holiday bright.

This year, all the various versions are now available. You can pick it up in eBook, paperback, hardcover, and even audiobook. Check it out on Amazon. It's best to pick it up soon, I think, to make sure that you can enjoy it during the Christmas season.

Just thought I'd let you know. Carry on...and happy holidays!

Prelude to Foundation

Way back in the last century, a young Big Anklevich got a three book omnibus edition of the Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov from the Science Fiction Book Club. I read the whole thing, which wasn't even all that long...particularly since those SFBC omnibus editions always had the tiniest margins in order to pack as many words per page as possible. Less pages meant less printing costs.

I really enjoyed the Foundation Trilogy, and had it on my list of favorites over the years, but I never bothered to read any of the later books that came in the series. The first ones were written in 1951, 1952, and 1953. Asimov didn't come back to them until the eighties. That smacked of a sequel that nobody wanted, which we are plagued with these days in every big series from Star Wars to Indiana Jones to The Matrix to Scream to anything else that Hollywood thinks that they might be able to squeeze a few more shekels out of. So, I never did read any others.

Then Rish's friend Jeff moved to Germany. Jeff was a huge speculative fiction book reader, and he had a big collection of books. Rather than pack them all up and move them to Europe or keep them in a storage facility, he chose to just give them all away to anyone who wanted them. Rish only had so much room to accept books from his friend, and he took all of his favorites, but he also knew that I would love to have more books to add to my own anemic-in-comparison collection, so he grabbed boxes worth of books that he thought I might enjoy.

I thanked him, and used many of those books to fill my shelves. I have this aversion, though, to having a book on my shelf that I've never read. It makes me feel like a fraud. Here and there, I set out on a new effort to read the stuff I have up there so that I can say that I have read them all. That's how I found myself reading Isaac Asimov's Prelude to Foundation.

It wasn't a magical return to a galaxy far, far away for me or anything, but it was pretty good. I find it to be an interesting thing that Asimov was doing in the end of his life. He was famous for a few different science fiction concepts, and he was weaving the universe together and uniting them all into one. 

My copy of Prelude to Foundation started with an author's note from Asimov that informed me what the proper chronology of his books were. The robots and Foudation went together, and he gave a nice delineated list of what was first, then second, then third, and so on. The funny thing is that hearing that list made me really want to read them all in that order now. I feel like I need to get to each and every one of them. I don't suspect that I will, but you never know.

Prelude to Foundation felt almost like a series of short stories stitched together, which shouldn't be surprising, considering that Asimov has written tons of short stories. He may well think in terms of short stories always, like Rish Outfield seems to. I like how he pulled it all together in the end, though. I won't spoil it in case you haven't read it yet, but the twist at the end was fun, and I liked it. 

Maybe I ought to try watching the TV series. I think I watched one episode of it, and didn't feel all that entertained, but maybe if I gave it another chance while I was in more of a Foundation mood...

Physical Media

When I talked about my goals for October, I lamented that I was only able to get the eBook version of Wizards and Angels published before the month ended. The paperback and hardcovers still hadn't come to fruition. Well, I'm here to report that they are now ready. I worked my butt off, and the hardcovers are ready for you lovely people.

If you've ever wanted a collection of paperback or hardcover books from B.D. Anklevich, now is your chance. Head over to Amazon and grab your copy! This is going to be the last volume of the short fiction collection for a while. It's time to move on to publishing novels. Coming up next is Sunny & Gray, Book One: Sunny. As long as I can manage to keep my act together, that should also come out this month. See you then.

Three Vampire Weekend Available In Audio Now!

It took a while for them to finally approve it, but it's here! Three Vampire Weekend is now available on audio at Audible.com. Check it out!

I had to make a new cover so that it was square, like it has to be for audio, so this one gets one more vampire added, to go along with Thor, the cat, and the missionary vampire. This guy is the farmer vampire from "Servants of the Master."

Making covers is always fun, so I can't complain. I hope y'all like the audiobook. I worked really hard on it last month and managed to get all of "The Elephant in the Room" done on time. Then, of course, Audible took almost two weeks to approve the book. So, it's only available now. But check it out and enjoy. I hope you love it.

Again, find it on Audible. I think, if you use my link, then I get a bonus if you start a new membership. So, if that's your plan, click that link. Oh, here's one for the UK: Audible link for UK and here's one for Australia: Audible link for Australia and here's one for Canada: Audible link for Canada. Sorry, Gino, they don't make one for New Zealand. Do they not do Audible out there? I can do one for Germany or France, which seems kind of weird, since the book's in English, but whatever. I guess you could use it to help you learn to speak English better, right? Try to listen and then repeat or something...

What Moves The Dead

I just finished T. Kingfisher's What Moves the Dead the other day.

To be honest, I only made it to the end of this book because it was so short. It was only five hours long to listen, and therefore, I doggedly insisted on finishing it even though it was boring the crap out of me. 

It was a send up of Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher." It was written to be a gothic-style story, and just didn't interest me in the least. I have to admit that this kind of stuff doesn't excite me. As much as Poe is a great point in literary history, I don't read him. His stuff doesn't keep me awake. So, this story, made to be similar to him, didn't do any better. 

I should have given up, but stubbornly, I pushed to the end. I can say I read it, but I don't know who else I'll say it to, because I don't really care to talk about it. There's a sequel to this book called What Feasts at Night, and I had it on hold as well, but I canceled that.

I read T. Kingfisher because Rish Outfield recommended her books on the Outcast. It was worth a shot, but I guess we don't have the same tastes when it comes to T. Kingfisher. There's nothing wrong with that. I suppose I'll move on, and see if I can find something I enjoy more to read.

I've been having bad luck with finding interesting books recently, so I hope things can get better. We'll see when I'm back with another report.

Nettle & Bone

I read this book because Rish talked about the author on his podcast. I figured I ought to check her out. I got on Libby and reserved some of her books. When it came up, I checked it out and started listening. When I told Rish what I was listening to, he said, "That's the best one." I had high hopes...

It took quite a while for the book to catch on for me, though. The earlier parts of the book didn't grab me all that much. In fact, despite the book being rather short compared to other things I've listened to, I managed to let the time run out on my check out. I had to return the book when I was only four hours in, and wait until it came up for me again.

When it came back up, though, the book felt more alive and exciting to me. Once we got to the part that the quest seemed to truly begin, it felt more urgent and exciting. I was more interested in coming back again and again, and I didn't forget that I had a book to listen to like I had done with it earlier. The last half of the book flew past, and I finished it in days. I returned it substantially early.

Admittedly, the story never really quite appealed to me. The quest was a little strange to me all along. The main character was desperate to save her sister. However, it wasn't the sister that she liked, but the one that she claimed hated her all through growing up. Why did they need to save her? Well, because her evil husband was making her pregnant. The main character was convinced that she was going to die from the pregnancies. Not to deny the danger of a medieval woman's risk from childbirth, but even then, getting pregnant was one of a human being's main drives. It's seems like going on a quest to stop her sister's husband from feeding her too much food, because people who ate too much got obese and might have a heart attack. Everybody around is desperately working to have enough food to survive, but our characters want to save their sister from eating too much?

Other than that, though, it was very interesting and fun. It went in directions that I didn't expect, and kept me coming back for more once we got past the early slowness. There was a little lack in the danger that they were in. It seemed like the author had Nerfed all the challenges they faced. When the Thief Wheel comes for them, takes them, and then just lets them go,  I had to wonder why anyone was scared of it and why there were people stuck on it to begin with.

I guess I'm not as big of a fan of T. Kingfisher as Rish is yet. We'll see if further experience with the author will catch me more. I have a couple more books by her on hold. So, depending on how things shake out, I'll be reading her again sometime soon.

Dawnshard

I know I said last time that the next audiobook that I'd be talking about was Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher. I had reservations in even putting that in the post, because I'd done that before and then things didn't work out and I felt stupid. I guess I should have listened to that instinct, because that's what happened this time too.

When the hurricane came to town, my cell service got so bad that I couldn't listen to my book for a whole week. By the time it finally came back, it was too late to finish the book. I only got halfway through it. Now I'm back in the hold line for it, and it say I'm number 63 in line for the 10 copies they have to loan out. Whoops.

So, I grabbed something else in its place. This time, it was another Brandon Sanderson book. It's called Dawnshard, and it is one of the mini side books from the Stormlight Archives series.

I checked it out a while ago, but just wasn't feeling it at the time, so I only listened to a chapter or so, before letting the loan lapse.

This time around, I didn't have the same malaise, and I managed to listen to the whole book in a friggin day. The book is pretty short, much smaller than a normal Stormlight Archive book. Those are usually a thousand pages long. This one was only 304 pages...but also they were smaller pages, because the book is the size of one of those old school paperback books, not the big trade paperback ones, but the little ones that people used to buy at the airport to read on a plane before their phones rotted their brains out and they couldn't engage their brains enough to read anymore. The whole audiobook is only seven hours and five minutes long.

I think I really liked that. What it felt like was a single story lifted out of one of the big Stormlight Archives books. In those books, Sanderson tends to write a story about this long about seven or eight characters, switching back and forth through the stories as we progress through the book. In this case, it was just the one character, and we got their one story. 

I think I really prefer that. I think I might like the Stormlight Archive series more if each book was just the story of one character. If they went through and divided up the stories into smaller solo books, it might appeal more. The only problem is that the finales tend to all merge into one chaotic intertwined superbattle, so it probably wouldn't work, but I think I'd prefer that.

This book wasn't amazing, but it wasn't bad either. It had some fun stuff in it, and I had a good time with it, so I guess I'd recommend it. Don't expect to have your socks knocked off, but you won't wish that you had your time back afterward, I don't think.

Up next...do I dare? Well, I'm pretty sure that up next will be Excalibur by Bernard Cornwell. It's the final book in the King Arthur series, and I've been waiting for quite a while for it to become available, so I'm pretty stoked to get to it. I should have plenty of time to listen to it too...at least, I hope I do. We'll see.

The Crown Jewels, Part 5

Sadly, this is the final post in this series. This is as far as the books go. The other two in the series are still to be published at a future date.

Here is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix:

This is the longest book in the whole series, and as such, you get a lot more pages that look like this:

But you still get plenty of pictures like these:

I particularly love this one.

I was just looking to see when the next book might be released. They came out once a year, at first, but when they got to the larger books, they started taking closer to eighteen months to two years to arrive.

I found out bad news, while looking for a release date. One, I didn't find any release date, because, two, Jim Kay has decided to call it quits before finishing the series.

He wants to pass the torch to someone else. Probably because he did such an amazing job that people think that a page like this one below is a little disappointing.

Because they expect pages like these:

I'm pretty upset, if for nothing else than that the art style won't match the rest of the way. The books can't be quite the same. It will be a bummer. I hope, that when they finally get around to putting out the last two books they get somebody who is pretty similar, at least, so that the collection seems to go together whell on my shelf.