Sometimes, when I’m writing back-to-back reviews within the same series, I find that I don’t have enough to say about each book, specifically, especially while reserving series-wide thoughts for the series review. That isn’t a concern here.
The Dragonbone Chair Review
There are two main ways to read The Dragonbone Chair and its sequels in the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy, and they are not mutually exclusive: this can be thought of as a historical fantasy story with sorcerous elements, or as a Tolkien-style fantasy with strong historical elements.
Foundation Review
It was actually a television adaptation of Foundation that prompted me to realize how long it had been since I last read this science fiction classic, and that it was probably time for a revisit. My wife and I recently watched AppleTV’s interpretation of Asimov’s novel, and so I decided it was an opportune time for a reread.
Reaper Review
Will Wight’s Cradle series might be my current guilty pleasure read. These fast, light, action-packed, “martial arts” fantasy novels aren’t Brandon Sanderson masterpieces that will massively alter my understanding of how to write fantasy, they aren’t four thousand year old tomes of philosophy or history, they aren’t detailed technical analyses of obscure mathematical theorems (a textbook on the disc embedding theorem might hold the prize for the strangest book currently on my reading list), but every time a new one comes out (which happens with impressive frequency), I get a copy within weeks, and read it within days.
Blood Magic S3:E3: Making Change Release
For all that I really enjoyed writing this story, and think that you will enjoy reading it, I don’t have very much to say about it. It’s a simple story, really, introducing Arval and providing a little context and a little conflict.
Blood Magic Season 2: A Look Back
I debated whether I should do a reflections post for season two at all. Since I started doing the release posts, most of the ground that I would cover in such a post is covered in those, instead, and I don’t want to be redundant. While Blood Magic is a major part of IGC Publishing at this point, making up the bulk of its content, I still want to be able to appeal to and attract readers who may not be interested in that particular series. However, I found after I finished the season two finale that I had enough to say about the season as a whole to make this post worth writing. Plus, I try to keep from putting spoilers to the events of the episode in the release posts, so consider this you spoiler warning: I do not intend to be so careful here.
Blood Magic S2:E3: Strange Lands Re-Release
My main goal, going through revisions having now completed the Pifechan invasion episodes at the end of season two, was to help readers understand the Pifechan mindset, and to make them seem less like a tropy evil empire out to dominate the world.
Child of Light Review
new and non-Shannara, I was therefore skeptical, but intrigued. Perhaps the only notable non-Shannara works he has published are The Magic Kingdom of Landover series, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was my hope that Child of Light would tap into whatever had enabled Landover. Unfortunately, my hopes were misplaced, and Child of Light proved to be anything but fresh.
Blood Magic S3:E2: The Society of the Broken Promise Release
On the surface level, it is about the straightforward problem of countering the Gälmourein threat. On a deeper level, it is about the mysteries involved, and in that respect this is a little bit of a bait-and-switch.
It’s a Not-So-Small World
couple of days, and I will get to my destination quickly, with readily available food, shelter, fuel, and other resources readily available in familiar forms all along the way. I can get in an airplane and fly anywhere in the world with a minimum of effort and time expended. Even more remarkably, I can take out my phone and conduct a live video conference with people in a dozen different countries, and we’ll hardly notice a delay.
