The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

N.K. Jemisin

This book is great. It starts out as your classic "Hick from the country is suddenly heir to the kingdom what do", and becomes so much more. A story of captive gods, beautifully characterized. Honestly, Jemisin's gods are one of the book's huge strengths. They are utterly godlike, and utterly flawed, and honestly brilliant.

Not a lot actually happens in this book. If you're looking for Epic Fantasy, look elsewhere, although the fate of the world does happen to be at stake. This is about one person, one family, and the actions in one palace.

There is a lot of "intrigue", but it is by no means a political intrigue book. I'm honestly not sure what category to put it in.

The concept is great, the writing is mostly good. There are occasional moments of brilliance, and even more occasional mild burrs in the writing that pop me out of the story for a second, but the bad ones are minor, and the brilliant ones are truly great. But it's really the character's that make this the story it is. The characters, and the gods.

Also, I hate that this is significant enough that I feel obliged to mention this, but the protagonist is a black woman. If you're looking for diversity in fantasy protagonists (which is kind of abysmal I'll be the first to admit), this is a great place to look.

I would recommend this book to fantasy readers, or those who are interested in exploring what the genre has to offer. I'm trying to think of what books are like this, and it's certainly not easy. If I come up with something, I'll edit it in.

This is a complete trilogy, and the second and third books are both excellent. I'll write them up at some point. There is an accompanying novella which is also quite good.

And that's all for the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms ladies and gents.

-Leo

Gardens of the Moon

 Steven Erikson

This book is confusing as all shit. All books, especially fantasy books, have a certain number of chapters or pages where they just throw you into the mess, and explain things later. I have heard that this explanation begins to occur a little bit around the third book in this series.

That said, I'm enjoying being confused so far. It's well written, and Erikson can do an incredible brutal scene. There's some cool ideas that I think I'm picking up on, and some interesting characters, although those supposedly change every book as well.

This book sorta follows a group of soldiers, who used to be the elite guard under the previous emperor, and what they do when the new empress turns against them. But really, that's probably less than a third of the book. There's all sorts of stuff with meddling gods, wizard fighting, Totallynotdarkelves who live on a moon, and worldbuilding out the ass. It's hard to give a summary.

Erikson does a good job of compensating for the confusion. There's some lovely maps, as well as a glossary, and a Dramatis Personae section listing the names of all the characters, what category they belong to (Bridgeburners, regulars at the Phoenix Inn, etc.), without which I would be totally lost.

It has the added benefit of being the first book in a completed epic fantasy series. I personally plan on continuing with the series, at least until I cease to enjoy being totally lost.

I would recommend this book to hardcore fantasy fans. If you enjoyed Game of Thrones but thought it could use more unexplained magic and about three times the characters, odds are good you'll like this book. This is not for the light reader. Amazon tells me the kindle edition is about 500 pages long, but it feels longer because of the dense writing style Erikson uses, as well as the amount of time you'll spend looking up names of characters.

If you do enjoy, there's nine sequels after it, as well as a host of accompanying novels. I'll review the books as I finish them, and if I manage to make it to the end without losing interest, I'll do a series retrospective.

That's it for Gardens of the Moon ladies and gentlemen.

-Leo

A Beginning

I often get people asking me for book recommendations. This is my way of handling this. I'll review books as I read them, tagging them with things like the below, as well as with other books I think are similar/fans of the first would like the second.

Some tags explained:
Hardcore: For those who love the fantasy genre, and have read many books in the genre. Do not make this your first fantasy book for god's sake
Fantasy Reader: Anyone who's liked a fantasy book will probably enjoy this book. If you hate fantasy on principle, you'll still probably dislike this book
Good Start: A great way for people to get into the fantasy genre. This'll be a good first book, and will leave you wanting more. Odds are good I'll also consider this good for those who already read fantasy as well, since for the most part I'm not in favor of introducing people to a genre with less than great books.
Must Read: You must read this book. I don't care if you hate fantasy. You must read this book
Eccentric: I do not anticipate finding another book similar enough to this one that I'll actually label it the same way. If that changes, I will make up a new tag for this.

Obviously these won't be comprehensive, and they certainly won't always be accurate. Treat this more as who I would recommend this too without knowing much more about them than how much fantasy they've read. I do not expect all people who read fantasy to like all books tagged as Fantasy Reader. That'd be silly.

And that's it boys and girls. Read some damn books.

-Leo