2024 Reading Recap

I thought it would be fun to look back at what I read last year in fantasy. 2024 was a bit of a disappointment because I only read five things: four books and a short story. This was down from the nine I read in 2023. I'm happy with what I read, but wish it had been more. Oh well, there's always this year.

Convergence by Craig Alanson, read by R.C. Bray.

This was free on Audible, and wanting to read (or rather, listen) to urban fantasy that wasn't Dresden Files, I decided to give it a try.

It was fine. The story is about Kazimir Wolf, a guy who's also possibly the only wizard in the world just as magic starts to make its return. because of this, he finds himself constantly on the run from people trying to capture or kill him. He's soon joined a talking golden retriever named Duke who is possessed by an ancient Babylonian wizard, and two warriors from the middle ages: Markius from Egypt, and Giselle from France. On top of this, Kaz has to deal with an impending event called the Convergence that could spell doom for the world.

I had two main problems with Convergence. First, it dragged on for too long. The audiobook is only 16 hours, but it honestly felt longer because the plot moved at about fast as a glacier. Alanson spent too much time writing funny scenes with Kaz and Duke that didn't serve any purpose whatsoever. Second, the bad guys were practically a footnote. They appeared in a couple of brief scenes in the first half, then disappeared until near the end. It was the same for these two other characters who were nominally supposed to be trying to find Kaz to help and protect him, but worse: they made a brief appearance in the first half and likewise didn't pop back up until the end. If Alanson had cut out some of the needless fluff and wrote more scenes featuring those aforementioned other characters, I would have enjoyed this a lot more.

Having said that, I do plan on reading or listening to the second book in the series, Dragonslayer.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

Redemption's Blade by Adrian Tchaikovsky, read by Nicola Barber.

I loved this story. Redemption's Blade is about what happens after the evil dark lord is defeated and it's not a happily ever after. Celestaine is one of a band of heroes who managed to kill the evil demigod known as the Kinslayer and put an end to his war of conquest and annihilation. That was ten years ago and the world is still reeling from the devastation. Now, she's on a quest to undo an evil the Kinslayer inflicted on one of the many races he conquered and has to contend with the aftermath of the war.

This was a good fantasy story and I enjoyed seeing a fairly realistic portrayal of what a fantasy world would look like after a massive and destructive war.

Rating: 9 out of 10.

Goblins & Greatcoats by Travis Baldree.

This was a fun short story that Subterranean Press released for free on their website. It's set in the same world as Baldree's Legends & Latte series. In this, a little goblin named Zyll arrives at an inn one rainy night and has to solve a murder. Nothing much I can add to this other than to say that I really liked it.

Rating: 10 out of 10.

The Black God's Drums by P. Djèlí Clark.

A very interesting novella set in an alternate timeline where America is still divided by the Civil War (which is a frozen conflict IIRC), and Haiti is a regional, if not a world power with its own fleet of airships. The main character is Creeper, who's a young thief in an independent New Orleans who wants to join the crew of the airship Midnight Robber. To do this, she shares information with the Robber's captain, Ann-Marie about a kidnapped Haitian scientist who possesses knowledge of a weapon that could kill thousands if it falls in the wrong hands. At the same time, Creeper has to deal with an African goddess in her head.

I enjoyed this and wouldn't mind revisiting the world if Clark ever writes sequels.

Rating: 8 out of 10.

A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny, read by Matt Godfrey.

I read, or rather, listened to this as part of a book club. The book is set over the course of the 31 days of October as a varied group of characters in Victorian era England prepare for a ritual event at the end of the month. All of them are supposed to be famous historical figures and fictional characters, which quickly becomes clear. What makes this story interesting is that it's told from the POV of Snuff, a dog belonging to one of the players, Jack, as he goes about his duties and interacts with the animal companions of the other players. Another interesting bit is that a lot of the book's fans will read one chapter a day for the entire month o October. I didn't because I was listening to the audiobook, but I may try it next October.

I enjoyed listening to this book. Zelazny doesn't miss.

Rating: 9 out of 10.

Blood Song by Anthony Ryan.

As you can see above, I didn't read or listen to much in the way of epic fantasy, but I did manage to fit one in. Blood Song tells the story of Vaelin Al Sorna, a man who was forced to join an order of warrior monks as a child and eventually grew to be a renowned champion of his kingdom. The book is set up with a framing device that a captive Vaelin is sent to fight another kingdom's champion and die. He's accompanied on the journey by a historian who wants to record his life story, which Vaelin relates. It's a tale of love, grief, pain, triumph, and tragedy.

I really dug Blood Song and plan to continue the Raven's Shadow series this year.

Rating: 9 out of 10.

And that brings us to the end of the recap. Like I said, I'm not happy with how few fantasy stories I read, but I plan on at least doubling the number this year. Hopefully, I'll do more than that.

In which I make another visit to Midkemia: I read Magician: Apprentice for the third time

 

And I still love it. I think if I were to ever make a list of my favorite fantasy novels, both Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master would be at the top of the list. I will never tire of visiting Pug, Arutha, Tomas, Kulgan, and the rest. I'm not going to review the book here, because I've already written my thoughts on this book before, which you can read here and here.

Suffice to say, I immediately picked up Magician: Master and I'm aiming to finish it before the end of the month. After that, I'll take a break before starting on Silverthorn and finally round it out with A Darkness at Sethanon. I'm going to make a concerted effort this time to continue the series. I didn't last time around because the time jump between ADS and Princes of the Blood was hard to get used to and I think I should have taken a break between the two.

Unlike the stock market, my fantasy reading isn't in a slump

TOPICAL HUMOR.

Anyways, here's a list of recent fantasy reads since the last time I posted about it:

The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny: This has to be the oddest, quirkiest series I've ever read. It's like modern fantasy mixed with portal fantasy and like high/epic fantasy.

Prince of Fools by Mark Lawrence: I owned this book for many, many years, but didn't read it because I had mixed feelings about The Broken Empire trilogy, of which I had read Prince and King of Thorns years ago. I didn't dislike the two books, but I wasn't exactly fawning over them either.  I decided to finally give it a chance once I had slain the slump and boy, am I glad I did. I enjoyed this book a lot and I'm planning on reading book 2, The Liar's Key next year.

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree: Yes, I hopped on the bandwagon and followed the hype train for this book and you know what? WORTH IT. The book lived up to expectations and I eagerly await the sequel.

Now, do I think that everybody is going to enjoy this novella? No. I don't see every fantasy reader sitting down to read a novella about a female orc warrior who quits the life of an adventurer to open a coffee shop. And that's fine because not everybody is going to enjoy reading the same things.

Storm Front and Fool Moon by Jim Butcher: I decided rather spontaneously to give the Dresden Files another shot and re-read (and in the case of Storm Front, re-re-re-read) the first two books. My plan is to try and read at least two books a month until I'm caught up. I'd prefer three, but I don't see that happening every month.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the year. I've got a couple of books in my reading pile and more that I haven't started yet. The slump is gone and good riddance!

Hopefully Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves will be as good as the trailer makes it look

I like that it's set in the Forgotten Realms. I'm sure there'll be folks who wish it had been Blackmoor, Greyhawk, or Dragonlance. Who knows, maybe one day they'll each get their time to shine.

Also, Sophia Lillis's tiefling druid character Doric? Adorable.

So how do y'all feel about the upcoming D&D movie?

Did you know reading fantasy books is cool? 👀

 I sure as hell hope it is, because I read five of them last month! Yes, that's right, your erstwhile blogger launched a bold attack on his fantasy reading slump in May and read five novels!

But in all seriousness, it was fantastic and I'm so glad that I did. I'm not quite prepared to declare the slump defeated, but I'm definitely getting there.

So, what did I read? I plan on trying to write individual reviews for each one, but here's a rundown:

The Black Prism by Brent Weeks: I started reading this last year, got about 50% through it before the slump struck me down, so I didn't pick it back up until towards the end of April, at which point I blew through it in a matter of days. Will be buying the second book in the series this year, hopefully.

The Sword-Edged Blonde by Alex Bledsoe: Same situation as above. I wanted something shorter to read about TBP, so I grabbed my tablet and restarted this from the beginning. I'm a solid fan for the Eddie LaCrosse series.

The Shadow of the Gods by John Gwynne: Found a copy in my favorite used bookstore and seeing how other fantasy readers (especially on booktube) were raving about it, cracked this bad boy open. I'm glad I did and needless to say, I'll be reading The Hunger of the Gods this year.

Green Rider by Kristen Britain: A fun read. Definitely meant to be an establishing book for the series.

A Shadow in Summer by Daniel Abraham: Another booktube influence. Those folks generally don't miss, so their opinions carry some weight with me when I'm deciding what to read. It was an odd book with an interesting culture, so I plan on reading at least the second book in The Long Price Quartet.

So, there you have it. Five books in one month. I've always added to the total for the year by finishing the second book in Roger Zelazny's Amber series, The Guns of Avalon.

Looks like I've got a lot of series on my plate, but I'm not complaining.

Here's the Wheel of Time trailer

Some people will complain about the changes and while I don't like one of them (Rand and Egwene apparently having sex), changes come with the territory. You're never going to get a faithful scene by scene, line by line adaptation because books and visual media are so wholly different from one another that you can never truly transfer the full essence of one to the other.

Just based on the trailer, the WoT show doesn't look bad.

Ten years

Well, holy shit. I can't believe that it's already been a decade since I created this blog, but it's true: August 24, 2011, I started Swords, Dragons, and Nerds because I fell down the fantasy rabbit hole and wanted a blog separate from my "main" one to write about what I was reading and all other things related to the fantasy genre.

And yes, I realize today is the 28th, four days after the anniversary. Ironically, I was aware last month of the date and wanted to get this out on the 24th, but alas, it was not to be. Things happened and I missed it. Oh well.

Here's to ten more years!

I read fantasy? #fakenews

But wait, it isn't, for I have indeed been reading fantasy fiction! True, it's just one book out of the fifteen books I've read so far this year, but hey, it's a start. So what did I read? A classic.

Yes, the first book in Roger Zelany's classic Chronicles of Amber series. What drove me to read this was two things: First, Daniel Greene included Nine Princes in Amber in a video of books that he wanted to read this year and that planted the seed. While I've read classic fantasy before, NPIA didn't really catch my interest for some reason. Seeing someone include it in their TBR in a YouTube video was evidently enough to do so. The second thing is that my favorite used bookstore happened to have a copy and I felt like it was worth the $2.50 to at least see if it was something I wanted to read. And it was.

So how was it? It was fine. I liked the way Zelany mixed the real world with a wholly fantastical one. I didn't expect it to go where it did in the last part, but I liked that it did. I plan or hope to read the next book in the series, provided I can find a copy.

I do feel like I'm starting to recover from this slump I'm in. I've been reading The Black Prism, which I need to get back to soon. My hope is that I can read at least four or five more fantasy novels before the end of the year. Far from what I've read in the past, but it's something.

Random thought: A Song of Ice and Fire as historical fiction

I can't tell you why this thought first popped into my head because it's been so long that I can't even hope to remember the reason. Nonetheless, it was something that spawned from my noggin like Athena from the head of Zeus and for lack of anything better, I thought I'd share it here.

So yes, reading A Song of Ice and Fire as if it were historical fiction is an odd notion and probably not one that occurred to George R.R. Martin when he conceived the series, but it's something that I don't think is that far-fetched. Historical fiction at it's biggest and grandest is simply the retelling (with liberties) of historical events as told from a mix of historical figures and wholly fictional ones. The stage is which ASoIaF is set is not dissimilar to that. If you were to excise the more fantastical elements like the dragons, white walkers, and magic, then you have a retelling of events that wouldn't be that far removed from what you'd read in a historical fiction novel or novels.

Indeed, you could take it one step further and argue that if the plot of the series were distilled down to just the events that occur, then the entire series could be read as a historical record. Political upheavals, assassinations, and wars of succession are exactly the kind of thing that happened in Europe for centuries, just sans dragons, zombies, and Kitt Harrington's perfect hair. In fact, when I finally get around to re-reading A Game of Thrones and (hopefully) the rest of the series, I'm going to try and do so from the point of view that I'm reading historical fiction.

Obviously, I bought more fantasy books

 Because when you're in a never ending slump, that's the sensible thing to do.

A Goodwill find and an impulse buy.

Found at a used bookstore that I've fallen in love with. I've never been heavy on urban fantasy outside of the like four Dresden Files novels I've read, but I'm willing to give this a try.

Bought this on Google's ebook store for like $.99 and read in fairly quickly. It was good enough to make me want to buy more of Parker's books.

Bought at a new-ish bookstore in town. I've reading it off and on and I'm going to make a concerted effort on this one.

Bought at same store as above. Lemme just quote you the opening:

In the myriadic year of our Lord - the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death! - Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth.

I'm hyped to read this one.

Another used bookstore purchase. Thought I'd take a chance on it.

Another new one. I've read it before, but wanted a copy of my own.

Does anything stand out for you? Read any of these before?