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.

2016 has been a pretty good year for fantasy reading

I decided today to do a tally of all the fantasy books I've read this year and I'm sitting at 11 right now. That's not bad, considering that I've read 24 books this year so far and that's a significant increase over what I read last year. Here's the list:

Stardust - Neil Gaiman
Storm Front - Jim Butcher
A Darker Shade of Magic - V.E. Schwab
Arrows of the Queen - Mercedes Lackey
He Drank, and Saw the Spider - Alex Bledsoe
Magician: Apprentice - Raymond E. Feist
Magician: Master - Raymond E. Feist
Silverthorn - Raymond E. Feist
A Darkness at Sethanon - Raymond E. Feist
Arrow's Flight - Mercedes Lackey
Arrow's Fall - Mercedes Lackey

I'm pretty happy with this list. I know that some of them aren't considered "top shelf" in quality and that there are other books and series out there that run circles around them, but I love every one of these books. Stardust is probably my favorite of the lot. I didn't think I would like the Arrows books because the main character starts out as a timid thirteen year old girl, but I was wrong.

I don't know if I'll be reading any more this year. I'm in a bit of a slump, which sucks because I wanted to read Emperor of Thorns. Well, there's always next year.

And that makes nine

(via Tor.com)

Just finished Dark Jenny not more than an hour or so ago, which brings my book reading total to nine with five of those being of the fantasy genre. I really binged on this book, running through 192 pages in a few hours. Dark Jenny is 348 pages total and if Google's math isn't wrong, that's more than half the book. I'm not sure if it's related or not, but I felt exhausted afterwards.

So next is either King of Thorns (Mark Lawrence) or The Mirror Empire (Kameron Hurley). The former is 419 pages, while the other is 511, not counting the glossary and such. Not even a hundred page difference, so either could work. They're both longer than Dark Jenny, which means it might take longer to read through whichever one I choose before the month and year end and I'd really like to make the number of books read a nice even ten. I guess it'll all come down to the one that hooks and pulls me in.

I do plan on writing reviews (or what I call reviews) for Dark Jenny and The Crown Tower at some point soon. I might wait until next month when I have more time I can spare away from reading. I have a mostly finished review about Legacies that I need to finish too.

You know what's a good book? Burn Me Deadly by Alex Bledsoe

(via alexbledsoe.com)

Actually read this book during the Summer and thanks to laziness, never got around to posting a review or anything else about it. Too late for that now, since it's been a while, but I still want to talk about it. Here's two reviews from two awesome blogs, though. First, here's the blurb:

Eddie’s riding back from a routine investigation when he nearly tramples a half-naked blonde who runs in front of his horse. The frightened young woman is clearly in serious trouble. Against his better judgment, Eddie promises to protect her, only to find himself waylaid by unknown assailants and left for dead beside her mutilated body.

Eddie isn’t the kind of guy to let this pass. But who killed Laura Lespertitt? Eddie’s quest for payback soon leads him to a tangled mystery involving a notorious crime lord, a backwoods dragon cult, royal scandals, and a duplicitous femme fatale who has trouble keeping her clothes on. As bodies pile up, attracting the unwanted attention of the king’s own men, Eddie finds that life is cheap compare to “the fire that dreams are made of….”

Burn Me Deadly is a really, really good book. It's a fantasy story with a seemingly standard grim and gritty setting, but with touches of detective and noir fiction. Eddie, for example, has a collection of swords with model names like what you would find today with firearms. Eddie is a sword jockey, a kind of man-for-hire and private dick (in more ways than one, badum bssh) who lives in a backwater town in a backwater kingdom. I like the modern touches because Bledsoe never allows them to overwhelm the medieval-ish setting. Then there's the assholes. MAN, are there assholes in this book! There's more than a few that you'll personally want to beat the living crap out of. I wish I had written a post about this book sooner, because I am leaving a lot out that I can't recall clearly.

Overall, Burn Me Deadly is worth reading.