Lee Hunts

TIGANA. This is a book that I picked up, not because of the book itself, but because of the author. Guy Gavriel Kay is a widely recognized author in the booktube space, especially for his prose. Not only this, but he writes fantasy standalones, and the lack of commitment is less intimidating. But what is this book actually about? Tigana is about a particular principality in a peninsula that seeks to liberate itself from a sorcerer's curse. The name of their province has been stripped away, from people's minds, from history, from everything. Whenever the name is spoken, it is simply not heard by those who were not born there before the spell was cast. In the Afterword, Kay compares this to the communist attempts to erase certain figures from history. There are the famous (or infamous) examples of photos that have been edited to remove figures who have been deleted from Soviet history books. In Kay's eyes, there is more to human loss than suffering. People can be unpersoned; ...

I wasn't planning on writing anything for Piranesi, if only because this is one of those books that I thought you should go into completely blind. I'm in agreement with pretty much everyone else on that because you can't really talk about this book without spoilers. I also balked at doing a spoiler review because I tend to do them when I have a lot to talk about, which is usually when I have issues with the book. It is safe to say I did not have many issues. But as I looked at some of the reviews and saw some of the interpretations of the book, I thought I would at least write something providing my take of the ending of the book, and also my interpretation of the story as a whole. Spoilers Ahead Greatest Strength The greatest strength of the book is the perspective shift. I don't mean that there is a shift during the plot of the book (part way through), but that the book's foundations are built on the "shift." We get the story from one perspective, and th...

I just finished reading the gargantuan novel, To Green Angel Tower, by Tad Williams. I thought about reading this book in parts, given its length. It's apparently up there with War and Peace in its length, and it is neatly divided into four sections—but I was engaged enough that I wanted to just finish the book. The fact that I heavily used the audiobook in conjunction with the ebook helped with that. This book is not only long, but it is the culmination of a trilogy. It finished The Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy. I have already reviewed the first two entries beforehand, and I will link them below. To briefly recap, I thought The Dragonbone Chair had potential, and it had an amazing climax. Stone of Farewell was not good, save for scatterings of scenes. It was basically the instantiation of middle book syndrome. But because my critique was simply that it didn't need to exist, I was still committed to moving on to the last entry eventually. Right from the outset, I have to s...

I just finished reading The Company, by K.J. Parker. This is not exactly a fantasy novel, but it certainly has that aesthetic. It takes you back to medieval times, and it captures the aesthetic of what you could call a grimdark fantasy novel; the catch is that there is no magic in the novel. It is a very dark, heavily character driven novel. People often criticize it by saying that nothing happens (until the very end), but that's because they go in expecting large and momentous events to unfold—kind of like a fantasy novel. The plot of this novel is very subtle, and it's more about the character dynamics than anything else. But another thing, which I think a lot of people miss in relation to this point, is that there is a certain way in which the story is told, which affects how people perceive its pace. We will get into the specifics below. The basic premise of this book is that Kunessin, a former military general, has returned home. He is making contact with all of his old wa...

I just finished the Stone of Farewell, which is the middle book syndrome of the four book trilogy, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, by Tad Williams. This book picks up right where The Dragonbone Chair left off, and like the previous entry, it methodically moves forward, following the various characters as they trek to their new destination. We have Simon in the north, with the trouble that Binabik is facing. We have Josua and his ragtag people now fleeing in the wake of the events of the last book. We have Miriamele, who is, in turn, chased by Isgrimnur, traveling south on a fruitless mission. And we have Maegwin, who is a headstrong woman now leading a defeated people after the first book. There are other characters, as well, who are more sidelined, but these are the core of the novel. All in all, I think this book was quite rough. It was a serious step down from book one. This does not mean there aren't good aspects to the book, but from a storytelling perspective, the way the story co...

I just finished reading The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams. This is the first book in his Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series. As described by Mike's Books Reviews, this series is about what happens after happily ever after. King John Prester is a great King that is loved by all. Legends are being sung about his exploits, when he rose to power. But now, he is old and dying, and he has two sons that do not love one another. One is destined to take the throne, while the other is suspected of wanting it for himself. But matters are even more terrifying to behold than that, as an ancient evil seems to be awakening in the north, and humanity is woefully unprepared for what is to come. Amidst all of these machinations is Simon, a lowborn scullion, who is a bare fourteen years of age. He is always lost in his head, fantasizing about romantic adventures, and finding excuses to escape this or that task at hand. But, as you can imagine, he is eventually swept up in an adventure of his own tha...