Lee Hunts

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...

In the A Song of Ice and Fire series, Tyrion is given a thought experiment by Varys, one of the more mysterious characters in the story. Here is the quote: “In a room sit three great men, a king, a priest, and a rich man with his gold. Between them stands a sellsword, a little man of common birth and no great mind. Each of the great ones bids him slay the other two. ‘Do it’ says the king, ‘for I am your lawful ruler.’ ‘Do it’ says the priest, ‘for I command you in the names of the gods.’ ‘Do it’ says the rich man, ‘and all this gold shall be yours.’ So tell me—who lives and who dies?" After Varys leaves, it is immediately suspected that the rich man would be obeyed by Shae, which says something. But Tyrion comes away with a somewhat more nuanced view, saying that it cannot really be answered directly, at least not yet, because there is not enough information, which implies an answer of its own. “All depends on the man with the sword.” But Varys has his own response to that: “[Y]et...

I just finished reading Emperor of Thorns, which is the climactic novel in The Broken Empire trilogy. I pushed through all three of the books in the series, as I was rather captured by Jorg, the main character. (Even as other people are outright repulsed by him . . . I should probably mention that, lol.) This book follows up the last book two years down the line, while also following a timeline from five years in the past. Another inserted perspective is also thrown in, similar to Katharine's from the last book, though this is executed in a different way. The second plotline serves a similar function to the secondary plotlines in the last two books: filling in the information that the main plotline requires in order to progress. Basically, all of this funnels the story toward the climax, where Jorg looks to become the Emperor, with the added tension of the Dead King, as he approaches the capital and wants to consume the world by killing everything in it. No Spoilers I was really le...