I Tried Starting Even More Fantasy Series

Because sometimes you don't want to read the whole book.

Back in August, I wrote a post talking about how I’d fallen out of love with reading fantasy. And the internet being the internet, I promptly received numerous recommendations for fantasy books. I put all those books on a list, thinking I’d maybe get around to trying some in the future, and it turns out, the future is now.

I previously did a couple posts (HERE and HERE) where I read the first fifty pages of the first book in a fantasy series and then decided if it was worth continuing. I really like this approach because it’s easy to trim my reading list when directly comparing books in the same genre. And fantasy book buffets are just plain fun.

So that’s what I’m doing this time except I’m giving them sixty pages. I was going to do five books, but the library did not get the fifth one until yesterday, so this means I’m going to do another one of these posts. Drop more recommendations if you want.

Also, I read these books in the order that they’re listed and in the order of what I thought I’d like, starting with the least likely to succeed.

Let’s see what I found.

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence

Pretty sure this book would burn, but I got it from the library, so no dice.

Alright. I’ve tried another of Lawrence’s books (Prince of Thorns) and I didn’t like that one either and quit not too far in. But that was his first book, so maybe he’s improved since then.

Also no dice.

I don’t know if this is true, and I probably never will, but I have the impression that Lawrence is one of those people who’s crass and pushy and unlikable unless you’re similar to him. Again, might not be true, but the reason I think that is because that’s how his characters come across.

The main girl is a scrappy fighter, emotionally repressed and annoying. Her village gets attacked, her aunt is most likely dead and she and the other kids get kidnapped and then rescued. So of course she squashes her fear and sadness, and contemplates (futile) escape because you can’t keep her down. When they get rescued, she is the one who keeps pace and asks questions, and when their rescuer gets attacked by a bear thing, she’s the one who has the presence of mind to attack the bear and kill it. Of course. And she’s the one person who dreamed of leaving her village and going to the city. She’s a fighter and will bulldoze everyone even if it’s a dumb idea. If you want to know the type of female character I hate in fantasy, she’s it. Right down the line.

And the other girls are equally bad. Some other fighter chick barges into the room where her friends are and tries to beat the daylights out of one of them in the name of sparring. But this is okay because she’s a fighter and emotionally damaged. Is this supposed to be a likable person in any way, shape or form? The other girls from the village are pathetic wimps and I’m left to wonder if there are any middle-of-the-road women. So far they’re either aggressive, cantankerous, annoying, and/or jerks, or fainting wisps of inconsequentialness.

Does he write nice, stable-minded characters? Is everyone twisted remnants of abuse and misery? I’d like some normal people who don’t care one way or the other about leaving their village and just barely keep up in the conflict, but are also genuinely likable. Where’s that fantasy story?

And the male characters. Ugh! One of the soldiers who rescues the kids…as soon as he opened his mouth I was like, “Oh. He’s one of those characters.” Swearing, right outta the gate. Modern swearing is a personal pet peeve in fantasy. On top of that, he spits, because it’s edgy, I assume. He does it several times, and the other fighter chick does it too, and it really annoyed me. It’s a nit-picky thing, I know, but this guy is not Clint Eastwood in a Western, so no, spitting does not add a lick of cool factor. (I don’t know if Clint Eastwood spat in a Western, but if he did, I’d give it a pass.) The soldier guy is also very aggressive to the point where he would be a terrible leader.

The main boy character is such a nothing burger I can’t bother to even talk about him.

What else did I not like?

I don’t like the world. I’m not interested in learning about any of the secrets that were hinted at. I hate the names of these people (Livira, Malar, Evar, Clovis etc.). And I just plain don’t care.

End of story. And this is the last time I give Mark Lawrence a chance.

Aren’t we off to a ripping start?

The City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty

Ehhhhhhhhh……….????????

It’s better than the first one. I’ll give it that.

So this girl is a conwoman who uses her ability of seeing/sensing people’s sicknesses to get as much money out of them as she can for providing her healing abilities. She’s hired to cleanse someone of a djinn (think demon possession but with an Arabian twist) and because she doesn’t believe in the supernatural, she agrees. But oh no! she accidentally summons a djinn while also attracting the attention of the bad monster thing in the person she was exorcising. Then she goes on the run with the djinn she summoned and it turns out that she’s actually Special™ and has entered into a whole new world of trouble because of her Specialness™.

The main chick invokes the dreaded “I can take care of myself” line, and that is a big ol’ red flag to me. I know the type of character this is and while she’s not as annoying as the one from the previous book, she’s on the same level and I don’t have patience for that archetype.

The djinn character is described as “strikingly, frighteningly beautiful” and that is another red flag. I can sense a romance a-budding and I like romances but… He’s that snarky, mysterious, brooding and aloof type—the stereotypical prickly man who is actually wildly romantic once you get past his barriers. And I’m just…I don’t find that attractive anymore. Ten years ago I would’ve maybe stuck through the whole book for his character, but now, that is not what I want to read. I think this is the first time I’m unearthing that realization and it’s very interesting to me. A difficult temperament on a gorgeous man doesn’t cut it.

There is a second POV which I did get to read some of. It’s some dude in the city that the chick is headed for and I don’t care. I know that’s not a helpful metric, but that is what this whole trial is all about: who can get me invested in under sixty pages.

I accidentally discovered the glossary. Can we just have a little note at the start of a book notifying readers that there’s a glossary/pronunciation guide/what-have-you in the back? Because if I were intending to read this book cover-to-cover, I might not have known it existed until I finished the book, which is not helpful. I think it’d be nice to let readers know that help is available within these pages.

But anyway, there are quite a few terms bandied about and some of them are explained, and yet there are A LOT of them, especially in the clothing area. I don’t think it’s realistic or a good idea to expect your average reader to remember and picture the dozen different names for long robes or headdress things. Maybe I’m just being too much of a Westerner, but the information I was receiving about this Middle Eastern world went beyond the limit of information I could absorb (and checking the glossary does get tiring). And when it comes to what people are wearing, the more details there are, the less likely I am to clearly picture them. At a certain point, all I know is this person is wearing clothes, and that point is surpassed multiple times in this book. So yeah, there’s a fashion department’s worth of information in here and I don’t care.

The whole mystery about who this girl is and what sort of powers she possesses and is she the key to everything, not interested. The intrigue, the journey, the factions of dangerous powers, the uncovering of truths…I was not hooked. There’s this chunk where information is thrown at me and I had not been given a reason to like any of the characters involved in said troubles, so the information was more hindering than enticing.

Before I sat down to write this review I was thinking that if the other books don’t pan out, I’ll give this one another forty pages. I’ve talked myself out of that. It’s a pass.

Empire in Black and Gold by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Okay. Alright. This one has potential.

It jumps right into the action. A city is being attacked and we watch a group flee the city. It seemed like this group would be the main characters, but the next chapter jumps ahead over a decade and the actual main cast is introduced: a mixed bunch of students who are about to be sent on a mission to discover what those attackers from the past are planning now.

The biggest hurdle for this book is the amount of information that gets thrown at you in the first 60 pages. Over a dozen characters are named, locations are rattled off, politics are already being discussed, war is about to kick off, trading agreements and age-old feuds are laid out, and that’s not to mention the world itself, which is heading toward the steampunk side, but has retained the fantasy feel.

And as if all that isn’t enough, the people are…humanoid, but they have bug characteristics and some bug body parts. We have beetles, spiders, mantids, moths, flies, ants, wasps and more. Some of them can fly, some have spurs in their arms, and then there are broader attributes, like the ants can communicate telepathically and the spiders are known for their deviousness. It’s not something I’ve come across before and it’s a lot to learn, but I don’t think it’s too weird to get onboard with and they still sound human, so it’s not like I have to unravel bug-speak too. I think there are regular humans too, but they haven’t come up yet.

This is by far the most innovative and bold take on fantasy that I have found in recent memory. Human bugs and advanced technology are not the norm, so points for that.

The characters themselves are not offensive. Yet. The four main characters are a beautiful, cunning woman (spider), a foreign prince who thinks very highly of himself (dragonfly), a halfbreed who’s trying to prove himself (ant/beetle), and a girl who is also trying to prove herself (beetle). And there’s their mentor/master, who I assume is still going to have a part to play, even though the four are leaving for their quest. I’m not attached to any of them, but there is the possibility that I could grow to care for them.

One thing I wasn’t expecting is that the narrative is not close third-person. By that I mean the chapters aren’t locked in on one person for the whole chapter; it hops heads on the same page, which is not normal anymore. In fact, some might say that it breaks the rules. That’s silly because it didn’t confuse me and it works well. It’s just another unique thing about this book.

And I have to point out that if anyone else wrote this book, chapter one would’ve been called a “prologue” and here it isn’t. I love that because I hate what prologues have become synonymous with: boring trudges that won’t make sense until much later in the story/series.

This slapped me with a ton of new information, but I think I came out of the other side without losing all hope of following the plot. So if none of these other books work, I’ll give this one more pages.

I sampled another of this author’s works during a previous fantasy trial and the main character kinda killed the interest for me. But I thought the author could write fine and with a different setting, he still can, and I like it.

Son of the Black Sword by Larry Correia

Now this is what I’m talking about. One chapter in and we have a metric ton of testosterone. Love it.

And you know what is missing from these opening pages? Women. I think there’s one peasant woman, but otherwise it’s just dudes and that is precisely what I want. Not to speak too disparagingly of my fellow women, but they do not necessarily make fantasy stories better. If I had to take a guess, I’d say 90% of my favorite characters in fantasy are men. I know at least one woman is going to make an appearance in this story (there’s a picture with one in the background) but not immediately introducing one is a big plus for me.

The main guy is a Protector and defender of the Law and we meet him as he’s about to fight a demon. The demons fell to earth a long time ago and were pushed back to the ocean and now the ocean is corrupted to the point where no one can sail upon it. That’s cool lore. Some hints about the past are sprinkled throughout and I have the impression that because the main guy is so dogmatic about upholding the Law, that we’re heading for a conflict with the Law and he’s probably going to end up breaking away from his Order to become a lone wolf type. I’m interested how someone like him could be convinced to alter his purpose in life.

What caught my attention about him is that he reminds me of what I thought Geralt from The Witcher series would be. I wanted a monster hunter killing monsters and that’s not where Geralt’s story stayed, which disappointed me. With this book, I don’t know how much more demon slaying is in store, but I’m getting the sense that it’s closer to what I want than any Witcher book.

Another interesting thing is that the story starts in the present, but a couple of the chapters go back to when the guy was in training. Normally when a book starts with the guy at full strength and then flashes back to when he was a kid, we have to suffer through many more pages, or perhaps the whole book, before we get back to when the guy is skilled. But this one goes back and forth, not every chapter and not to the same time, and I find that a refreshing way to add flashbacks.

Some of the dialogue is obviously for the benefit of the reader and not what I would call organic conversation. Giving information in dialogue is preferable to solid paragraphs of sludge, but sometimes it makes for stilted conversations. It’s too early to tell how much of the dialogue is stilted.

The writing style isn’t too flowery or bland, and while it does sprinkle in made-up words and numerous locations, the context prevents me from getting lost, and there’s a handy-dandy map. No idea how to pronounce most of the words/places, but unlike the first book in this post, it doesn’t rankle. Much. Frankly, I don’t like the names in any of these books, but that might just be because I haven’t read any fantasy in a long time and it’s taking me a minute to adjust. (It’s been two years since I read a straight-up fantasy book. I didn’t realize it’d been that long.)

Long and short of it is I’m going to continue reading. This was one of the most recommended books and I have to say, you guys done good. Hopefully. It could still go downhill.

---

And there we have it. One book a win, one is a maybe, and the other two are rubbish. That is what I call success. I’m going to continue doing this type of thing for as long as I can. I really enjoy it, so give me more recommendations if you have them.

---

Thanks for reading! Don’t forget to like, comment, share, and subscribe if you haven’t yet! You can show your support by upgrading to a paid subscription or leaving a tip with Buy Me A Coffee.