Reading Journey Part 2
30 June 2019
This is part two of the blog about the books that I’ve found memorable in my years of reading. I mainly read fantasy and sci-fi books, so fair warning.
College Reading
After getting settled in college, one of the first series’ that I read was a Song of Ice and Fire or Game of Thrones, which is the first book of the series. I definitely started the series later than most original fans since a few seasons of the show had already come out by then. I got into it mainly because of the fact that Ned Stark was played by Sean Bean, who as we all know infamously plays Boromir in Lord of the Rings. I found the writing quality of the first book by far the best, since the dialogue felt extremely crisp. Tyrion’s dynamic in the whole book was an incredibly heartwarming since he was so sarcastic, salty, and bitter, but managed to make consistently smart decisions. Obviously the biggest question on everyone’s mind was who was Jon’s mother, which gave rise to the famous R+L=J theory, due to the way a lot of the scenes in the book played out. The introduction of Tywin in the book and the Red wedding were scenes that are highly memorable. The scenes at the wall with Maester Aemon, Jon, and Sam were generally my favorite parts of the book, shockingly even above the dragon queen. I never really enjoyed Daenarys’ scenes and wasn’t able to relate or find a compelling reason to care about her arc. It was always Jon, Tyrion’s, and Arya’s arc that kept me sucked in. It’s naturally been fairly disappointing to see that Martin still hasn’t released a single book in all the time, but hopefully he managed to finish the series on a better note than the disappointment that was the last season of the show.
After ASOIAF, I started browsing reddit to find the best of the best series’ that I hadn’t heard of to try and find my list of all time favorite books. One of the series’ that was consistently recommended was the Kingkiller Chronicles’ Name of the Wind. Whatever you are doing when reading this blog, stop and go read this series. I guarantee that you’ll never have read something with this much attention to prose, world building, and dialogue. The series is a coming of age story of Kvothe the Bloodless, a namer, who won and lost everything in his rise to infamy. I don’t think I’ve ever read descriptions of music so vivid or felt such sadness through the pages of a book. Even writing this is making me remember the great scenes in the story. The story has fairly interesting magic system that isn’t prevalent in the world and needs to be studied by experts for years to learn, whilst also having faeries and we manage to visit multiple diverse characters. Patrick Rothfuss’s careful attention to both the story and the world ensure that he introduces an immense history and weight to the world that many other stories don’t have. We learn everything from currency, fighting style, language, and religion from a variety of characters who all come to study in the University, the premier institute of learning in the world.
During my trips back home during my freshman year winter break, I had to spend what was looking to be a miserable 12 hours in Heathrow airport, waiting for my next flight. But, the Red Rising trilogy by Pierce Brown grabbed my attention and hooked me into what I consider one of the best Sci-Fi stories that I’ve ever read. The series is timed in a world where humanity has colonized the Solar System, but through an incredible lie. A color system where Gold’s are at the top and Red’s at the bottom was created in the process, where the Red’s are basically slaves who work to get helium-3, an atmosphere creating element that is critical for the economies and colonization of the worlds. The story follows the rise of Darrow, a Red miner who loses everything and believed that the Red’s were the first colonizers of Mars and were paving the way for others, but in fact Mars is fully colonized. He basically infiltrates the system by getting a surgery to become a Gold and “breaks the chains” from the inside of the system. The story has an incredible supporting cast with the genius blonde Mustang, the strong but kind Pax, the poet Roque, and the manic loyal Sevro. It’s an amazing space opera with whip like swords, space suits, giant ships, and lots of red herrings. I think the main reason why I love the series so much is that it literally keeps shocking and surprising me at ever part of the way. Even with this, it has insane reread value as I can attest to multiple times.
Over my freshman summer bored out of my mind in the suburbs of Chicago, I picked up a Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and finished by Brandon Sanderson. At the time, it was the biggest series that I’d read at a massive 14 books. The only reason why I managed to finish it in a month or so was that my internship had a lot of downtime that was fully utilized by fueling my reading addiction. Also, I was staying in the middle of nowhere and had nothing to do most days. The story is a somewhat typical coming of age story, but what differentiates it from most casts is the sheer number o fmain characters. There are 6 main characters, 3 male and 3 female, and a whole pantheon of villains that are revealed over the course of the books. Every book builds and breaks the characters that creates a truly epic arc for every one of the characters. My favorites were definitely Lan and Mat for the sheer badass-ness and the luck-making strategy that followed him during the story. The books’ ability to slowly build up the world from a single village into this multi-continental world astounds me, and I hope I get to read many more series’ of this epic magnitude and scale. The books deal a lot with the power dynamic between men and women and is one of the few series’ where the females have more power for most of the series sadly except for one mister Rand’Al Thor, the Dragon Reborn. The series is not in my top 5 due to the fact that it does tend to drag during the middle books. The battle scenes of the entire battlefield are some of the best descriptions of mage on mage battle and just mass destruction in any series’ that I’ve read. Brandon Sanderson was able to finish the series on a complete high and managed to write in a very similar voice as Jordan, that made the transition very smooth between the books. Out of most authors, Sanderson is the one I’d choose to finish a series all 7 days of the week.
Brandon Sanderson
Where do I begin to describe the sheer machine that is Sanderson? Most fantasy or sci-fi authors struggle to put out 1 book a year even at that. Some of the more famous ones struggle to write the next book in their series for 7 years on end, cough cough GRRM and Rothfuss. Sanderson meanwhile dominates every single year by basically putting out multiple books of the highest quality. After starting to write a bit more, I’m absolutely shocked at how phenomenal his proclivity at writing truly is. Just look at how phenomenally stacked his bibliography is link.
Sanderson’s life work is this massive interconnected world called the Cosmere that connects the most important of the series in the Mistborn, Warbreaker, Elantris, Stormlight, and 10 short novels in the world. The best part of Sanderson isn’t the fact that the worlds are interconnected, but the fact that each of these worlds has an inherent unique magic system that makes the world fundamentally different. His ability to world build and create a compelling story is amazing to see as he’s able to do it consistently better than anyone else. The saying goes quality over quantity, but in Sanderson’s case he truly has been able to manage both.
Stormlight
The stormlight series is Sanderson’s magnum opus. It’s going to be an epic 2 part series of 10 books with some cast intermingled between the two, but with the first 3 books out it’s already one of the best series’ out there with many memorable moments. The awesome part of the Stormlight series is the way Sanderson weaves in flashbacks that slowly reveal the motivations and history behind each of the main characters without them feeling hollow before those key scenes. The series follows the world of Roshar with Kaladin, an escaped slave now bridgeman to cross chasms for the army yet one of the most honourable people around, Dalinar Kholin, a renowned commander known for his bloodlust but who is know a pacifist, and Shallan Davar, a prodigy artist with a trauma filled past. It’s a world looking at the apocalypse with frequent storms that wipe all knowledge of humanity off during certain intervals and our protagonists are rising up to face it head on with the help of their Spren, tiny elemental creatures that give humans different powers when bonded. It helps that there are way too many badass swordsmen in the series.
Mistborn
Mistborn was an action filled adventure that follows the story of a lowly girl who has a full suite of powers. Powers on this world are dependent on the consumption of different combinations of metallic powder, though most people can only consume one type of power. The story was pretty good overall though I didn’t feel as much of a bond to the characters or story as some of his other pieces.
Warbreaker
The world of warbreaker is all about breaths that lead to different power levels. Humans have a limited amount of breath that they start with when they’re born and they can transfer or use up that breath as they live their life. The story has one of the best talking sword interpretations I’ve seen where this one sword basically wants to kill everyone, but asks as if he’s killing only evil. It sounds mortifying, but it’s absolutely hilarious. Definitely one of the more unique versions of magic I’ve read.
Steelheart
This is the story of superpowers being bestowed upon the entire world due to some cosmic event and now there are all these governments under people with powerful powers. The story honestly reminds me a bit of Boku no hero where the main protagonist is constantly researching the various powers of the Epics and trying to find weaknesses. I don’t remember enough of the series, but it had a very interesting arc with a lot of unique powers and solid plot without too much deus ex machina.
Jim Butcher
Dresden Files
Over the sophomore year winter break, my family and I went to a trip in Orissa, that I didn’t find particularly interesting. There was a lot of downtime spent in a car driving around. I used this time to read one of the best series that I’ve had the pleasure of reading.
The Dresden Files covers the life of the only publicly listed “Wizard” Harry Dresden, a private detective trying to make ends meet in Chicago. His story is filled with references to fairy tales, mythology, and an epic cast of myths and characters. His affinity for burning buildings, cute temple dogs, and just uncanny way of shit-talking villains are some of the best bits of the story. Oh have I mentioned zombie dinosaurs in one of the books? It’s a story of a good guy worried that he has too much power, but actually doesn’t and gets beaten up constantly for it at the whims of beings with greater power who use him for their schemes. Buuuut, there’s a point where he fights back and it’s glorious.
Books 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 are literally the pinnacle of action and mystery. The case files are basically cases that Dresden has to deal with by the author putting him through hell by preventing him from using resources and the sheer power of his rivals. Each of the characters has such thematic inspirations that it’s awesome to see their progression over a 15 book series that I’ve managed to read god knows how many times.
I consider Dresden Files the best damn urban fantasy series in the world and I’m really looking forward to Peace Talks, the 16th book which is going to have 0 peace from just reading the first chapter.
Codex Alera
Romans + Pokemon. Yup, you read that right. That’s what Jim’s friend told him after a bet that he could write about any subject. It’s actually an amazing 5 book series where the main character isn’t able to find his bonded Fury, elemental spirits. It’s a solid rollercoaster of epic marches, sieges, and voyages that spans 2 continents and a solid amount of character progression.
I’d definitely recommend Dresden Files over this first, but it’s a solid one time read to blast through as the books are fairly short.
Aeronaut’s Windlass
The first book in his latest cyberpunk book came out a few years ago, and I did enjoy the ships in the sky and the mystery behind what happened to the ground. It’s an interesting world where everything is built upon Spires with talking cats as captains of the ships and a world of magic. I just want Peace Talks first haha, but an interesting series that I’m looking forward to reading for sure.
Michael Sullivan
Honestly, the most wholesome fantasy author. I emailed him one point asking him questions and he was kind enough to respond. He self-publishes all his books and is super active on reddit and other online communities. He has a list of authors are similar to him in writing style that I used to find a lot of series when I was going through a rut of good books.
Riyria Chronicles and Revelations
The OG duo of Royce and Hadrian, the badass ruthless assassin and the honest bloody swordsman made a hilariously good duo throughout the series. It’s filled with great plot twists and turns that made it an absolute pleasure to read through their heists and plans. The duo are ridiculously charismatic, though it’s still the intriguing plot that pulls the story along. The side characters and different character arcs add a tremendous amount to the world and show us the lives of a variety of people beyond our protagonists. This serves as a way to flesh out the world and characters far better than stories where it just focusses on a single character. We get to see what the impressions of various characters are from supporting casts’ eyes, which is something that doesn’t tend to happen to often in these types of books.
The Lies of Locke Lamora was a story highly recommended by r/Fantasy, though I never got attached to it to the same level as some of my favorites. It was a solid series with a witty, quipping main character that had a mean streak to him. It’s a good story with decent villains, but mainly driven by the heist like nature of the thievery and the crew that Lamora forms.
I probably read around 6 books of the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. It was the first series that I read on my first kindle, which I think was something special to remember. The Discworld series is a story of fairly independent stories, with some continuations from previous books, that is filled with comedy and color. The books themselves deal with various topics from death to weird rules regarding Wizards and their ilk, which Pratchett makes a lot of fun of. The stories are fairly satirical, but draw the reader in with the interesting plots and absurdist nature of the series. An example of this is the main protagonist of most of the series, Rincewind. He’s a wizard with no talents, a complete coward, but somehow manages to save the day by being thrust into ridiculous scenarios consistently. He’s accompanied by “The Luggage”, a semi-sentient piece of traveling luggage that is honestly somehow more competent than Rincewind.
Malazan Book of the Fallen
Oh, my. Where do I begin with this epic journey? Probably the series that took me the longest time to ever finish reading, and as I’m writing this has over 24 books that I’ve read. A truly epic series filled with incredible characters, worlds, gods, creatures, and just plain old humans. It’s one of the hardest series’ to get into, but by every standard one of the greatest epics written.
Steven Erikson’s prose does a remarkable job both sucking the reader in later on, but terrifies new readers. It took me 2 attempts to get started with the series, before I bonded with the Bridgeburners of Whiskeyjack and the story of the Paran siblings. The donkey and Kruppe the godly, the story of Beak, the sheer awe inspiring nature of Anomander Rake are just incredible characters who inhabit the world that Erikson and Casslemont built. I mean Rake is literally a human who not only wields the sword that holds back Chaos itself, but also turns into a freaking black dragon.
Erikson’s way of writing is fairly confusing to a reader initially, as he doesn’t provide you with any information initially. The reader gains information whilst the story unfolds, which makes it an incredible page turner as you’re constantly like “What’s this? Why? Whaaaaaat, that’s so cool!!”. The sheer number of badass characters across race, gender, Ascendent, and even across continent’s is crazy. Tell me, how many series’ exist where the story spans multiple continents and covers a series of cities in each? I’d daresay that story doesn’t match up to this one.
If there’s two books one just must read, it’s Deadhouse Gates and A Memories of Ice. The sheer descriptive nature of those two make it absolute page turners, and the first three books form a mini-arc of themselves, but the second book has generally a different set of characters. I think the final battle in A Memories of Ice is one of the best book descriptions I have encountered, including Battle of the Pelennor Fields, Wheel of Time’s final battle, etc.
Did I mention there’s so many elements of comedy in the series? Kruppe and his donkey charging is something that I never knew I wanted, but needed in my life. That’s not even talking about Tehol and Bugg, the greatest peasant mastermind duo in literature.
Just read the damn series haha!
While Dune is constantly recommended in the Sci-Fi community, I never really enjoyed it. I found the main character to be extremely overpowered with basically minimal progression arc and struggles, where he kind of just got his powers. In addition, the villain was truly a Mr. Eggman type character without much depth or intrigue.
I’d also read the dragonlance chronicles, the Greatcoat, and Traitor’s Blade series’ during this time. They’re all good series but not particularly outstanding in terms of reread value and thus haven’t gone back and reread them.
Inda was one series that I kept pushing off, and when I read it the way the story progressed and the worldbuilding occurred was fairly unique out of the other series’ that I read. The main protagonist really has to struggle throughout his journey with extremely few instances where he gets all the things he deserves. Inda, the titular protagonist, is a genius tactician in some kingdom (I’m writing this far after the fact), who seems to be someone who is uncharacteristically quiet and introverted amongst his peers. He gets enrolled in the premier military academy and absolutely succeeds at it, but things just don’t go his way throughout the 4 books.
Guy Gavriel kay
- tigana: Solid read
- fionvar tapestry: just a worse LOTR
Post Graduation
Andrew Rowe
Just after graduation, I started this gem of a series called Arcane Ascension or Sufficiently Advanced Magic. It’s a story about a world filled with spires (equivalent of dungeons) and attunements (magic giving brands) that are based in the world of Kaldwyn with pretty unique combinations of elemental magic.The heroes have a fairly understandable progression from complete novice to really learning some small tricks that help them stand their ground, but really get curbstomped by the main antagonists. It has one of the most realistic progression arcs with pretty minimal deus ex machina, particularly since the main protagonist gets an Enchanter attunement, which isn’t combat based. The series really emphasises the points of teamwork and establishing your own style based on your strengths rather than copying what’s the best for somebody else. It’s also really my first book from the perspective of someone who is uncomfortable with touch (can’t say more without spoiling). It has a varied cast of powerful women co-protagonists, LGBT characters, and a half-brother and half-sister dynamic that’s surprisingly refreshing and positive in comparison t the usual inheritance rivalries (no pun intended). Other than the absolute gem of a magic system (the progression is in terms of gem names haha), the combat classes and fights are truly one of the best constructed I’ve read. It’s truly refreshing going through the arc of someone whose determined to succeed but isn’t a chosen one with absurd powers revealed in the end game of story.
Speaking of the chosen one, the world that Rowe builds in AA actually begins in the series War of the Broken Mirrors that covers the story of Taelien. There are currently 3 concurrently going on series’ at the moment where Broken Mirrors happens quite a while back, Six Sacred Swords happens 10 years ago, and Arcane Ascension is in the present. For the last year or so, I’ve been eagerly awaiting each new book in each of the series’ and they’ve been phenomenal. Rowe’s done an incredible job of not revealing what happens in the earlier series’ even though we’re in the future, which makes every story incredibly interesting. I’m expecting a follow up series where it’s like Avengers Endgame, where everything comes together against the Tyrant in Gold, who we literally haven’t even seen once yet, which is crazy for a series with 8 books already.
Will Wight
At the end of Rowe’s books he always recommends Will Wight. I started off with the cradle series, and my god. I’d never read a “Cultivation” novel, a story based on Asian culture with a progression system, and cradle is honestly one of the best series’ I’ve read period. The magic system is fairly unique again where every martial artist has a notion of a path that they follow and discover. The levelling system goes from jade to Monarch (there are like 10 progresion levels in betwen) and above. There are snippets in the series where we track the Abidan, the basically gods of the universe, who are dealing with existential threats in space and across the ‘Way’. Wei Shi Lindon starts off as an Unsouled, someone who doesn’t have any ability to progress along a path, but unlike everyone else, he creates two paths by splitting his ‘madra’ (or mana). This allows him to have pure madra, a seemingly useless type of base madra, and eventually blackfire madra, a powerful flame based offensive that seems to make users of it insane. He’s one of the most humble and respectful protagonists who really doesn’t want to hurt anyone, but wants to be stronger so that he can protect the people he cares about and have a self worth. We follow a protagonist crew by the end of the 2nd or 3rd group that has one of the funniest mentors in Eithan Arelius, who seems to have uncanny knowledge and strength for someone so young. In the story, we basically see constant progression caps of people, but Lindon’s appetite for growth and the gaps which he sees between himself and others are what makes him so interesting, even though the gaps are basically non-existant.
powder mage
kate daniels riftwar Django Wexler (infernal batallion) Rage of dragons Kings of the wyld Demon Cycle Six of Crows