DB Books and Reviews

A new world and a distant past... After having a better time with PALE KINGS than I did with THE WRITTEN , I decided to continue with the Discord Read Along group this month as we read the third installment in the EMANESKA series. HOW I RATED IT  3/5  While I really enjoyed the promise of a drastically transformed world and thought there were some very interesting ideas introduced, the story decides to spend very little time on it's most interesting elements and instead follows an exiled Farden who is in an even more pitiable state than when we found him in the first book. SETTING/WORLD While settings can sometimes grow stale over the course of a series, Galley really shakes things up by introducing some rather drastic changes to the Emaneska that we'd come to know. Since the events of PALE KINGS, the magic of the land has changed and seemingly grown more potent as Farden's daughter grows in years. This has some rather interesting implications on the world, it's social

A story set in the skies... THE AERONAUT'S WINDLASS is a book I'd bought on a bit of a whim, partly for the cover and partly for the premise, during a Barnes and Noble Hardcover sale. I'd made the purchase online and had no idea that it would be a 600 pager. Although I've remained interested in reading it, years passed before I finally pulled it off of my shelf and dove in. HOW I RATED IT  3/5  While I had a good time in this rather unique fantasy world, I feel like a book of this size needed to have packed a bigger punch in order to justify it's longer page count.    CHARACTERS One of the biggest criticisms I've heard about this book is that the characters felt kind of cartoonish. I feel like to some extent, that is true, but I also got the distinct sense that this was a deliberate artistic choice. Each of the main POV and all of the side characters felt quite distinct from one another, but they definitely have a larger-than-life quality and their exaggerated

When one quest leads to another... The official second book in THE PROTECTORS OF PRETTANI series is one that I was very curious to get into after taking a short break from it to join a readathon.  HOW I RATED IT  4/5  TO SPEAK WITH ELDERS  didn't live up to all of my expectations coming out of SINS AND SORROWS , but I still very much enjoyed joining Grahme for another adventure.  PLOT/TONE Things kick off pretty much immediately after the events of SINS AND SORROWS (perhaps parts of it even overlap, the timeline wasn't completely clear to me). What threw me off the most is how little characters and events from the previous two books played a meaningful role in this story. In some ways, SINS AND SORROWS felt like essential reading prior to TO SPEAK WITH ELDERS , but in others, those events seemed rather inconsequential. Certain details would definitely be confusing without the prior context of Book 1.5, but I was really hoping for more connection points, especially since thin

April was a packed reading month thanks to a Discord Readathon and wrapping up a book I've been reading with some colleagues at work. Overall, it was a month with lots of amazing reads (nothing lower than 4 stars) and some truly delightful surprise hits.  1. Thrice (Needle and Leaf Book 1) This was a truly special  5/5  for me I'd been meaning to get to Thrice for quite some time now, but had no idea that I would love it as much as I did. It's got this almost-cozy sort of feeling to it and just tells a good, clean, entertaining story that will most certainly live rent-free in my head for quite a long time.  Full review here 2. The Culture Map  (Finished chapters 7-8 + the Epilogue this month) 5/5  for an awesome professional resource I've been reading this one for the past couple of months with coworkers, doing about one chapter a week. It was an awesome book about doing business with people from cultures that are different from your own, reflecting on the aspects of yo

The world is changing.. After years of putting this series off, I finally decided to give it a go with a fancy edition I'd been eyeing for a while since it fit a couple of the prompts I needed for a readathon. HOW I RATED IT  4.5/5  I was pleasantly surprised by this book's dark fantasy humor, exciting action scenes, and fairy tale feel as well as the serialized nature of the short story format. PLOT/TONE I think starting with the tone for this is probably the most logical opening. At it's core, THE LAST WISH is sort of like a dark remix of classic fairy tales and folk lore, with a heavy leaning towards the Slavic inspirations. I'd originally put off reading this series, because I thought it would be too dark and disturbed and while there definitely is a darkness to these stories, there is also a more humorous side to it all as well which I was not expecting at all. I feel like both the Neflix show and the video game adaptation are quite serious (or at least any humor

Enter the gods... After having a somewhat lukewarm reaction to  THE WRITTEN,  I was not really sure if I would continue the series. Thanks to some encouragement from people in the Discord read along, I decided to give the second book a series a try.  HOW I RATED IT  4/5 PALE KINGS improves upon its predecessor in pretty much every way and I am very happy to have continued with this series. I am also glad that I read some of this visually, versus solely consuming the story via audio.  SETTING/WORLD Once again, the world that Galley depicts is one of the strongest elements of the series. This time around, we also get to see some much more interesting corners of it. The story kicks off in a sandy, desert nation filled with strange creatures, customs, and foods. Seeing Farden navigate this realm in a fish-out-of-water fashion was greatly entertaining and it was in this particular location that the fantasy world felt truly set apart from others. The unusual mashup of fantastical creatures