What did you just read?

I honestly don't find the translation bad at all. The first 90ish chapters, Grid is a money hungry piece of shit. But he becomes a complete person after that. And they're up to chapter 1323. 1324 comes out tomorrow. God damn do I love this series. I'll jump into Magic-Smithing soon. Almost done reading Reader's Viewpoint now. Just another 100 chapters to go, so I'll be done very soon.

Maybe it's because I've read other Korean stuff. I just brush past most of it. The terms are easy enough to grasp, and if anything confuses me, a quick google explains it. Not too bad.

I've also read the light novels for Solo Leveling and Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint in addition to Overgeared. Then I really enjoy a lot of Web Toon's as well. They're almost all Korean as a base language. Toons like "The Gamer" explains so much Korean background, that it just comes easily to me.

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, book one of the Locked Tomb trilogy. An interesting science fantasy book--on the science fiction side you've got an interstellar empire, space travel, and general modern tech; the fantasy side brings in magic, specifically necromancy, and only necromancy, which the whole empire is built around. The setting has a whiff of 40k to it--an aesthetic that I'd call 'space gothic', a preference for swords in spite of the sci-fi setting, and an immortal emperor worshipped as a god--but seen through the eyes of a character not inclined to take it at all seriously. Main character Gideon gets press-ganged into playing bodyguard for the necromancer of the Ninth House when the Emperor calls for the empire's greatest necromancers to compete to become the Emperor's next immortal champions.

The story takes its time getting going, but I really liked the setting ('space necromancers' is novel enough to get my attention in general), and author's got a good style of writing. Looking forward to the rest of the series.

Iron Prince - Bryce O’Connor and Luke Chmilenko


Essentially Cradle, but in a sci fi steampunk-ish setting. You kinda have to hand wave away the ridiculousness of being in an intergalactic empire and still fighting with swords and shields, but it a pretty good progression fantasy overall. On KU so if you like the genre it’s worth a read.

Blood of Empire by Brian McClellan, book three of the Gods of Blood and Powder trilogy. This, along with the previous Powder Mage trilogy, is set in a 19th century-style fantasy setting, with muskets and sabers, and mages that get their magic from gunpowder. This particular book was okay, but had the weird issue of feeling like the Book Two in a trilogy, rather than the finale; a lot of time is spent laying groundwork for the story, and the ending just kinda happens without much fanfare. The end was pretty clearly setting up a third trilogy, but seemingly at the cost of having a compelling ending for this one. I don't regret reading it, but Powder Mage was a better read in general.

I really liked books one and two, but for some reason I felt book 3 really lacking and could never quite figure out why. I think things just happened too quickly, but it's been years since I've read it so it's hard to remember.

Ready Player Two.

Not as good as the first one, and some curious choices as to what to include as essential 80s culture, but still a good read.

Not read technically, but listened to Jurassic Park on my last drive to and from Colorado

slippery said:

Sufficiently Advanced Magic. I didn't really know what it was going in, because it was something I bought quite some time ago. It falls under the LitRPG umbrella but I forget how they divide it. It's just their actual world, but you get some stats and a lot of stuff works like an RPG. It was solid for the genre.

I haven't looked it up, but I would put good money on the author being a furry, so their is that.

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Author is a progressive retard who loved to use non standard pronouns in his books even though all it does is add confusion because he is talking about a single person using plural pronouns.

The story is decent if you ignore the wokeness of it all, but he doesn’t make it easy to do so.

Ritley said:

Iron Prince - Bryce O’Connor and Luke Chmilenko

Code:

https://www.amazon.com/Iron-Prince-Warformed-Stormweaver-Book-ebook/dp/B08KGT4CLQ

Essentially Cradle, but in a sci fi steampunk-ish setting. You kinda have to hand wave away the ridiculousness of being in an intergalactic empire and still fighting with swords and shields, but it a pretty good progression fantasy overall. On KU so if you like the genre it’s worth a read.

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I liked this a lot - Chmilenko's other series is pretty good, but I found this book to be much better overall.

I was reading Stephen King and Joe Hill and was looking for another good horror author and had completely forgotten about Clive Barker. I loved him so much as a kid. So I read The Thief of Always, which is one of my favorite books ever. And I'm now reading Cabal, which I never read as a kid. Jesus it's bloody. I love the way he describes things so much. That line, at the very beginning, "He wanted to see the secret face, the Wild One beneath the skin." something like that. Jesus man. Going to do Imajica next and then Hellbound Heart and Scarlet Gospels, maybe. Huge fan of Hellraiser, especially Hellraiser 2, but never actually read the books.

Just as a fair warning The Scarlet Gospels is really bad. It took him forever to get it done and he was/is battling health problems and it just didn't come together.

edit - his collections of short stories are pretty good, the Books of Blood