Mages are born with a knack. Illusions, transformations, divinations. Some people are just better at some things than others. I got dead things. Yay me.
Wow.
Mages are born with a knack. Illusions, transformations, divinations. Some people are just better at some things than others. I got dead things. Yay me.
Wow.
Babylon’s Ashes doesn’t really have much new to say.
One one hand, the interplanetary and interpersonal conflicts we say growing through the last book or two come to a head here, with space battles large and small, culminating in a lot of destruction and a fascinating yet completely mysterious final battle.
And we’re back. This time around, things are getting really serious with Meridiana, the queen of the Ghost Army wrecking havoc in the modern world. It’s an excellent story, much tighter than the previous two. It’s also rather more serious in tone, although there are still piles of jokes and references to other books to go around.
As was often the case, magic just chuckled and kicked physics in the balls, leaving it groaning and wondering what just happened.
You can tell you’ve found a really interesting question when nobody wants you to answer it.
Unfortunately, while the first novels in the Expanse series asked a whole pile of interesting questions about the Protomolecule and the gate builders… both seem almost entirely absent in Nemesis Games.
“My name is Isaac Vainio,” I said. “You smashed my library. Prepare to die.”
This time around, the stakes are higher. We learn a bit more about the history of magic in the world and Libriomancy in particular, including a way that doesn’t require Gutenberg’s presses to come into being, which isn’t something I had even considered. On top of that, we get some technomancy, more looks at the big nasties that live in books, and a big magical showdown.
There’s a reason that many people who suggesting a starting point for Discworld suggest people start with the City Watch subseries and Guards! Guards! in particular. It’s hilarious.
They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they want to. This book is dedicated to those fine men.
Holden was starting to feel like they were all monkeys playing with a microwave. Push a button, a light comes on inside, so it’s a light. Push a different button and stick your hand inside, it burns you, so it’s a weapon. Learn to open and close the door, it’s a place to hide things. Never grasping what it actually did, and maybe not even having the framework necessary to figure it out. No monkey ever reheated a frozen burrito.
In the first book, the protomolecule made zombies. In the second, it made a Venuscomputer and super soldiers. This time around? A wormhole gate to transit hub in what looks to be a pocket universe where the laws of physics are… flexible.
Libriomancer has a lovely premise. Basically, books are magical. The more people you’ve had that have read the same edition of a given book, the more possible it is to magically pull various objections out of said book. Gutenberg took this principal with his first Bibles and founded an organization of Libriomancers that have existed up to the present day.
I love how many different ways Hines finds to use objects from various books (many I’ve read or at least heard of):
Pyramids is essentially Discworld versus Ancient Egypt. The entire idea of a kingdom that has been stable for so long that they do everything because they always have combined with the idea of spending basically everything on giant pyramids for the dead. Throw in some reality unstability, some worldbuilding on the Assassin’s guild,
Worldbuildingwise, pyramids on the Discworld have this tendency to store time. Each king must have the greatest pyramid of all time. This time around, the pyramid is so big that reality gets a bit broken, sending the kingdom of Djelibeybi into a parallel reality where beliefs become reality.
A slightly shorter entry into the Discworld universe and the last of the Death subseries, I just couldn’t get into Thief of Time.
There are some interesting ideas in there. The fifth horseman of the apocalypse. Mrs. War. The Auditors (again) trying to simplify their jobs. The personification of Time. A clock that can keep ‘perfect’ time and the trouble that would cause. History monks.