A journey to Hell… and a few faces we haven’t seen in a while. Good times.
A journey to Hell… and a few faces we haven’t seen in a while. Good times.
So very bonkers. At times, I’m pretty sure I have no idea what’s going on, which makes me feel bad for the characters. :D It’s still a wonderful fever top of a story though.
Onward!
Far beneath the surface of the earth, hidden from the sun and the moon, upon the shores of the Starless Sea, there is a labyrinthine collection of tunnels and rooms filled with stories. Stories written in books and sealed in jars and painted on walls. Odes inscribed onto skin and pressed into rose petals. Tales laid in tiles upon the floors, bits of plot worn away by passing feet. Legends carved in crystal and hung from chandeliers. Stories catalogued and cared for and revered. Old stories preserved while new stories spring up around them.
The Starless Sea is an unfortunate sort of book.
On one hand, the prose is beautiful. There are some really wonderful passages and smaller stories that really sing on the pages. On top of that, there’s a lot of delightful visuals described from the book. Often times, I don’t really picture what’s going on in a lot of stories, I more… absorb them. But this, this really needs and thrives on the visuals. Especially leaning on the sights and smells of books and libraries and doors, it’s the sort of book a physical book lover (not a lover of stories, one of the actual physical books themselves) could really get into.
On the other hand… even after reading through the entire book, I’m not sure what in the world was going on / what the point of anything was. A book doesn’t have to have a point–I do love a good slice of life story–but this felt like it was trying to go for something. But with the absolute pile of characters (major, minor, versions of the same) jumping around all the time, it was hard to figure anything out. The prose and settings almost do enough to overcome that… but not quite enough.
So… I suppose it’s a book that was almost really really good… but didn’t quite stick the landing for me. It’s probably worth a try, but if you bounce off the first few chapters, consider that it doesn’t really change that much before the end.
The story is going now. Tommy has leaned into his powers–and his opponents are figuring out how to fight back!–we learn who/what exactly Pullman is, and Savoy really gets to do his Vampire thing.
Onward!
Finding stories, history, … family? And more enemies, more powerful than ever.
It’s good, if a bit convoluted at times.
This frail cloth, a gift to the person he had once been, was his touchstone, a reminder that once he had been whole. Once there had been joy.
That’s a crazy book for backstory. We get more backstory of Wulfe and Sherwood (big answers there), a bit more about Zee (he’s terrifying, but still a good guy), and even more escalations / variations on what it means that Mercy’s Coyote-magic is based around boundaries and death. It’s an interesting variation, a complicated book, and well worth reading.
Well that’s a fascinating bit of worldbuilding. In a nutshell, it’s a world (or at least story) dominated by naval superiority–brought about by ships built on the literal bones of sea dragons. And what’s more, the sea dragons appear to have been hunted to extinction, making the warships all the more rare and valuable.
It’s a very cool root for the story and Barker only takes it from there with unique twists on vocab and word choice, a few other interesting bits of magic, and more naval everything than you can shake some paint at.
I do quite enjoy the characters as well. Setting the story around a prison ship? Not that unusual, but I really do love how much Barker makes the reader care for the people on it–and to see them grow together as a grow. Lucky Maes is of course awesome as well–and I do love the more alien birdman. Want to see what more is going on there for sure.
Overall, a great book and I’m glad to have read it. Onward to the sequels!
But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well.
That was an interesting book. In a nutshell, humanity finally managed to blow ourselves up–and then the story begins. Years after Armageddon, we pick up with a religious order founded to preserve knowledge (a worthwhile goal).
Warning: the rest of this summary contains minor (IMO) spoilers on the structure of the book.
Onward marches the story, ever stranger. Hints of what Tommy can (and must) do.
Onwards and upwards!
With book #13 of the Mercy Thompson series (Soul Taken) coming out later this month, I’ve been relistening to the rest of the series (and I’ll probably hit the Alpha & Omega series on my way). Between the two, they’re either my top or second favorite urban fantasy series out there (the other being the Dresden Files) and I’ve reread each a number of times.
This time around though, I decided to hit all of the short stories and novellas as well, primarily collected in Shifting Shadows. Rather than one post per book, I’m just going to put them all in this one post, ordered chronologically within the Mercyverse. Any I haven’t read yet, I’ll leave as placeholders.
Good stories all and none seem critical for enjoying the main series if you skip over them. A bit more backstory, particularly for more minor characters though, which is appreciated.
I’ll try for minor spoilers at most, but I’m not always the most caring about that. :D