Found myself in the ER a couple weeks ago and was halfway through a book just sitting at home. I could have paid an extra $9.99 for the Kindle edition, but I have a hard time justifying the same cost as a paperback when I have the book at home.
With the end of Will’s supposed sabbatical rapidly approaching, the next entry in the popular Cradle series has been announced for a mere two weeks from now! Bloodline coming out on April 6th! All formats, too, including audiobooks. Nice.
https://www.facebook.com/willwightauthor/photos/a.292179890964495⁄1741703862678750
In case you’re here and wondering, “What the hell is Cradle?” It’s a Westerner’s take on a Chinese high fantasy genre called Xianxia; in Cradle, basically everyone does magic, which they call the sacred arts, and in particular they love using it to fight, and train for fights. Fighting and training for fighting are the big things the series tends to be oriented around, not entirely unlike popular shonen anime series like Naruto or My Hero Academia. Though the writing here is generally quite a bit better.
The story follows protagonist Lindon, who has what you might call a magic disability, but he doesn’t let that stop …
It’s not a tragic romance about true love- it’s a warning not to let yourself be ruled by your emotions alone.
The parents are ruled by a grudge preventing the happiness of their children and causing violence and death in the town they live in because neither wants to forgive the other. Like, their unnamed grudge causes fights to break out in the streets, causes deaths of people who have nothing to do with their grudge. You could make the argument that the fact that no one can name what caused this animosity, that it must not have even been so terrible, and they are holding onto it all out of pride.
Romeo is introduced to us by saying how he wants to kill himself because his romance with Rosaline ended, then immediately falls in love with the first cute chick he sees that same night, implying that he falls in love easily- that he is more in love with being in love than anything else. This is further exemplified by the fact that, unlike with many of Shakespeare’s …
Ray Bradbury said his famous Fahrenheit 451 story is NOT about government censorship but about “television destroys interest in literature.” Yet even in school we were told this book is about government control and censorship. I even remember Tolkien hating his LOTR being compared to ww2 as an allegory to the nuclear bomb being the One Ring. So what book do you know of that people completely miss the mark (I say completely because stories can have meanings other than what the author intended but some are so out there)
I was blown away by this book. I don’t know what I can really say that hasn’t already been said better by people much more intelligent than I, but I can finally understand why this book is held in such high regard.
I will admit that I got about 30% in and then put it down for about a year (I’m not even really sure why), but the completionist in me decided to pick it back up and I am certainly glad that I did.
I think the format of unveiling the overarching plot through the individual stories of each of our players was a brilliant way to conduct things. Each story built on the last in terms of revealing more details about the world, and I found myself becoming more engrossed with each page until I practically couldn’t put the book down. I hope I can discover some more books that use this technique to great effect.
I’m definitely going to have to re-read this one to get a better grasp on the plethora of details that Simmons was able to weave in, but damn! …
As Arthur C. Clarke Third Law says, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I know more than a few authors have run with this concept but I don’t know many, and I’m wondering if anyone has read any really good ones?
I was recently listening to the audiobooks of author Larry Correia (not everyone likes him because he’s a heavy libertarian and vocal in his personal life but his books have always been fun entertainment for me so let’s not get hung up on his personal views, please), specifically his Grimnior Chronicles and on-going Son of the Black Sword series. And (spoilers, I guess) both are fantasy series that you slowly realize are actually science fiction with magic systems that have a ‘scientific’ basis. Now, Larry Correia’s book, while a ton of fun in my opinion with lots of fun monsters, isn’t exactly thought-provoking and the literary equivalent of a popcorn flick like Pacific Rim or a …
I had seen a few weeks ago readers in this community talking about Lem and this collection of stories. Having never read anything by this author, I decided to track down a paperback copy and found one on Thriftbooks. I finally finished it last night after 10 days of pushing through and while I had some difficulty with a couple of stories, not because they weren’t well-done, but because my aged brain has trouble reading some things these days, overall, it was a lot of fun to read. I mean it took me a bit to realize what Trurl and Klapaucius actually were and it was something totally out of my wheelhouse and I didn’t want to give up on it.
The ‘First Sally’ was probably my favorite one as I laughed out loud in a couple of spots. The translation of this book from Polish to English was in my mind, flawless.
So, to those of you in this community who talked this book up, thanks. It was a challenging, yet fun time.