Proud moment for me:
I made it through the second of 8 absolutely delightful, engaging, and extremely PLEASURABLE novels in a series about a topic I love.
But the first book ended POORLY... because they knew that fans like me would be the second. It’s like it LITERALLY had zero ending. Meaning there was this absurd violation of novelistic structure.
And the second cemented my creeping suspicion that this all... all all all... was trifling crap. It’s like porn for people who like fast talking smart alecks, snide, sarcastic, and battle after battle after battle.
One amazingly engaging battle after another. So enjoyable. Exactly what I love.
Except that there's zero heart, soul, message... oh... it takes a head nod in the direction of what is noble and how should people behave...
But at the end of the day...
Lovely useless battles of stupid.
So... I did not buy the third.
I'm done.
Victory.
I’m not going to mention the name of the series because I don’t want to get into it with fans who are fine reading the same book 8 times:
Hero and partner in exotic setting fight stuff until they live or die.
That’s the book.
Sirens of Titan made me weep for three hours. This is what I expect a novel to do. Moby Dick changed the way I examine culture and society. Emma taught me to be expect the unexpected. Valuable books do valuable work. Entertaining books entertain. I get it. I consider the elevation of my human experience more valuable than being entertained for five hours. Thoughts?
This is me with the Stormlight Archive. I vociferously defended the first book, but after finishing the second one I couldn't face subjecting myself to a decade plus of thousands of pages of mediocre fantasy.
I think if I could just read the little 'asides' about the world, I'd be happy. He built an incredible setting, but after the fourth book I was just sort of grumpy. The majority of the characters just completely stopped being interesting. Give me that one guy making measurements of the fire sprites, or the colossal shrimp that one city uses for its executions.
Exactly! Thank you!