The problem with Alex Verus is how pointless evil most of the mages are. For people with that much power they are strangely limited in their goals and wishes. Why do the mages gather power? For what?

Immoral mages work a lot better if they have some sort of goal they work to..Be it absolute understanding of the world (Fate/stay night) or protection of humanity from the supernatural (Dresden). Alex Verus has none of that.. mages are the top dogs and there existence is mostly pointless.

 

Successfully manipulating mage politics and a general desire for control seemed to be their goals to me.

 

If no one's mentioned it, The Book Theif by Markus Zusak is a great book.

 

Why do we even tell people to read the first few books of Dresden anyway? It seems like we should just say "read these three books after this one, Star Wars style."

My ow recommendation:

The Bartimaeus Trilogy[1] is a fantasy series by Jonathan Stroud consisting of a trilogy published from 2003 to 2005 and a prequel novel published in 2010. The titular character, Bartimaeus, is a five-thousand-year-old djinni, a spirit of approximately mid-level power (fourth). The story follows the career of a teenage magician Nathaniel (later known as John Mandrake), and the alternative history of the peak of London's power as a magical oligarchy, through the eyes of the djinni Nathaniel first summons.

The series is mostly told from the perspective of Bartimaeus, although the Bartimaeus Trilogy also makes use of the perspectives of the magician Nathaniel and the commoner Kitty Jones. There is also one short chapter featuring the viewpoint of a foliot called Simpkin.


A really good story for young adults, but I found I still enjoyed it when I re-read it recently. It has great characterization and the world actually seems to balanced and has a logical conclusion as to why wizards don't rule the world (people eventually become immune to their powers). The first one has very little politics, but the latter ones deal with a great deal of intrigue and interpersonal relationships.

 

Felt the ending was "meh", though. Never made much sense to me as to why

Spoiler

Kitty didn't speak up on behalf the djinn and their enslavement, which was just as big an issue to her as the enslavement of the populous. Indeed, it just looked as if that was completely dropped, with things going as they were, with the magicians summoning and binding djinn while the "muggles" got a few more rights.

If Kitty had become catatonic or comatose (or dead) due to her journey, then I would have understood this turn of events, but she is alive and respected.

Also, that female magician who seized power afterwards needed to die.

But other than that, yeah, satisfying end and great series overall.



I just finished the second book of the Mistborn series and it was awesome. Vin is such a great character and her action scenes are a sight to behold, making her one the most interesting characters to follow. Especially at the climax of the book with the way she basically stood against armies.

But, I am still not sure on how to feel about the actual end of the book, with the conclusion of the Well of Ascension, I just hope the next book is going to make that more interesting.

Still, loved both mistborn books and I can't wait to read the third one.

Edit:

So, yeah, finished the third book and wow, I don't really know how I feel about it yet. On one hand, I loved about 99% of it. It was such a joy to read and see how all the things he set up in the previous books paid off in such an epic and rewarding way and the book got intense at times. The characters, as always, were interesting to follow, although I have to admit, I didn't like Spook all that much. He was not a bore or annoying or anything but I still would have rather stayed with Vin, who has become one of my favourite characters of any form of fiction.

But then there is the ending... the climax was an intense page turner but the actual resolution and what happened, well, I really wish it had ended differently. Now, I know it all paid off in a really consistent way, and it wasn't illogical or anything but really, I felt dissatisfied. I was surprised, I admit, did not see the ending coming the way it did and was left with "huh, so that happened".

But regardless of that, I really loved and enjoyed this series, going to tackle The Alloy of Law next, to see what that brings to the table. I suspect I will like it less, though, since it does play 300 years in the future and none of the characters of this trilogy will appear, and I have this personal failing to invest in new characters who do awesome things if I already have a favourite, whom I think they will never measure up to and I don't want them to.

I also learned that all of Sanserson's books share the same universe, but only showing different planets, so, having also read the Way Of Kings, will check out his other works as well.

 

I thought I would leave a rec for the book I'm currently reading/hearing.

It's the classic british working class novel The ragged trousered philantropists by Robert Trassel. This is a fantastic novel, realistic and timeless like very few books I read before. Here some more information about it:

wiki


If you want to take a look into this, there's the legal html copy at Project Gutenberg (click!) and a fantastic librivox audio recording over at archive.org.

 

I just found out that the last book in the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan came out. Going to read the whole series over again...
On another note I've been recommended Terry Pratchett. Is he any good?

 

Yes.

I've been reading his stuff for about 12/3 years now, and still enjoy them. I'd recommend reading them by published order, because even if they are, for the most part, stand alone novels, you often get characters cameoing. You'll also get more of the in-jokes.

His first few books differ in style quite a bit from later ones, so maybe try skipping one or two if you don't really feel them.

Because he has quite the following, you can likely get them at the library, or from a friend, rather than buying them. Which is always nice with an author you haven't tried before.

 

Read them all, it doesn't matter what order you read them in. I pretty much read them backwards and it was fine.

EDIT: This article sums up what I think of Pratchett better than I ever could.

Double edit: Reading order

 

Started with Reaper Man. So far so good.
I recognize the referance though.
'Bill Door'
Nice. Just nice.

 

So I need some recomendattion for both steampunk and cyberpunk novels. Anybody got anything to rec?

 

Nemrut: I liked the Mistborn trilogy, though I had issues with it. I really didn't like Alloy of Law very much.

Cyberpunk: I'm not really a William Gibson fan. I've read three books by him, and while he's great with words and ideas, his plots and characters are just flat.

My favorite cyberpunk author is Neal Stephenson.

More recently, The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi is worth reading. I think Richard Morgan is a bit overrated, but I did like Altered Carbon.

The Windup Girl is good, but it's not really cyberpunk, and certainly not steampunk.

 

So I found some time to start reading the Wheel of time series and to be honest I found it somewhat lacking. The charcters are lacking depth and childish (Nymeria for example) and most of the problems could be easily avoided if people talked with each other. The Shadow is your typical evil god and the trait most of his followers share is idiocy. Only Rand and Mat manage to be somewhat interesting.

I managed to get through book 5 but now I wanted to ask you if it gets any better or if it will continue to be your typical teen fantasy book.

 

Wheel of Time isn't worth your time, TBH.

 

Well personally, I thought the early books were the best in the series, though I enjoyed them all. Books 8-10 are the weakest parts. But I will also say that I disagree with nearly every complaint you raised there.

 

I actually like the WoT series even though I haven't gotten around to finishing it.
But here's the thing; chances are that if you didn't like some of the characters 5 books on, you probably won't for the rest of the nine other books. Heaven known I still dislike Egwene and Nynaeve round about book 11.
However I still feel that it's worth a read. Firstly because for every character you don't like you'll find somebody that you do like; Mat, Rand, Thom, Min- to name a few. But characters do have depth- you'll find out as they start getting more screen time. Secondly because the plot does get much better and much more intricate. WoT is in no way like your average teen fantasy series. You have much worse examples of that category (*cough*Inheritance Cycle*cough*).
Once the Forsaken start really jumping into the bandwagon you'll see that yes; while there is a Tolkienisque touch with the main dark overlord, the main focus is in fact the convulated schemes that run afoot due to his influence as well as what people do in their misguided good intentions.

My review is somewhat biased because I've been reading (and re reading) the series for a while now but give it a try.

 

So, I don't know if you guys like him but Dan Brown's new book Inferno is out. And it's all about Dante's Divine Comedy. The arts and symbols were pretty cool but the story was weak as hell.