I figured Hobb and Erikson being on here would hurt your soul a little. My bad.

@@mikesbookreviews No worries! 😁

There are several books by Hobb that I don't like, but Assasin's quest trilogy, and the sequel trilogy (the tawny man), are not among them, lol.

Even when! Right, he's just a StevieFanboy! Excuse him

Yup, I'm glad I didn't stop reading, same with Dresden Files and Malazan book of the fallen.

Hate that feeling ha ha

That's my feeling with E. Cline stuff lol

I loved Reaper's Gale. It's one of my favourite Malazan books. But as always, opinions differ.

I felt similar to Mike on my read of RG, but it all pays off in DoD and TCG.

@@osoisko1933 I still loved the ending of RG, but I also agree with you that there is further payoff of this book in DoD and TCG!

@@Johanna_reads Yeah I enjoyed the ending too. It was the Red Mask plot line that had me wondering what was the point of this, aside from showing the tragedy tribal peoples face against imperial states. It's s theme that has a personal meaning to myself, but to the overall narrative, again, I was like what does this have to do with everything else. But I trusted Erikson and pressed on and it was worth it.

Personally, I feel that Ericsson wants to portray the wider impact of the actions of bigger, more powerful nations as they seek to expand and lay claim to resource. That could give the impression of sidetracking, I guess, but for me it’s part of the wider theme of the entire series of inviting the reader to ‘witness’. The events do not only impact the big players; they impact everyone, intended or unintended.

Yeah, I remember being in college and being super excited to read it and realizing nothing happened was painful, I made myself read the rest of the series but it took until Sanderson's takeover for things to pick back up.

idk to me book 9 and 10 are even worse

@@andreww4751 Not making me excited about finishing the series lol

I felt let down by the slog, especially using what precious little free time I had from grad school to read it. However, books 11-14 are just as magnificent as book 8 was bad. The end is so good and worth all the tedious build up. It’s thrilling, fast paced, heart breaking, and just leaves you wanting more at the end. The character development is unreal. I would suggest paring audio books along with a physical book if you’re only doing one or the other. The audiobook narrators are fantastic and really help with the slower scenes while some scenes are worth it to read out right. I really hope you give the series another chance!

Book 10 is the real test. I was prepared for the worst, and still got agitated :D, but after that it's only uphill.

I liked it , too.

For me it was book 4 that hooked me

I read the first two books and was like meh....I might go back at some point.

@@matthewahearn5448 I was underwhelmed in books 1 and 5. After Book 6 I couldn't stop reading it. Book 12 will come out soon-ish so I would give it a try when it is over.

open world rpgs in a nutshell

Although possibly a fairly accurate representation of how teenagers would actually act lol

@@kylenorman5250 I was not that teenager XD

@@ToriTalks2 neither was I haha but teenagers definitely aren't a demographic known for their rock solid priorities in all circumstances. However, it still makes for a really frustrating read as you said.

Hell of an ending too.

​@@calebmauer1751one of those rare ambiguous open endings that nonetheless was satisfying because of its perfection. Maybe the best ending ever

I agree. A coworker recommended it to me since I was a fan of Red Dead Redemption and it’s easily in my top 5 book list. I’m still thinking about all the various monologues given by the judge. The violence was raw, but it’s what makes all those monologues and cantina gun fights so tense and potent. BUT I can definitely see how someone might not like the run on sentences dense with RICH vocabulary. I enjoyed every description of those landscapes where it’s geology is not stone but fear!

I thought that the writing style was beautiful

You have to kind of go with the writing style. I found it easier to stop analysing it and just let it sink in. Then it became a lot easier….although not easy.

It was absolutely horrendous

I remember when I read the poppy war I legit thought that maybe I read a different book than everyone else because I hated it that much.

Congratulations on the 1,893 XP you earned with this comment. You're super close to the next level!

@@mikesbookreviews lol 😂 if I work hard enough I’ll get there some day

Pacing is important in large novel series and Jordan lacked in that regard. He needed to up the pace long before he did. But he was still better than Terry Goodkind who had every book start off at a crawl regardless of how the previous one finished.

Keep pushing thru, remember 3 or 4 books were slow and not great but overall well worth it with an epic multi book conclusion. Great world, even the slow books were not bad aside from the pacing

@@jasonlarkin8807 Overall I am really enjoying being so immersed in the epic world. True the pacing is a bit awkward at times but I haven't hit the wall yet. I'm nervous for the few books before BS started writing them.

@@stevenredpath9332 The pacing is definitely a bit awkward at times, but overall I'm still really enjoying the world and the story.

@@Wanderwilderreading that’s good. I can’t fault Jordan for his world building.

Ha, thanks, love.

That was me with Toll the Hounds. Kind of just stopped reading part way through and it was ten years before I finally started over and read the whole series.

Every single one of them are talented. Would be dumb for a nobody like me to insult them ha ha

Benjamin is great, one of my favorite booktubers. I did like Blood Meridian, the Judge is such a complex and great character...

I LOVED the violence and the setting, but the lack of punctuation and the lack of narrative and internal dialogue made me DNF which was my first DNF in a decade

@@PsilocybeJedi I felt pretty much the same. I had put it down before half way

Ben IS a smart guy, but it's okay if your taste in books doesn't always mesh with his. He loves Blood Meridian and Wuthering Heights?! Woa. Some books you're not EVER ready for.

I agree. Ben is brilliant.

Why thank you :)

The Malazans definitely make the book bearable, I find the entire Tiste Edur plot dull... I understand why it exists, but I don't enjoy it. They are the boiled Brussel Sprouts of the series.

@@Furniture121 I like some of the Edur stuff like Rhulad, Hannan and Trull but a lot of them don't get nearly enough page time compared to the new characters that are introduced. I couldn't stand the new Letheri characters mostly because they were all horrible except Tehol. At least the nasty characters die

Same here. Reaper's Gale and Toll the Hound are the books that i took the longest to finish for malazan series. Only the appearance of malazan got me through the books

Agree on Beak. Also my favorite character.

I have never been able to get past the 2nd book in the malazan saga, I have tried so many times to go back and I just can't do it. It's really annoying as in theory I should love the series as it ticks so many of the fantasy and storytelling boxes that I normally love but something about Erickson's writing just keeps making me switch off when I try and read it.

Same for me

Man, if you didn't like Poppy War I can't wait to see what you think about TDR

Thankfully I haven't had to do that yet. I think the closest was saying Codex Alera wasn't anything special.

I tapped out after book 7. Couldn't handle it anymore. But I read one after the other. However, I cant read something else in between, as I fear I'll forget characters or events. But I've binged other series and didn't get burned out. Book 4 was the best of the 7 I read. I lied to myself saying I'd come back to it. But I wont, lol.

That's what I have been doing with the wheel of time series

Getting into fantasy by getting bogged down by a huge series isn't the best idea.

@@neondemon5137 true. Best try some trilogy, like mistborn or green one saga, and if particularly inclined towards grimdark then first law. Easy reads and fantastic stories.

May I suggest going the audiobook route? It makes getting through "the slog" of the middle books much easier, and the narrators are very good.

Beak! Agree.

Yeah I love Robin Hobb, but Assassins quest is my least favourite of her books, the first two books are just so good and then the finale just takes so long to get anything done, and this is coming from somone who normally enjoys a slow burn read. Liveship traders, rain wild chronicles and tawny man are brilliant aswell but I also did not enjoy fools assassin and havn't yet got round to finishing that last trilogy.

Even the best of authors has a miss sometimes.

How do you decide to start reading 📚 a book do you do a little research or just go on instinct I.E the premise interesting

I had to force myself to finish Poppy War. I though it started out good, but I hated the graphic violence (and yes, I know about the historical basis for the events, I just didn't want to read it), and by the end I hated the MC. I never had any desire to continue the series.

Try Jay Kristoff's Empire of the Vampire. It is sooo good.

I see. People always use those phrases (shonen, seinen, etc) and I had no clue what they meant ha ha

@@mikesbookreviews oh, it's pretty simple: Shonen = Boys Shojo = Girls Seinen = Adult These are literal translation from Japanese. These genres are defined by the magazine in which they are contained when they're published as single chapters. Some manga/anime are in between or transcend these boarders, like Attack on Titan, which is published in a shonen (boys) magazine but it is, in fact, more like a Seinen (adult) series for themes and structure (and I think you would love it).

I enjoyed the series, but yeah the first book was pretty cring

I've gotten that rec a few times.

Yeah, the series is almost an all time great for me, for things like the hidden meaning in the title. Just why did he go that route with the ending? Anything would have been better. Lampshading deus ex machina doesn't make it OK, not with five big books worth of buildup to get to that point.

It was undoubtedly clever, and the magic system was different and interesting, but I simply couldn't handle some of the characters. The MC younger boy (forget his name) was beyond insufferable, and that's what made me DNF the series.

Naah, he's so good at character building and tone setting, rarely is his page counts egregious.

Yup! Reminds me of Duma Key. About 200 pages too long, and I completely lost interest. The last 100 or so pages were amazing, which is sad because I don't think a lot of people will get there.

Needful Things, Insomnia, TommyKnockers, Duma Key immediately spring to mind. Just hits a really thick wall. The Stand is my favorite, I wish it was 3,000 pages long! 11/22/63 was long but it didn't hit that wall, same with IT, though I'd love to forget that one chapter exists. He's a notorious spinster, hit and miss, literary version of McDonald's.

Ironically enough, Joe Hill is the exact same way for me. Even worse, because he writes the most dislikable protagonists imaginable.

​@@PsilocybeJediI've read every single book of his, besides the last few. I can give you a list. Book by book breakdown. He admits it himself. Try Needful Things on for size.

If it’s not for you it isn’t for you but I will say you don’t meet any of the main characters in the series besides Limdon of course in book 1. The series is so much more than the narrow tropey glimpse you get in the beginning of book 1

Way of Shadows wasn't just cringe, it was PURE CRNGE!!! (For me too). Again... subjective but I've talked to more people that dislike it than like it.

@@JasonFalter weird, I loved the book as does everyone I know...lol, but if we all agreed that would be boring! To each their own :)

Theres some good ones out there, but many bad or meh ones.

I don't remember being disappointed at all with HoC when I finished it. I thought the various resolutions were suitably heart-breaking, cathartic and epic. I'm curious to know what you were disappointed by.

@@theskyisteal8346 the payoffs were the biggest issue for me. Everything in Sha’ik’s army, the betrayals building up, the evil people plotting and spinning their webs, were all destroyed by Karsa Orlong just coming in and killing all of them easily. The whole thing with the goddess (I mean behind the scenes, where she is in chains and stuff) is over with in about 5 seconds. The whole clash between the armies never even happened; Tavore (a character I don’t care for one bit) just strolled over and killed Felisin, then everyone just ran away. No battle, no nothing. Just a few pages here and there of killing going on. So basically everything building up for the entire book doesn’t happen, and instead some other stuff happens that just didn’t land for me. I also just don’t care too much for Karsa, although he started growing on me towards the end. I don’t really care too much about Pearl and whatsherface, I really don’t care about Cutter and Apsalar stuff aside from that scene on the cool island where Cotillian shows up. That being said, I loved everything the Bridgeburners (as always), I liked the stuff with the Tiste Edur and T’lan Imass, and the stuff with the Tiste Liosen was cool. Overall, the ending and payoffs just didn’t stick for me, which is why it’s currently my least favorite Malazan book.

@@s.p.8508 Ah okay, it seems like we came at this book in completely opposite directions. Karsa was immediately one of my favourite characters, I love Tavore, relate an embarrassing amount to Cutter, Pearl and Lostara at least interest me and I never cared one bit about Dryjhna or the Apocalypse. I always feel like we got the battle we were expecting when the Fist rode with the spirits of Raraku against the Dogslayers. And the rebirth of the Sea of Raraku was, to me, far more epic than a simple battle would have been.

@@theskyisteal8346 I think one of the issues was that Erikson spoiled me with his own books. I got used to the huge buildup and the epic battles at the end of each book, and I was really looking forward to it. Instead I got some random ocean popping up in the middle of a desert🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤷🏻‍♂️🤷🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️ That probably sounds stupid to someone who read the whole series, because I’m sure the consequences of that event are going to be MAJOR, but I was just really disappointed.

@@s.p.8508 That"s fair.

I suggest trying the Necroscope series by Brian Lumley, excellent vampire horror series

When you do your videos in one sitting and no cuts, you misspeak once in awhile. Sorry that was the only feedback you had for this discussion.

I read the first law trilogy and wasn't overly impressed. The way Mike raved about it , I thought it was going to be more epic in some way. To my Surprise the second trilogy by abercrombie is spectacular. I mean I can't put it down. I don't know maybe he's just a more seasoned writer with this

@@zerohero6602 Plan on picking it up after I finish a couple other books.