One of my reading goals of 2020 is explore some fantasy books and maybe find an author I can get really into. Harry Turtledove's Into the Darkness is built on a fantastic premise - the Second World War 'retold' with magic and dragons and all sorts of fantastical beasts - but I couldn't get past the cardboard-cutout characterization and the basic lack of writing skill in bringing battles to life. I was really hoping to get into that series, if only because of the cover art, but I ended up slogging through the last half of the book. George R.R. Martin's A Clash of Kings - the second book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series - was fantastic and deserving of a five-star review. Robert Silverberg's Roma Eterna was a collection of short stories looking at late historical events with the premise that the Roman Empire never fell; it had some good stories as well as some that were downright burdensome. Brian McClellan's Sins of Empire was a decent read, though it was more like a detective story than anything else. Terry Pratchett's The Color of Magic was a huge disappointment - I'd heard such great things of him! - but Mark Lawrence's Prince of Thorns was captivating beginning to end. If I got anything out of this batch of books, it was a desire to read more of Lawrence's stuff.
No comments:
Post a Comment