Title: The Broken Eye
Series: Lightbringer
Author: Brent Weeks
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Orbit
Release Date: August 26, 2014
Format: Paperback
Pages: 757

 

Holy infodump, Batman. The Broken Eye is not a short book. Despite that, it never feels slow. The massive page count notwithstanding, a LOT happens in this book. This isn’t some Shyamalan story where there’s just one big twist near the end. No, readers are constantly fed new information. And it’s not necessarily new information to the characters. It’s new to some characters; the ones whose POV we get throughout the story. So, young people. All these older folks who have been playing the Game of Thrones for a long time are already aware of this stuff.

It’s honestly kind of hard to review this book spoiler-free because of all that. So, let’s carry things over from my review of The Blinding Knife and talk about the characters. Everything The Blinding Knife did, which it did well mind you, The Broken Eye does better. With all the different perspectives, it’s really hard to nail down a single person as the Main Character. First, it seemed like it was Kip, but then Gavin started being a badass, and now we’ve focused more on Kip again. Plus, Teia’s time and influence in the story continues to grow.

Like I said last time, Kip’s character arc is very much a coming-of-age story. He started this series as a somewhat bright but uneducated and untraveled village boy. Now we’re starting to see what the clay that is his childhood will be molded into. A soldier, a warrior, a leader. And thank Orholam he got more mature. It becomes pretty clear throughout The Broken Eye that Kip has the potential to be a great man. He just needed the experience to grow into one.

Teia, on the flipside, goes through her own struggles. While Kip’s problems are mostly physical and emotional, hers are more mental. She’s living in the same world as all these other characters, but at the same time, she’s not. There are aspects of what’s happening only she can see. Dark secrets she stumbles into that could hurt her friends if they find out. And all the stress that comes with keeping such secrets.

While all this is going on, the other characters are still getting developed too. Some had more or less facetime than in the previous books, but no one gets neglected. Every character is just that, a character. Nobody gets demoted to being a background piece, which is fantastic.

This is the best book in the Lightbringer series so far. A very powerful middle point and one of the best in any series I’ve read to date. I’m a little skeptical about the next book because the 2^nd-to-last entry tends to be the weakest in series like these. But it’s come a long way from the initial skepticism the first book gave me, so we’ll see.

Title: The Saga of Tanya the Evil, Vol. 5: Abyssus Abyssum Invocat
Series: The Saga of Tanya the Evil
Author: Carlo Zen
Genre: Light Novel
Publisher: Yen On
Release Date: March 19, 2019 (English) | January 30, 2016 (Japanese)
Format: Paperback
Pages: 336

 

Abyssus Abyssum Invocat. One misstep leads to another. Literally translated as “hell calls hell”. A very appropriate title given this is the point where Tanya’s actions come back to bite her personally. The longer this war goes on, the worse things get for every side involved. But up to this point, Tanya has been fairly lucky. Volume 5 even pokes fun at this at one point, with the enemy believing they have intelligence leaks because no one is lucky enough to ruin as many of their operations as Tanya has. But the last book showed us that Tanya’s ego is starting to have consequences for the Imperial Army. Now those consequences affect her personally.

One of Tanya’s core flaws is failing to put herself in other people’s shoes. Now, this is not always a bad thing. Because she has knowledge of Earth’s military history, she is able to examine the current war with a unique viewpoint. But the flipside of that is assuming her preconceived notions are correct. When something happens that utterly and blatantly proves one of her assumptions wrong, it blindsides her.

Tanya has put trust in her instincts and experience up to this point, and for good reason. It can’t be said that she’s had zero setbacks before, but she has always come out ahead. Improvise, adapt, overcome. No matter what’s been thrown at her, she always manages to keep moving forward. But this time, she hits a wall. No one wins forever; everyone makes a mistake eventually. For someone like Tanya, who fears failure on an extremely personal level, having to confront that becomes a devastating challenge.

War is hell. Well, actually, war is war. Hell is hell. Tanya has never been disillusioned enough to not believe that. But success after success has conditioned her expectations. Volume 5 gives us the first time she experiences not a setback, but a complete and utter failure. It brings her to an absolute low point, the type of crippling negative emotion that can break people.

This is (most likely) the point in the series where the protagonist is at their lowest. They’ve been kicked down into the dirt and it will take everything they have to rise up again. But Tanya is as stubborn as she is anything else. And this being a war story, when she comes back with vengeance you know it will be bloody.

Title: Maelstrom
Series: Destroyermen
Author: Taylor Anderson
Genre: Sci-fi
Publisher: Roc
Release Date: February 3, 2009
Format: Paperback
Pages: 417

 

Alright, so Maelstrom picks up right where Crusade left off. Captain Reddy and co. know the Grik are coming for them with a massive invasion force and only have so much time to prepare. What’s more, the enemy fleet is backed by the Japanese ship Amagi. For those keeping score, the Amagi is a battlecruiser while the Walker is a destroyer. In laymen’s terms, the Walker is severely outgunned. The Amagi is another ship that did really exist with Taylor Anderson changing its history for his story. The real-world Amagi was damaged by an earthquake while under construction and scrapped. The sole surviving ship of its class, the Akagi, wasn’t even completed to the original designs; the Washington Naval Treaty forced it to be converted into an aircraft carrier mid-construction.

Anyway, back to the book. A lot of the last book involved Reddy and his crew getting their new Lemurian friends ready to fight. That still happens a bit in the beginning here, but the meat of Maelstrom is the subsequent massive battle. So, on one side we have the Lemurians and humans. They have superior weapons, training and tactics. The other side is the Grik. What they lack in quality they make up for in quantity and mindless brutality. Plus, the Amagi as their trump card.

It’s kind of hard (for me, at least) to sum up all the military action in a book like this without really going in-depth. I will say that it is top-notch. The two sides fighting are very different from each other in terms of personality, motivation, tactics and technological prowess, and it all shows. It reminds me a bit of early WWI history where some of the leaps in military technology were so massive and different that entire armies basically had to relearn how to fight. Remember kids, there’s a reason trench warfare suddenly became a thing.

The other main thing here is the set-up. While the big battle is the key focus in Maelstrom, the subplots continue. Including some new ones that will keep the series moving forward. Going in, we and the characters all know that this battle could break the Lemurians. But if they win, it’s not the end. It’s just the beginning. They’ve spent the whole series on defense so far. It’s still a long road ahead to take the fight to the Grik. Plus a few other things I won’t mention in detail here because spoilers.

And as a final side note, I think one of the reasons I’m loving this series is that it’s basically a space opera and I’m a sucker for those. Seriously, change the Walker into a spaceship, the Squall into a wormhole, and the Grik and Lemurians into aliens and we’re there. The only real difference is the setting being The Land That Time Forgot instead of Farscape.

Title: The Blinding Knife
Series: Lightbringer
Author: Brent Weeks
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Orbit
Release Date: September 1, 2012
Format: Paperback
Pages: 671

 

The Blinding Knife is a step up from The Black Prism in a lot of different ways. Part of this is due to the fact that it’s not the first book in the series. First entries are always hard because of everything they have to accomplish. Authors have to introduce the world, characters, and plot and then sell readers on all that. But if you’ve made it to book 2 here, you’ve clearly been sold already. Characterization and plot (especially characterization) are a lot more at the focus than world-building this time around.

So, let’s look at the characters. They’re great. Gavin is the world’s most magically powerful person, but my god the man has problems. Between the skeletons in his closet and everything he’s trying to deal with presently, he somehow manages to be a badass on top of having a heartbreaking story. And then there’s Kip. Thankfully, he starts to mature with a lot of The Blinding Knife focused on him being trained. It’s a slow journey for him, with most of his facetime being dedicated to growing up. For Kip’s segments, this is very much a coming-of-age story. And these are just the two chief characters.

Other people from book 1 may not have as much time in the spotlight, but they still shine. Karris and Ironfist in particular are increasingly well-written every time we see them. We also start to slowly learn more about our antagonist, the mysterious Color Prince. And you can’t not mention Andross (or as I call him, Tywin Lannister) and how much of a magnificent bastard he is. We also get a slew of new characters, most of the good ones being Kip’s fellow trainees in the Blackguard. While most of these characters have smaller moments, the moments they do have (often alongside Kip) are just fantastic. Especially Teia, you go girl.

Now, while all this characterization is great, the plot is a little slow. Granted, this is a fantasy series with a big page count, so that’s kind of a given. While a lot of The Black Prism focused on the world’s history, The Blinding Knife focuses more on its present. With the known world on the cusp of war, politics naturally become involved. The world is a loose connection of nations that only sort-of kind-of get along. Some people care about the war, others don’t, and it all gets very complicated. Plus, the multiple POVs throw a lot of different plotlines at us and not everything connects just yet. Those bits will probably come together in book 3 or later.

Overall, The Blinding Knife is a big improvement over The Black Prism and paves the way for a truly great series. If you’re like me and found The Black Prism to be a bit rough, just stick with it until you get to the good stuff.

Title: The Rising of the Shield Hero, Volume 6
Series: The Rising of the Shield Hero
Author: Aneko Yusagi
Genre: Light Novel
Publisher: Yen On
Release Date: November 22, 2016 (English) | June 25, 2014 (Japanese)
Format: Paperback
Pages: 400

 

Rising of the Shield Hero Volume 6 picks up not too far from where Volume 5 left off. Everyone is licking their wounds after the last big battle and planning their next moves. Kind of. As per usual, the other three heroes are still treating this whole thing like a video game and being jerkasses. And for those of you who watched the anime, Volume 6 is right after season 1 ends. Presumably, season 2 will cover Volumes 6-10 since season 1 did Volumes 1-5 but at the time of this writing, they don’t even have a release date announced yet.

Now, Volume 6 covers two different story arcs. For the first 60% or so of the book, we wrap up the previous arc with little hints about the next one being dropped. This mainly involves a training montage, with Naofumi and the Queen both aware of how grossly underprepared everyone is. This is the more easygoing part of the book, giving Aneko Yusagi more time for world-building, character development, and all that good stuff. Plus, a convenient way to explain why the characters are suddenly a lot stronger in the next fight. And I will take that over some “power of friendship” deus ex machina any day.

The second act is where we get to the good stuff, the next story arc. You better believe that training montage is going to pay off here. The opening arc bleeds into this new one and once the next arc starts, the characters slowly figure out what the new threat is. Until it culminates into a massive, epic battle of survival against a horde of monsters, naturally. It all makes Volume 6 very balanced; first, we get the “normal life” stuff, then we get the big battle.

I would say the biggest pro of this book is the characters, both new and old. We get a few new people like Éclair who are just awesome. And our existing characters get further development too, from massive levels of development like Rishia to the gradual development Naofumi picks up with each new volume. The downside of Volume 6 is that nothing really gets resolved. The opening arc has no real stakes and the new arc is set to continue in the next book. We’ll see what happens next there.

Title: The Colorado Kid
Author: Stephen King
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Hard Crime Case
Release Date: October 4, 2005
Format: Paperback
Pages: 178

 

I’m admittingly not the biggest mystery fan, but I’ll read anything by Stephen King. And honestly, my biggest reason for picking up The Colorado Kid was wanting to read something short. Now, Stephen King has shown before that he can write non-horror just as well as horror. And this is a very different story from your average King book. The reviews for this book are very mixed. It’s not even a ‘love it or hate it’ thing; people’s opinions are all across the board here. I, personally, liked it but can imagine some people loathed it for the same reasons I give it 4 stars.

So, The Colorado Kid has a lot going on that’s different from most other mystery stories. First off, the mystery isn’t fresh. And the characters aren’t even really trying to solve the mystery. We have two older journalists telling this new younger journalist the most memorable story of their careers. The story of an unsolved mystery and their insights into it. And this is where I think a lot of people draw ire with the story. In fiction, people want a resolution. They want the time they spent reading to have a payoff. That’s not what The Colorado Kid does, but it was never trying to do that in the first place either.

Like any good mystery, we start with one big question. In this story, it’s “who was this mysterious dead man?” And as little answers and hints are uncovered, that leads to more questions so the trail of clues can continue. The thing is, this is where The Colorado Kid kind of stops. The characters (and readers) speculate a bunch, but it’s never outright said what really happened. And that’s the point. The Colorado Kid is meant to reflect a real-life mystery. Not the fluffed up, everything-works-out fictional version that people tend to expect. And oftentimes, real-life mysteries go unsolved.

Yes, The Colorado Kid is in the mystery genre. But it’s not really about the mystery. It’s about the characters trying to solve that mystery. Which happens, albeit a bit on-again-off-again, over more than a year. When the trail ends and they still don’t have a concrete answer, all they can do is speculate. And deal with it. And move on with their lives. The older characters even straight-up say they’ve never shared this story with any big-time publications because they know the facts will get muddled as people make up their own false ending due to our unyielding need for that type of closure as a society. By telling the younger journalist this, they’re passing the torch to her. And that’s really the point of this story at its core.

And as a side note, I think I really liked this book because it didn’t have a “real” ending and endings are something that Stephen King tends to struggle with. That many authors tend to struggle with. Ending a story is one of the hardest parts of writing one and the “life goes on” aspect of The Colorado Kid allowed it to skip over this usually steep hurdle.

Title: Crusade
Series: Destroyermen
Author: Taylor Anderson
Genre: Sci-fi
Publisher: Roc
Release Date: October 7, 2008
Format: Paperback
Pages: 400

 

Things are starting to heat up for Captain Reddy, his crew, and their new allies in Crusade. A lot of the initial worldbuilding for Destroyermen got taken care of in the first book. So, this time around there is more focus on plot advancement. By the time I got around to writing this review, I’m already 6 books deep into this series. And so far, it seems like the story arcs can be measured out fairly well. Yes, the overall story is still about fighting the Grik. But it can be broken down into smaller actions, just like a real-world conflict. The first book left a lot hanging, but the story was fairly self-contained. Crusade is more the first half of a two-parter.

At the end of the first book, it’s not 100% clear what the characters are actually going to do next. They know a massive invasion force that will take no prisoners is headed straight for them. A decision has to be made: run or fight. They pick ‘fight’ and a lot of Crusade is the human characters teaching the Lemurians how to get ready in every possible way. That means training in combat tactics, developing new weapons, learning to use those weapons and tactics, and outfitting an overall peaceful society for war.

Much of the book is spent on this prep work. Not just getting it done, but how they go about doing it and the beginnings of ramifications all these changes will bring to Lemurian society. And a lot of this is new to Captain Reddy and his men too. Yeah, they’re Navy, but it’s not like any of them were Admirals commanding fleets before this. Not to mention having to lead ground troops into battle.

And as far as the plot goes, it’s kind of basic. In real life, war is a messy business that (historically) is rarely about the moral high ground. But when you’re up against a take-no-quarters enemy who behaves as such because they’re vicious carnivores that you hope to God will have the good grace to kill you before they start eating you, it kind eliminates any question of good vs. evil. It makes it pretty easy for the protagonists to become shining paragons of honor and heroism. They’re not like Disney-protagonist level good, they’ll get their hands dirty when necessary, but the enemy is clearly much worse.

Destroyermen really reads more like an old serial series than anything else. In the grand scheme of things, not too much actually happens in Crusade, and nothing is really fully resolved. But that’s not at all what this book is trying to do, so it really doesn’t matter. It’s just a fun alternate history military romp. It knows this and does it well. This is not the series to read if you’re looking for something on par with Of Mice and Men. It’s what you read when you want fighting, explosions, and action in a light sci-fi setting.