I was browsing through a local used book store's online store, found a book from an author I kind of
maybe remember hearing she might be decent (Red Wyvern by Katherine Kerr), checked it up on Goodreads. Searching the book, it gave another result not from Kerr called Rise of the Wyvern from the
Lesbian Space Pirates series. I took a double look there, lol.
Anyway, I picked books #1-3 from Wheel of Time. I had them up unti book #14 in Finnish (they made 1-3 books out of one OG English one...) but they stopped (later turned out they just paused) translating them at one point so I gave them away with the intent of getting them all in English at some point. So now I've started this journey agai. Even though I don't think the series is among the best, I still got deep enough into it that I want to finish it one day. Also got Neverending Story, American Gods, and something called The Immortals of Meluha by Amish. Not sure what the last one is, never heard of it before, but it had over 4 as its overall rating on Goodreads and the premise/mythology seems India-based so that's a nice change of pace to the middle age European setting, so I decided to check it out. It's fun to try out new names ever so often.
Obligatory Robin Hobb actually sucks post. She does, and so do her books—of which I've read 12 and regret wasting my time.
On to what I'm reading, upon suggestions from here I started The Library at Mount Char. Very cool concept so far and I'm pretty hooked. I'm only about 100 pages in though, so we'll see if it turns out any good.
Getting huge Gaiman vibes though, which is usual a good thing.
Obligatory "what the fuck am I reading?" post. She's undeniably a top tier fantasy author. One of the all time greats, sitting right there with Tolkien, GRRM, Le Guin, Pratchett, McCaffrey, Gaiman and such.
Her books have incredible characterization, a cast filled with great characters with well developed & deep relationships to each other, insane long-term world-building & foreboding, great unique takes on well worn tropes, and twists that can put GRRM to shame. The worst one could say about them is that there can be a bit of repetition and they can be a bit slow to start, but the things that eventually happen once the books start hitting their stride are engaging & exciting, often tragic to a devastating degree.
EXCEPT for the the Soldier's Son trilogy. That's easily her weakest work. Not horrible but the protagonist is just such a horribly whiny, insufferable prick that it made reading the books hard. I'll have to read them again sometimes, often knowing what I'm into can make for better subsequent re-reads, but as of first read basis, Soldier's Son, Forest Mage and Renegade Magic are the worst books Hobb has written.
