Jhereg by Steven Brust

Jhereg by Steven Brust

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Assassin nonsense in a fantasy land where death is generally not final and humans are the minority.

Yeah, I know everyone loves these books, but did you love the first one? Because I thought this was inoffensive but also uninteresting, and there was this overbaked convolution to the whole thing that made me think I ought to be reading it out of the super sekrit writing notebooks of a high school kid who plays a lot of D&D. Not like there’s anything wrong with D&D, just, you know. Random reincarnation plotline wtf?

To be fair, this was my hurricane book, and yeah, my sense of humor was elsewhere for a few days there (apparently it runs on electricity, I didn’t know). But yeah. Not funny.




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Dodger by Terry Pratchett

Dodger by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Plucky orphan is lifted out of the literal sewers of poverty in early Victorian London by accident and bravery and Charlie Dickens.

Fun but forgettable. I was honestly confused why this wasn’t a Discworld book. It’s not like that’s ever stopped him from introducing historical personages or anything, and this felt like Sam Vimes was just around any given corner. He kind of was, actually, only he was called Sir Robert Peel.

Then we got to the end, and there was an afterword about how Pratchett wanted to write a story about the nearly unimaginable poverty of the time. Which was pretty interesting, considering that usually when he wants to write about a thing from our world he tosses it in a martini shaker with some dwarves, some puns, and a pinch of Death, and then serves it chilled over some Granny Weatherwax wisdom. It’s not like writing from the remove of fantasy stops him from digging into something real he wants to talk about, is the thing.

I don’t have a point here, I just think it’s interesting is all. Why this book? Why this way? I am the last person to believe that severe illness touches every corner of someone’s life, down to how he conceives of a story. But there is a temptation to speculate, I will admit.




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