End Times in Dragon City

Note: this book review was originally written in a notebook on Dec 10/19 while I was on vacation last week.  I've made some minor edits to it while transcribing it.

Well, here we are: End Times in Dragon City - finished!

This book wasn't as good as Bad Times in Dragon City, although I still enjoyed it.  The problem is that the main character, Max, was stuck in prison for the first while.  And since the book is written from his perspective, nothing really happens until his friends break him out.

Let's back up a bit.  After Max killed the dragon at the end of Bad Times in Dragon City, Max was thrown into the highest level of the Garret so he could see the damage he had wrought to the City.  Freed from the dragon, the Ruler of the Dead immediately sent her armies to take out the city; her zombies are overwhelming the wall.  It's only a matter of time before she breaks through.

Eventually, Max's friends break him out of prison.  After catching him up on what's happening, Max decides they need to bolster the Imperial Guard and save the city.  But after the Guard blow up Goblintown, no one is interested in putting aside their differences in order to band together.  There's also one more problem: the dragon's corpse is decomposing in the middle of the city, a tempting target for the Ruler of the Dead.  If she gains control of it, Dragon City will be lost.

While I didn't think it was as good as the previous book, I still really enjoyed End Times in Dragon City, and thought it was a very fitting end for the trilogy.  I hope one day we'll get more of Max's adventures! 

I'd also love to know more about this setting!  How did the Ruler of the Dead first come into being?  If she's been stuck on this continent, what is the rest of the world like? And what happens next for Dragon City? 

Bad Times in Dragon City

Note: this book review was originally written in a notebook on Dec 9/19 while I was on vacation last week.  I've made some minor edits to it while transcribing it.

Wow. So I wasn't super sure how I felt overall about the first book in this series (although I did enjoy it).  But the second book was absolutely fantastic!

Bad Times in Dragon City takes place about two weeks after End Times in Dragon City.  Belle calls Max to her home to tell him that her sister's body has disappeared.  For most people this isn't a big deal, but for elves it's huge: an elf family has to produce the body within a few weeks or else a living elf must takes the deceased's place.  And because elves consider their elders treasures due to their knowledge and long histories, elf families typically send younger elves to stand in the deceased's place.  So that means Belle will go if Fiera's body isn't found soon!

I loved that detail within the worldbuilding.  And I loved how it was dealt with: Max assumed an elder would go because that's how humans deal with it - elders are near death, so let the young live.

Fiera's body disappeared the night after she died, and the family's manservant, Ford, was found killed around where it should have been.  So Max is determined to save Belle by finding it.  But all the while he's being called across the city to meet with powerful dwarves and the Wizard's Council due to the dragonet (the dragon's heir) hatching and imprinting on him.

I didn't quite catch Max's leap in logic of how he realized Belle and Fiera's parents knew what had happened to Fiera's body, but their father had indeed seen it walk off.  So Max assembles the gang to go and find it.  Rather than simply being possessed by the Ruler of the Dead, Fiera had been in league with her for months.  And as everyone is facing off under the City, the enraged dragon tears through the ground, trying to kill them all.  This ends with Max killing the dragon instead, much to the delight of the Ruler of the Dead - the dragon was the only one keeping her at bay.  And so we'll see how the story ends in the next book!

There was some very neat worldbuilding in this book.  The dragon lives on magic, which is why he wants elf bodies - he devours the built up magic within them.  The other long-lived peoples would likewise have lots of magic for him, while shorter-lived races like humans do not.  I loved this detail.

But I did start questioning Max's tie to the dragonet vs. the dragon's tie to the elf (the Voice of the Dragon).  The latter pair seemed super tied, to the point that the elf seemed to suffer any injuries the dragon received (although I may have misread that and the elf may have simply been caught in the crossfire?  I'm not really sure).  If they are tied like that though, will the dragonet live a shorter life because he or she is tied to a human?  I'm also wondering if Max's personality rubbed off on the dragonet because they seem to be psychically linked?  Hopefully I'll get the answers to these questions in End Times in Dragon City!

One last somewhat unrelated note: as I was reading both this book and Hard Times in Dragon City, I kept reading "glowglobes" as "snowglobes," which are totally not the same thing!

Hard Times in Dragon City

Note: this book review was originally written in a notebook on Dec 8/19 while I was on vacation last week.  I've made some minor edits to it while transcribing it.

Well here we are: over 7 years later, I finally read the first book of Matt Forbeck's second 12 for 12 series, Hard Times in Dragon City.  This trilogy is set in his Shotguns & Sorcery world.  I started reading it on my flight to Toronto last week (when I couldn't sleep on the plane); I ended up finishing it on the flight to Florida that day (with another hour of the flight remaining - Hard Times in Dragon City was a pretty fast read!)

Hard Times in Dragon City is another story about Matt Gibson, Forbeck's hero from "Goblintown Justice" and "Friends Like These" (although I admit I don't really remember much about him because it's been quite awhile since I read those stories).  The story begins with Max getting awakened from his bed by the elven guard captain, Yabair.  Some of Max's good friends have been murdered and he needs to identify the bodies.  From there, Max takes it upon himself to find whoever did this and bring them to justice, especially since he knows that the wrong man has been apprehended.  His journey takes him across Dragon City and beyond, visiting old friends and dodging assassins along the way.

I wasn't sure about Max at first, but by the end I quite liked him.  He's the kind of guy who has your back, and reminded me of the type of character I lik to play in RPGs: well-rounded in abilities (this comparison is quite apt as Shotguns & Sorcery was originally designed as a tabletop RPG).

The world is super fun too.  Max literally uses both a magic wand and a shotgun.  He even has to make snap decisions about which to use - can he pull off casting a spell fast enough? Can he pull out his shotgun before the enemy casts their spell?  The city itself is also a lot of fun, split into various sections for elves, halflings, dwarves, etc, and surrounded by a wall that keeps the undead out.  I hope a later book deals with the leader of the undead because she sounded quite interesting, too!

I also really liked how the story ended. Can't wait for more!

One thing to note though: Hard Times in Dragon City was written hurriedly as part of the 12 for 12 and it showed at times.  There were some minor mistakes all over the book (I even caught one spot where the book was originally written in third person rather than first, which makes me think an earlier draft must have been in third person). 

Four Shorts Read on the Plane Ride Home!

So now that I'm back home, I will fully admit - the reading spree I've been on lately has been while I was away on vacation.  The last 12 things I've read were all read while either in the airport or on a beach.  I even managed to read another four short pieces while I was travelling back home yesterday!  I wrote my thoughts down in a notebook after I finished each piece, so here is the edited versions of what I wrote.  :)

First I read "Legion" by Brandon Sanderson.  This was a super cool novella.  Stephen is a very special man.  He suffers from hallucinations of people, hallucinations which show up as he needs them.  Does he need the help of a historian?  Tobias is there for him.  Someone to help him defend himself?  There's J.C. the Navy SEAL.  Stephen has a mansion where each of these people have their own room because once they appear, they stay with him.

Stephen is approached by Monica, who works for a fancy research company. One of her employees, Razon, has stolen a camera that he created.  The camera supposedly takes pictures of the past.  So Stephen (and a few of his hallucinations) are recruited to track the camera down.  Their search takes them to Israel, where Stephen and company are convinced Razon has gone to either prove or disprove the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

One of the coolest parts was when Stephen flipped through a book on how to speak Hebrew and a hallucination appeared who could translate for him.  So depending on how exactly everything works, Stephen may have in reality flipped through the book and actually learned Hebrew!  He just has the hallucination taking over that part of his knowledge!  It was so cool! :)  (And if that's how things work, it means he's a ridiculously smart man!!!)

The other really cool part was when we find out why everyone keeps J.C. around. ;)

This was a super fun story that i really enjoyed reading!  Sanderson writes excellent novellas!  :)

Also, I'm super pumped to discover there's a second Legion story!!!!  :)

Next I read another Shotguns and Sorcery short story that I got from Matt Forbeck's first 12 for 12 called "Friends Like These."  This story involves some of the same characters that were in "Goblintown Justice" (notably Max and Kai the orc), along with a bunch of others.  This time, Max's halfling friend Moira has been accused of murdering an elf.  It's up to Max to prove her innocence once again.  This time he has to travel up the mountain to talk to the elves Moria had dealings with, so we get to see a few different parts of the city.  I enjoyed "Friends Like These" well enough, but I kind of think I liked "Goblintown Justice" a bit better.

After that I read "Jewels in the Night" by Kevin O. McLaughlin.  I've never read anything by McLaughlin before and don't really remember why I got this short story on my Kindle.  It's about a small crew of soldiers boarding a Chinese spacecraft.  The Chinese ship just nuked the American lunar colony and was returning to Earth.  The Chinese ship was created in secret because the Chinese weren't supposed to have such a vessel.  The marines were the colony's defense but were too far away to stop the Chinese vessel when it attacked.  So the marines did the only thing they could do - they waited in suits out in space and attempted to latch onto the vessel while it came by to assault it.  There were seven marines attempting this; only four make it onto the ship.  No one has ever attempted such a thing before, so the Chinese crew were completely unprepared for the marines' assault.  The marines succeed in their attack, taking out the crew and sending the vessel back to Earth to detonate its remaining warheads on China.  It's a terrible choice, but the captain hopes it will end the war.

As terrible as this story was (specifically with all the nukes killing billions of innocent people), I really enjoyed McLaughlin's writing.  I'll have to look into his other work (or more of this series) in the future!

Finally, I read "The Colonel" by Peter Watts.  I don't remember getting this one on my Kindle either.  I have to say, this one was intriguing but I really wasn't a fan of Watts' writing style.  "The Colonel" takes place in the future of our world where people can band their brains together to create hive minds.  The Colonel of the title is very, very against them and has been fighting them for a decade.  As the story progresses, it is revealed that his son was sent out into space and was never heard from again.  So when one of the local hive minds gives him an unexpected clue, he decides to risk everything to find out more.

I assume this was some sort of prelude to a novel or something because that was where the story ended.  I was sad that there was no real resolution to anything as a result.  As intriguing as the world was, I highly doubt I'll read any more because I really wasn't very interested in it.

So that's the end of my vacation reading spree.  I managed to clean up a whole bunch of things on my Kindle, plus I read Witch World in the middle of everything, too!  And now we're at the end of 2016.  I don't have separate blog posts for everything (and I didn't bother writing a post here for a few books), but according to Goodreads I've read 73 things this year!  A good chunk of those things were either shorts (thanks to the last few weeks) or graphic novels (only 25 were actual books, be they short story collections, novels, or nonfiction).  I had hoped to make it through 20 of the anthologies/short story collections that I own this year, but that didn't happen (I think I read 4, and one of those was an accident; I've also got two others on the go but am not going to be finishing them any time soon).  But I just checked out this 2016 Reading Challenge which I printed off last December; it looks like I almost completed it!  Check it out! 

:)

"Goblintown Justice"

About 5 years ago, I backed Matt Forbeck's first 12 for 12 Kickstarter campaign. One of the stretch goals that got unlocked scored me the ebook version of Forbeck's short story "Goblintown Justice." "Goblintown Justice" is set in the Shotguns & Sorcery setting Forbeck had created earlier as a roleplaying game world (and which was the setting of his second 12 for 12 trilogy). To date I've only read his Brave New World trilogy out of the 12 for 12 stuff I backed. So while flipping through my Kindle stuff, I decided it was definitely way past time I read this.

"Goblintown Justice" finds Max Gibson embroiled in trouble. He leaves the Quill and discovers an orc he knows from his adventuring days standing over the corpse of a woman in the auxiliary city guard (whom both he and the orc knew from said adventuring days). The Dragon Guard arrives and arrests them both. The evidence is overwhelmingly against the orc. Max is released and instructed to find the killer fast if he wants to save his orc friend. So he heads down to Goblintown, the roughest neighbourhood in Dragon City, looking for answers.

This is my first experience with Shotguns & Sorcery; I was really liking the world. It's got crazy little touches, like the zombie horde outside the wall, that added to the already interesting mix of wild west and wizardry. The story itself was also rather entertaining, full of the crazy politics of Dragon City's diverse inhabitants. Honestly, I'm quite looking forward to reading the second 12 for 12 trilogy now (which I may get to in the near future...)