I haven't updated in two months (though that's better than the six months that I hadn't updated before that), so here's what I've been reading during that time.
Codex Alera I: Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher. I found this to be entertaining, but the writing seemed to be lacking for me in some stretches and I wasn't as fond of some of the characters as I would have liked. It felt a bit YA. My impression was that some of that was intentional and perhaps I'm just not in the target audience?
I made a promise awhile back to expand my Urban Fantasy reading and so I started with Twenty Palaces I: Child of Fire by Harry Connolly. Overall I liked it, but wasn't terribly impressed. There were some good ideas here imo, but it also suffered in some ways (I guessed because it was the author's first work). There were a few elements that were mentioned/explained over and over, to the point that they started to bother me, such as what "meat" does. And I did not care for how the main character seemed to make such a big deal of certain physical aspects of other characters. He seemed to be quite discriminatory in a mean-spirited way towards people that he labeled as "too fat" or "too skinny". I've never understood such thinking, though I suppose it's realistic for some. But again, I tried to focus on the elements that I liked, and in the end I enjoyed it more than I didn't.
I probably wouldn't have picked up the next volume, Game of Cages anytime soon, but I had blind bought that from Borders for something like $1.50, so I continued on. I'm glad that I did, as those small elements that I found irksome in Book 1 were eliminated or reduced in Book 2. I found this story to be tighter and more interesting, and the characters more sympathetic and complex. I still didn't love the series, but my estimation of it was noticeably improved. So I quickly bought Book 3, Circle of Enemies. Before reading the book I looked at the summary of it. I didn't want to see the story go in that direction, but upon reading it I thought that the author did about as good of a job as he could have with it. I enjoyed this novel as much as the second, and was disappointed to learn that it is likely the last that we'll see anytime soon (though there is a prequel ebook just published in the last month). Ultimately, I didn't feel that this series was as entertaining as The Dresden Files or nearly as complex as Felix Castor, but I found it pretty good, and am glad to have tried it.
Next for me were the Iron Druid Chronicles: Hounded, Hexed and Hammered. The very beginning of Hounded had me worried, as it seemed a bit too simplistic, but I soon recognized that the series was meant to be more "fun" than anything else and in that light it was entertaining. Overall I thought it a bit better than the first of Twenty Palaces, as I appreciated the humor and thought it slightly more polished. However, while that series improved imo as it went along, I actually thought the opposite was true here. I thought that the 2nd and 3rd books went too much for humor, in some cases overly relying on the same jokes that were not as fresh in Book 2 and 3 as they had been in Book 1. I had hoped that the series might become more serious and polished as it continued, but found the reverse to be true. Perhaps the fault is mine for going in with expectations, or maybe the books are better read with a gap between them, but while I thought that there was definite potential here, it seems imo to be heading in a direction that I would label as too "cartoonish" for my tastes. I may try the next book just to see if it's more to my liking, but if not, I'll probably give the series up there.
After that were the first two installments in The Kate Daniels series, Magic Bites & Magic Burns as well as the short story set in that world from The Dark and Stormy Nights Anthology. I'm mixed on this one. I wanted to like it and there definitely seems potential here, the writing is competent and sometimes I enjoyed it, and the plot has some original aspects. At the same time, a lot of the elements strike me as very unoriginal and easily guessed. I almost felt like I could see a checklist being marked off as I read various "secrets" of the main character, her past, and her current adventures. I'd heard that the series got better with Book 2, but I didn't see that much difference between the two volumes. I have ordered Book 3, and am hopeful that I'll enjoy that one more, but have a feeling that it will be fairly predictable. I do have to take issue with the publisher, as the end of Book 2 concludes on the left page. Across from it is a teaser for another book in the series, which I assumed to be Book 3. A quick read showed that instead it was for Book 5 and it gave away two major spoilers that must have occurred between Books 3-4 (that almost anyone could have easily predicted, but still).
In the meantime I began reading for the first time The Eye of the World. So far I'm enjoying the plot and some of the writing, but am finding some of the writing and the characters to be less interesting to me than I would have liked. I'll see how it improves or not as I progress.
