I finished reading The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang recently. For those who are unaware, it’s a grimdark fantasy tale that pulls a lot of its material from China’s past several hundred years or so of history, in particular the Sino-Japanese conflicts and the Opium Wars. It is dark, with the depicted events all the …
I read the novella All Systems Red by Martha Wells (the first in the Murderbot Diaries series) prior to watching the Apple TV+ adaptation that simplified the title down to just ‘Murderbot’. As any who have read some of my past posts could probably tell, I find the art of adaptation really interesting. What the …
I’ve finally done it. I’ve read every published Brandon Sanderson Cosmere novel to date. The journey – and given the length, general number, and content of his novels, I’d say the word journey is an appropriate one – began over 10 years back in undergrad. I have other posts on the matter (https://mweald.com/2024/01/28/on-long-chills-case-dough-brandon-sanderson/), so I …
Revelation Space, the circa 2000 science fiction novel by the author Alastair Reynolds, is another book I read based on the recommendation of a friend, the same friend, in fact, who recommended Hyperion by Dan Simmons. These are two very different books, even if they are both science fiction, and they each held within different …
If I’d been asked to pick my favorite author during high school, it probably would have been Stephen King. I read my fair share of his horror classics during this time: The Stand, The Shining, It, The Long Walk, Cell, Under the Dome, etc. I grew up amongst the corn fields of southern Indiana and …
Hey all. I got the Kirkus review for The Work of Restless Nights, and believe it or not there was nary a negative comment to be found! This one had me nervous, I’ll admit. The whole setup for self-published authors, any author really, is primed for inducing anxiety. You pay Kirkus a not so insubstantial …
First off, I’m a big fan of Brandon Sanderson. When I was young, so pretty much from grade school through early high school, I read incessantly. From the time I first picked up the likes of Deltora Quest, Ranger’s Apprentice, Harry Potter, Eragon, or any book with Drizzt Do’Urden in it, all the way to …
M. Weald 