Read any good books lately? Rate them here

[Ravenshire]

I re-read (listened) the "Mistborn" books, including "The Alloy of Law." Really glad I included that one even though I was expecting "Shadows of Self" to be a new series more closely related to the events in the original trilogy. Turns out that, despite Sanderson's early claims that "Alloy" was a one-off story, "Shadows" is it's sequel with a third on the way. "Shadows" has been pretty good so far. A better story than "Alloy" actually with more references to the original trilogy, but not quite as good as the original. Still, a pretty good book from Sanderson beats the crap out of "great" books by most of the popular author these days.

Also recently finished the "Low Town" series. Imagine Philip Marlowe in a fantasy world setting. Both the setting and the writing style are very dark, chilling in places, but I still can't recommend them enough.

I've also managed to muscle through the gag reflex on three more of the "Wheel of Time" books. I'm closing in on the Sanderson books in that series. If not for wanting to read those, I would have given up on this tripe long ago. I still can't figure out how Robert Jordan convinced a publisher to allow him to crap out a new addition to an overly long, poorly imagined series every year or two. I have high hopes for the final three in the series, but Jordan's story could have, and should have, been told in a series of 4-6 books. He milked it for everything he could, started thread after thread and left his legacy unfinished. The sad part is, the seeds of a great story are there. Jordan just drowned them with purple prose and unnecessary side plots.