In Which I Have Midway Thoughts of Harrow The Ninth and Where My Reading is Taking Me
To be honest, I don’t like dark themed or toned fiction. It’s something I read at minimal. I will pick up something that catches my eye. The good stuff isn’t written by edge lords who want all the darkness with none of the light.
So the Locked Tomb Series seems to do that for me. I have little issue that it is a dark book, I mean, death is kind of everywhere in the book down to the decorations. And to be honest, this isn’t the book I should be reading now, but here I am. I am in a morose mood with ongoing frustration that started this year and is never ending at this point.
Greetings, once again my being a slow reader is biting me in the butt. Feels like I’ve been stuck on Harrow the Ninth the same way I got stuck on Gideon the Ninth. It doesn’t help that yearly summer slow down was relentless this year. I’m still in the tail end of it as I’ve been stuck and reading is like pulling teeth. I want to finish it but, there is another factor here. The book seems to suffer with second book syndrome a bit.
There are things happening. I’m never going to say that a book has nothing happening because it’s not at the pace I want. However, I’m not sure what everything in the book is heading too. This book opens a lot to the world that it’s it. It’s an interesting world for sure. It’s just that it does that thing where there is a clearly huge world with a problem, but it’s so confined to a space it almost feels as if it’s restricting itself.
Basically, epic setting in a limited perspective of the main character, who is not moving much. Harrow’s experience in this novel is internal mixed in with the external. There is a large external conflict that being a bit walled behind smaller external conflicts. And the situation dresses itself as a hopeless one. Where there aren’t a lot of choices. Face the beast or run, which is, I suppose, literal in this book.
I want to do a review of the entire series. But that fully requires for book four to be released, and that still doesn’t have a release date. But, I’m good with waiting on series.
*Tries to ignore The King Killer Chronicles heavy breathing on the shelf and the sad, mournful cries of Lorna Freeman’s never to be finished series.*
Well…as long as they are released.
Speaking of books, I’m building up a lovely collection of magical realism novels to read next year.
Why magical realism? Because, to be honest, the landscape of fantasy is becoming a more frustrating landscape at the moment. I’m not going to lie, for more than a handful of years, I felt the need to pivot more and more away from fantasy as a whole.
There are zero new releases I care about. I mean, Murderbot, but that is sci-fi. Even the Locked Tomb is fantasy sci-fi. I’m even like, “Hey, Andy Wier, do you have a book for us?” I really don’t see anything eye-catching in fantasy at the moment. Every time I listen to a fantasy description, it all sounds like the last handful of books to be published. And if there are books that I am interested in, all the books kind of read in the same-y voice.
And don’t be like:
“The old fantasy stories were better. Everything should be Tolkien and escapism.”
Yeah. No. I don’t follow that track. I don’t want to read the same kinds of stories, both old and new, over and over again. As I stated, I like epic high fantasy, but I firmly, wholeheartedly believe that should not be the only type of fantasy that needs to exist. Reading older works isn’t going to change that. Besides, I have an entire catalogue of Mercedes Lackey books to read.
Stupid Humble Bundle.
As for the escapism. Fantasy can serve more than one purpose, and it should. That doesn’t mean it should have just a message. There is more space between point A and point B. We should have all learned this in math class as children. I was terrible at calculating that exact space, but I at least know between 1 and 2, 1.854 still exists.
Look, I like variety. Right now, it’s like every fantasy sub-genre is locked into the same collection of tight conventions and now, with tropes being a misguided focus, it’s like everything is being rehashed again and again.
I need more than just tropes, conventions that are getting worn to me with changes in set dressing that really doesn’t change very much. I need imagination.
I might turn to Sci-fi. What are some sci-fi books I need to read? Adrian Tchaikovsky is a writer I’m interested in reading. I adore Murderbot if that helps. And no, I don’t care for Becky Chambers. I do very much like Andy Weir. I tried reading Acorna long ago. Though, I might give it another go. Feels like something I would like now. In fact, I might aim for that next year.
Speaking of imagination. A certain silly story that involve a man who is a phoenix and a woman who is turning into ice, Claws of Ice Wings of Fire shall indeed resume updates next week.
While there was a piece of me that wanted one more week off. It’s been squashed with the need to get the story finished. Get ready for the next round of edits that I can do on my own, and the book is going to an editor.
Why not beta readers?
I don’t know how to acquire beta readers, especially ones that would be interested in this story. Or, honestly, for anything I write. It’s just going straight to editor and then the self-publishing route.
Next week, I’m probably going to put out a call for editor suggestions. I can tell you if it’s an editor on Substack, and they come from this list:
https://themanifest.substack.com/p/copywriting-and-editing
and there is another one that I can’t find now. But it was a list of editors on Substack that was hosted on what appeared to be its own website. I know about them. If there are editors out there that don’t appear on those lists, I’m looking for to maybe hire you.
I’ll find the website, hopefully before next week’s end of weeks post.
Until then, happy reading and God bless.