Book list 2025

           

After a brief nearly decade hiatus, seems about time to start posting again. This is more or less what I read last year.

            Dungeon Crawler Carl 1-7

Aliens destroy most of earth, with the few "lucky" survivors get to larp in an insane role playing game. After 7 books you would think you would know if you liked a series, but I’m still not really sure.   There are of course stuff I enjoy.  It has many of the hallmarks of good epic fiction that I like, such recurring characters, extensive backstories, and a wider plot outside the main story that slowly gets revealed.  I don’t particularly like Carl who I find to be too much of a nihilist for me,  but his partner is fun.  I do wish the whole thing was like 30% less convoluted and 50% less weird and disgusting.  The 3rd book in particular was hard to get through and even still I feel like I can’t track  the larger players involved very well.  The premise would work just as well without everything being so over the top.  

Cradle Books 1-5

The Cradle series is 13 books, though I might just read the wiki summaries for the rest and call it a day.  Cradle has sort of a Kung Fu magic where characters level up throughout the books..  The first two were slow and the main characters weren’t interesting, but there were glimpses of a more compelling larger story.  I continued because they were relatively short and the reviews said it got better.  And it does, I really likes the end of the 3rd and the 4th book.  The 5th book was a huge slog though.  The power creep loops are getting repetitive.  Our protagonists keep defeating harder enemies and getting more powerful just to find another level of enemy to fight.  The main characters have gotten slightly more well-rounded than the beginning, but I wouldn’t call any of them likeable.  I do want to know what happens, but perhaps not enough to read 8 more books.   

Bobiverse 1-5

Another series where I found the quality to be a bit up and down.  Bob became a digital version of himself after he died, and then cloned himself and the clones cloned themselves .. until the he have a vast community of digital Bobs. The characterization of Bob is strong, he feels like a distinct quirky character, though I often have trouble remembering which clone was which, particularly in the early going.  For the most part I enjoyed the larger philosophical and social dynamics issues.  The story faltered more when the Bob’s interacted more directly with other life forms with a lot of those parts feeling slow and dull.    

Wind and Truth

I have read almost every Sanderson book and have liked almost all of them except two.  This was one of those two*.  Brandon has talked a lot about the Wheel of Time being a pivotal influence in his writing, a series that bogged down terrible in the middle books due in part to having too many characters.   I think Sanderson went too far in the other direction here.  Instead of growing the cast, we just made all of our existing characters superhumanly awesome at everything except self confidence with all minor characters having the role of telling our main characters how awesome they are. The ten day structure of a global war could have been interesting, but it just wasn’t dynamic enough, so you had hundreds of pages of very little progress.  Some of this felt really unrealistic like having a trench warfare with superpowered characters.  With the world on the line our heroes spend the time playing board games, going on a quest to be a therapist, and spend countless time pondering if they are their best self.  I do, in general, like where things ended up after the climax, so I’m hoping Sanderson learns from his errors here, and gets it back together on the back half.    

The other was the graphic novel, White Sands, which was put together by people who clearly didn’t know how to tell a story in that medium.

I am Malala

An autobiography of Malala.  It is a short book, but as you would expect heavy to read.  It is odd juxtaposition of a pre-teen/teen girl having teenager problem and becoming an assassin’s target, but that her life.  I’m not sure it was particularly enjoyable, but is worth reading.  

Seven Good Years

A comedian’s book about raising a child in Israel.  It was short and at times humorous, but the book mixed up true stories and pure fiction in a way that left me confused as to what real and took me out of the story.      

Seven Deadly Sins

I picked this one up at a free library I think mostly on a whim.  David’s Walsh book on his pursuit to show Lance Armstrong cheated in winning 7 tours.  Since is based on real life the book is less on proving Lance Armstrong did drugs and more on trying to get people to not ignore the obvious evidence in front of him.  It thus fairly disjointed with Armstrong’s downfall being mostly after Walsh had given up and gone on other things.  It revolved largely around interviews and profiles of racers and affiliated people who had mixed levels of interestedness and goodness.  It is an okay read on an interesting subject.

I don’t particularly care about steroids.  It isn’t a great thing to allow, but I find it generally understandable why people who have dedicated their life to a singular pursuit don’t understand when they hit a sacrifice they shouldn’t make. Armstrong is one I always disliked though as he went out of his way to cause damage to others.  There is, I think, an important and somewhat hopeful message in this story.  You never know what will bring someone down and people are often untouchable until they aren’t.  You don’t know what that last push will be, so you do your part, as long as you much as you can, and then hope someone else picks up the baton.  

What's Next: A Backstage Pass to The West Wing, Its Cast and Crew, and Its Enduring Legacy of Service

West Wing is one of my favorite shows (though no Sport’s Night) and still is a nice view of government that actually wants to make people’s lives better.  The book was retrospective on making key episodes and service stories.  It was heavy on the everybody is wonderful, which while expected isn’t particularly interesting, but there were also enough entertaining anecdotes throughout to make it enjoyable.

Tigana:

My favorite book of the year though I don’t thing it quite stuck the landing.  Tigana has a fascinating premise.  Taking place in a fantasy version of renaissance Italy, a distraught wizard puts a spell on a Tigana causing all to forget its existence except for a select few who are trying to restore its memory .  It has a very poetic prose and you can feel the passion of the characters and their struggle to balance their mission with the sacrifices they have to make.  It can be slow and meandering, but I enjoyed the pacing.  I wish the ending was more grounded though and the author stopped adding more mysticism and magic (one particular character arc ending was quite unsatisfying), but otherwise I quite enjoyed it.  Going to try to read some of Kay’s even more well regarded books this year.

Emberdark:

Yet another Sanderson secret novel,  this was vastly better then Wind and Truth.  While not quite at the level of Mistborn or Warbreaker, it is solidly in the second tier of Cosmere novels.  The highlight of the book was a compelling protagonist with a distinct personality and a story that that flowed naturally from it.  Dusk needs to balance his preference for traditions and quiet with dealing with being thrust into the Cosmere space age whether they liked it or not.  How to be colonized on your own terms is an interesting problem.  There is also a rogue crew of intergalactic spacemen led by a dragon, if you are into that sort of thing,  but they weren’t quite as flushed out.  The book is heavy on Cosmere lore, but it felt more like strong world building here than crucial and confusing plot points as it has in some other cases.  There are certainly Sanderson tropes here, and the ending felt very him, but the execution was solid throughout.