What I Read: September 2020

Well, I hope everyone is enjoying the new month! Here’s what I read in September - it was all wizards all the time for me last month and I have no intent to change that.

Wizard’s First Rule, by Terry Goodkind (Sword of Truth series book 1) - to be clear, I spent most of August reading this and think I just technically finished it in September. Irrelevant, I know.

I picked this up on someone’s recommendation. It’s a pretty chonky book, but they sold it well and there wasn’t anything else jumping out at me at the time, so in I went. Little did I know, dear reader, this might be the best series I’ve come across. Ever. The lessons from the world and the magic are better than Harry Potter. The sense of adventure and the quest of the thing is better than LOTR (yes, I said what I said). The love story makes Outlander look like…a non-event. The writing is impeccable. I think “stupid good” describes it accurately. It’s got the simple precision that details exactly enough of everything at exactly the right times. The plot never lags over the 700+ pages and the ending is an absolute masterpiece. There is tough stuff in this book, but it is not excessive or glorified (I have huge issues when authors use violence as a plot device or because they’re too lazy to come up with something else - maybe you’ve already figured out by now why I stopped reading Outlander and never got far in GOT either).

It smacked me in all the right ways. The characters are clever, real, subtly funny, and undergo incredible growth. It deals with magic, destiny, lessons, self-discovery and acceptance, but also with a terrible bad guy, magic books, a dragon, and the best love story I’ve ever read. The fate and balance of everything known is at stake. I’m hooked and delighted that there are so many of these and that they’re all so big.

There’s a precise moment in the final scenes of the book where one paragraph gave me goosebumps, dropped my jaw, and made me weep. All at once. Absolutely incredible. I don’t know how to talk about it more without giving things away. Just trust me and go get it.

Stone of Tears, by Terry Goodkind (Sword of Truth series book 2) - The second book in this big series and it is as incredible as the first one. I don’t know how to talk about it - again - without giving things away. I’m going to need you to trust me on this. Go read the first one, then prepare yourself for the way that one felt in your head, multiply it by at least three, and that’s how this one feels.

This book expands the story and the world. The writing is just as perfect, the plot just as tight and exquisite, and all the things I loved about the first book are doubled in this one. The challenges Richard and Kahlan go through are both excruciating and necessary and make their story all the more incredible. The ending is just as perfect as i didn’t expect it to be and I cried about it again. Ugh.

I’m starting the third book today after I get my stuff done. I don’t want to read anything else for the rest of the year, really, and I’m absolutely fine with that.

I wish I’d found these decades ago.

Battle Ground, by Jim Butcher (Harry Dresden book 17) - I listened to this, it’s an excellent series on audiobook, and, I cannot talk about it either unless you’ve also read all of the rest of them! Stuff happens here my friends, and I’m gonna need a minute to figure out what I think and how I feel about it.

The book is filled with great fight scenes, compelling writing, fresh character development, and it’s a real good story. The thing about this series that’s most fun for me is that reading these Dresden books feels like why I love going to see those superhero movies by myself at the theater - I can totally disappear for a while and be totally entertained. There’s enough humor and big explosions and badass people saving the world with various levels of magical powers to forget about everything else for a while. Harry Dresden has become a fun fictional dude running around in my head. I love his energy and his charm, his issues and his humor. Butcher writes in a way where I find all I have to do is push play on the audio or put my eyes on the page and I’m in it.

This one has big moments for the characters. I’m not sure what will happen next to Harry or how he’ll deal with what happens to him here. At one point, I thought I had it figured out; thought that I knew WHY the thing that happens, happens, but I was incorrect. I think I’ve come to terms with it a little, and obviously it doesn’t feel great. But…that’s the tradeoff isn’t it.

Getting invested in fictional characters is a risky business.