I’m continuing my re-read of the Reacher series (and The Expanse) and have started Without Fail, the sixth in the series. It’s really, really good. No big coincidences, very much a mystery, about as perfect an example of Child’s writing as I recall.
I’m about 100 pages into Stephen Graham Jones’ The Only Good Indians, and holy shit.
Legitimately shocking, incredibly good horror. Slow burn that’s surprisingly plausible.
So I blew through all 10 Cradle books by Will Wight. Took about 5 weeks front to back.
I found them pretty up-and-down. The dumb stuff – the Dragonball action, the naked sociopathy of nearly every character across 10 novels, the society/world that doesn’t work at all if you think about it for the briefest moment – is so dumb. Maybe not Michael Bay Transformers dumb, but within shouting distance. It’s dumb, you guys.
On the other hand, the narrative cracks right along and the core relationships and character arcs are well thought out and engaging. I did read all ten books in five weeks, after all. The prose is absolutely functional (this isn’t faint praise; functional and unobtrusive prose in fantasy novels is not a given). Some of the action is pretty great, when it’s not making up some new arbitrary nonsense about the power level. There’s a dragon turtle. The way Wight planted seeds early on and paid them off 8-9-10 novels later is damn impressive.
But then the big celestial metagame that is interwoven and teased throughout the whole series is…dumb. There was a chance to really tie the whole thing together by landing that alongside Lindon’s arc and the Monarch/Dreadbeast arc together in what would have been an interesting and frankly more meaningful way in book 10, but that emphatically did not happen. At this point I don’t know if I’m even in for further books in the series. Maybe Wight has a solid endgame planned and I’m not giving him enough credit and he just hasn’t gotten to it yet, but right now my take is that book 10 takes a big ol’ whiz in the middle of the room.
Ultimately I would recommend many, many other series of largely popcorny action novels before this one.
I give it six skybeams out of a possible infinite number of iterations of star-crushingly overpowered attack techniques.
As someone that would be hard pressed to come up with a series more purely entertaining than Cradle, I’m sincerely interested to hear what those would be.
Then again, one of my favorite things about the books is the well-crafted magic system, which you don’t seem to care for at all, so maybe it’s just a clear-cut difference of perspectives.
Best part of the whole thing, right there.
My issue with the magic system is that it’s just ludicrously arbitrary. I object to “well-crafted” – I think it’s well-described, but e.g. any Sanderson novel has a system that makes massively more sense given its core concepts than Cradle’s. In Cradle, fuck it, Blackflame does this why not. It’s the Zoidberg of magic systems. Oh, pure madra does this now. Hey look, someone manifested a new power at a narratively convenient time, what a surprise!
It can be fun to read about, absolutely – Wight has a real talent for describing what Lindon is doing internally, for example, and how it feels to cycle whatever madra etc etc – but like Cradle’s society and the larger worldbuilding with the Abidan and the Vroshir, none of it holds up to the most cursory of examinations.
Anyway, fantasy things I would heartily recommend first:
Gladstone’s Craft cycle
Dresden
Rivers of London
Alex Verus (glad to hear you’re enjoying it, @ineffablebob!)
Anita Blake (before it turns into just straight-up porn)
Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson novels
Iron Druid
Literally everything BrandoSando has ever written
Naomi Novik’s entire output (may want to invest in some good coffee though, sheesh)
…
Another dozen series I’m not coming up with off the top of my head
…
The good Grisha books by Leigh Bardugo
The mediocre Grisha books by Leigh Bardugo
Whatever the hell the Innkeeper books are called, by Ilona Andrews
Some other series where the protagonist is a manic pixie dream swordswoman with a Complicated Relationship with a powerful-but-dreamy lion shapeshifter guy in some magic city and her dad is like evil immortal blood warlock Ashurbanipal or whatever
Honestly Cradle just feels very C+ to me. I don’t hate it, but I do find it ultimately mediocre.
Oof, talk about “magic does this when it’s convenient,” there’s no internal logic at all. I slogged through 5 books and it wasn’t completely without its charms but for me it’s just about the polar opposite of Cradle in terms of energy in for enjoyment out. The world’s certainly interesting, though.
I haven’t read the others but this being your first pick bodes poorly for our tastes having much compatibility. That said, I have been looking for an entry point with Sanderson.
It reminds me of the Sith Academy from Star Wars: KOTOR, but across a whole world. And then someone asking the question: what if you had a group that could trust each other, and weren’t constantly afraid of being stabbed in the back?
I think the first Sando I read was Warbreaker, which I liked enough to seek out more of his stuff. Mistborn is what put him on the map, and you can’t go wrong with that. His Reckoners series (starts with Steelheart) is really well done but very different than the fantasy stuff we’ve been talking about.
I will reread the entire Craft cycle and come back here in a few months loaded for bear on this one, my friend ;)
e: I do apologize for leading the list with it, though – we were discussing popcorny action novels, and they ain’t that. No doubt Cradle has much more motion to its narrative, shall we say, than the Craft books do.
I bounced off the first Cradle book for the reasons @inactive_user describes so I can’t do a full comparison, but fantasy series from (or mostly from) this century that I consider better:
Gladstone’s Craft Cycle
Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London
Abraham’s Dagger and Coin
Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives
Jemisin’s Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
Griffin’s Matthew Swift & Magicals Anonymous
I also liked McDonald’s Raven’s Mark although that may not be for everyone.
For less action-y but still very good fantasy I would add:
Abraham’s Long Price Quartet
Jemisin’s Broken Earth (arguably the best fantasy of this century, along with Long Price)
There’s probably tons more. I didn’t hate Cradle but there is a LOT of good fantasy out there that has exciting action, better than Cradle. YMMV.
Selfless cooperation as a superpower. I kind of love it.
Thanks.
Well, you’ll win that debate, not on the strength of your arguments but by simple virtue of the fact that I’m never going to read those books again. :) I get tired just thinking about it.
Now there’s a fantasy series with an internally logical magic system, and a hell of a good narrative to boot.
I loved the first chapter of the first book. And then the second chapter was such a left turn. Perhaps a completely different world with different characters? I have a tough time with that kind of left turn in books, so I haven’t found out yet. I need to try again. And this time I won’t read the first chapter. That way Chapter 2 is the start of the book.
Currently reading it now as well. A number of times I’ve had to look up from the pages and think about what I had just read and what that meant. And gone back to read it again and read further with all that dread. Legit shocking for sure.
I didn’t see it mentioned yet in this thread and I only started reading them a week or so ago but I’ve just finished all 6 books in Martha Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries and so I can only conclude that everyone here is in on it already.
If not, go forth and find out for yourself, stat.
I don’t know if everyone is on it but they’ve been substantively discussed previously because they’re absolutely fantastic. Which is to say, I wholeheartedly agree with:
Abraham loves the “character long thought forgotten turns up in an unexpected place”. Dagger and the Coin starts the same way. I bet that happens in Expanse, too, although I can’t think of an example at the moment.
Anyway, I suggest you keep reading :)
The blurb for book 1 is definitely less than compelling. Bad blubs happen though so maybe someone here can tell me what’s unique about it?
One series that leaps to mind is Butcher’s Furies series, it was pure level-up candy, though better written and deeper than Cradle, by a bit.
Oh yeah! That one was pretty good too.
It’s a fantasy quartet where every book in it is arguably a different style of story, and proves to be something of a biography of a pivotal figure in the setting although you likely wouldn’t think it starting out. The characters are great, the prose is great, and the magic is very interesting - basically, this empire has been dominating things because they have poets who write concepts into sort of…specialized djinn is probably the closest thing? They only do the particular thing they embody, but they can be very creative about it. Only problem being they hate existing in that way and will do their best to undermine their controller. Oh, and they’re running out. Each way of expressing the concept only works once, and it ends when the poet dies.
I think all the books that have been mentioned are great and almost certainly better literature than Cradle but I don’t think they’re doing what Cradle’s doing. To me, Cradle feels much more in line with like, LitRPG (and I suspect, though i haven’t read any, cultivation novels). And boy, is it head and shoulders better than those. (I say as someone who finds them compulsively readable.)