Stormfront is the roughest of the series, which makes sense since it was his first book. The series gets better and better afterwards. I strongly recommend that you keep up with the series.
I would also recommend checking out his other series when you are caught up on the Dresden Files. The Codex Alera and The Cinder Spires. He just started Cinder Spires, so you may want to hold off, though the first book doesn’t really end on any big cliff hanger. The Codex Alera is a finished series.
I was out of Audible credits but still had a week of bike-commuting to go before my subscription reset. Someone in one of these threads turned me onto Audible’s “daily deals” and I snapped up a book for $1.75 that sounded at least nominally interesting.
https://www.amazon.com/Dungeon-Born-Divine-1/dp/1539519759/
Dungeon Born, by Dakota Krout. It’s… not particularly good.
The core concept is very similar to what @ineffablebob describes above in his review of “Orkonomics”: Krout tries to construct a world where a MMOG-style dungeon - complete with respawning mobs - makes logical sense, and then he tries to build a world and economy on top of it, and finally he tries to use that as a setting for a story. Unfortunately, it pretty much fails on several levels (pun not intended).
The author has a magic and “level” system that he has obviously painstakingly conceived of and mapped out. Unfortunately, he spends a VAST portion of the book laying out that system in mind-numbing detail to the reader. Honest-to-god, for the first few chapters I really suspected I was listening to a screenplay/tutorial for “Dungeon Keeper” where they put a thin narrative on top of the tedious rules-lecture.
Eventually the author adds some characters, and I guess it could be argued that there is some incidental character growth.
The whole mess isn’t helped much by the narrator of the audiobook version, whose overly-exaggerated voices would sound at home in a “Strawberry Shortcake” cartoon on Saturday morning.
I absolutely feel like I got my $1.75 worth of entertainment out of this book. But I would have felt pretty cheated if I had paid, say, $2.35. The best thing I can say about it is that I have the urge to play the original Dungeon Keeper again… I think I still have the disks around somewhere.
No October thread yet? I am not presumptious enough to start one.
Been listening to a couple of audio books.
“Annihilation” by Jeff VanderMeer.
Decent enough book, well read. I am stopping here after the fist one though, I have zero interest in a sequel and have already spoilered the other two books for myself to make sure I wasnt missing anything. I am happy enough with this as a yarn but zero desire to explore more of its world.
“Endeavour (A Sleeping Gods Novel)” by Ralph Kern
I am really enjoying this. I bounced out once before due to the narrators terrible attempts at English accents but after a while he gives up and you can focus on the story. Which is fast moving and large in scope, just the way I like my SF :)
Just finished this. Wanted to thank you for the suggestion. I really enjoyed it and look forward to the rest of the series.
Just finished my first Vorkosigan Saga novel. I think it’s the most recent one in the series.
Like Bujold’s fantasy series, this is an inoffensive story with likable characters. Also like her other books, I never feel any real danger. Confrontations last a few pages at most. Things always resolve happily. Not sure I like this, especially considering I am coming from the Farseer series, where this is almost never the case.
The last few books in that series are very light and mostly about spending time with characters you love from 12+ previous books in the series. If you want danger and heartbreak you should go back and read from the start.