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thistlechaser
Son of the Black Sword by Larry Correia. While this isn't usually the type of book I'd enjoy, I liked it so much that 10% in (a couple hours of reading, it was really long), I stopped to google the author to learn more about him.
That was a big mistake.
Turns out Correia's first book series (self published, while Son was traditionally published), was fiction written for gun owners. Literally. He was a member of an online gun forum, and he wanted to write a story for them.
Not damning, fair enough. But then I read more about him.
Turns out he believes straight white men are the ones who are stereotyped against, so he started a right-wing, anti-diversity group to target book awards.
I wanted to DNF Son at that point; this wasn't an author who I wanted to spend time with. The problem is that I was really enjoying the book.
I thought about it a lot, and I decided that, since I already owned it, there was no harm in finishing this book.
On to the story review...
Set in what first seems a fantasy world, the main character is the best fighter in the world. Literally. It was stated repeatedly. Also he cannot feel fear (again, literally) and he can just dismiss any amount of pain. There were so many fight scenes, some of them up to a chapter long (I mostly skimmed those). He spends the first part of the book being a defender of the Law -- traveling the lands to punish people who break it. (Law is capitalized through the book.)
Then for plot reasons, the character stops doing that and ends up with some outlaw religious guys (religion is against the Law). The group's goal is to bring back a forgotten god.
Through the story we slowly learn that the planet is maybe distant future Earth.
At first I hadn't really thought much about who or what the forgotten god might be, but pieces started falling into place.
Near the end of the book, we learn the main character has no idea about women. Has never interacted with them in his whole life other than speaking a couple words. (How that came out only after 10+ hours of reading, I have no idea.) The main character believed things like "all women like compliments" and "no woman can fight". Just the character's opinion, right? Well in the world building, only men go to war. Women of the warrior caste (born into it) only stay at home and at most defend the home.
The story ended with the main character learning how to pray.
So add up the author's clear politics, his demonstrated willingness to put those politics into his stories, and the pieces of this story so far... I suspect the forgotten god is Jesus. I really hope I'm wrong about that, I'd like to give the author more credit than that, but... he doesn't really deserve benefit of the doubt, does he?
I went from being sad I wouldn't read the rest of the series to being okay with that decision. Everything about this book left a bad taste in my mouth, and I have no interest in spending more time with Correia's writing.
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DNF #24: Spiritwood by Jacqueline Dooley. This might have been an interesting story, but the POV switched too much and the writing/story just didn't hook me. It opened with a boy in the hospital, being treated for cancer. Then switched to a dragon on another world(?). Then switched to a princess on another world(?). In the story, trees are magic and connect lots of worlds; checking the book's summary, apparently the characters eventually meet up on one world.
Unfortunately there are no reviews on Goodreads or Amazon, so I couldn't even check if it might get better (but since the first 10% was so flat, I doubt it).
DNF #25: The Blind Dragon: A Tale from the Canon of Tarn by Peter Fane. This one also might have been interesting, if the story had focused on the characters, dragon, or plot instead of on the battles. Set on a world with dragons (though they could have been horses: they were warm blooded, had live births, and they used mare/stallion/foal/dam all sorts of horse terms for them). A girl bonded with a blind dragon, and I would have really loved to explore that, but instead the story launched into battle. Per other reviews, the whole book is just battle, battle, action scene, battle, which isn't a good match for my tastes.
Also, oddly, this was the first book the author wrote. "A Tale from the Canon of Tarn" makes it sound like it's set in a series. Also, "Tarn" sounds so much like "Pern", which also had a white dragon book.
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And I'm DONE with all of my books with either 'Dragon' in the title or a dragon-like thing on the cover! I'm surprised at how much fun it was to stick with a theme.
I spent a long time considering what theme to do next. I was just about settled on 'space', but I think I'll do 'cover images of things with wings' instead. Birds, people with wings, planes, etc.
