Review: Elric of Melniboné

Elric of Melniboné by Michael Moorcock
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For anyone who looks at the dates read can see it only took me two days to read this. Granted I rushed through it so I could be finished with it before my Christmas vacation, but I still couldn't wait to be done with it. It's not a long read, nor did I found it to be a particularly engaging one. It might be that the book hasn't aged well, but you'd think that a book that has around five million entries in its series, you'd think I would find something special about it. It's not bad, just surprisingly meh.

I think my turn off is that the tone of the book is grandiose without being grand. There's an unearned heart to the book that seems to believe you should hang on every word without those words actually being good. If that makes any damn sense. To be fair, I might not be explaining it well. I'd say you have to read it to maybe understand what I'm saying, but I wouldn't recommend that. Just take my word is that this is a book you can probably skip. Or you might have worse reads if you have literally nothing else to read for a couple of days.

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Review: The Burning God

The Burning God by R.F. Kuang
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Burning God is a perfectly serviceable ending to a trilogy I enjoyed overall. I'll outline my issues with it, but I still say this is a book series most need to read. While nothing eclipses the first book in terms of quality, this is not a typical book series that drops the ball after the first volume. If you've already read the first two books, you should at least be somewhat happy with the last edition.

Things like pacing, prose, and characters are still top-tier here. Flaws aside, TBG can at least maintain your attention. Not perfect, but also never boring. Being more of the same is both a blessing and a curse as what the same is also pretty good while not being surprising either.

I would say it has two big problems. First, it doesn't add anything new in terms of characterization or plot. It's roughly just a continuation of the previous book without many steps taken to outline a grander story. Two, the author more or less writes herself into a corner where the mangled bittersweet reminding-me-of-Game-of-Thrones-though-not-quite-as-bad is the only option left available. I know what the author is trying to say because she literally spells it out to the reader, but I felt there should have been a few more drafts on the table. At least she didn't go for a redemption arc. That would have been even worse.

Pet peeve: The epilogue isn't an epilogue, it's a conclusion to the unnecessarily abrupt ending of the last chapter. That's not what epilogues are for. Not being used properly is a big reason why I generally dislike prologues and epilogues.

I, admittedly, had this final volume on my 'To Read' list for a couple of years in between reading the second book. I can't help but think if I had read this closer to the last book I might have had a better opinion of it. But books, if nothing else, should last the test of time. I should put at least some onus on my memory, but it also shouldn't be completely to blame. I still liked it, just not as much as the first two.

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