Half-Orcs

As much as I am in love with the world David Dalglish created, and how I'm dying to know what happens with this group of people I love dearly, I've had to put reading the series on hold. I only have the remaining two Half-Orcs books and the Paladins series as e-books. It's getting harder and harder for me to read e-books. It gives me a headache and makes me so tired. For now, it will have to wait a little while.

The Weight of Blood- ♥♥♥♥

David Dalglish- The Weight of Blood

170 pages

I’m a little torn with this book. I discovered a different series by Dalglish by chance at the library. I fell in love with it immediately. The Shadowdance series has stuck with me since the first book. I’m talking deep down, can’t stop thinking about it, obsession kind of stuck with me. I found out the Half-Orcs was in the same world, and I just had to get my hands on all of them. From what I understand from various author’s notes, the Half-Orcs series was written first, and Shadowdance was created as a backstory. This is where being torn comes in…

I did like the book. Enough to give it four stars even. The tone just felt so foreign. In his author note Dalglish talks about the book taking a much darker tone than was anticipated, but that wasn’t even the issue for me. Dark books, movies, songs, etc, are my comfort zone. This just felt… rushed. It felt like there wasn’t as much description as I was used to from him, and it felt like we were being dragged along without getting much time to look around. I’m hoping as this series progresses things will fall into a more familiar rhythm. I think Shadowdance just set such a high standard in my mind for all of his writings.

Now, the negatives are out of the way. Seeing more of Drezel was much needed for me. There are a lot of complexities to this world that I was only beginning to understand at the end of Shadowdance. More of the gods’ backstory is revealed, and the ways of magic shown even more in depth.

The main characters are fascinatingly contradictory. Seeing how their bond grows, changes, or collapses will be interesting. Harruq’s growth is what interests me most though. It feels like his character will be the more dynamic of the two, and while I want to like Qurrah… I just can’t. I hope that will change, the brothers seem to rely on each other in so many ways. We’ll see.

The storyline was a little discombobulated. Things moved so fast, and connections were made and ran by so frequently, some of the threads were a touch hard to grasp at first. I think a lot of it was because the book was so short. With only 170 pages to weave something so complex, it leaves the reader with a bit of whiplash. I checked, the next book is 321 pages. Things should only get better from here!

Overall, I liked the book. Stepping back and holding it as its own novel rather than trying to push it into the Shadowdance shaped hole I wanted it to go in helped a lot in coming to that conclusion. I’m really looking forward to reading the rest of this series!

Rating:

♥♥♥♥

Updates in General

It's been a lot of radio silence lately. I've had a lot of things going on in my personal life that have made staying active more difficult than I would've liked. Things might be settling down a bit now. Few matters I wanted to update here:

New books:
I have been working on the new series. The first book in the new series is tentatively named Rage. It follows Vanessa and James. They own a Private Investigator firm in a new world I've created. The writing is coming along, but is a bit behind where I had planned it would be. I'd like to give a hopeful completion date, but I'm just not sure enough at the moment.

Harnessing the Flame:
Harley is still on my mind a lot. I haven' forgotten about her or her story. I'm still just a little stuck with her right now. Her story will get finished though, that I'm sure of.

Reviews:
I've read a lot of books since the last review I posted. While there is plenty I could say about those books, I just didn't have it in me to sit down and write out cohesive reviews. I did decide on some changes to how I post them though.

For starters, there wont be a detailed review for every book. I tried to nail down some rules, but it's all relative. From now on it will be on a series by series, book by book basis. Some books are contained enough within the series it's easy to break them down. Others are too intertwined with the rest of the series that everything I say feels a bit redundant. That isn't fun to write, and I'm sure it's not fun to read. If there is an in depth review it will have a link to the page. If there is no link then I decided against a more detailed break down. The reason for this choice may or may not be included.

Secondly, I am still working out all the tags I want to use. Some of them only occur to me after reading a book, and tags aren't always easy to retroactively apply. At some point I will get it figured out... Hopefully.

Reading Lists:
I updated the sidebar with new reading lists. 2017 is no longer available from there, but 2018 is. I have created another page which will link to any past years reading list as well as a master list that will contain a list of everything I have read since the beginning of 2017. That list will get massive fast, so it might be better to look at the break down of the years.

Reading Challenge: 
A new year brings a new Goodreads reading challenge! I put it in the side bar. 150 books this year, same as last year. I also completed last years challenge successfully, logging 154 books for the year! I'm hoping to make this year just as successful. Next year I would like to aim for 200 books, but that might be a bit lofty even for me.