Lucas Blogs About Books

Shiny! So, that's this book's deal? Well, Hypothetical Reader, The Empire of Gold  is the conclusion to S.A. Chakraborty's Daevabad Trilogy that began in The City of Brass and continued with The Kingdom of Copper . Oh, yeah, it's that series about genies! Djinn. They prefer to be called djinn. Most of them, some of them prefer to be called daevas. Hence Daevabad. And that's where the SPOILER free portion of this post ends. If you haven't read the first two books, go back and read those. Anyway, here's a quick recap of the story so far: Nahri is a conwoman in Egypt during the Napoleonic Wars who longs to become a doctor. One day she accidentally summons an ifrit but is saved by a dashing daeva named Dara who reveals that she's a shafit (that is to say, someone of mixed human and djinn heritage). He takes her to the city of Daevabad which was once ruled by her ancestors, the Nahid clan. That is, until they got a little too genocide-y and were overthrown b...

What do any of these pictures have to do with each other? So, what's this book's de–Hey! The title of this blog post and the title on the cover are different,   though slightly similar. What gives? Well, you may have noticed that the cover also says, "Three Novellas," so I figured I could write up each one independently. And turn one book into three posts? Well, since the first two novellas are each more than one hundred pages long, I'd say they'd be better served by being reviewed separately rather than together. Also, you gotta generate content somehow. I'll allow it. How kind of you, Hypothetical Reader. I'm nothing if not understanding. See, it's a reviewable item, I think. Anyway, this book's deal is that it's a novella, originally published in the 90s and now collected as part of a new book by Nebula and Hugo award winning writer Connie Willis. It's a sci-fi western about a couple of human surveyors mappin...

I'm still trying to work out the exact mechanics of this collision. Fun cover though. Okay, time to put Hypothetical Reader back in its box for a moment. That's right, plain old essay format review time. Now, I know that pervious instances of this format were both books that I thought were quite good, but I'll be honest: while I enjoyed reading Stupid Love Comedy , it is, in fact, only okay. Let's talk about why. So, Stupid Love Comedy is a Shōjo manga by Syusyusyu Sakurai (disclaimer, I haven't read all that much in the Shōjo genre, so it's possible that people who are fans of that genre may enjoy this more than I did) concerning the relationship between Osamu Hasegawa, a manga editor, and Suzu Sakura, a mangaka. See, Hasegawa used to be an editor at San Cruz,  a Shōnen magazine, who has been reassigned to Shōjo magazine  Daisy  to work with one of their promising new talents. Well, her debut was promising. As it turns out, Sakura-sensei (in addito...