Books Received in December 2017

Many thanks to TOR for the following review copies.

The Will to Battle by Ada Palmer - Book three of the Terra Ignota series. I thought Too Like the Lightning was absolutely brilliant but had some issues with Seven Surrenders. The series is so involved that I might wait until the last book is out before reading this, as I'll have to reread or skim the previous books in order to get the most out of this.

The long years of near-utopia have come to an abrupt end.

Peace and order are now figments of the past. Corruption, deception, and insurgency hum
within the once steadfast leadership of the Hives, nations without fixed location.

The heartbreaking truth is that for decades, even centuries, the leaders of the great Hives
bought the world's stability with a trickle of secret murders, mathematically planned. So
that no faction could ever dominate. So that the balance held.

The Hives' façade of solidity is the only hope they have for maintaining a semblance of
order, for preventing the public from succumbing to the savagery and bloodlust of wars
past. But as the great secret becomes more and more widely known, that façade is
slipping away.

Just days earlier, the world was a pinnacle of human civilization. Now everyone-Hives
and hiveless, Utopians and sensayers, emperors and the downtrodden, warriors and
saints-scrambles to prepare for the seemingly inevitable war.

Hymn by Ken Scholes - This is the final book in the fantastic Psalms of Isaac series. I've reviewed all of the books in the series (Lamentation, Canticle, Antiphon, Requiem, Hymn). The books have a lot of intrigue and blend science with magic. The series hasn't received nearly as much attention as it deserves. It does get heavy at times (book 2 has a lot of torture), but it's well worth it.

The battle for control of The Named Lands has captivated readers as they have learned, alongside the characters, the true nature of world called Lasthome.

Now the struggle between the Andro-Francine Order of the Named Lands and the Y'Zirite Empire has reached a terrible turning point. Believing that his son is dead, Rudolfo has pretended to join with the triumphant Y'zirite forces-but his plan is to destroy them all with a poison that is targeted only to the enemy.

In Y'Zir, Rudolfo's wife Jin Li Tam is fighting a war with her own father which will bring that Empire to ruin.

And on the Moon, Neb, revealed as one of the Younger Gods, takes the power of the Last Home Temple for his own.

Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson - The Stormlight Archive book 3.

In Oathbringer, the third volume of the New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive, humanity faces a new Desolation with the return of the Voidbringers, a foe with numbers as great as their thirst for vengeance.

Dalinar Kholin's Alethi armies won a fleeting victory at a terrible cost: The enemy Parshendi summoned the violent Everstorm, which now sweeps the world with destruction, and in its passing awakens the once peaceful and subservient parshmen to the horror of their millennia-long enslavement by humans. While on a desperate flight to warn his family of the threat, Kaladin Stormblessed must come to grips with the fact that the newly kindled anger of the parshmen may be wholly justified.

Nestled in the mountains high above the storms, in the tower city of Urithiru, Shallan Davar investigates the wonders of the ancient stronghold of the Knights Radiant and unearths dark secrets lurking in its depths. And Dalinar realizes that his holy mission to unite his homeland of Alethkar was too narrow in scope. Unless all the nations of Roshar can put aside Dalinar's blood-soaked past and stand together-and unless Dalinar himself can confront that past-even the restoration of the Knights Radiant will not prevent the end of civilization.