Books in 2016. Crazy talk, right? Well, I read 'em, and I've got opinions on 'em. So let's talk about books. I'll warn you right up front that while I'll keep major spoilers to a minimum, I'm not shy about spoiling books if it benefits a potential conversation about them. That includes discussing characters, some light plot points, and overarching ideas to books. If you already have plans to read these, you might want to do that. Otherwise, maybe I'll talk you into reading both of these novels. They're pretty good!

I started off 2016 pretty strong by finishing Daniel Abraham's The Dragon's Path, the first in the series The Dagger and Coin. You might know Daniel Abraham as one of the two creative minds behind The Expanse, a sci-fi series of novels adapted into a television show on Syfy. The book was recommended by Giant Bomb and Alpha Protocol's own Matt Rorie during a discussion of modern day fantasy novelists. Turns out, it's pretty good.

I'm also relatively close to finishing Jenny Lawson's latest book Furiously Happy, which deals with her fight with mental illness along with lots of anecdotes. It's relatively similar in structure as her last novel Let's Forget This Ever Happened, but it finds Lawson admirably exposing many of her fears and struggles with day-to-day life.

Let's start things off with...

The Dragon's Path

(a.k.a. Pretty Little Fantasy Liars)

OK, so the book really isn't subtitled that, but it might as well be. The whole of The Dragon's Path revolves around lies, deceit, political games, and the exposure of such. Every character, in their own way, lives a lie - some, in fact, even wind up making a pretty good living at it. As a universal theme, it's a fairly interesting one, particularly since everyone in the novel so far seems guilty of deceiving someone, save for a questionable protagonist who sets out to find the truth in all things. Unfortunately, that universal theme winds up translating to a lot of characters that feel roughly the same, albeit ones on very different roads.

Each character starts off with the facade of being a decent human being. By the end, some still are, some aren't, as is pretty typical in any story of length. Abraham makes a point of giving us the facade of archetypes we might like, and then putting them into very natural situations where their breeding, experience, or lack thereof. It's skillfully done, but it's also done across the board, so that by the time it happened with the third or fourth major character, the beat of the novel already felt a little too familiar. It was a remarkably intelligent move for a first time novelist, but the idea stretched thin by the conclusion of the novel.

Dragon's Path also suffers from a problem I've come to associate with bloated fantasy writers who grow too obsessed with their own worlds - it's plodding. While these characters seem to be going somewhere, by the end of the novel, Abraham has established little in terms of advancing or presenting an overarching threat or storyline. The whole thing feels a bit like Abraham's setting up a chess board, but not actually playing a game.

That said, there's a lot to like here. Abraham's world building is deftly done, giving hints as to the appearances of races without flat-out telling the reader what each character or race looks like. Instead, he uses the characters and their natural environments to drop hints and such about the various races and locations he's created. That takes a lot of skill.

I'm also really fond of the novel's morally tight-rope walking protagonist Geder. He's a phenomenal character. Without delving too much into spoilers, his moral ambiguity tends to be the most fascinating of the bunch, if just because his own search for answers finds him on an actual journey. I'm not entirely sure if his timeline syncs up with the rest of the characters - he takes a lengthy journey which seems to happen rather rapidly while other characters see months of breaks and progression off-page, but that might just be me not paying all that much attention, and frankly, it doesn't matter. Distance and time in fantasy novels has always been a kind of "close your eyes and go with it" experience, so it's not some deal-breaker.

It's a relatively tight read, too, although at first glance, I thought it was nearly double in size than it actually was, since the ebook version includes a copy of The Expanse,. I haven't yet read that, but fully intend to return to it once I've cleansed my palate a bit with some other novels on my to-be-read pile.

Overall, this shows promise. It drags its feet a little much, but it does a marvelous job of setting up an interesting world, if not necessarily an interesting plot. I'm going to read the second at some point or another, but with several major novels on the horizon for me, I've gotta put it down for now.

Furiously Happy

Here we delve into some curious, hilarious waters.

Jenny Lawson (also known as the Blogess) was recommended to me by a good friend of mine who shares a similar sense of humor as me. We tend towards insane rants only tangentially related to the last thing we spoke of, and our conversations with each other often read like crazy talk, but there's a cleverness behind it all that sates a part of my mind that often goes unfulfilled.

Jenny Lawson's writing is basically a literary version of that hyper, slapstick intelligence. She darts from topic to topic like a hummingbird, never staying with one thing overly long but often returning to themes or prior ideas in future chapters. While her previous novel was largely all about the comedy, here she leaves herself vulnerable, talking about her struggles with social anxiety and depression while spending interludes talking about nonsensical arguments with her long-suffering, good-hearted husband.

It's fascinating to read about, especially since I'm by and large an outsider looking in on this. I mean, sure, I've got a little bit of social anxiety, but it's nothing that really leads to crippling situations or anything like that. Even so, her determination to fight mental illness with a fuck-you grin when she's able to is motivating.

It's a fast read, the sort of thing you might knock out in a couple of sittings, and I cannot recommend it enough, both if you deal with social anxiety or depression or any sort of mental illness, or even if you don't. I'd recommend reading Let's Forget This Ever Happened first - it's not necessary, but it's just as intelligent and establishes a good baseline for you to understand who this Jenny Lawson is.

What are you reading? Got any upcoming books you're excited about? Any you're itching to get your hands on that are already out?