I read this book earlier on this year and absolutely loved it; like you say, the style in which it was written was special. I was totally engrossed and could relate to many parts of it. I picked this up after I had read another book of hers (Is Mother dead ) which is just as brilliant - if not better. I am a fan!

You guys have no idea how helpful this was to me! My TBR is now out of control. 😂😂

PLEASE send me that picture of ginny PLEASE

I feel fair points all over. In regards to the treatment of women. For me personally it raises the question can distasteful people still be heroic? What is someone's limit on what makes them unredeemable. There are plenty of people in fiction and reality that are in relationships where they themselves feel that it's acceptable when other people might see it as abusive. Could more of that been explored or commented on or ... anything... sure. But maybe he wasn't capable at the time as a writer to cover that or just didn't feel the need. My personal favourite series is the Rigante series or the solo book winter warriors

I've read every issue

i've just finished it and i still wonder why pierce brown is so mean to us lol i'm eager to know how this will end. (pierce brown, if you happen to read this, PLEASE let my babe darrow be happyyyy)

17:13 My man, you're literally describing the exact world we live in. Is it fashionable to rail against injustice? Is it fashionable to conceive the system is stacked against us? Selfishness, stepping on others and lying is the bedrock of capitalist democracy. Nobody is equal under capitalism and if that's a fashionable idea it's because people are finally waking up to see how devalued and disenfranchised we are in a world where everyone but us profits off our labor

I have the first three TPBs and Book Two... But I'm so tempted to get Book One too!

The only way I could possibly agree with this video more is if at the end you said, apropos of nothing, “Bush knocked down the towers”.

I loved Malazan:BotF but is IS something of a challenge to read. For me, it got harder with each book. Erickson never stops introducing new chars and locations all the way to the end. It was a lot to keep up with. It IS worth it though.

This video was great! Why didn't y'all cover my one of my favorite subgenres? Atomic SF Noir Cosmic Horror Such a huge oversight 😤. (The Big Jump by Leigh Brackett is the only book in the genre 😂) I'm gonna need y'all to read some Travis McGee even it means I have to send you the first few in the form of the original 1964 paperbacks 😉. I really appreciate y'all making this. It has helped me sort out the genre in my brain. Thanks!

It definitely shows you guys put a lot of thought and work into this, and I hope you know how much it's appreciated 🤩 I think psychological thrillers, epic crime (a term of which I had never heard of before) and cozy mysteries are my personal favourites, but I am definitely going to dabble in a few of the other genres based on all your guys' amazing enthusiastic recs! A lot of my favourite fantasies have great mystery/thriller/crime aspects, like Legacy of the Brightwash by Krystle Matar (steampunk detective noir), Mushroom Blues (fungalpunk noir), and The Wickwire Watch (murder mystery cozy-ish steampunk with a dash of horror). Genreblending is just the best! 😛

Holy guacamole this is an epically great Booktube vid!!!!! And tailor made to be informative for someone like me who knows almost nothing about this whole side of the literary world. Granted I have a good feel for these genres and subgenres from movies I’ve watched over the years (especially when I was more of a cinephile than reader in my high school and college days), but I’m interested in exploring these more in books so this was just perfect for me. I recently read a fantasy murder mystery that I loved (Murder at Spindle Manor) and a sci-fi thriller that I loved in Dark Matter, so I def need to try more. What would you recommend for me? I feel like for something outside of spec fic that something on the more epic scale like Power of the Dog sounds up my alley, or maybe trying out a new subgenre like the spy thrillers would be fun.

Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon series is a great example of spy - crime thriller

Thank you for this discussion. I lean more towards the thriller with a side of mystery, light on the crime. I do also like cozy mysteries especially if they have cats and a magical element. I just finished reading a mystery called Where They Last Saw Her by Marcie R Rendon. Women are going missing from a reservation in Minnesota. It was very atmospheric with the snowy Minnesota winter and the woods playing a major roll. I was filled with dread from all the poor decisions that the gumshoe main character was making to find the missing women. It had an element of a cozy (ie the amateur sleuth) but was heavier on the suspense because there was a perpetrator continuing to do bad things. Not sure what I would call it. My library slapped a “mystery” sticker on the spine which I agree with as a main genre; it’s the sub-genre that I’m not good at.

Amazing video! Psychological thrillers like Gone girl are my jam but I also love some historical thrillers!

I appreciate this video as it’s something I’ve had a passive curiosity for, cheers

Wow, that was detailed. 👏 Well done in explaining all the aspects.

I’ve been reading thrillers for a while now, and I prefer more literary leaning thrillers. Thanks to you both I’ve recently started reading more crime novels. I truly enjoyed my first Dennis Lehane, Small Mercies, and intend to read more of his works. I will also be reading The Blackhouse, Dissolution, and Ohio soon. Thanks for all your great recommendations. A book in this vein I would highly recommend to you both is The First Day of Spring by Nancy Tucker. It is a dark character study of an eight-year old girl who kills a young child, but its real focus is the impact of abuse, the way society views criminals, and the idea of throwaway children. I thought it was an intelligent and impactful book I could not stop reading.

The thing about crime literature is its fluidity (not unlike fantasy and science fiction), it's kind of hard to pin down what 'crime fiction' is but I think you guys did a good job succinctly describing what crime fiction is, and the many subgenres. Though of course, it can be hard to define crime novels cleanly, because they often run around in different styles in one book. For instance, is Gone Girl a psychological thriller? A psychological thriller with noir elements? Both? How about Millennium books? Crime thriller? Noir crime thriller? All of the above? I give up... Anyway as you guys know, I generally prefer my crime to be more hard boiled and intense. I do like some of the classic mysteries such as Sherlock Holmes, Dupin (aka the original Sherlock), and some of the Poirot novels (Murder on The Orient Express is excellent), but I generally like a harder edge if you will. Good work guys!

Great video Carlos and Yolanda. Well researched. Well said. Well edited.

So if I really enjoyed Winter of Frankie Machine (I promised Yolanda I'd read Power of the Dog next), and loving Dennis Lehane (Ive read Shutter Island and Mystic River) Ed Brubaker's Criminal (just started the 2nd volume)... what should I check out next, especially from the latter two I mentioned?

Apropos psychological thrillers, have you guys read the Hannibal Lecter novels?

Brys. Beddict.

Definitely. Love those ten huge books.

Ayyyyeeee my man! Honestly for me this one surpassed Memories of Ice which I didn't think could ever happen but this book just has everything I could ever want in an epic fantasy

Recently read Mystic River and its become of my favourite books of the year!

Great wrap-up! I’m wanting to read The Chrysalids and Book Lovers at some point. Loved the photos of you two with Jimmy & Kelsey! ❤

Awesome update guys! Jealous that you got to meet the Nutts lol. I’ve been wanting to eventually read some Le Carre. One day perhaps. Recursion and the Tainted Cup were my best reads for August.

You're going through a post-apocalyptic phase, you say? 🦢🎵

I genuinely love how much you guys support the comfort reads, I feel like I need to treat myself like that way more often as well!! Definitely going to check out Lady Audley's Secret and bump Giovanni's Room up the TBR. Also, so fun to hear your differing experiences with that first book, the beauty of reading haha. My faves of August were Asunder by Kerstin Hall (new no. 1 fave of the year!), Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle and Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors 🤩

You always read an interesting range of books 🙂 "Day of the Triffids" by Wyndham is one of my favourite books. I first read that as a teenager 40 🤯 years ago. I then read all the Wyndham books that my public library had - which included "Chrysalids". I really enjoyed it and the concept stuck with me since then but for a long time I didn't know what its title was. Then the WWW arrived and you can find these things out. So I recently reread "Chrysalids" on audio (Audible UK has a lot of Wyndham books for free) and I enjoyed it just as much 2nd time around. That creeping sense of menace of being found out, the off page horror of what happened to those who are - which your brain can imagine better than any written gore. He might get dismissed as "cosy apocalypse" but he's very good at it usually. I've also reread "Midwich Cuckoos" - very good, and "Kraken Awakes" - which I enjoyed better now (I found it boring as a teenager) but it has real pacing issues. I still haven't read his other most famous book which is "Chocky" so I need to get around to that, plus all the free stories on Audible keep tempting me 🤗 Looking back at my reviews, I can see that I was a bit "it was just OK" on the conclusion of the 2nd arc of "The Expanse" too. However I have just finished the final arc of the series which I really enjoyed - so I agree with all those people who say it's the best part of the series.

Thanks to you both, in August I read my first Dennis Lehane novel, Small Mercies. It was wonderful, and I plan to read more by him. Emily Henry is top tier. Book Lovers is also my favorite from her.

Top 10 list. 5 honorable mentions. Problem solved.

Persuasion is a slow burn, so I support taking it…slowly. 🤣 Giovanni’s Room might be a perfect novel? Yeah, I think it is! I finished the Black Company series with Soldiers Live, finished the Gormenghast series with Titus Awakes, and continued the City Watch subseries with Men at Arms. Safe to say my August reading was a success! 💜

Very cool that you got to hang with Jimmy and Kelsey! Good luck with the new job and upcoming reads

Sounds like a cracking month! 1984 is my all time favourite book, so clearly Carlos is misguided for not saying so too. Also a big Wyndham fan but haven’t read the Chrysalids! The Day of the Triffids is excellent. I’ll be doing a dystopian and apocalyptic books video soon. If you ever want to do a gloomy readalong I am there.

Great recap 😊 Wyndham is one of my favourite authors (so happy you’re trying him - lots of authors were influenced by him such as Atwood and King) and Wilkie Collins. Lady Audley is very good but The Woman in White is even better! P.S. lots in RL and started working part-time as a bookseller too 😉

The Expanse short stories are also excellent. Not sure how they slot into the bigger timeline because I'm reading them after the series. But they are excellent.

Carlos, you might not like C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner then, but Yolanda will love it!!! 1984, when I read it back in the day, was awesome and scary! A must read even today, at least for a reference point, since it is so influential to the dystopian genre... Malazan is the🐐!✨🐐

You did finish The Chrysalids first. Now I need to know what we are reading next and why is it Night of Knives 😎(please not in September, I have too much to read 😭). If you read Wilkie Collins let me know. I would like to join in. Book Lovers is my next Emily Henry read. I'm looking forward to it! Yay Happy Place! My wife read it a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. I'm really struggling with the concept of "book of the year". I have read too many amazing things this year. Great wrap up!

Glad to hear you liked Book Lovers! I just grabbed that to be my first Emily Henry read when I’m in the mood for something different. And yeah Carlos Babylon’s Ashes is them doing something way different with a truly large ensemble POV cast, which allowed us to get eyes in all sorts of relevant places we wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. It’s not about caring about these one-off POVs so try not to let that get in the way of enjoying the exciting climax of the first arc - it’ll be back to the usual POV style for the last three books don’t worry!

YES! I'm so glad you loved this book properly. I'm not surprised, but I'm glad :) Yes it's absolutely critical of capitalism. One of my favorite bits in that regard is the Drownings in Letheras. You know the phrase "drowning in debt," of course. Well... this makes it LITERAL. The money you owe is strapped to your back in the hopes that it'll drown you. In WATER. Talk about a metaphor made real... I love it so much. **SPECIFIC SPOILERS FOR THIS BOOK** - - - Regarding Seren and the rape: other commenters have said helpful stuff I agree with so I'll focus on something that hasn't been said: Erikson does a lot of mirroring/echoing, which I believe you've commented on in previous books. But it's series-wide, not just contained within each book. And rape is one of those things -- every time you see it happen, it's handled differently. And as usual, Erikson isn't saying "these ways of handling it are bad and these ways are good" -- he's simply presenting different options and it's up to us to judge as we will. Fair warning, there are other instances of this coming in later books, and again it's extending the mirroring out further. More instances and more different ways of handling it. And of course that's not to say you have to like it -- you absolutely don't. Even if you understand multiple reasons for its inclusion, that doesn't mean you HAVE to think it's effective. BUT, I wanted to share some more reasoning for its inclusion, considering your (understandable) comment about thinking it was just unnecessary. But anyway, there's so much great stuff in this book: Tehol/Bugg (and all the other funny shit with Shurq, Ublala, etc.), Trull being a sometimes-annoying-but-generally-standup-dude, the Crippled God really doing some evil shit to Rhulad, all the crazy magic stuff... it's so epic! And yet as you say, it comes down to a familial drama in the vein of a Shakespearean tragedy. Which was absolutely intentional, as you might have guessed -- Steve knew what he was doing lol On to the Bonehunters!! Looking forward to how much you're gonna love that one :)

Declare by Tim Powers was partially influenced by Le Carré’s novel, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. But djinn and other fantasy stuff get involved. Very worthy of its World Fantasy Award (tied with Galveston by Sean Stewart, both very worthy winners!) It’s one of the best books I’ve read so far this year.

I really enjoyed the ramp up at the end of Spy Who Came in from the Cold. All the maneuvering, and plausible deniability, until things come to a head. The ending pulled the whole thing together. James Baldwin is such a beautiful writer. Persuasion is a true classic, and Spear Cuts Through Water is destined to be. I'm looking forward to the new Mariana Enriquez.

Dawg... Giving us the setting and context of the FINAL SCENE in a Malazan book IS a spoiler. 😐 Issokay though. I am on to Midnight Tides next though and am very excited. Enjoying House of Chains right now very much.

We love and miss you too 😢

Yes, it is the Corporations that are now Big Brother! Check out my review of 1984, you may like it :)

I see what you mean about Le Carre, though one of the points of his spy novels is that espionage is rather pedantic, even boring, work. Where the tension comes from is the paranoia. Who do you trust in a world where everyone has their own interest or could be spying on you? Glad to hear you enjoyed 1984. It is one of the greats of dystopian literature, even if I think Brave New World is the scarier dystopia. Also Giovanni's Room is a masterpiece. One of my favorite books about the LGBT+ experience. Keep up the good work guys!

The Toob. And books! ☝️ Wait, Steven Fry is the narrator of 1984? Have to check it out. The man is a legend. Emily Henry. I put it in the category like the sitcom tv. It’s fun to watch, we know the end but there are some twists. She is a pretty good writer. Malazan is Malazan. One of the best book in the series. Tehol and Bug are the best. The Expanse. Good but a bit overhyped. Not the sci-fi of the era.