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Fiction books I read and liked in 2023

Published on in Books

I started a new hobby in 2023: reading fiction books! I started with fantasy: Harry Potter, Mistborn, and The Stormlight Archive.

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Harry Potter

After several years of not reading fiction books (almost) at all, I started my new reading hobby with this classic heptalogy (= 7-book series) by J. K. Rowling.

I have written about Harry Potter before: I read all 7 seven Harry Potter books in 33 days.

Mistborn

This was a great series! I read all 7 books in the series (trilogy + novella + tetralogy (= 4-book series)). Brandon Sanderson is such a good writer.

Three things that are better in Mistborn than in Harry Potter:

  • The magic system is logical and there are clear rules, whereas in Harry Potter the magic system feels quite random and chaotic (everything seems possible).
  • Action scenes are described clearly in Mistborn, whereas in Harry Potter some scenes are quite unclear, like "many spells were flying here and there" (not a direct quote, but I recall especially one scene that was described very vaguely).
  • There are multiple viewpoints, which brings out people's different personalities, whereas in Harry Potter almost everything is written from the viewpoint of Harry Potter.

The Stormlight Archive

Also by Brandon Sanderson.

This series is much more heavy than Mistborn – there are much more characters and places and things etc.

I'm glad I read Mistborn before this one because had I started with this, this would probably have been way too overwhelming.

So far I have read books 1, 2 and 2.5 (novella), and I'm waiting for book 3 from the library.

Dislikes

I don't want to be Negative Nelly, so I'll just quickly note why I didn't like some books:

  • Hunger Games (trilogy)
    • Silly premise
    • Tacky romance
    • First-person perspective (I seem to prefer third-person perspective)
    • Present tense (feels weird; I prefer past tense)
    • Spoiler (read backwards or ):

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    • I read the whole trilogy despite starting to dislike it quite soon after starting :D :|
  • The House in the Cerulean Sea (novel)
    • I had quite high expectations for this as I had read that this is a good novel to read after Harry Potter
    • But this was too slow/boring, so I dropped this after a few dozen pages
  • Malazan Book of the Fallen (series)
    • I had read that this is a very heavy series; someone wrote that you need to read ~300 pages before you might start to get a grip of the plot
    • So yeah, this indeed felt too heavy, so I dropped this after just a few dozen pages :D
  • Assassin's Apprentice (series)
    • First-person perspective (I seem to prefer third-person perspective)
    • Too slow/boring beginning, so I dropped this after a few dozen pages