I might say same too. Especially when a book does not work for me but seemingly it works for others, is it necessary to say so? I would prefer to comment on books that turned out to be special somehow.

The Cold Commands

After The Steel Remains, I expected to struggle through The Cold Commands, but I’m glad to say that it’s so much better. It’s still harsh, uncompromising, pulling no punches, but the author is no longer trying too hard, neither to shock nor to go through some third grade creative writing checklist. The characters are much more developed and no longer striving to be crass, unlikable and hard to support. The world is more fleshed out, making more sense, little by little, if you snatch the pieces when they appear. The thrilling combat scenes remain, but the graphic brutality is used more sparingly and skillfully. And that may be even more true for the sex scenes, which this time around are meaningful and convey emotion. As for the walks through the Grey Places, while the following ones make much more sense, something like that disjointed plague fever dream that is chapter 19 definitely takes skill to pull off.
There is still plenty of room for improvement, however. The fact that many names remain too strange or complicated for me to be able to properly keep track of who’s who is probably my problem more than the author’s, but I wouldn’t say that the same holds true for still feeling like I’m grasping at smoke too often for this point in the story, that in certain cases no, or at least no better, explanations will be provided. On the other hand, while this takes the story to what I gather is much more familiar territory for the author, and I must admit that the much greater magnitude and impact of the fantasy elements compensates for it, I’m still not keen on the increased amount of science fiction elements that are introduced. And, albeit as a far less important aspect, there are still moments, and probably one in particular, when that overuse of f-words remains grating.

Rating: 4/5

Ian Toll's Pacific Crucible. 4/5 Very interesting in some parts, a bit coarse in a few spots, a bit disturbing in other parts.

Renegade Swords. Another DMR anthology, this one a homage to the classic sword-and-sorcery anthologies of the 70s like Flashing Swords. Six (edit: no wait, I forgot to count, it's 8). stories included.

House of Arabu by Robert E. Howard is a great one and might be the only story I can recall by Howard that's set in ancient Greece (well, Mesopotamia, the hero is a Greek). Pretty hard-boiled even by Howard's standards.

Necromancy in Naat by Clark Ashton Smith is part of Smith's Zothique series that is set in the far future. A man travels across the world to find his kidnapped wife and ends up shipwrecked on a island ruled by three necromancers. It's wonderfully evocative and kind of sweet despite how downbeat and sardonic Smith tends to be.

The Woman of the Wood by A. Merritt isn't really S&S, but the editor included it because he likes it a lot. A man becomes an instrument of revenge on behalf of some wood spirits engaged in an endless war against French loggers. I like Merritt's work and this was alright even if I didn't like it as much as the editor.

Slaughter of the Gods by Manly Wade Wellman is Wellman's final story about Kardios, his Atlantean swordsman hero and one of Wellman's final stories, period. Although I generally like Wellman's work, this is obviously the low point of the volume and is mostly likely reprinted here just to get it in print for the sake of completeness as no one knew it existed when the Kardios stories were originally collected. It's lazily plotted and lacks atmosphere and tension as Kardios screws a goddess and then hacks his way through an entire pantheon of gods without much difficulty.

People of the Dragon and The Pillars of Hell are a couple of Stone Age stories by Lin Carter, taking place one generation apart as a tribe wanders endlessly south, encountering strange menaces in their travels. Carter takes a lot of crap as a writer, but these are actually pretty good and are superior to some of the stories that were included in the publisher's later Prehistoric Tales anthology. If you like that cartoon Primal (I do), you'd probably get a kick out of these.

The Rune-Sword of Jotunheim by Glenn Rahman and Richard Tierney is, as the title indicates, very Norse, about a warrior and his partner, a giant shape-shifting Asgardian sorceress. The woman is subdued by a demon that's even bigger than she is and the guy has to go to Hel with Odin's blessing to rescue her. This was fun and I would have read more stories about the pair, but unfortunately this story is all the writers did with them. It hits a nice balance between the fatalistic Norse mindset while still keeping the characters relatable.

Princess of Chaos by Bryce Walton is a sword-and-planet story about a Martian barbarian and a Terran mutant woman fighting interdimensional cat people on Venus. The intro kind of oversells it as a lost classic, IMO, but it's still a perfectly entertaining example of its genre.

It took me all year of only reading it during bathroom breaks, but I finished adult Hellboy's 6-volumes of Earthly adventures, and BPRD Omnibus 1/4 for good measure. Now I get to appreciate that del Toro took the Peter Jackson's LotR route and made loving improvements while honoring the source material; and what a source the comics are! A pity Hellboy in Hell, Young Hellboy, and BPRD 2/3/4 are yet beyond my grasp; and doesn't Abe Sapien have his own series?

Ian Toll's Pacific Crucible. Very good overall. Incredibly interesting. 9/10

Vacuum Diagrams by Stephen Baxter
I liked the short stories a bit more.

Soulkeeper

The premise of a world where magic suddenly returns, along with creatures that were remembered only as myths and legends, going all the way to demigods, is interesting enough. Somewhat as a fable, the book also makes some good points about humanity’s place in the world, albeit mostly in passing, and it depicts villains with understandable motives, some of whom may even turn out to not be actual villains. And it also mostly avoids what I call human filth, those behaviors typically only being mentioned as reminders that they exist and need to be fought against, and the main characters do so, this probably also being the explanation for how easily the situation is accepted by Devin, as well as a few other notable characters in similar positions. In addition, there are thrilling fights and some moments that have an emotional impact, the graveyard scene that comes before what probably should have been the finale standing out, along with the next few chapters.
The last chapter and the epilogue are rather weak, however, and the rest of the book, before that part that stands out, seems to lack the depth and the impact such a story and such momentous events should have. The pace is too leisurely, too much is glossed over, too many ideas seem to have just been briefly entertained and then discarded, and the immaturity of some of the secondary characters seems to sometimes bleed into the writing, at least Tommy’s moments often leaving the impression of comic relief inappropriately forced into the story. Also, on top of a typical dose of hero’s luck, the main characters are literally spared from death several times over, those who could and should have killed them simply deciding not to even if it makes little sense. On the other hand, while it does help explain their motives, directly presenting the point of view of deities just seems wrong. And, while I guess it’s a minor problem otherwise, I can’t help but point out that there’s one corpse too many in the first fight.

Rating: 3/5

Just to add the short story too, A Gift of Faeries and Firekin

This is just a sweet, heartwarming short story, most probably taking place shortly after the end of Soulkeeper. There's little else to say about it, but it is nice that Puffy is the one who comes up with the idea and does a good part of the work, displaying some more of his abilities and personality, since in the book he was almost discarded as an active character after being brought to Devin's home. On the other hand, while not doing so is understandable, especially from Puffy's point of view, something could have been added for Tommy and Adria as well.

Rating: 3/5

Pío Broja. Los pilotos de altura. You cannot getbny better. Sea adventures with depth. Now going for thevsequel.

The Blacktongue Thief

A lot of thought and effort was obviously put into this book, and into the world, many elements being presented in great detail, including a few that aren’t commonly “customized” as part of fantasy worldbuilding. This gives the impression that the series should have a truly epic scale, and the complications, if I may use the term, added towards the end enhance that feeling, yet it doesn’t threaten to be crushing or overwhelming, Kinch’s first person presentation being enjoyable and including plenty of humor, which usually works, at least for me.
In spite of that, it seems far from realizing that potential. Of course, it’s possible that much of it is merely because it’s the first book in what’s intended as a series, but the author seems to try too hard, in both directions, in a book that’d have probably needed to be about three times the size for all of the information to come naturally, to be shown rather than told. As it is, much is forced upon the reader, the action being paused for a detailed explanation the first time the matter comes up. This tends to reduce the weight and the impact of the story, and Kinch’s lighthearted attitude makes it even worse, driving away that feeling of actually reading a personal account that a first person presentation should normally enhance. In addition, elements such as slang, other languages or different coins and currencies, which would have added flavor if there’d have been enough room for them, strike me as unnecessary complications under these circumstances, while on the other hand the number and the development of the characters is clearly insufficient for something intended as an epic tale. Then again, quite a number of times, especially when powerful magic is involved, it feels more like a fairy tale than actual epic fantasy, and that’s a style that I’m not fond of.

Rating: 3/5

If Audiobooks count, Graphic Audio's production of Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War (all books) Very, very good.
Graphic Audio's presentation of Brandon Sanderson's Alcatraz series--books 1-3. Also very, very good.

Halo: The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund. After playing the Halo games recently (well, the ones in the Master Chief Collection), I was a bit hopped up on the franchise and remembered that I had a copy of the original prequel novel, so I read that one, too. I'll admit I can be a bit snooty about tie-in/licensed fiction, but people have always had nice things to say about Nylund's Halo books and it turns out, yup, it's pretty decent.

The book is very Robert Heinlein and a bit of Ender's Game, a pinch of Foundation maybe...very much in line with classic military sci-fi concepts. Master Chief is a product of the Spartan program, a controversial project to create supersoldiers for the purpose of neutralizing domestic terrorism (in this case, stuff happening on outer world colonies) before humanity collapses into a dark age of civil war, but then aliens make war on humanity and the Spartans become the great hope for victory against them. Most of the book follows the development of Master Chief/John-117 and how he's raised to be a soldier, gets genetically enhanced, then further enhanced with experimental powered armor, and then achieves his final form when Dr. Halsey also invents Cortana, a "smart AI" created by digitizing a clone of Halsey's own brain, who maximizes Master Chief's potential when she's plugged into his head. Along the way, there are grim updates about the war effort, and then everything ends up right where the original game begins.

Halo's kind of funny to me because conceptually it's really derivative when you look at it from a distance, but it gets a bit more interesting and manages to become its own thing up close. I just liked spending time with the characters in the story and in a way it's kind of a shame that the book could only ever be a prequel because Nylund introduces some intriguing people, especially Captain Keyes's bridge crew, that you know are all dead meat because of how the games are going to play out. I probably won't check out too many other Halo EU books (there's a lot of them now), but I might put Nylund's other ones, before Microsoft stiffed him on royalty payments and he bitterly bowed out, on my reading list.

The Crystal Keep

Despite being published after it, The Crystal Keep takes place before Grim Work and some reviews also state that it's better to start with it, so I did. Not that I expected much, in fact just having a quick look through what was available for free, searching for something that I could read quickly and finish before the end of the year, and deciding on it because it was shorter than the other two options I ended up with. But it did work out, being quite easy to read despite some paragraphs that struck me as being too long, and keeping me somewhat interested, without boring or annoying. It depicts only an adventure of a new chief of a barbarian clan, who rashly decides to take on a cult with only a few companions, but it does what it aims to do well enough, presenting the brutal struggle against overwhelming odds and not shying away from the graphic details.
It does tend to be too much for any reasonable suspension of disbelief, however, and I'm not just referring to the solid dose of hero's luck. If the party would have been presented as having magical or otherwise supernatural abilities, it might have worked, but as it is, the level of fortitude, being able to keep fighting so well and for so long while just about ignoring all the injuries, the conditions, the lack of sustenance, is just too much. Fans of the genre would probably expect and enjoy this far more, and the action can definitely pull you along, but I found myself making a note that the story should have ended halfway through, badly, and what happened after that, starting with the trope of some of the bad guys discussing the plot for little reason other than to be overheard by the protagonists, made me feel a need to roll my eyes quite a number of times. And some of the crudeness, not to mention the single-minded lecherousness of one of the companions, did at times also go over the top.

Rating: 3/5