The love affair continues

I love a good story, and there is no story I love more than fantasy fiction novels. There is no higher literary goal in my mind than the ability to weave a story together that is engaging and believable where you have some hairless youth wielding the biggest flaming sword since the creation of the earth and throwing lightning bolts left right and centre as he battles a god or demon for the continued existence of the universe, or something of that nature…

I mean it’s improbably, most people if they saw it happening wouldn’t have a bar of it! If you told a drunken hobo in a bar, it’s pretty unlikely he would believe you. He is more likely to think your some kind of hallucination.

Writing a story that makes you believe there is some snot nosed kid living in the valley of cherry blossoms whose dad was the retired dark lord of oblivion who accidentally happened upon the sword of utter catastrophe which was wielded in the battle of wailing sands against the epitome of evil who held the world in endless foreclosure by said snot nosed kid is a masterpiece.

I’ve been getting into the stories a bit recently, helped along by the Baen free library and there have been some stand outs there, some David Weber stuff in his oath of swords series, the stories by Keith Laumer about his character Retief who delves into interstellar diplomacy. But none of these roused my old feelings for a

A book I picked up recently renewed these feelings of love I have for all things fantasy fiction, mostly by being a damn good read “The White Tiger” by Kylie Chan. It also reminded me that no matter how precarious a ledge the world you are reading about is sitting on, no matter how shiny the armor, how hot the sword, how wavy the hair, if you hero/heroine doesn’t also come to have a massive thing for the most beautiful thing in creation and somehow steal their hearts it just doesn’t quite grab you as much.

I mean in some ways I probably am a hopeless romantic, but this book made me believe the world (modern setting fantasy) feel like the characters were real and some damn implausible things were happening right in front of me. It also made me think a relationship between a mortal character and god was plausible, kudos.

Martial arts, magic, gods, Asian mysticism, demons and a love story, this book really targets my weaknesses.

I am however incredibly upset the sequel hasn’t been written or at least published 