Review: War Maid's Choice by David Weber

War Maid's Choice is the fourth (and most recent) book in the War God series. Up front, I like this series and recommend it... but since I've already talked about that for three books, take that as the baseline while I complain about a few things.

This book generally follows three character viewpoints: Bazhell, the lead for all of the books and champion of the war god; Leanna, who was a teenager when we last saw her and is now an adult war maid; and the villain of the moment. Like previous books, the villain sections remain a bit of a slog - they're where I most often put the book down, because I obviously don't like the character. It's not my favourite form of exposition.

The relationship between Bazhell and Leanna (you may recall my cringing at it while she was younger) is still incredibly meh. At least it's not really drawn out, but I didn't believe them as a pairing and it reads a bit creepy the same way Sparhawk/Ehlana did (if you're unfamiliar: young girl puts designs on older warrior and eventually "traps" him into marriage as an adult). Not as bad, but... eh.

Overall, the series may have hit its peak already for me. There were to many characters with similar names to try to keep straight, the stakes are getting unreasonably high and the battles unpicturably large. It's pretty clear there's another book planned to follow, and I'll probably read it, but it's getting too high fantasy for me if this is any indication.

Review: MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood

MaddAddam is the third and final novel in Atwood's post-apocalyptic series that started with Oryx and Crake. I read the second one (The Year of the Flood) relatively recently and found it underwhelming, you may recall. I'm happy to say that this one did improve my overall impression of the series, though I suspect that I enjoyed the first novel most.

So, while the first two books were concurrent with different characters, the third starts right after those and continues with both sets of characters surviving together in the decimated world. With one exception (the new information about the genetic spliced creatures), the current-time story (surviving) isn't very notable. Most of the book is actually about one character's history, Zeb, and about another character retelling it to the Crakers. The style is readable, though a bit put on toward the end when one of the Crakers is actually telling the story.

The book went by fast and I liked it well enough, but I wouldn't say it was mindblowing. It did redeem The Year of the Flood a fair bit.