Readings

So, work's been relatively quiet of late, which opens up time to warm up the Kindle app and start in on the list of books I've had on my virtual probably-to-read pile. Some of these come from review websites, some from happenstance, and some from my Amazon recommendations list. The latter has been disturbingly flooded with isekai-style (though probably US and self-published in origin) books that look like things that would be far more appealing to my early-teen self than who I am now.

Among the Fallen: The Genesis
Thankfully, it was cheap. The protagonist is killed in a fight between two still un-explained baddies/beasties/something, and is brought back into her home city after a few months in the middle of a zombie apocalypse in which a demon-like world is being overlaid with Earth. She's given a suit that gifts her with superhuman powers (primarily uber-regeneration at this stage) and sent off to defeat several of these "Fallen" lieutenants to prevent the ritual combining the worlds that will otherwise result in badness for humanity as a whole.
It's like a little bit of Spawn set in Resident Evil with a grotesque Hellraiser aesthetic to everything. Nothing about that immediately turns me off to it. The implementation, however, is lacking. The main character hadn't grabbed me at all by the end. The scenes of gore and torment are actually so common they lose impact, especially when the heroine herself can recover from seemingly anything thanks to her symbiotic demon suit. And when the books ends with her only having faced one of the five (all of which she's supposed to defeat by "sunrise"), everything feels so drawn out and thin.
Also, if you're a writer and you're thinking of using more than one or two flashbacks/flashforwards in your book, think about it again. Reaaaaally consider if it ads something to the book. Consider how jarring it can be for a reader. Sleep on it. Think about it again. And if you still think you should do it, you probably shouldn't.

Cast in Deception
The Chronicles of Elantra are sort of "fluff" in my mind, but I still enjoy reading them. Way too much time is spent explaining things, reiterating things, and going on about how different beings see things differently. And yet, I still find many of the characters and elements of the world charming, so I'm fine with that.
This one primarily follows Kaylin and dragoness Bellusdeo into the lands of the barrani to escort Teela's mindlinked kin to Elantra. There's a lot of political pieces moving around, though this book has no real clear "bad guy" and there's less word-wrangling than usual. Like a few of the other books in the series, it didn't feel very "filling" by the end, but was still enjoyable to read and watch the characters.

Red Right Hand
I'm still sort of digesting this one, but I don't think I can rate it higher than average. It takes the urban fantasy formula of a young woman unaware of the powers of her line getting pulled into supernatural conflict and sets that in Lovecraftian Mythos cosmology. The novel seems to be largely setup, however, as the heroine spends perhaps more than 80% of the book being pulled around by Nyarlathotep with no power to do much herself. She gains some agency toward the end, but I found it difficult to like her, even with traumatic backstory. And not liking the "Man in Black" is pretty much a given when he's (at best) the lesser of eldritch evils. Though, if anything, I think I did like him better than the heroine - go figure.
The story's not bad, but it just felt a little weak. Maybe I'm tired of origin stories. I don't regret reading it, but I'm not sure I'm going to follow the series either.