I chewed through Lartry Correia’s Grimnoir Chronicles this week, starting obviously with Hard Magic. I’m making this one the BotW despite the fact that my favorite scene happened in Warbound; it’s a good trilogy generally. Definitely worth a read, if you like Depression-era magic dieselpunk pulp. Bizarrely, there are people who don’t.
And so, adieu to The Alamo.
I’m willing to bet that I know your favorite scene from Warbound.
Go for it. 🙂
The Superman reference.
The one that turned into an Iron Man reference? Why, yes.
Huh.
Mine was when Lance went hunting.
Gotta love a book with John Moses M*****f***in’ Browning as a supernaturally gifted miracle-worker.
In other words, non-fiction.
Love this series. The magic system turns into a superhero system. And he develops its rules each book very well. I might have preferred a little more character arc from Jake. But then, it sort of fits, he’s a heavy. Solid. Not much changes him, or how he approaches things. And Faye’s arc more than makes up for it.
How to do this spoiler-free ..
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I found Heavy Jake’s arc changes him pretty significantly .. but it is subtle.
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Faye’s arc is the longest one, and is quite remarkable.
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I found the couched-but-more-honest-than-history-class evaluations of depression-era politics very enjoyable as well .. but that’s just me.
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Mew
I think Jake’s arc is more an exploration of the magic system than himself, perse. And I don’t think we can say much more without spoilers. 😛
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And I concur about the almost veiled history lesson. And I loved watching the mainstream critics’ heads explode as they walked into the Nissei comparison when they tried to defend FDR.
Larry received a lot of emails from Japanese readers that praised his accuracy of Imperial Japan back then.
Eh .. Heavy Jake and Larry Correia’s other ‘heavy’ character, Owen Pitt, both suffer from being so noisy in the internal-monologue that it’s difficult to filter all the “story/plot development” from their “personal development”.
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This is not a complaint .. most peoples’ internal monologue make it tough for us to see how we’ve grown .. or regressed .. more an observation of how closely you need to watch Jake’s attitude to see the significant change.
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Mew
I once saw a streamer do a one-off RPG set in the Grimnoir setting. (I recognized the setting, the players did not.) The PCs were not exactly fitting the time period and I could tell the GM was torn between hitting the realism button of “what are you idiots doing? This is the 1930s!” and just ignoring it and continuing on. His self preservation eventually won out and he ignored it, BTW.
Correia is extremely good at action scenes, especially combat. In some ways, it’s a shame that the verve of the action tends to stop people noticing the wonderful characterization and character arcs, the terrific world-building, etc.
Zeppelin, ninja, zombie, pirates in one scene. Also have the best written literary villain I’ve ever read. He is the hero in his own story.