Fantasy Buddy Reads discussion

This is a Buddy Read for Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland starting on June 18, 2024.


Happy Reading

Looking forward to it!

Got my copy of this one in the mail yesterday! Have two others I need to read first though, but I'm excited for this one!

Me too... I enjoyed A Taste of Gold and Iron, this author is lacking in audio copies of her works, and this was is all piratey... win win...

I picked it up on the sitewide sale... either for being cheaper than 1 credit, or just with a credit, I forget, I bought so much...

I will say that I've heard this one is like a tonal 180 from A Taste of Gold and Iron so definitely don't go into this one expecting something similar. Though they are in the same world

Erin wrote: "I will say that I've heard this one is like a tonal 180 from A Taste of Gold and Iron so definitely don't go into this one expecting something similar. Though they are in the same world"

That's good to know--always useful to manage expectations.

My reading mood is all over the place right now, so I've started a bunch of audiobooks of varying sound quality...

Read a bit of this this morning... bit quiet, so I'll probably read the rest at home...

I spent the early bits trying to figure out if all the characters were male or a mix of male and female, given the male narrator and lack of gender pronouns in the story very much... I think they're all male...

Anyway, there's some definite early connections to Taste of Gold & Iron, specifically the investigation in that story... it seems to have inspired the MC of this book to a bit of theft... from there, I'm sure the story becomes it's own thing, just a little Easter Egg for fans of the author's other works...

Do I need to read A Taste of Gold and Iron to enjoy this story or do you think it's okay to read it on it's own? I have a request in to get it from the library.

RachelG. wrote: "Do I need to read A Taste of Gold and Iron to enjoy this story or do you think it's okay to read it on it's own? I have a request in to get it from the library."

it's okay to read it on it's own

Started! Through Chapter 2 and having several laugh-out-loud moments--favorite so far: "Toss me in one of the sea serpent breeding pools so you can say I died in a massive fuck-pile like I always wanted to."

Finished! I will never think of the numbers 6 and 52 the same way again... (view spoiler)[I loved the cake contest--all of the unconnected rules, and how it was essentially an insult contest as well.

Avra's very one-track mind was amusing--as were the antics of people trying to deal with him.

The ending was pretty predictable, but still very heartwarming. (hide spoiler)]

Zoomed through the first 1/3 of this after work today... this is quite different from Taste of Iron & Gold... quite fun/hilarious...

You know... Julian is positively tame compared to bisexual comedian Grant O'Brien from College Humor / Dropout.tv...

You'd basically need to swap those numbers... it's well-known, by anyone that watches the related content I mentioned above, that (view spoiler)[Grant O'Brien blew 50 guys at some underground New York party scene, in one night...

It's come up in multiple improv shows now, and in the first one, it blew several other comedian's minds... including one who was his roommate at the time of the incident they were previously unaware of...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S5_0...

That episode was written by Grant & Brennan (the redhead)'s OTHER roommate in 2012, from what I understand... the point of the show is it's a scripted new show where the anchors don't know what's on the teleprompter, and the writer is trying to get them to break and laugh... and there's a running score of who laughs the most/least...

In later seasons, Grant has started a running gag where everytime they get the owner of the network to come on (Sam Reich, son of Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor during the Clinton Administration), they talk about rebranding to Dropout America an alt-right news network, and make him say all sorts of conservative stuff... (hide spoiler)]

The reviews for this book are wild... they're mostly super high... or they DNF'd when they got tired of Avra's antics...

This... is a real person? Someone actually DID THAT??? Wow... that's terrifying. I hope he went to the doctor afterwards... those body parts have been too many places...

Grant O'Brien is a real person... yes... and the more you get to know him through content, the less surprised you become...

One of the other game shows on the channel occasionally does a segment where they bring out an object/thing and you have to make it make a sound... an accordion and a sound bite... one of those circus game where you use a hammer to make an object rise up and ring a bell... one time they brought in the host's cat and you had to make it meow or do a trick with a treat... and one time they brought in Grant O'Brien with noise-cancelling earphones, and the game was to get him to make an innuendo as fast as possible... and I think he did it unprompted, just being introduced...

I paused for breaks from the raunchiness so much, that this took me forever to finish... and once done, I was kinda underwhelmed by the whole thing...

Altho, it feels like this will have larger implications for future books set in this world, (view spoiler)[ now that sea travel is open to all... (hide spoiler)]

That being the one thing that connected this to the other book... I wonder if she just wanted that to not be an issue anymore for her next story and got sidetracked, or something...