What are you Reading Now?

I read the first volume of the light novel series The Devil is a Part-timer! and it was even more hilarious than the anime was. Definitely going to keep reading this series. Highly recommend.

The premise is that there's a fantasy world where the Devil King Satan is bent on world conquest, but just before achieving victory a Hero appears. One by one his armies are defeated and the Hero and her party assault the Devil's Castle. As a last resort, the Devil King and his one remaining Great Demon General create a portal and flee to another world: this world, Tokyo, Japan. Where they find that they have lost their demon forms and have no natural supply of magic power. They are stuck here in human bodies, subject to human frailties and no way to create another portal to return home. But the Devil King is unfazed. He forms a plan. He will... get a part-time job! If he does well enough he might even make it to... Full-time Employee! And once he can surpass his manager at MgRonald's he'll be poised to take over the world! Only one problem, Emilia the Hero followed him to this new world and though she also is cut off from the source of her holy power, she's still trying to kill him.

 

I finished reading The Story of Kullervo. A volume including Tolkien's unfinished "The Story of Kullervo", based on the Kullervo cyle of the Kalevala, two versions of his lecture on the Kalevala and an essay about Tolkien's relationship with the Kalevala. It was all quite fascinating. It's common knowledge that Tolkien's Turin Turambar and the Tale of the Children of Hurin takes a lot from Kullervo, but until now I had never really fathomed why Tolkien was so inspired by this story in particular. It's easily my least favorite part of the Kalevala and I find Kullervo himself rather a repulsive figure. But after reading this I have a better understanding. It's also very interesting to see one of Tolkien's earliest attempts at creating names. Some of the "word sounds" he used in Kullervo ended up as part of proto-Quenya.

I also finished 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Despite its unfortunately sensationalist title (for which I imagine the publishers are to blame) this was a very informative look at the Bronze Age Collapse and what really caused it. Was it the Sea Peoples? Was it earthquakes? Was it climate change and famine? Many theories have been put forth by historians over time. The book comes to the very reasonable conclusion that it was all of the above. Or rather, a total systems collapse caused by many different disasters in different places and times that had a large ripple effect that devastated the whole eastern Mediterranean. The most interesting part of the book though was not about what caused the collapse but was the detailed picture the author painted of what the Bronze Age was like pre-collapse. He describes it as a far more advanced, interconnected and cosmopolitan age than I realized. In fact, he compares it directly to our own times and not without reason.

 

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. It was alright.

Now I'm finally reading Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. It's FINALLY on kindle. I'm loving it.