New stuff:
Corax; Lord of Shadows (Guy Haley) - My first of three Horus Heresy reads. HH is the best. Unfortunately this one leaves you lukewarm. 200 pages that feel like 140 pages with the criminally large margins and white pages is barely enough to explore the central concept of Corax endangering the Campaign against the Carinae Sodality to persue a warlord that uses ancient bio-weapons to weaponize his own population against the imperium, but the novel also seeks to explore tensions on the Ravenguard Homeworld AND introduces the Ravenguard Genetic Flaw; the Sable Brand, which causes you to go all mopey. You end up with a bit of fluff coupled with some interesting descriptions but nowhere enough time to explore any one of these three, let alone all of them. Not the worst of the Primarch series, but its not going to win any hearts and minds outside of a very niche audience.
The Well of Ascension (Brandon Sanderson); My life is a hell, even in my escapism of choice I am tormented with mediocrity. Sanderson somehow manages to write a 700 page novel that doesn't start until around page 500. I have discovered a new flaw to this Epic; the essentially static nature of the action. There are no pilgrimages to faraway lands, there is little to discover geographically and the whole of the setting's Final Empire feels interchangeable in the extreme. There is plenty of mystery and more spectacular action to keep you from collapsing into somnolescence but reading the characters something becomes abundantly clear. The Mistborn trilogy is a YA series with a push-up bra, a bacardi breezer lemon and too much make-up, trying to act edgy and cool in front of the adults so it can join the big boys fantasy club.
The Storm Lord (Tanith Lee) - Easily the most enjoyable of the bunch, Storm Lord is a luridly purple tale of inheritance, intrigue, passion and divine decree, dripping with Sword & Sorcery goodness. While the story itself is more reminiscent of some Bronze Age Cycle of Death and Renewal, maimed kings, swaggering palace guard, lascivious harlots, steaming jungles, alabaster draconic idols, human sacrifice and ancient, savage gods turn the whole into the lovechild of Stephanie Meyer and Robert E. Howard. Lee writes beautifully, and the nomenclature fits the mood perfectly (Xarabiss, Dortharians, Lord Ahmnorh, Raldnor, Yannul the Lan etc. etc.). A violent, cruel world, inhabited by half-savages driven by their passions and lusts. The amount of couplings, harlotry and rapes in the book, while serving to amplify the S&S feel of the story, leaves one with the impression that perhaps the book was written with one hand and Lee herself would not mind overmuch to be ravished on a table by some iron-thewed, bronze-skinned conqueror with steely grey eyes, so if you are the sort of person that takes offence at this sort of thing, I'd skip this book. Also be prepared to lose track of half the side characters (I immediately confused Ahmnorh with Karthaos and could not for the life of me figure out what had happened to Lord Ohrn. Enjoyable, and there is too little S&S as it is.
"The Great upturned Bowl of the Plain's sky was drenched with the blood of sunset. The sun itself had fallen beyond the Edge of the World. Now, before the Rising of the Moon, only a single scarlet Star gemmed the cloak of gathering twilight." etc. etc. etc.