Finished Mark Lawrence's Red Sister. A mediocre book that offers a lot of originality and lets you down time and again with worn out tropes and unlikable characters. I felt stuck with them, the world-building being the most interesting aspect of the book, and even then not anything to crow over.
The prose was often painful, and the dialogues were bad.
I'll rate that 2/5 in GR. I skimmed through the last 1/4, focusing on "interesting moments", so as not to DNF it out of rage.
Now I feel like re-reading something of quality. Anything to break this vicious circle of mediocrity I've been caught in recently.
Try Wolf Winter by Cecilia Eckback!
Meh. Sounds like historical crime/thriller. Sorry but I'm barely reaching time when the sun rises when I do, yet is still setting or set when I leave work, so I'm not inclined on reading about the long winter just now.
There's a murder but there's no detectives. And yeah, the author did an excellent job in portraying the atmosphere of the place, so hmm...
Maybe
The Last Witness by K.J.Parker? One of my favorites of 2016. It's also a novella, so it's short and gets to the point.
Some books that I haven't read but heard a lot about:
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden (was in the top 10 of GR),
The Dagger and the Coin or
Long Price Quarted series by Daniel Abraham (GRRM's apprentice and writes The Expanse with another pen name),
Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames (winner of FF list and also very well regarded around. If I remember right you didn't exactly like Locke Lamora, and this has a similar feel but with adult, really aged characters).