First of My Name Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 There wasn't a thread for this yet, so here you go. I'm still reading The Way of Kings and I'm liking it a lot, there's so much to see in there. And it contais lots of maps and drawings, which I'm a sucker for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guinevere Seaworth Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 I finished The Dragon Business by Kevin J Anderson. While it was a short and funny story, I found the humour a bit forced. I felt the author was trying too hard.Now savouring The World of Ice and Fire. The illustrations are stunning. The artwork showing Torrhen Stark kneeling before Aegon the Conqueror is my new favorite. I'm now part of the way through the Targaryen Kings and just finished Dance of Dragons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eponine Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 I'm reading Middlemarch for a book club and it's narcolepsy inducing. I'm not even interested enough for a good hate read. People negotiating marriages is my least favorite kind of reading. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zorral Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 The Free State of Jones: Mississippi's Longest Civil War (2001) by Victoria E. Bynum; The Huguenots by Geoffrey Treasure (2014), The Plantagents: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England (2012) by Dan Jones and The Peripheral (2014) by William Gibson.\ And, as ever, continued digging into the Colonial Records of South Carolina. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garett Hornwood Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 I'm still re-reading The Fellowship of the Ring and realizing how much I forgot over the 15+ years since my first reading in high school (along with watching the films a dozen times over the years). I've progressed approximately 7% of the way through The Poetry of Robert Frost, I'm reading between 3-10 pages depending on the length of the poems since this is a leisure read. I'm also slowly making my way through a new book called The World of Ice and Fire, I'm reading a "section" at a time so I'm only through The Rise of Valyria (page 13). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buckwheat Posted November 1, 2014 Share Posted November 1, 2014 I found all three Dunk&Egg stories in one book (translated) in the library and picked it up. I am somewhere in the middle of The Sworn Sword now, and I am enjoying it a lot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterbound Posted November 2, 2014 Share Posted November 2, 2014 Reading The Shotgun Arcana at the moment. These are great books. Pick them up if you get a chance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gordonah Posted November 2, 2014 Share Posted November 2, 2014 I've just started Interesting Times by Terry Pratchett. My 23rd Discworld novel, so I am expecting to enjoy it as much as all the others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deleted01 Posted November 2, 2014 Share Posted November 2, 2014 Almost finished NOS4R2 by Joe Hill. Really enjoying it. I have a new Katherine Webb novel to read and review, so it'll probably be that next. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maester Llama Posted November 2, 2014 Share Posted November 2, 2014 I read The Six-Gun Tarot, the first book in the weird western series of which Shotgun Arcana is the second, early last year and dug it. Forgot the second one had come out; I'll definitely have to pick it up. I've been getting through a lot of fiction: Finished Anthony Ryan's Tower Lord. It's structured very differently than the first book, Blood Song, and is telling a quite different type of story for the first while -- though by the end it reverts to form and there's some very solid fightin'. There are advantages and disadvantages to the changes in approach -- like the increased point-of-view count and the broader epic fantasy canvas -- and the book still feels quite conservative in some ways, but I'd say it still comes out on balance as a better book than Blood Song for me, by a pretty clear margin. It was solid fun and I'm anticipating the last book in the trilogy. I always get some degree of enjoyment out of reading John Scalzi's books. He's an intensely readable writer for me. And he has been changing up his subject matter pretty significantly between each of his last few books. But I've found that his last three or so novels have been kind of swings-and-misses for me, still enjoyable in many places but with a slight tendency to use a type of wit and snark that I enjoy a lot but is becoming a bit of a Scalzi shtick to paper over lack of substance. His new book, Lock In, his first near-future thriller, is my favourite of his in at least the last half-decade, perhaps longer. Fast-paced, fun, and full of the best, non-gratuitous version of Scalzi banter, but with a crisp plot that I found really absorbing and a fascinating near-future sf world to explore. A really good sf crime story wrapped up with issues of how disabled people interact with society and embodiment. Good stuff. I also just finished M. L. Brennan's Generation V, the start of an urban fantasy series about a slacker college graduate who is gradually turning into a vampire, in one day. I am occasionally a sucker for urban fantasy and I don't quite know how to explain why this one has gripped me so completely. Because all the tropes are here. They're just presented in a very down-to-earth, grounded way, simultaneously earnest and mocking; the book punctures the mystique of vampires and other urban fantasy staples via the very matter-of-fact way the protagonist reacts to them, but never treats its own universe or characters like jokes, ever. It's also a take on urban fantasy thoroughly grounded in the little people: the protagonist is connected to vampires who live in crazy mansions, but he himself works at a grungy coffee shop and has rent issues, and while vampires are super-strong and fast etc the protagonist and his supernatural sidekick / bodyguard consider it a major triumph when they manage to take out single minions of evil while getting beaten only half to death. Funny and off-beat while still presenting a fully-built urban fantasy universe and characters with big potential for conflict and drama, with an awesome buddy team at its center -- though this central relationship has the potential for maximum cheese in future books if not handled with care. Will devour sequel. I'm now reading two books by "important" British novelists before continuing with my month of popcorn: David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks and Sarah Waters' The Paying Guests. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Er Rn Posted November 2, 2014 Share Posted November 2, 2014 I'm also reading through The World of Ice and Fire. Just finished the section on Targaryen kings and moving into the Tourney at Harrenhal. I'm loving all the histories and the illustrations really are beautiful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SkynJay Posted November 3, 2014 Share Posted November 3, 2014 Reading The Shotgun Arcana at the moment. These are great books. Pick them up if you get a chance. Next book lined up on my Kindle. Enjoyed the first one quite a bit. I also just finished M. L. Brennan's Generation V, the start of an urban fantasy series about a slacker college graduate who is gradually turning into a vampire, in one day. I am occasionally a sucker for urban fantasy and I don't quite know how to explain why this one has gripped me so completely. Because all the tropes are here. They're just presented in a very down-to-earth, grounded way, simultaneously earnest and mocking; the book punctures the mystique of vampires and other urban fantasy staples via the very matter-of-fact way the protagonist reacts to them, but never treats its own universe or characters like jokes, ever. It's also a take on urban fantasy thoroughly grounded in the little people: the protagonist is connected to vampires who live in crazy mansions, but he himself works at a grungy coffee shop and has rent issues, and while vampires are super-strong and fast etc the protagonist and his supernatural sidekick / bodyguard consider it a major triumph when they manage to take out single minions of evil while getting beaten only half to death. Funny and off-beat while still presenting a fully-built urban fantasy universe and characters with big potential for conflict and drama, with an awesome buddy team at its center -- though this central relationship has the potential for maximum cheese in future books if not handled with care. Will devour sequel. I was sucked in the same way. It does everything right despite not looking like it should be that original.. And when I first saw the cover I really did think it was a tie-in to some kind of CW show. And you are in luck, the sequel does not start in with the cheese so you are safe for at least one more book. I finished my first Moorcock book, the first Elrich, to end last month. Currently reading the first Caiaphas Cain omnibus because I just wanted something quick and fun. Then it is on to the aforementioned Shotgun Arcana, while listening to Annihilation by Vandermeer, my first experience with the author. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maester Hodor Posted November 3, 2014 Share Posted November 3, 2014 I finished The Slow Regard of Silent Things a couple of days ago, and now I'm slowly making my way through The World of Ice and Fire. Seeing how GRRM's next book won't be coming out soon, I'm in no rush to finish it. Right now I'm basically just biding my time until Stephen King's Revival comes out November 11th. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mashiara Posted November 3, 2014 Share Posted November 3, 2014 I finished Fortune's Pawn by Rachel Bach and loved it. Light space opera with a main female character that really captured me. I loved it so much, I jumped right into book 2 of the series, Honour's Knight, which was equally fun. Love the dialogue,, love the action, love the interaction of the characters, really addictive stuff. I'll be reading book 3 soon because I'm dying to see how this ends, I just wanted to step away for a while. I'll start The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell today if I can. I've been looking forward to that one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scotcat Posted November 3, 2014 Share Posted November 3, 2014 I'm just finishing up with TWOIAF and will be getting my teeth into Inside HBO's Game of Thrones when it gets delivered on Thursday. Apart from that, I'm reading Voyager by Diana Gabaldon. It's early in the month so I'll be adding to that list as/when the time comes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
farseer2 Posted November 3, 2014 Share Posted November 3, 2014 I finished The Night of the Swarm, the final book of the Chathrand Voyages tetralogy by Robert V.S. Redick. This is a remarkable series, that in my opinion does not get discussed as much as it deserves. This is my goodreads review: --And we are done. The final book of the Chathrand Voyages tetralogy is over and I am left with a bittersweet taste, as befits the ending. Mr. Redick is a ruthless narrator, perhaps too much so. Not because he is not afraid to kill important characters, but because he often does not feel the need to close the circle of their personal stories and give us readers a sense of closure. Whether this works is a matter of taste. It is not fully satisfactory, but perhaps it gives us a sense of realism not often found in epic fantasy, a feeling that life just goes on, that we often don't get neat endings and not all is perfect even after a big threat has been defeated. Soon new ones will appear, although perhaps they will be for different heroes to fight. Coming back to this story, I feel bad to only give four stars out of five to a tale so ambitious, with so many strong points and things to commend. However, I have the feeling that it might have been even better. When you see so much inspiration and potential for greatness you also become more demanding. Let's see. Never since The Lord of the Rings have I seen a fantasy world with such a feeling of depth as Alifros. The richness of the setting is incredible. It feels fresh and new, always with new wonders to surprise us and captivate our imagination. At the same time, the character work is excellent. All of them feel like real people, complex, with virtues and flaws that only make it easier to care for them. The cast is large, not so much for the total number of characters but for the number of fully-drawn characters. Perhaps that becomes a problem. So much attention is paid to the background and stories of each character that sometimes we are in danger of losing focus on the story being told here. When authors get asked for a new tale set in their more famous fictional world, often they write a story fleshing out one of the side characters. In this series, those stories are already included in the books. Again, it's a matter of opinion. For some it will be awesome. Others might have preferred a tighter narrative. I was somewhere in the middle. I loved all those background stories (they are good!) and I cared about the characters, but at the same time I felt a certain sense of detachment from the main storyline. When an important antagonist was defeated it sometimes felt underwhelming, like an afterthought. I have just finished reading the story and I miss it. It's a feeling I have with the really great epic fantasies. I feel that this will be one of the rare series that I read again. I'm surprised that it is not talked about much more often. Read it! It's not perfect, but it has a lot of personality and you will find things here that other epic fantasy stories won't be able to give you. I'd like to express my admiration for the author and hope that he will keep writing and giving us stories as memorable as this one.-- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kese Posted November 3, 2014 Share Posted November 3, 2014 I finished The Slow Regard of Silent Things a couple of days ago, and now I'm slowly making my way through The World of Ice and Fire. Seeing how GRRM's next book won't be coming out soon, I'm in no rush to finish it. Right now I'm basically just biding my time until Stephen King's Revival comes out November 11th. Same here, slowly going through The World of Ice and Fire and waiting Revival, which i hope to get before the weekend, then everything else goes on the back burner. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Serious Callers Only Posted November 4, 2014 Share Posted November 4, 2014 Ex Machina 1-3. Good superhero comics book that marginalizes superheroics, which is how it should be. It's a bit like west-wing of comics, with a retired hero being mayor of NYC.Needless to say the narrative is superior to anything that DC or marvel put out that actually focuses on 'super-heroics' with their tiresome arch-nemesis and events and crushing history (disregarding outliers like the recent She-Hulk - where she works 'just' as a lawyer). Marvel/DC delenda est Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterbound Posted November 4, 2014 Share Posted November 4, 2014 I'm just finishing up with TWOIAF Just finished it myself. All I thought the whole time is, 'This is going to be a great series when AGoT ends on HBO.' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starkess Posted November 4, 2014 Share Posted November 4, 2014 About halfway through The Magician King. Julia is worse than I remembered. It's not a bad book, but not enjoying it as much as the first one. I finished Fortune's Pawn by Rachel Bach and loved it. Light space opera with a main female character that really captured me. I loved it so much, I jumped right into book 2 of the series, Honour's Knight, which was equally fun. Love the dialogue,, love the action, love the interaction of the characters, really addictive stuff. I'll be reading book 3 soon because I'm dying to see how this ends, I just wanted to step away for a while. Never heard of those books, but with such a ringing endorsement, they're added to my to-read list! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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