What We Are Reading in February

[BleatingHeart]

I'm just starting the Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. The prologue was cool.

Then, it'll be The Inferior by Paedar O'guilin. Really looking forward to that one. The author put a link to some sample chapters on another forum and I loved them. I've seen him here too, so I presume he's done the same.

After that, I don't know. There's just so much cool stuff out there right now, I'm in heaven! Maybe Red Wolf Conspiracy since it's the hot new thing. Or Red Seas Under Red Skies if I can't wait after the first one.

[swedeheadchris]

I'm just starting the Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. The prologue was cool.

Then, it'll be The Inferior by Paedar O'guilin. Really looking forward to that one. The author put a link to some sample chapters on another forum and I loved them. I've seen him here too, so I presume he's done the same.

After that, I don't know. There's just so much cool stuff out there right now, I'm in heaven! Maybe Red Wolf Conspiracy since it's the hot new thing. Or Red Seas Under Red Skies if I can't wait after the first one.

Red Wolf Conspiracy is good Not fantastic, but certainly very good. Finished it yesterday, review soon.

Just finished Jennifer Rardin's Jaz Parks book, Once Bitten, Twice Shy, which I actually really enjoyed. It had a lot of the typical vampire novel stereotypes...

There was the inevitable "crush on the vampire" bits -- but then, how could anyone resist a tall, dark vampire, with green eyes and strong ... damn, gotta snap out of this -- but it was actually done well, with Jaz, first-person narrator, often laughing at herself, and not taking it too seriously ... Not when there are crazy, plastic-surgeon/criminal mastermind vampires to hurt... And Jaz, a tough, funny character, is very good at that.

but was light-hearted and fast-paced enough to be forgiven most problems.

Review here!

~Chris

[Peadar]

Thanks for buying the book, BH.

Red Wolf Conspiracy is good Not fantastic, but certainly very good. Finished it yesterday, review soon.

Please be swift I'm another one who nearly bought it today despite the leaning tower of great reading that's starting to clog my office.

Halfway through K.J. Parker's The Escapement. It's just starting to hot up about now...

[Larry.]

Read three really different books (yet enjoyed them all) yesterday/today so far:

First was a re-reading of one of my most favorite childhood books, Crockett Johnson's Harold and the Purple Crayon (one of my closest friends gave that to me as a Christmas gift a few years ago, not knowing just how much I loved the books when I was learning to read). I saw it on the shelf last night, smiled, and then picked it up and read it through. Amazing how imaginative it still appears when I'm a more jaded 33.

Second book was David Anthony Durham's Pride of Carthage. I plan on writing a review of this in the next day or so, but it was one of the rare historical novels that didn't leave me criticizing the analytical parts.

Third book was a review copy of the tradeback edition of D.M. Cornish's YA trilogy opener, Foundling. Illustrated by the author himself, this book had a sort of a late 18th century/early 19th century "learned wit" feel to it and I enjoyed it and I know I would have been clamoring for more if I had read this around the age of 12-13. Good stuff.

Around page 220 in my re-reading of Joyce's Ulysses. Enjoying it even more this time around.

[kcf]

I just finished The Inferior by Peadar Ó Guilín. I enjoyed it - it's a bit YA-ish, but crosses over well enough. I'm definately excited to see what comes next (full review).

Just started - Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie.

[RedEyedGhost]

Just finished Jennifer Rardin's Jaz Parks book, Once Bitten, Twice Shy, which I actually really enjoyed. It had a lot of the typical vampire novel stereotypes...

but was light-hearted and fast-paced enough to be forgiven most problems.

Review here!

~Chris

That does sound like pretty standard Vampire Lit. It doesn't sound bad, but I think a comparison is needed with top-shelf Vampire Lit. So, now you must read Huston's Already Dead... you must read Huston's Already Dead... must read Huston's Already Dead... read Huston's Already Dead... Huston's Already Dead... Already Dead...

(did my cliched vampire hypnotism work? )

[bossfan2000]

Currently 400 pages into The Summoner by Gail Z Martin. I read that this was best selling book published by Solaris here in the US last year, and most of the reviews have been positive. Maybe I am in the minority, but it seems the writing and story are comparable to Belgariad era Eddings. Lots of cliches, everyone has "intuition" about when something bad is going to happen, or that tells them the right thing to do, etc. I am enjoying it ok, but its gotta be one of the most trope filled books I have read in awhile. Seems like a young adult book to me. Even for someone like me who likes reading the same type story over and over, its a bit much..though I do like it just enough to keep reading.

[Inigima]

Finished Dresden #6. Haven't settled on a next read yet.

[RedEyedGhost]

Currently 400 pages into The Summoner by Gail Z Martin. I read that this was best selling book published by Solaris here in the US last year, and most of the reviews have been positive. Maybe I am in the minority, but it seems the writing and story are comparable to Belgariad era Eddings. Lots of cliches, everyone has "intuition" about when something bad is going to happen, or that tells them the right thing to do, etc. I am enjoying it ok, but its gotta be one of the most trope filled books I have read in awhile. Seems like a young adult book to me. Even for someone like me who likes reading the same type story over and over, its a bit much..though I do like it just enough to keep reading.

Most of the reviews I've seen have been less than favorable (and I'm lazy so those I've seen are the bloggers/reviewers that post here).

[Edda van Heefmstra Ruston]

Finished Brasyl (MacDonald) yesterday, so I suppose it counts as February reading, but The Eyre Affair (Fforde) was done Thursday so I'm out of luck on that one.

Now I've started The Historian (Kostova), but I also have The Book Thief (Zusak) waiting for me, if I have to put the Kostova down. I'd like to read Evil for Evil but it'll take a while to get it imported.

[Queequeg]

Finished Brian McNaughton's Throne of Bones, a fantasy/horror collection of interrelated short stories mainly about ghouls and necromancers. It wasn't bad, but I couldn't get into it. Something about the author's prose style just didn't click with me.

Currently reading The Essential Dracula and Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution by A.J. Langguth.

[Ser Hot Pie]

You know what? Just a quick aside to say that as I look through my book collection, I come to realize that there has been a tremendous amount of satisfying reads in the past couple of years that have been a direct result of the chatter in this forum.

Thanks to all of you for your great recommendations and your superior taste in literature.

[Amras]

Do you remember that thread that Calibandar started where we polled who was best of Lynch/Ruckley/Rothfuss/Abraham and Abercrombie? Do you remember that Abercrombie won it with ease? Sure you do - you guys aren't goldfish either, but what most of you don't remember is that I rated Abercrombie next to last after Ruckley. I read "The Blade Itself" when it was first released, and didn't like it enough to continue reading. But seeing as everyone was raving about how good the sequel (and now the third book) is, I thought that I'd better go back and see if I hadn't missed anything.

And it turns out I did, to some extent, though I still believe that the first book in the First Law is not brilliant by any means. It's just a nice read and nothing more.

"Before They Are Hanged", however, is infinitely better in my eyes. It's so much better that I was a thoroughly surprised at how much I actually loved it. Easily one of the very best sequels I've ever read, and now I can't wait to get my hands on LAoK (just like the rest of the board seems to be). If I had a second stab at rating those five authors, Abercrombie would now be my nr. 2. He is radiant in his own way, but he doesn't come close to the brilliance of Scott Lynch.

Yet.

[Larry.]

Finished Joyce's Ulysses. Enjoyed it again, of course. Also finished reading a 2007 anthology from DAW Books called Wizards, Inc. While some of the individual stories were pretty good, the premise uniting the tales ("What if you found out you had magical powers? What would you do with them?") failed to make for a strong collection. Not bad, but far from good.

Just started reading Tim Pratt's 2007 novel, Blood Engines and who knows where I'll go from there, as there are plenty of deserving reads, plus I'm starting to receive quite a few review copies again (funny how this goes in cycles with me). Might be hard to resist reading/reviewing some of these before their scheduled release dates (most of these I'm receiving have March/April release dates). One odd observation (alliteration, FTW!) to make: Orbit US's MMPB ARCs have thicker paper and a tighter binding than their street-release copies. Or at least that's true for Karen Miller's books compared to the two ARCs of hers that I have received from them. Strange that the ARCs would be better-made than the MMPBs.

[Deornoth]

I've just finished reading Kay Kenyon's 'The Bright of the Sky' (Pat beat me to it though!), a tale of a star pilot's quest to save his family from servitude in another dimension. It's a little bit more than that though as our hero's every action forces him to re-evaluate everything that he believes in and this leaves things completely up in the air for the rest of the series. There are some problems with pacing but the lush and expansive world I encountered more than made up for this, I'm looking forward to reading more... My full review is over Here.

I'm now well into Glen Cook's 'Whispering Nickel Idols' and it's looking very good so far...

[Muttering Bill]

Currently 400 pages into The Summoner by Gail Z Martin. I read that this was best selling book published by Solaris here in the US last year, and most of the reviews have been positive. Maybe I am in the minority, but it seems the writing and story are comparable to Belgariad era Eddings. Lots of cliches, everyone has "intuition" about when something bad is going to happen, or that tells them the right thing to do, etc. I am enjoying it ok, but its gotta be one of the most trope filled books I have read in awhile. Seems like a young adult book to me. Even for someone like me who likes reading the same type story over and over, its a bit much..though I do like it just enough to keep reading.

I read this one over the summer, and while I liked it, it was definately standard fare. Feels like Star Wars transplanted into an epic fantasy setting. Haven't read the Belgariad, so I can't say how accurate that is. But it was entertaining enough - engaging, well-paced, natural feeling dialogue.

But now that I'm re-reading it to get ready for the second book, I'm noticing a lot more awkwardness in the prose. Only around 150 pages down, and it's not holding up well thus far - but I remember not really being able to get into it this early the first time around either.

[Gold Storm]

Just finished Troy Fall of Kings by David Gemmel, now will start Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell, he is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. I loved his Warlord, Sharpe, and Saxon series. He paints great pictures, and his heroes are not perfect male models that never do anything wrong.

[mashiara]

Just finished The Thousanfold Thought. I found the whole series very interesting and different. I was afraid at first that it was overrated but it turned out not to be the case. I have questions of course, and I'm sure I missed a lot. I'm going to go dig up an old Bakker thread or two and answer them. I'm curious to see if the way I saw/understood things is the way they are supposed to be.

My next read is going to be Ham on Rye, by Charles Bukowski.

[Bellis]

Slowly slugging through Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. This writing is somewhat Pynchonesque. But Pynchon always has something interesting going on and distinct characters you can really get your teeth into. Wallace gets bogged down for tens of pages at a time in his own cleverness. Parts are interesting, parts just overdone. Something to do with tennis and radical Quebec separatists in an alternate/near-future North American union. The worst part are the 60 pages of dense endnotes, which you have to flip to every few pages, necessiting two bookmarks, and which are sometimes though rarely worth the flip (or even related to the text), and really take me out of the story. Why couldn't he have used footnotes instead like other post-modernists?

At the same time, I'm reading Catherynne Valente's Orphan's Tales duology, which I bought recently. I just finished a re-read of In the Night Garden, which was much better than I remembered, quite delighful, and am looking forward to In the Cities of Coin and Spice.

[sparky]

About 3/4 of the way through Devices and Desires by KJ Parker. It's really taken me in, actually. We'll see how the rest of the trilogy goes...

I really have to take exception with those that claim there's nothing special about Parker's prose. I certainly find it above average, and Parker offers little nuggets of insight on virtually every page, which goes a long way towards my admiration of his/her abilities. I have found that aspect of things pretty damn entertaining.

I will say, however, that if you're a stickler for character motivation and such, it might be a less fulfilling read. I find myself somewhat and inexplicably uncritical when it comes to plot and such. I 'go with the flow' more often than not, and I think that has helped me with this book in particular.