August 2014 reads

[ljkeane]

So far this month I've finished up reading Caine Black Knife, which was decent but probably the weakest of the Acts of Caine books I've read so far. Now I'm about halfway through Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky, which so far is very good. I liked A Fire Upon the Deep but elements of it did feel a little dated, A Deepness in the Sky so far has been a real step up from an already good first book.

[williamjm]

Finished The Dragon's Path, Book 1 in The Dagger and The Coin by Daniel Abraham. All in all it was a good enough book, the first half in particular I thought was a little bit difficult to get through, but the second half just got better and better until the end. I must admit that I'm slightly dissapointed with the "lore" from the world. I mean, Abraham gives you 13 races of humanity but none of them are explored in a way that gives you an idea of their culture or anything. I love the concept but not so much the execution. I like the concept of having economics and banking as a focus of the story, and I hope Abraham involves it more with the main plot as the series goes on. Overall a good enough book, but I can't help but feel just a tad bit dissapointed with this one. The second half made up for it, and both the prologue and epilogue were fantastic.

I felt the same as you about The Dragon's Path, it was good but a bit of a disappointment after The Long Price Quartet, but I think the series has improved with every subsequent book (hopefully book 4 keeps up that trend). The other races and cultures do get fleshed out a bit more in the later books, it did seem slightly odd in the first book that the thirteen races are such an important part of the world-building but we spend most of the time in places inhabited by a single race and most of the viewpoint characters are from that race (Cithrin is an exception, but she doesn't know much about her own culture).

Posted elsewhere but finished "Leviathan Wakes", "Caliban's War" and "Abaddon's Gate" by James SA Corey (aka Daniel Abraham och Long Price Quartet) and wow I cannot articulate how great these novels are or how much I should have read them before. I honestly didn't think I'd have another "why on God's green planet did I not pick up these before?" moment after McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan saga, but really, now I feel MsMcMaster is almost pushed off the throne of "best read of the year".

Anyway, since they were so great I am now at a complete loss regarding what to read. I have some stuff waiting, but it's really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Splurged on some cheap Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Romance titles in the Kindle shop but I dunno. Perhaps time for more Miles Vorkosigan.

Along similar lines you might enjoy Rachel Bach's Paradox series if you haven't read that yet, it's not quite as good as Vorkosigan or the Expanse, but I still thought it was an enjoyable read.

I definitely think you'd like Bujold's Chalion fantasy series as well, their characterisation is as good as the characterisation in her Vorkosigan books.

Now I'm about halfway through Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky, which so far is very good. I liked A Fire Upon the Deep but elements of it did feel a little dated, A Deepness in the Sky so far has been a real step up from an already good first book.

I think A Deepness in the Sky might be one of the best SF books I've read. While I enjoyed A Fire Upon the Deep a lot (particularly the Tines), some parts of it felt unconvincing, Deepness is more consistently good.

[lessthanluke]

Leviathan Wakes is superb. Hope you like it. :)

Well, I just got Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels so I have a similar issue. :lol: Have been eyeing up Mirror Dance as well though and may be able to blast through it before the Con. Maybe.

We can discuss Myles at length at LonCon lol. I need to get in front before then.

[polishgenius]

I think A Deepness in the Sky might be one of the best SF books I've read. While I enjoyed A Fire Upon the Deep a lot (particularly the Tines), some parts of it felt unconvincing, Deepness is more consistently good.

Agreed. Fire Upon the Deep is good (though personally I preferred the space stuff to the Tines) but Deepness is amazing. And has one of my favourite sneaky manipulator characters.

[deleted01]

I must be in the minority who prefers The Dagger & the Coin to the Long Price.

Unfortunately I'm having to wait for the price to drop before I buy the 4th novel. Hopefully it'll be soon, I really want to read it.

Almost finished Lies We Tell Ourselves. Ruin and Rising turned up today, so I'll start that next.

[Toblakai]

I will be done with Esslemont's Orb, Sceptre, Throne in a few days, and I will probably need a breather before starting Dust of Dreams / The Crippled God. But I don't want to break up my marathon Malazan read with a hefty novel, so I was thinking of the Rogues anthology.

Has anyone here read that, and I mean beyond just the Martin novella? I am also very interested in reading the stories by Abercrombie, Gaiman, Rothfuss, Lynch and Abraham. I will try to read a lot of other stories too, but we'll see how my patience lasts for authors I don't know.

[HexMachina]

I will be done with Esslemont's Orb, Sceptre, Throne in a few days, and I will probably need a breather before starting Dust of Dreams / The Crippled God. But I don't want to break up my marathon Malazan read with a hefty novel, so I was thinking of the Rogues anthology.

Has anyone here read that, and I mean beyond just the Martin novella? I am also very interested in reading the stories by Abercrombie, Gaiman, Rothfuss, Lynch and Abraham. I will try to read a lot of other stories too, but we'll see how my patience lasts for authors I don't know.

I really enjoyed the Joe Abercrombie and Gillian Flynn from the anthology. They werr the real standouts for me.

[mashiara]

I finished the anthology Songs of Love and Death, edited by George RR Martin and Gardner Dozois. As with most anthologies I had mixed reactions to the stories. A few of them were excellent, some of them were good and a couple were just downright boring. I'd say it's a pretty enjoyable read overall.

I'm now reading The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R.Carey.

[David Selig]

I finished Blindsight, it was brilliant throughout. This is how hard science fiction should be written - for all its cutting edge scientific speculations, it is also a really well written fiction with developed characters (none of them conventionally likeable at all, which is another plus for me), impressive style (Watts is really good at creating a creepy atmosphere , for example) and a complex narrative structure.

[jet199]

Just finished The Law and The Lady by Wilkie Collins. The first third was pretty rough as the book was published in three parts and so the inciting event is dragged out to become the cliffhanger of the first part. However the second two thirds were great. The main character shows great development as well. She starts off as such a child that I thought I would not be able to put up with it but by the end she is basically calling the shots. The thing that annoyed my most was the "dying of a broken heart" nonsense that the Victorians loved and happens to at least two characters.

I did a bit of googling and apparently it was meant to be followed by a further book. Looking back at the story I think the main affects were that we have one character who is mentioned throughout but never appears, who I assume would be the antagonist for the next book, and a useless husband whose purpose may well be to become heroic or die tragically later on but as this is not played out he is just a bit annoying.

I am currently looking for something out of rights to adapt as a play and this has definitely gone on the list.

I am currently reading "How to write a pantomime" by Lesley Cookman. Then I am going to start on some penny dreadfuls.

[The Drunkard]

Finished Caliban's War. I'm not sure if I'd place it above Leviathan Wakes, but it was really good. If I was going to fault it on anything it would be the human villains, which are all fairly similar and predictable. The protomolecule, though, manages to be consistently threatening whenever it appears and Venus was plain spooky all throughout the book.

I missed Miller, but Avasarala and Bobbie made up for him.

Given the epilogue, I'm so glad I don't need to wait for the third book to come out, heh.

[Jo498]

Just finished The Law and The Lady by Wilkie Collins. The first third was pretty rough as the book was published in three parts and so the inciting event is dragged out to become the cliffhanger of the first part. However the second two thirds were great. The main character shows great development as well.

I read The Woman in White several years ago in a German translation and last year "The Moonstone" on Kindle. I found them actually very entertaining, but they are Colllins' most famous ones, so I wonder if there are others up there. The one you mention seems considerably weeker according to your description.

Took a break from The Thousandfold Thought (I don't think I'll become a real Bakker Fan, it gets tiring) and read "Watership Down", a book I had heard about for years, but never got around to read. And I admit, I was not sure I'd like a book about mainly rabbits. But it is an amazingly well done book, very original and quite readable for adults. The seagull is one of my favorite characters...

[Nearly Headless Ned]

Excession-Iain M Banks.

Not my favourite Banks (That would be player of Games) but a witty and unusual......thriller I suppose you'd call it.

[Peadar]

I'm reading Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong by David Walsh. Very good so far.

[Maester Hodor]

I just finished The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. It was a fantastic, easy read.

Next up will definitely be The Widow's House by Daniel Abraham. I probably won't be able to start it until the weekend, but I'm very much looking forward to it.

[deleted01]

Next up will definitely be The Widow's House by Daniel Abraham. I probably won't be able to start it until the weekend, but I'm very much looking forward to it.

I'd be keen to hear your thoughts - I'm hoping to pick it up in a few weeks :)

Almost finished The Exiled Queen by Cinda Williams Chima. It's a bit slower than the first book, but still enjoyable.

[Nicomo Cosca]

Finished Half a King yesterday and I absolutly loved it! Not as great as BSC or TH, but it was still great!

Now I'm reading The Iron King by Maurice Druon. I'm enjoying this book, and even though its based on real history my knowledge of this period is pretty limited so it just adds to the excitement of whats going to happen!

[williamjm]

Finished The Seal of the Worm, the tenth and final book in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt series. I thought it was a good conclusion to a good series, the way most of the plots were resolved seemed appropriate and I liked that it finished on a bittersweet note where victories were only won at significant cost. Throughout the series the pacing has been a bit erratic and at times the final book was maybe a little bit too fast-paced with some events happening in a much smaller number of pages than they'd have taken up if they'd happened in the earlier books. There's so much going on that there's not that much room for character development for many of the characters, although for the characters that have been in multiple previous books that's maybe not too big an issue. I think we could maybe have seen a bit more of some of the relatively new characters, for example we never really seem to find out much about Ernain despite him playing a key role in some of the events in the final book.

Speaking of elements introduced in the final book, I thought the Worm made a very effective enemy, there is something horrifying about the concept behind them and I'd probably rather face an army of the Others than the Worm.

Overall, I've really enjoyed the series. While it has had its ups and downs and hasn't been entirely consistent I think Tchaikovsky did grow a lot as an author over the ten books (the first book is very clearly a first novel). It's also refreshing that I started reading the series when the first book was published in 2008 and a mere 6 years later I can finish the tenth book. If only all fantasy series had that kind of publishing schedule...

[Garett Hornwood]

I'd be keen to hear your thoughts - I'm hoping to pick it up in a few weeks :)

Almost finished The Exiled Queen by Cinda Williams Chima. It's a bit slower than the first book, but still enjoyable.

I read the Seven Realms novels last year and all of them were enjoyable.

---

Yesterday I finished Mort, finally got to read a Death book and it was great plus a cameo with Rincewind.

Today I started The Hallowed Hunt to finish the Chalion series by Bujold.

Year-long readings update:

The Bible: Through Colossians.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Through Othello Act IV.

[Bolivar]

Really enjoying The Widow's House by Daniel Abraham. I feel like we're all gonna look back at The Dagger and the Coin very fondly when it's all said and done. I wonder how this one has been doing, sales-wise.