November Reads 2015 2.0

[Maester Llama]

Finished Galbraith's third mystery Career of Evil. It feels weird to describe a book that takes as its subject such disturbing material -- and it is pretty grody, this one -- but Rowling's immersive gotta-turn-page powers are on full display and I found the book hugely absorbing. If you like to try and guess who dun it in mysteries like this I think the clues might be there, just, though the one that I think is probably the load-bearing piece of evidence will require a quick wiki trip for most people and the book does not help you. I did have a guess going into the last hundred-fifty pages and I was wrong, not even close, because I thought I'd identified a major twist that turned out to be nothing. The book keeps the pool of suspects all looking equally slimey and likely very skillfully for an impressive length of time.

 

I reacted to the killer's point of view in a somewhat conflicted way: On the one hand I found it well and creepily done, an evocative, and very blunt, portrait of an incredibly sick and twisted mind. On the other hand, it's ... well, I mean, it's mostly just the usual misogynist serial killer operating procedure dialed up to eleven isn't it? It's disturbingly put across and it adds a lot of narrative anxiety, but it's pretty much a soup of bloodlust and woman hatred, and that's pretty tired stuff. So in a sense I see how his chapters add tension to the book, but in another sense I think they diminish its appeal and are a little played out, and honestly I was always glad to get back to Strike and Robin -- which may be part of the purpose; his brain is hardly supposed to be a comfortable place to be.

 

The novel does some great character development on Strike and Robin; they're deepening into really enjoyable characters to follow. I find their dynamic very fun, but the will-they-won't-they element is becoming pretty clunky, and in a way kind of off-putting for me, because the series presents the two men in Robin's life in such divergent terms that I feel like the series is prejudging her choice. The short version of my criticism here is I think the Robin / Strike relationship would be more interesting as a potential romantic partnership if Robin's fiancée Matthew was not portrayed as such a total cock, because my god the book is not subtle about how shitty he is, and as a result the possibility that Robin might get together with Strike starts to look like a narrative obviousness. Career of Evil deepens this a bit, but not quite enough I don't think.

 

Great, fun book with a couple caveats. Looking forward to the next one, whenever it appears.

 

Now over half-way through Leckie's Ancillary Mercy, which is great thus far as hoped and anticipated, and just a few chapters into the beginning of the reputedly epicly shitty Queen of Fire. It hasn't started super-inspiringly, but certainly hasn't made me hurl yet. Early days, though. I will say this, however: I feel like a marked percentage of the people who are vocal about disliking the last two books in this trilogy don't like Reva. Those people are high. Reva is the greatest and I could read about her chopping up dudes and giving bad-ass speeches for many many pages.

[Darth Richard II]

I loved Reva and Book two, and hated book three so much I gave my entire trilogy away.

[First of My Name]

I'm still surprised people loved Blood Song as much as they did. I'm glad I didn't hang around for the sequels.

[Iskaral Pust]

I just read Hollow World by Michael Sullivan, the last and unfortunately weakest of an eclectic mix received from my father. It's not terrible, just not very good. An ordinary Joe engineer builds a time machine in his garage and travels to a utopian future, while inadvertently bringing the seed of a conflict for him to heroically resolve. As usual SF is just a backdrop for musings on aspects of our society, but there was nothing especially insightful or well written here. Definitely not hard SF.

I've started Sword Of The North, Luke Scull's second in the Grim Company series. Enjoyable so far. Very similar to Abercrombie.

[Guest]

I'm still surprised people loved Blood Song as much as they did. I'm glad I didn't hang around for the sequels.

I feel like I saw almost nothing but high praise for that one and only held off on buying it because of what I was seeing about the sequels. 

[3CityApache]

I just finished Lawrence's Prince of Thorns, and I'm not sure if the author is mad or I am. 

Care to elaborate? I've read it as well few months ago and I'm still considering continuing the series.

Reading second Harry Dresden novel. So far so good.

[End of Disc One]

Almost done with Name of the Wind. The last leg is really dragging. I find Kvothe's over purple, saccharin interactions with Denna to be super irritating and forced and it pulls me out of what is otherwise a very interesting story.

Rothfuss's prose is stunning, and I love the world building and magic system. I have to conclude with RBPL on his leading man though. I don't think the protagonist being a hyper competent, ubermensch, rockstar, philosopher king really works...

Don't bother with the next one then 

[First of My Name]

I feel like I saw almost nothing but high praise for that one and only held off on buying it because of what I was seeing about the sequels. 

Book 1 wasn't bad but it didn't come close to living up to the hype. In fact I regret buying it, I just don't think it was very well written, I decided I wouldn't read the sequels even before the reviews came in.

[Astromech]

 Caliban's War was even better than Leviathan Wakes. The Expanse series has been a lot of fun so far.

I managed to find Barry Hughart's, The Bridge of Birds, at the bookstore the other day and will be starting that.

[peterbound]

Started the mechanical.

I dig it.

[Spockydog]

I started Adam Nevill's Lost Girl. Impeccably written as usual from Nevill, but the subject matter is not my cup of tea at all. He's one of my favourite authors, but I'm not sure I'm going to continue.

Also started The Watchers by Neil Spring. Set in the sixties and seventies, it's either historical sci-fi or historical fanstasy. Not quite sure yet. I've not read anything by Spring before, but he seems to know what he is doing.

 

[Peadar]

I started Adam Nevill's Lost Girl. Impeccably written as usual from Nevill, but the subject matter is not my cup of tea at all. He's one of my favourite authors, but I'm not sure I'm going to continue.

I think that one finishes really, really well. It does the usual Nevill thing of racheting and racheting up the tension all the way. 

[Guest]

Care to elaborate? I've read it as well few months ago and I'm still considering continuing the series.

I'm not sure that I can too articulately.  I thought the pacing was crazy, abrupt, so we get our main character just vaulting through situation after situation with brazen actions.  And it went pretty quickly from seeming like a fantasy book to a post-apocalyptic world with little tiger kids named Gog, necromancers with thought-powers, and heart-eating.  Madness. 

[Spockydog]

I think that one finishes really, really well. It does the usual Nevill thing of racheting and racheting up the tension all the way. 

Hmm. That's certainly made me think twice about abandoning it.

If you can confirm that

there's no on-page child abuse

Then I'll probably go back to it straight away.

 

[The Marquis de Leech]

Finished The Etruscan by Mika Waltari (not one of his better ones, though that might just be the translation. Having magical realism turn up in a Waltari historical fiction novel is just weird).

Next up is the Thomas Harris duo - Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs.

[Xray the Enforcer]

Started the mechanical.

 

I dig it.

It's not flawless, but I very much enjoyed the book. Looking forward to the next installment. 

[Xray the Enforcer]

After a few aborted attempts at reading new books (just could not deal with Traitor Baru Cormorant, among others), I decided to reread the Ancillary series. And by god, there's a clue to Breq's backstory right in the first volume that I missed the first time around (but is revisited in the latest book). 

[Darth Richard II]

After a few aborted attempts at reading new books (just could not deal with Traitor Baru Cormorant, among others), I decided to reread the Ancillary series. And by god, there's a clue to Breq's backstory right in the first volume that I missed the first time around (but is revisited in the latest book). 

Oh do tell. And yeah, Baru Cormorant I thought was shit.

[Starkess]

I started a re-read of La Sombra del Viento. I've had the sequel sitting (unread) on my shelf for ages, so I figured I'd go through this one again and then read that one. I'm also reading Donald Maass's Writing the Breakout Novel in preparation of doing edits on my latest manuscript.

[HexMachina]

Finished Shakespeare's "As You Like It" which was another great one IMO. I did manage to keep forgetting Rosalind was supposed to be disguised which led to some confusion once or twice, but overall very good.

Sunne in Splendour has slowed to a snails pace. I could be busy with this for some time yet....