February 2016 Reads

[Astromech]

Haha, I loved it for all the reasons Datepalm and apparently you hated it. It sounds like more of a problem with GGK's writing overall than Tigana specifically. However the picture with the G.I Joes standing over the squirrel alone was worth reading the review.

[Maester Llama]

Finished Leigh Bardugo's ya secondary world fantasy heist novel Six of Crows. Tortured, complex young folks doing awesome things, plot twists, clever schemes, wicked action, operating on the emotionally-heightened ya stage with lots of feelings and doing so well, with some genuine depth and bite in the relationships. I started having fun almost immediately, and there are great character scenes all the way through, but the hundred-plus page heist itself is just one big thing after another without ever slowing down. All hail. Cliffhanger kicks like a mule. This is the fourth book set in this world, but the first of a new series [a duology, it sounds like], and my complete lack of knowledge of the earlier books didn't hurt my enjoyment at all. Now on to Kate Elliott's Court of Fives, to continue the well-reviewed recent ya streak and begin experiencing the stuff Kate Elliott published in what was apparently something of a level up year for her.

 

I had not read Datepalm's review of Tigana before, and it is wondrous. I have fond memories of Tigana, but these memories are laced with a strong dose of skepticism and raised eyebrows, so even though I personally extracted a lot of enjoyment from the book I can look at reactions like this one and go "yup, ... yup, I get that." Kay is a writer of enormous talent and he's written wonderful stuff, but I think we sometimes forget that a lot of [in particular though not exclusively] early Kay has absolutely massive bubbling rivers of cheese baked into it and some of the gender stuff is pretty pungent -- there are parts of The Fionavar Tapestry I consider even more loltastic than Tigana on both these counts. Since this came up on the last page where Goldhand praised Kay specifically for his writing of romance / sex scenes, with the caveat that I don't pretend to know a lot about what makes a good scene of this type, I found the sex / romance in Tigana to be memorably bad. The scene in the cupboard early on stands years later as one of the dumbest things I've read and almost made me throw the book, and the less said about that sequence where they stop at the castle the better off we are as a people. Kay has written some fabulous stuff in this arena; that stuff is just not in Tigana.

[Astromech]

Those two scenes in Tigana were still better than the early scene at the court of Gorhaut with Ademar being Ademar in A Song for Arbonne.

[C Rutherford]

6 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Thanks! Before I start clicking these links though, where does it fit in the chronology of the series?

I believe they are all supposed to be prequels.  But it has been awhile since I read them.  Dr. Gottlieb (the one at Tor) and the one on his website were written in 2010 and 2011 respectively.  The second Milkweed book was published in 2012.  So those two are definitely fine to read in terms of chronology.  The one at Subterranean Press was released the same year as the third book so you might want to hold off on that.

[Andorion]

1 hour ago, Maester Llama said:

Finished Leigh Bardugo's ya secondary world fantasy heist novel Six of Crows. Tortured, complex young folks doing awesome things, plot twists, clever schemes, wicked action, operating on the emotionally-heightened ya stage with lots of feelings and doing so well, with some genuine depth and bite in the relationships. I started having fun almost immediately, and there are great character scenes all the way through, but the hundred-plus page heist itself is just one big thing after another without ever slowing down. All hail. Cliffhanger kicks like a mule. This is the fourth book set in this world, but the first of a new series [a duology, it sounds like], and my complete lack of knowledge of the earlier books didn't hurt my enjoyment at all. Now on to Kate Elliott's Court of Fives, to continue the well-reviewed recent ya streak and begin experiencing the stuff Kate Elliott published in what was apparently something of a level up year for her.

 

I had not read Datepalm's review of Tigana before, and it is wondrous. I have fond memories of Tigana, but these memories are laced with a strong dose of skepticism and raised eyebrows, so even though I personally extracted a lot of enjoyment from the book I can look at reactions like this one and go "yup, ... yup, I get that." Kay is a writer of enormous talent and he's written wonderful stuff, but I think we sometimes forget that a lot of [in particular though not exclusively] early Kay has absolutely massive bubbling rivers of cheese baked into it and some of the gender stuff is pretty pungent -- there are parts of The Fionavar Tapestry I consider even more loltastic than Tigana on both these counts. Since this came up on the last page where Goldhand praised Kay specifically for his writing of romance / sex scenes, with the caveat that I don't pretend to know a lot about what makes a good scene of this type, I found the sex / romance in Tigana to be memorably bad. The scene in the cupboard early on stands years later as one of the dumbest things I've read and almost made me throw the book, and the less said about that sequence where they stop at the castle the better off we are as a people. Kay has written some fabulous stuff in this arena; that stuff is just not in Tigana.

The cupboard sex scene you are referring to made me stop reading the book. I am still debating whether to try again or not. Its a ral shame as I loved Lions of Al Rassan

[Jo498]

It's probably the curse of bad scenes that they are the ones that stay best in one's memory. The cupboard scene is almost the only thing I remember from Tigana (and I found it both utterly implausible and fairly revolting when I read it) but I think I found the book still better than Fionavar which has a few good scenes but also fairly cringeworthy stuff (self-sacrifice after mind-blowing sex with a literal love godess or am I mixing things up) and overall did feel rather derivative. While I think that as far as style and atmosphere is concerned Guy is better than a lot of other fantasy, I guess that those scenes might be the reasons why I never got around to read any more of his books.

[red snow]

SPQR by Mary Beard as I can't get enough of Rome and find the people involved in fall of the republic to be fascinating and surprisingly 3D given the distance in time. Guess we were lucky it was at a time people recorded their thoughts (even if it was often for propaganda)

[Xray the Enforcer]

Reading City of Blades right now. Too early to have an opinion, although I like the backdrop of things being fairly terminally fucked up in Saypur.

[The Marquis de Leech]

5 hours ago, Jo498 said:

 (self-sacrifice after mind-blowing sex with a literal love godess or am I mixing things up) 

IIRC, it's self-sacrifice during mind-blowing sex with a literal love goddess. Mind you, I haven't read the series in years.

Kay's biggest strength is his prose. His biggest weakness is his melodrama, at least based off what I've read of him (the Fionavar Trilogy, plus Last Light of the Sun). I haven't read Tigana, primarily because my local library doesn't have it, and I am insufficiently enthusiastic to actually buy his books. 

[SeanF]

SPQR by Mary Beard as I can't get enough of Rome and find the people involved in fall of the republic to be fascinating and surprisingly 3D given the distance in time. Guess we were lucky it was at a time people recorded their thoughts (even if it was often for propaganda)

I didn't think SPQR was bad, by any means, but it didn't tell me anything new. The best book I've read about the downfall of the Roman Republic is Rubicon, by Tom Holland.

Unusually for the ancient world, there's a huge amount of contemporary material for 1st century BC Rome. The 3rd century AD, by comparison, when equally fascinating events were occurring, is pretty blank by comparison.

[red snow]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

I didn't think SPQR was bad, by any means, but it didn't tell me anything new. The best book I've read about the downfall of the Roman Republic is Rubicon, by Tom Holland.

Unusually for the ancient world, there's a huge amount of contemporary material for 1st century BC Rome. The 3rd century AD, by comparison, when equally fascinating events were occurring, is pretty blank by comparison.

It's too early to judge yet vs Tom Holland. I still think the most enjoyable version I've encountered so far are in podcast form Dan Carlin's "death throes of the republic" and Mike Duncan's "The history of Rome" - also do a very good job. It's interesting how people have different takes in different players (Pompei can be anything from a chid-like attention seeker to the best Roman Rome produced). Then again I guess historians have to find different takes to stand out/get published.

 

1st Century Rome really does highlight the power of writing things down in a durable format. We have to be thankful of Monks and Golden age Muslims for recopying texts from various times as well. It's a shame the third century was so chaotic as it meant details were lost (or destroyed) and I can imagine with the constant changing of the guard many historians/commentators had to be very careful about saying anything unless the next regime disagreed.

[SeanF]

I didn't think SPQR was bad, by any means, but it didn't tell me anything new. The best book I've read about the downfall of the Roman Republic is Rubicon, by Tom Holland.

Unusually for the ancient world, there's a huge amount of contemporary material for 1st century BC Rome. The 3rd century AD, by comparison, when equally fascinating events were occurring, is pretty blank by comparison.

It's too early to judge yet vs Tom Holland. I still think the most enjoyable version I've encountered so far are in podcast form Dan Carlin's "death throes of the republic" and Mike Duncan's "The history of Rome" - also do a very good job. It's interesting how people have different takes in different players (Pompei can be anything from a chid-like attention seeker to the best Roman Rome produced). Then again I guess historians have to find different takes to stand out/get published.

1st Century Rome really does highlight the power of writing things down in a durable format. We have to be thankful of Monks and Golden age Muslims for recopying texts from various times as well. It's a shame the third century was so chaotic as it meant details were lost (or destroyed) and I can imagine with the constant changing of the guard many historians/commentators had to be very careful about saying anything unless the next regime disagreed.

I think we were fortunate to have Cicero in the 1st century, who wanted people to read about him hundreds of years later, and made a point of making multiple copies of his books and letters.

[Puntificator]

13 hours ago, C Rutherford said:

I believe they are all supposed to be prequels.  But it has been awhile since I read them.  Dr. Gottlieb (the one at Tor) and the one on his website were written in 2010 and 2011 respectively.  The second Milkweed book was published in 2012.  So those two are definitely fine to read in terms of chronology.  The one at Subterranean Press was released the same year as the third book so you might want to hold off on that.

What Doctor Ivanovich Saw (the one at Subterranean Press) takes place between The Coldest War and Necessary Evil. The other two are related and are prequels to the series, but I think make more sense if read after Bitter Seeds.

[TheRevanchist]

20 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Ugh, Tigana makes me throw up into my mouth.

Can we sacrifice this to some evil God?

[TheRevanchist]

Having read the prequels of Foundation series, now started reading the original trilogy.

[beniowa]

Finished City of Blades.  I thought it was very good and I liked it as much as the first book.  In some ways, it may have been better with a tighter story and writing that was more polished.  Mulaghesh also worked very well as the main character.

Also read Meeting Infinity, a sci-fi anthology edited by Strahan.  With any anthology there are going to be stories or authors you don't connect with and this one was no exception.  And with themed ones there are always going to be a couple stories that don't quite fit the theme.  On the whole though, it was a good anthology. 

Now reading Poseidon's Wake by Alastair Reynolds and Xenowealth: A Collection by Tobias S. Buckell. 

[red snow]

8 hours ago, SeanF said:

 

It's too early to judge yet vs Tom Holland. I still think the most enjoyable version I've encountered so far are in podcast form Dan Carlin's "death throes of the republic" and Mike Duncan's "The history of Rome" - also do a very good job. It's interesting how people have different takes in different players (Pompei can be anything from a chid-like attention seeker to the best Roman Rome produced). Then again I guess historians have to find different takes to stand out/get published.

1st Century Rome really does highlight the power of writing things down in a durable format. We have to be thankful of Monks and Golden age Muslims for recopying texts from various times as well. It's a shame the third century was so chaotic as it meant details were lost (or destroyed) and I can imagine with the constant changing of the guard many historians/commentators had to be very careful about saying anything unless the next regime disagreed.

I think we were fortunate to have Cicero in the 1st century, who wanted people to read about him hundreds of years later, and made a point of making multiple copies of his books and letters.

your post initially freaked me out. I was thinking "I wrote that" but must be some weird quote thing going on.

There was a passage about a Cicero quote where he apparently wrote to a friend commenting on how if his words were remembered in the future he would have gained some immortality. Like the author says, Cicero would be delighted to know he's still being talked about and quoted.

On a different topic "The ocean at the end of the lane" is possibly the most disturbing Gaiman book I've read. I think it's the fact it's from a kid's POV that makes everything more scary and makes for a great metaphor reagarding adults as seen by kids.

 

 

[Darth Richard II]

Speaking of Cicero, I finally got around to reading Harris' Imperium, and not only was it the best damn thing ever, but when I went to buy book 2 I found a pristine hardcover copy of it used and book 3 had just come out and was on sale! Yay!

[Corvinus85]

Finished my re-read of A Shadow in Summer, on to A Betrayal in Winter.

But in all honesty, I didn't like the first book, as much as I tried to. My opinion of it has not improved since I read it a couple of years ago, but this time I'm trusting people who say that the sequels are better. And thanks to reading The Expanse, I am more familiar with Abraham's writing abilities. It has a good premise, and I liked the beginning and end, but much of the middle, especially the last third was a real slog. The prose is good, but I didn't much care for any character.

I thought Maati and Liat were mostly useless, definitely a lot of moping going around. Amat, and there's hints of Avasarala in her (or the other way around), seemed like a solid character, but she spent half the book in hiding then went on to hatch a gruelingly slow plan only to be outmaneuvered by the apparent protagonist, who pretty much cruised through the whole plot.

And what the hell? How is it that the most important figure of the city next to the ruler has practically zero security? Heshai and Seedless were only the lifeline and de facto guardians of the city. And in that regard, couldn't the Galts, who seem to be a martial people, just send some highly trained assassin to kill the almost-always-drunk poet? 

I did kinda liked Seedless, and would have wanted to see more of the Khai, he seemed interesting.

Another smaller problem I have is with the term choice for the wizards of this world. Poetry has never been my thing, I would have preferred an invented name like the utkhaiem.

[Teng Ai Hui]

Now I want to read Tigana.