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May 2016 reads


First of My Name

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46 minutes ago, First of My Name said:

I'm reading The Long Walk by Stephen King, which has been waiting on my pile for ages (part of an omnibus called the Bachman Books, four novellas King wrote under an alias). Enjoying it so far, the premise is like the Hunger games without any violence. It's a pretty old story but already very typical of King in what he focuses on in the prose.

I liked Blaze. Simple but kewl. It's been so long since I read The Running Man that I can't remember whether it was any good ...

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I read about half of this.  The grammar is simply appalling, and the content is not much better.  I am sorely disappointed.

 

41 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

My problem is was so ham fisted with the message, it completely took me out of the story, plus I found the main character to be insufferable.

It seems to be one of those love it/hate it books. There was a thread for it that I think got eaten when the board updated.

It did and it was a good thread.  Very few positive comments in it.  I'm with you, it was the worst book I read last year. 

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Glad I decided to drop Rainbows End. With both the comments here and reading through some of the Goodreads reviews and it seems like I dodged a long, slow bullet.

Picked up the e-book of Still Alice from the library. I am just getting into it, and finding the writing to be a bit clunky, but it's short and I think it will be a quick read. Plus sometimes I need to force myself out of my SF/F ruts!

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I finished The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin yesterday and thought it was brilliant. The writing was fantastic and I've never cared for characters as much from so early in the books, even before i really knew what was going on.  The first pages, when all sorts of new things and terms are introduced, are hard to get by, but people should just keep on reading because this is such a great book, you won't regret it.

I needed something simple and cleansing after this. I'm reading Stephen King's A Good Marriage. Also, The Marketplace by Laura Antoniou.

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9 hours ago, RedEyedGhost said:

I read about half of this.  The grammar is simply appalling, and the content is not much better.  I am sorely disappointed.

 

It did and it was a good thread.  Very few positive comments in it.  I'm with you, it was the worst book I read last year. 

:lol::thumbsup: 

5 hours ago, mashiara said:

I finished The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin yesterday and thought it was brilliant. The writing was fantastic and I've never cared for characters as much from so early in the books, even before i really knew what was going on.  The first pages, when all sorts of new things and terms are introduced, are hard to get by, but people should just keep on reading because this is such a great book, you won't regret it.

I needed something simple and cleansing after this. I'm reading Stephen King's A Good Marriage. Also, The Marketplace by Laura Antoniou.

Yes, The Fifth Season was one of my highlights in what was a really good year for reading last year. That first chapter is awfully depressing.

I'll be very happy if it wins the Hugo, and not just because it reads like a checklist of Vox Day's worst nightmares

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Finally got around to reading The Silver Metal Lover by Tanith Lee and even though my expectations were through the roof, I was not disappointed. It wasn't at all what I had expected though, absolutely not.

Quote

Mother, I am in love with a robot.
No, she isn’t going to like that.
Mother, I am in love.
Are you, darling?
Oh yes, mother, yes I am. His hair is auburn, and his eyes are very large. Like amber. And his skin is silver.
Silence.
Mother, I’m in love.
With whom, dear?
His name is Silver.
How metallic.
Yes, It stands for
Silver Ionized Locomotive Verisimulated Electronic Robot.
Silence. Silence. Silence.

 

 

I also realised around the half-way mark that there was no HEA for Jane and Silver, both from the plot development and that sense of Doom that hung over everything.

 

For a while, I almost couldn't pick it back up again after that but I am very glad I did. The ending was brilliantly handled, and tied it neatly to the beginning. It also managed to be both very raw and immediate, at the same time as having a very spirited and almost playful language. As far as stories about transformative love, this was definitely one of the better ones, if not the best one, I have read.

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Finished two more things from last year: Laura Anne Gilman's Silver on the Road and Django Wexler's The Price of Valor.

 

I think I mentioned in last month's thread that I was finding the Gilman a bit of a slog and unfortunately this continued. The premise, which imagines an alternate "old west" in which the balance of power is different, is good stuff, and the central character relationship, a student-mentor bond, is great. The writing is atmospheric, particularly when shit gets magical later on, with haunting, lyrical descriptions of the numinous, which is my jam. Suffice to say there is a lot to like here and I entirely understand why the book works very well for some. But it is slooooow; oh but it is slooooow. It's very much a setup book and an origin story, so the focus on the central character gradually coming into her power makes sense and comes with the territory, but it also takes the book most of its length before it articulates the stakes of the conflict its two leads are facing beyond "there be bad shit; you stop bad shit ok?" and this bugged me. The book also makes some very legitimate choices that just don't quite match my tastes as a reader. Most notably, the secondary cast is very small. A number of interesting characters come and go as the main duo travel around, but [with one great notable exception] these characters don't return to the book beyond their individual episodes. I like small casts of characters just fine, but it turns out I prefer more than two or three, and while other characters and their relationships with the main duo have major impacts on the story, absolutely, this ends up being a two person show a lot of the time. It's a very solid book, just not quite my thing. Might well have a look at the sequel.

 

Wexler's The Price of Valor, the third volume in his Shadow Campaigns epic fantasy series set in a secondary world's gunpowder era, on the other hand, is one-hundred percent my jam. This installment balances the military focus of the first novel and the revolutionary spy games of the second more evenly, which is great for somebody like me who dug both. The pace is great: fast but not frantic, with time for smaller, quieter moments, but never resting long. The protagonists are wonderful, flawed but endearing, with widening cracks between them facilitating great character conflict [some of which bears fruit in this book and some of which is waiting for later.] The antagonists steer away from the moral ambiguity that's served so much epic fantasy varying degrees of well in that they're pretty much awful people, but the book does well with them on this ground: there's one villain in particular who I got genuinely angry at, the cheating smirking shadowy little fucker, which almost never happens anymore. Further, in terms of their mechanical role in the story they feel like legitimately overwhelming threats for the protagonists, making fight scenes involving them [of which there are several this time] extremely tense and high-stakes, and also hugely, fist-pumpingly satisfying on the rare occasions when the protagonists do successfully down one of them, like a prose fiction analog of a Dark Souls boss fight. To add to the general sense of joy [albeit often extremely violent, sobering joy that never skimps on grizzly-but-never-glorifying descriptions of the realities of war] the book has going for it, The Price of Valor doubles down on the series' spirit of just-get-on-with-it feminist inclusivity with everything it has, populating both the military and spy plotlines with an enormous array of women in all types of roles -- big roles, tiny roles, cannon fodder, major asskickers, economic prodigies, stolid soldiers, friends, lovers, everything. Great book, great series; hope the one character arc that's tending in a direction I'm not crazy about at the end of this one does something cool instead; can't wait for the next one.

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17 hours ago, RedEyedGhost said:

I read about half of this.  The grammar is simply appalling, and the content is not much better.  I am sorely disappointed.

I can't believe you still have enough faith in the show that you could BE disappointed. 

1 hour ago, Maester Llama said:

fist-pumpingly satisfying on the rare occasions when the protagonists do successfully down one of them, like a prose fiction analog of a Dark Souls boss fight

Lol. What a fun sentence.

 

As for me, i'm with the general opinion that April has been a terrible month for reading. I started reading The Equations of Life by Simon Morden, which came highly recommended by goodreads, and for the third time this month I'm dropping a book and moving on. The main character - Samuil Petrovitch - is a genius prodigy who, when he isn't effortlessly hacking secure government systems or discovering the Grand Unified Theory (with no formal education, just alot of books he read in his own time) - is constantly embarrassing and mouthing off to career criminals with absolutely no consequences.  But the author has clearly been to some writing workshops and knows that your characters have to have some limitations - so Petrovitch has a dodgy heart that doesn't stop him running marathons and he wears glasses. So he's definitely not a Gary Stu. Maybe i could forgive this if the story was really fun. But its not. And there is this really awkward romance with giant teenage mutant ninja nun. That's not a metaphor or an exaggeration. And no, i have no idea why or how this series was nominated for the Phillip K. Dick award in 2012.

Ill be moving onto The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman as it it's as close to a guaranteed good read as i can think of. Also doing my yearly reread of Solving the Procrastination Puzzle by Professor Timonthy Phychyl. It remains by far the best book i have read on the subject and i've read more than a few.

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8 hours ago, Lyanna Stark said:

Finally got around to reading The Silver Metal Lover by Tanith Lee and even though my expectations were through the roof, I was not disappointed. It wasn't at all what I had expected though, absolutely not.

 

  Hide contents

 

 

One of my absolute favourites! There's a sequel, but, with different characters. Best to stick with just this one, I think...

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21 hours ago, Wrycthen said:

I liked Blaze. Simple but kewl. It's been so long since I read The Running Man that I can't remember whether it was any good ...

Blaze isn't in the collection, though that was also under the Bachman name. I did manage to get the version that includes Rage, which was taken out of print after it seemingly inspired a school shooting. Haven't read The Running Man yet but it has fairly positive reviews.

16 hours ago, mashiara said:

I finished The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin yesterday and thought it was brilliant. The writing was fantastic and I've never cared for characters as much from so early in the books, even before i really knew what was going on.  The first pages, when all sorts of new things and terms are introduced, are hard to get by, but people should just keep on reading because this is such a great book, you won't regret it.

I loved this book too, I can't wait for the sequel. I thought the first chapter was really well done, the preview is a big part of what convinced me to buy it.

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Finished The Emperor of the Eight Islands.  It's a mythic fantasy set in feudal Japan and I thought it was very good.  It's the first of four books, all of which are going to be released within six weeks of each so there won't be a long wait to read the whole thing. 

Now reading The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald and Sharp Ends

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On 5/2/2016 at 5:43 PM, RedEyedGhost said:

It did and it was a good thread.  Very few positive comments in it.  I'm with you, it was the worst book I read last year. 

The book pissed me off and the praise it was getting almost made me go Darth Richard on a few people.  The ending was one of the biggest FU moments I have ever seen directed to a reader.

On the other hand glad to see some more Fifth Season fans cropping up on this thread. 

Apperently I am still loved despite shuttering the old blog.  I have the new Alex Marshall book in front of me so as someone who loved the first I suppose that will be my next read once I get some time.

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I started Equal Rites (my first Terry Pratchett book ever!) in late April and finished it up today.  It was my first Pratchett book, but definitely won't be my last.  I can't remember the last time I smiled and laughed so much while reading.

A few hours after finishing that, I started on the Witcher book Sword of Destiny.

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1 hour ago, SkynJay said:

The book pissed me off and the praise it was getting almost made me go Darth Richard on a few people.  The ending was one of the biggest FU moments I have ever seen directed to a reader.



The ending was what made it worth it.

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I read Still Alice last night. And I do mean last night--I ended up staying up about 2 hours past my bedtime to finish. It was not the best-written book, but it was heartbreaking and sad and made me cry several times. It was also relatively short. I'd definitely recommend it. And it was nice to read something outside of SF/F genres. Plus it was from the library, yay for free ebooks.

Just picked up The Green Rider, also from the library. I'd never heard of it but it has decent reviews on Goodreads so I decided to give it a shot. Feels like it's been a while since I've read an epic fantasy, which this seems to be.

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12 hours ago, Peadar said:

One of my absolute favourites! There's a sequel, but, with different characters. Best to stick with just this one, I think...

Yes, I understood there were mixed reviews and mixed feelings about the sequel. I don't think it really needs one as it feels quite complete on its own. :)

Although some of the reviews discussed that

the sequel was the story told from the perspective of the robot, but that this was also part of the problem with it, since Jane's very emotional responses and her complicated relationship with her mother are driving the story forward. I am unsure how it would work without those components.

I have to admit to being tempted though. :) due to the quality of the first novel.

I also found another Tanith Lee novel shoved into the very back of one of my bookshelves, so I am now a very happy reader with an even larger To Read-pile.

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7 hours ago, polishgenius said:



The ending was what made it worth it.

We each have our own thoughts of course.  And I miss the thread that had our thoughts lined up.  But what me mad was..

Spoiler

I felt the out of left field ending was an insult to the reader due to the nature of the narrative.  At every point in the story we had access to Baru's thoughts; including times where she was feeling betrayed despite it being part of the plan she was hatching when all is said and done. This isn't the case of things she said out-loud were misleading; every thought in her head was misleading the reader.

Some people said there was some foreshadowing.  I never saw it and it didn't excuse that fact that in order for the whole story to work Baru's own thoughts were lying to us.  Not in a unreliable narrator fashion, but in a 'oh just kidding now I am thinking about this completely differently' kind of style.  It wasn't subtle and in my mind wasn't done with any craft.  

 

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8 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

I just threw up in my mouth a little.

Baru Cormorant - I hold the unpopular opinion that the book was really rather mediocre as the author does not do a very good job of sticking to points he took a lot of trouble to establish.

Spoiler

 

1. From the very first, there was a lot of emphasis on bringing down the Empire from within and the importance of the economy. The empire's economic dominance was harped on a lot as to how it doomed military revolts to failure. So ever since Baru joined the rebels I was thinking that it made no sense, unless she had abandoned her original plans, which was never indicated. So a betrayal was likely. It was even mentioned how the empire let escapees flee for a bit before catching them.

So I kept a betrayal in mind but I felt utterly alienated by how it was executed. If we get a deep long term PoV character like Baru, it makes zero sense that the betrayal is kept out of the readers view. Its like being in Tyrions PoV and not knowing anything about Wildfire during Blackwater. 

2. From the beginning there is a lot of emphasis on Baru's economic skills and she repeatedly mentions how alienated she feels in diplomatic and military circles. Yet, she spends half the book doing exactly this, quite successfully. Her vaunted economic skills don't really help her mission that much

 

 

 

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