September 2016 Reads

[The Drunkard]

Finished the First Law Trilogy the other day, and have ordered the next few books. Thought it was great, especially some of those reveals and betrayals in the last few hundred pages.

Fucking Bayaz, especially. I'm sincerely impressed with the author for pulling the wool over my eyes for that long.

Have also been reading the Witcher series (currently up to the Tower of the Swallows), which I sort of love-hate. Anything involving Geralt and his love interests makes me want to shoot myself, but other than that it's quite good. (The book's Emhyr is ridiculously more interesting to read than the game's Emhyr was to watch.)

[RedEyedGhost]

@The Drunkard you should probably spoiler tag that.

[SkynJay]

Sad am I.  I finished Gentleman Joel and the Red Queen and have no more Vorkosigan to read (other than Ethan of Athos and Falling Free which are not calling to me for some reason). 

So I went to left field and picked up... Palidin of Souls.  Because for some reason I read Curse of Chalion and never continued on with it.  I guess this is a Bujold quarter for me.

[Guinevere Seaworth]

I haven't posted in a while.

 I thought The Spider's War was an excellent conclusion to the Dagger and Coin series.  I like series that finish with all loose threads neatly tied up. The only issue I had was:

Spoiler

Geder's only moment of heroism causes his death.  I thought it would've been a neat twist to have him survive and live quietly in the woods.  Yes, he killed a lot of people and made some very poor choices but he was very naïve and his low sense of self esteem made him very susceptible to manipulation.  I saw him more of a flawed human being rather than being a true villain that needed to be offed.

Diplomats and Fugitives was another installment of the indie author Lindsay Buroker's The Emperor's Edge series.  I should've stopped at what was supposed to the final book, Forged in Blood II.  The other books that come after are really just filler and don't really have meaningful plot or character development.

Billy Ruffian by David Cordingly was an excellent history of the 74 gun ship of the line Bellerophon.  I consider myself a bit of naval history buff, especially of the tall ship variety and I had no idea how involved the Bellerophon was during the Napoleonic wars.  She was in the thick of The Glorious First of June battle, Battle of the Nile and Battle of Trafalgar.  She was also the ship that intercepted Napoleon in Rochefort and brought him back to England in 1815.

Now reading No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished by Rachel Aaron.  I love her stuff!

[The Marquis de Leech]

Finished Gloriana. It's really a flawed masterpiece: lush prose, interesting setting... ruined by not one but two terrible endings. The original 1978 ending is offensive:

Gloriana gets raped, which gives her the desired orgasm. It makes sense in context.

The 1993 ending is just plain pretentious. The edition I read could also have done without the Afterword.

[Lyanna Stark]

On 29/09/2016 at 6:34 PM, SkynJay said:

Sad am I.  I finished Gentleman Joel and the Red Queen and have no more Vorkosigan to read (other than Ethan of Athos and Falling Free which are not calling to me for some reason). 

So I went to left field and picked up... Palidin of Souls.  Because for some reason I read Curse of Chalion and never continued on with it.  I guess this is a Bujold quarter for me.

I hope you like Paladin. In my mind, it was a worthy sorta/kinda successor to Curse.

 

Personally I am still on the Ancillary train and LOVING IT!! So far I am rating Sword somewhat higher than Mercy, but it ain't over til it's over.

[RedEyedGhost]

I finished Full Fathom Five by Max Gladstone last week, and I think that might be my favorite of The Craft Sequence so far.  Both Kai and Izza were fantastic protagonists.  I also like the links back to the first two books.  

Then I read the newest Sandman Slim novel, The Perdition Score by Richard Kadrey.  It was decent, but it's getting a little samey.  I'm hoping he has an end in sight, and he's not just pumping out books for the paycheck.

I finished that last night, so I started my October reading a little early and picked up A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay.  I'm four chapters in, and I'm totally feeling this book.  Seems like it will be a perfect October book.

[Garett Hornwood]

I finished Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham, I found it a very good read.

I'll post in the October thread what my next book is...which I expect will take the entire month.

[Spaßvogel]

My last September read:  Just finished Norm Macdonald's memoir...ish...book, Based On A True Story. 

It's surreal and it's brilliant.  (and they said on a podcast that it was nominated for a Pulitzer?)

[Iskaral Pust]

I finished The Things We Wish Were True, a contemporary lit-fic about relationships and past events casting a shadow over our lives.  Very similar to Jonathan Tropper.  Pretty well written although lacks anything to make it really compelling.  

Now starting The Long Earth. 

[Jo498]

Although I read the last 15-20 pages today, I put Cryptonomicon on the September list. Overall, I am slightly disappointed. It's decent but it does not have the freshness, fun and originality of Snowcrash. I think Stephenson is somewhat overambitious here and there is not quite enough substance for what he tries to do. He is also not so good at drawing sympathetic characters. Many of the potentially interesting ones are hardly developed (e.g. Amy) and of the ones that are given center stage Randy (apparently the closest thing to an identification character for the reader) and his grandfather are not that gripping. E.g. TC Boyle is (in his better books) considerably better in making quirky characters sympathetic.

There are quite a few good sections (most of Bobby Shaftoe's although there are probably WW II books that do such stuff better as well), the crypto stuff is sometimes interesting and I do not regret having read it. But I didn't like the ending very much and overall it didn't quite live up to the hype/blurb/fame...

[Winterfella]

Finished The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp

Pretty creepy read, very fitting for the month of October.  The Exorcist meets House of Leaves for the social media generation.  Not quite the scare factor that both of those had for me, but it has its moments.

[Lily Valley]

On 9/25/2016 at 0:30 PM, Lyanna Stark said:

Well, I finished Sword and omg. I think I might like it as  much, if not more, than Justice. Sure, there is no epic journey or Quest, in the same way as before, because things are getting complicated, but that's also the point. Nothing is ever solved by some lone hero murdering some dude, and this is proof of that. And damn what a proof.

Of course, a lot of people are probably going to not really fancy when action gets swapped out for more dialogue and big questions like "what is justice? what does that even entail? is this a benefit, and in that case, to whom?"

 

  Reveal hidden contents

I loved how Aethoek works as a sort of micro-version of Radchaii space, with issues of administration, who answers to whom, who does what and when, with factions against eachother etc. It's great stuff, and even Breq with all the righteous anger just ran straight into that. Even if she basically blasts through everything, it's still not the same. Also great to see amazing and very subtle character development.

Breq's reaction to the Sword of Atagaris ancillary was amazingly well done, both with the very real assessment of it as a threat, but also the bone deep compassion. And the ending, damn. Yes, it was extremely well done, and a better and more poignant ending than the first novel, I thought. Such a howling outpouring of grief and loss in such a a brief and subtle passage.  I wondered if people missed it because it was brief and understated, but if nothing else, Radchaii really do do understated a lot.

 

So yes, HUGE FANGIRL SQUEEE and already started on Mercy. Also regretting I cannot name firstborn Anaander Mianaai.

 

I'm so glad you liked it!   I agree with the points you made in the spoilers.  Also, Breq's loneliness and isolation become more palpable in this book.  Waiting on your review of #3!

I finished Leigh Bardugo's new book, Crooked Kingdom.  It was great, very entertaining read.  

I also inhaled Death's End, the final novel by Liu Cixin in the Remembrance of Earth trilogy. I thought it was very good, but of the three books, The Dark Forest is still my favorite.

Now what should I read?  I have a Bruce Sterling novel on my coffee table and I know I have a few other half-finished books lying around.  Hard to find the heart to pick up something new after two big wins like those.

Oh wait, I just realized I haven't read Jemesin's new book yet.