Guinevere Seaworth Posted November 15, 2016 Share Posted November 15, 2016 Crucible of Gold by Naomi Novik was a step up from the previous 2 books but still not as good as the first three. Now reading the next book in the series, Blood of Tyrants. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unJon Posted November 15, 2016 Share Posted November 15, 2016 I just put down reading Riddle-Master after the first 10 pages. It just felt dated and childish. Does it get better, or is it a book best read in one's youth in the '80s? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jo498 Posted November 15, 2016 Share Posted November 15, 2016 I read the first Riddle master a few weeks ago and it took me a fairly long time to finish. It gets considerably better and overall it did not feel dated to me (and only the first two scenes or so are childish, it gets fairly dark quite soon) but it never really grabbed me for some reasons. It feels quite different and original, though, being anything but a Tolkien clone. So while I myself could not yet be bothered to start the second book (the first is very open-ended and I have an omnibus edition anyway) I'd recommend to perservere for a little longer. Have you read LeGuin's Earthsea books? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unJon Posted November 15, 2016 Share Posted November 15, 2016 3 hours ago, Jo498 said: I read the first Riddle master a few weeks ago and it took me a fairly long time to finish. It gets considerably better and overall it did not feel dated to me (and only the first two scenes or so are childish, it gets fairly dark quite soon) but it never really grabbed me for some reasons. It feels quite different and original, though, being anything but a Tolkien clone. So while I myself could not yet be bothered to start the second book (the first is very open-ended and I have an omnibus edition anyway) I'd recommend to perservere for a little longer. Have you read LeGuin's Earthsea books? Thanks. That's helpful to know. I have not read Earthsea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jo498 Posted November 15, 2016 Share Posted November 15, 2016 Earthsea is better in my recollection. They are maybe not all that similar but share "high magic" and a rather particular setting and "tone" that to me is rather different from a lot of other fantasy. It's neither like Tolkien or the clones nor RPG influenced nor pseudo-historical "grimdark". And it is well done in its way, so I think it deserves some praise for atmosphere and originality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contrarius+ Posted November 15, 2016 Share Posted November 15, 2016 7 hours ago, unJon said: I just put down reading Riddle-Master after the first 10 pages. It just felt dated and childish. Does it get better, or is it a book best read in one's youth in the '80s? I love those books. First read them as a wee thing, then reread them last year. I think you just have to have a certain frame of mind to appreciate them. You like Earthsea? You'll probably like Riddle-Master. IMHO. eta -- I didn't even notice that Jo had mentioned Earthsea before I posted -- so here's at least two people, me and Jo, who see a connection in style between the two. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jo498 Posted November 15, 2016 Share Posted November 15, 2016 Yes, but for the record I read the Earthsea books only once almost 20 years ago in German translation... and I respected the first Riddle master more than I loved it. But both have original settings and qualities rarely found in "mainstream" fantasy. And UnJon has not read Earthsea so this will not help him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
l2 0 5 5 Posted November 16, 2016 Share Posted November 16, 2016 Currently reading The Girl Who Played With Fire. I couldn't put it down last night. Got to the part where: Bublanski and his team put together that Salander is the suspect for not just 2 murders, but also the Bjurman murder. The conversation with Armansky that leads to him telling Bubbles that Blomkvist is an associate of Salander was awesome. I'm currently wondering how/why Salander could've killed the journalists. I have no trouble believing that she killed Bjurman considering what he's done to her, but the journalists I don't understand yet. I'm thinking it's possible someone is framing her since the door to Bjurman's office was left unlocked so someone would go in there and find him dead, and the gun is obviously linked to Bjurman and Salander so it would be easy for someone to draw the conclusion that Salander did it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Marquis de Leech Posted November 16, 2016 Share Posted November 16, 2016 Finished off Waking Nightmares. Good little collection of stories, especially towards the beginning. Next up is another of Ramsey Campbell's short story collections, Dark Companions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andorion Posted November 16, 2016 Share Posted November 16, 2016 So I am currently reading The Prince of Fools by Mark Lawrence and the Darkness that Comes Before by Bakker. I really like Jalan so far. I think I am going to enjoy this PoV I am being blown away by Bakker. He is really doing a great job conveying the epicness of the world he is creating. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garett Hornwood Posted November 17, 2016 Author Share Posted November 17, 2016 I finished The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins and it was excellent. All my apprehensions when I started were quickly dispelled as the narrative and Collins' writing style took over. Thanks to LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program, I received an ARE of The True Flag by Stephen Kinzer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jo498 Posted November 17, 2016 Share Posted November 17, 2016 If you think you'd like a somewhat more "conventional" Victorian mystery love story, try Collins' "The woman in white" (probably free for kindle). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maia Posted November 18, 2016 Share Posted November 18, 2016 On 15.11.2016 at 1:29 PM, unJon said: I just put down reading Riddle-Master after the first 10 pages. It just felt dated and childish. Does it get better, or is it a book best read in one's youth in the '80s? Not at all, I have read the Riddle-Master trilogy for the first time in this millenium and at 30+ and loved it. But IIRC, the other 2 books are stronger than the first one. It really sticks the dismount too, which not that many series do, IMHO. Also, those are fairly slender, old-style volumes, with the whole trilogy being the length of a good modern doorstopper, so... The edition I read was even published as an omnibus. Not childish at all as a whole, either. The beginning of the first book just gives you a riff on "the Shire". On to my reads: I Live with You by Carol Emshwiller - a short fiction collection. Quite good, though the first piece is probably the weakest. Wonderfully creepy, well-written and poignant first-person PoVs/protagonists, with a tinge of horror and general weirdness even when a story lacks supernatural elements. I certainly intend to pick up more stuff by her, should it prove practical. The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle - a tor.com novella, which I expected to love, but which didn't quite work for me in the end. An inside look at one of the black Cthulhu-worshippers which so often appear in the work of Lovecraft. I loved the first half of it, but the second didn't quite work for me. Kindred by Octavia Butler. A time-travel story where a young black woman from 1976 gets drawn into anti-bellum South in the early 19th century. Time-travel stories with similar set-up are quite common now, of course, but that one is from 1979. And it is great, IMHO. Loved it and intend to hunt down more of Butler's work ASAP. I have previously read her Fledgling, which is dark fantasy, and very good too, but somehow neglected to track down more of her stuff at the time. Currently reading The Masked City by Genevieve Cogman , second book of her series about a magical librarian. Liking it as much as the first one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Selig Posted November 18, 2016 Share Posted November 18, 2016 On 15/11/2016 at 2:29 PM, unJon said: I just put down reading Riddle-Master after the first 10 pages. It just felt dated and childish. Does it get better, or is it a book best read in one's youth in the '80s? The beginning of the first book is by far the worst part of the series IMO. As a whole the series is not childish at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andorion Posted November 19, 2016 Share Posted November 19, 2016 Finished Mark Lawrence's Prince of Fools. Very good book. Different but similar to Prince of Thorns. Also finished Darkness That Comes Before. Awesome writing, excellent story, but very weak female characters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedEyedGhost Posted November 19, 2016 Share Posted November 19, 2016 I think I was 30 (+ a year) when I read The Riddle-Master Trilogy, and I really didn't care for it. Plus I remember a few scenes from the three books, but I can't recall much else about the plot and that is extremely rare for me. I have better recall for both good and bad books that I read in high school than I have for this series, and I would say that puts it squarely in the 'meh' category for me. Were it terrible, it would have at least been memorable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stonebender Posted November 19, 2016 Share Posted November 19, 2016 I'm the same way with Riddle-Master. I read it maybe six or seven years back, and I can barely recall anything about it. And I'm the type of reader who usually finds at least one great scene or character in just about everything I read. Weird that this one was so empty an experience. Anyway, I'm reading the first Dread Empire novel. Pretty cool. My first Cook aside from one Black Company short story. I'm not that far in, but thus far I like how mythic it feels. A little different than I was expecting based on Cook's reputation and Vandermeer's introduction to the omnibus. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garett Hornwood Posted November 20, 2016 Author Share Posted November 20, 2016 Finished The True Flag by Stephen Kinzer, a short easy read about the beginning of the argument about what role the US should play in the world. Tomorrow I'm starting Thief of Time as part of my read through of Discworld. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted November 20, 2016 Share Posted November 20, 2016 Trying to read Spellbreaker, Charlton's long delayed final book in the something or other trilogy and it is...not good. Was very so so on book two so I think I'm going to DNF this, it just reads way too much like bad D&D fiction from the 90s. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Marquis de Leech Posted November 20, 2016 Share Posted November 20, 2016 Finally finished Dark Companions. I think it's a mistake to read back-to-back short story collections from the same author: you end up spotting the tics and formulas, which ruins the fun. That goes double for horror stories, since unease gets replaced by boredom, and goes triple when (as in this case), the second collection is weaker than the first. My completed reads for November: The Vampire Lestat, by Anne Rice Let the Old Dreams Die, by John Ajvide Lindqvist Waking Nightmares, by Ramsey Campbell Dark Companions, by Ramsey Campbell Next up is The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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