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November Reading 2016


Garett Hornwood

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Thank you to whoever mentioned Rachel Aaron's Heartstrikers series in these threads.  The first book, Nice Dragons Finish Last, presented interesting characters and did a good job at world building.  Even though it felt like a Dresden Files clone, I continued on with One Good Dragon Deserves Another.  This second book was an improvement in that the problems faced by the two main characters felt more cohesive.  I didn't hear any dice rolling in the background this time.  Currently, I'm anxiously waiting for book #3 to arrive at my local library.  Until then, I'm reading Carli Lloyd's biography.  (She was the MVP of Women's WC 2015 and scored a hat trick in the first 16 minutes of that final.)

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Finished Paul Kearney's excellent mythic coming-of-age fantasy set in Oxford and surrounds in 1929/30, The Wolf in the Attic. It's beautiful and I'd recommend it unreservedly, except -- and I really didn't expect to be writing this at the half-way point -- I was noticeably less keen on the ending than I was expecting to be. The book changes in a big way about half-way through and it sustains this change / escalation [toward a greater emphasis on the fantastical] wonderfully, ... until right near the end when -- trying to avoid spoilers as much as I can -- it settles much more on portraying one of the groups in the book's major conflict as evil or at least wrong. It's a bit of a twist, though there is some foreshadowing, and I was sort of surprised and disappointed that this was the way the book jumped, because the choice can be read in some somewhat stereotypical ways. I realize this is vague in the extreme. Beautiful book. Ending's kinda hinky.

 

Blitzed through Kevin Hearne's first Iron Druid uf novel, Hounded, mostly on and around Halloween. I had fun. It makes for an easy, compulsively enjoyable urban fantasy action binge. Wow the perspective's male gaze-y, though, to the point where -- as an apples-to-pretty-much-apples benchmark -- I'd compare it to Butcher. I like the dog, though, even if one or two of his jokes get old.

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Finished Kemp's Hammer and the Blade.  Really enjoyed the ride.  Just what I needed after The Thousandfold Thought (not that I disliked that book, just that it was the type of read that exhausts me these days even as I appreciate it).     

Now reading Wolfe's The Land Across. 

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Finished off The Vampire Lestat. Good, if a bit ponderous and digressive in the second half, and the discrepancies in characterisation with Interview are too extreme to put down to biased narration.

Next up is Let the Old Dreams Die, by John Ajvide Lindqvist.

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I finished Marc Turner's The Dragon Hunt, the second in his Chronicles of the Exile series. While it does, especially to start, still suffer from 'wanna be like Malazan!'-itis, it's good fun, and the second half of the book in particular is a standout set-piece in its own right that's elevated the series for me from 'read in a spare moment' to 'watch with interest'.

 

 

Now I too am cracking on with The Hanging Tree.

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I read Pillars Of The Earth, despite some warnings around here.  My mom had recommended it for ages so I thought I owed it to her.  On the positive side, I really enjoyed the portrayal of the social, political and economic life -- most fantasy is so annoyingly implausible in world building -- plus I enjoyed the plot anchored around building something rather than all the usual wars and quests.   But the characters were so one dimensional and the central drama around Jack, Alfred, the damsel and the psychopath rapist was both predictable and soapy.  

Now I'm reading Inverting The Pyramid, a non-fiction history of soccer tactics.  I really like the idea of this book but so far I'm finding it bloated with too many minor anecdotes.  I think the author is a little too pleased with his research.  

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Y'all may be pleased to know that I am finally reading/listening to A Game of Thrones by... ohhh, some guy.

I had previously started it twice, but I couldn't stand the narration and quickly gave up both times. Third time's the charm -- I still don't much like the narration, but I don't actively hate it anymore.

And as for the writing, I'm suitably impressed. Not a fan of the shifting-POV storytelling style, but the characterizations are excellent.

I'm roughly halfway through now. I know a few things that will eventually happen from hearing about the TV series (I haven't watched the series), and I keep wondering whether they'll happen in this book or another one....

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Real life stuff interfered a little so it took a little while to finish Galileo's Dream.  I haven't read absolutely everything by KSR, but I have read a bit and this book feels like an oddball.  The historical fiction stuff about Galileo is really good, but it doesn't seem to mesh well with the far future storyline.  The book just didn't feel like it hung together all that well. 

Now reading The Tengu's Game of Go by Lian Hearn. 

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I finished Dan Brown's Inferno and lived to tell the tale.  Man, this guy assumes his reader must be told everything.  Now about 100 pages into Jemisin's Fifth Season.

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7 hours ago, Triskan said:

I finished Dan Brown's Inferno and lived to tell the tale.  Man, this guy assumes his reader must be told everything.  Now about 100 pages into Jemisin's Fifth Season.

 

 

Careful, you can die from that kind of sudden jump in quality.

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I decided to finish The Rain Wild's Chronicles which I only got halfway through when it first came out as it seems to be becoming relevant to Robin Hobb's latest series. Hopefully it's a bit better now I can read it through in one go. I can't really remember most of the first 2 books though so since I'm going to have to reread them I might as well start from the beginning of the Liveships books. I've finished Ship of Magic so far which is still great.

I'm going to have to interrupt my Liveships reread with The Hanging Tree though, which I've just noticed has come out.

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10 hours ago, polishgenius said:

 

 

Careful, you can die from that kind of sudden jump in quality.

lol.  I can defend Brown a bit on plot, but the difference in prose is indeed jarring.

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Made short work of The Tengu's Game of Go.  This was the fourth and final book in Hearn's The Tale of Shikanoko.  It finished things off nicely, though I was a little surprised at how quickly the climax and conclusion were resolved.  I liked that all four books were released within six to eight weeks of each other and overall it was a pretty good feudal Japanese-flavored series.  I understand this series is related to the author's previous Tales of the Otori so I'll probably check that out at some point.

About to get into Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. 

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More by the most excellent Leigh Bardugo here. About a third of the way through Siege and Storm. Somehow it feels both more and less YA than Shadow and Bone, the first in the series. The plot tilts more towards adult, but the dialogue feels more YA than before.

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