February Reading 2017

[Leofric]

Finished January by rereading Treasure Island to get ready for the final season of Black Sails to see how they tie everything in.

Finally read The Deserter by Peadar O Guilin, I read the Inferior a long time ago, so had forgotten parts leading into this book, but liked it a lot and won't wait as long to read the last book in the trilogy.

Also, read The Waking Fire by Anthony Ryan, really liking this world and the different characters, looking forward to the next book.

Now reading Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee enjoying it so far, but still trying to wrap my head around calendric heresy, but it does seem fitting I'm reading this as San Francisco is in the middle of celebrating the Chinese New Year.

Next up are The Flame Bearer by Cornwell, The Heart of What was Lost by Tad Williams, and The Wolf in the Attic by Paul Kearney.

 

[Garett Hornwood]

Finished Dangerous Women 1 yesterday, I found it a mix bag overall but I did like The Princess and the Queen which was the reason I purchased the book in the first place.  Given that I'm ardent history reader, the whole "history" aspect was exactly up my alley.

I've started The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II by Edward Gibbon, which actually covers books 3 & 4 from his original work.

[Jo498]

I read the book I had looked for in the other thread "Quarantine" by Jim Crace about several people fasting in the desert in 1st century Judaea. It is not bad and quite powerful sometimes but overall I found it slow and a little disappointing but I had probably expected something quite different.

[Peadar]

19 hours ago, Leofric said:

 

Finally read The Deserter by Peadar O Guilin, I read the Inferior a long time ago, so had forgotten parts leading into this book, but liked it a lot and won't wait as long to read the last book in the trilogy.

 

Wow, thanks

[Paxter]

On ‎8‎/‎02‎/‎2017 at 6:04 AM, aceluby said:

Read Elantris over the last week and it falls in line with pretty much every Sanderson book I've read, though the dialogue didn't seem quite as cringe inducing as some of his other works.  Again, the magic system shined the most, but the majority of characters were cardboard cutouts.  

I also finished Elantris recently and found it to be a bit of a slog. This was my first Sanderson novel and I was left underwhelmed, particularly in relation to the world-building and characters. The plot was the saving grace - I actually found myself enjoying some of the political machinations and court intrigue. But overall this was nothing more than mediocre fantasy.

I'm now reading Mantel's Wolf Hall and am enjoying it so far, despite finding some of the prose a little confusing initially.

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

23 hours ago, Garett Hornwood said:

Finished Dangerous Women 1 yesterday, I found it a mix bag overall but I did like The Princess and the Queen which was the reason I purchased the book in the first place.  Given that I'm ardent history reader, the whole "history" aspect was exactly up my alley.

I've started The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II by Edward Gibbon, which actually covers books 3 & 4 from his original work.

Mushroom is pretty awesome.  The entire tone when he's balancing Mushroom's account vs the Septon's or whatever was subtly hilarious.

 

Starting Philip K Dick's Ubik.

then it's: 

Richard Morgan's Market Forces

NK Jemison's Fifth Season

Gabreil Squalia's Dead Boys

 

 

 

[Darth Richard II]

36 minutes ago, Paxter said:

I also finished Elantris recently and found it to be a bit of a slog. This was my first Sanderson novel and I was left underwhelmed, particularly in relation to the world-building and characters. The plot was the saving grace - I actually found myself enjoying some of the political machinations and court intrigue. But overall this was nothing more than mediocre fantasy.

I'm now reading Mantel's Wolf Hall and am enjoying it so far, despite finding some of the prose a little confusing initially.

 

 

Pfft, confusing prose? I'm reading The Name of the Rose for the first time.

[Jo498]

5 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Pfft, confusing prose? I'm reading The Name of the Rose for the first time.

the Latin bits are usually found in translation somewhere in the back of the book

[Darth Richard II]

6 minutes ago, Jo498 said:

the Latin bits are usually found in translation somewhere in the back of the book

Not in mine.  although I finished it and enjoyed anyway!

[aceluby]

13 hours ago, Paxter said:

I also finished Elantris recently and found it to be a bit of a slog. This was my first Sanderson novel and I was left underwhelmed, particularly in relation to the world-building and characters. The plot was the saving grace - I actually found myself enjoying some of the political machinations and court intrigue. But overall this was nothing more than mediocre fantasy.

I'm now reading Mantel's Wolf Hall and am enjoying it so far, despite finding some of the prose a little confusing initially.

 

 

Yeah, his world building in this particular novel wasn't that great.  I've read quite a few of his other books, so I know it gets better; but unfortunately he seems to have some serious issues with single dimensional characters.  He never goes too deep with that aspect, and some of his dialogue is really not good, but he has some really interesting magic systems, worlds, and plots.  I always save him for a light read after something heavy like Bakker or Hobb

[C Rutherford]

15 hours ago, Paxter said:

I also finished Elantris recently and found it to be a bit of a slog. This was my first Sanderson novel and I was left underwhelmed, particularly in relation to the world-building a while nd characters. The plot was the saving grace - I actually found myself enjoying some of the political machinations and court intrigue. But overall this was nothing more than mediocre fantasy.

 

 

 

 

 

I'm a bit of an outlier probably.  I found Elantris to be readable and showed a bit of promise if much of it was incredibly rough.  For me, Sanderson has only gotten worse.  He had some interesting ideas in Elantris world building wise.  the first Mistborn novel also showed a bit of promise but seems incredibly confined in terms of worldbuilding and too simplistic for me.  Even more than Elantris which I found had a small stage; and stage was how the setting felt.   Since the first Mistborn novel, everything I have read of his seems to get rapidly worse.  The worldbuilding akin to rabid diarrhetic monkeys in poo flinging frenzy.  But he has his fans. 

 

Just cracked the cover of Jason Rekulak's The Impossible Fortress, and then plan on tackling All Our Wrongs Today by Elan Mastai.  Also interspersing with a little re-reading of K.J. Parker's collection Academic Exercises.  I feeling a bit deprived after the nice spate of monthly entries in the Two of Swords series.  I will need to go back and re-read that when he finally starts that back up in a couple (hopefully) months.  Until then I plan on re-reading a story in the collection once a week or so. 

 

[williamjm]

I finished Bancroft's Arm of the Sphinx. I think the first section was less compelling than the story in the first book and the airship piracy plotline didn't feel as original as most of the storylines inside the Tower itself, but once the story gets to the Golden Zoo it starts to get more interesting again and I thought the final section of the story was perhaps the best in the series so far. I found the Sphinx to be an intriguing character with my opinion of what their motivation was and how good the intentions might be changed repeatedly, a lot of which was coloured by whoever the current point-of-view character was and their own biases. Byron and Ferdinand may not have had the same depth but they were fun characters as well.

Not exactly sure what I'll read next. It might be Ian Esslemont's Dancer's Lament, although I might go into town and buy Adrian Tchaikovsky's The Bear and the Serpent.

[brunhilda]

On 2/8/2017 at 6:37 PM, Paxter said:

I also finished Elantris recently and found it to be a bit of a slog. This was my first Sanderson novel and I was left underwhelmed, particularly in relation to the world-building and characters. The plot was the saving grace - I actually found myself enjoying some of the political machinations and court intrigue. But overall this was nothing more than mediocre fantasy.

I really didn't like Elantris at all. Mistborn was fine. The first two Stormlight books were fantastic. I did not expect to like the Reckoners at all but thought the first two were very good. I've gotten #3 but I want to re-read 1 and 2 before jumping in.

[Darth Richard II]

I still think Warbreaker is his best by far.

[Plessiez]

I've been working my way through Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt series recently.  It's a decently written epic fantasy series which has the selling points of already being finished, and of being themed around insects.  (I might not have started it if I'd known in advance that there were as many as ten books in it though...) The third book, Blood of the Mantis, which I read this month, is both the shortest so far and the most obviously episodic, but I liked it well enough and I'll be reading more later in the year.. 

I also finished Cynthia Ozick's Collected Stories this month, having started it in January.  I've realised after doing the reading self-challenge thing for a while that a very high proportion of the books I read are by authors I've read before, and I'm going to be trying to reduce that proportion a bit over the year.  This was a first step towards that. I thought this collection was very good, though a lot of the literary references went over my head and I didn't care for a couple of the individual stories (particularly 'An Education' and 'The Doctor's Wife').

And I've just finished David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which I picked up after it was discussed in January's version of this thread.  This was only the second Mitchell book I've read; I read Cloud Atlas around a decade ago, and liked it okay, but not enough that I felt much interest in trying his subsequent work.  I liked this a lot more, especially after the first section.

[Andorion]

1 hour ago, Plessiez said:

I've been working my way through Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt series recently.  It's a decently written epic fantasy series which has the selling points of already being finished, and of being themed around insects.  (I might not have started it if I'd known in advance that there were as many as ten books in it though...) The third book, Blood of the Mantis, which I read this month, is both the shortest so far and the most obviously episodic, but I liked it well enough and I'll be reading more later in the year.. 

I also finished Cynthia Ozick's Collected Stories this month, having started it in January.  I've realised after doing the reading self-challenge thing for a while that a very high proportion of the books I read are by authors I've read before, and I'm going to be trying to reduce that proportion a bit over the year.  This was a first step towards that. I thought this collection was very good, though a lot of the literary references went over my head and I didn't care for a couple of the individual stories (particularly 'An Education' and 'The Doctor's Wife').

And I've just finished David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which I picked up after it was discussed in January's version of this thread.  This was only the second Mitchell book I've read; I read Cloud Atlas around a decade ago, and liked it okay, but not enough that I felt much interest in trying his subsequent work.  I liked this a lot more, especially after the first section.

Shadows of the Apt is a very interesting series and it gets noticeably stronger in the later books. My favourite was book 8.

[williamjm]

2 hours ago, Plessiez said:

I've been working my way through Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt series recently.  It's a decently written epic fantasy series which has the selling points of already being finished, and of being themed around insects.  (I might not have started it if I'd known in advance that there were as many as ten books in it though...) The third book, Blood of the Mantis, which I read this month, is both the shortest so far and the most obviously episodic, but I liked it well enough and I'll be reading more later in the year.. 

Although it's a ten book series overall the initial plotlines do largely get resolved in the fourth book, Salute The Dark. I think Blood of the Mantis is perhaps the weakest in the series and the one that stands on its own the least. After that there are three semi-standalones each featuring a subset of the characters from the early books and largely set in new parts of the world before a closing trilogy that wraps up the major plotlines. I'd also agree with Andorion's comment that the series generally gets better as it goes along.

[Mark Antony]

Enjoyed Best Served Cold a good bit though not as much as Last Argument of Kings but that had two books of build up.  Felt like a fantasy kill bill mixed with seven samurai. Might take a break from first law and read The Flame Bearer by Cornwell before I get into The Heroes and Red Country. 

[unJon]

Read Libarary at Mount Char based on recs here. Really loved it. Super weird and different. Reminded me a bit of Gaimon's American Gods but not really. Will definitely read his next book. 

 

Also finished Neal Asher's Owner trilogy. I liked a lot but think the Polity and Cormac series are a bit better. Overall Asher should be much better read around these parts. Any fan of Banks' Culture would enjoy Asher I think. 

[Iskaral Pust]

10 hours ago, Mark Antony said:

Enjoyed Best Served Cold a good bit though not as much as Last Argument of Kings but that had two books of build up.  Felt like a fantasy kill bill mixed with seven samurai. Might take a break from first law and read The Flame Bearer by Cornwell before I get into The Heroes and Red Country. 

For me, BSC is his weakest book so far.  The Heroes and Red Country are better stand-alone books.  But I'd agree with taking a break between grimdark reads. 

I finished Bancroft's Senlin Ascends after lots of recs here.  It's an enjoyable steampunk odyssey in a creative setting, but suspend your disbelief on world-building. I'm a bit disappointed with the ending as I didn't realize it would be a series.  I've purchased the second but won't rush to it.  Although inventive and novel, the story drags a bit: the single POV felt a bit solipsistic as he shed his naivety and scrambled over everyone else in pursuit of his goal, his fears of being undeserving made me wonder if I should even want him to succeed, and almost everyone but the central POV and his love interest are portrayed as malicious and exploitative or just vapid and indolent (again with the solipsism because everyone else is not on his mission and is therefore worthless).  Overall, well written, creative and novel.  Definitely worth a read.