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April Reads: What, fool, are you reading?!?


Larry of the Lawn

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It wasn't only that. As I said, that was the final note which tipped me over the edge. But it just didn't grab me.

I've just finished Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, a book which was selected for my monthly book club. I found it an effort to get through, luckily it's not that long. It just reminded me strongly of The Alchemist, with its generic wisdom on the nature of the human spirit (I kept putting it down and not wanting to pick it up again). The story is about two people who enter a relationship in a war-torn city who end up migrating elsewhere repeatedly through this magical realism device. I just found it trite and largely unmoving, it's like there is too much distance between the two protagonists and the reader, it's all kind of vague and whimsical, like nobody really cares that much about what is happening. Urgh. It's well-written but it just didn't have that much to say to me. 

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On 20.4.2017 at 11:28 PM, Plessiez said:

I liked The Dark Forest a lot more than The Three Body Problem, though neither is really close to being hard SF (certainly not if the science in question is physics, anyway).  I still haven't decided if I want to read Death's End though.

Looking forward to this -- I really liked Orthogonal.

I liked Orthogonal too. I would recommend reading some of the background stuff he posted on his website before starting the book though. Unless you are way better than me in figuring out how a world with different laws of nature works.  I found this book much more difficult than his other books in that regard.

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Late to the party but I loved Max Gladstone's Three Parts Dead. It exceeded my rather high expectations after reading many of the positive reviews. Excellent world-building, interesting characters, well-paced plot and intriguing central mystery. I'm looking forward to reading more of the Craft Sequence.

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5 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

I haven't read it because I don't have an ereader and book two is like a million dollars.

Quit repeating this lie.  As was expected the ebook release of The Blade of Tyshalle had a profound effect on the paperbacks secondary market value.  I've pointed it out to you before, this time I'll include links:
abebooks has two copies for <$16
Amazon has three for <$23

So either buy one of those inexpensive copies and enjoy the book, or just quit your bitching about it all together. 

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6 hours ago, Isis said:

It wasn't only that. As I said, that was the final note which tipped me over the edge. But it just didn't grab me.

I struggle too with the high praise for the Caine series.  I read the first and thought it was ok, but nothing great.  I started the second but the melodramatic emo angst within just a few pages made me drop it forever.  It was like a caricature of "tough guy must be shown to experience intense personal pain/loss to motivate him to be even tougher".  It felt like a cliche of a 1980s action movie hero.  The central premise of world-shifting to blend a dystopian Running Man story with a traditional fantasy world is ok but nothing special -- even Hunger Games did it better.  The writing, plot, characterization, etc just felt too cliched and overwrought.  

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I got bored with Liar Temptress Soldier Spy and didn't bother to renew my library loan. I know I said I was done with re-reads, but I couldn't pick anything new so I decided to re-read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. It's a great book, I first read it in high school (and immediately wrote a copycat story) and it is still good to read even knowing the ending.

Heard lots of praise for it around here, so I've decided to read Senlin Ascends next.

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56 minutes ago, Iskaral Pust said:

I struggle too with the high praise for the Caine series.  I read the first and thought it was ok, but nothing great.  I started the second but the melodramatic emo angst within just a few pages made me drop it forever. 

I am able to (barely) understand if someone is confused with this series while reading Caine's Law. But after or while or even before reading The Blade of Tyshalle, the best of the series? I just can't wrap my head around it. 

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16 minutes ago, homedawg said:

Caliban's War - Really digging The Expanse series.  Speaking of.....Are the novella's and short stories only available in audio?

I think they should all be available in e-book form. I don't think any of them are available as physical books (not sure if they ever intend to do an anthology of them).

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8 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Well whatever interest I had it in had now effectively been killed, thanks.



Honestly, judging by some of the series and authors you love, I reckon it'd be right up your street. It's like Mark Lawrence's work turned up to 11.

And yeah, it does get melodramatic sometimes, but it works.

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I have finally finished A Tale of Two Cities. That's it now. No more Dickens for me ever. I may watch some adaptations but I'll never read him again, it's just such a tiresome slog through all the needless words. It just goes on and on and on...

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I read John Hornor Jacobs' The Incorruptibles. It's got an interesting mix of different elements - it's an alternate history where the Roman Empire now rules most of the Americas, it's also a fantasy Western with elves taking on the role of the natives, there's a fair bit of political intrigue and all the technology is based on 'engineers' enslaving daemons to do their bidding which adds a supernatural horror element. Although all these different pieces of world-building do make it feel fairly original, I sometimes felt it was trying to pack a bit too much into a relatively short book and what feels like it should be the primary plot is squeezed into the last hundred pages.

The vaettir seemed to be positioned as the main antagonists for most of the book, but as the story builds towards its climax it felt like they were completely eclipsed as a threat by the Crimson Man.

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16 hours ago, homedawg said:

Caliban's War - Really digging The Expanse series.  Speaking of.....Are the novella's and short stories only available in audio?

One of the novellas "The Churn" can be found in book form in '2015 The Years Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas' published by Prime books.  I found a copy of this at my local library.

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I really disliked the Caine books -- or well, I managed to slog through the first book and read about 1/3 of the second before abandoning the series forever. 

Re: Expanse novellas. All are available as e-books; no idea about audiobooks because I am not a fan of the format.

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Currently reading the fourth volume of the Akira manga series, and liking it a lot. I'm also wading through my massive Harry Potter: Page to Screen hardcover, which contains 530 beautiful pages' worth of background information about the movies.

On the Caine novels: the second book, Blade of Tyshalle, is my favorite book I've ever read. The first third is indeed pretty slow and yeah, it's melodramatic, but that just makes it work better for me. It's not a perfect book but I'm willing the overlook some flaws because of the sheer quality of Stover's writing. I've read it three times now, and every page is still like candy. It's like Stover looked into my brain while writing it and rewrote each sentence until it was as rhythmic and hard-hitting as it could be. And that's not even mentioning the characters, action and world-building, which are all top-notch.
So personally, I can't fathom how someone could possibly dislike it. The first book, maybe, but I feel like anyone who didn't like Tyshalle either hasn't read enough of it or didn't give it a fair shot.

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