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January Reads


Larry.

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I�m reading Consider Phlebas by Iain Banks but I�m seriously considering droping it. It is almost as bad as Goodkind, the diference being that it is in space.

:stunned:

Having read both Consider Phlebas and (for reasons too tedious to divulge) Faith of the Fallen I can only say ... I don't agree? It's hardly Banks' best work (it's rather bloated, for a start, particularly in the middle) and I can definitely understand somebody not liking it. That said, I'd have thought that - if nothing else - the lack of eighty-page monologues, and the fact Banks has a vocabulary that doesn't hinge around the word 'thing', would have been sufficient to escape any such comparisons.

Mind expanding on what you found so terrible about it? (In spoiler-tags, if you go into detail, I suppose).

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SPOILER: Phlebas
I havent finished it yet, but I can already see many issues. One of them is the whole canibalism issue that Horza faced in that small island. Bloody, stupid and unnecessary, something that Goodkind would do. Poor action scenes that have no value to the story and happen all the time for no good reason at all besides a poor entertainment atempt. Killing of characters that the writer himself took time to develop, which means you dont get atached to characters because they may be killed for no good reason. Poor atempt of discussing religioun, like Horza discussing the Idiran beliefs. Also a very lame atempt of creating wonder by describing things like the Orbitals, that are suposed to be 14 million kilometers long. At the same time, the setting has many holes, since the biggest ship they can create is 4 or 5 kilometers long.

The writer changes the setting too much towards what he wants the story to be. That means the setting has no integrity, just like Goodkind´s. Besides that there are just too many stupid scenes, one example being when Horza "tricks" the shuttle in the canibal island to destroy its artificial inteligence and get the shuttle for himself.

There are just too many things that make me see this book as a poor atempt of fantasy in a sci-fi setting. You could say its a poor atemp of copying StarWars.


I think the main tool of sci-fi is its setting. The story should be a vessel for the ideas ofthe writer. For example, the Culture is extremely interesting and the war also, but you can barely see any of it in this book. Its mainly about a guy without any choice traveling from one place to the other and getting fucked over in the process. I swear, the guy has been fucked over in every way he could be in every single chapter I´ve seen so far.

SPOILER: fucked over
First he is a prisoner. Then he barely escapes from prison and almost get deaf due to the alarms in the Idiran ship. Then he has to escape the ship for no good reason at all and gets captured by guys that make him fight a guy "to prove he is worthy". Then he gets poor equipament and has to invade a fort where half of the crew dies, again for no good reason at all, just because his leader, which is suposed to be doing the job for years, comits the most stupid tactical decisions possible. Then they travel to the Orbital where he loses his woman, most of the rest of the crew, almost die due to the megaship crashing, and when he is almost escaping, another member of his crew detonates a nuclear device and shoots his ship. Then the guy that is controling the shuttle goes mad and wrecks the shuttle in the water, which means he has to swim 3 km in cold water after having his leg shot. Then when he reaches the land he is captured by a sadistic group of canibalistic people that eat shit and fish skin, even through this is suposed to be a sci-fi work set thousands of years in the future and these guys are behaving worst than monkeys. Not to mention the whole issue is as stupid as fuck, since the whole business is impossible and contradic almost everything we know about humans and how they behave.

If that isnt as bad as Goodkind I dont know what it is. Not even the main character in those books suffer and face so much shit as Horza.
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I'm currently about halfway through Ian McDonald's Brasyl (I think I spell the title differently each time I write it). Like River of Gods before it the start was a bit slow, but the novel is getting increasingly good as it goes along. It could end up taking the top spot of the "2007 novels" list if it continues to be this good.

Then I have a huge pile of books I bought mainly on recommendations from people on this board. If anyone would like to give me suggestions for where to start on this pile, I would be interested. I'd currently like to read books which aren't too depressing, but are nicely written and thought-provoking in terms of character or theme, or open my mind to new ways to write fantasy.

GRRM - Rretrospective

Ian Banks - Use of weapons

Steph Swainston - Year of Our War

Scott Lynch - Red Seas under Red Skies

These four I particularly liked, especially the first two.

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I'm going to finish Walter Jon Williams's Dread Empire's Fall trilogy, having thoroughly enjoyed the first volume last month.

After that I'll roll the dice to decide between The Terror by Simmons, Temeraire by Novik, Last Call by Powers, or Black Man by Morgan.

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I'm going to finish Walter Jon Williams's Dread Empire's Fall trilogy, having thoroughly enjoyed the first volume last month.

After that I'll roll the dice to decide between The Terror by Simmons, Temeraire by Novik, Last Call by Powers, or Black Man by Morgan.

Reading Perdido Street Station.

Don't have an opinion yet.

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I'm about halfway through 'Last Argument of Kings' (Joe Abercrombie) and am fighting that urge to skip to the last page and see how it ends... It's good, actually it's bloody good :thumbsup:

I'm looking forward to that one very much.

For now, I've finally finished with The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, a fascinating exploration of all the things you didn't want to know about our food supply, plus some innovative antidotes to the problems that arise.

Just starting, Swiftly by Adam Roberts. Only read one chapter so far, but already found *two* great twists!

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In the last couple of days I've finished up Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan (review) and I read a reviewed the short story D.A. by Connie Willis over at FBS. Right now I'm reading The Lees of Laughter's End by Steven Erikson. I plan to read some Sanderson next.

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Finished Gil's All Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez which was a waste of two days. Full Review.

The biggest problem was the comedy. I was, for some reason, expecting clever satire, but what I got was a couple of rednecks drinking beer, ogling a teenage girl and calling each other ass-holes. The only thing missing was fart jokes.

Besides the inherent lack of wit, Gil’s All Fright Diner is thinly written. Martinez doesn’t bother to internalize the narrative. In fact, he can’t even decide who the narrator is; the PoV just hops around randomly, now on Earl, now on Tammy, now on a dog. Anybody is fair game, and he doesn’t give so much as a warning.

Outside of the occasional infodump, the bulk of the story is dialogue. Bad redneck dialogue. Often with conversations between three characters, with nary a speaker-tag in sight to let us keep track of who is saying what. Good think that Duke and Earl are essentially the same character (excepting that Earl is a little more cowardly), so it doesn’t really matter who’s talking. And on top of that, it’s all written in dialect. Bad redneck dialect.

Next up is K. J. Parker's Devices and Desires. If this one goes well, then I'll probably move on through the rest of The Engineer Trilogy afterward.

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Well I won't get through this all in January, so for me it's more of a list of what's on my plate for 2008.

-need to finish Charlie Wilson's War

-Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay

-Something buy Umberto Eco

-The Great Ordeal by Bakker and A Dance With Dragons are the two I'm praying I get to read this year.

-Not sure if I can slog through Wizard's First Rule by Goodkind. I hate to not finish what I've started but it's worse than I thought it would be.

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I finished the Cisco last night as well as the Mamatas (for comments on the Cisco, see the thread on Blurbage) and got a little over halfway into Sylvia Kelso's Amberlight, which I'll finish shortly. That one is okay to good, but nothing is really grabbing me the way that the Cisco and Mamatas did. Then again, it's hard to read a more traditionally-told tale after reading Cisco...

Shortly, I'll be reading either The Secret History of Moscow or The Shadow Speaker.

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I ended December and started January with Ursula LeGuin, The Telling. It's a very low-key book, that deals with questions of changing societies, religion and language; I enjoyed it. The writing of the book is rather lovely.

I started David Kehlman, Measuring the World. Even though, it is a German author, I bought the English translation instead of the original, because I took him for an English author. :blush: It's not a fantasy novel, but a sort of historical novel, telling the lives of Alexander of Humboldt and Carl Gauß - and their different approaches to measuring the world. ;) I'm not yet so far in, but it is interesting and witty.

On my list to read, and laying on my shelves are:

Abercrombie, The Blade Itself

China Mieville, The Iron Council

Charles Stross, Supernova

Ursula Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

The last three, from the Library, are translations to German, though.

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I have a huge pile of books I bought mainly on recommendations from people on this board. If anyone would like to give me suggestions for where to start on this pile, I would be interested. I'd currently like to read books which aren't too depressing, but are nicely written and thought-provoking in terms of character or theme, or open my mind to new ways to write fantasy.

I'd like to be able to distinguish which ones would make better 'weekend books' which need to be read at a slower pace for appreciation, and could be more dense and slow-moving, and 'weekday books' which I can read after a tiring day at work in smaller sections: these need to flow more quickly and easily, and not be too much of a burden on the memory.

While they aren't the books on your list I enjoyed most, I'd suggest that the Lynch and (because of the format) the Martin would make the best "weekday books". The Lynch at least should also satisfy your desire for "not too depressing" - though depending on your definitions, many of the other books on your list might not.

I think the main tool of sci-fi is its setting. The story should be a vessel for the ideas ofthe writer.

Ah. Yeah, if that's what you're looking for in SF, then this book (and Banks in general) is really not going to appeal at all. While I certainly don't agree with the notion that the setting has no integrity, it's true Banks just isn't all that interested in worldbuilding (preferring instead Important Human Themes ... oh, wait, that's Goodkind :P). His books are about his characters, first and foremost, and if you don't care for them, they don't really work.

SPOILER: Consider Phelbas
I actually agree completely with the general uselessness of the scenes with the Eaters. That was the episode I was referring to earlier as 'bloat' - they're unnecessarily gorish, add fuck-all to the plot, and the book would be significantly better if they weren't there.

That said, I don't agree with the rest of your criticisms at all ...

The Oribitals, for a start, aren't particularly aimed at "creating wonder"; they're an homage to Larry Niven's Ringworld (which, if you've not read, I suspect you might like a lot more than the Banks).

Complaints about the "Killing of characters that the writer himself took time to develop" seem slightly incongruous on a forum devoted to A Song Of Ice And Fire ... but it's a little difficult for me to really respond to any of that in detail without spoiling the rest of the book.

But primarily, the comparisons to Goodkind still seem incredibly misplaced.

Of course the main character of the Sword of Truth doesn't suffer as much as Horza - the main character of the Sword of Truth is a thinly disguised Mary Sue who exists soley to spout propaganda for the moral and political views of the author. 'The protagonist suffers too much' is just not the reason that Goodkind fails as an author - quite the opposite, in fact, at least by the later books.

Characters in Goodkind suffer to demonstrate the malefic nature of the heroes' enemies or, conversely (when the "heroes" are the ones doing the torturing), to titillate Goodkind's audience by offering them the chance to see 'justice' inflicted on his ideological enemies.

Neither of these reasons explain the use of violence in Consider Phlebas.

In all honesty, given what you've said so far, I think it's a pretty safe bet you're not going to like the remainder of the book anymore than you've liked it so far. Unless you're the sort of person who has to finish any book they start, I'd suggest there might be better ways to spend your time than on this.

Oh, and ....

SPOILER: Minor spoilers for the end of Consider Phlebas
Who ever said the book was supposed to be set 'thousands of years in the future'? ;)

ETA: Oh, yeah, and I finished The Master and Margarita on the train home today - so that's one down, at least.

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Currently working my way through John Rateliff's two volume History of the Hobbit. Definitely a solid scholarly analysis, with much more focussing on literary precedents than Christopher Tolkien did in his History of Middle-earth series.

Not sure what to read after that; I'm sure I'll find something.

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About halfway through Norman Partridge's Dark Harvest and liking it quite a bit. One of the better horror novels I've read in a while.

Next up - A Vintage From Atlantis, the third volume in Nightshade Books collected fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith.

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