April '08 Reading Thread

[gyrehead]

[quote name='Ser Barry' post='1297595' date='Apr 2 2008, 11.39']I am reading The Day Watch right now and I have had to pause between each sections as I really don't think it is up to much. Especially the first section which was a sub-par Goth kid emo romance. The second section was better in terms of plot but better than awful doesn't equal good. The plot was good enough for a forty page short story, it got spread too thin and the gaps appeared. I could also do without the pages and pages of shite rock lyrics which are meant to be deep. Cheer up. I like the ideas in the work but the execution hovers around barely adequate.[/quote]

I was amazed at how steeply and rapidly the books in the series to date plunged in quality. Still readable but the second and third books both read like fanfictions of the first. Doesn't bode well for book four. As for the rock lyrics? I tend to start giggling when I rea dthem so I try to just skip over them. When it comes to his philosophical depth through lyrics, Lukyanenko couldn't give a flea a bath.

Just started Brenda Cooper's [b]Reading the Wind[/b], sequel to [b]The Silver Ship[/b]. Like the first book but this second one just isn't grabbing me for some reason. Might have to put it aside and take on something else.

[beniowa]

[url="http://thedecklededge.blogspot.com/2008/04/last-argument-of-kings.html"]Last Argument of Kings[/url] by Joe Abercrombie. I thought this book was fantastic and was definitely one of the best fantasy books I've read. My only complaint is that the world-view is a too cynical for my taste but I think that's Abercrombie's point. An abosolute must-read.

Next up is [i]Small Favor[/i] by Jim Butcher which I bought today.

[ThRiNiDiR]

Trin read "Before They Are Hanged" and the book made quite an impact on her. Check our blog to find out the name of our mascot and comment your thoughts on the review I'm quoting below ([url="http://sf-fantasy-books.blogspot.com/2008/04/joe-abercrombie-before-they-are-hanged.html"]link[/url]).

[center][b]*****************[/b][/center]

[font="Book Antiqua"][center][color="#006400"]"[b]Before They Are hanged[/b]" by [i]Joe Abercrombie[/i][/color][/center]

[color="#FFFFFF"]---[/color]If the first novel of [i]The First Law[/i] trilogy plummeted into the fantasy genre as a delightfully refreshing and innovative subversion of (epic) fantasy tropes, “[b]Before They Are Hanged[/b]” delivers a heightened style into the mix, it also triples the action and multiplies the humor. Simply put– Abecrombie managed to write a rock-hard sophomore effort; and the best of it is that he managed to keep the plot interesting and simple at the same time - skillfully avoiding the danger of making it too dense or convoluted and therefore detract the attention from the biggest strength of the first two books in the trilogy – [i]c h a r a c t e r i z a t i o n[/i].

[color="#FFFFFF"]---[/color]Although it did not take him long to put out the sequel of “[color="#006400"]The Blade Itself[/color]”, Abercrombie matured as a writer somewhere in-between the books, learning from the experience of writing “[color="#006400"]The Blade Itself[/color]” and its shortcomings. In the first instalemnt, he acted unsure at some parts of the novel, relying heavily on his (otherwise cracking) sense of humor and at times the story just felt a bit confusing. The humor is as dark and as present as in the first book but even subtler this time around, with Glokta clearly stealing the show displaying his bitter irony and world-weariness. The plot itself evolved somewhat from a light-fantasy fare interwoven with humor and occasional gritty scenes, to a more realistic setting where webs within webs of conspiracies, backstabbing politics, raging battles and endless lust for power flourish. At the same time however, “[b]Before They Are Hanged[/b]” still manages to retain the lighter elements of its predecessor. Characters remain realistic and quite unusual, although sometimes a bit stereotypical (prevalently the gentry) – but still a good distance from the typical fantasy geezers I’d say.

[color="#FFFFFF"]---[/color]It might come as a surprise, but Abercrombie doesn’t pay heavy attention to detailed world-building; or at least that’s how it appears at first. The narrative in “Before They Are Hanged[b][/b]” does not baffle the reader with the depictions of land or people, but regardless to that Abercrombie stands triumphant, because the reader easily conjures up in his mind the fictional world of the book down to its grittiest details. The catch is that Joe inserts many simple, but shrewd observations into his characters’ dialogue and uses the occurring events themselves to build up stones, paths, trees, houses and walls and the rest of the surroundings. The final result is a more or less completed image of the world, acquired without having to read through boring descriptions of the world and (sometimes) tedious info-dumps.
[color="#FFFFFF"]-
---[/color]The one flaw - if you could call it that, of his subtle world-building is that the reader can easily lose track of time. Joe jumps from one scene to another in order to keep the action unabated and manages not to flounder in the hellish tempo of all the activities that are going on. That, unfortunately, costs him a bit when it comes to the perception of the passing of time; the voyage to the end of the world, which takes months, seems to last only about weeks or so. Mind you, I didn’t find this very off-putting, since I read the book in one reading, devouring it in one afternoon – what I want to say is that Abercrombie keeps only the interesting parts and skips the potentially boring ones but it might bother some of you, who enjoy and prefer the process of telling of a story in favor of relatively bare and goal-driven plot.

[color="#FFFFFF"]---[/color]Another fallacy that still plagues Abercrombie's writing is predictability (but that changes with the third book, I can tell you that now :) and unusually so if you consider the unpredictability of a couple of protagonists.

[color="#000080"][size=1][center]*minor spoilers ahead*[/center][/size][/color]
---For example, Jezal - a high-brow noble with a slight but undeniable potential to become a bearable, if not worthy companion in the first book - now, unsurprisingly, grows into a skilled fighter with a rational touch to everything he does, thus being a bit easier to cope with and maybe being even slightly likable. The situation with Glokta is somewhat similar. He expects to be killed (in one way or another) throughout the book and is so sure of his inevitable demise that he says (monologue) his goodbyes at every possible occasion. If the reader is not completely naïve or a beginner, he doesn’t actually believe in Glokta’s imminent demise It therefore comes as no surprise when Glokta survives and ‘well’. But that is actually ok, since he is one of my favorite characters, if not the favorite.
[size=1][center][color="#000080"]*end of spoilers*[/color][/center][/size]

[color="#FFFFFF"]---[/color]“[b]Before They Are Hanged[/b]” will not be remembered for its arguably pedestrian plot, neither can it boast with great epic battles or vivid world-building, but it nevertheless holds your unwavering attention up to the end. The book is strong on humor and sharp dialogue, not to mention how it manages to render (rather than avoid) many clichés. It is true that it sometimes feels a bit predictable, but that doesn’t spoil the reading experience at all. Quite on the contrary, “[b]Before They Are Hanged[/b]” is one of the more enjoyable fantasy books I’ve read - not to mention the fact that I can hardly remember the last time I laughed so hard and so often while reading a work of fiction. [i]Strongly recommended.[/i]

[size=4][color="#006400"][b]4,5/5[/b][/color][/size]


[i][color="#000080"]~ Trin ~[/color][/i][/font]

[Lord of Oop North]

I finished re-reading [i]Downbelow Station[/i] and enjoyed it just as much as I remember. Now I am going to be moving on to [i]The Armageddon Rag[/i] and [i]Fevre Dream[/i], both by George R.R. Martin. I have never read either of them.

[Annelise]

Finished[b] Trainspotting[/b]. Saw it at the library. Took me awhile, that Scottish dialect be slowin me down, hehe. But not surprisingly (I loved the movie), I liked it. :)

Returning it and going to look for the Kite Runner.

Still working on [b]Churchill[/b]. Can't put my finger on it but Jenkins doesn't move for me like Goodwin does. It's more dry, bits at a time rather than getting wrapped up in it like I did with Goodwin's biographies. Still interesting, though.

Going to look for [b]The Kite Runner[/b] today, when I return Trainspotting.

[Serious Callers Only]

Read Jim Butcher - Small Favor (more of the same, will someone die already - oh he gets laid. An important character development )

Brandon Sanderson - Warbreaker (draft from his site) reminds me of mistborn, only not at all if you know what i mean. Solid.

Its here:.

[url="http://www.brandonsanderson.com/drafts/warbreaker/WarbreakerFull4.2.doc"]http://www.brandonsanderson.com/drafts/war...akerFull4.2.doc[/url]

It's in sucky doc, but that can be easily passed to suck html. Which i then unsuck with my ebook reader program.

Nancy Kress - Fountain of Age Novella, nothing to do with her sleepless universe.

Reading Dave Duncan - The Alchemist's Apprentice - i missed Dave and his blatant adventuring machismo. Good world building as usual. Love Venetian scenarios (the saving grace of the Lion of Alexandria books by Eric Flint and some others - will they write another already, the story is hanging around in my id).

Going to read Ian McDonald - River of Gods.

[Ormond]

Some of the books I've read recently include:

[i]The Bastard of Istanbul[/i] by Elif Shafak. This was the book chosen this semester at my university for the faculty book discussion group. It was very interesting as a presentation of the differences between modern Turks and modern Armenian-Americans on the importance of acknowledging the Armenian genocide, particularly as a book written by a Turk that takes a more "Armenian" viewpoint, but I found the male characters one-dimensional and thought she chickend out on how she ended the story.

[i]Star Wars on Trial[/i]. This is a book of essays about the Star Wars films, with a debate back and forth by authors on various sides, deliberately organized to be humorous even when the critics/authors have serious disagreements. Though I'm not a real Star Wars fan (I haven't even ever seen the second movie of the prequel trilogy -- and after this book I think I may never want to see it :) ), I found it to be a lot of fun and learned a lot about the films I'd never known before.

[i]Endymion[/i] by Dan Simmons. I read the two [i]Hyperion[/i] books seven years ago and just got around to starting the sequels. I really enjoyed the book, especially the descriptions of the various worlds visited. The aspect of science fiction I like most is exploring the different climates and cultures authors create. I also found the concept of a far future controlled by a resurgent Roman Catholic church, which literally has the power to physically resurrects its followers, to be a fun concept, if a tad more on the fantastic than the believable science fiction side for me. But I admit that I found the two main characters -- the narrator Raul Endymion and the child Aenea -- to be a tad underdeveloped.

[i]El Milagro and Other Stories[/i] by Patricia Preciado Martin. This is a very short book of short short stories by a Mexican-American author, set in Tucson, Arizona. I really enjoyed it; Martin was able to make her characters interesting and to do a good job of describing both the universal human aspects and the specifically Mexican-American aspects of her characters at the same time.

[i]Three Men in a Boat[/i] by Jerome K. Jerome. Every once in a while I get a "classic" I have never read from the library and make myself read it. This is a comic novel which was published in the 1880s about three young English dolts and their dog taking a river trip on the Thames. The humor is based on how silly and immature these 20 somethings of a bygone era are. I found parts of it very funny, but thought it ended abruptly. One of the best passages was about antiques, where Jerome teases the antique lovers of his day by pointing out how the everyday items of the 1880s will be the sought after antiques of the 2200s -- and it's fun to read this and realize that he was exactly right, with some of the things he describes indeed already being very sought after by collectors in 2008. :)

I have just started (only read the first 10 pages at lunch) [i]Assassin's Apprentice[/i] by Robin Hobb. I read her Liveship Traders trilogy several years ago and have always wanted to go back and read her other two trilogies set in that world, and have finally gotten around to it. I am really enjoying her style of writing already (though I have one tiny quibble with her description of a character's beard as being both "short" and "bushy", which to me seems contradictory. :) ) But I'm looking forward to really getting into the book this weekend.

[Vethnar]

I finished reading Joe Abercrombie's [i]The First Law[/i] yesterday night. I found the trilogy somewhat overhyped, but still quite good. Nothing very memorable, but a fast, fun read, and each book was better than the previous one. I already look forward to [i]Best Served Cold[/i].

[i]Orphan's Tale[/i] (Catherynne Valente) is next on my list. It looks very interesting; I hope it lives up to my expectations.

[Larry.]

Edward Whittemore's [i]Quin's Shanghai Circus[/i] was as I expected - he hadn't quite found his "voice" as an author here (it was his first novel), but there were so many scenes that were so outrageous that this glorious mess was much more on the glorious side than on the messy.

Received Ursula Le Guin's latest this afternoon, the just-released [i]Lavinia[/i], which is a riff off of Vergil's epic. Very intrigued by the premise here of focusing on Lavinia, who has only one speaking line in the [i]Aeneid[/i]. Will read it tonight and maybe tomorrow.

[ThRiNiDiR]

[font="Book Antiqua"]We reivewed [size=3][b]Joe Abercrombie's[/b] [color="#006400"][i][b]Last Argument of Kings[/b][/i][/color][/size]...not once, but twice :)

He didn't get a perfect score, from neither of us,...I usually post the reviews here, but since there are two of them it would take a bit much of space; I'm posting links though.

The first one I'd call [color="#000080"][size=3][i]the lenient review[/i][/size][/color] ([url="http://sf-fantasy-books.blogspot.com/2008/04/joe-abercrombie-last-argument-of-kings_05.html"]link[/url]).

The second one does a bit more [color="#000080"][size=3][i]chewing and spitting out [/i][/size][/color]I guess ([url="http://sf-fantasy-books.blogspot.com/2008/04/joe-abercrombie-last-argument-of-kings.html"]link[/url]).

Post your thoughts!
thrinidir[/font]

[gyrehead]

Got a load of arcs this weekend. Carey's [b]Kushiel's Mercy[/b], Naomi Novik's Victory of Eagles (a big boo hiss to Del Rey for now ruining my shelf-scape with going to hardcover; well arc oversized trade, but still...), Patricia Bray's [b]Final Sacrifice[/b], [b]The Dark Ferryman[/b] by Jenna Rhodes, [b]Tender Morsels[/b] by Margo Lanagan [b]The King's Shield[/b] by Sherwood Smith (an unbound proof so I won't read this until next week at earliest) and plunged right into Novik and, like the previous books in the series, it went rather fast. I'm not sure if I liked it as much as the first three books though. Novik is taking smaller bites out of her parallel timeline than perhaps I would like. There is still plenty of substance and it is not as bad as Cornwell's Alfred the Great series that seems to be adopting a 24 attitude almost in how minute he takes on events (at Cornwell's rate I think we shall have a book for every year of Alfred's reign and then some). Still Novik really does capture the whole era rather well and I enjoy her take on dragons even if it slightly veers towards the twee at times.

Now, after making a deal with myself to only read a new book after reading something that has sat in the pile for at least two months, I'm skipping back to Miles Unger's [b]Magnifico[/b], a biography on Lorenzo de Medici. Then, assuming my reading beats the post, I'll plunge into Jacqueline Carey. If I don't outpace the delivery man, I'll likely succumb to temptation and jump into Richard Morgan's [b]The Steel Remains[/b] as I think that is what the email I got indicates or the really big book of the year, Daniel Abraham's [b]An Autumn War[/b] which should mail any time now from what I undertand.

[Thrashalla]

Finished Kay Kenyon's [i]A World Too Near[/i]. Up to standard with the first book of the series and it improved on some of the characterization of the non-humanoid species. However, my favorite aspect of the last book was the storyline of the main character's daughter and this time around I was underwhelmed by the direction it took. Overall though, great story - much faster paced than the first and much more suspenseful finish...and yet another incomplete series I'm hooked on.

Next up, Glen Cook's [i]Shadow Games[/i]. (More [i]Black Company[/i], WooHoo! :bow: )

[Guinevere Seaworth]

Finished [i][u]High Deryni [/u][/i]by Katherine Kurtz. I think I would have enjoyed this much more as a teenager. It has good worldbuilding and characterizations but the ending was just too convienent and it left a few threads hanging. It didn't help that one of the main characters was 14 year old boy. I have read sooooo many fantasies dealing with teenage boys that it gets tiresome. Despite the shortcomings, I'm glad to have read Katherine Kurtz.
Started [u][i]The Grand Crusade [/i][/u]by Michael Stackpole, the final book the DragonCrown War Cycle. I don't have high hopes for this one. I have LAOK in the mail and may end up reading that instead.

[duchess of malfi]

Just finished up Jim Butcher's [i]Small Favor[/i] - lots of action with fae enforcers and demons. :) Lots of big developments in the lives of Harry and friends. :) Very pleased. :)

I was going to read [i]Brasyl[/i] next, but think I will read the new historical fiction by LeGuin ([i]Lavinia[/i]), and [b]then[/b] read [i]Brasyl[/i]. :)

[bossfan2000]

[quote name='Guinevere Seaworth' post='1302824' date='Apr 6 2008, 09.55']Finished [i][u]High Deryni [/u][/i]by Katherine Kurtz. I think I would have enjoyed this much more as a teenager. It has good worldbuilding and characterizations but the ending was just too convienent and it left a few threads hanging. It didn't help that one of the main characters was 14 year old boy. I have read sooooo many fantasies dealing with teenage boys that it gets tiresome. Despite the shortcomings, I'm glad to have read Katherine Kurtz.
Started [u][i]The Grand Crusade [/i][/u]by Michael Stackpole, the final book the DragonCrown War Cycle. I don't have high hopes for this one. I have LAOK in the mail and may end up reading that instead.[/quote]

I read the King Kelson trilogy by Kurtz back in the 80s while in high school and loved them. Probably partially due to the fact that Kelson was close to me in age at the time.

I must also been in the minority thinking the DragonCrown War Cycle was very good.

I am a little over halfway into The Born Queen and its absolutely fantastic. Hope the last 200 pages can keep it up.

[mashiara]

I finished reading [i]The God of Small Things [/i]by Arundhati Roy. I loved it. I got carried away by the language and by the emotions. It made me think more about things, and about how the smallest details can appear to have such a huge impact on your life. One of the best books I've read lately.

Next I'm going to start reading [url="http://www.amazon.com/Crimson-Petal-White-Michel-Faber/dp/0156028778/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207535413&sr=8-2"]The crimson petal and the white[/url] by Michel Faber. I'm also slowly going through [i]Myths of Greece and Rome [/i]by Thomas Bulfinch.

[Peadar]

[quote name='mashiara' post='1303681' date='Apr 7 2008, 03.34']Next I'm going to start reading [url="http://www.amazon.com/Crimson-Petal-White-Michel-Faber/dp/0156028778/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207535413&sr=8-2"]The crimson petal and the white[/url] by Michel Faber.[/quote]

The Faber book is amazing and I really envy you your first read of it. He also wrote an SF book called [url="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Under-Skin-Michel-Faber/dp/1841954802/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207553028&sr=1-1"]Under the Skin[/url], which is not for the faint hearted.

[Astra]

OK.
I gave up on [b]Gene Wolfe[/b] and [i]The Claw of the Conciliator[/i]. An impossible task.

I was debating what to read now. Either [i]The Tawny Man[/i] trilogy or Crown [i]of Stars[/i] series and...
...I started [i]King's Dragon[/i] Crown of Stars 1 by [b]Kate Elliott[/b].

[Edda van Heefmstra Ruston]

I finished Evil for Evil and read The Escapement. I have a trashy romance novel to finish (:P) but next up is Wizard Knight and then Dreamsongs Vol. I.

[mashiara]

[quote name='Peadar' post='1303880' date='Apr 7 2008, 10.24']The Faber book is amazing and I really envy you your first read of it. He also wrote an SF book called [url="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Under-Skin-Michel-Faber/dp/1841954802/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207553028&sr=1-1"]Under the Skin[/url], which is not for the faint hearted.[/quote]

I'm only a little over a hundred pages into it and I'm liking it a lot already. [i]Under the Skin [/i]looks interesting too.. nobody can call [i]me[/i] faint hearted when it comes to books. I'll probably add it to my never-ending list of books to buy.