September Reading Thread

[pat5150]

Just finished Raymond E. Feist's FLIGHT OF THE NIGHTHAWKS.

Well, for those who -- like me -- have grown disillusioned with Feist's two latest series, I'm happy to report that Flight of the Nighthawks marks the return of the Raymond E. Feist who captured the imagination of millions of readers worldwide with the Riftwar Saga and the Serpentwar Saga. And yes, it's about time!;-)

A very satisfying read from an author who truly needed to regain his erstwhile form.

Check the blog for the full review. . .

Patrick

[Xray the Enforcer]

The Lies Of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

I can confirm that it is both the shizzle and the nizzle.

Scott needs to put that on his website.

[RaceBannon42]

Finished Up The Blood Knight by Greg Keyes and Ultimate Iron Man by Orson Scott Card

Currently working on One More for the Road, a short story collection by Ray Bradbury

The Blood Knight took me a while to get my feet under me. It throws you right into things, and I'd forgotten what happened in the last book, so it took about 100 pages for me to figure things out again. After that it was smooth reading. Keyes keeps the novel well paced, and throws in enough twists and turns so you don't really know whats going on for sure.

Ultimate Iron Man is a HC collection of the 5 issues comic book mini series. If you arent familiar with the Ultimate Universe, its essential Marvels attempt at reimagining its super heros. Most of the Ultimate stuff I've read is top notch. Cards essentially re writes the history of Iron Man so about the only semblance to the original are the characters names, and of course the Iron Man armor. I actually really liked his take on the origin story. Its so very different.

Full reviews will be up on the blog soon hopefully.

[Turinqui-Calima]

Barnes and Nobels had 50% of on classics. So I bought The Art of War and Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglas, an American Slave. Might go back and buy more! Will read them as soon as I finnish my re-read of AFFC.

[davos]

Finished The Thousand Fold Thought a few days ago. Letting it sit for awhile before forming a full opinion of it. The ending seemed a little jumbled and I'm going to have to go back through the last 100 or so pages to make sure everything makes sense. Not sure if I really like what he did with Ikurie Conphas. Still pondering on it. Its certainly an exceptional book though and a truely original series. One of the best things out there right now.

Just started on Erikson's House of Chains. Read the first 3 in the Malazan series some time back after I ordered them from the UK but couldn't justify continueing to do this despite having enjoyed it greatly to that point. I found the most recent 3 installments in the dealers room in LA and scopped them without a second thought. Since I'm likely to read them back to back to back and since I have not had a great deal of reading time of late House of Chains, Midnight Tides and The Bonehunters may well take up most of my September reading.

[Stubby]

I've now finished book three of the Ender saga, "Xenocide." Its great stuff. Normally, I don't go for the "true" sci fi stuff but I have found this series impossible to ignore. Further to my earlier post in this thread, I'm moving on to book four "Children of the Mind" immediately so as to keep some form of continuity there.

Unfortunately, TLOLL will have to wait.

[Kanin]

Finished Feist's Magician series, and started a reread of A Game of Thrones

[The Red Wolf]

I am currently reading The lies of locke Lamora and after that who knows. I enjoyed the first Malazan book but I am not sure I want to get into the whole series.

[saint777]

Finished Blood Follows and am now starting on The Healthy Dead which is the second novella in the Bauchelain and Korbal Broach series.

BF was a solid mystery/fantasy tale that really wets your appetite for future installments with these characters. Hopefully the next book has more Broach in it. The only complaint I have is the heavy pricetag($20USD) for a novella(121pgs.). THD is the same price and comes in at only 128pgs. Other than that BF was a fun read.

[Chaldanya]

Am reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. It's irritating the shit out of me atm because it's firmly from the school of tell don't show, and I loathe information dumps with the firey passion of a thousand burning suns.

The other books on the go are Keeping It Real by Justina ???, not read enough of it to know what's the what, but it seems alright to me from the limited pages I've read.

Also reading The Lies of Locke Lamora for fear of getting kicked of the board if I didn't. Not sure if it's the shizzle and the nizzle but it's seeming OK to me, and I love nothing so much as a good thief story

N

[Infidel]

Just finished John DeChancie's Starrigger, first of his sadly overlooked comic sf trilogy.

Currently reading:

Hitler's Generals, edited by Corelli Barnett and Brust's Book of Jhereg, being composed of Jhereg, Yendi, and Teckla.

The Brust is excellent - so sorry I hadn't gotten into the Vlad Taltos series long before now.

On the horizon are Van Creveld's Supplying War and perhaps the Starrigger sequel...

[TheHalfman]

Finished Troubleshooter by Gregg Hurwitz.

Currently rereading A Game of Thrones, who wrote that again?

And reading The Last Assasin by Barry Eisler.

[Multaniette]

Echoes of the Great Song - David Gemmell

Pro's:

- Great action sequences

- a riveting starting chapter

- an interesting world

- a page-turner

- nice backstory

Cons:

- disjointed narrative in parts

- the book suddenly looses its tightness about half-way through when a certain plot point is revealed

- characterization. Certain stereotypes are well realized however, others are neither interesting nor well-written

- plot is interesting in the beginning but I think Gemmell revealed too many aces too quickly

- He has this annoying ability of telling, not showing

Despite my slightly lengthy objections, I liked the first part of the book a lot. Overall, it was an entertaining read.

Rating 6/10

The Greenstone Grail - Amanda Hemingway

The first book of an urban fantasy trilogy incoporating the concepts of time-travel, multiverse and the arthurian artifacts. Set in a quaint British back-water village, the story is slightly reminiscent of Susan Cooper's much superior Dark is Rising sequence.

The plot is intriguing enough and it's easy to like the main character. There's just enough suspense and meat in the story to keep the reader interested despite the oft-times awful characterization, awkward prose and the stupid quips about teenagers the author seems so fond of making that always fall flat on their faces. There are fairies and dwarves, gnomes and gnome-lite creations, the famous 'dark wood' of british fantasy literature and the wise old grandad who is more then he appears to be.

Rating: 5/10

[Stubby]

I am weak and pathetic.

Despite my promises above to continue with the Ender saga I have failed. The temptation of TLOLL was just too much. I'm well into it now and loving it.

[Werthead]

The other books on the go are Keeping It Real by Justina ???, not read enough of it to know what's the what, but it seems alright to me from the limited pages I've read.

Also reading The Lies of Locke Lamora for fear of getting kicked of the board if I didn't. Not sure if it's the shizzle and the nizzle but it's seeming OK to me, and I love nothing so much as a good thief story

N

Justina Robson? I think a few people have been reccing that book quite a lot. Peter F. Hamilton, my favourite SF writer, has recced that a few times as well so I may have to take a look.

Still reading Spin and about a third of the way in. Enjoyable book, but very old-school ("Hmm, and when is the whacko religious cult going to turn up interpreting the inexplicable alien phenomena for it's own ends...ah, there they are!"). Certainly not quite the calibre I was expecting from a Hugo winner.

[Xray the Enforcer]

totally agreed, Wert. It was a throwback of immense proportions. :cry:

[Nightwatcher]

Currently reading through the Harry Potter books, which I haven't picked up before. Right now I'm halfway through Prisoner of Azkaban. I figured now would be good time to read them, what with the final book due out next year. If only that were true with ASOIAF . I've only seen the 1st film, and that was four years ago.

[Happy Ent]

Finished Wheel of Time Eye of the World, just to see what everybody was talking about. As I said before, I had no idea it was so derivative of LotR. One-to-one correspondences between some of the characters. I don't know if it's a universally bad thing (might be an hommage)—Prince of Nothing is derivative of LotR as well, after a fashion. Near the end I thought, "Ok, I found Aragorn and Treebeard and the Ringwraiths and Bree. At least he kept Tom Bombadil out of it."

But he didn't.

So did I like it, ignoring the LotR-tropes? Not at all. I found it boring and all the characters pretty unengaging. In truth, I can't see what there was to sell out from. I understand that many of the readers here have fond memories of the first X volumes of WoT (where X is less than or equal to 5, I guess)—without wanting to be snarky, may that be an artifact of the relatively young age at which you submitted yourself to those? After all, lot's of people here liked Ender's Game as well.

[Werthead]

Confused. Did you just read the first book, then? The Eye of the World's similarities to LotR are quite depressing, but the later books move away from that (stopping to briefly rip off Frank Herbert's Dune along the way) and by the latest volume any correlation between the two works seems a long and distant memory. Certainly even The Eye of the World is not as monstrously derivative of LotR as The Sword of Shannara is, for example.

As for the age thing, possible. I picked up the series when I was 17 (by which time I had already read and enjoyed Peake, Wolfe, Tolkien, Pratchett, Kim Stanley Robinson and rejected Eddings and Brooks) and thought it was pretty damn good for about 2-3 years until I picked up AGoT and ACoK. However, I still think it starts out well and only completely falls apart much later, around Book 7. I'll be rereading the series for the first time in about six years in early 2008 (to preprare for the arrival of the final volume), and it will be interesting to see if my opinion has changed after getting into Erikson, Bakker, Lynch and others.

[Happy Ent]

Did you just read the first book, then?

Yes. Are you saying I need to read more to get an impression?

Now I get it! Yes, I only read the first book, and made a mistake in my previous message, writing WoT instead of EotW. Thanks for pointing that out. Silly me.