April 2015 Reads

[Arwyl]

Just finished Promise of Blood and currently reading The Crimson Campaign. I now understand the reviews about minimal world building and structure of the magic system. First book was entertaining enough, and I am really loving Poe and Mihali, so I'm going to continue and finish the trilogy. Whenever the powder mages do what they do though, I can't get this mental image of people getting high in clubs here. LOL.

[Nearly Headless Ned]

Station Eleven-Emily St John Mandel.

Really good this and worth all the nominations it's been getting.It could have been another tired and generic post apocalyptic yawn fest, but the characters,writing and themes are too strong for that.

[The Wolves]

Started A Tale of Two Cities so far so good.

[polishgenius]

It's weird, with Station Eleven. I read it a few weeks ago at roughly the same time as Peter Heller's The Dog Stars, also a story of living in a disease-caused apocalypse, and one with at least some similar themes of social relations and nostalgia in the apocalypse even though it approaches them very very differently. And at the time I thought it was a fair bit better, in large part because I thought Dog Stars was reaching a little too brazenly for some tools of emotional manipulation- but in the intervening time, my mind's wandered back to Dog Stars much more often, whereas Station Eleven faded, to the point where I couldn't remember how it ended without checking. In fact it's only the pre- and during-apocalypse segements that I've found memorable- much of that, the dialogue and character and the sheer writing skill is superb, but the after, not so much.


Still, I can see why it's getting the praise that it is. I loved it while I was reading it. But I do recommend The Dog Stars to anyone who likes Station Eleven too.

[Nearly Headless Ned]

It's weird, with Station Eleven. I read it a few weeks ago at roughly the same time as Peter Heller's The Dog Stars, also a story of living in a disease-caused apocalypse, and one with at least some similar themes of social relations and nostalgia in the apocalypse even though it approaches them very very differently. And at the time I thought it was a fair bit better, in large part because I thought Dog Stars was reaching a little too brazenly for some tools of emotional manipulation- but in the intervening time, my mind's wandered back to Dog Stars much more often, whereas Station Eleven faded, to the point where I couldn't remember how it ended without checking. In fact it's only the pre- and during-apocalypse segements that I've found memorable- much of that, the dialogue and character and the sheer writing skill is superb, but the after, not so much.

Still, I can see why it's getting the praise that it is. I loved it while I was reading it. But I do recommend The Dog Stars to anyone who likes Station Eleven too.

A Canticle For Liebowitz by Walter M Miller Jr is probably my favourite post apocalyptic tale. Just the sheer scope of it.

[Darth Richard II]

A Canticle For Liebowitz by Walter M Miller Jr is probably my favourite post apocalyptic tale. Just the sheer scope of it.

fuck yes. +1

[polishgenius]

I've had Canticle on my list for years and years but somehow never got round to it yet. It is basically the founding father of the genre was we know it, of course, so I'll get there eventually.


It is though set a lot further into the future than these two, right?

[First of My Name]

I've had Canticle on my list for years and years but somehow never got round to it yet. It is basically the founding father of the genre was we know it, of course, so I'll get there eventually.

It is though set a lot further into the future than these two, right?

I've wanted to read it for some time as well.

I believe it takes place in 3 different periods in time.

[TheRevanchist]

Finished The White Rose (and so I am done with Books of The North). Easily, the best book in the trilogy with an awesome bittersweet ending.

Time to read the two final Hyperion Cantos books before I'll come back to The Black Company.

[Seasick Shrimp]

Just finished The voyage of the dawn treader, and it was by far my absolute favourite in the Narnia-series so far. It was a really lovely read, with an exciting journey to the east. It was simply magical, everything that they found to the east was so fascinating and awestrucking, loved it!

And, in the end;

It was so sad to see the valiant Reepicheep go by himself into Aslan's country. I hope he had a good time there and that he found friends and wasn't lonely :) I was also sad to hear that it was Edmund's and Lucy's last visit to Narnia, but I had been feeling it coming.

So, after having this wonderful experience I'm jumping directly into The silver chair. Hopefully it will be just as good or even better! Now that my journey through Narnia is slowly coming to its end I'm starting to feel really sad, so Lewis's books have obviously have a deeper impact on me than I thought, which is great, of course. Looking forward to seeing how the whole story of Narnia wraps up!

[Jo498]

I am almost finished with Dante's "Divine Comedy" (in German translation), only 9 cantos to go.

I had started this already twice, probably once still as a teenager and the last time might have been almost 20 years ago and never made it further than the first few cantos of "Paradiso". It is tough going sometimes (and I guess the poetry is much better in the original language, unfortunately I do not know enough to get through even a dual language edition in reasonable time) but it is a fascinating piece. Being somewhat more familiar with medieval philosophy and theology probably helped for the Paradiso not becoming a hermetic bore.

[Guinevere Seaworth]

I finished my re-read of Post Captain by Patrick O'Brian.

Now reading a highly anticipated book, Guns of the Dawn by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I loved his Shadows of the Apt series. This is a standalone book and completely unrelated to his series.

[Talleyrand]

Finished The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng. Great read. Beautifully written with some great characters and some pretty emotional scenes. Bit heavy though, need to find something light to read next

[Nictarion]

Finally got around to reading Dune, and I'm not dissapointed at all. It's as great as I've always heard. I definitely regret waiting so long to read it. I would easily say it's one of the best books I've ever read.

Have heard mixed things about the sequels, but I loved it too much to not at least try them.

[TheRevanchist]

Started Endymium (third book in Hyperion Cantos). Only 10 percent so far, but I am really liking it.

[aceluby]

Started Endymium (third book in Hyperion Cantos). Only 10 percent so far, but I am really liking it.

Glad you're liking it! I enjoyed the hell out of those books.

About 300 pages into The Name of the Wind by Rothfuss and this is probably the best book I've read all year; and I've read some really good books this year. I'm just enthralled with it and just 'get' the main character. Really hits home for me, and I'm loving it.

[Iskaral Pust]

I agree with recs above for the Canticle of Liebowitz.

I just finished Golden Son, the second volume in the Red Rising trilogy. If the first volume was similar to The Hunger Games, the second volume is a Roman civil war retold as a space opera. All the future tech is axiomatic and under-explained, almost like a magic system. Entertaining, full of action and lots of betrayals and shifting alliances, lots of highs and lows for the single POV protagonist. Still too much anguish in the internal POV. It was a light, fun, quick read.

Now reading Abercrombie's Half a King. Very good, as usual from Abercrombie. We've seen his other crippled and naive characters before, this protagonist is both. Yarvi doesn't have the dark sense of humor of Glotka nor the world-weary wisdom of Logen. It feels a little YA-ish compared to Abercrombie's other books, but still very good.

[Starkess]

I finished Adaptation by Malinda Lo. It was...not good. Area 51 teenage fanfic would be how I would sum it up. I read this one for book club, but I ended up not finishing in time. Just as well, I don't like shitting on the book when everyone else likes it. Apparently there are sequels but I am not touching them for a second.

Decided to get back to CJ Cherryh's atevi series. I am on book seven now, Destroyer, which I am looking forward to reading.

[HexMachina]

I finished The Steel Remains today. My impressions can be summed up by the word "meh". It was an alright book, but I was never hooked. There was never a time I was reading and thinking 'just one more page!' I also had several issues with the book too. Two which jumped out at me:

The geography/setting: This is possibly more of a problem with me, but I just felt the world, and where everything was in relation to each other, was never really explained. In addition to this, I felt there was an awful lot of reference to events, places and people as though I should know who/what/where they are, but I wasn't really following it.

The characters: So, our three main characters are Ringil, Archeth and Egar. While they are all fairly well developed, I just felt that they were too similar to one another. I understand they are weary, damaged war veterans, and some of their similarities are a result of this, but I would have liked them to be a bit more distinguished from each other.

Other than that, I didn't have any huge issues with it, it just failed to grab my attention. Not sure I'll continue with the trilogy. Maybe if I have nothing else to read some time.

Up next, The Wilfull Princess and the Piebald Prince. I could have sworn I had read this already, but from what I've read so far I think I must have read a preview/sample and then never got round to buying it, because I only recall things from the very beginning, Oh well! Very enjoyable so far. Also, a question for anyone who uses Kobo, or possibly other ebook companies. I bought my version of this for £2, but there was also another for £9, but the descriptions were exactly the same. Wondering if anyone knows what the difference was (I though perhaps one might be illustrated, but the description made no mention of that)

[Procrastimancer]

I finished Station Eleven a few days ago and wasn't as taken with it as others seem to be. It was good with some really great moments scattered throughout and I liked it, but I don't think it offered anything particularly impressive or memorable. It probably doesn't help that I just read The Dog Stars by Peter Heller last month, which features the same sort of apocalypse. Station Eleven does it better (at least its style doesn't make me want to beat my head against a wall), but reading it so soon after really steals the freshness from it.

Now I'm reading Mort(e) by Robert Repino. I'm a hundred something pages in and still don't know what to think of it.