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May - Reading 2018 - Have another?


RedEyedGhost

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I don't think I ever posted after finishing The Invasion by @Peadar.  It was excellent.  Really enjoyed the flow of the ending/climax, and then again the final bit.  Was very thrown off when the word hashtag appeared, and loved the explanation :lol: 

After that I read The Thousand Names by Django Wexler.  Wow that was fantastic.  Predominantly told in two PsOV as an army makes it way back to a city they had fled after a revolution overthrew the nation's prince (who is a non-factor member of the army's wagon train) and a new, clever colonel has arrived with (very green) reinforcements from across the sea.  One of the POV characters is a captain of "low birth" but from a rich merchant family that all died 19 years early in a fire which caused him to seek out this post across the sea to get as far from those memories as possible (most of his fellow captains earned their spots in this army because of failures on their home continent), and the other is a "ranker" (private - and for the first chapter only) who bought her spot in the army as she was fleeing from a "bordering" school that was set to marry her off (sell her) to a farmer in need of wife as they had just done to her lover - the army is males only so she's living a lie and is under constant worry/threat of her secret being discovered.  It all sounds a little clichéd as I type this out, but I never once felt that as I was reading it.  Highly recommended - especially for fans of Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson.

I then did something I haven't done in a very, very long time - I immediately started the second book in the series - The Shadow Throne.  I honestly cannot remember the last time I went straight into a subsequent book of a series; I love to hop around genres/authors/series.  Loving this second book too.  It does kind of make the first book feel like an extended prologue, and that's not a bad things.  Especially with the introduction of a third primary POV (each book has one antagonist POV that we did into at the start of each "part").  

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19 minutes ago, RedEyedGhost said:

I don't think I ever posted after finishing The Invasion by @Peadar.  It was excellent.  Really enjoyed the flow of the ending/climax, and then again the final bit.  Was very thrown off when the word hashtag appeared, and loved the explanation :lol: 

 

Aw, thanks, REG! :) 

 

For myself, I'm reading Adrian Tchaikovsky's The Hyena and the Hawk

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Just started on Richard Morgan's Altered Carbon, and I'm really enjoying it so far, I'm at maybe 25% of the book so far. However, one plothole I noticed is bugging me.

Spoiler

Bancroft is an ultra-rich powermonger with influence in the highest political circles, and yet he has absolutely no influence over the Bay City police force? There is no one in the chain of command willing to humor him in exchange for a bribe or favor, and he has not other choice but to hire an off-world private specialist? For such a dark and cynical novel, this is surprisingly naive.

Maybe this gets explained later on, so I'll give it time.

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I finished Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts and loved it.  More Tremblay soon.

Next I read Pratt's Blood Money.  This is a series of self published and fairly pulpy legal thrillers that is actually pretty good.  This is the weakest of the series so far, though.  This kind of thing is a good palate cleanser between more speculative or heavier works.

Now I am reading Gaiman's Preludes and Nocturnes for the however many'th time.

 

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On 02/05/2018 at 9:02 PM, Peadar said:

For myself, I'm reading Adrian Tchaikovsky's The Hyena and the Hawk

I finished that a couple of days ago, I thought it was a good conclusion to the trilogy. Although there's quite a few battle scenes in it I liked that it managed to keep the focus on the underlying causes of the conflict rather than just the fighting. It was a series that did use a few traditional epic fantasy tropes but I thought it did a good job of putting a unique spin on them. As in Tchaikovsky's other books I thought there were plenty of interesting characters in this.

Since then I read Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology, which I enjoyed, I thought it was a good summary of the myths. I think I might have enjoyed it more if I hadn't read Joanne Harris' The Gospel of Loki a couple of years ago, which featured most of the same myths although told from Loki's perspective.

I've now started Dave Hutchinson's Europe in Midnight. I did like Europe in Autumn when I read it last year but felt it maybe took too long to reveal what was really going on, hopefully the second book will work better now that the premise has already been established.

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On 5/4/2018 at 11:40 PM, Lily Valley said:

Taking a break from Serious to read a cat detective mystery.  It's fun.

Aiya! You can't write something intriguing like "cat detective mystery" and then not share the title and author.

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Cat detective mystery has to be Lilian Braun, right? I used to devour those books!!

I'm still reading Rocket Men. Hopefully I will be done soon, and I'd like to read another novel at some point before I die.

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On 5/5/2018 at 5:59 PM, Triskele said:

I'm about half way through book 2 in Vendermeer's Southern Reach trilogy, and while I'm still curious to see where it goes it's quite a bit different than the first book and not as gripping.

I felt the same way.  The first book was tightly written, while books 2 & 3 meander a lot more.  Also, don't expect it to really go anywhere, it doesn't conclude all that well, though the ride is.... interesting.

I finally finished The Black Prism and all I can say is.... BOLLOCKS!!! :lol: I actually may read the next one eventually when I'm in a Sanderson'esque mood, but good lord, going in thinking this would have anything close to good writing was a mistake. 

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Started up Heroes Die by Matthew Stover yesterday.  ~100 pages in and so far it's really gripped me, plus the writing is just SO much better than the last book I read, which is a refresher.

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On 5/6/2018 at 7:57 AM, Teng Ai Hui said:

Aiya! You can't write something intriguing like "cat detective mystery" and then not share the title and author.

Sorry!   It's The Case of Jack the Nipper (A Chronicle of Mr. Marmee) by H.L. Stephens.  Very victorian language. I spent several pages SEVERAL times waiting for an exhausted character to have some tea to revive his spirits before conveying news.  I was all, "OUT WITH IT AND STOP EATING THAT PUFF PASTRY RIGHT NOW!!!"

Edit:  @Starkness  NOT FAMILIAR WITH BRAUN!  :runs off to look for her:

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