red snow Posted January 4, 2019 Share Posted January 4, 2019 1 hour ago, williamjm said: I think Empire was his first published novel, and I think that showed at times. I did enjoy it, but I think his writing did steadily improve throughout the series, and the storylines get more compelling at the same time. It's a 10 book series (although there are also 4 short story collections in the same world). I did really like Guns of the Dawn. It's a bit different to most of his other books (like Children of Time), since they tend to have very high-concept world-building, whereas in this the world feels comparatively mundane. I liked the character development, as the protagonist goes from a life that could have come from a Regency Romance into her world's equivalent of the Vietnam War. Children of Ruin is out in May, apparently, although Tchaikovsky being Tchaikovsky he also has a book coming out in April and a second book in May. While looking this up, I found a blog post where he said that he's recently decided to quit his day job as a lawyer and write full-time, which is faintly alarming considering how fast he was writing books when not doing it full time. A book every 2 months i imagine if he's doing do full time. There are Comic book writers who are slower than him! I'm glad he's getting enough traction to quit his day job. I keep hoping someone will notice shadows of the apt and see how ripe that is for a tv adaptation. The idea alone is good enough but there are plenty of characters and storylines to hijack. Apologies for turning this into the Adrian Tchaikovsky thread! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Richard II Posted January 4, 2019 Share Posted January 4, 2019 Note to self: Catch up on Tchaikovsky Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seli Posted January 5, 2019 Share Posted January 5, 2019 Finished Foundryside by Robert Bennett, nice and quick heist type story in an interesting universe. Works well on multiple levels for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedEyedGhost Posted January 5, 2019 Share Posted January 5, 2019 1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said: Note to self: Catch up on Tchaikovsky Inconceivable! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starkess Posted January 5, 2019 Share Posted January 5, 2019 Thanks for the info, everyone! This was my first Tchaikovsky book so I wasn't sure what to expect. I didn't mind the writing (I don't mind non-strict third person POV), so it's good to hear that the story branches out and improves. And oops, only 10 books! I'll definitely get back to the next one soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iskaral Pust Posted January 5, 2019 Share Posted January 5, 2019 I read The Court Of Broken Knives by Anna Smith Spark, book #1 of the Empires Of Dust series. This is grimdark fantasy like a blend of The Black Company and Prince Of Thorns. The prose is very good but the overall style is very much a thematic exploration rather than a plot-driven or character-driven narrative. The central theme as the plot unfolds — with uneven pacing and some pointless POV (Orhan) — is whether to hope for the best of a person or to fear their worst. Drug addiction is used as a relatable metaphor. Overall it’s only ok. I enjoyed the prose but I thought the author was too focused on the emo angst backstory of everyone and not present enough with any of the characters. I’m all for literary fiction blending into the fantasy genre, but she didn’t get the balance right here. Based on the quality of the prose, I’ll be interested to see what she writes after this series. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peadar Posted January 5, 2019 Share Posted January 5, 2019 Taking @Astromech's suggestion and reading Constantinople: The Last Great Siege, 1453 by Roger Crowley -- What a great writer he is! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starkess Posted January 5, 2019 Share Posted January 5, 2019 I picked up Commonwealth by Ann Patchett from the library. Don't really know what it's about, but going to give it a shot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astromech Posted January 6, 2019 Share Posted January 6, 2019 8 hours ago, Peadar said: Taking @Astromech's suggestion and reading Constantinople: The Last Great Siege, 1453 by Roger Crowley -- What a great writer he is! Now I'm kicking myself for not buying his book Conquerors about the Portuguese Empire the other day when I saw it on the shelves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peadar Posted January 6, 2019 Share Posted January 6, 2019 9 hours ago, Astromech said: Now I'm kicking myself for not buying his book Conquerors about the Portuguese Empire the other day when I saw it on the shelves. That sounds great too! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red snow Posted January 6, 2019 Share Posted January 6, 2019 On 1/4/2019 at 11:23 PM, Darth Richard II said: Note to self: Catch up on Tchaikovsky Now he's a full time writer he may be publishing faster than we read! He's got a good head start on you too. 9 hours ago, Astromech said: Now I'm kicking myself for not buying his book Conquerors about the Portuguese Empire the other day when I saw it on the shelves. These seem quite interesting and the Portuguese empire is one I'm not familiar with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Astromech Posted January 6, 2019 Share Posted January 6, 2019 4 hours ago, Peadar said: That sounds great too! 4 hours ago, red snow said: These seem quite interesting and the Portuguese empire is one I'm not familiar with. The Pirate History Podcast mentioned Crowley's Empires of the Sea so I decided to read it. I was unfamiliar with Crowley but am indebted to the podcast for pointing the author out to me. Very good narrative histories about fascinating events, conflicts and people. Yeah the Portuguese Empire gets overshadowed by the Spanish Empire. Another subject I need to read more about. His fourth book is City of Fortune ,discussing Venetian history. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Plessiez Posted January 6, 2019 Share Posted January 6, 2019 I didn't read much fiction in 2018 (or at least I didn't finish much) but I''m going to make a bit more of an effort to do so this year. To start the year I'm hoping to complete the following this month: Hunger (Elise Blackwell) The Last Days of New Paris (China Mieville) New York 2140 (Kim Stanley Robinson) The Sea Watch (Adrian Tchaikovsky) Jerusalem Poker (Edward Whittemore) Alif the Unseen (G. Willow Wilson) Like everyone else, it seems, I'm reading something by Tchaikovsky. I think I read the first five Shadows of the Apt books over the first half of 2017 then took a bit of a deliberate break; I'm going to try to finish this series this year if I can. On 1/4/2019 at 9:37 PM, williamjm said: Tchaikovsky being Tchaikovsky he also has a book coming out in April and a second book in May. While looking this up, I found a blog post where he said that he's recently decided to quit his day job as a lawyer and write full-time, which is faintly alarming considering how fast he was writing books when not doing it full time. I'd guess lots of Shadows of the Apt was written (in some form) before Empire in Black and Gold was published, so perhaps the speed at which those books came out doesn't reflect the speed at which they were written.. But even if so, I'm also pretty surprised to learn that Tchaikovsky has a day job to quit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red snow Posted January 6, 2019 Share Posted January 6, 2019 20 minutes ago, Plessiez said: I didn't read much fiction in 2018 (or at least I didn't finish much) but I''m going to make a bit more of an effort to do so this year. To start the year I'm hoping to complete the following this month: Hunger (Elise Blackwell) The Last Days of New Paris (China Mieville) New York 2140 (Kim Stanley Robinson) The Sea Watch (Adrian Tchaikovsky) Jerusalem Poker (Edward Whittemore) Alif the Unseen (G. Willow Wilson) Like everyone else, it seems, I'm reading something by Tchaikovsky. I think I read the first five Shadows of the Apt books over the first half of 2017 then took a bit of a deliberate break; I'm going to try to finish this series this year if I can. I'd guess lots of Shadows of the Apt was written (in some form) before Empire in Black and Gold was published, so perhaps the speed at which those books came out doesn't reflect the speed at which they were written.. But even if so, I'm also pretty surprised to learn that Tchaikovsky has a day job to quit. I think that's true particularly for the first 3-4 books. Still he manages 2 books a year (he's published 19 books since 2008 not including short stories) easily and he'd have required quite a stockpile if he was writing less than that a year and keeping books coming at that pace. Like he says in the blog about it he doesn't anticipate more books coming out. Seems like he might try comics and i daresay try and relax and make use of some free time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garett Hornwood Posted January 6, 2019 Author Share Posted January 6, 2019 Finished Founding Rivals by Chris DeRose, though it was good book describing how James Madison and James Monroe came to be standing against one another for a House seat for the 1st Congress under the Constitution and how the outcome probably saved the Constitution from getting scraped by a second Constitutional Convention. I've started The Rise and Fall of the British Empire by Lawrence James. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
williamjm Posted January 6, 2019 Share Posted January 6, 2019 I finished Tchaikovsky's Dogs of War, which I thought was very good. It did cover a lot of ground and packed in more plot developments and ideas than I'd initially been expecting, there are times when I'd have been happy to read a bit more detail about some of the events but at the same time the pacing does give the book a real sense of momentum. For a dog genetically engineered to be a hybrid killing machine Rex is a likeable protagonist and gets some good character development. Tchaikovsky also manages to give the other characters personality, even if the character in question might be a swarm of bees. There are plenty of books in which new scientific breakthroughs lead to unexpected consequences, I liked that this one pointed out that while there can certainly be bad or even horrific consequences there can be good things happening as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paxter Posted January 7, 2019 Share Posted January 7, 2019 I finished Mrs Dalloway and The Power and the Glory in December. I found the former very challenging but rewarding. There were some seriously amazing pieces of prose and I enjoyed the juxtaposition between the wealthy, upper-class Clarissa and the shell-shocked Septimus. Well worth a read provided you can tolerate the stream-of-consciousness style. The latter took me quite a long time to get into. I didn't really understand why so many non-Mexican sub-characters were introduced at the start of the novel but more or less dropped as the novel wore on. Once the story truly focussed on the whisky priest, the lieutenant and the mestizo, the novel was a lot more engaging and enjoyable. But overall, I'm not really interested in reading any more Graham Greene. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inkdaub Posted January 8, 2019 Share Posted January 8, 2019 I tried to read Yoon Ha Lee's Ninefox Gambit but crashed and burned for the second time. So I moved on to Polansky's A City Dreaming. So far so good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frey Filet Posted January 8, 2019 Share Posted January 8, 2019 Finally giving Dan Simmons' Carrion Comfort a try after seeing it on so many to-read lists (I'm a big fan of his Hyperion/Endymion cantos). For those who have read it, I'm curious to know your thoughts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyll.Ing. Posted January 8, 2019 Share Posted January 8, 2019 Finally got around to read all of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, plus the sixth-of-three book by Eoin Colfer. I had read it all many years ago, and didn't remember much beyond the first book and the Colfer add-on (those were the only ones I had read multiple times). To be honest, it didn't exactly blow my mind. Not sure what it was about it. I presume the unique presentation style is what made it a classic, since few of the characters are that intriguing (Marvin the robot is a classic, of course, but the traits of all other characters aren't much to write home about), the series jump locations all the time and none of them are dwelled on for long, and the books hardly have a story either beyond book 1. The narration remained delightfully quirky throughout, but the action kind of comes from nowhere and goes nowhere, and the end (before Colfer's sixth book) is sudden and depressing too. I don't regret having read it, but I'm not sure how many times I'll bother to re-read it either. No hard feelings, but also not many soft ones. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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