Second Quarter 2019 Reading

[Ravenhair]

We Cast A Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin, NO attorney and auteur extraordinaire (also a helluva a nice person). Linking an NPR review of his book (beware of spoilers if you click the link). 

https://www.npr.org/2019/01/30/689747338/in-we-cast-a-shadow-the-horrors-are-close-to-home

[Paxter]

On ‎6‎/‎2‎/‎2019 at 1:16 PM, Triskele said:

I bought a few non-fictions the other day including Jared Diamond's Upheaval, but I also picked up Tad Williams' first Memory, Sorrow, & Thorn book.  Never read that one and maybe gonna try it out.  Impressive GRRM quote on there.  

I'm also reading (at a glacial pace) the first instalment of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. It's taken over a month to get through 400 pages!

Meanwhile I've started Sally Rooney's Normal People, which has been incredible so far.

[williamjm]

On 6/18/2019 at 6:59 PM, Paxter said:

I'm also reading (at a glacial pace) the first instalment of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. It's taken over a month to get through 400 pages!

Have you emerged from the tunnels beneath the Hayholt yet? Some parts of the book did feel a bit interminable, but I did think the pace did improve a bit as the story progressed.

[Paxter]

2 hours ago, williamjm said:

Have you emerged from the tunnels beneath the Hayholt yet? Some parts of the book did feel a bit interminable, but I did think the pace did improve a bit as the story progressed.

Haha yes we’ve emerged from the Hayholt. I’m not going to quit the series re-read anyway - I enjoyed the books as a teenager and I’m keen to read the new series (at some stage!) after this. At the current pace I’ll finish the final book in 2025.

[Peadar]

I really enjoyed Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It will be on my Hugo Nomination ballot next year, I'm sure. Up next, is Jared Diamond's Upheaval. 

[williamjm]

7 hours ago, Peadar said:

I really enjoyed Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It will be on my Hugo Nomination ballot next year, I'm sure.

I think I'll definitely be nominating it next year as well.

I've continued going through this year's nominees. Seanan McGuire's Beneath the Sugar Sky was a fun read, but perhaps a bit insubstantial in terms of plot.

I liked P. Djeli Clark's The Black God's Drums better, it's an urban fantasy/steampunk story set in an alternate history New Orleans where a slave revolt lead to it becoming an independent state in the early 19th century. We were talking in the urban fantasy thread about the importance of setting to the genre, and I thought this did a good job of portraying its vision of New Orleans. The two main characters were interesting as well, there's definitely potential for sequels and I'd be interested in reading more about them. The plot itself is decent, although towards the end it starts to feel a bit rushed, I think the story could maybe have benefited from being a bit longer.

[ljkeane]

 I've just read Limited Wish by Mark Lawrence was ok and The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter which I really enjoyed. Limited Wish wasn't bad but it felt a bit too similar to the first book. It probably doesn't help that it's only been a couple of weeks since I read One Word Kill. The Rage of Dragons was just a lot of fun. It's fairly similar to Anthony Ryan's Blood Song before it went off the rails with the second and third books. 

Next up I'm going to read Children of Ruin.

[Iskaral Pust]

7 hours ago, ljkeane said:

 I've just read Limited Wish by Mark Lawrence was ok and The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter which I really enjoyed. Limited Wish wasn't bad but it felt a bit too similar to the first book. It probably doesn't help that it's only been a couple of weeks since I read One Word Kill. The Rage of Dragons was just a lot of fun. It's fairly similar to Anthony Ryan's Blood Song before it went off the rails with the second and third books. 

Next up I'm going to read Children of Ruin.

In that case I’ll wait a while to read Limited Wish.

[Joey Crows]

After a couple of years of pushing, my wife has finally gotten me to tackle Neil Gaiman's Sandman. It didn't hurt that I watched Good Omens and absolutely loved it. Very different of course, but here I go!

[Isis]

On 6/20/2019 at 6:16 AM, Triskele said:

I was actually come in to say that I am seriously struggling with the first Tad Williams MST book.  I'm about 200 in and seriously meh.  I will probably slog through this one whether it picks up for me or not, but expectations for the series are lowered right now.  

I wouldn't trouble yourself with it. I read all four books on a two week 'sun, sea and sand' holiday in my early 20's. But life is too short for books that don't interest you and you really aren't missing much if you don't read them.

[Ormond]

I just finished The Barbed Coil by J. V. Jones, the first novel I have read by that author. It's her "standalone" fantasy, fitting into the subgroup of fantasy literature where a person from our world is suddenly sucked into a Renaissance-like culture where magic works.

There was much that frustrated me about this book. I disliked about the first third of it. At one point there was a passage describing the evil king character's physical handicap in a way that seemed to imply that the most evil people all have such handicaps. I never got interested in the main character, the woman who's thrown from our world into the fantasy. She had some "Mary Sue" aspects and somehow her emotions weren't believable to me. Though the last two thirds of the book were much better and more compelling, the final chapter after the evil king is defeated wrapped up everything too quickly and neatly, almost in a "happily ever after" manner that didn't fit for me in a story which had a lot of graphic violence.

However, the magic system (the magic wielders in this world are those who illuminate manuscripts, who are able while they are drawing and painting to participate in battles long distance) was unique and interesting, and the characterization of many of the secondary characters was excellent. The inkmaker and scribe's helper Emith, and his mother, are two of my favorite characters in all of fantasy. There also is, of all things, a pet dog to the wife of the evil king who is one of the best "non-magical" animal characters I've run across in a fantasy. Overall I think I'd give it a B+, and it certainly makes me unsurprised that Jones's more recent fantasy series, A Sword of Shadows, has generally gotten excellent reviews. The Barbed Coil is the sort of flawed novel that showed that its author nevertheless had great future potential.

[Derfel Cadarn]

Her Sword of Shadows series is excellent, an improvement over the Book of Words series set before it.

[Iskaral Pust]

20 hours ago, Ormond said:

I just finished The Barbed Coil by J. V. Jones, the first novel I have read by that author. It's her "standalone" fantasy, fitting into the subgroup of fantasy literature where a person from our world is suddenly sucked into a Renaissance-like culture where magic works.

There was much that frustrated me about this book. I disliked about the first third of it. At one point there was a passage describing the evil king character's physical handicap in a way that seemed to imply that the most evil people all have such handicaps. I never got interested in the main character, the woman who's thrown from our world into the fantasy. She had some "Mary Sue" aspects and somehow her emotions weren't believable to me. Though the last two thirds of the book were much better and more compelling, the final chapter after the evil king is defeated wrapped up everything too quickly and neatly, almost in a "happily ever after" manner that didn't fit for me in a story which had a lot of graphic violence.

However, the magic system (the magic wielders in this world are those who illuminate manuscripts, who are able while they are drawing and painting to participate in battles long distance) was unique and interesting, and the characterization of many of the secondary characters was excellent. The inkmaker and scribe's helper Emith, and his mother, are two of my favorite characters in all of fantasy. There also is, of all things, a pet dog to the wife of the evil king who is one of the best "non-magical" animal characters I've run across in a fantasy. Overall I think I'd give it a B+, and it certainly makes me unsurprised that Jones's more recent fantasy series, A Sword of Shadows, has generally gotten excellent reviews. The Barbed Coil is the sort of flawed novel that showed that its author nevertheless had great future potential.

 

15 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Her Sword of Shadows series is excellent, an improvement over the Book of Words series set before it.

Agreed with Derfel.  There was an enormous leap in the quality and maturity of her writing.

(and I think B+ is generous for Barbed Coil or the Book Of Words generally)

[ljkeane]

The Sword of Shadows series is really good, there’s also a pretty high chance the series isn’t getting finished though.

[Darth Richard II]

6 hours ago, ljkeane said:

The Sword of Shadows series is really good, there’s also a pretty high chance the series isn’t getting finished though.

Um, there’s a very very high chance that it is.

[ljkeane]

2 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Um, there’s a very very high chance that it is.

It's been nearly 10 years since the last book. I know she's gone back to trying to finish Endlords but I wouldn't be hugely confident it's going to happen and on top of that finishing the series in one book seems like a stretch.

[Darth Richard II]

48 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

It's been nearly 10 years since the last book. I know she's gone back to trying to finish Endlords but I wouldn't be hugely confident it's going to happen and on top of that finishing the series in one book seems like a stretch.

Last I heard she was about half way done with the next book, not sure how many more there are supposed to be though, There's a topic on it somewhere.

[Paxter]

All done with Sally Rooney's Normal People. Wow. This is one of those books that doesn't seem to be doing much on the surface. It's set in Galway and Dublin in the early 2010s and follows a fairly typical story of adolescent romance and relationships. But it really is something special. Rooney just has a way of getting the characters to sink beneath your own skin so that you get to know them almost better than your own loved ones. And her way of handling conversation and other interactions is so subtle, so realistic and so direct that you really get captivated by what is happening. The tone is sombre (and sometimes downright depressing) but with enough moments to not feel unnecessarily angsty. This was a 10/10 for me - best non-genre read of the year so far.

I'm still wading through The Dragonbone Chair. I'll pick up Austen's Northanger Abbey next (nearly done with her main works - just have Emma to go after this).

[Peadar]

I'm reading Calgar's Siege by Paul Kearney. A bubblegum read for me, although, I have to admit it's weird these days to come across a book with absolutely* no women in it. Is that standard in the Black Library?

 

 

*Not 100% accurate, but almost.

[Astromech]

Finished the audiobook of Alex Kershaw's The First Wave: the D-Day Warriors Who Led the Way to Victory in World War II. Excellent account of the Allied Invasion by focusing on individual experiences, personalizing such an epic event.