Second Quarter 2020 reading

[williamjm]

16 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Finished The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams. Fuck me that ending was gloriously downbeat in its abject destructiveness. (Listen to the score for Season 1 and 2 of Game of Thrones when reading - it's a good sonic match). 

I get the feeling that I know how this is all going to play down, but now I'm totally curious. Onward to Book 2 of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn - Stone of Farewell! 

From what I remember the first book felt like it had the slowest pace, although the series is never exactly fast paced.

15 hours ago, Wilbur said:

So help me out in preparation for reading Williams.  For some random reason, I have never read any of his books, so I have them lined up for this summer.  Anything you would tell a first-time reader?

It may be 'just' a trilogy but set aside plenty of reading time - the third book is one of the longest novels ever published.

[Ormond]

Just finished last night The Retrieval Artist and Other Stories by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, which starts out with her Hugo-nominated novella "The Retrieval Artist", on which a series of science fiction private eye novels were later based. I enjoyed most of the stories though I thought a couple of them had junior high school age kids being way more clueless than even typical junior high school kids are. 

Now plan to begin the third book in Clive Barker's Abarat young adult series. 

[Zorral]

Interviewed about his latest novel (09/2019), Sidi: Un relato de frontera, Arturo Pérez-Reverte (author of wonderful historical fiction Alatriste series) believes a novel is made of three parts: documentation, imagination and personal experience.

He defines imagination as "narrative talent."

Some readers have objected to where this author's own narrative talent and his experience, plus the Muslim and Christian documents he's studied, took him with the great national hero -- who, when the Cid lived, there wasn't even an idea of a 'reconquista', much less a nation called "Spain." After all, even Charlemagne's forays into al-Andulus were mercenary jobs, fighting some Muslim states on the behalf, for pay and booty, other Muslim states.

 

Quote

"El Cid was a guy who, in a turbulent, bloody and uncertain territory, was looking for his life. El Cid was a mercenary!"

Then there is the place of landscape in novel creation. Though Pérez-Reverte didn't include landscape in his definition of the parts that make a novel, he puts it in the title, "Sidi Un relato de frontera." He sees Sidi moving in a world that is a John Ford Western, which makes so much sense in so many ways.

Evidently many readers feel offended by this portrait of Sidi -- they are are rejecting what this novel is, which above all is a novelist's vision. Also, it seems a lot of readers were expecting another version of the Charleton Heston-Sophia Loren `1961`film, El Cid.

Sometimes readers adore a novelist's vision of a notable historical figure, as readers adore Mantel's Thomas Cromwell.

There isn't an English translation of Sidi, as far as I know, at least not yet.  I'm laboriously making my way through it in Spanish, which then changes how the text affects me, because the first effect is always me, struggling with the language -- because while I can get along fine in Spanish on the street, etc., this is a much more more sophisticated Spanish -- and my Spanish was essentially learned in Havana, which is by no means 'literary' Spanish. But one gets on, one way and another.

But the author is a very good writer, which makes it all possible in the first place!

[IlyaP]

6 hours ago, Wilbur said:

Thank you all for helping me set my expectations.

Do I need to have any special reading order instructions?

Managing expectations is useful when dedicating time to something this big. 

As @williamjm said - set aside plenty of reading time. Knowing when it was published and the norms of the genre upon its release might be useful background info as well.

[The Marquis de Leech]

10 hours ago, williamjm said:

From what I remember the first book felt like it had the slowest pace, although the series is never exactly fast paced.

It may be 'just' a trilogy but set aside plenty of reading time - the third book is one of the longest novels ever published.

I think of it as a tetralogy, rather than a trilogy. I shudder of To Green Angel Tower as a single volume. 

[Darth Richard II]

10 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

I think of it as a tetralogy, rather than a trilogy. I shudder of To Green Angel Tower as a single volume. 

Pfft I read it in hardcover in one sitting when it first came out!

[williamjm]

13 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

I think of it as a tetralogy, rather than a trilogy. I shudder of To Green Angel Tower as a single volume. 

I read it as two paperbacks as well. I wonder if it was published today whether they would do it as four books, there's probably less of an expectation now that every fantasy series should naturally be a trilogy.

[Peadar]

On 5/19/2020 at 6:16 PM, Darth Richard II said:

Pfft I read it in hardcover in one sitting when it first came out!

Pah! I read it while standing on one foot atop a pillar in the desert.

[Luzifer's right hand]

3 hours ago, Peadar said:

Pah! I read it while standing on one foot atop a pillar in the desert.

High in cocaine I hope. 

[Jo498]

I read Williams' doorstops only once, almost 25 years ago but wasn't it mainly a technical reason for the split of the last volume in the pbck edition? I don't remember a division in two large section within the book.

[Darth Richard II]

13 minutes ago, Jo498 said:

I read Williams' doorstops only once, almost 25 years ago but wasn't it mainly a technical reason for the split of the last volume in the pbck edition? I don't remember a division in two large section within the book.

Yeah, the third book is one of the longest ever written.

[ljkeane]

I finished The Gutter Prayer. It wasn't bad but it didn't really hold my attention so it took me a while to get through.

Next up I'm going to read Ironclads by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

[Derfel Cadarn]

On 5/14/2020 at 6:42 AM, Leofric said:

Been a while since I posted here.  Let's see, in the first three weeks of staying at home, I read the four Royal Sorceress Books by Christopher G. Nuttall.  Enjoyed them, a take on the laws of magic being discovered and exploited by the British, just in time to stop on the American Revolution and put the French in their place, the story starts about a hundred years later as a young girl is chosen as the heir to the Royal Sorcerer and the other nations of the world are trying to catch up with the British in their use of magic for war.

Then read Lord of the Hunt by our own David Craig,  continues the quality story, characters and world building from the first book.  Loved finding out more of the history of all the lineages of Hunt's parents and how they met and Kerry's training and adventurers as a new vampire hunter.

Then read all five of the books by Leonard Wibberley on the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, a tiny independent English nation in the Alps who take on the world, starting with The Mouse that Roared.   Still funny, though a bit dated, as they were written in the 60's and 70's.   The first book and the last, Beware the Mouse (which is  actually a prequel set in 1450), are my favorites out of the five.

Finally, just finished Genghis: Lords of the Bow by Conn Iggulden, a historical novel covering Genghis Khan's initial wars against the Chin.   It's actually the second book in a series about Genghis Khan, but I haven't read the others (I found it in a bargain bin a while back for a dollar).  Will probably look for the others in the series.

 I started  The Girl and the Stars by Mark Lawrence at lunch today, would have kept reading it but luckily the battery on my Kindle died, forcing me to get back to working from home.  

Christopher Nuttall's Royal Sorceress series is published by the same people (Elsewhen Press) who published my three (so far) novels as well as @Zoë Sumra 's two (again, so far?) Underside sci-fi novels

C Nuttall's Bookworm fantasy quartet (with a follow-up trilogy, two books out so far) are his better known books, though I prefer the Royal Sorceress books. The first one has a very interesting sympathetic antagonist. It's also an interesting alternate take on history where the British Empire discover magic. It also doesn't shy from the darker side, such as the 'farms'.

Glad you liked Lord of the Hunt , the paperback comes out on Monday. I got a big box full of copies this week I've also recorded a video reading in the rear garden of Pollok House (walking distance of where I live in the south of Glasgow). Pollok House is in the book, albeit I renamed it Dunkellen House. I sent it to the publisher who will stick it on YouTube soon.

Currently still reading Fall of Light by Steven Erikson. Glad I re-read Forge of Darkness first, as it has a lot of random people I wouldn't remember. Taking a small break from it while I read the paperback of Lord of the Hunt. My own books don't feel 'real' until they're physical.

Re the Tad Williams discussion, I've got the novella and recent two books of his, but I'm tempted to wait until nearer the release of book 3 before re-reading M, T & S, and then reading the new trilogy.

[IlyaP]

11 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Currently still reading Fall of Light by Steven Erikson. Glad I re-read Forge of Darkness first, as it has a lot of random people I wouldn't remember. Taking a small break from it while I read the paperback of Lord of the Hunt. My own books don't feel 'real' until they're physical.

Re the Tad Williams discussion, I've got the novella and recent two books of his, but I'm tempted to wait until nearer the release of book 3 before re-reading M, T & S, and then reading the new trilogy.

I've been told the [incomplete] Kharkanas trilogy is a very different beast from the main Malazan books. Apparently the tone is decidedly different, more serious, more somber? They're the only Erikson books I've not read. 

Re: Williams' books - the new trilogy he's writing - what's the impetus for doing so?

 

[Darth Richard II]

Fall of Light is basically Erikson turned up to 11. It’s hard to describe.

[Astromech]

I finished Douglas C. Jones's Elkhorn Tavern. I assumed the Battle of Pea Ridge would play a larger part in the story, but it really only set up the events of the story. 

Now going back to non-fiction with Anne F Hyde's Empires, Nations and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800 - 1860.

[williamjm]

I read Neil Gaiman's third Sandman volume, Dream Country. I liked the four separate stories in the volume although Facade was my least favourite. Midsummer Night's Dream was good although I suspect I'd probably have gotten more out of it if I'd ever seen or read the play. The inclusion of the original script for Calliope was an interesting insight into Gaiman's writing process.

I'm now most of the way through Martha Wells' Exit Strategy which is as entertaining as the other Murderbot novellas.

[ljkeane]

Ironclads was a good quick read if a little lacking in subtlety. It's about time someone had the courage to highlight the Finnish Peril though.

Next up I'm going to read Rachel Aaron's Night Shift Dragons her books are usually good for some lighthearted fun.

[mix_masta_micah]

10 hours ago, IlyaP said:

I've been told the [incomplete] Kharkanas trilogy is a very different beast from the main Malazan books. Apparently the tone is decidedly different, more serious, more somber? They're the only Erikson books I've not read. 

Re: Williams' books - the new trilogy he's writing - what's the impetus for doing so?

 

He basically is deconstructing his own Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series with this new one. Very interesting to subvert and mirror his own series. I don't want to spoil it for you but I think it's well rendered, and while long (I don't mid the slower pace), I find it superior to MST thus far. The Norn perspective and the overall mystery of the Gardenborn is played up and fascinating. 

[dog-days]

Just read the eighth and for now the last Penric and Desdemona book. Fun, oddly comforting reading despite all the people dying from plague.

I'll have to plunge headfirst into something else before I go into withdrawal. I feel that reading something more factual would be good for me right now - there are several good examples waiting for me on my bookshelf - but lockdown has left me with an appetite for nothing but adventure stories. Sigh. Well, it's not such an awful cross to bear!