Second Quarter 2020 reading

[Wilbur]

Wrapped up listening to Ian C. Esslemont's Deadhouse Landing this morning out on the bike, and it was also pretty enjoyable.  Not perhaps as tightly written as the first book, as this one seemed to want to name-check a whole lot of the characters from the early Book of the Fallen works, but it still works if you can pass by this aspect and stay focused on the story.  And again, far, far better than the books he wrote first that were concurrent to the MBotF.

The early story of Tayschrenn was enjoyable, and although I don't have a perfect memory of the different things he does in MBotF, his backstory gave him more humanity.

[IlyaP]

10 hours ago, VigoTheCarpathian said:

Against the Day by Pynchon. About 1/10 of the way in, enjoying it so far.  Very fantastical Jules-Verne-ian backdrop but interwoven with American turn of the century issues around labor/capitalism/anarchy, humor, tech.  But like Gravity’s Rainbow, a struggle of a book when your brain isn’t devoted to processing it.

This is a magical, magical book. You're in for a delightful, one-of-a-kind treat!

[IlyaP]

4 hours ago, Wilbur said:

Wrapped up listening to Ian C. Esslemont's Deadhouse Landing this morning out on the bike, and it was also pretty enjoyable.  Not perhaps as tightly written as the first book, as this one seemed to want to name-check a whole lot of the characters from the early Book of the Fallen works, but it still works if you can pass by this aspect and stay focused on the story.  And again, far, far better than the books he wrote first that were concurrent to the MBotF.

The early story of Tayschrenn was enjoyable, and although I don't have a perfect memory of the different things he does in MBotF, his backstory gave him more humanity.

Curious to see then how you react to Kellanved's Reach, when you get to it.

[Astromech]

I finished John F. Ross's War on the Run: The Epic Story of Robert Rogers and the Conquest of America's First Frontier. An excellent narrative of Rogers and his involvement in the conflicts and events of the late 18th C in North America.

I am now reading Douglas C. Jones's Elkhorn Tavern, historical fiction centered around the American Civil War's Battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas.

[A wilding]

I have just finished Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott, generally described a a mix of Gormenghast and Harry Potter. I would be interested to know if anyone else has read it and what they thought.

This was on my TBR pile because of two personal recommendations (it also has a cover quote from Hilary Mantel), but I don't understand what they saw in it. It does have an interesting central premise: after some unspecified horror in the sixteenth century, an eccentric town full of oddly clever people is isolated from the rest of England by order of Queen Elizabeth I, and has remained isolated ever since. It is I suppose legitimate for the author not to explore how the town has managed to maintain its isolation and obscurity (despite its economy being apparently sustained by "selling weapons technologies" to the outside world), though I would have liked to know! The plot being full of holes and strands that go nowhere could be partly explained by it being the first of a trilogy; and the thinness of the characters on the grounds that they are supposed to be grotesques.

But I can't get away from the poor quality of the writing, bad enough to keep throwing me out of the story. In places it is snark worthy, with me finding myself struggling to visualise what is supposed to be happening. I would say that it desperately needed editing, except there is an afterword with copious thanks to his editors. 

[Rorshach]

8 minutes ago, A wilding said:

I have just finished Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott, generally described a a mix of Gormenghast and Harry Potter. I would be interested to know if anyone else has read it and what they thought.

This was on my TBR pile because of two personal recommendations (it also has a cover quote from Hilary Mantel), but I don't understand what they saw in it. It does have an interesting central premise: after some unspecified horror in the sixteenth century, an eccentric town full of oddly clever people is isolated from the rest of England by order of Queen Elizabeth I, and has remained isolated ever since. It is I suppose legitimate for the author not to explore how the town has managed to maintain its isolation and obscurity (despite its economy being apparently sustained by "selling weapons technologies" to the outside world), though I would have liked to know! The plot being full of holes and strands that go nowhere could be partly explained by it being the first of a trilogy; and the thinness of the characters on the grounds that they are supposed to be grotesques.

But I can't get away from the poor quality of the writing, bad enough to keep throwing me out of the story. In places it is snark worthy, with me finding myself struggling to visualise what is supposed to be happening. I would say that it desperately needed editing, except there is an afterword with copious thanks to his editors. 

Haven't read it, but the bolded there sounds like K. J. Parker's The Engineer Trilogy.

[A wilding]

Well the bit about selling weapons technologies ("discreetly" apparently) is just a throwaway paragraph basically mentioned to explain some antipathies in the town. It seems one faction regards doing so as morally degenerate. The author is clearly not interested in the details or what the technologies are. Though several of the people involved seem to know a lot about particle physics. They are incidentally also teachers and apparently do this in their spare time,  with the town school sometimes feeling more like a university,

All this makes the book sound more interesting than I actually found it - for me it just came across as muddled and confused.

 

[ljkeane]

Lonesome Dove was excellent. I suppose it shouldn't have been a surprise with how highly it appears to be rated it general but I wasn't expecting it to be that good.

On 5/7/2020 at 2:20 PM, VigoTheCarpathian said:

Lonesome Dove is a good first choice to the genre, I think.  It was the first universally-regarded “Western” book in my entire family (half of them cowboys, half nerds).  It’s a great blend of big story and characters/voices and it smuggles in some really great themes, without being too heavy.  YMMV on the sequels

Are the sequels not worth reading then?

Next up I think I'll continue my Dresden files reread with Cold Days.

[Peadar]

I have just started K. J. Parker's The Two of Swords, Volume One. Enjoying it so far.

[VigoTheCarpathian]

17 hours ago, ljkeane said:

Lonesome Dove was excellent. I suppose it shouldn't have been a surprise with how highly it appears to be rated it general but I wasn't expecting it to be that good.

Are the sequels not worth reading then?

I have to be honest, I haven’t re-read in almost 20 years.  I think the writing and story are likely just as good, but if I remember, it felt like lonesome dove was more balanced, bittersweet, and the sequel was more on the bitter side - broken or mean characters.  I remember one of the prequels being pretty good (Dead Man’s Walk, I think), and the other kind of a re-tread of past plots.  The Berrybender Narratives was good (not a sequel, but kind of a condensed/similar set of stories).

 

[Blue Roses]

On 5/9/2020 at 6:17 PM, A wilding said:

I have just finished Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott, generally described a a mix of Gormenghast and Harry Potter. I would be interested to know if anyone else has read it and what they thought.

 

I've read the trilogy late, last year and quite enjoyed it. I read recently Lud-in-the -Mist  (Hope Mirlees 1926) and that was the obvious and direct inspiration for Rotherweird along with shades of Rosemary Sutcliff and Wind in the Willows I thought.

I found his writing style readable but it's horses for courses. I would suggest that you don't bother with the other 2 books as it's more of the same style. He can't quite sustain the story across 3 books and the ending is a bit of mess but it was different to read and mostly entertaining. 

Read 2/3rds of Robert Harris' The Second Sleep and skimmed the rest. I think from now on I will only read Harris' books if they are based on historical events, ie. Officer & Spy, Cicero etc. as his complete fiction ones are never as good. As a journalist, his writing is best when it's confined by events. Second sleep just got silly. 

Reading Dominion by Tom Holland. Brilliant so far. 

 

 

[Hereward]

On 5/9/2020 at 6:56 PM, A wilding said:

Well the bit about selling weapons technologies ("discreetly" apparently) is just a throwaway paragraph basically mentioned to explain some antipathies in the town. It seems one faction regards doing so as morally degenerate. The author is clearly not interested in the details or what the technologies are. Though several of the people involved seem to know a lot about particle physics. They are incidentally also teachers and apparently do this in their spare time,  with the town school sometimes feeling more like a university,

All this makes the book sound more interesting than I actually found it - for me it just came across as muddled and confused.

 

I also didn’t enjoy Rotherweird. I enjoyed the premise, but I didn’t think he did anything coherent with it, though the details, perhaps tellingly, haven’t stuck in my memory. I didn’t bother with the sequel.

Unlike most of the rest of the world, my reading has dropped off a cliff. I was about 10 books ahead of my Goodreads target of 70 books and now I’m only three ahead. That’s what comes of not having a four hour daily commute, I suppose.

Anyway, I’m currently listening to False Value by Ben Aaronovitch. Not enjoying it much so far. I don’t like change!

[ljkeane]

22 hours ago, VigoTheCarpathian said:

I think the writing and story are likely just as good, but if I remember, it felt like lonesome dove was more balanced, bittersweet, and the sequel was more on the bitter side - broken or mean characters.

Really? I thought Lonsome Dove was pretty dark. I might leave that for a bit then.

I almost entirely buy e books these days but I'm quite enjoying reading a paper book with my Dresden Files reread. I've also been feeling a bit nostalgic for Raymond E. Feist's early books with him being mentioned a few times here recently. With that in mind I've had a bit of a root through my books and found my copy of Daughter of the Empire and I'm going  to read that next.

[williamjm]

I finished Samantha Shannon's The Priory of the Orange Tree. Overall I did enjoy it, although it did have some weaknesses. It is a long book at over 800 pages and although it's nice that it is a standalone that wraps up all its plot threads it did feel like something that might more commonly have been split into multiple books. Mostly the pacing is good but despite the length there were times when the plot felt a bit rushed. I'm sure if this had been published in the 90s it would have been an epic fantasy trilogies. It does have many of the traditional epic fantasy aspects - several quests, court intrigue, a plot that manages to cover the entire map, a coming-of-age story for Tané, a dark lord ("The Nameless One") prophesied to rise again and lots and lots of dragons. Most of the book is spent into 'West' and 'East' sections, the former has the more traditional epic fantasy setting reminiscent of medieval Europe while the 'East' is fairly clearly inspired by Shogunate Japan (complete with traditional Japanese dragons who are the ancient enemies of the western dragons). It's definitely got a more modern outlook than many of the older epic fantasies, one of the cover blurbs describes it as 'a feminist Lord of the Rings' and I think it lives up to the first part of the description although it doesn't have the depth of history or world-building seen in Tolkien.

I liked the characters, I think Sabran probably got the most interesting character development despite not being a point-of-view character - perhaps because it takes some time to really get a good impression of her character. The two protagonists in the East probably have more obvious flaws than Ead and Loth in the West, which gave them a bit more depth. It is one of those fantasy series where the main antagonist is mostly off screen, although out of the supporting cast Kalyba was probably more interesting as someone with more ambiguous intentions towards the protagonists.

It was a consistently entertaining read, and although I think some aspects could have been done better I think I'd probably be interested in reading more by Samantha Shannon in the future.

Now I'm reading something considerably shorter in the form of Lois McMaster Bujold's eighth Penric and Desdemona novella, The Physicians of Vilnoc. Bujold commented last week before publication that it ended up feeling a lot more topical than when she started. I'm not sure a story about an unexplained plague is going to be to everyone's taste right now but there is something comforting about the competence of the characters in dealing with it.

[IlyaP]

Finding myself struggling with a particularly bad case of a fidgety and short attention span at the moment (I've really really struggled to get into anything that isn't a long-form videogame RPG (having just done 54 hours in Dragon Age: Exodus (aka Dragon Age 2) and something like...23 hours and counting of Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn*). But I've been trying to read the Hodder Books edition of The Dragonbone Chair (the one with the Michael Whelan cover) by Tad Williams, which I picked up a few months before the whole world went to absolute hell. I'm 538 pages into this 930 page behemoth. So I might be done with it some time next week if I can maintain a consistent pace. I've just reached the point in the story where I'm being suddenly introduced to a bearded dude with the crystal wolf eyes. (Who is he? Why is he? No idea!). It's a classic of the genre, and I'm going to do my best to beat this beast.

...Unless of course something distra -- oh hey a shiny thing!

 

*Isometric RPGs are a kind of palliative for my soul. I find myself wondering how many hours I can lose in each of the old Bioware/Black Isle games. It's a nice way to fill the time between job applications and freelance gigs. 

[dog-days]

6 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Finding myself struggling with a particularly bad case of a fidgety and short attention span at the moment (I've really really struggled to get into anything that isn't a long-form videogame RPG (having just done 54 hours in Dragon Age: Exodus (aka Dragon Age 2) and something like...23 hours and counting of Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn*). But I've been trying to read the Hodder Books edition of The Dragonbone Chair (the one with the Michael Whelan cover) by Tad Williams, which I picked up a few months before the whole world went to absolute hell. I'm 538 pages into this 930 page behemoth. So I might be done with it some time next week if I can maintain a consistent pace. I've just reached the point in the story where I'm being suddenly introduced to a bearded dude with the crystal wolf eyes. (Who is he? Why is he? No idea!). It's a classic of the genre, and I'm going to do my best to beat this beast.

...Unless of course something distra -- oh hey a shiny thing!

 

*Isometric RPGs are a kind of palliative for my soul. I find myself wondering how many hours I can lose in each of the old Bioware/Black Isle games. It's a nice way to fill the time between job applications and freelance gigs. 

I keep having bouts of huge nostalgia for the Baldur's Gate games. I got all teary-eyed yesterday when someone mentioned Bioware just thinking of the old Black Isle Studios logo, not to mention the old BIS message boards that I lurked on avidly when I was in my early teens. I keep wondering if I should invest in Pillars of Eternity to scratch the isometric RPG itch. 

[A wilding]

42 minutes ago, dog-days said:

I keep wondering if I should invest in Pillars of Eternity to scratch the isometric RPG itch. 

It is on my list as a resource for next time I feel I need some time out from the pandemic.

[williamjm]

10 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Finding myself struggling with a particularly bad case of a fidgety and short attention span at the moment (I've really really struggled to get into anything that isn't a long-form videogame RPG (having just done 54 hours in Dragon Age: Exodus (aka Dragon Age 2) and something like...23 hours and counting of Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn*). But I've been trying to read the Hodder Books edition of The Dragonbone Chair (the one with the Michael Whelan cover) by Tad Williams, which I picked up a few months before the whole world went to absolute hell. I'm 538 pages into this 930 page behemoth. So I might be done with it some time next week if I can maintain a consistent pace. I've just reached the point in the story where I'm being suddenly introduced to a bearded dude with the crystal wolf eyes. (Who is he? Why is he? No idea!). It's a classic of the genre, and I'm going to do my best to beat this beast.

...Unless of course something distra -- oh hey a shiny thing!

If you're having a problem with short attention span at the moment I'm not sure that Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is the best series to be reading right now, although from what I remember the pace of the first book does pick up in the final section.

[Gaston de Foix]

I'm having problem with my attention span as well.  Nothing truly engages.  I'm reading the Devourers after reading a rave review by V E Schwab and can't seem to make any progress with it.  If anyone can think of a truly addictive or engrossing tv show or book I'm not likely to have read or viewed please fire away. 

[IlyaP]

4 hours ago, williamjm said:

If you're having a problem with short attention span at the moment I'm not sure that Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is the best series to be reading right now, although from what I remember the pace of the first book does pick up in the final section.

It's sort of a pledge to myself to make it through it, since I purchased it and have been trying to get through it for a while now, but not before everyone here was helpful in assisting me finding an edition that didn't feature a painfully blotchy font. I owe it to Westeros Lit to finish it! I do this for you!