Third Quarter 2020 Reading is a Joy

[ljkeane]

I agree with Galactus on The Empire of Gold. I thought it was a little bit of a disappointment.

Spoiler

As I said in the previous thread I thought Manizeh, Kaveh and, to an extent, Dara were conveniently incompetent to make things easy for Nahri and Ali.

Recently I read Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas which I thin I saw on a recommended summer reading list somewhere. I wanted to like it. The whole mysterious small university setting with sinister things going on the background sounds cool but we see it through the lens of a main character just kind of drifting along in a depressed haze which is pretty frustrating. Then it ends with a sort of non ending ending which always annoys me.

[Gigei]

There seems to be some interest in Empire of Gold. Should we make a dedicated thread or is keeping the discussion here fine?

[Ormond]

I just finished a "true crime" book titled The Devil at Genesee Junction by Michael Benson. This is about the murder of two teenage girls in suburban Rochester, New York back in June 1966. Benson lived in their neighborhood and knew the victims when he was a child; he went on to become a crime writer and attributes that partly to the experience of growing up in a neighborhood traumatized by this crime. It turned out to be very interesting even though it was impossible in the end to say for sure who the murderer was. Benson obviously has a "best suspect" but since all the suspects themselves are now dead and there is no perpetrator DNA available it's impossible to tell for sure. However, he did pretty much prove to me that the person who most people in the neighborhood most strongly suspected is almost surely NOT the real murderer. 

I have now begun The Eye of the Heron by Ursula Le Guin. This was first published back in 1978 and deals with two human cultures on the same planet with competing philosophies -- hypermasculine authoritarian vs. communal pacifist. So far the individual characters and the two cultures seem a bit too one-dimensional for me, but I'm not very far into the novel. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

Finally finished Grimms Fairy Tales. Deceptively not light reading, on account of the frequently bizarre plot twists that make you think you've missed something.

[Wilbur]

1 hour ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Finally finished Grimms Fairy Tales. Deceptively not light reading, on account of the frequently bizarre plot twists that make you think you've missed something.

Yes, as a reader I often wonder if a page that got the story from point A to point C had fallen out of the original manuscript.  Surely there was a point B missing somewhere!

Also, it is well worth your time to get one of your German in-laws to read aloud stories in High German like, "How Some Children Played at Slaughtering".  Especially if they don't already know the story.

[Gaston de Foix]

11 hours ago, Gigei said:

There seems to be some interest in Empire of Gold. Should we make a dedicated thread or is keeping the discussion here fine?

I'd be happy to talk about it in a dedicated thread.  What I find most impressive is the authenticity with which it incorporates Islamic faith, traditions and culture.  A few years ago when Saladin Ahmed's book came out I remember there was a (deserved) oohing and aahing over the setting but the series seems to have stopped after the first book.  

Spoiler

What I find less impressive is that Manizheh seems to become a pantomime villain as time goes on, with the politics and mixed rights and wrongs pushed aside. I think Chakraborty fights against this tendency, but the series of revelations seem to undermine her attempt.  

 

[Gigei]

14 hours ago, Gaston de Foix said:

I'd be happy to talk about it in a dedicated thread.  What I find most impressive is the authenticity with which it incorporates Islamic faith, traditions and culture.  A few years ago when Saladin Ahmed's book came out I remember there was a (deserved) oohing and aahing over the setting but the series seems to have stopped after the first book.  

  Hide contents

What I find less impressive is that Manizheh seems to become a pantomime villain as time goes on, with the politics and mixed rights and wrongs pushed aside. I think Chakraborty fights against this tendency, but the series of revelations seem to undermine her attempt.  

 

Alright, the book just came out recently so there won't be tons of people but I'll make a thread since I have some questions.

 

Edit:  Alright, I've made a dedicated thread for the Daevabad trilogy.

[Caligula_K3]

On 7/4/2020 at 2:50 PM, Gigei said:

Hahaha, yeah the first book is very YA since the two main characters are very young (in djinn years). There is a 5 year timeskip after the first book which means the second one has more aged-up characters.

Did you get to the other main character's chapters? There are actually two protagonists in the first book. I mean it starts off with Nahri but Ali is also a main POV character. Ali himself is quite young but it's his chapters that have the political stuff with older, much more experienced minor characters.

City of Brass was the author's debut work and she gets much better later on. Like I said, I was pretty much "huh..." at first on City of Brass but it had a nice ending which made me want to read more. You could always skip ahead to the ending to see if it intrigues you.

Thanks! I did get to the other main character, but wasn't super impressed by him or the politics in those chapters either. When libraries open up again, I'll do what you suggest and skip to the ending and see if I want to read on.

[Peadar]

Just starting Mark Lawrence's The Girl and the Stars.

[ljkeane]

I'm finishing up my Dresden Files reread with Skin Game before Peace Talks comes out this month.

[Leofric]

I read The Bone Ships by RJ Barker after I finished his Wounded Lands trilogy.   The Bone Ships is the start of his new Tide Child trilogy set in a completely new, but equally fascinating world, of vast oceans and scattered islands and sailing ships constructed from the bones of dead sea dragons.    It follows Joron Twiner, a young fisherman condemned to the black ships, whose life and world is is transformed by the arrival of a legend, Lucky Meas, on his bone ship, the Tide Child, who leads the ship and crew on an epic quest. 

Then I read, like so many others above, the final book in S.A. Chakraborty's Daevabad trilogy, Empire of Gold.    I found it an enjoyable conclusion to the trilogy.

but I do agree:

Spoiler

It kind of went overboard on how Manizheh's evilness kept escalating.  She went from someone badly treated and seeking revenge and justice herself and her people using increasingly questionable means, to just someone who was pure evil through and through, right from the start.

 

[HexMachina]

On 7/4/2020 at 11:37 PM, Derfel Cadarn said:

@HelenaExMachina

Hopefully book 3 will do the characters justice. 

Glad you like Kerry and Lady Delaney; they’re favourites to write, and were scanted in book 1. Hell, they were very minor characters in the original 2011 draft.

Well I finished the book tonight and may need to go out and eat my hat, as I am satisfied with the points I previously mentioned

interesting to know about Delaney and Knox! I suppose the novel must have grown a lot since then given how involved they are in the current iteration. Kind of reminds me of something Robin Hobb has said in an interview before, where in an early draft of her Realm of the Elderling books the Fool was a minor character who delivered a some important information and then faded into the background. Oh what different novels they would have been...

 

speaking of, on with my RotE reread. Time for the Tawny Man trilogy. Chapter on chapter idling with Fitz and the Fool is just what I need right now...

 

edit: almost forgot to ask, does it help having reviews across multiple platforms? Goodreads, Amazon, etc.? Have added one to Goodreads but will copy to Amazon if that's helpful for marketing etc. (I did the opposite for Resurrection Men)

[Derfel Cadarn]

15 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Well I finished the book tonight and may need to go out and eat my hat, as I am satisfied with the points I previously mentioned

interesting to know about Delaney and Knox! I suppose the novel must have grown a lot since then given how involved they are in the current iteration. Kind of reminds me of something Robin Hobb has said in an interview before, where in an early draft of her Realm of the Elderling books the Fool was a minor character who delivered a some important information and then faded into the background. Oh what different novels they would have been...

 

speaking of, on with my RotE reread. Time for the Tawny Man trilogy. Chapter on chapter idling with Fitz and the Fool is just what I need right now...

 

edit: almost forgot to ask, does it help having reviews across multiple platforms? Goodreads, Amazon, etc.? Have added one to Goodreads but will copy to Amazon if that's helpful for marketing etc. (I did the opposite for Resurrection Men)

@HelenaExMachina Thanks :)

It does help having reviews across multiple platforms, especially Amazon and Goodreads. Amazon is usually where people first learn of the books, plus when the reviews hit a certain number, it apparently makes it looked on more favourably by the Amazon algorithm affecting visibility.  Goodreads is good a a central site for books.

Hope the plot made sense. Book 3 will hopefully be finished next year, tentatively called Lucifer & Son.

 

[Iskaral Pust]

I finished By The Rivers Of Babylon by Nelson DeMille, a re-read of a classic action thriller I last read in my teens.  I don’t recall why I bought this on Kindle but it offered a different tone and voice after another generic Fantasy with a whiny, emo teenager and a Gary Stu.  Nelson DeMille wrote some of the best quality military-related thrillers of the past generation, like Cathedral, BtRoB, The General’s Daughter and Charm School.  The plot of BtRoB is an attempted Palestinian hijacking of an Israeli Concorde that becomes a siege on the site of ancient Babylon.  The politics certainly feel dated, with the Israelis collectively/politically presented as unquestionably virtuous.  Some of the characterization felt forced too, with lots of subtext about civilized types needing violent types who will do whatever is necessary.  But still overall a good read.

I also finished Death At Whitewater Church by Andrea Carter, a cozy mystery set in a remote part of contemporary Ireland.  Very well written and enjoyable.  The author is female, so perhaps unsurprising that the first-person POV is a woman and most of the female characters are much better developed than the male characters.  I enjoyed the insights on different personalities.  This is the first of a series, and it may stretch credibility to have a series of murders in a small remote village, but I’ve already purchased the next in the series.

[williamjm]

8 hours ago, Triskele said:

I'm giving this Bujold a shot for the first time and trying to recall which of you all to hold accountable if it's not really good.  Expectations are high.  

Which book are you starting with?

I'm happy to be accountable for any consequences of recommending Bujold.

[Inkdaub]

My reread continues with West's The Riven Shield. 

[Plessiez]

Finished The Light Brigade.  I still think it's the best of the Hugo nominees I've read this year, with Arkady Martine's A Memory of Empire in clear second.

Now about a hundred pages into J. V. Jones' A Fortress of Grey Ice.  I read A Cavern of Black Ice about eighteen months ago (and The Book of Words about twenty years before that...) and it's taken a while for me to remember what happened in the previous book.  But I remember liking that first book quite a bit: I didn't think it was hugely original but it felt well-executed all the same.  (And this is one of the few physical books I have access to at the moment, so...)

9 hours ago, Triskele said:

I'm giving this Bujold a shot for the first time and trying to recall which of you all to hold accountable if it's not really good.  Expectations are high.  

Not sure if this is the consensus view, but I think Bujold tends to vary in quality quite a bit.  I remember liking Paladin of Souls a lot, for example, but I think that the early Vorkosigan books are ... not great.  (I think the first book in the series I read was Memory, which is really good, but is also a very bad place to start the series.)

[williamjm]

4 hours ago, Plessiez said:

Not sure if this is the consensus view, but I think Bujold tends to vary in quality quite a bit.  I remember liking Paladin of Souls a lot, for example, but I think that the early Vorkosigan books are ... not great.  (I think the first book in the series I read was Memory, which is really good, but is also a very bad place to start the series.)

I think there was a discussion on this recently in one of the other threads. I think like many authors Bujold's writing did improve as her career went along. I still enjoy the early Vorkosigan books but I think they're not as good as the later (in terms of publication) books like Memory or A Civil Campaign or the Chalion/5 Gods books which began when she'd been publishing for over a decade.

[ljkeane]

I finished Skin Game to complete my Dresden Files reread in time for the new book. I think I've done the same reread from Changes for the last few books to come out so I've read all of them a few times up to this point but I've only read Skin Game the once and I'd forgotten a fair bit of the plot so it felt fairly new to me. Which was good. I'm looking forward to Peace Talks now.

 

[Derfel Cadarn]

40 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

I finished Skin Game to complete my Dresden Files reread in time for the new book. I think I've done the same reread from Changes for the last few books to come out so I've read all of them a few times up to this point but I've only read Skin Game the once and I'd forgotten a fair bit of the plot so it felt fairly new to me. Which was good. I'm looking forward to Peace Talks now.

 

Looking forward to peace talks. Strange that about 2 months after it came out, I met my wife.

Since then I’ve gotten married, bought a house, had a daughter, two new jobs (albeit same organisation), and had three books published.