Third Quarter 2020 Reading is a Joy

[Durckad]

5 hours ago, williamjm said:

I finished David Mitchell's Utopia Avenue. Overall I liked it, although I wouldn't put it up there with Mitchell's very best books and I think it does have some weaknesses. I think the biggest issue is the pacing, if we were to use a metaphor from the 60s music scene setting of the book then I think this is more of a sometimes self-indulgent double LP rather than a snappy 3 minute single. It seems to take a very long time introducing the characters and the setting and although there are some dramatic moments throughout the story I think most of the plot seems to happen towards the end of the novel, and it is a fairly long novel. When it does get to them I thought the plot was compelling, although some key moments such as the conclusion of the 'Knock Knock' plotline felt a bit rushed.

What I did like were the characters, something Mitchell has always been good at and I think the book does a good job of both developing their characters and also showing how the relationship builds up between the four band members (and their manager) and how such contrasting characters can work well together. Jasper de Zoet gets what is probably the most interesting plotline and I think is also the most interesting character, someone struggling to understand a world he often finds baffling while also trying to deal with a literal voice in his head. I also like the tie-in to The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet which is one of my favourite books of the past few years, even if the inclusion of some fantasy elements into what is otherwise a fairly mundane story might confuse people who hadn't read Mitchell's previous books. I thought Elf was the most immediately likeable of the characters and her plotline may not have stakes as high as Jasper's but she still gets a number of good scenes through the book. One thing Mitchell often does well is portrayals of characters who have serious flaws where he doesn't shy away from those flaws but still regards the characters with some sympathy and show that there is some possibility for them to become better, I think Dean Moss is the best example here, he probably has the most typical rock star story of the members of the band and while he does keep making terrible decisions he does have enough redeeming moments to make him interesting to read about.

The book is also filled with cameos, from a mixture of real-world figures from the late 60s musical scene and a few characters from previous Mitchell books. In another book this might not have worked but the impression is gives of everyone in Soho or the Californian music scene knowing each other does feel like something that might have been in a rock biography, so having the characters randomly bumping into David Bowie in the street makes sense in this context.

At one point a character mentions the quote that 'writing about music is like dancing about architecture', and there is something slightly lacking that no matter how much we read about Utopia Avenue's music that we can't hear any of it, but the book is probably doing something right when the reader is left wishing that they could hear the music being described in the book.

Utopia Avenue is up next for me after I finish The Gathering Storm.

As somebody who loves the self-indulgent prog/psych scene of the 60's and 70's, your reservations and weaknesses don't sound all that bad to me, honestly. Compared to The Gathering Storm in size (and the last couple of WoT books sitting in my to read pile), Utopia Avenue looks like a copy of the Chipotle menu.

[hauberk]

On 8/14/2020 at 5:05 PM, hauberk said:

I'm back to Wild Cards after a break of a couple of years.  I recently picked up the America arc - Mississippi Roll, Low Chicago and Texas Hold'Em.  So far, I'm only about 2/3 through Mississippi Roll, but  I'm reminded, with each new book, of what a joy it is for me to revisit this world.  I continue to miss a lot of the older characters (Turtle and Mod Man most of all), but anytime Billy Ray shows up, I know I'm in for a treat. 

Finished Mississippi Roll.   Quite satisfied with it - it did not feature enough of my favorites, but still a great opportunity to revisit a marvelous shared world.  On immediately to Low Chicago.  It's got a nice twist that, I don't believe has been done with WIld Cards previously.  

[Plessiez]

I finished Semiosis by Sue Burke today.

This is a fairly short SF novel describing the lives of several generations of human colonists on an alien planet, after the first settlers leave an Earth ravaged by wars and ecological collapse to start what they envision as being "a new society in harmony with nature".   Generally enjoyed it -- I thought the shifting POVs across the generations worked particularly well -- but a few points bothered me.

Stories about humans traveling across space to settle alien worlds aren't anything new, of course, but these days I find it hard to find books with this basic premise plausible.  The only example of something close to this which I think really works is Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora, which is essentially a book about why interstellar colonisation isn't ever going to happen. 

Burke largely glosses over a lot of the technical issues (which makes sense, because they aren't the point of the book); the colonists have already been on Pax for weeks by the start of the first chapter, and we only have a few quick flashbacks to prior events.  But even skimming over the details, both the scale of the colonisation effort and the timeframe in which everything happens doesn't seem quite right.  The colonists leave Earth sometime in the 2060s, which seems incredibly optimistic.   And the initial number of settlers seems too small by at least one order of magnitude (I think there are about fifty colonists in the first generation).  But the biggest problem I had was that around the middle of the book:

Spoiler

We start to see sections from the POV of some of the alien life native to Pax, which -- though not done especially badly in and of itself -- can't avoid making the aliens instantly seem a lot less mysterious and inhuman.  Towards the end of the book these alien POVs are needed for the narrative to work, but I think the book could easily have dropped them before that.

One other complaint (which I don't think merits a spoiler warning) is that the book is the first of a duology, and ends pretty abruptly.

--

Next I'm either going to continue my J. V. Jones progression with A Sword from Red Ice or, maybe, finally try one of the books I actually meant to read during lockdown: Edward Whittemore's Jerusalem Poker.  (I made it about halfway through this back at the start of 2019, but that got disrupted by various outside factors.)

[williamjm]

16 hours ago, RedEyedGhost said:

Reaper's Gale is where I dropped the series.  I bought the next book, but never got around to reading it because RG was such a slog.  Although, I really didn't care for the Lether and Edur, and book 5 was the low point of the series for me.

I liked the Lether plotline in Midnight Tides so I was looking forward to reading more of it, but I wasn't that keen on the direction it took in Reaper's Gale. I think it did make it worse that it not only took a long time to get to the ending but I also didn't particularly like the ending when it got there. In that sense it is probably worse than something like Toll the Hounds which is also very slow paced but at least I was fairly happy with the ending of it.

16 hours ago, Durckad said:

Utopia Avenue is up next for me after I finish The Gathering Storm.

As somebody who loves the self-indulgent prog/psych scene of the 60's and 70's, your reservations and weaknesses don't sound all that bad to me, honestly. Compared to The Gathering Storm in size (and the last couple of WoT books sitting in my to read pile), Utopia Avenue looks like a copy of the Chipotle menu.

I think it definitely does sound like something you should like. When I say it was long-winded that was more in comparison to the other David Mitchell books I've read which usually pack a lot of story in to a relatively small number of pages rather than in comparison to Wheel of Time which is a different order of long-windedness.

[ljkeane]

I just finished The Enemy by Lee Child. I read a few Jack Reacher books years ago, then forgot were I was up too and gave up on them. I started reading them again this year and I think this one is a new one for me. It's entertaining in the usual action movie in a book way but what's struck me reading these books again that I didn't really register when I was reading them before is that Jack Reacher's life is really depressing. I'm not even that fussed if he catches the bad guys anymore, I'd just like him to make some sort of lasting human connection.

[Luzifer's right hand]

22 hours ago, RedEyedGhost said:

Reaper's Gale is where I dropped the series.  I bought the next book, but never got around to reading it because RG was such a slog.  Although, I really didn't care for the Lether and Edur, and book 5 was the low point of the series for me.

I did the same thing. Toll the Hounds is on my to-read pile since 2008...

Today I read Every Time We Meet at the Dairy Queen, Your Whole Fucking Face Explodes by Carlton Mellick III. Just wtf... I read some of his more mainstream books before but this one was maybe a little bit too much for me.

[RedEyedGhost]

43 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

I did the same thing. Toll the Hounds is on my to-read pile since 2008...

I got it when it came out too, and with it being that long, I know there's a next to zero percent chance that I'll ever read it as I would have to reread the first seven as well.

[Gorn]

After a long period of reading historical non-fiction, SF and contemporary fiction, I got a craving for fantasy. I briefly considered a re-read/finishing of WoT (I never actually read the Sanderson books, Knife of Dreams was the last one I've read more than a decade ago), then I shuddered and gave up on the idea.

Instead, I've started the Lyonesse trilogy by Jack Vance. I'm only on the first chapters, looks good so far.

[Derfel Cadarn]

Re-reading Cornwell’s Excalibur, book 3 of the Warlord Chronicles, and imho thet trilogy is his best work.

 

[Peadar]

About to start yet another K.J. Parker book -- How to Rule an Empire and Get Away With it.

 

[LongRider]

15 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Re-reading Cornwell’s Excalibur, book 3 of the Warlord Chronicles, and imho thet trilogy is his best work.

 

Excalibur has such a great ending, I stood up and cheered.  Really liked it.   

[Wilbur]

19 hours ago, Gorn said:

...Instead, I've started the Lyonesse trilogy by Jack Vance. I'm only on the first chapters, looks good so far.

I will look froward to hear your impressions.

Vance was so far out of step with everyone else writing fantasy in the 1980s, yet to me his work is so very superior to the more popular stuff that was available then.

[Teng Ai Hui]

On 8/8/2020 at 9:27 PM, Peadar said:

I'm trying We are Legion (We are Bob) by Dennis Taylor. So far, it reminds me a bit of Andy Weir's The Martian -- an engineer solves problems to stay a step ahead of death. Is that a genre?

Thank you for the suggestion.  I've been looking for something like this recently.  I just finished books 1 <We Are Legion (We Are Bob)> and 2 <For We Are Many> in the series.  Next, I'll start book 3 <All These Worlds>.  Also, I'm anxiously waiting for book 4 <Heaven's River> which will apparently be released on Sept. 24th.

[Jo498]

5 hours ago, Wilbur said:

I will look froward to hear your impressions.

Vance was so far out of step with everyone else writing fantasy in the 1980s, yet to me his work is so very superior to the more popular stuff that was available then.

Lyonesse is not quite as far out of step as the Dying Earth books, I'd say and it's still superior to much of what has been added to Fantasy in the last 35 years. I wish anyone could come close to Vance in language and atmosphere. But unfortunately the 2nd (especially) and 3rd volumes are rather uneven and don't quite keep the level of the first or the better parts of the rest. I understand that Vance was rushing the last book because of failing health but that doesn't quite explain the shortcomings of the 2nd, the IMO poor handling of the Melancthe arc and the silly episode on that other world/planet at the end of #2. Nevertheless, overall as a "series" it is among my favorite fantasy (and as SoIaF has already had two weakish volumes after three mostly very good ones and is on average not going to get better, Lyoness will probably stay ahead still a bit).

[Peadar]

7 hours ago, Teng Ai Hui said:

Thank you for the suggestion.  I've been looking for something like this recently.  I just finished books 1 <We Are Legion (We Are Bob)> and 2 <For We Are Many> in the series.  Next, I'll start book 3 <All These Worlds>.  Also, I'm anxiously waiting for book 4 <Heaven's River> which will apparently be released on Sept. 24th.

I had no idea there was a book #4! It kinda felt like a good natural ending already.

[Luzifer's right hand]

6 minutes ago, Peadar said:

I had no idea there was a book #4! It kinda felt like a good natural ending already.

I'm surprised about that too.

[ljkeane]

I' m reading M.R. Carey's The Book of Koli. It's started pretty well that's no real surprise with Carey's books which tend to be pretty consistently good.

[JGP]

I've been struggling with Anthony Ryan's The Black Song for a few days. It's not bad I guess, just hasn't managed to generate any enthusiasm in me. I'll read a chapter, then fuck off for other things for hours, maybe more.

Dropped it for Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes.

It only crossed my radar a few days ago but I quickly preordered and it released today. Heard good things. Neanderthal culture has been fascinating to me for years after I'd read an article about a discovery of a Neanderthal item cache, and that amongst them was a flute crafted from a cave bear femur. 

 

[Peadar]

Well, I have to say that the most recent two K. J. Parker books have been very enjoyable. You already know what you're getting with him, but if you like that sort of thing, these are great:

16 Ways to Defend a Walled City

How to Rule An Empire and Get Away With It

They could both be read as standalones, although the second does contain spoilers for the first.

Up next, Seanan McGuire's In an Absent Dream.

[ljkeane]

The Book of Koli was really good. I've got a bit of a soft spot for post apocalyptic stuff in general but this was an excellent example.

Spoiler

I particularly liked that the significant pre apocalypse tech Koli found was basically a fancy ipod.

 

9 hours ago, Peadar said:

How to Rule An Empire and Get Away With It

 

They could both be read as standalones, although the second does contain spoilers for the first.

Is it not a sequel to 16 Ways to Defend a Walled City? I thought it was.