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First Quarter 2021 Reading


Plessiez

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7 hours ago, Mr Gordo said:

Yeah I got maybe 180 pages in and gave up. Hated the prose, hated the characters, hated the would make Sanderson blush infodumps every 5 pages.

Also wanted Hilo to just DIE after about 10 pages.

Yesterday, I was thinking, "Jade City seems interesting enough.  I'll pick it up sometime in the future when the trilogy is completely published."  Now after reading your review, I want to read J.C. next.

 

 

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18 hours ago, Mr Gordo said:

Yeah I got maybe 180 pages in and gave up. Hated the prose, hated the characters, hated the would make Sanderson blush infodumps every 5 pages.

Also wanted Hilo to just DIE after about 10 pages.

He's a quite complicated character which isn't immediately apparent. Anyway, sorry you didn't like it. Better to stop now than hate it for another 400 pages.

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3 hours ago, Mr Gordo said:

Thanks? o.O

I mean, just about everyone else on planet earth loves it to death, I'm sure you'll be fine.

I realize that it seems odd, but your review made me more intrigued in Jade City rather than pushing me away from it.  Beforehand, it was just a well-liked book that I put in the back of my mind.  Now, after you were so vividly negative about it, I want to read about the character Hilo.  Hopefully, I will feel as passionately as you do about him and the rest of the book.

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I finished Gwynne's A Time of Dread and it was pretty good throughout.  I will continue the story soon.

I am currently reading Green's Unknown 9: Genesis.  Secret cabals of astrophysicists and quantum metallurgists. 

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After a couple of dense non-fiction books, I loaded up E.C. Tubbs' Mayenne (1973), a Dumarest of Terra novel, for a long drive down to southern Arizona yesterday.

This is the ninth of thirty-some books about Dumarest's quest to find Earth that Tubbs wrote, and Tubbs is a good writer, but these are not books you want to brag about reading.  Tubbs has excellent writing skills, and he occasionally touches on real science-fictional ideas, but Golden Age heroes are a little hard to swallow unless you intentionally approach them as if it was 1951.

In Mayenne, Earl Dumarest finds himself in a space ship that is damaged and then rescued by a world mind.  The world mind is bored, so it puts the survivors of the crew through a series of ordeals.  Dumarest is increasingly angry, as he just wants to get on with his quest to find Earth.  Also the Cyclans are still after him.  Also beautiful women love him and his excellent body.  Also there is violence, and Dumarest must once again slay several people and an alien monster.

Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure books are a contemporaneous, and much more satisfying, story of a man seeking a return to Earth, and moreover they feature a lot of positive relationships between flawed characters as well as some terrific humor.  I keep hoping that Dumarest will show some of these human qualities, but so far, no.  Go, get and read (or listen to) the Planet of Adventure, a series with the best and most satisfying ending of any I have ever read:

I got a dozen of these Dumarest stories in a swap with a friend, and the audiobooks were produced in the last ten years.  But the characters and their worldviews are certainly anachronistic, which makes me wonder why they were selected for audio production.  While enjoyable in small doses, I can only enjoy about one of these a quarter, given the high Virile Man is Virile! content.

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Recently finished two fairly short novels.

First Max Lakeman and the Beautiful Stranger by Jon Cohen. This was a book I bought years ago when I saw it on a list of fantasy novels. It turned out to just have barely enough "magic realism" to qualify as a fantasy. It's about a suburban guy with a lawn cutting business and a basically good marriage who ends up having an affair with a woman who evidently has somehow been created from his own mind -- along with her husband. For a while I thought the two fantastic characters were going to be the ancient Greek deities Zeus and Aphrodite, but that was never made clear. Some of the characters were interesting but I'd only give the book a C+ -- was worth my time, but just barely.

Then I read a mystery, The Semester of Our Discontent by Cynthia Kuhn. This won a "first novel" award from the Agathas a few years ago. I thought it deserved it -- the amateur sleuth was a newly hired woman English professor at a fictional large prestigious private university near Denver. The characters were interesting (though the murder victims were a tad unbelievable in their over-the-top anti-feminist nastiness) and the writing pulled me along. I suppose the clues that would lead a reader to guess the identity of the killer may not have been there quite well enough, but it was a really great example of a "cozy" mystery and I would recommend it highly to anyone who likes that genre -- as well as anyone who enjoys a book about backstabbing departmental politics at a large university. :)

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I finished The Handmaid's Tale yesterday. What a disturbing book, and yet, it sucks you in and you can't stop reading. It's structure takes a minute to get used to as it bounces all over the place, but once you get it the read is a delight. I'm never going to read it again, but I'm glad that I did. Kind of curious how they've gotten four seasons now out of this book though. 

Anyways, I have an ambitious six or so weeks, aiming to read each of these before the start of May:

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So I thought A Desolation Called Peace was a bit of a mixed bag. Like the first book the court intrigue and culture clash stuff was good but I thought the interaction with the aliens stuff worked less well. Overall still a decent book though.

Spoiler

My issue wasn't with the aliens themselves but more the mechanisms around the Teixcalaan war with them. So far as I can tell other than through jump gates (wormholes presumably) there isn't faster than light travel but they're sending messages back forth in a few hours? There's an inhabited planet in the same system as and Teixcalaanli colony which they just never noticed? They never bothered thinking they might need to translate alien messages before they sent out a fleet to fight aliens? It all just didn't fit together too well for me.

Next up I'm reading Alix E. Harrow's The Once and Future Witches.

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I'm up to book 4 of Colleen McCullagh's Masters of Rome series, Caesar's Women. I have enjoyed the books tremendously so far, but Caesar is easily my least favourite character -- a dreaded combination of Mary Sue and pomous dickhead. He's coming to dominate the series more and more, so after this one I'll probably take a break to jump into something else.

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I finished re-reading The Mirror Empire. I had forgotten most of the plot and was quite a bit confused and found the characters annoying and some of the gender lamp-shading aggravating. And then I went and checked my review on GR from reading it in 2016 and apparently I had the exact same reaction then! Ha. Well, anyway, I never read the rest of the trilogy as I was waiting for it to be completed and then forgot, so I'm looking forward to continuing on to see where it goes.

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I read Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (translated from Polish), a murder mystery blended with literary fiction.  It has an unusual and unreliable narrator in the first-person POV, who is an eccentric personality with great observation of the people around her.  Some reviewers thought the plot arc was surprising but I though it was very obviously telegraphed and therefore found it to be a bit boring as it unfolded.  Enjoyment will also depend on how sympathetic you are toward Janina.  Should she feel outraged that a middle aged woman who understands and communicates everything through astrology gets dismissed by others?  An unusual read, at least.  Are other people wrong/evil/inhuman if their moral code is not the same as yours?

The Keeper Of Lost Causes by Jussi Adler-Olsen was next but I didn’t finish it.  It’s a Scandi noir that felt too conventional and predictable.  Nothing about the prose, character or plot was compelling enough.

Most recently I finished The Greatest Knight (and long subtitle) by Thomas Asbridge.  It’s a non-fiction history, nominally a biography of William Marshal from a primary source, but also an opportunity to explore early chivalry in the Norman/Angevin period and the history of the 12th century as Stephen vies with Matilda, Henry II rules after the white ship costs an heir, the disaffected Henry III, and eventually Richard the Lionheart and John.  It was interesting to read deeper about this period.

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On 3/15/2021 at 10:17 AM, Peadar said:

I'm up to book 4 of Colleen McCullagh's Masters of Rome series, Caesar's Women. I have enjoyed the books tremendously so far, but Caesar is easily my least favourite character -- a dreaded combination of Mary Sue and pomous dickhead. He's coming to dominate the series more and more, so after this one I'll probably take a break to jump into something else.

That's where you differ from the author and most of the readers of the series -- particularly with the author.  Other readers have thought the problem was the author herself, like all the women in her series who knew him, fell in love with "her" Caesar. This one is his book, though.  The rest aren't like that.

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1 hour ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Most recently I finished The Greatest Knight (and long subtitle) by Thomas Asbridge.

I have read this one twice!  Well, I listened to it first as audio book, then about a year later, I read the print book.

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Read The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix Harrow.  It was another posting by @Lord Patrek in the amazing book deals thread.  ($3.99 on the kindle at the time I bought it).  Thank you again for your posts!

What a great book.  Loved the old fashioned Jonathan Swift style first person narration.  It seemed especially appropriate because the setting of the book is the late 1800s and very early 1900s.  Loved the main character, Ade, Yule and the chief antagonist.  The world was a great concept.  Sort of the lion the witch and the wardrobe times 10,000 other wardrobes to 10,000 other places.   I would recommend this to anyone here who hasn't picked it up yet.

What I really wanted to talk about was how coincidentally similar the main character in this book is to the last book I read and posted about here, A Deadly Education, by Naomi Novik.  Both authors are white (I think Harrow is white) and are writing about main characters who are half white and half another ethnicity.  In Novik's case the other ethnicity is Indian, in Harrow's case

Spoiler

 the other ethnicity is "alien" but easily mistaken for

black or possibly native American.  Both characters are not really in touch with their non-white background, as explained in-story, which may make it easier for the author to write these characters.

The interesting thing I think is that the race of Harrow's main character is more prominent in the her book than in Novik's.  It's not a huge point in the book, but there is periodic talk about the overt racism of the time.  Although ethnicity is prominent in Novik's book, she didn't really delve into racism to the extent that Harrow did.

Anyway, as posted previously Novik got in trouble for seemingly accidentally or unconsciously putting racist elements into a book that I think she was trying to make "color blind," where Harrow does not seem to have gotten in to any trouble in a book that more frankly tries to deal with the racism of the time.

I wonder if there is something to the idea that Harrow was trying to portray racism and therefore was more sensitive to race and unconscious bias when she was writing?  Is that how she was able to, as a white woman, write a book with a decent number of non-white characters and escape substantial criticism?  I'm curious what other people think.

As a refresher, here was the controversy about A Deadly Education & the apology from Novik:

https://www.themarysue.com/racism-vs-representation-the-missteps-of-naomi-noviks-a-deadly-education/

http://www.naominovik.com/apology/

To be fair, I did find one podcast that claimed that The Ten Thousand Doors of January was racist, too.  But This doesn't seem to be a widely shared opinion.  Claims of racism certainly did not go viral the way they did for Novik.:

https://mythcreants.com/blog/280-the-ten-thousand-doors-of-january/

 

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I finished Ian W. Toll's Six Frigates: The Epic History of The Founding of the U.S Navy. It covers the initial debates over the creation of a navy through the War of 1812. Interesting read. I wanted to read a shorter book by Toll before I tackled his Pacific War Trilogy to get a feel for his writing. Informative and entertaining. 

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3 hours ago, Astromech said:

I finished Ian W. Toll's Six Frigates: The Epic History of The Founding of the U.S Navy. It covers the initial debates over the creation of a navy through the War of 1812

Woo!  Have you also read Theodore Roosevelt's history of the US Navy?  I have it on my list, but somehow have never gotten around to it.

Right now I'm very excited that I've been able to order a new history, The Horde,, published next month by the Harvard University Press, by Marie Favereau.  Alas though, that the press slapped on to the title that exhausted  "changed the world" subtitle.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-674-24421-4

https://static.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/marie-favereau/the-horde/

 

 

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5 hours ago, Zorral said:

Woo!  Have you also read Theodore Roosevelt's history of the US Navy?  I have it on my list, but somehow have never gotten around to it.

Right now I'm very excited that I've been able to order a new history, The Horde,, published next month by the Harvard University Press, by Marie Favereau.  Alas though, that the press slapped on to the title that exhausted  "changed the world" subtitle.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-674-24421-4

https://static.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/marie-favereau/the-horde/

 

 

I haven't but Toll touches on it briefly in the epilogue, as well as other sources on the history of the US Navy and the War of 1812.

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On 3/17/2021 at 2:02 PM, Zorral said:

That's where you differ from the author and most of the readers of the series -- particularly with the author.  Other readers have thought the problem was the author herself, like all the women in her series who knew him, fell in love with "her" Caesar. This one is his book, though.  The rest aren't like that.

I'm not sure that's true (that the rest aren't like that). The hero worship and centrality of Caesar continues for another two books. I'll be honest, I wish I had stopped at book 3 or 4. The writing was never good and the research was always great, but the later books for me were just too much "Caesar is great! Everyone loves Caesar! Except for Caesar's enemies... Bibulus was just jealous!"

 

On 3/15/2021 at 8:01 AM, ljkeane said:

So I thought A Desolation Called Peace was a bit of a mixed bag. Like the first book the court intrigue and culture clash stuff was good but I thought the interaction with the aliens stuff worked less well. Overall still a decent book though.

  Reveal hidden contents

My issue wasn't with the aliens themselves but more the mechanisms around the Teixcalaan war with them. So far as I can tell other than through jump gates (wormholes presumably) there isn't faster than light travel but they're sending messages back forth in a few hours? There's an inhabited planet in the same system as and Teixcalaanli colony which they just never noticed? They never bothered thinking they might need to translate alien messages before they sent out a fleet to fight aliens? It all just didn't fit together too well for me.

 

Interesting. I'm about 3/4s of the way through and I also find it a mixed bag, but from the opposite perspective. I find all the scenes on the capitol world (god help me, I will never be able to spell out that name) and from the POV of Eight Antidote to be very tedious. I know this is supposed to be a unique child, but... Martine really cannot write a child, and the cast around him isn't particularly interesting. But I've found the interactions with aliens and the warfront to be much more better.

All in all, though, the book is paced very strangely. I only really started enjoying it around 40% in. A lot of the early situation dragged on for way too long and felt overwritten.

 

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I finished Winter, the final book in the Lunar Chronicles. Overall I liked the series okay, but I had a lot of complaints about the worldbuilding and I think the pacing of the entire series was thrown off by the conceit of having each book be a different retelling, and this culminated in a too-long, very poorly-paced final book. I wouldn't dissuade anyone from reading the books but I found it to be not quite up to the hype.

Now I'm listening to The Art of Theft, the 4th book in the Lady Sherlock series. I've really enjoyed this series (and the narration), and book 3 was my favorite. So far book 4 is not quite living up to it. There's sooo much emphasis on romantic plots that I feel worked a lot better as compelling subplots and so far too much of the plot has hinged upon coincidences, which is especially irksome in a mystery/puzzle novel. But it's still pretty good, and maybe I'll be more enthused by the end.

I also started reading So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo. I've read a lot on the internet on the topic, and fiction books that center on it, but I've not read any long-form non-fiction on racial theory (I don't read much non-fiction in general), so I thought this would be interesting. I'm a couple chapters in and I appreciate the author's perspective but find several points on which I disagree with her and think her attitude towards potential counterarguments to be condescending/dismissive. 

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I read the latest installment in the Bobverse, Heaven's River by Dennis E. Taylor.  Enjoyed seeing a new race and their habitat, though the internal split and conflict amongst the Bobs was less of interest.

Then I read the Call duology by Peadar Ó Guilin.    Really loved seeing the Sidhe in their nasty glory and the premise of the story.    Kind of glad my imagination couldn't fully picture how horrifying the people that fall into the Sidhe's hands have been twisted and reshaped.  

Now starting Cold Magic by Kate Elliot.  Read her Crossroads and Crown of Stars series so eager to dive into another. 

 

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