First Quarter 2022 Reading

[Fragile Bird]

I’m starting this thread so that I keep my momentum going!

Happy reading and listening, everyone!

[Fragile Bird]

Has anyone read the Curse of the Mistwraith series? Written by Janny Wurts. Werthead posted that the final book in the series has just been published, volume 11. I took a quick look at the first book, reading the opening chapters, and it looks very interesting, but then I looked at the descriptions of the next volumes and I gather that the two protagonist brothers are enemies forever, which sounds so sad and depressing. I’m not sure I want to invest weeks of reading a tale that’s eventually a total downer. Comments?

[Infidel]

14 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Has anyone read the Curse of the Mistwraith series? Written by Janny Wurts. Werthead posted that the final book in the series has just been published, volume 11. I took a quick look at the first book, reading the opening chapters, and it looks very interesting, but then I looked at the descriptions of the next volumes and I gather that the two protagonist brothers are enemies forever, which sounds so sad and depressing. I’m not sure I want to invest weeks of reading a tale that’s eventually a total downer. Comments?

Interested in any takes on Wurts as well....love the Empire trilogy with Feist, but never read her otherwise....

[williamjm]

I finished Katherine Addison's The Angel of the Crows. I enjoyed reading the story but I think I would have liked it more with some changes made to it. I liked the setting - a Victorian London that is somewhat familiar but with the addition of both supernatural and steampunk elements. I also thought the characterisation was good, particularly the main characters Crow and Dr Doyle. In theory, I also like the idea of a Sherlock Holmes-inspired detective duo investigating supernatural crimes in this setting but I think I would have preferred it if the inspiration had been a bit more subtle. The author says in an afterword that it started out as Sherlock Holmes fan-fiction with added angels and most of the cases are very heavily based on some of Sherlock's cases. Some of the twists are interesting, in a world where supernatural hounds are, if not common, not unknown this does add some extra complications to The Hound of the Baskervilles. However, I think the book might have been more interesting with more original cases, for most of them a passing familiarity with Holmes stories or their many adaptations will allow the reader to predict most of what happens. For a bit of variety there is also an investigation into one of history's most infamous unsolved crimes in the form of the Jack the Ripper murders, but I think some original cases might also have been interesting.

[Wilbur]

I am enjoying James D. Hornfischer's Neptune's Inferno - the US Navy at Guadalcanal.  This book does a better job than most of keeping the reader on track with who is doing what and where.  The Southern Pacific theater had so many actors, and the region is so unfamiliar to most Americans, that the majority of books about the time and action there are messy, but this one stays on course nicely.

Two nice video series that complement it nice include the following.

 

[Peadar]

I enjoyed my first read of the year: Adrian Tchaikovsky's The Elder Race. It's a short SF -- about 200 pages or so.

[dog-days]

40 minutes ago, Peadar said:

I enjoyed my first read of the year: Adrian Tchaikovsky's The Elder Race. It's a short SF -- about 200 pages or so.

I enjoyed it too. I'd been hoping for something longer and more complex like Guns of the Dawn, but in the end I appreciated it for what it was - a short, tightly-written adventure story that includes some interesting ideas - nothing new or perspective-warping, but sensitively drawn nevertheless. I thought that the male protagonist's emotional development was particularly well done. 

[Peadar]

12 hours ago, dog-days said:

I enjoyed it too. I'd been hoping for something longer and more complex like Guns of the Dawn, but in the end I appreciated it for what it was - a short, tightly-written adventure story that includes some interesting ideas - nothing new or perspective-warping, but sensitively drawn nevertheless. I thought that the male protagonist's emotional development was particularly well done. 

Books like Guns of the Dawn don't come along every week! I wish more people had read this one. In my opinion, it's his best, although in his own opinion, Dogs of War is his best -- that's only my number 2  

[Peadar]

I have started 84K by Claire North. Looks good so far.

[unJon]

1 hour ago, Peadar said:

I have started 84K by Claire North. Looks good so far.

Let me know if you still think so in the end. I used to love North, but have found her more recent books hit or miss, so have been reluctant to get this one. 

[Peadar]

2 hours ago, unJon said:

Let me know if you still think so in the end. I used to love North, but have found her more recent books hit or miss, so have been reluctant to get this one. 

Will do. I loved Fifteen Lives and the House of Games series of novellas. A few others didn't work as well for me, but I'll see how this goes. I'm a slower reader these days due to commitments, so it may be a few days.

[dog-days]

On 1/4/2022 at 8:34 AM, Peadar said:

Books like Guns of the Dawn don't come along every week! I wish more people had read this one. In my opinion, it's his best, although in his own opinion, Dogs of War is his best -- that's only my number 2  

Moving Dogs of War up my reading list, now. A number two to Guns of the Dawn still has plenty of room to be a great book. 

[Ormond]

Yesterday I finished The Briar King by Greg Keyes. This is the first book in his "The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone" four book fantasy series.

I really loved this book. It does follow the somewhat conventional plotline of an ancient evil reawakening in a fantasy world, but it does this very well. Its viewpoint characters are complex and show growth and change during the course of the novel. They include Anne, a 15 year old princess of the royal house, who combines some of the traits of Sansa and Arya but actually seems a more accurate representation of an impetuous teenager forced to develop some wisdom than I usually see.  There is a young monk called Stephen who is a great example of a naive bookish young man who also is forced to change in surprising ways. Keyes was able to get me so invested in these and other characters that I was more frightened reading the chapters near the end of the book when major violence impacts their lives than I often am while reading fiction. Keyes also makes quite amazing uses of humor -- there is an arrogant young fool of a swordsman who shows up in the second half of the book who had me laughing out loud while he's helping to save Anne from very frightening foes. 

I know from seeing many comments on the Web that a great many fans of this series absolutely hated the fourth book, or at least its ending, so much so that they seem to have soured on the whole series. (I have seen a few contrary opinions to that.) I have avoided "spoiler" reviews so have no idea what Keyes did in his ending to irk so many readers, but this first book is so good it's quite a shame that happened to this series.

One of the somewhat unique facets of this series is that some of the characters -- including Anne and Stephen -- are obviously descendants of the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island. The founder of the ruling dynasty of the main country in this fantasy world was Virginia Dare (spelled Virgenya in the book), first British child born in the New World. Stephen's surname is Darige, and his main nemesis's surname is Spendlove, which are both unusual surnames found on the list of the names of the real colonists on Roanoke Island. Though the connection is obvious to anyone who knows a bit about the Lost Colony, at the end of the first book one is still left with many questions as to how these English colonists on an island off the North Carolina coast were translated into this fantasy world and how such a small group ended up conquering an empire in a world where magic works.  And one of my quibbles is how the religion of Keyes' fantasy world is a medieval Christianity with saints but without God or Jesus -- a sort of polytheism with churches, bishops, and monks just like in medieval Christendom. I don't see how the Roanoke colonists would have forgotten the story of Christ. One of my guesses as to what perhaps Keyes did in the fourth book that angered fans was to resolve the connections between his fantasy world and our real world in a very unbelievable way. (Please don't tell me if you know!)

I guess at this point in my life I sort of appreciate Keyes having finished his series even if he did it badly.   And my style of reading is such that I might never make it to the fourth book before I die, anyway. So at this point I feel really happy to have read a book I liked so much. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Finished Ian Fleming's third Bond book, Moonraker. Now that I have a decent sample size the differences between book and Movie Bond are pretty apparent. Book Bond is way more like Craig's version than Connery, Brosnan or Moore's. He's not very suave, he's kind of cold and he's not a lothario. There aren't any fancy gadgets yet, BB mainly just uses basic tools. He should also weigh like 400 pounds with his drinking and eating habits. He's not much of an action hero and he's constantly getting his ass kicked. His successes largely have come from his wits and quick thinking, and he's pretty sneaky as one would expect. Overall BB is way less of a caricature than many of his on screen adaptations.

Also, I can't comment on the films Moonraker and Live and Let Die because I haven't seen them in a long time, but the film version of Casino Royale is really faithful to the book. They didn't change any of the major plot points for the most part, just modernized it, added more action and explored Le Chiffre's background a bit more.

[williamjm]

8 hours ago, unJon said:

Let me know if you still think so in the end. I used to love North, but have found her more recent books hit or miss, so have been reluctant to get this one. 

I read it a few years ago, I wouldn't say it was a bad book but I didn't like it anywhere near as much as some of her other books.

2 hours ago, dog-days said:

Moving Dogs of War up my reading list, now. A number two to Guns of the Dawn still has plenty of room to be a great book. 

I really liked both books, although they're very different to each other.

[polishgenius]

9 hours ago, unJon said:

Let me know if you still think so in the end. I used to love North, but have found her more recent books hit or miss, so have been reluctant to get this one. 

84K is incredibly different to any of her other work, really. Less flighty in its writing style and whimsical/fantastical in concept than the rest of her stuff, and pretty damn grim and angry.  



 

 

On 1/4/2022 at 9:34 AM, Peadar said:

Books like Guns of the Dawn don't come along every week! I wish more people had read this one. In my opinion, it's his best, although in his own opinion, Dogs of War is his best -- that's only my number 2  

I like Dogs of War a fair bit, but anyone who's read Grant Morrison's WE3 might take a while to get past the similarities (Dogs eventually opens up into a different sort of scope, though, so it's worth it). 


Tchaikovski writes so damn much man. My favourite I think is Cage of Souls, really like that. Need to catch up on some of his novellas/shorter books, but I do have a slight issue with the publisher charging full price as an ebook for some of the shorter ones- it's pretty daft that 600 pages of Cage of Souls or Children of Ruin costs four or five pound, whereas Walking to Aldebaran or Firewalkers, both clocking in at 150-ish pages, are seven pound. I know value for money and length are not an exact correlation but I'm not paying full novel price for something I can read in an hour. 

 

Still, One Day All Of This Will Be Yours sound so damn cool I'm gonna have to read it eventually. 

[shortstark]

Can we petition GRRM to get Adrian Tchaikovsky to finish ASOIAF, man is ridiculously prolific and maintains such a high standard..

Ok Ok joke...

[Zorral]

Anthony Horowitz is even more prolific, and he does both novels (adult and YA) and endless television, some of the most popular television evah!

[Fragile Bird]

Finished the second Thursday Night Club book, The Man Who Died Twice, and the book of the Witcher short stories, The Last Wish. 
 

Funnily enough, one thing they have in common is some hilarious one-liners.

[Starkess]

7 hours ago, Ormond said:

Yesterday I finished The Briar King by Greg Keyes. This is the first book in his "The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone" four book fantasy series.

That name sounded vaguely familiar so I looked it up and I did indeed read this series back in 2014. I don't remember a single thing about it (even the character names you've posted left me scratching my head), but apparently I gave the books 3, 3, 4, and 3 stars on Goodreads (on GR, 3 stars = I liked it and 4 stars = I really liked it). So my past self enjoyed the last book!