First Quarter 2022 Reading

[Garlan the Gallant]

Was disappointed with Abraham’s new novel.

[The Wolves]

I just finished A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes. I really enjoyed it. It is a Greek retelling of the Trojan War from the women perspective. 
 

The book was refreshing, it was also heartbreaking. I appreciated that all the women seemed to have their own voices, they didn’t seem like copies of each other. 
 

The author did a great job on giving the women so much presence during a war. I felt their loss, anger, fear, vengeance, pain, the unjust of it all and their love for their families, husbands, and children. 
It was a good read overall and I’m looking forward to reading her other book Pandoras Jar coming out in a few days. 

[williamjm]

I finished Alix E. Harrow's The Once and Future Witches which I thought was very good. I liked her first book (The Ten Thousand Doors of January) but I thought this one perhaps had a stronger narrative. One of the biggest events in the book happening right at the start and the characters initially don't entirely understand what has happened and I thought the book did a good job of gradually revealing the secrets of their world to them and to the reader. To begin with, aside from being set in the fictional city of New Salem it feels like a fairly typical late-19th Century American setting but the alternate history elements do become more apparent as the book goes along. I also thought the three main characters got some good development throughout the book and the relationship between the three sisters also develops, to begin with it looked like it could be one of those frustrating stories where the characters are refusing to talk to each about important things but there are good reasons for that and eventually they do get past it. I thought the bittersweet ending was satisfying without being overly neat.

I've now started Pat Cadigan's Fools.

[Plessiez]

Finished Startide Rising a few days ago.  Not much to add to my earlier comments.  There's some interestingly weird stuff in it - not surprisingly, really, given how much the setting clearly owes to the work of people like John Lilly in the 1960s and 70s - and I am glad I stuck with it, but I won't be investigating the sequels.

I quite liked Daniel Abraham's Age of Ash.  Agree with people who've said it's not hugely original, but I thought it was well done.  That said, I wasn't entirely sure what the point of

Spoiler

starting the story with a flashforward to Elaine a Sal's coronation was supposed to be, other than making it clear that we weren't supposed to feel any tension about questions of whether Alys or Elaine survive

But presumably there's some other point to it that I'm just not getting right now.

 

[Durckad]

Continued reading update.

Read The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. LeGuin. I quite liked it, but it definitely feels like the most "traditional" of the Earthsea novels so far, with a quest structure and a villain of sorts. It was good, but not quite as good as the prior two. The first half feels a bit aimless at times, but the second half picks up the pace once it fully embraces its more traditional fantasy narrative structure. Overall, enjoyable, but not a must read, essential fantasy novel like the first (or perhaps the second as well) but worth reading if you're a fan of Earthsea. 3.5/5

Followed that up by finally reading Dune: Messiah and, I'm going to be honest here, but... Dune: Messiah >>>> Dune. Better characters, better writing, a more interesting narrative, and better villains. Honestly, the Harkonnens fucking suck as villains, honestly, they're either non-entities like Rabban or over-the-top cartoon characters like Vlad. Feyd had potential, but aside from a few moments with him, he's just as much of a cartoon as Vlad, just in a different way. Same with the Emperor. The antagonists in Messiah, may not be fully fleshed out, but they aren't 2D caricatures rubbing their hands together about how eeeeeevil and smart they are either. There's a bit more to them than that and they have conflicting desires and goals driving them. Their main plot is bit underwhelming once revealed, but Herbert slow unveils it in such a way that it is interesting throughout the entire novel. The main characters all continue to be good and properly build upon what happens in the first novel and the themes explored are much more interesting, IMO. The worldbuilding continues to be excellent, and Messiah is a nice, relatively short read and has very little of Dune's excessive faffing around.

This might sound like I don't like Dune at all, in fact, I think I favorably reviewed it a few months ago, but the flaws and parts I do not like stick out so much. It would be easy to say that Messiah, as a sort of companion sequel to Dune, makes the original better, but I don't think that's the case. Dune's faults are all its own and Messiah seems to learn from them, resulting in a more interesting novel. I'd say if you like Dune, Messiah is a definite must read. Even if you think Dune is flawed or even kinda sucks, I would still recommend Messiah as it seems to (IMO) correct a lot of the most commonly mentioned problems with the original. Definitely thinking about continuing on with Children at some point, but not yet. 4/5

Finally, I read Daniel Abraham's new book, Age of Ash and I found it... fine. I thought it started interesting, and it ended well, but the mid section of the book just kinda plodded along. I thought the characters were... fine and the worldbuilding was... fine and the story was... fine. I don't really have much to say other than I just felt underwhelmed. Everything just feels a bit undercooked. Very few of the characters managed to get me invested in a story that was just kind of... there. There's some really interesting tidbits hinted at during the book, but it's all papered over by a mystery that's solved too quickly and a heist that is organized and executed too quickly and there's a bunch of faffing around in between by characters that I just tolerate. I hope the next book is a bit better, but Abraham has definitely written enough good that he's earned my confidence that he can hopefully deliver. But if it's the same as this one? Eh... 2.5-3/5

Next up is Tamsyn Muir's Harrow The Ninth

[williamjm]

5 hours ago, Durckad said:

Read The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. LeGuin. I quite liked it, but it definitely feels like the most "traditional" of the Earthsea novels so far, with a quest structure and a villain of sorts. It was good, but not quite as good as the prior two. The first half feels a bit aimless at times, but the second half picks up the pace once it fully embraces its more traditional fantasy narrative structure. Overall, enjoyable, but not a must read, essential fantasy novel like the first (or perhaps the second as well) but worth reading if you're a fan of Earthsea. 3.5/5

I read all six of the books at the beginning of last year and I agree with your opinion here, while it did have some really good scenes in it overall I think it's one of the weaker Earthsea books.

[Inkdaub]

I consider Robert Jackson Bennett to be a favorite of mine but I have tried to read Foundryside twice now and bounced off both times. I think this one might not be for me. So I started Sagara's Cast in Peril which I already knew I would like. Full speed ahead.

[Zorral]

This second volume in Cameron's series shows admirable knowledge of history in many of its aspects.  But more impressive is how lightly this actually weighs on the narrative, rather it deepens the entire milieu. Looking in the innernezes I see some readers feel quite differently about this, especially after the third volume. 

[urrutiap]

Books im reading currently

 

Bentley Little's The Haunted

Star Wars High Republic Light of the Jedi

 

in April Ill be reading these

Star Wars High Republic Rising Storm

Star Wars High Republic Fallen Star

Star Wars Darth Maul Lockdown

[williamjm]

I read Pat Cadigan's Fools. It was an unusual reading experience, it's a cyberpunk novel where it is possible for people to buy the memories of others and even artificial personalities. The protagonist starts off the story with a major identity crisis with multiple personalities fighting for dominance and as a result it's a disconcerting book to read with frequent (and often abrupt) changes in perspective between different points of view all of which are confused to some extent about what is going on. It's a bit hard to follow the story at first due to this, as the book goes along it does start to make more sense although it's definitely a story where each answer just leads to more questions. It's an impressive and unique story, although I'm not sure how much I really enjoyed reading it and since none of the characters are particularly likeable it was hard to care too much about what was happening to them. There's always a bit of a risk for a cyberpunk novel from the early 90s that it might end up feeling dated, but I think it mostly doesn't aside from characters still using public landlines since it may have technologies to manipulate minds and memories and flying taxis but apparently no mobile computing devices.

Now I've started Leigh Bardugo's King of Scars.

[polishgenius]

Finished Age of Ash. I agree with the general sentiment, it's... fine, but nothing remarkable, I guess? I'm not too worried coz I felt that way about Leviathan Rising and a little bit about the first Dagger and Coin too, but there's less time for Abraham to get to his level here. 

 

On 3/14/2022 at 12:03 AM, williamjm said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Reading the first chapter again after reading the rest of the book it describes three characters and what they are doing during Bryn al Sal's funeral. One of them seems to be Goro (with one of Kithamar's game pieces) and another is Alys but there's also a young man mentioned with an injured hand and I'm not sure who that is meant to be. It could maybe be Elaine's lover but I'm not sure why he would be mentioned, unless he's meant to be a more important character later in the series?

 

 

Spoiler

I think it has to be Garreth yeah, but we're not given enough context to know why. Fairly positive you're right and he'll be back in the next book.

It's the guy with the bead that interests me. It was Halev Karsen- Byrn a Sal's friend/adviser- that took it, but he's never described to have a beard so it would be odd that that would be the sole identifier in the scene- and in any case, he should be pretty busy at that point. On the other hand, there are two occasions where Karsen is shown to have something odd about him- in the scene where he takes the bead, Kithamar finds him and his behaviour odd, but also the first 'proper' scene in the book, when Alys sees him, she 'recognises' him and freaks out but it's never quite specified why, iirc. So there's definitely more to him, and it's not impossible that he's some other power that wears Karsen as a disguise. 

 

[Garlan the Gallant]

22 hours ago, polishgenius said:

Finished Age of Ash. I agree with the general sentiment, it's... fine, but nothing remarkable, I guess? I'm not too worried coz I felt that way about Leviathan Rising and a little bit about the first Dagger and Coin too, but there's less time for Abraham to get to his level here. 

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

I think it has to be Garreth yeah, but we're not given enough context to know why. Fairly positive you're right and he'll be back in the next book.

It's the guy with the bead that interests me. It was Halev Karsen- Byrn a Sal's friend/adviser- that took it, but he's never described to have a beard so it would be odd that that would be the sole identifier in the scene- and in any case, he should be pretty busy at that point. On the other hand, there are two occasions where Karsen is shown to have something odd about him- in the scene where he takes the bead, Kithamar finds him and his behaviour odd, but also the first 'proper' scene in the book, when Alys sees him, she 'recognises' him and freaks out but it's never quite specified why, iirc. So there's definitely more to him, and it's not impossible that he's some other power that wears Karsen as a disguise. 

 

I liked the first entry in both of those series way, way more than this.

[Starkess]

I (finally!) finished Moon Witch, Spider King, which is a long-ass audio book at like 30+ hours (more like 20 for me, I can't stand 1x speed). Can't remember who tipped me off that I might try this one even though I DNF'd book 1, but thanks! I did enjoy this one a lot more. It was a lot easier to actually understand (though still quite difficult, and I probably should have read rather than listened). I didn't love this book--James goes all in on violence and grimness in ways I don't always appreciate, and I felt the story took some surprising twists and turns that were sometimes like "ooh what?!" and sometimes like "um what." and didn't feel cohesive as a narrative always. But certainly an interesting book!

Still struggling through Age of Ash. I've been reading in like 10 minute increments because I get distracted and go on my phone. Not sure if I can blame the book (though seeing some y'all's comments, perhaps I can) or just how wrecked my attention span is these days!