What are you reading? First Quarter 2023

[Fragile Bird]

On 3/2/2023 at 12:02 PM, Argonath Diver said:

After years and years of hearing this board sing her praises, I've finally leapt into JV Jones' A Cavern of Black Ice. Specifically, I went in completely blind. I knew she was very highly regarded here, but hadn't actually read a lick of plot summary. 

I don't know the reading habits of the rest of you lovely lot, but I have always enjoy scanning the standard fantasy series map before dipping into any prologue, etc. Hers reveals some neato location names right off the bat. Much like how I analyzed the map of Westeros many, many times over, hoping to see stories about places like Bear Island, etc, I immediately found myself hoping to see some of the settings of that map. 

Even before I'd read 10 pages, I was delighted by Jones' particularly lovely crafting of language. The last series I finished was, I'm a bit embarrassed, was The Belgeriad after @Ser Not Appearing inspired a re-read. Let's just say I skimmed over the last book of that series as fast as I read the entire Prologue and first two chapters of Jones' work. I have a bad habit of skimming over stretches of uninspired prose, but with Jones I've found myself re-reading full paragraphs already, just to savor the language. I'm only halfway through the first book, but Jones is adept at conveying more character with one sentence than some authors spend chapters attempting.

I have no clue where this series is going, either, which is a delight. So glad our library system finally got a single beat up old copy of this for me to request.

Oh dear oh dear oh dear. I took it out in 2022 and gave up trying to read it. My library doesn’t have an audio version, maybe I’ve gotten lazy and that was the problem. Maybe I’ll try again. I vaguely remember my eyes glazing over at one point.

Eta: now I vaguely remember the torture scene that opened the book. Honestly, is it the US gun culture that makes torture in books so acceptable? Yes, yes, she was born in the UK but has lived in the US most of her life. So you guys like your blood and gore?

[Argonath Diver]

No, I do not, thank you very much. Again, I went in wholly blind, and yes that opening scene was pretty rough. There are some very dark moments throughout the novel as well. I'd recommend you continue to steer clear - her otherwise excellent characters and carefully-crafted prose won't keep your attention between the hardest bits. Though a forum favorite here, I found Mark Lawrence's work unreadably morbid, myself. The vibe of Cavern of Black Ice - again coming from a totally new reader - seems to be to be Tad Williams if he'd gone through a really dark patch in his life.

You have a fair point that violence toward the unwilling is depicted very clearly in many modern fantasy writers. From GRRM, Hobb, Bakker and Erikson to Mr. PG-13 himself Brandon Sanderson, very explicit blood-n-guts passages run rife through the genre. Perhaps that's why Abraham's Long Price Quartet was so wonderful - hardly a battle scene and certainly no torture horror scenes albeit a very mature setting. I was excited to hear good feedback toward Chris Wooding as more of a throwback, non-grimdark fantasy, but I was put off by The Ember Blade being cheesy.

Regardless, I finished Book 1, enjoyed everything about it except three or four of the really brutal bits, and am waiting for the second through inter-library loan. 

[Jaxom 1974]

I needed something to read and am now finishing a re-read of The Hour Glass Mage, last of The Lost Chronicles of Dragonlance (partly because my son is kinda sorta maybe starting to show some interest in reading Dragonlance and some other fantasy stories...working on him going over to it, slowly...)

But as soon as I'm done, I'm starting Shannon Chakraborty's latest, The Adventures if Amina Al-Sarafi...I know I need to actually read the last if the Daevabad trilogy still...and I will at some point...but I read the description of this one and I had to try it...

[dog-days]

15 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

But as soon as I'm done, I'm starting Shannon Chakraborty's latest, The Adventures if Amina Al-Sarafi...I know I need to actually read the last if the Daevabad trilogy still...and I will at some point...but I read the description of this one and I had to try it...

Didn't realise it was already out! Hope it lives up to the undeniable awesomeness of the blurb. 

[Gaston de Foix]

3 hours ago, Argonath Diver said:

No, I do not, thank you very much. Again, I went in wholly blind, and yes that opening scene was pretty rough. There are some very dark moments throughout the novel as well. I'd recommend you continue to steer clear - her otherwise excellent characters and carefully-crafted prose won't keep your attention between the hardest bits. Though a forum favorite here, I found Mark Lawrence's work unreadably morbid, myself. The vibe of Cavern of Black Ice - again coming from a totally new reader - seems to be to be Tad Williams if he'd gone through a really dark patch in his life.

You have a fair point that violence toward the unwilling is depicted very clearly in many modern fantasy writers. From GRRM, Hobb, Bakker and Erikson to Mr. PG-13 himself Brandon Sanderson, very explicit blood-n-guts passages run rife through the genre. Perhaps that's why Abraham's Long Price Quartet was so wonderful - hardly a battle scene and certainly no torture horror scenes albeit a very mature setting. I was excited to hear good feedback toward Chris Wooding as more of a throwback, non-grimdark fantasy, but I was put off by The Ember Blade being cheesy.

Regardless, I finished Book 1, enjoyed everything about it except three or four of the really brutal bits, and am waiting for the second through inter-library loan. 

Just chiming in here to say that the torture scene was sufficiently off-putting for me to stop reading and I haven't picked it up again.  Same for the Netflix show Troy which also had a torture scene. I stopped midway and now can't finish.  Torture is just uniquely off-putting for me in a way that battle, gore etc are not.  

[Teng Ai Hui]

5 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Eta: now I vaguely remember the torture scene that opened the book. Honestly, is it the US gun culture that makes torture in books so acceptable? Yes, yes, she was born in the UK but has lived in the US most of her life. So you guys like your blood and gore?

Mark me down as a Yank who can't stomach blood and gore when watching movies and reading books.  Also, I have zero interest in gun culture.  I guess I watched too many episodes of MacGyver during my formative years.  Plus, I have never had any desire to get up before dawn and walk through a timber in the cold in order to kill a deer.

I haven't read anything by JV Jones, but I had to stop reading Lawrence's Emperor of Thorns because of a torture scene.  

[Fragile Bird]

Further to my comments about torture scenes, I was out running errands and caught some of the CBC radio program Ideas this evening, and the discussion was about how animals are presented in literature, particularly dogs. One of the people being interviewed is doing her Ph.D on the topic and she talked about how many famous books have scenes of dogs being shot or tortured. Apparently there’s a real movement out there about presenting animals in a more humane way, not using gratuitous violence against them. In fact there’s a whole concept of writing from the animal’s point of view.

There was a discussion about the section of To Kill a Mockingbird where a “mad” dog shows up and Atticus Finch is urged to shoot it, displaying and proving his manliness before the children, who watch and approve and are suitably impressed. Parallels are drawn between the presentation of torturing animals and torturing humans. I should look up the show and listen to the whole thing.

[Teng Ai Hui]

Oh, seven hells, now I will have nightmares about that scene in The Dead Zone.   

[dog-days]

Read most of Thinking Again by the Jan Morris (1926–2020) while sitting in the local library enjoying the generously high central heating. I've never ready any of her more serious and famous works (e.g. the Pax Britannica trilogy). This one I really enjoyed: it takes the form of one hundred and thirty diary entries, most fairly short, which Morris wrote during 2018 and 2019. Despite the trials of advanced age – her partner Elizabeth by this time had dementia, the death of friends and acquaintances, physical struggles, and the isolation of the very old in a changed world – the tone remains for the most part determinedly breezy, alighting on the small things, the amusing, the ridiculous. If a few of the attitudes and language seem 'of their time' Morris would probably have owned up to it with a smile and a shrug.  

The long perspective is remarkable: 

"I hardly knew my father, who died when I was eight or nine years old and already away at boarding school. His health had been broken and his life ruined by poison gas in France during the First World War – the Great War, as we used to call it – and the most vivid memory I have of him finds him fitfully asleep in bed when I was home from school on holiday. In his dreams the war was raging still, and when I crept awestruck into his bedroom he cried out warnings, tossed and turned, moaned and coughed uncontrollably  and sometimes bitterly laughed, so alive in his nightmare that I heard the guns myself, ducked to the screaming whistle of the shells, smelt the cordite and the treacherous, murderous gas..."

I'd like to read more of her writing on Wales. Morris identified as Welsh and lived in the village-very-Cymraeg of Llanystumdwy in the north-west, despite having been raised in England with an upper middle class background. 

[JoannaL]

"Furious Heaven" the second part of The sun chronicles by Kate Elliott was published last week. so far (Ihave read a third until now) it  is as intelligent and entertaining as "Unconquerable Sun".

 

[TheLastWolf]

This time atleast going to finish Karamazov. Like Karenina, multiple failed starts (though got a long way in)

[polishgenius]

11 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

There was a discussion about the section of To Kill a Mockingbird where a “mad” dog shows up and Atticus Finch is urged to shoot it, displaying and proving his manliness before the children, who watch and approve and are suitably impressed.

 

I don't know about the rest of the discussion but that is absolutely not the point of the scene in TKaM. Not even a little bit. Also it's not a "mad" dog. It's a mad dog. A rabid dog. The point being that Atticus, out of the whole town, is the only one who has the strength and courage to do something that needs to be done, a recurring theme of the novel.

[Jaxom 1974]

On 3/10/2023 at 3:51 PM, dog-days said:

Didn't realise it was already out! Hope it lives up to the undeniable awesomeness of the blurb. 

Only 35 pages into it and I only hope the pace keeps up because thus far it has me hooked and thinking it could find its way into my all time favorites list...

[Ser Not Appearing]

I don't know if I mentioned it before but I've finally convinced my friend to take the time to read The First Law series. He's actually on the third book now but I've started a reread so that we can discuss more. 

Just got to Brother Longfoot for the first time, who he said reminded him of the type of character I would create in a role-playing game. I think I'll take that as a compliment. The guy is so in his own world, such a leaned-into characterization. Anyway, I've relistened to the opening section many times over the last few years but never really did a full reread. In doing so now, it's interesting to discover the types of things that I actually remember and the details that I've forgotten.

On a side note, I love the narrator pairing for these books, though I do listen at 1.5x.

[beniowa]

Keep forgetting to post here so I'll just do the ones I've read so far in March.

Read The Terraformers, a new release by Annalee Newitz.  This is kind of a hopeful book about people dealing with corporations on a terraformed world in the far future.  Felt a little piecemeal, but it did end pretty strongly. 

Also read Parable of the Talents, second book in the Earthseed Duology.  Another dark, powerful book by Octavia Butler. 

My most recent read was Dead Country by Max Gladstone, seventh book of the Craft Sequence.  Hard to believe it's been five years since the last Craft book.  This was shorter and more reflective than most in the series, but I really enjoyed it. 

[Jaxom 1974]

3 hours ago, beniowa said:

Keep forgetting to post here so I'll just do the ones I've read so far in March.

Read The Terraformers, a new release by Annalee Newitz.  This is kind of a hopeful book about people dealing with corporations on a terraformed world in the far future.  Felt a little piecemeal, but it did end pretty strongly. 

 

This is a case of, "This cover just is wonderful, I should read this book..."

I'll likely do so eventually just because of the cover.  

[Peadar]

I finally finished "An Litir" ("The Letter"), a boy's own adventure set in the earlyish 1600s in Galway. Plenty of fencing involved, a beautiful girl to be admired and a dastardly villain. There are three in the series. I may read the second one in a few months.

[ljkeane]

Since I lasted posted in this thread I've read Christopher Buehlman's The Blacktongue Thief which I didn't particularly like. The humour didn't click with me which quite a lot of the book revolves around. After that I read Rachel Aaron's The Battle of Medicine Rocks which I really enjoyed. As her books tend to be it was a nice, fun read.

Now I'm reading Daniel Abraham's Age of Ash.

[williamjm]

I read Neil Gaiman's The Kindly Ones. Since it is the longest volume in the series there was a lot going on in it, particularly since it seemed determined to bring together most of the major and minor characters from earlier stories. I think it usually did this effectively with some welcome returns for some characters I wasn't necessarily expecting to see again, although sometimes it was a challenge to remember all of them - I think I might have struggled to remember Lyta without the TV series having recently reminded me of her existence, which could have been a problem given how crucial she is to the plot. The climax to the story is heavily foreshadowed, but still powerful despite that and I think wisely does not try to tie up everything neatly. I think the weakest part of it is that some of the artwork was in a different style to the earlier volumes and I really disliked some of it.

I've now moved on to trying to finish off Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn books after the recent publication of the final book in the second series. Before starting that I read the novella A Secret History, which I didn't read when it first came out. I think it was useful for reminding me about some of the events in previous books since it is retelling the events from a different perspective. As a story it felt a bit clunky with a lot of exposition (a lot of which seemed to be trying to tie the series into Sanderson's non-Mistborn books), and the attempts at humour by the protagonist fell flat.

[Inkdaub]

I am reading Hanrahan's The Shadow Saint and I suggest everyone who loves tomato soup and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to climb aboard the Hanrahan train.