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What are you reading? First Quarter 2023


williamjm
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Spent most of my reading time over the last few months reading Megan Whalen Turner's The Queen's Thief series. I know I read the second book when I was a kid, and maybe the first two, but likely didn't know the series continued. 

Overall I enjoyed it. Eugenides is a Gary Stu if I ever saw one, but I can give it a pass since he's his god's avatar, and I do like that the author didn't make him a saint. The books that took place away from Eugenides worked the best for me - it felt forced how often the reader was supposed to be "surprised" by some manipulation he pulled off when you're following him everywhere and ostensibly sometimes in his mind. 

I liked the side characters and the overall plot was well done - so satisfying to see all the pieces come together in the end. Paying attention is rewarded with this series!

I also liked the focus on understanding characters and their motivations, and how that plays into the larger plot / machinations, vs just being a story about war and power. 

The end made my heart feel more full than I expected. 

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Somewhere in between Thief books, I read Mythago Wood. I did NOT enjoy it, and don't know why I finished it. Plodding, boring, unsympathetic protagonist, and a complete failure to deliver on the concept. This should've been an amazing part horror part folklore part historical fiction part fantasy book, but ultimately felt like a weird wish fulfillment romance + generic adventure, with the central romance / plot driver being our protagonists creepy obsession with a fake woman his brain constructed, who just smells so earthy and wild and intoxicating (puke). The concept of a mythago also never clicked for me - either I'm not smart enough (or didn't care enough), or it just doesn't really make sense, despite the science-y explanations built around it. 

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I had to put The Golden Enclaves on pause again. El started a brief travelogue and that is my biggest literary pet peeve. I fully intend to finish it. I really enjoyed the first 2 books and want to know the final conclusion. It’s just that this last book doesn’t flow as smoothly as the others.

Currently I’m half way through book #3 of the Starship for Sale series. There’s nothing special or ground breaking about these books, yet I can’t put them down. 

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Read Frontier Wolf as part of a loose resolution to catch up on the last couple of books in Rosemary Sutcliff's (1920–1992) dolphin ring cycle. Although published last in 1980 excluding the posthumous Sword Song, it's set in 343 AD so falls chronologically between The Silver Branch and Lantern Bearers; the protagonist Alexios could be the grandson of Silver Branch's Marcelus Flavius.

Frontier Wolf is what would these days probably be called a Young Adult book: it's telling a coming-of-age adventure story that ends well for the protagonist, though has some fairly brutal aspects to it along the way that wouldn't look out of place in Abercrombie, even if the style is much more lyrical, the tone on some levels more idealistic, and the dialogue literary and perhaps owing something to Kipling and other writers of that era. Much of Frontier Wolf echoes and shadows Sutcliff's more famous work The Eagle of the Ninth (set 126 AD). 

At the start of the novel, Alexios is not in a good place. We learn in flashback about how he badly miscalculated while on his first proper officer's posting and got a lot of his men killed. (Contrast this with Marcus Aquila, the earlier hero: his initial transformation happens due to the injury he suffers while successfully and triumphally defending his fort against a chariot charge). As punishment, a fairly light one because of his good family connections, he's sent to command a fort north of Hadrian's Wall with a fictional division known as the Frontier Wolves, comprising soldiers' with dodgy backgrounds or recruited, contrary to usual practice, from the local tribes.

Ultimately, he has to face the same dilemma that he screwed up in the opening chapter. An atmospheric retreat through the lowlands of Scotland in early winter reminded me both of Marcus's and Esca's escape, but also of the situation faced by Marcus's father, who tried and failed to get the remains of his legion safely back to the wall. 

Questions of empire lurk on every other page; any one book Sutcliff's novels of Roman Britain could easily supply enough material for a thesis or three. The influence of the British military, their expressions and values, is clear enough. Sutcliff was the daughter of a Royal Navy officer, and was a great fan of Kipling. The rank-and-files's (real? imagined?) values of brotherhood and loyalty permeate a lot of her fiction, which is also typically homosocial and blatantly homoerotic in tone. (It has to be fairly blatant for me to pick up on it.) Frontier Wolf has multiple bromances, two ending horribly, one rather better.

Spoiler

Also the cute cat dies. Sutcliff really wasn't pulling her punches with this one.

The above paragraph may have made Sutcliff sound like a rather jingoistic writer, but really she's more complex than that. I think that to various degrees she was a conservative one: Marcus and Alexios both get rewarded with the chance to Romanize land (Marcus) and people (Alexios). She loves to confront her protagonists with difference, with other worlds, with the idea that, like travellers in the Forest of Arden, they take part of that strangeness on with them, having internalised it and made it part of their new, better selves. But in the Roman books, that often just looks like someone doing well within the status quo, albeit in a rather 'alternative' way. It's hard to grudge it too much to Marcus and Alexios, since they go through the wringer, though not to the same extent as poor Aquila in The Lantern Bearers

Still to go is Dawn Wind

The library had a copy of The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty (the Daevabad author) and I started it last night. So far, so good. 

Edited by dog-days
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About done with book 2 of The First Law, which is my first full, sequential reread since the first time.

I haven't gotten to book 3 yet (obviously) and I'm loosely interested to see the timeline of that one because I've never thought of it before and now I wonder if ...

Spoiler

... Ferro might be pregnant when she bails at the end of the series and there's an as-yet-unrevealed little Logen or Ferro out there.

I imagine not, but I don't recall how long they continue "coupling" and it is striking my imagination as a potential fun future character.

 

Edited by Ser Not Appearing
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Ages ago I said I was doing rereads of some books, and a new series, and I have been meaning to post about it since January. I decided to re-read, well, re-listen to, Lois McMaster Bujold’s three Chalion books (Penric is in the same world but it’s not part of the Chalion series). The writing really is beautiful. I wondered about The Sharing Knife series, since there were never holds on them at the library, and since someone said they had read the series and enjoyed them I decided I’d have a go at them.

Bujold really writes beautifully about damaged people. The Curse of Chalion, The Paladin of Souls and the Hallowed Hunt all of central characters who desperately need healing, mainly emotionally but sometimes physically as well. Penric is slightly different, in that he starts as a callow youth and only gets damaged after his mentor dies and the new folks in charge drive him to despair at the hospital, but many of the people he helps along the way certainly fit that description. Penric and the Shaman is probably my favorite of the series.

Anyway, she wrote The Sharing Knife series after the Chalion books, and well after the bulk of the Vorkosigan books, between 2006 and 2009. Penric came after. Bujold decided to set this world in what is essentially settlor Ohio, and was proud of the fact that her details, her idiom, her world were all praised as accurate reflections of the time. The four books were meant to be one extended book in four parts, not sequels, and Book 2, for example, picks up the evening of the end of Book 1, Book 3 a few days after the main characters leave his home setting for her home setting. I was prepared to loathe the world, with its corny American pioneer tone, but I actually grew very fond of it along the way, although if I heard one more saying about people looking like frogs who’ve lost their pond or another joke about squirrels I thought I was going to chuck them all. The books are Beguilement, Legacy, Passage and Horizon.

In this world there are two kinds of people, Lakewalkers and Farmers. Farmers are not just farmers, they’re everyone who is not a Lakewalker. A thousand years ago there was a third group, rulers of them all, people who were powerful mages and who built all the important roads that still are used in this time, and huge cities that have all vanished, sunk under lakes and seas or simply destroyed. The Lakewalkers believe they were the next tier down from the powerful mages, as they have mage powers as well, and the Farmers were basically the working class. The powerful mages, it’s suspected, wanted to be even more powerful, and that power grab destroyed them. A magical (?) creature was created and destroyed in the war that followed, and when that creature was blown up tens of thousands or more of its pieces were scattered and buried in the ground, pieces that seed creatures called Malice. Bujold creates a concept called Ground, which can roughly be described as the essence of everything, whether a person or a thing. Lakewalkers can sense and manipulate Ground, they can feel what you are feeling (but can’t read your mind). Farmers have Ground, but can’t sense it. The Malice live off Ground and strip the Ground out of everything around them, becoming more powerful as they consume plants, animals and humans. They can actually capture animals and turn them into human-like slaves, who become their army, and they can also mind control humans. They’re immortal, except that Lakewalkers, and only Lakewalkers, can kill them using a Sharing Knife. It’s called that because the knives are made from the bones of dead Lakewalkers, which are enchanted by connecting them to an individual Lakewalker, and that Lakewalker eventually kills themself with their connected knife, which transfers their life essence to the knife, “priming” the knife. Lakewalker soldiers, “patrollers”, carry primed knives to kill Malice. Only these knives can kill Malice.

The central characters are, first, Dag Redwing, a patroller who is one of those damaged men Bujold creates, a soldier renowned for the relentless way he hunts and kills Malice. He doesn’t care about his life at this point because of tragic losses in his past. The other is Fawn Bluefield, a young farmer girl who runs away from home and gets caught up in a Malice hunt Dag is part of. The books follow their relationship and how they fall in love, marry, and have to carve out a new way of life. Lakewalker/ farmer relationships are, of course, taboo, which causes a great number of problems for the couple.

Bujold’s writing, once again, is wonderful. Dag is very cowboy-like laconic and Fawn is very prairie girl, they may not be to your taste.

As I’ve listened and re-listened to these books it amazes me to see how Bujold plants so many ideas that could be future books.

At one point, for example, Dag is at his captain’s headquarters and it’s mentioned there are only two missing Lakewalkers, Dag, who had been missing a few weeks, and another fellow who’s been missing for two years, and the captain is urged to take down the fellow’s marker, stuck in the missing box. You’d swear Bujold would come up with a sequel following up that fellow’s story, but instead she wrote the Penric novellas.

However, in an epilogue to Book 4, one of the side characters comes to Dag and Fawn to ask for advice, since this Lakewalker lad just found out he has a daughter with a farmer girt he once had a roll in the hay with. Nothing for ten years, and then in the midst of her Penric books, Bujold writes Knife Children, a novella about the Lakewalker finding out his now 14-year old daughter has run away from her Farmer home. If you don’t want to invest the time in the original books, try Knife Children to give you a taste of the world. The original books are a very tender description of marriage, this book is a lovely description of a father’s love for his child. Barr is a very likable character, funny, self-deprecating and a far better person than he was in Books 3 and 4 of the original series. The epilogue always brings a tear to my eye. The narrator is extremely good.

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Two books that I picked up and then put back down again shortly thereafter included the following.

J.G. Ballard's High Rise was on my re-read list for some reason, and I cannot remember why.  Perhaps because of the film that came out six or seven years ago?  Upon finishing the first thirty pages, though, I was reminded of how dark and depressing life was in post-war Britain, and although Ballard is a good writer, the characters aren't likeable and their choices are equally bad and dull.  I like a bit of dystopia, but this one doesn't suit my mood right now, so I put that one away.

I replaced it with Kameron Hurley's Bel Dame Apocrypha, which was recommended on this thread or one of its predecessors.  God's War is the first book in the series, so I loaded it up and waded in.  Again, the writer is smooth and accomplished, and the story flows well, but after a couple of hours I decided that it wasn't for me.

Third time's a charm, right?  So I went with Shattered Sword, which is the Battle of Midway, but told with the benefit of Japanese source material instead of the somewhat-distorted tale most of us learned in school or from certain star-studded movies.  The authors Anthony P. Tully and Jonathan Parshall do both a good job of correcting some of the distortions Americans have about the battle and analyzing the reasons for the outcome.  A lot of the distortions Westerners have come from applying American operational expectations to what we think must have happened in the Japanese carrier operations, such as on-deck re-fueling, and making that a cause of the destruction of the IJN carriers.

Instead, the authors show that the Japanese operations were different (below-deck re-fueling) and their entire tactical doctrine was different (carriers set up for raiding rather than invading).  They have A LOT of translated doctrinal and operational information, as well as the IJN after-action reports and some log books, so unless you really want to know exactly how IJN fighter CAP was staged, or how the logistics trains associated with carrier groups work, this may not be the book for you.  However, given my earlier two swings and misses, I persevered to the end, and it was overall illuminating and very complete.

Also, if you have any interest in a visual representation of this book, Montemayor's three-part videos encapsulate the action and adventure part of the story wonderfully.

Part 1 - Japanese: Plans and perspective

Part 2 - Japanese: Hiryu Strikes Back

Part 3 - American perspective and post-game analysis: Well, that went about as poorly for the IJN as it could have possibly done

Tully and Parshall argue and provide good evidence that the Battle of Midway was only ever going to have a negative outcome for the Japanese, even if they had won, given the IJN's doctrine, the internal political shape of domestic and military politics, the Japanese unwillingness to build for total war rather than a limited raid and creation of a sphere of influence, and the lack of understanding that the US would absolutely build out for total war.  I learned a lot about the operational and doctrinal ideas of the Japanese that I never knew before, and much of it helps make this and other episodes of the War in the Pacific more understandable.  Otherwise, I just thought the Japanese were making stupid choices, but now I comprehend the internal logic of some of their decisions.

Does it reach the heights of Neptune's Inferno or Dreadnought?  No, but it is a top-rank book of naval history and analysis for the reader with an appetite for details.  A lot of details.

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Just finished C. S. Friedman's forthcoming Coldfire prequel Nightborn: Coldfire Rising. It's the story of the Founding of Erna up to the First Sacrifice, as the colonists must have a way to gain a measure of control over the fae before it kills them all. The book also includes a revised edition of the novella Dominion, which recounts the tale of Gerald Tarrant he has attempts to master the Forest and becomes the Hunter.

Fans of the Coldfire trilogy will relish the chance to read more stories set in that universe. Friedman is planning a set of novellas exploring the rich history of Erna. This is the first such project and it bodes well for the future. :)

You can read my full review here.

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On 3/12/2023 at 10:53 AM, Jaxom 1974 said:

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...

Having now finished The Adventures of Amina Al-Sarafi, I cam honestly say I enjoyed the hell out of it. Honestly, I enjoyed it more than what I've read of the Daevabad Trilogy thus far.

It was parts Best Served Cold, with a touch of the Gentleman Bastards, and then it went off in a Pirates of the Caribbean riff, yet it maintained its own voice and painted a truly vibrant world.  I do hope, as it seems to be promised, future follow ups...

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5 hours ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Having now finished The Adventures of Amina Al-Sarafi, I cam honestly say I enjoyed the hell out of it. Honestly, I enjoyed it more than what I've read of the Daevabad Trilogy thus far.

It was parts Best Served Cold, with a touch of the Gentleman Bastards, and then it went off in a Pirates of the Caribbean riff, yet it maintained its own voice and painted a truly vibrant world.  I do hope, as it seems to be promised, future follow ups...

Interesting combination.

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53 minutes ago, Peadar said:

Starting Kindred by Octavia Butler. Modern (1970s) African American woman accidentally time-travels to an ante-bellum plantation. Only about 20 pages in, but so far enjoying it.

 

Only loosely related, but Facebook showed me a reel the other day of a standup comedian talking about if he time traveled to the past ... he'd have no idea how to prove he was from the future because he doesn't know how anything works and his grasp of history is so poor.

 

It made me think hard about if I knew anything that could prove my origin or would at least prove truly useful. The answer was no.

Edited by Ser Not Appearing
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43 minutes ago, Ser Not Appearing said:

 

Only loosely related, but Facebook showed me a reel the other day of a standup comedian talking about if he time traveled to the past ... he'd have no idea how to prove he was from the future because he doesn't know how anything works and his grasp of history is so poor.

 

It made me think hard about if I knew anything that could prove my origin or would at least prove truly useful. The answer was no.

Have sometimes considered the same thing. 

I mean, I could try and talk about germs and the importance of sterilizing implements and surfaces, but I couldn't prove anything and I reckon they'd just decide I was completely crazy. And my appeal to them to write semantic HTML probably wouldn't stir their sympathy either. 

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I finished listening to The Woman in the Window, which I found disappointing (overly long, idiotic MC, and it made me have trouble sleeping because I don't deal well with anything scary and, again, the MC was such a f'ing idiot that she kept placing herself in danger). Then my hold on Assassin's Apprentice came in, so I'm listening to that now. This trilogy is one of my favorite of all time, and I've never listened to the audiobook before. I'm enjoying it as much as ever, and damn this book hits so hard after having read the series a few times. 

Spoiler

I am a shameless Molly fan and her and Fitz being SO DAMN CUTE but SO DAMN DOOMED is killing me.

 

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Someone on one of these threads (perhaps Winterfella?) recommended C.S. Forester's The Good Shepherd, and since the audiobook is read by one of my new favorites, Edoardo Ballerini, it has been my book of the week.  It can be summarized in two points.

  • Do you like Alistair MacLean's H.M.S. Ulysses, but wish that it was 50% longer?
  • And do you wish that all of the additional material comprised on-the-nose Biblical quotations made by the main viewpoint character to illustrate, highlight, and emphasize the exact situation he is currently facing?

Then this is the book for you!

Seriously, though, the reader, Edoardo Ballerini, is excellent.  And the book is a completely competent and likely a highly accurate retelling of the experience of the Atlantic convoy escorts.

However, I read H.M.S. Ulysses as a teen, and it was just fine despite a scandalous dearth of allusions to Scripture.  Plus, MacLean celebrates the everyman members of the crew, who do their jobs in the face of a multitude of dangers.  Yes, the dangers are piled on to the point that as an adult, it is difficult to believe a ship could be so unlucky.  But still, it is great.

The single viewpoint makes The Good Shepherd more unified, but if you find that character or his idiosyncrasies, such as constant Bible quoting, in any way off-putting, you are trapped into that character without relief.  I don't recall Forester's Horatio Hornblower being quite so pious, for instance.  Perhaps he was making a reference to Captain Ahab?  Seems a weird choice, since Captain Ahab is fairly unlikeable.

The Good Shepherd is fine, well-written, good plot, sufficient excitement, etc.  But I if you have not yet read either of these 1955 novels, go with MacLean in this particular instance.

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I finished The Shadow Casket by Chris Wooding, sequel to The Ember Blade.  I absolutely loved Ember Blade, and while I didn't like the sequel quite as much, it was still very good.

Also read a short novel, The Twice-Drowned Saint by C.S.E. Cooney.  This one is a bit hard to describe.  It's kind of a wacky, revolutionary little book about saints and angels in a fantastical city ruled by angels.  A little weird, but I liked it quite a bit.

 

On 3/7/2023 at 11:08 AM, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Just finished The Sea of Tranquillity by Emily St John Mandel. It was absolutely lovely. She can flat out write. 

One of my favorite reads last year!

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On 3/12/2023 at 6:14 PM, Jaxom 1974 said:

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.  

Same.  I was already a fan of the author, but this is definitely an eye-catching cover.

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On 1/14/2023 at 5:55 PM, Zorral said:

Would you say then, that Mason & Dixon is "spoiler-proof" in the sense that most people use spoilers -- as to giving away plot story and character?

I think of the Gormenghast trilogy that way -- since in my experience people what people call spoilers has to do with plot, story, etc., and you can't do that in a few words with Gormenghast.  It's so much about style and tune and attitude.  It's not a traditional fantasy in the way so many are used to.  IMO, of course.

still no completely sure how i fell about the Gormenghast trilogy. interesting read, very unique story telling style. i'm pretty sure i liked it, but don't know many people i would recommend it to.

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Age of Ash was good as expected. Some elements of it were a little odd, with significant seeming things happening and then not being followed up on but I assume that's down to the trilogy of books taking place simultaneously thing and they'll be addressed in one of the other books. It'll be interesting to see how Abraham manages to cover things over the next two books.

I also read Django Wexler's Emperor of Ruin the last book of his Burningblade and Silvereye trilogy. It was okay. I do quite like Wexler's books but his series do tend to start out really strong and not quite manage to end on a high.

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