What Are You Reading? Second Quarter, 2023

[Peadar]

7 hours ago, williamjm said:

Guns of the Dawn, Children of Time, Dogs of War and City of Last Chances were some that I particularly liked by him. I haven't read The Expert System's Brother.

These are all great. In my opinion, Guns of the Dawn, Dogs of War and Cage of Souls are his finest works.

[ljkeane]

I liked The Expert System’s Brother but, yeah, I’d say Guns of the Dawn and Cage of Souls are Tchaikovsky’s two best books.

[Fragile Bird]

New thread is up!

[A wilding]

On 6/26/2023 at 6:40 PM, dog-days said:

Has anyone read Andrew Caldecott's Rotherweird books? My library service has all of them. I remember Waterstones pushing them heavily a few years ago, and the covers are certainly beautiful, but I can't recall seeing them mentioned with praise or otherwise here. 

I mean, I guess I could just read them myself and make up my own mind...

Wait. 

Nah. 

Late to the party, but I read the first one when short of books in Covid lockdown and it was dreadful. I imagine it only got published because of the author's connections. I was going to do a snark, but never got around to it.

[dog-days]

5 hours ago, A wilding said:

Late to the party, but I read the first one when short of books in Covid lockdown and it was dreadful. I imagine it only got published because of the author's connections. I was going to do a snark, but never got around to it.

Somehow I had the feeling that might be the case. The total silence in all the usual places I snuffle around for recommendations and the pristine condition of the library books were warnings. 

[A wilding]

@dog-days Actually, I am still a little annoyed about been suckered into buying a copy of the book in my pre-lockdown buying spree (mostly on the recommendation of a friend, who judgment I will be more doubtful about in future, though they did withdraw the recommendation after reading the next book). So I have dug it out of our "for charity shops" pile and semi randomly picked a page to criticise. Here goes.

 

Our protagonist, Oblong, a newcomer to the town, has come equal first in a festival race. A book of protocol is consulted and it is determined that there must be a tie-breaker. The winners must race to the top of the church tower, apparently without being allowed to enter the church. Now read on:

Quote

 

Oblong jumped over the cemetery wall and located two parallel rows of stone rungs near the northern corner of the church's rear wall. They rose to the parapet of the tower high above him.

The crowd, sensing that Oblong would provide richer entertainment, surged through the gravestones after him.

Cocooned in concentration Oblong looked only at the green-grey stone in front of him, climbing up and up [...] Wooden slated windows just above marked the belfry [...]

The morning had been calm, and the gust of wind caught him unprepared. His gangly legs flailed like a sheet in a gale and his right hand came away. Miraculously he was thrown across, into, and though the shutters. He clambered to his feet to see two large bells hanging beside four smaller ones - but they were nothing compared to the extraordinary frescos. [Continues to describe the frescos for a page or so.] A thick carpet of dust recorded his footprints. Nobody had been here in years.

 

Stone rungs? On the outside of an ancient church and still able to bear a man's weight? Really?

A gust of wind strong enough to knock a man off a wall and then sideways though a shuttered window? Into a room that has a thick carpet of dust that this gust apparently did not disturb?

Not only was Oblong miraculously thrown though the window, he appears to also be miraculously completely unhurt. Yet he does not give his experience a second thought, then or afterwards. I guess those frescos really did draw his attention!

What did the crowd think of all this? We are not told, but when Oblong eventually emerges from the church they are busy feting the winner and ignore him.

Nobody ever shows the least interest in fixing those slats/shutters.  Though to be fair I don't remember any mention of the church having services in it, or even having a vicar.

Edited July 10, 2023 by A wilding

[dog-days]

16 hours ago, A wilding said:

@dog-days Actually, I am still a little annoyed about been suckered into buying a copy of the book in my pre-lockdown buying spree (mostly on the recommendation of a friend, who judgment I will be more doubtful about in future, though they did withdraw the recommendation after reading the next book). So I have dug it out of our "for charity shops" pile and semi randomly picked a page to criticise. Here goes.

 

Our protagonist, Oblong, a newcomer to the town, has come equal first in a festival race. A book of protocol is consulted and it is determined that there must be a tie-breaker. The winners must race to the top of the church tower, apparently without being allowed to enter the church. Now read on:

Stone rungs? On the outside of an ancient church and still able to bear a man's weight? Really?

A gust of wind strong enough to knock a man off a wall and then sideways though a shuttered window? Into a room that has a thick carpet of dust that this gust apparently did not disturb?

Not only was Oblong miraculously thrown though the window, he appears to also be miraculously completely unhurt. Yet he does not give his experience a second thought, then or afterwards. I guess those frescos really did draw his attention!

What did the crowd think of all this? We are not told, but when Oblong eventually emerges from the church they are busy feting the winner and ignore him.

Nobody ever shows the least interest in fixing those slats/shutters.  Though to be fair I don't remember any mention of the church having services in it, or even having a vicar.

I can handwave plenty of illogicalities if the writing is strong enough, but the extract you posted sounds as if it was written by robot on a bad day. Lawyers of various stripes can make great genre fiction writers (Sansom was a solicitor, Adrian Tchaikovsky did something related to the law), though not in this case. Thinking back to some of the law students I met while working in a law library, Caldicott may have browbeaten his editor into submission rather than the other way round. 

Finished A Face like Glass by Frances Hardinge. Deceit, treachery and highly explosive cheeses. When I started, I thought that this book, full of whimsy as the setting was, might be for younger children as opposed to her cross-over YA books I've previously read (The Lie Tree, Deeplight), but the tone became complex quickly, and I ended up liking it just as much if not more than the other two. 

The setting is an underground city, and the key feature of the people who inhabit it is their lack of facial expression. They have to deliberately acquire expressions, often buying them, with the wealthy members of the court mastering a large range and using them to manipulate and gain power, while the lowest rungs of the working class have just one or two at their disposal. For anyone who has struggled with human social relationships, the book is particularly resonant and powerful. As ever, Hardinge's style is immaculate. The main villains could have done with a little more depth, but that's a pretty minor quibble given how much she packs into one not hugely long book. 

Edited July 11, 2023 by dog-days

[The Grey Wolf Strikes Back]

Finished listening to The King Must Fall from Grimdark Magazine. Like with any other anthology, I found some of the stories more enjoyable than others. (In the interest of transparency, I should note this was my first experience with audiobooks.) Anyway, I am now back to reading prose, specifically Stardust, which is first exposure to Gaiman's writing.