What Are You Reading? Third Quarter, 2023

[Peadar]

7 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

 

I wanted to start Paul Kearney’s The Monarchies of God next, any views on him ? I’m a huge fan of Matthew Stover and I’ve heard Kearney’s style is similar. But I’ve also heard Monarchies feels very rushed and short.

I thought The Monarchies of God was really good. However!!! If I remember right -- and it's been a while -- there are two different versions, and it's the later one you should read. @Werthead is an expert. He'll know...

[Werthead]

10 minutes ago, Peadar said:

I thought The Monarchies of God was really good. However!!! If I remember right -- and it's been a while -- there are two different versions, and it's the later one you should read. @Werthead is an expert. He'll know...

Yup, you want the two-volume omnibus version (Hawkwood and the Kings and Century of the Soldier).

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

1 minute ago, Werthead said:

Yup, you want the two-volume omnibus version (Hawkwood and the Kings and Century of the Soldier).

Are they comparable to The Acts of Caine ? 

[Werthead]

10 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Are they comparable to The Acts of Caine ? 

Not massively, aside from a generally similar fuck-everybody attitude. Kearney is more like Erikson with the philosophy dialled back and the focus more on the military adventures. The authors Kearney is most similar to are probably Gemmell and Pressfield, in this series anyway (in other books he's more like Neil Gaiman). 

[dog-days]

Not sure where to stick this. Anyway, the author and graphic novelist T Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon was diagnosed with breast cancer last month, and has written a couple of short web comics about it:

Part 1

Part 2

[Zorral]

Waiting to Be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poet’s Memoir of China’s Genocide, by Tahir Hamut Izgil; translated by Joshua L. Freeman

"A prominent Uyghur poet, Izgil fled China with his family in 2017. His understated memoir, among the first such accounts available in English, recounts with poetic restraint the increasingly brutal treatment of a Chinese ethnic minority at the hands of a state that uses mass detentions, interrogations, surveillance, even torture to suppress dissent."  --  Penguin Press, Aug. 1

 

[RhaenysBee]

I finished Nightshade and it was quite well done. I still love this series and Horowitz certainly delivered something adult in this book that the previous installments lacked. It was open ended, so I’m hoping for more. Or even a segue to an adult Alex novel because the environment was established for it. Very clever work. I do recommend the entire series to any preteen, early teen who enjoys action/thriller/crime genres. Also the Diamond Brothers series which I also read as a preteen and absolutely loved, because they are so funny. 

[Underfoot]

Took me longer than expected, but finally finished my re-read of Age of Ash today to be ready for Blade of Dream. 

It is so much bleaker than I remembered, as dark and devoid of humor as kithamar on the longest night. That feels like quite a departure from Abraham's other books, where there was warmth and sometimes humor in character interactions even if the world was in trouble. Kind of a tough read for me at the moment, though maybe that says more about where I'm at right now than anything. 

Good to reread it though. Lots of little details to watch out for in the next one. 

I've also been listening to the Farseer trilogy on audiobook, for the zillionth time. It's such a comfort series for me. Finished Assassin's Quest today as well, and if I had to define a "bittersweet" story ending, I'd just quote the final words of the book. 

[The Grey Wolf Strikes Back]

@Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

I loved The Monarchies of God. Some of the best-written battles in the genre (with gunpowder!). As for your other question, only the last book is rushed and even then it isn't a bad read, just not as good as the prior four.

[Wilbur]

For the past couple of weeks I have had Old Venus on the ipod.  I generally find these sort of anthologies to be mixed bags, but I have found several favorite authors through them as well.

This one, edited by GRRM and Gardner Dozois, was a bit of a slog.  The unifying theme was stories written in the style of pre-Mariner and pre-Venera Golden Age SciFi adventures, but written in our contemporary time.  And many of the authors are accomplished writers, so the individual stories were often good.  However, the main theme wasn't necessarily a driver of consistency in world-building, so the constant change in scene was a bit jarring: Venus as a Soviet state, Venus as Edgar Rice Burroughs imagined it, Venus as Sci-Fi Florida, etc.

GRRM has done some good work in maintaining a consistent shared world in Wildcards, but this is not at all that kind of anthology.  Every story contains a new imagining of Venus, so I wasn't drawn back to it with excitement to see what would happen next.  So the stories are good, just inconsistent in their settings.

So, if you have ever wanted to know what Bertie Wooster and Jeeves would do on Venus, or what it is like to have sex with a Venusian woman who sports a long and powerful prehensile tail, or how a waterborne Soviet economy would work, then this may be the anthology for you.  Also, the readers of the audiobook were all top-rate, so that should be a nice incentive for those of you would like to listen while you work or play.

[Ser Not Appearing]

The 10 yr old and I finished the Harry Potter series last night.

It's rather interesting how Rowling had equality as a major theme in the series, given where things have gone for her. I think it's probably a good example of how we all have blind spots and are incomplete in the ways we manifest virtue. But I've largely ignored her and that whole issue beyond headlines, which is perhaps privilege, so I may be missing something.

Anyway, the final book was pretty good. I'd forgotten basically everything except the big strokes. I think it broke her out of the rhythm and formula she had used as a crutch and, generally, it served to make her a better writer in this book. My son and I had a hard time not listening to it in every free moment (much to the annoyance of my wife and daughter). I did tire of how the named bad guys never died after being defeated. There's only so many times the damn werewolf can get wrecked before his reappearance to menace just feels underwhelming. Kill them, imprison them, cut off their tattooed arms, break people's wands... I don't really care. But don't just let them wake up and wander away again.

I rather enjoyed the arc of Severus throughout all the books, knowing what was coming. Rowling did a good job obscuring his true reality. He was one of the heroes, perhaps the truest hero, of the books because he wasn't forced into anything and reacting. He actively chose all his risks on what his life was dedicated to.

Before they revealed that Voldemort wasn't the master of the elder wand (because Draco disarmed Dumbledore before Snape killed him) my son made a really good point ... that Voldemort didn't actually kill Snape. Nagini did.

Also, Voldemort lost because he broke every password rule when hiding horcruxes. Random > Personally identifiable

Edited August 2, 2023 by Ser Not Appearing

[horangi]

Just wrapped up Consider Phlebas as the start to my first foray into Ian Bank's Culture series.  I can see why Stellaris named a major update after him.  The scope of the galaxy is grand and he has a good ability to create quite alien species and 'cultures.'  That said, while the first three quarters of the book were a fun romp through space, I gotta say the last quarter in the tunnel system really dragged; culminating in a final battle that must have been 30 pages long.  It was like reading the transcript of a live D&D game battle that took 2 hours of player time but actually represented 1 minute of in-game fighting.  It was funny that in the end the most successful character was the sassy side-kick drone.  I understand that many Culture enthusiasts think this book to be the weakest though, so onward to book 2!

[TheLastWolf]

Finished the Memento short story by Jonathan Nolan that was adapted by his brother Christopher. Left me wanting more.

[TormundsWoman]

On 7/28/2023 at 9:09 AM, shortstark said:

Good to hear, can you give us a heads up as to how close to completion the book is..plz....

I'll assume you quoting my old post was an error

 

Since I'm here I gotta put a good word in for the Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo as the latest fantasy book I've read. Lovely pace and interesting plot (as always since heists tend to be exciting for me) and that's considering I've seen the Netflix show first! I think it's awesome they haven't really waited to introduce the Ketterdam characters until 100 years or so later on the small screen. I positively enjoyed them on the TV series and the same happened with the book counterparts.

[IlyaP]

I've been trying to read Neal Stephenson's The Confusion, but I realised that this is going to be one of those books that I have to read in bits at a time, because the lack of production and copy editing in this book is offensive to my eyes. It's less a book than it is a collection of wikipedia articles strung together with bits of oddly-depicted violence and poor characterisation and horrifically uninteresting exposition. 

And then there's fresh nonsense like this, which appalls me from a professional editing and layout/formatting perspective.

Going to move on to something else instead. Not sure what yet. 

Edited August 4, 2023 by IlyaP

[Inkdaub]

Almost finished with Carrick's The Liar's Knot and it is at the exact same enjoyment level as the previous book in the set. Next I am planning to read Teran's God is a Bullet. Teran is a pseudonym of some unknown person or persons, the book seems to have almost absurdly good reviews...it's like the old SNL gag about the hypnotist playing Broadway at the same time as Cats... and it's about a small devil worship cult which always draws my eye. I saw a trailer for the movie with Coster-Waldau by mistake and now I am all in.

Also, I looked up Coster-Waldau for spelling support and the first thing on the 'people also ask' list was...'Who plays Jaime Lannister in the Flash?' Am I really that far out of the loop? 

[dog-days]

Read Winter's Gifts, the latest Aaronovitch novella set in the Rivers of London universe. Found it readable, but not memorable. 

Despite the author's efforts with the evangelical Christian background of the protagonist, a lot of the characters sounded to me like people from England given access to bigger cars and more countryside. That is, the voices didn't sound quite right. 

Not sure how successful the portrayal of Native American characters is, and I'm not qualified to judge. 

I did like the wintry lakeside setting, even if it was probably influenced by the later chapters of American Gods. 

Having said that, I wouldn't mind another Reynolds-focused book, especially if Aaronovitch feels inclined to dig a bit deeper into her background and how that could be tied into urban fantasy. 

[Zorral]

Lee, Brenda, with Robert K. Oermann and Julie Clay. (2002) Little Miss Dynamite: The Life and Times of Brenda Lee. 

Charmed. Charming.  She’s a very intelligent, smart, talented, successful, HAPPY woman, who always loved her musical work, who has been singing in public all her life since even before age 7.  When she was just 3 years old, the geezers hanging out at the hardware store outside Atlanta where she grew up, would get her to stand on a half barrel and sing.

She learned French during a period she was working in Paris.  She also learned Japanese because she performed there so often.  Musicians do tend to have a gift for languages, but she did all this while still a kid, getting good grades and working professionally all the time!

She was still performing in 2002 when her autobiography came out (Julie Clay is her daughter, btw).  She may have quit now, finally, as Covid stopped so many, and at this stage of her life, getting the groove-momentum back may not feel worth the massive investment of effort.

 

[The Wolves]

Currently reading Bernard Cornwell’s The Winter King, it’s a King Arthur retelling. This has been on my TBR since last year and since the show is coming out this month I wanted to get on it. 
 

I’ve heard nothing but great things about this trilogy so I’m excited to read it. 

[Knight of Ashes]

Children of Hurin reread; and afterwards, I'll follow the advice of an article and reread A Storm of Swords' Red Wedding section to cheer myself up.