What Are You Reading? Third Quarter, 2023

[IlyaP]

On 8/27/2023 at 8:04 PM, Ran said:

Yeah, he's less known than he ought to be, and is still plugging away at the Vlad Taltos series. Lyorn is out next year, and then Brust intends two more novels to close out the series. There are also sequels to The Phoenix Guard.

Hey @Ran, is this the best place to ask Taltos questions? Or should I start another thread? 

I'm on book 2 and I'm....confused. A lot. 

[IlyaP]

(I'm also avoiding wikipedia or any fan sites because I REALLY don't want to be accidentally spoiled.)

[Ran]

20 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Hey @Ran, is this the best place to ask Taltos questions? Or should I start another thread? 

I'm on book 2 and I'm....confused. A lot. 

I'd start a thread.

[williamjm]

I read Chris Wooding's The Shadow Casket. I think I could probably have done with a summary of the previous book at the start since it has been five years since The Ember Blade came out and it took me a while to remember the details of it. The sequel picks up the story after a three year gap, it still mostly focuses on the same characters although there are also several new additions to the cast. I remember Wooding saying when the first book was released that he wanted to write something reminiscent of some of the epic fantasy series of the 80s and 90s. There are definitely plenty of familiar epic fantasy elements, although it does also question some of the traditional tropes - there's a running theme about what it means to be a hero (or to be someone seen by others as a hero). Some of the characters also worry a lot about what happens next if their revolution does succeed and the imperial forces are overthrown, which is not something that I remember characters in older series like the Belgariad worrying about.

The book is very long at over 800 pages, and although a lot does happen during the book the length did seem a bit excessive. At times the plot does feel a bit unfocused, the quest for the titular Shadow Casket does feel a bit unconnected to the other parts of the plot, although presumably it will important consequences for the final book. The final section of the book is probably the best, with some interesting and sometimes surprising plot developments and Wooding's willingness to kill off characters means that there is some tension about what will happen to them. Overall, I think the first book was probably better paced but this was still an entertaining read.

[HokieStone]

On 8/29/2023 at 8:43 AM, HokieStone said:

I decided to re-read the "Memory, Sorrow and Thorn" trilogy.  I last read it...I dunno, 30 years ago?  I remember really liking it, and I know there's been some new books in the series (or a follow-up series, however you want to look at it).  I'm about 1/3 through "The Dragonbone Chair" - I pretty much have no recollection of my first read(other than enjoying it), so it's like it's new to me.

Does seem to have some 1970's/80's fantasy clichés - Simon the kitchen boy obviously has some secret parentage which make him destined to be a hero.  Pyrates is a little too "muhahahah" of a villain.  I'm at the point where Simon is wandering the countryside, having fled the castle, and he seems to conveniently be running into situations/people that important/helpful.

Still, I'm enjoying it.

ETA:  One other complaint - the map at the front of my 30 year old paperback is garbage - tiny print, and not much detail.  I printed off a better one found online and keep it tucked away in the front cover.

So, I've seen blurbs that Memory, Sorrow and Thorn was an inspiration for GRRM to write ASOIAF.  And, as I make my way through the first book, I'm certainly seeing some parallels.  There's a "Hand of the King", and a bandit that wears a helm shaped like a "snarling hound".  The Sithi certainly invite comparisons to the Others.  I believe one of the titular swords is made of metal from a meteorite, like Dawn in ASOIAF.

[Iskaral Pust]

Destroyer Of Cities is #5 in Christian Cameron’s Tyrant series of historical fiction set in the military conflict among the successors to Alexander The Great’s empire.  This volume features the siege of Rhodes.  This author (also writes Fantasy as Miles Cameron) does militaristic historical fiction very well, even if his main characters are a bit repetitive and tropey.

The Impossible Dead by Ian Rankin is a Scottish police procedural fiction in his Malcolm Fox series about a strait-laced internal affairs police officer who wants to wash away the outdated corrupt culture and old-boys system of policing.  I prefer his John Rebus series but this was still a pretty good read.

Scythe by Neal Shusterman is a YA (IMO) SciFi novel with a contrived setting to explore a moral question and character development.  In a world where death is all but eliminated, Scythes are selected to cull people randomly in line with prior rates of mortality.  They are supposed to be objective and eschew all power, but an evil faction emerges.  Perhaps this would be deep stuff for a 14yr old.  Not terribly written, just too YA for my taste.

[Iskaral Pust]

Fall, Or Dodge In Hell by Neal Stephenson is a specfic novel about the nature of consciousness, especially an uploaded consciousness that persists beyond death.  I wasn’t much impressed.  It’s a pity to see Stephenson’s writing turn so stale and flat since Anathem.

No Plan B by Lee Child is a Jack Reacher novel, but one of the weaker ones I’ve read.  I’ll still continue buying these whenever they’re on sale for Kindle.

Northern Wolf by Daniel Green is a historical fiction novel set in the American Civil War and this opening volume in the series is set at Gettysburg, told from the POV of a recently recruited Union cavalry trooper positioned on the defensive flank.  Capably enough written.  I may read more of the series.

[IlyaP]

2 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Fall, Or Dodge In Hell by Neal Stephenson is a specfic novel about the nature of consciousness, especially an uploaded consciousness that persists beyond death.  I wasn’t much impressed.  It’s a pity to see Stephenson’s writing turn so stale and flat since Anathem.

I loved everything Stephenson wrote from pretty much The Big U onwards, but around Reamde, he started off in a weird direction, and subsequent books have all been giant mountains of "meh" for me, which is utterly tragic. I own Termination Shock and still cannot bring myself to read it as it sounds like Elon DeGrasse Saving the World and I just don't care. 

I'm inclined to agree that Anathem might have been his last legitimately personally meaningful work to me, with Reamde being overwritten and under-edited excess, DODO being an admittedly cool epistolary novel, but stylistically underwhelming. Seveneves? Blergh. 700 pages of engineering pr0n that did not engage in the least, and New Found Land being, I really don't know what, since it's an audible-only release (but one that at least gives the fantastic Sean Stewart some much needed attention).

[Starkess]

Finished listening to Mad Ship, the 2nd book in Hobb's Liveship trilogy (the 2nd trilogy set in the Fitzworld). This is my second time reading this trilogy, and I always ranked it below the Fitz books, but upon re-read I'm liking it even less. All the characters are terrible, the situations feel contrived at times, and the books are glacially paced and overly long (especially noticeable as the hours of the audiobook drag on). I mean, it's still Hobb, so it's good, but definitely don't think I'll feel the need to re-read this trilogy again. Starting Ship of Destiny and then looking forward to a change of pace.

[Wilbur]

15 hours ago, IlyaP said:

I loved everything Stephenson wrote from pretty much The Big U onwards, but around Reamde, he started off in a weird direction, and subsequent books have all been giant mountains of "meh" for me, which is utterly tragic. I own Termination Shock and still cannot bring myself to read it as it sounds like Elon DeGrasse Saving the World and I just don't care. 

I found that the characters in Termination Shock (several of them, not all) were much better, more easily empathized with, than those in his most recent works.  At least two of the characters were people I grew to care about very much, which isn't something that has been the case for me since Cryptonomicon.

In any case, Termination Shock was a book in which the Neal Stephenson of old peeks through in several distinct ways, and a much less murky read than the stuff since Anathem.

Edited September 2, 2023 by Wilbur
cain't spel

[Luzifer's right hand]

Just finished the The Great God's War series by Stephen R. Donaldson which I mostly finished because I wanted to see how it ends and because I found parts of the world build intriguing. I'm thinking about rereading the The Gap Cycle which is far superior.

Currently I'm reading Translation State by Ann Leckie and I'm enjoying it a lot so far.

[Wilbur]

After seeing the film Oppenheimer, I went and picked up the audiobook of Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb and found to my surprise that it was read by Grover Gardner.

There is a newer version available now on Audible read by Holter Graham, but the older, Grover Gardner version is the one I have, and he is one of my favorite readers.  His German and Hungarian (the language from Mars) pronunciations are very good, which is a key success factor for this subject matter.

I enjoyed the film, and the wider scope of this book is very enjoyable with the visualizations from the film in my mind.

Probably my favorite character in this retelling of history is Fermi, specifically in his embrace of popular Americanisms - reading the Sunday funny papers, adopting common American phrases, growing a lawn, etc.

[polishgenius]

On 9/2/2023 at 3:59 AM, Iskaral Pust said:

Fall, Or Dodge In Hell by Neal Stephenson is a specfic novel about the nature of consciousness, especially an uploaded consciousness that persists beyond death.  I wasn’t much impressed.  It’s a pity to see Stephenson’s writing turn so stale and flat since Anathem.

 

 

Fall, Or Dodge In Hell is dreadful tbh. Reamde suffers because it was two separate pitches that his publisher asked him to smoosh together int one book, and Seveneves suffers because Stevenson rather clearly started writing a backstory for the second part and it ended up taking over the book and developing in ways that ultimately didn't suit the way it needed to end to actually launch that second part. Both should really have been two separate novels, to fully allow the exploration of two separate themes and stories.

But FoDIH suffers because he just didn't have anything interesting to say about simulated reality. By far the worst of the books of his I've read. 

 

 

[KingintheNorth4]

I just finished reading Legacy: Treasures Of Black History, which my Great Aunt let me borrow. It shows photographs of objects that are kept in the Moorland Springarn Research Center at Howard University. Rare maps, poems, letters, and other items that detail the Black experience in America, from the 16th century to today. 

[unJon]

I just finished Dogs of War, which I loved. And now I see there is a sequel, Bear Head, so I am diving into that. 

[williamjm]

I read Shannon Chakraborty's The River of Silver, a short story collection in the world of her Daevabad trilogy. I thought this was a bit different to some other spin-off short story collections I've read. Earlier this year I read James S.A. Corey's Expanse spin-off Memory's Legion, and although the target audience was clearly fans of the main series I think the stories would also stand on their own. The stories here on the other hand feel more like vignettes, many of them apparently originating as material cut out of the trilogy. I think fans of the trilogy should enjoy these, there are a lot of good character moments in them that perhaps wouldn't have fit in the main narrative but which do provide a bit of extra depth. Getting to meet a couple of characters who died before the books began but who had a big influence on the plot is particularly welcome.

12 hours ago, unJon said:

I just finished Dogs of War, which I loved. And now I see there is a sequel, Bear Head, so I am diving into that. 

I really enjoyed Dogs of War and the sequel is also good.

[Garlan the Gallant]

I’ve been seeing a self published author a lot on my Goodreads. Ryan Cahill? I’ve never heard of his books. Are they actually of good quality or is it just a self published author who is good at getting his name out on the internet? TBH, the description of the books make it sound very derivative,

[IlyaP]

On 9/9/2023 at 9:25 AM, polishgenius said:

Fall, Or Dodge In Hell is dreadful tbh. Reamde suffers because it was two separate pitches that his publisher asked him to smoosh together int one book, and Seveneves suffers because Stevenson rather clearly started writing a backstory for the second part and it ended up taking over the book and developing in ways that ultimately didn't suit the way it needed to end to actually launch that second part. Both should really have been two separate novels, to fully allow the exploration of two separate themes and stories.

Wait, his publisher wanted two different books and got Reamde? Really? That might account for why it was such an overwritten mess. I actually attacked it with a red pen while reading it, and started tightening sentences and X'ing out extraneous paragraphs, and identifying the typos that littered the manuscript. 

I was extremely displeased with the book and its undercooked themes and excessive page-count. Over 100 pages could have easily been excised from the book and it would have lost nothing. The entire Walmart (was it?) sequence could have been a few lines of text. And the final act dragged on for far too long. I know he said he wanted to try his hand at writing a summer beach read of a book, but that's not what he delivered. Instead we got a semi-satirical techno-thriller that didn't know what it wanted to be or say. If he wanted to a summer beach read, he should have aimed for Zodiac levels of tightness and focus.

I've still yet to make it through Seveneves. It looks like engineering wank of the highest order, and I'm already surrounded by engos in my day to day life, I don't need it in my fiction as well. 

On 9/9/2023 at 9:25 AM, polishgenius said:

But FoDIH suffers because he just didn't have anything interesting to say about simulated reality. By far the worst of the books of his I've read. 

A bit of credit is merited on some semi-interesting writing on exactly one page, where Richard is "waking up" in the simulated world. I forget the exact page as I took the book to a street library once I finished it and never looked back, but I remember reading exactly one page where I thought to myself "he's trying to envision this as best he can, and points for effort, Neal, and hey, it's nice to finally have some interesting prose in this book!"

And the ending with Enoch. What in the actual f*ck was that. Reality is like layers of an onion or something? It was like the novelistic equivalent of the pullback reveal in Men in Black at the end of the film. 

[polishgenius]

4 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Wait, his publisher wanted two different books and got Reamde? Really?

Other way round. He wanted two separate books, his publishers said 'Neal Stephenson books must be long, these are too short' so he mashed them together. 

 

 

I confess I mostly quite like Seveneves, the first part comes off like an oversized The Martian and the second is a cool SF adventure with some neat ideas. But the transition between them doesn't work great for me and the second part was undercooked.

[Inkdaub]

I was reading Teran's God is a Bullet and at about the halfway point I put it down and read Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven instead. That proved to be a really good idea.