May 2011 Reading Thread

[TheEvilKing]

Finally received The White Luck Warrior yesterday.

About 60-70 pages in so far. And it's awesome.

You're just a bit further in than me, then. How epic was the bit

Where he was banging on about the Four Armies

[thistlepong]

The Darkness that Comes Before

Salt: A World History - Mark Kurlansky

Reality is Broken - Jane McGonigal

Rereading The Hero With a Thousand Faces

[Borque]

You're just a bit further in than me, then. How epic was the bit

Where he was banging on about the Four Armies

Very. That part reminded me a lot about TWP, only on a much grander scale.

[Guinevere Seaworth]

The Shelters of Stone was much better than The Plains of Passage. It is still brainless but entertaining fluff despite all the repetitions of the prior rehash of earlier novels.

Now reading Mortal Coils by Eric Nylund.

[Eponine]

Finished AGOT re-read. Only reading a few minutes at a time, while compiling, but will certainly be finished by the time that ADWD comes out.

[oneeye]

I'm reading the latest Ayla book (or last if we are lucky).

[Bellis]

I read Daniel Abraham's The Dragon's Path, the start of his new series. This one didn't grip me so much as it did some of the others around here. Like his Long Price Quartet, there's an emphasis on economics. That part I liked. The rest seemed a little too epic fantasy generic. I may give it another shot when the next book comes out, after all, it took me a while to warm to A Shadow in Summer as well. So far though, I don't think this series is going to be as strong as his last one.

[pat5150]

Just finished Alastair Reynolds' Chasm City and it was awesome! Space opera doesn't get much better than this!

Check the blog for the full review. :)

Patrick

[Datepalm]

Finished Kate Griffin's A Madness of Angels. Its got some mixed reviews, but I really liked it. The plot was a bit thin (but it spun out well, fitted together fairly neatly, and had a solid resolution) and some of the action sequences were a bit too long, but I tend to regard those as minor quibbles. The worldbuilding is wonderful, and I think might be the smartest and most original use of the whole urban-fantasy concept i've yet to read. This is definitely my very favorite magic London. I thought that characterziation was actually pretty strong, and besides, it ticked some of my very favorite boxes, so maybe i'm predisposed to like it - motley crews with conflicting interests, fanatics whose faith is showing cracks, people driven to (literal) inhumanity by their own fears and obsessions, friends-turned-enemies, etc.

Still reading Year of Our War, and probably next is either Mary Victoria's Tymon's Flight, which seems to be a little-reviewed epic fantasy set in a world that is a single giant tree (with airships, naturally) thats nominated for something in the Gemmel, or the sequel to Madness of Angels. Or maybe I'll give Jesse Bullington another shot, after burning out on the Brothers Grossbart.

[Mjolnir]

I want to like Griffin's A Madness of Angels so badly, because the setting and the way she makes the mundane deeply magical really is amazing, but the beautiful descriptions aside the rest of the book just doesn't add up for me. Dialogue, pacing, it's admittedly difficult for me to point at the weak places in a few words but the thing just feels less than the sum of its parts -- some of them really excellent parts. Sure I'll finish it someday; good to hear it ends well.

Briefly, since last time I tried this I was in the middle of this huge post when my machine decided what I was writing blew and booted me back to the thread page: Finished Rothfuss's The Wise Man's Fear. Loved it. Loved the hints about the central mysteries, loved the characters old and new [though a few are in danger of sounding exactly the same], loved the rambly bits that sometimes don't add anything plotwise at first glance but enrich the story so much, loved the stories within the story. Thought the part Werthead referred to in his review as "the porn version of Tom Bombadil" was pretty wobbly, but Rothfuss is a good enough writer that even that's constructive and contributes to the story in irreplaceable ways. Can't wait for the third one, but this is an extremely satisfying second installment.

I also finished Kathleen Ann Goonan's In War Times, an sf /alternate history spanning 1940 to 1970 in about an attempt to create a device that cures the human drive to war and conquest. Splintered timelines and quantum hijinx ensue. One of the central metaphors is an equation of the touching and divergent timelines with the individual harmonies of jazz, and this extended comparison is a highlight of the book. It's been very highly praised and from a conceptual standpoint hell yeah I can see why. Unfortunately for me the line-by-line writing, while good, isn't really my kind of thing. It feels very expository: lots of explaining and formal description. It has trouble relaxing into the narrator's headspace. Maybe this is delibrate: the book's subjects aren't comfy ones. But it keeps me at one remove, like there's a plate glass window between me and the scene. Long passages of explanatory political or social history clunk for me, because they're slapped down raw rather than feeling like they flow naturally from the characters and the times they occupy. Period detail is richly present, but feels so explanatory I can't get into it. [Exception is the first person sections, which were apparently written by Goonan's WWII vet father.] Sometimes the book relaxes, lets its guard down, and I'm there and it's great. And some of the writing about time and jazz and quantum physics gets enthusiastic almost to the point of lyricism and breaks out of overformality that way. But a lot of the time it reads like a great story that's just a little constricted by its delivery. Great book; shame the writing style wasn't quite for me.

[Datepalm]

I want to like Griffin's A Madness of Angels so badly, because the setting and the way she makes the mundane deeply magical really is amazing, but the beautiful descriptions aside the rest of the book just doesn't add up for me. Dialogue, pacing, it's admittedly difficult for me to point at the weak places in a few words but the thing just feels less than the sum of its parts -- some of them really excellent parts. Sure I'll finish it someday; good to hear it ends well.

The pacing, with the very long chapters, sometimes felt a bit off. OTOH, I rather liked that the plot was so straightforward, since it was there mostly to hang the worldbuilding and the character arc/mystery on. It supported the themes she was going for well enough, while allowing them room to breathe.

I do wish the minor characters had a bit more pages (though the first person pov probably couldn't really handle that, and third person pov would undercut the whole 'who is in Matthew's head' freakshow there) especially since they were mostly women and all the villains were men, so it ended up a bunch of men in interesting relashionships with women being there in more functional roles of being on this or that guys team. OTOH they all still managed to be interesting in their own right, so i'm hoping to see more of them in the sequels. (I think it actually ekes a pass on the Bechdel test, even, which is rare for a first person male POV.)

[RobMRobM]

Finished the Rothfuss tome and loved it. Now re-reading Name of the Wind. He is a clever, clever man.

Next up after that will be the new Esselmont

[mashiara]

Datepalm, I loved A Madness of Angels, I thought it was a perfect take on Urban Fantasy. I liked the sequel as well but not as much. I'm waiting for the third book to arrive in the mail.

I read Daniel Abraham's The Dragon's Path, the start of his new series. This one didn't grip me so much as it did some of the others around here. Like his Long Price Quartet, there's an emphasis on economics. That part I liked. The rest seemed a little too epic fantasy generic. I may give it another shot when the next book comes out, after all, it took me a while to warm to A Shadow in Summer as well. So far though, I don't think this series is going to be as strong as his last one.

Hmmm... I'm about to start The Dragon's Path today. Let's see how I feel about it.

I finished Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes yesterday and I was completely blown away by it. (no pun intended) The Vietnam war is something I've mostly seen in movies and not in books but this book was brilliantly written. It grabbed me from the first pages and it had me sitting on edge and holding my breath, getting angry at people and things, feeling devastated with the way things turned out, dreading what was coming next and yet being unable to stop reading. It was heartbreaking and painfully realistic. Another excellent recommendation from this board, I'm not sure I would have noticed it otherwise. Thank you.

[Convivial Edd]

I've been on a roll lately reading books that I have bought years ago. I Finished The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester. Really, really good. Instantly one of my favorite sci-fi book I've read.

[SkynJay]

First Black Company book down, onto book two.

[Guinevere Seaworth]

I finished Mortal Coils by Eric Nylund. It was OK. I thought The Book of Joby was much better with similar themes. I did find it interesting that in both books, Lucifer was my favorite character even though he (it?) was portrayed completely different by the authors.

I'm looking forward to reading The Sea Watch by Adrian Tchiakovsky. This is one of my favorite ongoing series to date.

[Renasko]

Finally, finally, onto 'White-Luck Warrior', Bakker's latest. Here's hoping Akka gets to slap Kellhus! What? I have high expectations. :P

[Grack21]

Finally, finally, onto 'White-Luck Warrior', Bakker's latest. Here's hoping Akka gets to slap Kellhus! What? I have high expectations. :P

Haha. I've only read the first one but yeah, that would be cool.

[Bellis]

I read The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht, one of this year's big lit fic reads. It's a magic realist story of a young doctor in 90s Balkans and her quest to understand her grandfather. There's a bit of war, a bit of fantasy, a bit of family drama. Also, animals. The book is shockingly well-written for a first novel, especially considering that the author was under 25. The story and character development is not quite matched by the quality and maturity of the prose, however, it's still well worth reading.

[RedEyedGhost]

Finished Dead Beat by Jim Butcher, which was another great entry in The Dresden Files. I'm now about 20% through Shadow Bridge by Gregory Frost, it's a stories within stories novel kind of like Catherynne Valente's The Orphan's Tales, but so far it's not nearly as deep.