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What are you reading in October


mashiara

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Just finished The Ritual by Adam Nevill. It's a very entertaining book about a group of friends that take a "shortcut" through the woods and find themselves being hunted by something that they can't quite comprehend. I'd recommend it if you like dark horror stories.



Now I think I'll go back to the Discworld and read Small Gods by Terry Pratchett.


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I finished The Devil You Know by Mike Carey on Monday. Great book. Very Dresden-esque, although I definitely think this was written on a high technical level, but it still had plenty of cheese. My favorite bits of cheese being when Fix tells us he had two options, details those options, and then says, "So, I went with option C." and when he's showing off his observational skills by identifying a character as right-handed because he saw him holding a phone with his right hand. Yeah, I'm right-handed and I literally cannot remember the last time I held a phone with my right hand; I like to have my right hand free so that I can actually do other stuff when I'm on the phone too. But overall I really enjoyed it and will definitely be reading more because it was hella fun and appears to be setting up a very interesting mythology.



I've started (and am about 1/3 through) Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot. I'm loving this book. It reminds me a lot of Ray Bradbury's works, both in its nostalgic feel and how it skips around a large cast of quirky small town characters. The language isn't as ornate as Bradbury (really it's much more vulgar), but I don't mind because it works really well.


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(Still successfully putting off my plan to reread/finish Wolfe's Book of the Short Sun...)

I finished Guy Gavriel Kay's Under Heaven earlier this week. I think this is the first Kay I've tried since the (rather underwhelming) The Last Light of the Sun came out. Which was ... what, a decade ago now?

I was surprised how much I enjoyed it, really. Kay has a definite tendency towards melodrama and his prose is sometimes a bit too consciously clever for my taste (although, that said, I do have a soft spot for The Lions of Al-Rassan; can only blame that on reading it at an impressionable age). Both these habits seemed to be toned down quite a bit in this book though. And the device of repeatedly jumping to the POV of very minor characters seemed to work a lot better this time around then it did in tLLotS. Possibly helped that I'm really not at all familiar with the period of Chinese history on which the story is based, so the plot didn't have quite the air of inevitability it might have had otherwise.

I understand that River of Stars is set in the same continuity? Tempted to try that soon as well.

Currently rereading Iain M. Banks' Against A Dark Background. This is probably the best of his non-Culture SF, I think.

Just finished Red Seas Under Red Skies. I think I liked the book more after the re-read, but I still feel that The Lies of Locke Lamora a better novel.

I definitely liked that book a lot more on rereading (although I still don't think the flash-forward prologue really works)..

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I understand that River of Stars is set in the same continuity? Tempted to try that soon as well.


Rivers of Stars is in the same setting a few centuries later. There's not much in the way of direct connections but there are a lot of references made back to that era, the characters seem to regard it as having been a Golden Age and the political situation is a reaction to the events at the end of Under Heaven. I think it's a good book - I probably prefer Under Heaven but I think River of Stars does have a stronger ending.


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Finished Firebird by Jack McDevitt, another good Alex Benedict story.



Then read The Dragon Never Sleeps by Glen Cook. Finally got around to it after reading and rereading the Black Company and Garrett P.I. for years. Liked it a lot.



Just started Master of the World by Jules Verne. Wasn't aware of this one before, though I have read many of his other books, 20,000 leagues Under the Sea, the Mysterious Island, 5 weeks in a Balloon, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Around the World in Eighty Days. Looks like this one basically him doing it again, seeing the future, this time dealing with airplanes and air power.



Next up is The Breeds of Man by F.M. Busby, and I need to pick up a copy of The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch

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