Reply With QuoteAbout halfway through The Red Tree by Kaitlin Kiernan (too lazy to look up the spelling).
A very slow build-up of creepiness, enjoying it so far, but it might be too slow for some.
Just started Anno Dracula. Pretty cool take on a Victorian England where Dracula not only won, he is consort to Queen Victoria. Neat cast of characters, both historical and fictional, and I am very excited to see where this all goes.
About halfway through The Red Tree by Kaitlin Kiernan (too lazy to look up the spelling).
A very slow build-up of creepiness, enjoying it so far, but it might be too slow for some.
Finshed Theft of Swords and started Storm Prey, a Lucas Davenport.
Caitlin.Originally Posted by Gav
And if memory serves, the only well-known horror writer responsible for describing and naming a species of giant sea-going Mesozoic reptile.
Just finished Declare by Tim Powers, which I loved.
Finished Warbreaker.I think I've run out of Sanderson now, until the new Mistborn hits PB. Unless I want to wade thru the 6 or so Wheel of Time books I never bothered with to reach his.
Started Mystery, which is one.
I just finished Patrick Rothfuss Name of the Wind & The Wise Man's Fear and I have to say my feeling are mixed.
After the first book I was convinced that I had started a most amazing and very original series. I just sailed through the 700 pages of the first book. Fast paced, great story, characters I liked. When I started the second book, I figured that 1100 pages would either finish the series or get me ready for the finale.
Yup, er nope. I think the booked covered about a year of the protagonist's life. A teen year as well. The story continued to hold my interest but once I realized that the book was barely going to move the ultimate story forward I became a bit disheartened. At this rate, this will be a 30 some-odd book series just to get us caught up with the present day in the story. Mind you I enjoyed it but 1100 pages and the main character ages a year? The story is basically the main character retelling his life to a writer...I love the way it is done but I need a bit more forward momentum.
I am definitely eagerly awaiting the next in the series but I really hope he gets a good editor.
Unfortunately, ever since Jordan, good editors have been aware that people will buy infinitely protracted fantasy series, and so they appear to encourage this ridiculous bloating of verbiage.
I could swear that Rothfuss claimed it was going to be a trilogy.
Then again, he also claimed that Wise Man's Fear was going to be out in 2008.
I've had Iorich by Brust sitting on my shelf for a couple months now and finally got around to it. If you like the other Taltos books you'll like this one too.
Having read the first two books, that isn't going to happen. There is simply too much to cover in the main character's past even if they conclude the current time line with "and he realized his past and used his super magic to annihilate all enemies, saving the world."
I don't think it is too drawn out though. The story format is just the one where the main character tells about their past before getting to current events. In current times, they talk about all of his super accomplishments so i'd imagine they are going to at least somewhat go in to them while telling of his past.
Yup, I am not holding my breath for the third book. If he takes as much time to move thru the years on the next book, it will be a while for sure.
I agree, it wasn't actually drawn out, since that tends to have negative connotations. But I did expect the book to cover more of Kvothe's life.
In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson
The book chronicles the real story of a guy (and his family) who was named Ambassador to Germany in 1933. William Dodd was a history teacher and ended up being a major voice against Hitler after serving as Ambassador.
It is a very easy read as Larson tells a good story with lots of facts and interesting characters. You get a good feel for Germany of the mid-1930's and for what it was like to live there.
I read Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich years ago and this is a much easier read of the period. Larson tells the story through the lives of Dodd, his daughter Martha and his son Bill. His daughter in fact gets a lot of ink and was introduced to Hitler.
Finished reading the Legends of the Riftwar trilogy over the last couple of weeks. It's an interesting set of books where Raymond Feist collaborated with three other authors to write a series of books set in his Riftwar universe. The three aren't directly tied together except by the overall world setting.
Honoured Enemy was decent, but a little slow-paced for me. I really liked the interplay of the enemy factions being forced to cooperate, though.
Murder in LaMut seemed very poorly named for the first 75% of the book, as there wasn't much in the way of murder. Things got fast and furious at the end, though. Personally, I thought the twist at the end was a telegraphed a bit, but even so it wasn't bad.
Jimmy the Hand is the best of the three. Jimmy is a favorite character from other Riftwar books, but I think the story is good enough to be worth a read without any previous experience with the Riftwar story. Has a bit of everything: good intentions gone bad, good guys foiling the dark plots, boys doing silly things over girls, etc. Probably enjoyed it most due to the influence of SM Stirling, one of my favorite authors in his own right.
Finished The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. There are really quite a lot of interesting history and psychology here, but I found it slow going at times. I guess there is just a lot to think about, like the grim logic of a Hobbesian trap. Definitely a cure for nostalgia about past eras.
So far in June I've read ...
The Black Company, which I'd never read before. It was really fun; I'm looking forward to picking up the second book (although it looks like they're mostly out of print, and I'll need to pick up a compilation of books 1 - 3).
The Passage which started out strong, got a little soggy half way through, picked it back up, then suddenly accelerated dramatically towards a conclusion that raised more questions in the last fifty pages or so than had been raised in the preceding 700. Still, I'll read the sequel.
Redshirts, which was not what I expected (I didn't read the cover flap, since I knew I'd be reading it since it's Scalzi), but was actually awesome. A lot of fun in every way.
I know I'm missing a book in there, too. Crap. Ah well, it'll come to me eventually.
Finished the great Cryptonomicon by Stephenson. Are there any recomendations for the Baroque cycle? Is it a must read prequel if I loved Cryptonomicon?
Some of us (myself included) abhor the Baroque cycle. Quicksilver is one of the few books I have stopped reading on purpose. I'd recommend reading Stephenson's Anathem instead.
I liked Quicksilver a lot, but I wouldn't really consider it a prequel to Cryptonomicon. I mean, it kind of is, but that fact is totally irrelevant.
Oh, and I'm reading Already Dead by Dennis Johnson. It's great.
I still think Cryptonomicon is his best book. The Baroque Cycle has ties to it but is a really substantial undertaking and I for one found the first book intermittently pretty dull. I almost think Reamde would be more in Cryptonomicon's spirit.
Finished Emory Thomas's 'The Confederate Nation,' a short brisk read that I highly recommend to Civil War buffs. Now bouncing between John Krakauer's 'Into Thin Air' and a book called 'This Republic of Suffering' which explores the various aspects of death in the Civil War. Also started to dig into Jared Diamond's 'Collapse.' The segment on Easter Island is pretty fascinating.
So much so that I found early on it to be a bit of a rehash and it seems like Stephenson is just reusing the same themes and waving the Libertarian stuff even more front and center. I actually put it down for something else after a hundred pages or so. I should get back to it at some point.
Finished Redshirts in a day, enjoyed it quite a bit. The concept: what if the characters in a sci-fi TV show figured out they were being used (and often killed) for dramatic effect?
At some point you stop counting the layers of meta and go where the story takes you.
Whereas The Baroque Cycle is my favorite thing by Stephenson and I abhorred Anathem to the point I stopped reading it on purpose.
I can see both points of view on both books so I think it boils down to personal taste. I tend to like historical fiction whereas I could find nothing to relate to in the imagined world of Anathem.
I think someone on here may have recommended Donn Pearce's novel of the Battle of The Bulge. Nobody Comes Back. I heartily second the recommendation. It's a pretty incredible novel and, for me it ranks not far behind Thin Red Line and Catch-22.
Also incredible is that it was Pearce's first novel since 1974.
Excellent point. I tend to favor sci-fi/fantasy, so an imagined world that is well thought out is very appealing to me. The story was good too, but I loved being thrown into the deep end of a not-quite-human society. Some people have trouble with Anathem because the 'deep end' ends up including a lot of made up vocabulary that is not explicitly explained. The cool part is that by about 1/5 of the way through the book, the words might as well be English because your understanding of them is so complete.
I actually like historical fiction quite a bit. Quicksilver just seemed very low on plot for the first 150 pages and I couldn't get further.
I...don't really remember any libertarian stuff in either book. I mean, yeah, in Reamde one of the software billionaire's brothers is a nutso antigovernment survivalist type holed up in northern Idaho, but that's one character, who was regarded with a certain amount of bemused patience and no actual ideological accord by the other characters. If I felt like it was becoming some sort of libertarian ideological screed (ala Goodkind), I'd have had to stop reading a long time ago.
There's certain tropes he seems to have with relation to guns and gold, and maybe a bit with drugs too.
Yeah, I dunno. Obviously it never bothered me.
Did a lot of reading this month.
Tried reading Cryptonomicon, but it just seemed to be a story about some soldiers back in the day written in a offbeat pseudo-humourous fashion. I like alternative histories which I presume this was supposed to be, but this wasn't sci-fi enough or interesting enough to hold my attention.
Read the four novels in the Book of the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe. The steampunk-esque world is actually a generation ship travelling to its destination. The residents worship TV screens through which their gods contact them, kind of like our world. But they've got fancier TV screens, and a more fantastical world. I liked the first novel, but the author seemed to run out of steam after the first novel and the latter ones just didn't have the same quality. There were still good ideas present, but only the first novel really worked. There were points in the last novel where I couldn't work out what was going on.
Read Kraken by China Mieville. Guy works in museum, with dead animal corpses. One is a Kraken, it gets stolen. Wacky magical hijinks ensue. It was good writing and felt like a solid novel compared to other books I had recently read, but it just didn't feel as interesting as his earlier work. I appreciated the references to Hugh Cook, but it was just a token tribute to another recently deceased author and didn't add anything.
Reread Gateway by Frederik Pohl. Basically, there's an alien space station. People go out there, hop on the old shuttles which have predefined courses which go to unknown destinations. It costs money to live on the station, but you can earn some by going on a shuttle ride and finding something. Something other than a horrible death, that is. It is a bit dated in the assumptions Pohl made about "the future", but still a great read.
Tried to read Timescape by Gregory Benford. Future sends messages to the past to try and fix the ecological problems present in the future. It was like a solid novel, but after reading probably half I gave up waiting for something to happen.
Read Emphyrio by Jack Vance. An interesting sci-fi story about different cultures, and galactic civilisation. It's no Lyonesse, or Dying Earth, but it is still an entertaining novel.
Tried to reread Dancer's at the end of time by Michael Moorcock. Weird incestuous nonsense, and time travel or something. I remember reading this book when I was in my teens, and enjoying it. But it just seems somewhat juvenile and nonsensical now, and I couldn't finish it.
Reread Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny. Mismash of magic and religion based on advanced technology, with whimsical gods who are mortals who "ascended" with the aid of that tech. It's a very enjoyable read, even for the third time.
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