Reading in April 2009

BrightStar said:
I seem to recall that I've read that book, and whilst it was a struggle to get through - especially the first half - overall, I found it to be a good book. I'm regretting that I didn't pick up the next book in the series. After it being so long since I read Cavern of Black Ice, I can't rememeber what happened in it well enough to be able to follow the plot of book two.
Click to expand...

Yeah I can definitely see how this would be the case. The opener was very much a string of Strange and Portentous Events that were shaping up to become a central narrative mystery. If it were a little smoother and Jones didn't get so many little details of her worldbuilding wrong I would probably have gone along for the ride, and given that many of her dropped clues were indeed interesting and unsettling, I imagine the central mystery could have been a good one. If I run low on the book pile (hah, right, that'll happen) I'll probably go back to find out.

I feel like Jones' over-descriptiveness is a pretty big pitfall in her work, at least in the 50-odd pages I read. It didn't bog the story's pace down too much -- although if it continues after the narrative mystery's in place, that could change -- but the more extraneous and non-researched "realistic" details you stick in there, the more likely they are to be noticed as wrong, and then groucho readers like myself get all "wtf this book sux" and go read Bernard Cornwell instead.
 
Finished Last Argument of Kings by Abercrombie.

I think this last book in the trilogy was also the best. I really like the way how it ended, or rather not ended, cause that seems to be the point of the series, that everything runs in circles. There are still some answers that I'm dying to find out, but all in all very satisfying conclusion.

Now reading Kushiel's Chosen by J.Carey. I had a gap between books of about a year, but I'm really surprised that I remember all the key characters rather well, although I was in a bit of a struggle when reading Kushiel's Dart. So far, very enjoyable read. I really like Carey's writing style.
 
Good day all. I am 300 pages into Gardens of the Moon and on the one hand I am loving this book. It is so well written and it is very complex - I am just starting to sort out in my mind where the rest of this story is going. But just barely. On the other hand I have not bonded with a character or two yet to follow through the journey. Yes there are several interesting ones who I want to read more of but I dont feel like I am getting a chance to stick with any one long enough to totally get into their heads. I am leaning towards Tattersail, Toc the younger and Whiskeyjack as my favourites. I am inclined to believe that as the story progresses and the conflict becomes more focused I will get to know them better and settle in to it from their perspective more.

However, I dont want to give the impression I am complaining. It is a real treat to read a book this good. It was a bit of a search for me after finishing A Feast for Crows in the ASOIAF series to find something else that was so engaging. I love how the world just flat out exists and you have to come up to speed on who is who and how things like the magic in this world work quickly, trusting that you the reader are smart enough to do so.
 
I tried reading Jonathan Strange and Nr. Norrell, I only made it through 80 pages before putting it down. The writing style just made it unentertaining. So I picked up The Briar King instead.
 
Just finished China Miéville's The City & The City and it's a very good read!

A great blend of murder mystery and speculative fiction that should appeal to most genre readers.

Patrick
 
Bastard said:
Bastard said:
Right now I'm reading The Great Hunt of Wheel of Time, might follow it up with one of these (don't know yet):
Dragon Reborn
The Name of the Wind
The Way of Shadows
Silverthorn
Click to expand...

Finished The Great Hunt and The Name of the Wind. Enjoyed The Great Hunt quite a bit, readying myself for the Dragon Reborn... but not yet. I thought it was a better read than the first novel though.

The Name of the Wind I liked. You could tell that the author was having fun writting this, or at least that's the impression that I got. But as the novel itself tells us, the story was merely laying the groundwork for the meat of it, so I have high expectations for the sequel which looks to be more exciting and have more action.

Started The Way of Shadows, the first couple of chapters haven't said much to me, but I have a feeling that it'll get better after the slow start.
Click to expand...

Finished The Way of Shadows, and I enjoyed it. Although clearly having plenty of flaws in the writing (though it's not something I mind) like a weak dialogue, though there were some funny ones, a somewhat lack of good detailed descriptions, and not really good in transitioning from one scene to another... I thought it was an enjoyable book, will read the rest of the series later. I really liked the fast pace and the action, and the story and dillemmas were good, though it felt some of them could be better presented. But yeah, it's like going to the movies to watch a real action movie, you don't care much for the details as long as you get some kickass action, etc. Worth mentioning that I felt that his writing got stronger as the novel progressed.

I'm also 60 pages away from finishing Dragon Reborn, 3rd book of Wheel of Time, and so far it has been my favorite book of the series. Partly because they've focused on the other characters outside from Rand, and have made them all interesting and worth reading about them. In particular I liked Mat. I'm quite impressed with what they got out of his character. The earlier two books had me hating him; he was highly annoying. But in this book he has become completely awesome, easily among the favorites of the novel at the moment.

Will read Silverthorn after I'm done, unless I find the need to continue Wheel of Time immediately.
 
Last edited:
You'd think I'd have learnt to keep well enough alone (for at least a while) after reading Naked Empire (Sword of Truth) barely a few weeks back, yet having just returned from finishing my recent non-fantasy read, Chainfire seemed almost to call to me from the stack of books waiting on my to read pile.

My reasoning is largely due to the knowledge that if I read Chainfire, I'll be spending my days with a average read (if I'm lucky, and I'm still not sure about that after my less than pleasant readthrough of Naked Empire). This suits me well right now, since anything of a higher quality is likely to inspire me to want to continue writing my own work in progress. Which is a bad thing at the moment because I just don't seem to have even a glimmer of creativity in me at the moment to be able to write, nor do I actually have the time to write even if I did.

Although it may no longer guarantee itself to at least be a fun read (though earlier books in the series certainly were passable) the next Sword of Truth title is certainly likely to be a quick and easy read. I'm not quite ready to start another new epic series, and I don't have any standalone books to read in the meantime, so this should do for the time being.
 
currently reading Tinker by Wen Spencer

Very unusual fantasy/science fiction storyline. I just finished. Read the book in one sitting because I could not sleep and it was very entertaining. I would recomment this book to anyone that likes fantasy.
 
I have just read Memories of Ice and I am flabbergasted. I find the complexity of the book...amazing. All of the inter-character ties, the world building, the LAYERS of history just make me stare in awe. How the history is not some stagnant thing to be stated on pages 1-5 and then pretty much forgotten, No, Mr.Erikson creates a living history that not only sets the foundation for the entir series, but actively affects the actions of people in it. Layers upon layers of history in world that is hundreds of thousands of years old. Really *&(( amazing. I could go on for pages on the this, but I will leave it at this.

Memories of Ice by Steven Erikson gets 5/5stars!

And the comedy all over the place in this one was really great...
 
Recently finished Dragonfly Falling by Adrian Tchaikovsky (review is up on Speculative Horizons, for those of you that are interested). Really, really good novel - improves in every way on the first novel. Gripping stuff.

Currently reading The Ninth Circle by Alex Bell. Pretty good so far.
 
Still waiting for Amazon to deliever my copy of Dragonfly Falling....

Currently on a John Scalzi kick - almost finished Old Man's War, which is a military SF novel, but with a light and humourous writing style. This book just seems like fun, and I am gobbling it down fast..... I have 4-5 more Scalzi books ordered from my local library.
 
Apathy said:
I have just read Memories of Ice and I am flabbergasted. I find the complexity of the book...amazing. All of the inter-character ties, the world building, the LAYERS of history just make me stare in awe. How the history is not some stagnant thing to be stated on pages 1-5 and then pretty much forgotten, No, Mr.Erikson creates a living history that not only sets the foundation for the entir series, but actively affects the actions of people in it. Layers upon layers of history in world that is hundreds of thousands of years old. Really *&(( amazing. I could go on for pages on the this, but I will leave it at this.

Memories of Ice by Steven Erikson gets 5/5stars!

And the comedy all over the place in this one was really great...
Click to expand...

Absolutely agree! I don't understand how he does it and I feel bad for anyone's who's given up on the series. It's just that good.

I'm about halfway through House of Chains and it's just great. Every spare moment I have (not too many of them) I'm in the book and that's always a good sign.

Also reading Grave Peril, which is easy reading during class. I'm graduating in a couple weeks so I really don't have motivation to listen to a professor talk about nothing, but it's still graded on attendance (this is a university class?). Anyway, it's entertaining and fast-paced as the Dresden Files usually are. I'm kinda tired of some of the same elements being repeated yet again. Harry gets crap beat out of him, then again, then again, but at least he still kicks butt. :)
 
I'm not a fan of first person pov, but decided to give the Dresden Files a chance.

They weren't amazing, but I thought they were a fun read. Thought it was impressive that he managed to keep such a consistent quality up over 11 books.

My only real complain is the repetition. Maybe it's because I read them back to back, but the constant re-describing of the same things, in almost exactly the same way, in each and every books got really, really irritating until I just started skipping those passage.
 
I'm just about 30 pages into Chainfire now. At least it has a quicker and more interesting start than the previous book, but my one big complaint about it so far is that I seriously thought that I'd missed a book somehow. I even went back to check at amazon, and wikipedia just to make sure!

Chainfire feels like it's in the middle of something, which is fine, but when that book itself is in the middle of a series, then it feels a bit unbalanced to me. Other than that though, once I'd assured myself I hadn't missed anything (though I do think it'd be quite possible to skip the odd book in the SoT series and not really notice the loss) the start is enjoyable enough. Richard seems a bit dense: I'd expect him to be doing a bit more to try and figure out the extent of the problem by now. But other than that, it's a nice, easy read that should keep me occupied until I fancy beginning something of higher quality.
 
BrightStar said:
I'm just about 30 pages into Chainfire now. At least it has a quicker and more interesting start than the previous book, but my one big complaint about it so far is that I seriously thought that I'd missed a book somehow. I even went back to check at amazon, and wikipedia just to make sure!

Chainfire feels like it's in the middle of something, which is fine, but when that book itself is in the middle of a series, then it feels a bit unbalanced to me. Other than that though, once I'd assured myself I hadn't missed anything (though I do think it'd be quite possible to skip the odd book in the SoT series and not really notice the loss) the start is enjoyable enough. Richard seems a bit dense: I'd expect him to be doing a bit more to try and figure out the extent of the problem by now. But other than that, it's a nice, easy read that should keep me occupied until I fancy beginning something of higher quality.
Click to expand...

In all I enjoyed the last trilogy of SoT quite a bit, at least more then the previous couple of books. I really liked the first half of Confessor, though the second half felt quite rushed and you could tell that the author wanted to get it over with.
 
Bastard said:
In all I enjoyed the last trilogy of SoT quite a bit, at least more then the previous couple of books. I really liked the first half of Confessor, though the second half felt quite rushed and you could tell that the author wanted to get it over with.
Click to expand...

Well, that's slightly reassuring to hear, though it'll be a shame if Confessor leaves me dissapointed. Confessor is the last book in the SoT series, isn't it? I can never remember the order with those books.

Chainfire still suffers from too much retelling. It's even more so annoying this time around than it was when I read Naked Empire, because I only just finished Naked Empire less than a month ago, and I had to read through pages of summary then, too. Okay, so I see the point in a series that might take years between book releases (not sure how long passed between each SoT release, though) but it's still very, very annoying if you're reading the series straight through. I think it's a little sad when I'm skipping pages and pages at once, because they're all just telling me what I already know. Sometimes, I feel as though Terry Goodkind treats me (the reader) as though I'm a little stupid.

I was kinda surprised to discover that the next two books that I need to buy are a little more expensive than all the previous books. I was sort of expecting that lots of people would be eager to resell them, and thus they'd be quite cheap. But it seems not. I'll probably wait to buy the books when I actually intend to read them, rather than just picking up a copy to sit on my to read pile until I feel like giving it a go.
 
BrightStar said:
Well, that's slightly reassuring to hear, though it'll be a shame if Confessor leaves me dissapointed. Confessor is the last book in the SoT series, isn't it? I can never remember the order with those books.

Chainfire still suffers from too much retelling. It's even more so annoying this time around than it was when I read Naked Empire, because I only just finished Naked Empire less than a month ago, and I had to read through pages of summary then, too. Okay, so I see the point in a series that might take years between book releases (not sure how long passed between each SoT release, though) but it's still very, very annoying if you're reading the series straight through. I think it's a little sad when I'm skipping pages and pages at once, because they're all just telling me what I already know. Sometimes, I feel as though Terry Goodkind treats me (the reader) as though I'm a little stupid.

I was kinda surprised to discover that the next two books that I need to buy are a little more expensive than all the previous books. I was sort of expecting that lots of people would be eager to resell them, and thus they'd be quite cheap. But it seems not. I'll probably wait to buy the books when I actually intend to read them, rather than just picking up a copy to sit on my to read pile until I feel like giving it a go.
Click to expand...
Yeah, the retelling is annoying, just skip those portions or do some "fast reading" over them, that's how I got through with it without problems. The last book at least has a clear conclusion, so pretty much everything gets resolved... my main problem with it is that it felt like he spent little time in some aspects I would've liked more of or that I wanted it more detailed or impacting, but he instead focused on just finishing the story. Won't say more so I won't spoil you. And to give some perspective, I'm one of those that liked the series, even the bad books... though I find many of the criticisms quite valid.
 
Well I've finished my annual Dean Koontz. Hideaway was entertaining and yet there wasn't much meat to gnaw on this bone. Lots of tension building up for not much of an ending. Typical horror/thriller book ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Sponsors


We try to keep the forum as free of ads as possible, please consider supporting SFFWorld on Patreon


Your ad here.
Back
Top