Fantasy / Horror Reading in October 2015

Luke_B said:
Sydney is in Australia. Not sure about Sidney ;)
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Do you seriously want me to start pointing out every time you misspell something, hmmmmmm? Because I could do that, you know.

And I'm quite confident that there are plenty of Sidneys in Australia, thankyouverymuch.
 
I have finished The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker. It's certainly a good book, maybe even a great one, but on my all-inclusive scale that includes intangibles such as the "fun-factor," I'd have to rate it only a solid B. Ask me again in five months, though, and you may get a different answer.
 
Westsiyeed said:
Finished the second book in John Hornor Jacobs' Incorruptible series, Foreign Devils.

There's no middle-book syndrome here; the book is well-paced and the story never gets bogged down. A very enjoyable read and if you liked The Incorruptibles, you'll like this one.
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Good to hear. I really enjoyed the Incorruptibles. I didn't even realize the second book was out yet. Looking forward to reading that one.

I've been reading Half the World by Joe Abercrombie. It's the second in his YA series and I'm enjoying it so far. Engaging story and exciting... I realized once I started reading that the previous book in the series hadn't really stuck with me so well though. A few characters from the previous book popped up and (aside from Yarvi) I didn't really remember any details about their character.

I'm also still working my way through the audio version of King's Under the Dome. I'm near the homestretch, and kinda ready for it to be over. Feel like the end is dragging a bit and I just want to get answers to the one or two burning questions that have kept me interested throughout the book. Overall, I'm not a huge fan of the book, but I think the narration is a big drawback. If I were reading it instead of listening to it I'd probably be enjoying it a bit more.
 
Westsiyeed said:
Finished the second book in John Hornor Jacobs' Incorruptible series, Foreign Devils.

Fisk and Shoe are back, this time they're on the hunt for Beleth, a Daemonologist engineer turned bad, whilst Fisk's new partner Livia and her entourage must make a diplomatic mission to Kithai to try to broker peace.

The novel follows these two storylines throughout, and both are as entertaining as each other - with daemonology, hell-fire shotguns, master swordsmen and the 15-foot tall vaettir, it's really a hybrid of many of the common tropes in fantasy, all set within a land that is part Rome and part Western, with a bit of Eastern influence thrown in.

There's no middle-book syndrome here; the book is well-paced and the story never gets bogged down. A very enjoyable read and if you liked The Incorruptibles, you'll like this one.

Next up: Empire Ascendant by Kameron Hurley.
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I had no idea this was even out. I only read Incorruptibles a couple of months ago and really enjoyed it, will definitely be checking the sequel out.
 
Finished Queen of Fire by Anthony Ryan : good finish, but not quite as gripping a tale as the debut of the series. For me the problem lies not in the story but in the characters. THey felt underdeveloped, rushed, with the exception of the three or four main heroes. And by the third book there was a ton of secondary characters that I was supposed not only to remember and put in context, but also to care about when they run into trouble, which they did plenty in this "yet another end of the world war against an evil overlord"

I don't believe I'm actually saying this, but Raven's Shadow overall was good enough to have merited a couple more books for fleshing out the world and the secondary heroes. Definitely will be reading the next book by Ryan.

Now I picked for Halloween a collection of Cordwainer Smith best stories. I only read "Scanners Live in Vain", but I believe I'm off to a good start.
 
algernoninc said:
Finished Queen of Fire by Anthony Ryan : good finish, but not quite as gripping a tale as the debut of the series. For me the problem lies not in the story but in the characters. THey felt underdeveloped, rushed, with the exception of the three or four main heroes. And by the third book there was a ton of secondary characters that I was supposed not only to remember and put in context, but also to care about when they run into trouble, which they did plenty in this "yet another end of the world war against an evil overlord"

I don't believe I'm actually saying this, but Raven's Shadow overall was good enough to have merited a couple more books for fleshing out the world and the secondary heroes. Definitely will be reading the next book by Ryan..
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His upcoming series sounds quite different. It'll be interesting to see how he develops as a writer. I also had the feeling that the last book felt rushed, like he was going to make it a trilogy no matter what. As a writer, I take however many books the story needs. I think there are a lot of trilogies that should be two books or four or five, but so many authors are married to the idea of a trilogy, and it hurts the story in the long run.
 
Ryan Mueller said:
His upcoming series sounds quite different. It'll be interesting to see how he develops as a writer. I also had the feeling that the last book felt rushed, like he was going to make it a trilogy no matter what. As a writer, I take however many books the story needs. I think there are a lot of trilogies that should be two books or four or five, but so many authors are married to the idea of a trilogy, and it hurts the story in the long run.
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I loved most about the first book the fact that it was heavily focused on one character, similar in many ways to Patrick Rothfuss. The sequels were more interested in developing an epic scale to the story, and I did like them, but they don't hold on to that special thrill of an original work - the end product was standard epic military fantasy instead of a character driven story.
 
I finally finished Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy. I absolutely love Hobb's writing, but the last book was really slow for me. I felt it could have benefited from about 200 pages' worth of editing. Nonetheless, the last book provided a great conclusion to the trilogy. I gave five stars to Assassin's Apprentice and Royal Assassin and four stars to Assassin's Quest. It will be at least a few months before I continue on with The Liveship Traders trilogy, however.

Yesterday, in the spirit of the holiday season, I read Batman: The Long Halloween, a fantastic story-arc that clearly influenced Nolan's trilogy. I also read Bram Stoker's short story, The Judge's House. I read Dracula about a dozen years ago, as a teenager, and loved it. I was thrilled to find that Stoker does a great job packing plenty of atmosphere and horror into 30 pages.

I have just started Ray Bradbury's The Halloween Tree and am about a quarter of the way through. This is my first Bradbury, and I'm really enjoying it--feels very nostalgic.
 
Ropie said:
Yes, although about 150 of those are appendices and index, and around 50 pages of the story have single lines of text in various elaborate graphical layouts. I'm by no means a regular consumer of massive books!
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Neither am I, though I make exceptions. I read the first five Ice and Fire books back to back.
 
intensityxx said:
An article of possible interest to readers of mythic fiction and fantasy. And old women like me.
Why Are Old Women Often The Face Of Evil In Fairy Tales And Folklore?
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Interesting article. If you like time travel and want to see a mature lady protagonist, I recommend Time Shifters by Shanna Lauffey. There's a series, five books at present. But both age and diversity are covered with Akalya, the main character. The name comes from the Pakistani side of her family.
 
Just finished Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness and other tales of terror". While I enjoyed them overall (this was my first exp with Lovecraft) I mostly have to say this - GODS, THIS MAN WAS A RACIST!.....

There. Now that I vented this, I'm going into Malazan, Numero 3 - Memories of Ice. :p
 
YordanZh said:
Just finished Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness and other tales of terror". While I enjoyed them overall (this was my first exp with Lovecraft) I mostly have to say this - GODS, THIS MAN WAS A RACIST!.....

There. Now that I vented this, I'm going into Malazan, Numero 3 - Memories of Ice. :p
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He was. Also anti-Semitic. About that latter, oddly, several of the writers he helped most were Jewish and from what I've read about his letters, he was unfailingly courteous to them. I've occasionally wondered what he would have thought, had he lived, of the revelations about the Concentration Camps in the aftermath of WWII.


Randy M.
 
YordanZh said:
Just finished Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness and other tales of terror". While I enjoyed them overall (this was my first exp with Lovecraft) I mostly have to say this - GODS, THIS MAN WAS A RACIST!.....
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I recently asked ST Joshi about this in an interview: my question and his response was:
Q: Much of the criticism of HPL today is about the person rather than his writing. Do you have any particular thoughts about the person, rather than just the writing? Based on your extensive knowledge of the person, do you think you would get on with HPL if was still alive today?

Answer: Much has been made lately of Lovecraft’s racism and anti-Semitism, but I think people fail to understand his views in the context of his times and of his own intellectual development. The matter is too involved to go into here, but let me say that racism comprises a relatively small component of his overall philosophical vision and affects his literary work only slightly. Moreover, he seems to have been an admirable individual in every other regard—kind, generous (not with money—of which he had little—but with his time and expertise), sensitive, and courteous. All his friends had the highest regard for him; some colleagues who knew him only by correspondence (such as August Derleth and Robert Bloch) felt he was one of their best friends. He was a tireless and sympathetic tutor to a great many young writers of his time. Bloch has said that, if he had known that Lovecraft was dying in 1937, he would have crawled on his hands and knees from his home in Milwaukee to Providence, R.I., to be at Lovecraft’s bedside. At his death he ended up being one of the most universally beloved individuals of his generation.
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I finally finished The Aeronaut's Windlass this afternoon. It took me longer than it should have, only because my schedule this week was not terribly conducive to listening.

Although not perfect, this was a lot of fun. I was impressed by the depth of detail throughout, and by how different it was from Butcher's other books. More upsides: lots of well-written action and derring-do. And, as I've mentioned before, I'm a sucker for age of sail stories, so the more he got into that stuff the happier I was. I loved Grimm's character -- right up my alley when I'm looking for dashing adventure.

On the downsides: I could sometimes see Butcher working too hard -- but, again, that can be part of first-in-series syndrome. He isn't quite settled in yet. Sometimes he worked too hard at being arch; sometimes he worked too hard at making Rowl extra-catty; sometimes he worked too hard at here-we-are-being-all-dashing-and-age-of-sail-y. He was so invested in the action-and-adventure-age-of-sail schtick that at times (multiple times) the plot became too predictable. And I really couldn't stand Gwen a great deal of the time. ;-)

But none of the downsides ruined the story for me. It was certainly better than the first Dresden book, and look how that turned out. Considering that it's the first of a new series, I'm expecting great things once Butcher really hits his stride with it.

As for the narrator -- great stuff there. I was a bit surprised that it was a British narrator, but given the age of sail angle I really shouldn't have been. The narrator, Euan Morton, was unimpeachable in all aspects -- tone, delivery, voices, accents, all impeccable. He's a professional actor, and it shows. He hasn't recorded many books yet, but I'll certainly be looking for him in the future.

An easy 4 stars on this one, and I'll be eagerly awaiting the sequel.

Up next: A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab. I've already started, and it's interesting so far. Not far enough in yet to get a really good idea, though.
 
Just a few thoughts on Erikson's Dust of Dreams as I reach the half-way mark or thereabouts:-

In some ways I am a little sad that the Letherii empire and its neighbours is the setting. Letherii is regarded as something of a backwater by the Malazans, and here we have the veterans and even the Letherii themselves running the country down. The Malazans think the Letherii are military second-rate, and the Letherii have gone from self-centred expansionists to realising that they are gnats compared to some of the other powers in the world.

It's fine, but I just feel like the Letherii plots (The Edur invasion, Tehol and Bugg, Brys' death and resurrection) were tied off and done. I'm at a loss as to why we have to have the Errant propped up into becoming a new big bad when a few books ago he was pretty passive in the face of everything, for example.

As the Bonehunters head off into the Wasteland towards a battle with (probably) not one but two elder races who haven't featured as prominently before now, I kind of feel like I would have liked a book taking us to some of the places which seemed a little more.. oh... Cosmopolitan... Daruhjistan... Seven Cities... ?

Kind of a mild quibble and its early days. Maybe Erikson takes things elsewhere towards the finale, particularly with The Crippled God.

Actually, speaking of The Crippled God, I think I preferred it when he was firmly 'the big bad' and not 'misunderstood bad'.

Loving the detailed depiction of the K'Chain Che'Malle and the fact that they have all these new types. The flying assassin, with his night vision, wings and four eyes are pretty cool. Seems like the Matrons are sort of genetic cooks that can breed particular details - or add them with surgeries, like the bladed arms of the K'ell hunters.
 
in october, i read:
Fergunakil by Andrew Hindle
this is the fourth in his series, and i was lucky enough to get an advance copy. lucky, because i don't know any other scifi author doing space sharks. frikken space sharks! they have, like biological ships made of sharks. it's so awesome i want to just grab my kindle and shove it all under everyone's nose and scream at you: "it's got frikken space sharks in it! what more do you want?" needless to say, i liked this, and the cover gives me a warm fuzzy feeling in my unmentionables. (full disclosure: i'm friends with andrew. we went to uni together and majored in the stunningly useless creative writing degree. having said that, i don't get so enthusiastic over friends' writing unless it's good. this is good. so good, i get jealous and want to cut him so he's lucky he lives in finland and i don't.)
Blade of the Destroyer by Andy Peloquin
this was a great action novel with an OP hero with memory problems and weapons of game-themed cool. while there's nothing unique to the book's premise, it still feels fresh in the way it's presented. i liked it. waiting for the sequel. it really needed a better fantasy cover, though. this one went a little too umm horror? while there's a lot of demonic themes going on, it's still fantasy more in flavour.
Stone Dragon by Klay Testamark
this is hilarious! mocking a ton of fantasy tropes and reminds me a lot of something harry harrison might have done if he was feeling frisky and wrote more fantasy than scifi. i was worried he wasn't doing anything with these because his last book in the series is from 2014, and they had been being released pretty quick. i tried contacting the author, but klay's not a social person. however, i found a note on deviantart by the guy who does his covers saying he's done the cover to the next book in the series, so i'll be continuing with these. think of it as d&d but with enough jokes it'd make a great comic book series.
Scale Bright by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
not a book many people would think i'd be reading, but i have a secret fetish for poetic sentence structures. this one reads like a gaiman book if gaiman could actually write prose (don't get me wrong, i love his comics and stories, but prose isn't his thing and that's not necessarily a bad thing...). urban fantasy's not something i've been into this past few years. got sick of vampires. i took this because of its asian side and found it sucked me in. demons and legends and a calm story (which i didn't expect. i expected more vitriolic sharpness to her writing) which i really liked. there's no avoiding the benjanun saga online, which is one reason i wanted to read this (my personal opinion is i used to love reading her caustic reviews because they were actually quite hilarious. might help if you enjoy troll humour, though). i'm glad i did. it was really good if you can put aside the online drama and enjoy it for what it is.
Of Darkness and Dawn by Will Wight
will wight gets better every book, and this is the second(ish) in this series and continues with his sleep-hungry heroine who is always being forced to wake up and stab someone. there's some manga influences here, as well as the games, and there's nothing wrong with that. i love the worlds will creates, and this one is really exciting. it's made even more interesting by the fact he wrote two books from one character's perspective, and has the "villain" with his own book and perspective so it's honestly hard to say which side is the real villain. this is pretty unique, i think. i'm a big will fanboy. so big, that if i DID go to Mandratha to get a tattoo, it'd be a tattoo with will wight's name in it.

(edit: removed my november list to add in the november thread)
 
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