Reading in April 2009

[suciul]

I hear bad things about the first book of Foreigner but good things about the rest of the series. I dunno, a bad first book can ruin me.

Books 1-6 were very good, 7-8 so-so to weak, 9 back to very good and 10 is coming out this month or next

 

[Dirty Hands]

I finished up The book of Joby by Mark J Ferarai earlier this week, and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I didn't know what to expect from a biblical story mixed with an Arthurian one. But Ferarai was defiantly able to pull it off. Even thought the pace of the story is a little slow, its packed with so much emotion that it keeps you engrossed in the book.
Usually only Guy Kay is able to make me reach such emotional highs, but I found myself getting a little teary eyed towards the end. Great book.

At the moment, I'm about 3/4 way in K.J. Parker's Devices and Desires. It started out promisingly, but has been some what of a let down since then.

 

[Astra_]

Finished The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
It was bitter-sweet....although more bitter than sweet, sad book...
Time traveling concept was not the main story line. This book is more about people... incredible love story and full of emotions.

Started Nation by Terry Pratchett
1/10 into it, nothing special so far.

 

[BrightStar]

I finished up The book of Joby by Mark J Ferarai earlier this week, and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I didn't know what to expect from a biblical story mixed with an Arthurian one. But Ferarai was defiantly able to pull it off. Even thought the pace of the story is a little slow, its packed with so much emotion that it keeps you engrossed in the book.
Usually only Guy Kay is able to make me reach such emotional highs, but I found myself getting a little teary eyed towards the end. Great book.

Oh! What a coincidence. I just picked that one off my "to read" pile earlier today. Gave up on The Year of Our War and decided to go for something else. I'm still not quite in the mood to begin a new series, so I thought I'd try The Book of Joby. It aught to be just my thing, as I love stories with a biblical theme, but I've had some very negative experiences recently, so I'm cautious. Hopefully, I won't be dissapointed.

 

[Winter]

I picked up The Year of Our War off my to read pile (a few books up from The Book of Joby, actually), but never finished it either. It wasn't that I didn't like it, I was pretty much neutral for what I did read, but because I had other things that I wanted to read instead. It has been at least a month since I last posted what I have been reading, so I guess I should do that.

Charlie Huston - No Dominion and Half the Blood of Brooklyn. Both damn fine novels, I have quickly come to love Huston's writing, be it his Joe Pitt novels or his stand alones.

Kafka - The Metamophosis. Found it to be a decent and well-written story, but beyond that I do not understand the praise it gets.

Joe Haldeman - The Forever War. After reading Starship Troopers and Scalzi's novels, I find that this book lacks the punch it would have had otherwise. I still found it to be a good novel after I got past a relatively slow and annoying beginning.

I am reading Jeff VanerMeer's Shriek: An Afterword and am really enjoying it. I didn't know what to expect going in and I really don't know what to expect in the coming pages. It is unlike an other fiction novel I have read and I am enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would.

 

[BrightStar]

I picked up The Year of Our War off my to read pile (a few books up from The Book of Joby, actually), but never finished it either. It wasn't that I didn't like it, I was pretty much neutral for what I did read, but because I had other things that I wanted to read instead. It has been at least a month since I last posted what I have been reading, so I guess I should do that.

I was trying to read that before I started The Book of Joby, but couldn't get on with it at all. I only managed about 60 pages, before I gave up, but the book just failed to grip me. I think it was all a bit too... weird. And I felt like it was supposed to be funny, but I didn't think it was. It all just seemed a bit silly to me, really. And the writing failed to grip me. The characters weren't easy to sympathize with, and there were too many details that I felt should have been clarified.

What kept bugging me as well about this book is that I kept imagining the main character as a woman. I don't know why. It was really annoying to be imagining him as a woman, and then having to keep constantly reminding myself that he's not.

 

[pat5150]

Just finished David J. Williams' The Burning Skies, sequel to last year's action-packed The Mirrored Heavens.

It's a great blend of military science fiction and dystopian cyberthriller that should appeal to fans of Richard Morgan.

Patrick

 

[Dirty Hands]

It aught to be just my thing, as I love stories with a biblical theme, but I've had some very negative experiences recently, so I'm cautious. Hopefully, I won't be dissapointed.

I dont think you'll be disappointed. What really worked for me was the fact that I was already familiar with the elements of the story, and therefor had idea of how things could work out. So when things started to pick up in the story and different threads started to come together. I thought I knew what was going to happen, and couldn't wait, as I eagerly anticipated the big BANG that was going to occur.
But as you can imagine, things didnt work out the way I thought they would, when evreything converged together. but all of the hype I built up in my mind on how things could come about, is what made this book so enjoyable. And the fact that things didnt end the way I wanted them to, didnt take away from my enjoyment of the book.

 

[BrightStar]

I dont think you'll be disappointed. What really worked for me was the fact that I was already familiar with the elements of the story, and therefor had idea of how things could work out. So when things started to pick up in the story and different threads started to come together. I thought I knew what was going to happen, and couldn't wait, as I eagerly anticipated the big BANG that was going to occur.
But as you can imagine, things didnt work out the way I thought they would, when evreything converged together. but all of the hype I built up in my mind on how things could come about, is what made this book so enjoyable. And the fact that things didnt end the way I wanted them to, didnt take away from my enjoyment of the book.

I'm certainly pretty optimistic about this one, especially since I read what was up on the author's site. It seems like just my thing. I've had some nasty experiences in the past - The War of Angels by Darren Dowler, for example, was utterly awful - so I try to be more cautious these days. But I must admit to having a definite soft spot for all things concerning angelic characters, and it would be hard to resist God's Demon. I'm just glad it's promising to be a good read.

I'm still reading The Book of Joby at the moment, which is turning out to be a very good read so far. Only a few chapters in, but already finding it to be a total page-turner. I'm really enjoying the characters, and have come to are about Joby quite a bit already.

What pleased me particularly was that I've been enjoying this book, even though the main character is a child. Sometimes, this puts me off, as I think it's very difficult for an author to write a realistic child and oftentimes the child can come off as obnoxious, too adult, or wimpy. Joby is a very realistic child, so I'm finding it interesting having him as a main character.

 

[Eventine]

All those reading The Book of Joby at the moment may be interested in the discussion in our book club thread.

 

[Draxinusom]

Read through the entire available Temeraire series from Naomi Novik, that is

His Majesties' Dragon
Throne of Jade
Black Powder War
Empire of Ivory
Victory of Eagles


Definitly a bit on the lighter side regarding things like Dragons clawing into stuff and killing (except if one takes sides with all the poor cattle...) but those books got depth and something else I can't quite clearly put my finger to it which enrich it immensly and make these a great read. Maybe it's the semi-correct historical setting and events in the Napoleonic wars or just the different character's personalities working well together, can't really say what it is that makes those special.

The characters are quite fun, especially the namesake protagonist Temeraire with his often naive, sometimes deep and non-conformist views and especially his quite meddlesome nature when he gets a chance to discuss his opinion and views with other Dragons.

From the 5 books available now, I'd say I liked the Black Powder War the least of all them. Not that it's particularly bad, it just felt a bit ... incoherent rushing through all the areas. From what I gathered, the book wasn't planned to be the third one, which should have been EoI, but at the time after ToJ someone else brought out a book with Dragons and the same core plot device in EoI, so that one was be preemted by BPW.

There's a big Deus Ex Machina at the end of the first book, sadly, and later starting with book three I felt that the Tharkay character often felt a bit like a minor Deus Ex as well, but it's nothing too badly, just a slight discomfort overall. Still, a very nice read and a series I'm going to follow to the conclusion.

Now on to something more 'classic': Started reading the first Harry Potter, which I never read and dodged all the movies so far.

 

[BrightStar]

All those reading The Book of Joby at the moment may be interested in the discussion in our book club thread.

Thanks. I skimmed the topic very quickly, but there seems to be a lot of spoilers so it's difficult to follow discussion too well without reading them. I haven't finished The Book of Joby yet, but I probably will check out that topic in more detail once I have.

One point I did note from that topic was that the book's second half might not be as strong as the first. I hope this isn't true, because I'm really loving the first half so far. It's plot may be somewhat slow paced, but it's the characters that drive this story forwards and I'm really loving reading about them.

 

[TheEvilKing]

Good to see so many people enjoying The Book of Joby as I picked that up last week.

Just started The Chosen by Richard Pinto. A couple of chapters in and struggling with the clunky prose after the beautifully flowing Dragon In Chains.

I'm also about half way through The Escapement by KJ Parker, book 3 of the Engineer Trilogy. This has been a killer series so far. Really looking forward to seeing how it all turns out.

 

[BrightStar]

Just started The Chosen by Richard Pinto. A couple of chapters in and struggling with the clunky prose after the beautifully flowing Dragon In Chains.

I read The Chosen, and then book two (The Standing Dead) and I must admit that after finishing book two, I wasn't particularly bothered about buying book three.

A lot of people find it difficult to deal with the prose, but this wasn't really the main thing that bothered me about the book. It's very long-winded and sometimes tiresome to have to read a page of description before anything happens, but what bothered me more was the fact that The Chosen plodded along at a frustratingly slow pace, and I never really did come to care about any of the characters. Having only read both books less than a few months back, I'm sorry to say that very little about the two books remains in my memory except that the plot was very dull and nothing really happened in either of them.

I thought the world and sociaty was very interesting, but there just wasn't a strong enough plot or characters to drive the story on. I preferred the first book to the second, but struggled even with The Chosen. The Standing Dead, unfortunately, suffered from the same problems as The Chosen, but to a greater and more annoying extent. In The Standing Dead, what bothered me most was the main character's inability/refusal to really do anything. He just seemed to passively stand by whilst events plodded on by, but he never really reacted to try and change things for himself.

It was a shame really, since I really wanted to enjoy The Chosen and The Standing Dead, but in the end, was dissapointed and frustrated by the both of them. I hope you enjoy them more than I did.

I posted my opinion of The Standing Dead as I was reading it in this topic (though I'm not too sure if I might have mentioned The Chosen at the same time) so you can always check that out if you want to read over my comments.

 

[Amaunette]

Books 1-6 were very good, 7-8 so-so to weak, 9 back to very good and 10 is coming out this month or next

Ahah, Foreigner...that series was pretty good. JUST BUM RUSH THAT ####! Finish it in a day!

Thanks, you two, I will definitely pick Foreigner up next then. I'm going through the Fortress series so fast I'm going to need something else good to read really soon.

Just started The Chosen by Richard Pinto. A couple of chapters in and struggling with the clunky prose after the beautifully flowing Dragon In Chains.

I actually liked The Chosen but couldn't get much into the second book because I didn't like the way the first book ended. Then again, I am apparently far less bothered by chunky prose since other books similarly described (like Williams' The Dragonbone Chair) don't really keep me from enjoying the story. So I'm not sure I'm the best one to give a recommendation on such a book. However, what I really loved best about The Chosen was the world building, especially the caste structure. And the masks! Those were great.

 

[Hobbit]

Currently reading China Mieville's The City and The City; another intelligent and thought-provoking book from China (so far).

Mark

 

[algernoninc]

finished two pseudo-horror thrillers by F Paul Wilson: "The Tomb" and "The Keep". Typical airport lounge fare, reminding me of Clive Cussler with Repairman Jack as stand-in for Dirk Pitt, and with less accent on technology and more on the supernatural / horror. I thought The Keep has very poor writing with wooden dialogue and predictable plot, but it is placed in and around my home county [Ploiesti and the Carpathians to the north of the city] so it was marginally interesting to see how the author got his research done. I was disappointed a little by his portrayal of Vlad Dracul as a bloodthirsty madman, with the most far fetched claims written by his turkish and hungarian adversaries given credence here [he didn't impale the entire population of his own cities with women and children included, and he didn't punish indiscriminately, yes he was paranoid, but his boyars really were out to get him and he was betrayed by them repeatedly] Oh, well, i guess I'll read another F Paul Wilson novel the next time I travel and i need some light entertainment, but for now I will get back to historical fiction with House of Niccolo - book 6 out of 8.

 

[BloodStreak]

I am reading Peter F Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction. I have often overlooked his work but now I am starting to become really interested in it.

 

[DarthV]

Finished up The New World by Michael Stackpole. Good series, but the end suffered a bit. For most of the series I was more interested in a couple of the 'minor' characters than the main plot (Ciras & Dunos).

Now on to John Marco's The Eyes of God.

 

[BrightStar]

Now on to John Marco's The Eyes of God.

Sadly, there's an author that I really wanted to enjoy, but when I read his Jackal of Nar (book one in the Tyrants and Kings series) I just couldn't get on with it. I think The Eyes of God sounds interesting, but since I didn't like Jackal of Nar I'm worried I should probably keep away.

Still reading The Book of Joby at the moment. I think the pacing slowed down (I'm about halfway through it now) but I'm still finding it really, really enjoyable. I love how cunning Lucifer can be sometimes!