Reading in April 2012

Just started The Hunger Games today. About 100 pages in, and it's pretty good! Better than I expected.
 
Finished In the City of Coin and Spices by Catherynne Valente. This concludes the Orphan Tales, a story that is now officially in my top ten fantasy list. I liked how in the afterword the author mentions among the sources for the book the Grimm Brothers, the Arabian Nights, Ramayana, Afanasiev (a very good collection of Russian folk tales) and the oral tradition of storytelling in general, passed to her from a grandmother.

I've started now The Bloodstone by Karl Edward Wagner - my third Kane book, and it promises to be as good as the previous ones.
 
I've just finished William Meikle's Crustaceans. Fast, furious, and fun. I'm holding off getting into anything else right now until I pick up Kevin Hearne's Tricked tomorrow, though I suspect I'll have to fight the wife for it.

After those, I'll finish up Weston Ochse's Blood Ocean and figure out what happens from there.
 
Just finished Kushiel’s Dart by Jaqueline Carey.

This was recommended to me by my nephew so I decided to give it a try

Of course I always try to resist the temptation of judging a book by its cover. Nevertheless, for about the first third of the book, I started to build an impression of a predominately themed Romance book masked as Fantasy. However, I kept on reading and soon discovered I was wrong.

I believe Kushiel’s Dart is an impressive debut for Carey. Despite being the first part of a trilogy, the ending is satisfying containing enough plot resolutions such that it can also act as a standalone, sufficiently rewarding the reader.

The entire story is narrated from just one point of view, the heroine, Phèdre. Overall, I believe Carey handled this writing style well. Although, at times it was a bit awkward concerning how Phèdre needed to obtain information to ‘dump’ to us, the readers.

I was pleased with the world building throughout the novel. The character and plot development was also decent with the exception of a couple of scenes where I thought behaviors exhibited were out of character (based upon previous knowledge learned). To avoid spoilers I will refrain from specifics.

This book was a delightful quick read (even with a relatively high word count) with just the right balance of complexity concerning the world and its cast of focal characters. I definitely plan to eventually continue the series.

Having just recently finished The Bonehunters by Steven Erikson comprised of countless point of views, I can envision alternating between these contrasting writing styles to keep them both fresh :).
 
This weekend I finished Among Others by Jo Walton as part of my Hugo reading. It's a little light on actual story, but worth it for the literary SFF references.

Now reading Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht.
 
Reading The Desert of Souls by Howard A. Jones and liking it a lot. It's also (as Throne of the crescent moon) themed on Arabian Nights, but placed in (semi)historical Baghdad of Harun-ar-Rashid. Some protagonists are historical figures. Warning: digging too much into real-world history of Harun-ar-Rashid would make a spoiler. Tone is lighter than Throne of the crescent moon, and it's more like urban sword&sorcery for a while.
 
The Drowning Girl by Caitlin Kiernan

The subtitle is “A Memoir” by India Morgan Phelps (known as Imp). Imp says she is crazy, a madwoman, as were her mother and grandmother, and she was once diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. The Drowning Girl is a story pieced together from fragmented and sometimes contradictory memories merged and stirred with bits of esoteric lore picked up from her mother and grandmother, and a great deal of reading, and inspired or catalyzed or dreamed into by viewing a painting titled “The Drowning Girl.” Here Kiernan is questioning the nature of story-telling by taking on the voice of a young woman who is trying to both find and declare the truth through writing her memoir. It’s an intricate, complex book, a search for meaning and for peace of mind, and it’s lovely in spots and brutal in others. I’m not sure I’m as taken with this novel as was with The Red Tree, but anyone who read that novel would certainly want to read this one. And maybe reread it. I expect in a year or two I’ll consider rereading both The Red Tree and The Drowning Girl, and expect both would repay rereading.


Randy M.
 
I finished Death Masks by Butcher yesterday, and I thought it was okay. I didn't enjoy it as much as either Summer Knight or Grave Peril, but it was better than the first two. I wasn't really a big fan of the other two Knights, Sanya and Shiro, but I did enjoy the plot around the Denarian's. I'm already a little bored with the
Red Court/ White Council war
so I've a feeling that it is time to take a break from the Dresden Files.

I think next I'm going to read When We Were Executioners, by J.M. McDermott. The first book, Never Knew Another, was fantastic so I'm really looking forward to this one. I also have a few books from K.J. Parker on the shelf that I've been wanting to read, so I may pick up one of those instead.
 
I read Tricked: Book 4 of the Iron Druid Chronicles. For those who are interested or keep track of such things, the first quote on the back cover is from this SFFWorld review: http://www.sffworld.com/brevoff/722.html

As for the book itself, I think that it continues very much in the tradition of the first three. I felt that the writing was a bit crisper and more complex, a couple of the magical explanations went on a bit long, but I would expect it to be enjoyable for fans of the series. The plot was focused, the characters dealt with events in a way realistic to their depiction and I think that Hearne went into their psyches a bit more deeply this time around.

I have to say that I was on the fence about buying and reading this one, both because of a question of misogyny that arose in the third book, and also because it felt like the series might be declining. Neither of those fears proved to be an issue this time around, so I'll likely pick up the next book (due in November in the U.S.).
 
After reading and loving 1Q84, I'm now nearly halfway through Murakami's Kafka on the Shore and enjoying it too. His writing style is quite unique; very passive and subtle yet hooks you into the story straight from the start.

There are two main story lines running (on even and odd chapters), and both are as interesting and intriguing as the other (I often find with many books like this that one of the sub-plots is better than the other, so I "rush through" one to get to the other). Not the case here which is good.
 
The Wind Through the Keyhole (Dark Tower 4.5/8) by Stephen King.

King kens what he's doing.
 
I set aside Cold Fire by Kate Elliott yesterday after a couple of hundred pages. It isn't bad, I actually like the world building, but I just cannot connect with anything in the novel to keep me reading.

On to Scourge of the Betrayer by Jeff Salyards. 20% through it (reading on Kindle) and I'm very drawn to the story.
 
Finished Gemmell's Waylander in the wee hours this morning. I tend to like Gemmell, particularly his penchant for minimalism, so this was a fine read for me.

Not really sure where to go from here.
 
Finished the sequel to Mark Sumner's "Devil's Tower," "Devil's Engine." It was a worthy sequel to the fantasy western, and I really enjoyed the somewhat quirky character of the Rainmaker, as well as how Buffalo Bill Cody was portrayed, which quite honestly, is how I imagined his character to pretty much be like in real life. The ending was satisfying as well, although I would have liked to have seen how the magic, or "talents" as he referred to them in the duology, was carried into the twentieth century after that, and if it survived at all, but Sumner's duology was meant to be only a fantasy western, after all. I'm really glad I was recommended to it on this board, although sadly I forget who made the recommendation, because I really enjoyed the duology.
I'm now reading the first book of the "Seven Brothers Trilogy," "The Prince of Shadow" by Curt Benjamin, and I'm enjoying it. It's rather refreshing reading an medieval oriental-inspired fantasy series this time around as a change to the medieval or ancient Europe-inspired fantasy that I know and love and usually read.
 
Randy M. said:
[...]
I expect in a year or two I’ll consider rereading both The Red Tree and The Drowning Girl, and expect both would repay rereading.
Click to expand...

High praise for the unreliable narrator! :)

On my end, I finished Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia which depicts a paramilitary organization's endless fight against things that go bump in the night. A better than most plot, engaging funny characters and some pretty terrific action scenes. The author describes himself as a gun nut and sometimes you wonder whether you're reading a firearms manual while drowning in superfluous technical details. Otherwise, a "just-plain-fun" series opener.
 
Started Memories of Ice by Erikson. Not a full chapter in (though I very well may be by other authors' standards). Not going to do any fancy reading order, just going to follow the publishing order, as was intended.
 
I'm going to finally get around to reading The Dark Tower series soon. Would you suggest reading the new one between 4 and 5 as King suggests?
 
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