- Joined
- Mar 22, 2003
- Messages
- 14,995
I got books in series I'm working on as gifts, so reading in January has been those.
Read Terry Pratchett's The Truth (Discworld.) (satiric secondary world fantasy) He's a god. It hurts to read these when they are so good and funny and knowing he's so ill. It's a book that manages to be relevant to the time and tech of when it was written, now, and the past all at the same time, tackling newspapers and the power of news. His writing is so amazingly constructed. It's like an onion, it has layers. This is probably one of my favorites now of the vast series.
Ben Aaronovitch's Moon Over Soho, the second book in his contemporary fantasy series set in the U.K. about magician apprentice/police detective Peter Grant, which is getting more and more attention. This one dealt with a magical crime crisis in the Soho area of London, natch, and involved jazz musicians, which brought Peter dealing more with his dad, a minorly known jazz musician. The book wasn't quite as well crafted as the first one maybe, but it was a solid follow-up that expanded the magical world of the story in interesting ways. It was nice to get a better sense of Peter's multiracial family and background, and the posse of jazz player aides he picked up were a lot of fun. The key with these types of series is the protagonist voice, and Peter is a good one for me -- his relationships with the other characters are well done, as is most of the dialogue. I've generally been recommending this series to folks looking for a contemporary fantasy one and there's a discussion on it in the forum. (Aaronovitch is also well known as a former writer for Doctor Who and British television. The first book in the series is called The Rivers of London, re-titled Midnight Riot in the U.S.)
Read Laura Resnick's latest in her popular Esther Diamond series, Abracadaver. The series is a broadly farcical contemporary fantasy about a working actress who helps out a 350-year-old mage fight evil mystery in NYC. It's of absolutely no interest to about 90% of the folk who frequent this forum,
but I put it up for the minority who might be interested. (If you like Robert Asprin and that sort of thing, you may like this one.) Again, protagonist voice is the thing and I find Esther's pragmatic do-gooder a lot of fun in Resnick's experienced hands. Like Pratchett and Aaronovitch with his dialogue, the book has a few layers working that you can dig into or ignore, as you prefer. This one, unlike others in the series, takes up right after the somewhat cliffhanger ending of the last one, The Misfortune Cookie, and involves Esther's gang dealing with whether her sometime boyfriend, organized crime police detective Lopez, has a new partner who is not what he seems and may have something to do with reanimated corpses and demons. I liked this one having some nice digs at cop shows, with Esther back to work on one. It's interesting that Esther is seeing the real costs to being part of a second world, balancing with the ordinary one, and Resnick has the ensemble of regulars down pat with the dialogue at this point. (The first book in the series is Disappearing Nightly.)
And along the same lines, I read the fourth book in Diana Rowland's White Trash Zombie contemporary fantasy series, How the White Trash Zombie Got Her Groove Back. While the series is kind of satiric at points, it's not a straight out satire series. This book I enjoyed for the character development of the protagonist, morgue worker and recovering addict Angel, who happens to be a zombie in Louisiana. A lot of new developments and discoveries came up about the zombieism, which twists between SF and fantasy. This one was also fairly action packed, as it was a rescue mission when several members of the organized zombies in her area are snatched, traitors are suspected, and Angel and several of her comrades have to travel to NYC. This opened up Angel's world and strengths further, but contemporary fantasy suspense, like regular suspense, is very much about sense of place, which meant losing that aspect -- ruralish Louisiana and the morgue environment -- in this series entry. So not my favorite of the series, but interesting, and again, a lot of good action with all the paramilitary/spy characters of the "Zombie Mafia" and there's disturbing set-up for the next one. (Rowland is a former cop, morgue attendant and CSI forensics investigator, so all her procedural stuff is spot-on. The first book in the series is called My Life as a White Trash Zombie. She also has a demon summoner cop contemporary fantasy series, the Kara Gillian series. I haven't tried that one yet, but I would like to see Karen Gillan play Kara Gillian in a t.v. version. It would be better than her last t.v. series.)
Currently, I'm reading Max Gladstone's Three Parts Dead, the first in his Craft Sequence series that got so much buzz. It's a secondary world fantasy with so many different elements and cultural bits packed into the text (and a very subtle strain of dark satire as well.) Too early to entirely know, but I'll just say that so far, I'm really, really liking it.
Additionally, I'll be then finishing the Wheel of Time series with final book Memory of Light by Jordan and Sanderson, which will be a long journey done, more Glen Cook Black Company novels, The Marching Dead from Lee Battersby which is the sequel to The Corpse Rat King, and The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette.)
I'm also jonesing for more of Michael Sullivan's Riyria novels (I'm behind,) Jim Hines' newest Magic Ex Libris novel, Unbound, Daniel Jose Older's new series/novel Half-Resurrection Blues, James Barclay's Raven series (I'm behind,) Lucas Thorn's When Goblins Rage in the Nysta series, and Susan Boulton's amazing sec world novel Oracle (which will be a bit tricky to get since it doesn't have a U.S. publisher yet, hang it, but is available in the U.K.) I also am trying to decide if I'm reading on in the older series or jumping for now to the new series of Jon Sprunk and Kameron Hurley. Any votes?
Read Terry Pratchett's The Truth (Discworld.) (satiric secondary world fantasy) He's a god. It hurts to read these when they are so good and funny and knowing he's so ill. It's a book that manages to be relevant to the time and tech of when it was written, now, and the past all at the same time, tackling newspapers and the power of news. His writing is so amazingly constructed. It's like an onion, it has layers. This is probably one of my favorites now of the vast series.
Ben Aaronovitch's Moon Over Soho, the second book in his contemporary fantasy series set in the U.K. about magician apprentice/police detective Peter Grant, which is getting more and more attention. This one dealt with a magical crime crisis in the Soho area of London, natch, and involved jazz musicians, which brought Peter dealing more with his dad, a minorly known jazz musician. The book wasn't quite as well crafted as the first one maybe, but it was a solid follow-up that expanded the magical world of the story in interesting ways. It was nice to get a better sense of Peter's multiracial family and background, and the posse of jazz player aides he picked up were a lot of fun. The key with these types of series is the protagonist voice, and Peter is a good one for me -- his relationships with the other characters are well done, as is most of the dialogue. I've generally been recommending this series to folks looking for a contemporary fantasy one and there's a discussion on it in the forum. (Aaronovitch is also well known as a former writer for Doctor Who and British television. The first book in the series is called The Rivers of London, re-titled Midnight Riot in the U.S.)
Read Laura Resnick's latest in her popular Esther Diamond series, Abracadaver. The series is a broadly farcical contemporary fantasy about a working actress who helps out a 350-year-old mage fight evil mystery in NYC. It's of absolutely no interest to about 90% of the folk who frequent this forum,
but I put it up for the minority who might be interested. (If you like Robert Asprin and that sort of thing, you may like this one.) Again, protagonist voice is the thing and I find Esther's pragmatic do-gooder a lot of fun in Resnick's experienced hands. Like Pratchett and Aaronovitch with his dialogue, the book has a few layers working that you can dig into or ignore, as you prefer. This one, unlike others in the series, takes up right after the somewhat cliffhanger ending of the last one, The Misfortune Cookie, and involves Esther's gang dealing with whether her sometime boyfriend, organized crime police detective Lopez, has a new partner who is not what he seems and may have something to do with reanimated corpses and demons. I liked this one having some nice digs at cop shows, with Esther back to work on one. It's interesting that Esther is seeing the real costs to being part of a second world, balancing with the ordinary one, and Resnick has the ensemble of regulars down pat with the dialogue at this point. (The first book in the series is Disappearing Nightly.)
And along the same lines, I read the fourth book in Diana Rowland's White Trash Zombie contemporary fantasy series, How the White Trash Zombie Got Her Groove Back. While the series is kind of satiric at points, it's not a straight out satire series. This book I enjoyed for the character development of the protagonist, morgue worker and recovering addict Angel, who happens to be a zombie in Louisiana. A lot of new developments and discoveries came up about the zombieism, which twists between SF and fantasy. This one was also fairly action packed, as it was a rescue mission when several members of the organized zombies in her area are snatched, traitors are suspected, and Angel and several of her comrades have to travel to NYC. This opened up Angel's world and strengths further, but contemporary fantasy suspense, like regular suspense, is very much about sense of place, which meant losing that aspect -- ruralish Louisiana and the morgue environment -- in this series entry. So not my favorite of the series, but interesting, and again, a lot of good action with all the paramilitary/spy characters of the "Zombie Mafia" and there's disturbing set-up for the next one. (Rowland is a former cop, morgue attendant and CSI forensics investigator, so all her procedural stuff is spot-on. The first book in the series is called My Life as a White Trash Zombie. She also has a demon summoner cop contemporary fantasy series, the Kara Gillian series. I haven't tried that one yet, but I would like to see Karen Gillan play Kara Gillian in a t.v. version. It would be better than her last t.v. series.)
Currently, I'm reading Max Gladstone's Three Parts Dead, the first in his Craft Sequence series that got so much buzz. It's a secondary world fantasy with so many different elements and cultural bits packed into the text (and a very subtle strain of dark satire as well.) Too early to entirely know, but I'll just say that so far, I'm really, really liking it.
Additionally, I'll be then finishing the Wheel of Time series with final book Memory of Light by Jordan and Sanderson, which will be a long journey done, more Glen Cook Black Company novels, The Marching Dead from Lee Battersby which is the sequel to The Corpse Rat King, and The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette.)
I'm also jonesing for more of Michael Sullivan's Riyria novels (I'm behind,) Jim Hines' newest Magic Ex Libris novel, Unbound, Daniel Jose Older's new series/novel Half-Resurrection Blues, James Barclay's Raven series (I'm behind,) Lucas Thorn's When Goblins Rage in the Nysta series, and Susan Boulton's amazing sec world novel Oracle (which will be a bit tricky to get since it doesn't have a U.S. publisher yet, hang it, but is available in the U.K.) I also am trying to decide if I'm reading on in the older series or jumping for now to the new series of Jon Sprunk and Kameron Hurley. Any votes?
