Reading in June 2009

[intensityxx]

I finished The Tooth Fairy late last night and have started on The Limits of Enchantment, also by Graham Joyce.

I've gathered several of his books, but never know which one to start with. How'd you like Tooth Fairy?

 

[BrightStar]

Just over 500 pages into book three of Outremer now. I've worked out that I might be able to have this one read by the end of the week, which would be nice. I think maybe half the problem I am having with this book is the writing style; it seems a bit boring in places. There's nothing really "potetic" about it. I even read a sentance that read something along the lines of "The darkness was the darkest dark". Felt kinda lazy and unimaginative to me. I am having a hard time visualizing much of the world, the action, and the characters, which I think is maybe why I'm not enjoying it. The book does not capture my imagination, though the story, events and characters ARE actually good - they just do not make particularly engrossing reading.

 

[Rob B]

I've gathered several of his books, but never know which one to start with. How'd you like Tooth Fairy?

Tooth Fairy is a great, disturbing, uncomfortable and rewarding novel.

 

[Randy M.]

Just finished The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle. What a terrific novel, imaginative, inventive, filled with distinctive and memorable characters and both propelled and enriched by Beagle's ability to compress his prose. For instance, when the immortal unicorn states she no longer has time for princesses,

Molly said something strange then, for a woman who never slept a night through without waking many times to see if the unicorn was still there, and whose dreams were all of golden bridles and gentle young thieves. "It's the princesses who have no time," she said. "The sky spins and drags everything along with it, princesses and magicians and poor Cully and all, but you stand still. You never see anything just once. I wish you could be a princess for a little while, or a flower, or a duck. Something that can't wait."

Anyone who loves more than just epic fantasy, who enjoys a supple and inventive use of prose, and who hasn't read this yet really should.

If you're interested, I make a few more comments on TLU here,
http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22751

Randy M.

 

[Eventine]

Thanks for the quotes Randy - you've definitely reinforced my desire to read Beagle. Unfortunately his works don't seem any easier to get a hold of...

For those discussing Joyce, he's one of my favourite authors. The Tooth Fairy was my first Joyce novel, but my favourite is a toss up between Facts of Life and Limits of Enchantment - both were amazing novels to me, and highly recommend them to anyone who is interested in fantasy that offers a little more than "sordz n' evlz."

 

[suciul]

I finished In Great Waters by Kit Whitfield

A very compelling book and a page turner set in a world where the mixed blood children of "deepsmen" and "landsmen" are "royal", the novel left me a bit mixed at the end. I guess it's ultimately a well written YA book though it has some adult language, but the main teenage characters do not really grow into adulthood until the end and the book should appeal especially to the YA crowd.

Still I loved Ms. Whitefield style and I am willing to read more novels by her, though I would love an epic fantasy with adult characters.

 

[Winter]

I've gathered several of his books, but never know which one to start with. How'd you like Tooth Fairy?

I have to agree with Rob:

Tooth Fairy is a great, disturbing, uncomfortable and rewarding novel.

As for Joyce, I have read three of his novels--Memoirs of a Master Forger/How To Make Friends With Demons, The Facts of Life, and The Tooth Fairy--and am onto the fourth (The Limits of Enchantment). I have been talking about him more on another forum and as much as I hate to copy and paste, this is what I said:

I have come to the conclusion that I hate Graham Joyce. It is two-fold, the hate. On one hand, which would be that of the aspiring writer, I hate him because I know there is no way I will write something as good as this or any of the books of his I have read thus far. On the other hand, which would be that of the reader, I hate him because while I quite enjoy a good book, I never have the intention of reading the whole thing in a sitting. And that is exactly what Joyce does. No other author that I have come across has ever had the ability to draw me into a story so quickly and it is a rare few that force me to read the book until I am finally finished. Beyond the sheer imagination and the wonderful prose of Joyce, there is the ability to keep me guessing. At some point in most novels I will eventually figure out what will happen next. Shadow of the Wind was such a novel, though I liked it very much despite that. In the case of Joyce's novels though, I have no clue what will happen next, except for the small bits that he basically gives you*. His novels are quick reads, but not the sort that resort to mediocrity in order to achieve it. In fact, I will say that these are some of the finest books I have read.

*Yes, he basically tells you what is going to happen, but in my case... I didn't want it to happen and there was some small hope that it wouldn't happen. Unfortunately that bit of hope was busy being crushed by dread as the scene unfolded.

I am reading The Limits of Enchantment right now and I have to say that it has not quite snagged my interest like the others have. The prologue was very well written and it managed to catch my interest, but that ended with the beginning of the first chapter. There have been moments since, but something always happens to break it. It's not bad, far from it, it just hasn't grasped me like the other ones had. It seems to be picking up though, so I expect that it will soon.

Eventine, Joyce may not be my favorite author, but he is on his way there. After reading Memoirs of a Master Forger (published under the name William Heaney) I went out and bought the books that I could not find at the library and, as I may have said above, I haven't been disappointed yet.

 

[Kazz Wylde]

Winter, Just can't give much higher praise then that!
I've been looking for a copy of The Tooth Fairy, or anything by him. Is he usually in the fantasy or horror section?

 

[Winter]

I order online, so i just look under "Graham Joyce."

The Tooth Fairy could be under either fantasy or horror. Check both.

 

[DailyRich]

About 160 pages into Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker, and while he's come up with yet another fascinatingly inventive system of magic and some compelling characters, I'd like to see him try a setting other than a teeming metropolis filled with intrigue and a god-like figure in charge.

 

[suciul]

I finished Green by Jay Lake and it was his first novel I could finish but only because the story and the heroine fascinated me, the style being the stilted, teeth-grinding one of previous novels.

My mini-review:

Very interesting story which though in the vein of many such, manages to seem reasonably fresh while the main character and narrator is fascinating, but the writing style is very stilted.

Great short fiction does not always translate to novel length and the narrative flow of this book sometimes just screeches to a halt and you have to struggle to get back into it; the same feeling I had with the other Jay Lake novels which I could not finish, but in this one the heroine and the story kept my interest to the end; smoother writing would have made this one a novel to remember, this way it's good but not great


Luckily and to my big surprise I found a copy of Naamah's Kiss by J. Carey in a Borders today (pub date is Jun 24), bought it on the spot, read 250 pages and it's just great; after struggling sometimes through the thicket of Green's prose it is wonderful to have prose that just flows, you lose into and did not want to put aside...

 

[mjolnir]

DailyRich Wrote:
About 160 pages into Brandon Sanderson's Warbreaker, and while he's come up with yet another fascinatingly inventive system of magic and some compelling characters, I'd like to see him try a setting other than a teeming metropolis filled with intrigue and a god-like figure in charge.

It would be nice wouldn't it? For me it's not so much that it's gotten old, -- the central cities in Elantris, Mistborn, and Warbreaker each have very different vibes, -- as that I see the potential for it to get old if he does it very much more. Hopefully The Way of Kings will break out of this trend a little bit.

Been reading a lot of fantasy:

Rides a Dread Legion, Book 1 of the Demonwar Saga, by Raymond Feist: Bad but still reasonably entertaining if you can adopt a "just along for the ride" attitude, something which didn't use to be necissary with Feist. I'd put it about on a level with the conclusion of the previous series, Wrath of a Mad God, or just slightly lower, so while Feist has done slightly worse he's also done much, much better. Embark only if are addicted fan who must know what happens. Events of world-shattering significance to the series are raced through with no emotional resonance, and one major development right near the end is flubbed particularly badly. And Feist still cannot write women.

Midwinter, by Matthew Sturges: Interesting book, this. Supposed traitor to the faerie queen, -- the story takes place in the faerie realm, -- imprisoned, but offered a pardon if he can assemble a crack team of prisoners and perform a task for the crown in secret; war between two faerie factions going on in the background which becomes quite important. Billed as "the Dirty Dozen with elves", Midwinter offers a swords-'n-sorcery adventure through a fairly traditional faerie-land with occasional very quirky concepts latched on. [Let me see if I can make my meaning clearer: Most of the story's focused around what feels like a fairly "normal" secondary world that might be inhabited by humans as easily as fey, but if you ever wanted to see an elf cruisin' in a vintage car now is your opportunity.] Elements like the car, the rips in space-time, the clockwork bunnies that show up briefly, etc, can feel a bit patched on, as though Sturges threw a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what stuck, but they also give the story unexpected flavours of quirkiness. Given that the rest of the world-building is only occasionally rivetting, your milage will probably vary on how much these quirkier elements win you over; they got me interested but not over-the-moon thrilled. I think that Sturges may have been trying to do something a little different, a little more gritty or off-beat, [can we make "feypunk" a word?], -- with his faerie kingdom, but this didn't come through quite strongly enough for me. And the otherworldly majesty I associate with faerie wasn't quite there either, [though the setting has a wonderfully mythic backstory which I enjoyed], so the whole thing just feels a bit ... meh. The characters are in about the same place for me, potentially interesting but without space enough to really shine, though I do rather like Silverdun, the faerie illusionist and intelligencer who will apparently be central to the sequel. The romance, while it hints at interesting differences in the characters' world-views, feels like it's there because you're supposed to have one of those, and though I appreciated a late attempt to humanize the villain it doesn't quite work. Of course, it could be that Sturges is just trying to highlight how pathetic the villain is, -- it's hard not to sspoil here, -- but like so much else the character just isn't quite present enough for this to have its full impact. Elements like the changelings who supplant human children nod to fey mythology and hint at great things, and I can see why some folks really like this book. Midwinter didn't quite do it for me, but there was certainly intriguing stuff in there. For those on the fence, Pyr has a generous sample up on their sample chapters blog.
________
CREAMPIE MATURE

 

[DailyRich]

It would be nice wouldn't it? For me it's not so much that it's gotten old, -- the central cities in Elantris, Mistborn, and Warbreaker each have very different vibes, -- as that I see the potential for it to get old if he does it very much more. Hopefully The Way of Kings will break out of this trend a little bit.

Maybe wrapping up Wheel of Time will do the trick.

 

[mjolnir]

Me again. Sorry for the double post.

The Mirador, Book 3 of The Doctrine of Labyrinths, by Sarah Monette: The Mirador follows on from Melusine and The Virtu, and seems to me to be, -- among many other things, -- a book about the consequences, political, personal, and psychological, of the momentous events in those books. This is secondary world fantasy viewed through an intensely focused personal lens; the story is told through very distinctive first person narratives. Moody, baroque, with more literary allusions than I could ever hope to catalogue even if I knew them all which I don't, and not for the faint of heart, The Mirador is in my opinion the best of The Doctrine of Labyrinths that I've read thus far. Climax seems a mite rushed, but again this is a personal story and it's what's happening to our narrators that's important. The story has always been loaded with symbolism and metaphor and these elements are happily just as present here. But they would not have the significance that they do without a monstrous good story underneath, and that this certainly is.

Dragon in Chains, Book 1 of Moshui, by Daniel Fox: Set in an ancient China / Taiwan influenced secondary world; exiled emperor comes to island pursued by enemies. War-makings and hijinx ensue. Lyrically written in flowing sentences that bring long brush-strokes and surreal water-colours to mind, -- or my mind at least. Book is also hugely and unrelentingly violent, and the often almost poetical style has the effect of making war-time attrocities stand out as even more horrifying than they otherwise would be; such language, I felt irrationally whilst reading, should not be sullied by being called upon to depict such horror. It's an effective artistic choice, though the unending river of gore does become a mite numbing. Many classes of character are type-cast: all soldiers are homicidal ruinous maniacs; all generals are mustache-twirling schemers. But I forgave the book this; Fox, it seems, is drawing deliberately in broad strokes, at least for now. Was hoping for more mythological elements, -- there's really only the dragon and one other thing that's a spoiler, -- but what is there is really well done. The way some of the characters were handled disturbed me a bit, but on the whole they're an interesting if not always explicable bunch. The book ends on a cliffhanger, and while I'm a little bit wary of where some of the characters are going I'm happily on board for at least one more installment. Oh and Daniel Fox is Chaz Brenchley by the way, for those who care and didn't know.

Mean Streets: Collection of urban fantasy of the paranormal pi type, compiled by Roc to promote their UF series / authors. Novellas by Jim Butcher, [yes it is a Dresden Files story], Simon R Green, Kat Richardson, and Thomas E Sorrycantspellitofski. [It does start with an S, though. The Butcher story was great fun, very tense and filled with genuine drama and action. It probably did help that I'm already very invested in this universe, though. [Note that the story takes place after the end of Small Favor and inevitably spoils the end thereof.] Morally and thematically the piece might be a bit heavy-handed, but is still well-taken because Butcher while he isn't subtle can always put something moving together. I did not dig the Green story. The Nightside seemed like an intriguing setting, but the characters failed to grip me and the story's plot lacked tension. The world-building also seemed to go very much for the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach, without going into very much depth about any of it. Looks like a nice treat for Nightside fans though. Kat Richardson's Harper Blane story was my second favourite, a slow-burning ghost mystery which uses its supernatural element well and leans on it only slightly. The writing itself didn't seem special and Harper interested me as a protagonist only some of the time, -- though more towards the end, -- but the story was good. I could see myself maybe trying more Greywalker. The Thomas S, [feel real guilty I can't spell it, but I don't have anything with the name written on it to hand], is an interesting angellic / biblical-based detective story with a quite far-out central concept brought down to earth by human touches. [The angel protagonist's relationship with his dog struck me as particularly well done.] In fact I wish the author had kept things a little closer to the ground conceptually in general, but still an interesting story. I'm not quite convinced, but if I came across a novel I'd probably give it a look. Collection might make a nice library checkout, -- that's where I got it, -- unless you're a big fan of all four authors or something.

Shadow's Edge, Book 2 of The Night Angel Trilogy, by Brent Weeks: Full of assassins, bad-ass swordmasters, mages, etc, Shadow's Edge is very much big fat epic fantasy. Scale here is altogether broader than in the previous volume The Way of Shadows. This is unfair of me, I know, but this seems to me a very masculine outing: lots of folks running around who are the baddest of the bad times a thousand at swordplay, or sorcery, or assassinating; battles and general badassery aplenty; and Weeks can't pass by a female character without commenting on her physical appearance. In most ways this is unarguably what Cranky Hamster calls extruded fantasy product, but if action-heavy, summer movie EFP is what you are looking for then this series is totally where you should be. Me, I find that there are times when this is precisely what the doctor ordered, though a certain amount of tooth-grinding and a willingness to take the whole thing as sword-swinging' fun is required.

I'd love to go into more detail on the more complex of these, [the things that fascinate me about the Monette, and the things that I both really like and really don't in the Fox,] but all this blithering has taken it out of me. Plus it is Sunday, which means that I can allow myself to read Shadow Unit, so I must bid you all good evening.
________
SUZUKI KIZASHI HISTORY

 

[Scrambles]

Steven Erikson's Midnight Tides 295 pages or so into it..... was gonna give up on it but Tehol and Bugg showed up and well yeah . I wouldn't like to get into a one on one conversation with Erikson he seems to be a guy who loves to get off on his vocabulary, would probably have a 15 minute conversation describing the weather. Anyways gonna power through it only seven hundred and something pages to go :/

Did some audio books as well, Stephen Kings Shawshank Redemption and listening to Brooks Zombie Survival Guide.

 

[rsullivan9597]

I'm really enjoying "hero of Ages" by Brandon Sanderson - I think this whole series was excellent.

 

[algernoninc]

i have also started Hero of Ages after burning through Final empire and Well of Ascension. I usually insert some lighter volumes in between the fat fantasy ones, but with Sanderson the action flowed easily enough to plunge directly into the next installment. The downside is that it gets easier to get to saturation point and to start seeing the little wheels behind the story.
I think Sanderson is a talented, natural storyteller capable of transforming stock characters (orphan teenager with supernatural powers) and classic plot (ocean eleven?) into a fun ride. It has already been told in commentaries that he falls a little short in worldbuilding with the same big city setting from Elantris and minimal travelling outside city walls. Reading the books so fast I'm beginning to feel they are a little padded, like there is not enough story for the number of pages produced, especially with Well of Ascension, since I had no problems with Final Empire. Now I'm 100 pages into Hero of Ages and I had only one battle and the rest is background info on characters and repetitions from previous volumes.
I would rate Sanderson on a par with Brent Weeks, Scott Lynch and Brian Ruckley, but still not up to R Scott Bakker or Patrick Rothfuss.

 

[Randy M.]

Winter, Just can't give much higher praise then that!
I've been looking for a copy of The Tooth Fairy, or anything by him. Is he usually in the fantasy or horror section?

Not sure where you live, but in the local (central New York) Borders, Joyce sometimes shows up in the mainstream fiction section. That's where I found Smoking Poppy, as I recall.

Randy M.

 

[BrightStar]

I just finished the third and final book of the Outremer series: Hand of the King's Evil.

Although this series got off to a great start for me, and had me hooked throughout most of book one, by the end, I have to admit that I just wanted it to all be over. I don't know what went wrong or why, but I just found every sentance to be an ordeal.

That last fifty or so pages tie things up pretty nicely, and reveal a few major twists that I actually hadn't seen coming - although the foreshadowing was there, now that I think about it.

I just wish that the writing itself had been able to engage me more. I struggled to really sympathize with the characters, or even to visualize them all that clearly. And some of the scenes just weren't described in enough detail or clarity for me to be able to visualize them in my mind.

It's a shame. I had such high hopes for this series when I began.

Now I'm just pleased to be over with it, and am wondering why I forced myself through the last two books. I hoped I would enjoy them, but never did. Now I feel like I wasted my time.

Now that I'm done with Outremer though, I'm going to make a start on The Death of the Necromancer. One thing that's worrying me about this book-I was sold what I think must be an advanced reading copy. There's a warning about text being unedited and uncorrected, and I'm worried that I might not be getting the best of this book if I read this particular edition. I'm so cross at the person who sold this to me at amazon marketplace without specifying what it was.

 

[Cranky Hamster]

iReading the books so fast I'm beginning to feel they are a little padded, like there is not enough story for the number of pages produced, especially with Well of Ascension, since I had no problems with Final Empire. Now I'm 100 pages into Hero of Ages and I had only one battle and the rest is background info on characters and repetitions from previous volumes.

Truly a worthy successor to late-stage WoT, sounds like.

I've been reading mostly non-genre stuff lately, although I'm also revisiting my huge stack of Did Not Finish novels to see if I was uncharitable in my judgments when I dumped them the first time through.

First up was Gail Z. Martin's The Summoner, that beloved punching bag o' mine. I read about 20 pages from where I gave up in disgust last time and got to the point where a troop of bandits rushes screaming out of a forest to attack a caravan including Our Hero. (He was pretty much the only character I remembered. The rest melted together into this big stack of prefab plastic generic-ness like a heap of microwaved He-Man sidekicks... although that's pretty much how they started out, too.)

Yes, that's right, they rode their horses full-speed through thick forest. Uh-huh. And when they had gotten up enough momentum on this charge -- miraculously staying in formation, not losing a single horse or rider to a low-hanging branch or tangled bit of brush, and helpfully heralding their presence with bloodcurdling shrieks -- they attacked at close range. Instead of shooting silently from ambush. Because aoewjhaenba;inr the stupidity omfg brain leaking out ears make it stooooppp.

Anyway after I was done adding my bloodcurdling shrieks to theirs, that one went right back on the DNF pile. Better luck next time!