Reading in March 2011

I finished up Deryni Rising today. All in all, I found it a very fascinating intro to a series. A powerful church, a race of magic-wielders among and indistinguishable from humans, court intrigue (little light on this in this intro volume, as almost the entirety of it takes place in one day). For being published in 1970, the writing feels fairly fresh. There's a little more telling going on than we're used to in today's market, but very interesting, nonetheless. Anyone interested in seeing some of what happened between Tolkien and the later "Tolkien-clones" would do themselves a service to look into this one. This is post-Tolkien, pre-Brooks, pre-D&D, political fantasy. A successful book cutting ground in some of the early years of fantasy as a marketing genre. Really enjoyed it, and looking forward to reading the second book in a while.
 
London said:
Just finished The Wise Man's Fear from Rothfuss and have started on Val Gunn's In the Shadow of Swords. After that is The Sea Watch by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
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Gunn's book had a lot of great ideas, it just failed to deliver and the book seemed to get worse as it moved along.


Finished Rothfuss' Wise Man's Fear. A ton of filler and after it was all said and done, not much really occurred as far as the overall tale. The side quests were entertaining as was the entire book, but it was a bit frustrating to see so much nothing happen. I still enjoy Kvothe and where it is leading up to but this book left a lot to be desired. Book three should be really fast paced and full of plenty of answers.

Starting my read of Contra Alliance: Shadows of the Past by Tom Kolega. The publisher sent me a copy. Not sure what to expect and I can't seem to get the image of the classic video game out of my head but it appears to be a sci-fi future military thriller with some aliens thrown in to the mix.
 
finished Cold Copper Tears by Glen Cook - very good entertainment in the humorous fantasy category, with great one-liners and some darker themes.

I've gone back now to three ongoing series I'm interested in, before tackling some major 2011 releases:
- Red Hood Revenge by Jim C Hines
- The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet by Arturo Perez-Reverte
- Cursor's Fury by Jim Butcher.

on my TBR are the books that I hope will feature in my top 10 by the end of the year:
- The Hammer by K J Parker
- The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie
- Sea Watch by Adrian Tchaikovsky
- The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

after these I hope the next Chathrand book by Robert Reddick will be available in stores and I will get steamed up about ASOIAF - both the HBO series and A Dance with Dragons.
 
algernoninc said:
after these I hope the next Chathrand book by Robert Reddick will be available in stores .
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I finished it and The River of Shadows just blew me away and I have a hard time seeing anything else this crazily entertaining in 2011; I would not want to spoil it so i will put an observation below, but the 3 books: Red Wolf Conspiracy, Rats and the Ruling sea and The River of Shadows just hang together perfectly and tightly with all the twists and turns you want. The last book The Night of the Swarm hopefully will put the exclamation mark on this superbly entertaining series, but you can read these 3 for a complete experience.

the storyline started in The Red Wolf Conspiracy ends here while the last book in the series which promises to be another cracker will be more of a standalone new adventure like.
 
Finished reading Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss a week ago. Thoroughly enjoyed it and read the full thing in about 4 days sacrificing valuable sleeping time.

Now reading Game of Thrones, it's a bit strange after finishing Wise Man's Fear but I'm enjoying it so far. A lot of characters to follow and fit in my head so it's slow going plus reading it on my iPhone isn't quite the same as having the book in my hand.

After Game of Thrones I'm not sure what I'm going to read. Will maybe take a break until exams finished.
 
I'm currently in the initial few chapters of Gail Carriger's Soulless (Despite being Steampunk, it seems more fantasy to me), and I'm torn.

On the one hand, the humour is great and it's fairly easy to read. It's also ridiculously English, so that's also good. On the other hand, it's kinda ruined by the paranormal romance influences creeping through.

If I finish this, which I kinda doubt at this moment, then chances are I won't progress much further. Shame, really :(
 
it's kinda ruined by the paranormal romance influences creeping through.
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Romance? More romance?

Sorry to say, you might as well stop there, Cheerwell.... there's more of it later.

Mark
 
Cheerwell said:
I'm currently in the initial few chapters of Gail Carriger's Soulless (Despite being Steampunk, it seems more fantasy to me), and I'm torn.

On the one hand, the humour is great and it's fairly easy to read. It's also ridiculously English, so that's also good. On the other hand, it's kinda ruined by the paranormal romance influences creeping through.

If I finish this, which I kinda doubt at this moment, then chances are I won't progress much further. Shame, really :(
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Yeah, I had some mixed feelings on the book myself. A frustrating read, to say the least.
 
Rob B said:
Yeah, I had some mixed feelings on the book myself. A frustrating read, to say the least.
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Thanks, Rob. Wasn't aware it'd been reviewed here. Your review seems pretty spot on for where I am now; It's a very quick pull, it's not badly written, but things peek through unnecessarily. If it wasn't a para-romance book, and if those elements had been dropped, maybe Carriger would be onto something stronger.

So you two really think I should put it down now? I've just got to
the bit where she's met with the vampire who sent her the summons, along with the others there.

On another note, I think Orbit dropped the ball on the covers. Look even slightly further than a glance at them, and you can see it's the modern London on the second and third book - skyscrapers, air-con and all. Not sure about the model, either. She's a few sizes too small to really look like Alexia - But that's par for the course with covers.
 
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To be honest, I tend to keep going until the bitter end, though with age i now realise increasingly that sometimes life's too short. :)

I'd finish it but then decide whether you want to go further, IMO.

Mark
 
There doesn't seem much point, Hob. I've got Shadows of the Apt, loads of Shannara, Magical Kingdom of Landover, Recluce, Mistborn, Warbreaker, Elantris... *Elevator music* ... and the first two Witcher books to read.

I can always give The Parasol Protectorate another go once I've gotten more read.
 
Sounds like a plan.... especially as you seem to have plenty of others to have a go at.

There are people who swear by the 'first 100 pages rule': where after 100 pages if you're not interested give it up. Don't think it always works for Fantasy, but there are some I know who stick to it.

Mark
 
Hobbit said:
There are people who swear by the 'first 100 pages rule': where after 100 pages if you're not interested give it up. Don't think it always works for Fantasy, but there are some I know who stick to it.
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I generally give up by page 78 if I'm going to give up. I don't know why, but every book I've 'stopped' reading recently has been stopped at about page 78. Page 100 could be anywhere from one night to three nights of reading for me :(
 
My girl taught me a rule that may apply here: When considering, if a book is worth reading, open it on page 69, read the contents of the page and if you're enticed, start reading from page 1 :)

I don't vouch for this method though.
 
Hobbit said:
There are people who swear by the 'first 100 pages rule': where after 100 pages if you're not interested give it up. Don't think it always works for Fantasy, but there are some I know who stick to it.

Mark
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Yeah, I generally follow that rule, depending on the book size though - a 200 page novella may warrant a 30-50 page rule, whereas a 1000 page tome could be up to 200.:)

Cheerwell said:
I generally give up by page 78 if I'm going to give up. I don't know why, but every book I've 'stopped' reading recently has been stopped at about page 78. Page 100 could be anywhere from one night to three nights of reading for me :(
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Ha ha! Now every time you're reading a book you're going to stop at page 78 and think "do I really need to keep reading? Should I go for a record number of page 78 stops?".:D
 
I've started on James Barclay's Noonshade tonight, which has been a bit of a shock. I've read Dawnthief twice, once 8 or so years back when we discussed it for the book club and once last year (or maybe 2 ago) when I purchased the 2nd and 3rd books in the trilogy. I'm finally getting to books 2 and 3, and the shock is that Noonshade picks up exactly where Dawnthief left off...and it's all very fuzzy who some people are or what The Raven had to do back in book 1 to get to the end of things. I have vague images, but that's about it. Anyone know of a synopsis I can refresh with?

So far, though, about 1/5 of the way in, it's very enjoyable, and I think I have enough of the first book refreshed to get by. No pretense here, just good old "Here's a problem, let's try to fix it." Not that I mind pretense, but this is fun, too.
 
I am guessing everyone is reading The Wise Man's Fear I would like to know who will not be reading The Wise Man's Fear.
 
jtbrazil said:
I am guessing everyone is reading The Wise Man's Fear I would like to know who will not be reading The Wise Man's Fear.
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I'm not. I'm nearly halfway through Abercrombie's Last Argument of Kings, and loving every page.
 
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