Reading in March 2011

[suciul]

I finished Among Thieves by D. Hullick and it was one of those books where first person narration which i generally love and prefer whenever feasible, did not work in the least for me and I could not care less about the narrator, the setting or the story so this series goes on the drop pile.

Secondary world fantasy novels with cities, assassins and underworld are a dime a dozen these days and this just does not stand out; there are comparisons with B. Weeks or S. Lynch peddled about this one, but the prose is flat and far, far away from Mr. Lynch's quality, while it lacks the exuberance and inventiveness that made B. Weeks such a favorite of mine.

If you want a comparison, the indie A Dance of Cloaks by D. Dalglish reads kind of like this, and is even a little better.

 

[Rob B]

I could not care less about the narrator, the setting or the story so this series goes on the drop pile.

THANK YOU for using the proper wording on the phrase, SO many people use COULD CARE LESS and I always find myself correcting them.

On to what I'm reading, or will start to read: The Unremembered by Peter Orullian.

 

[Bastard]

I finished Cursor's Fury by Jim Butcher : I enjoyed it, with some reservations. It is well written , with likable characters, fast and frequent action, interesting worldbuilding and powerful magic system. I wonder though if it isn't Jim Butcher who is writing a parody of the heroic fantasy genre and not Patrick Rothfuss: the plot is so contrived and at the same time predictable, the dialogue cheesy with patriotic feelings and the main hero is turning fast into an unbeatable Gary Stu. This is the third book and the third time the Empire is facing total annihilation with the only hope resting on the youthful shoulders of the "orphan baker boy".
The series is redeemed in part by the author sense of humor - i can fell him winking at me at suggesting that I not take myself too seriously, relax, turn off my brain and enjoy the rollercoaster ride.

Don't know if this is confirmed or not, but apparently there was some sort of challenge or bet made in which he ended up writing a fantasy series based on elements of Pokemon and The Lost Roman Legion.

http://www.circvsmaximvs.com/showpost.php?p=657712&postcount=15

We saw Mr. Butcher recently at a Small Favors book signing, and he said that these books came out of an online argument about writing.

On some forum another guy was arguing that if you had a great story, it didn't matter how bad a writer you were, it would come out at least halfway good. Butcher's response was that if you were a good writer, you could take a hackneyed plot and make something good out of it. The other guy challenged Butcher to take two overused plot ideas and make a good story. One, lost Roman legion. Two, Pokemon. Out came Codex Alera. Butcher told the guy he wasn't going to post any of it as he thought he could actually sell it. Guy took that as a sign of his own victory. Jim just laughed at him... All the way to the bank!

Really don't know how much truth is in this, but seems like people have accepted this through the years.

 

[Evil Agent]

I'm about 4/5ths through Last Argument of Kings by Abercrombie, but just have to say that this trilogy has climbed into my Top 5 series of all time. The first book was a bit shaky, but it just keeps getting better and better. I have fully connected with all the characters, and seriously care about each one of them. Not many authors can make me care like that.

I've also started a re-read of The Hobbit (since it began filming yesterday). I realized I'm behind on my Hobbit readings (only 3 readings, as opposed to LOTR which I've read 8 times).

 

[suciul]

On to what I'm reading, or will start to read: The Unremembered by Peter Orullian.

Unremembered should come this week or next also to me, but I am not sure it's something I will enjoy and we already have a review prepared for early April by Robert...; much more interest in White Luck Warrior (read on receive of course, modulo having enough long chunks of reading time) and maybe Winds of Khalakovo which also should come at the same time...

In the meantime I got today a high expectation indie, The Shadow at the Gate by Christopher Bunn, sequel to the very entertaining A Hawk and his Boy and that is my next read, hopefully getting me back on track with sff after two mediocre reads in Among Thieves (f) and Up Against It (sf)

 

[PeterWilliam]

I'm about 4/5ths through Last Argument of Kings by Abercrombie, but just have to say that this trilogy has climbed into my Top 5 series of all time. The first book was a bit shaky, but it just keeps getting better and better. I have fully connected with all the characters, and seriously care about each one of them. Not many authors can make me care like that.

Right there with you, EA. You're definitely going to love The Heroes (I say this only because, having read a minority of your posts - which could be hundreds to thousands - I tend to find a lot of similarities among our reading preferences and impressions, especially LoTR). Personally, I'm really enjoying what Abercrombie is doing with the stand-alone episodic books - slowly weaving together numerous disparate threads while only giving the barest of hints where it leads (e.g. the guy with the green eye and blue eye who seems to be everywhere).

Inter-Cranial Monologue: man, I hope Joe doesn't show up and say something like, "I don't know where it's going" - even if it's true, Joe, please, at least, feign an unflappable omniscience
/inter-cranial monologue

EA, the only thing I see in your future is that you might be super-attached to those characters. When you get to Best Served Cold and later The Heroes, just let them be what they are - the screw-turning, tension-ratcheting, climb towards an eventual, and monstrous, ass-kicking. I was slow to getting around to BSC, but recently burnt my way through TH. I wish I had waited, because now I'm getting a little edgy about the next book. I know it's nothing new to intense GRRM or Rothfuss fans, but I'm starting to develop a heavy-duty "jones" for the next story after The Heroes - an entirely new and uncomfortable sensation for me.

 

[Erfael]

I finished up Vandermeer's Finch tonight.

This third volume of Vandermeer's Ambergris Cycle was probably my second favorite of the three. I loved City of Saints and.... but found Shriek a little lacking in some ways. This third volume was compelling to me in how it tied up loose ends of Ambergris history from the first two books but a little lackluster in the way it did it.

The setting, as always with Ambergris, is stunning. This third book really brings us full circle. We've now gotten to see Ambergris over the course of its full history, from colony to grand city to post-fungal-apocalypse wasteland. Since starting this a few days back I've been throwing out the word funguspunk here and there, and that's really what it feels like. Most "science" is performed through the use of various spores and fungus. Much or the technology is also, from fungus boats to fungus guns to strange little delivery tubes that are somehow alive. Food is delivered through large mushrooms. There are even fungus-based diseases that people can catch which then begin to convert them, for good or ill, to various kinds of fungus people. The setting here is almost as well-drawn as that in Chris Wooding's The Fade, which I really loved back when we read it for the book club. This is one of those books that thumbs its nose at all those big fat fantasy books and their worldbuilding -- and it does so by packing all sorts of interesting history, politics, social structure, etc., into just over 300 pages.

The story here starts out as a detective story regarding a couple of murders, but pretty quickly morphs into something that has much more to do with the history of the city. In the end, I didn't much love the characters or how they fit into the story, but I read more for that history. We find out things about The Silence, Duncan Shriek, why the grey caps are in Ambergris, and quite a number of other things.

All in all, this has been one of my favorite reads of the year so far -- even given that I found the main storyline and characters a little on the dull side.

 

[molybdenum]

I was reading Hawkwood and the Kings, but I've really been having a tough go through it the past two months. Usually reading books by the same author all in a row works well for me, but after devouring The Ten Thousand and Corvus rather quickly, I think I've reached my Kearney quota for a little while. I'm only about 50 pages from the end, but after interrupting my reading for a little while to read The Wise Man's Fear, I really have no desire to pick it back up. There's been nothing into the book I can really dig my teeth into, the characters don't excite me in any ways, the plot takes some interesting turns but is mostly ho-hum, and the world is just a version of our own 500 years ago with a little magic thrown in. Nothing that really begs me to keep reading.

Right now I'm doing A Towers of Midnight re-read, while trying to determine whether I should pick up Stonewielder or Best Served Cold next. I've also got a big aSoIaF re-read coming up somewhere in the next few months. Just have to decide whether to buy the books this time or borrow them again.

 

[Evil Agent]

I've also got a big aSoIaF re-read coming up somewhere in the next few months. Just have to decide whether to buy the books this time or borrow them again.

The North American versions have just been reissued with new cover art, so that could be an excuse to pick up a new set.

 

[Westy]

I finished up Vandermeer's Finch tonight.

This third volume of Vandermeer's Ambergris Cycle was probably my second favorite of the three. I loved City of Saints and.... but found Shriek a little lacking in some ways. This third volume was compelling to me in how it tied up loose ends of Ambergris history from the first two books but a little lackluster in the way it did it.

The setting, as always with Ambergris, is stunning. This third book really brings us full circle. We've now gotten to see Ambergris over the course of its full history, from colony to grand city to post-fungal-apocalypse wasteland. Since starting this a few days back I've been throwing out the word funguspunk here and there, and that's really what it feels like. Most "science" is performed through the use of various spores and fungus. Much or the technology is also, from fungus boats to fungus guns to strange little delivery tubes that are somehow alive. Food is delivered through large mushrooms. There are even fungus-based diseases that people can catch which then begin to convert them, for good or ill, to various kinds of fungus people. The setting here is almost as well-drawn as that in Chris Wooding's The Fade, which I really loved back when we read it for the book club. This is one of those books that thumbs its nose at all those big fat fantasy books and their worldbuilding -- and it does so by packing all sorts of interesting history, politics, social structure, etc., into just over 300 pages.

The story here starts out as a detective story regarding a couple of murders, but pretty quickly morphs into something that has much more to do with the history of the city. In the end, I didn't much love the characters or how they fit into the story, but I read more for that history. We find out things about The Silence, Duncan Shriek, why the grey caps are in Ambergris, and quite a number of other things.

All in all, this has been one of my favorite reads of the year so far -- even given that I found the main storyline and characters a little on the dull side.

Interesting summary, Erf, and I would pretty much have to agree with you. I also thought Shriek was not as good as the others but preferred Finch over Saints, probably because as a novel it was more coherent than the set of short stories Saints is.

I love Vandermeer's writing style and how the novel covers so many genres, and I also love how so much is packed in 300 pages - these are really the type of books I prefer as opposed to 3x1000 page tomes. As with many of his stories there's also an underlying current of uneasiness and horror, which I really like.

Looking forward to more from him, his latest book of short stories "The Third Bear" is on my to-read list (as is The Fade by Chris Wooding you mentioned above).

 

[Erfael]

I read City of Saints and Madmen in its initial publication by Tachyon(I think) and then the later Tor reissue. The first publication had only the four core stories. The later reissue had a lot more stuff in it, but it was less focused. I really love the four core stories, though: Drayden, In Love; The Case of X; The History of Ambergris; and the Voss Bender thing (not the actual titles, but the basic idea). They have all stuck with me over nearly a decade, and pretty vividly, too. I don't think I care that they're not as cohesive as a novel. For me they paint such a vivid picture of the early history of Ambergris through, well, history and character portraits and such that they really worked (and still do) for me.

Of course, do you usually do short stories? I keep a healthy dose of them in my reading, so they don't bother me at all. If you're more a novel person, I can see that definitely being a clincher there.


And on that note, my next read: The March/April issue of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Always fun diving into these because I never know what I'll read next. Total grab-bag.

 

[Loerwyn]

I've also started a re-read of The Hobbit (since it began filming yesterday). I realized I'm behind on my Hobbit readings (only 3 readings, as opposed to LOTR which I've read 8 times).

Yay! I love The Hobbit.

I skipped some of the poems in Smoke & Mirrors last night, along with a screenplay-esque piece, and continued with the short stories. The one called something like The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories (Could be wrong) was quite interesting

 

[Randy M.]

I skipped some of the poems in Smoke & Mirrors last night, along with a screenplay-esque piece, and continued with the short stories. The one called something like The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories (Could be wrong) was quite interesting

That ended up being one of my favorite stories, one I'm pretty sure I'll reread before too long.

And I strongly urge you not to totally skip the poems. They are really stories in meter and rhyme.


Randy M.

 

[Colonel Worf]

The Magicians by Lev Grossman. The back cover caught my attention. So far, it's a poor man's Harry Potter meets Narnia.

Ohh.. this was the January BOTM. I thought the title looked familiar. I'm a couple months too late.

 

[Loerwyn]

And I strongly urge you not to totally skip the poems. They are really stories in meter and rhyme.

I might go back to them, but me and poems don't get on too well.

 

[Erfael]

The Magicians by Lev Grossman. The back cover caught my attention. So far, it's a poor man's Harry Potter meets Narnia.

Ohh.. this was the January BOTM. I thought the title looked familiar. I'm a couple months too late.

Never too late. We're always happy to have people come in and try to spark up the discussion again.

 

[Sonja Ravenscroft]

I started Gaiman's Smoke & Mirrors today. Yay

I'm a lover of anything Gaiman, and loved Smoke and Mirrors (I like Fragile Things just a *tad* more for his story stories) both are great though.

I've been meaning to re-read the Sandman collection again (I own all the volumes)-think I might do that after my current pile of Hugos is finished.

 

[Loerwyn]

I'm a lover of anything Gaiman, and loved Smoke and Mirrors (I like Fragile Things just a *tad* more for his story stories) both are great though.

I think I just found the next book I'm ordering

I've not got much energy or patience for novels at the moment, so this collection is going down really well. I seem to be over halfway through it now (I skipped maybe 10-15 pages at most; Certainly no more than 30) and I only got it Monday morning.

 

[MattNY]

The Magicians by Lev Grossman. The back cover caught my attention. So far, it's a poor man's Harry Potter meets Narnia.

Ohh.. this was the January BOTM. I thought the title looked familiar. I'm a couple months too late.

How far are you into it?

 

[Erfael]

I'll be starting in on April's book of the month tonight, Ian Whates's City of Dreams and Nightmare. Thoughts next month in the discussion.

Finished up tonight with the March/April issue of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I hope to post a review/overview in the next few days.