Books

[Sierra]

Mm. I need to finish that reread of the Coldfire trilogy sometime. (Reread the first two books, then got distracted by something.) I've managed to remember virtually nothing about the last book.

C.S. Friedman's usually good. Likes to focus on extremes of human behavior; her protagonists are usually very intense and driven people. Also often dysfunctional or outcast in some way. In any event, she does a very good job of getting you inside the main characters' psyches, and I enjoy her books just for that. I think I prefer it when she does science fiction, though. The Madness Season/In Conquest Born/This Alien Shore are all pretty good. Only one I was fairly unimpressed with was The Wilding.

[Scar]

Just finished the Pillars of Creation in Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series.

The Naked Empire next, because I might as well finished this damn series and be done with it for good!

~

Needs moar Nathan.

>_>

[Dhyerwolf]

Mm. I need to finish that reread of the Coldfire trilogy sometime. (Reread the first two books, then got distracted by something.) I've managed to remember virtually nothing about the last book.

C.S. Friedman's usually good. Likes to focus on extremes of human behavior; her protagonists are usually very intense and driven people. Also often dysfunctional or outcast in some way. In any event, she does a very good job of getting you inside the main characters' psyches, and I enjoy her books just for that. I think I prefer it when she does science fiction, though. The Madness Season/In Conquest Born/This Alien Shore are all pretty good. Only one I was fairly unimpressed with was The Wilding.

I will say at least that the third book has at least been non-repetitive (As in, she appeared to use a new base plot) and the inclusion of more characters at least goes farther to making the world seem...more complete. So both of those are marked improvements.

[Veryslightlymad]

Finally read my copy of The Orc King the other day. I haven't read a non-poker book all the way through in over a year, so this was a good experience.

Interesting seeing the characters age up as they are. Even weirder still to have the story have parts that are 100 years in the future. The fate of Drizzt's friends is left vague, but I enjoyed the brief mention of Tos'Un. Then again, that was sort of the point.

[Captain K.]

The Lost Symbol:  Not technically bad, but extremely formulaic.  If you've read the Davinci Code and/or Angels and Demons, you've read this book already.  Here, let me give you the plot summary.  Not actual spoilers unless you haven't read anything else by Dan Brown.


A self-mutilating ZEALOT appears!
A genius female SCIENTIST conducts groundbreaking research in a lab unlike any other in the world.  And she's hot, because all female scientists are.
Our hero, ROBERT LANGDON, is present at the scene of a grisly crime.  Kind of like the old lady in Murder, She Wrote.  Seriously, every place Angela Lansbury went somebody died!
The ZEALOT gives everyone until midnight to meet his demands, for no particular reason.
ROBERT LANGDON discovers something hidden in a HISTORICAL BUILDING that nobody actually bothered to notice before.
A GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL chases ROBERT LANGDON through the HISTORICAL BUILDING.  This continues throughout the whole book, since the GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL always arrives a few seconds after ROBERT LANGDON leaves.
ROBERT LANGDON reminds everyone he is claustrophobic, as this will become important later.
An OLD MAN tells ROBERT LANGDON that these hidden SYMBOLS have a special meaning.  ROBERT LANGDON scoffs at this, because he is a Skeptic(tm).  Despite his whole career being about this very thing.
The ZEALOT kills some people, because he is smarter and stronger than armed security guards and government agents.
ROBERT LANGDON solves an ancient puzzle in a few seconds.
Gasp, this leads to another puzzle!
And this one leads to another puzzle!
Wait, we went the wrong way, it was really leading to this puzzle!
ROBERT LANGDON must come to grips with his claustrophobia.
Wait, the GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL was really on our side the whole time?  Whoda thunk it?
As time is running out, the ZEALOT is dramatically thwarted and dies painfully.
ROBERT LANGDON solves the final puzzle, revealing that the great secret is hidden in plain sight of everyone in the world.
ROBERT LANGDON thinks about GOD for a bit, because despite being a Skeptic(tm), GOD is pretty nifty.

[Grefter]

You aren't following the FORMULA.  This BOOK is about GOD but presented from the MIND of a SKEPTIC(tm) therefore is the BEST BOOK written in FOREVER.  That is the DAN BROWN formula.  You need to MAXIMISE the amount of WANK when you are talking about DAN BROWN books.  Also the book needs to be shit.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I thought the Dan Brown formula was presenting awfully wrong and mangled [insert anything that requires multiple braincells to fiddle with here] references and trying to paint them in a way that it looks like he did his research, but failing because the mistakes are egregiously obvious to people with access to functional fingers and Google at worst.

[Grefter]

That is the WANK.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

That's a lot of effort for wank when he could be just shipping HarryXHermione in livejournal for maximum wanktential. It's potentially less embarrassing than writing self-insert reality fanfiction where the author's SI main is also Tom Hanks.

[Grefter]

The man is a big enough tool to self insert as Tom Hanks.  We aren't exactly talking about high hanging fruit here.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

He somehow manages less dignity than the subset of the HP fandom that cried Civil War-like oppression (as if they were slaves) over pairings in a freaking youngster's book series. This is less talking about hanging fruit than rotten nuts dropped into raw sewage.

[Grefter]

Dan Brown is certainly well fertilized at least.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Late, but I half-expected and half-hoped you'd pull that joke.

[Grefter]

Nick Fury Agent of SHIELD - So you start this book and it is pretty good.  It gets to the point where Steranko is doing the writing as well as the art and it is really good.  You get to like the last 2 issues and it is fucking beautiful, some of the best comic book layout and all that shit I have ever seen, like seriously amazing stuff.  Then it stops.  FUCK.  FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.

It really is James Bond in comic book style (which puts it in its own place because fuck comics are weird and awesome sometimes).  Well worth the money, good reads and good times.  I will have to pick up a Doctor Strange trade I think so I can have the mirrored acid Kirby trip.

[Grefter]

Brent Weeks, Night Angels Trilogy - I was reading this on the plane to DL Con, read the first book there, second book on the way back and just finished the third book now.  This stuff is trashy pulp.  It is pretty good at at that since it pretty much knows that it is that way.  It is kind of a poor man's Farseer trilogy maybe for the whole assassin thing, but Weeks doesn't have the same flair for character work that Hobb has had since the first book.  It is another one of those things that goes into not good but fun pile.  I dunno exactly how to describe it.

Mostly for Lady Door since she had mentioned she had been looking for the first book (or the third? something like that), considering the rate you (used to?) consume fantasy novels, worth picking up.  For people who don't devour books as much as the English majours do, eh pretty skippable overall, but if you see it cheap then no harm there.

For perspective I guess, if I was going to put it up against another pulpy kind of trashy fantasy series from my youth?  I would pick up Katherine Kerr's Deverry series over this, but I would read it over licensed fantasy game novels. I was going to say Weiss and Hickman specifically and then got all guilty about how much I actually really like Death Gate Cycle and some of their other stand alone stuff, but suffice to say they are better than say your Salvatore stuff.  It is pulpy but doesn't revel and drown you in cheese the way they have a tendency though.  It is still cheesey but only sometimes and normally they ham it up when they are being so.

Edit - Oh yeah perspective being that I bought the first book because I wanted to read something absolutely horrible, picked up the second at the airport on the way out because, fuck why not and got the third one on the way back because by that point I was actually having fun.  So they are bad, but better than the truely horrible I was expecting, but bad in fun ways, which goes with pulp fantasy anyway.

[Lady Door]

It was the first book I was looking for, yeah, and I do still go through books that quickly. It came up on my queue on paperbackswap but I declined it because... well, read the last sentence below. But thanks for the heads up; I'll look into it.

On that note:

Read #3 of the Dresden Files. It is... the Dresden files. Harry gets the crap beaten out of him repeatedly, but manages to triumph in the end. Hooray! Nice trashy pulp detective mystery thing.

Have finished book #2 of the Phoenix something-or-other series (the second trilogy written by James Mallory & Mercedes Lackey). I have #3 in my possession but I'm not super excited to read it so it sits on my shelf a while longer. The series is... not very well written; the previous trilogy was better. It is epic, world-changing fantasy in three relatively short books, so I feel like a lot of normal world/character-building stuff falls to the wayside. The characters feel a bit "cheap," for lack of a better word.

Finished #7 of Wheel of Time, getting to halfway through #8. Since I'll be on a plane Friday night, I'll probably finish that and get good headway into #9 by Tuesday. I don't have too much to say about the books themselves, really. They are ... still Wheel of Time? There's a lot more jumping around between characters, which is a little difficult to wrap my brain around and calls to mind my frustrations with George R.R. Martin and teaser drops (ie, this character's viewpoint ends on a cliffhanger and now for something completely different!). The characters feel like they're finally dropping into character rather than pastiche which is great.

I've read way too much junk in the past few months, though, and my interest in reading more is waning. I will probably muscle through Wheel of Time because I'd like to read the new book (which I've preordered) when it ships at the end of the month, but once I'm through that I think I'll swap over to "literature" for a while. Since I majored in English but specialized in medieval literature, I am woefully behind on my classics. Time to remedy that!

[Dhyerwolf]

I've read the Night Angel trilogy too. I'll agree that it was a little trashy, but I'd also say it entertaining the whole way through (Which is sometimes more than I can say for good fantasy!).

Clearly based on LD's last sentence, it should clearly be for those who go through books like econ majors! I read nearly everything I own at least twice, and the numbers of books left for me to buy in the future is dwindling.

[Grefter]

Oh well yeah there is a reason I was up at 2 in the morning to post that.  They are pretty fun.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Finished Gregory Maguire's "A Lion Among Men" last night. It's the third book in his "Wicked Years" series as it's being called now, following "Wicked" and "Son of a Witch".

This story feels very... "tacked on". Whereas Wicked was clearly a brilliant twist on an old tale and "Son of a Witch" was a coming-of-age story that Mr. Maguire was clearly very vested in and simply chose Oz as the backdrop, "Lion Among Men" feels more like a world-building fantasy novel that's more about tying up loose ends than actually telling a story. The writing itself is still good and moves along a quick pace, but overall the whole experience felt phoned in. His usual strength of tying in political and social problems directly into his characters' lives is still present, but he fails to fully explain the political landscape of the time, which is really disappointing considering the attention it received in Wicked and Son of a Witch. Maguire does an admirable job of fleshing out the Cowardly Lion, but the development of original characters Yackle and Ilianora is held back by his need to make their backstories suspense-filled mysteries.

The ending is also incredibly unfulfilling and felt like it needed another 10 pages or so to explain the conclusion of the actual action of the book. This is not to mention that despite being a book who mostly tied up loose ends, it left a few too many loose ends about Liir, Candle, their kid, Emperor Shell, and even Ozma (though this last one could be forgiven).

Despite being a good place to finish up this story, it seems as if Mr. Maguire is going to milk it for another sequel. What's really unfortunate about it to me is how, unlike Son of a Witch, Lion Among Men is completely reliant on the two previous novels to tell its story, and it doesn't feel stronger for having taken less time on exposition.

tl;dr: Good writing; good main character; plot and ending are lacking; can't stand on its own; not as good as its predecessors. Sequel incoming?

[Luther Lansfeld]

A genius female SCIENTIST conducts groundbreaking research in a lab unlike any other in the world.  And she's hot, because all female scientists are.

Well duh. 

[Dark Holy Elf]

Science is hot. You people haven't been listening to Grefter enough.

[Grefter]

On that note, Candide, just saying.

[OblivionKnight]

Science is hot, math is ugly.

The true theory of relativity, that.

[Excal]

Man, when it comes to sexy, Heuristics >>> Algorythims.  True, yo.

[Grefter]

Nah OK, you don't fully understand what you say, Science is conventionally sexy with a great personality (Like Summer Glau or something) maximising the obvious sexy.  Math is sexy like Sean Connery.