Author Topic: Books (Read 174152 times)

Shale · « **Reply #850 on:** June 02, 2011, 04:44:47 PM »

Picked up the two newer League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books on vacation. Century 1910 was okay, but Black Dossier was amazing. "What Ho, Gods of the Abyss!" is very likely the greatest English-language work of all time.

Captain K. · « **Reply #851 on:** June 03, 2011, 12:45:45 AM »

A Clash of Kings - This book lost a lot of what worked in Game of Thrones, namely that it *wasn't* high fantasy. Magic is talked about anecdotally by the characters, but it's really just old wives tales and such. GoT has some zombies at the beginning (which you quickly forget about), a guy with a flaming sword (which you later learn wasn't magic either), and then the stuff with Daenrys. Which worked because you were like, hey, there is some magic in the world. Then you get to the second book and there's magic shit everywhere. Wolf dreams (been there done that, thanks), shapeshifters, and all the shit with the R'lyeh worshippers. It really kills the mood of the series.

A Storm of Swords - Better than the second book. I'm predicting that by the end of the series, Arya will be a shapeshifting facechanging 11-year-old master assassin.

*starts reading the fourth book*

Holy shit, I was right.

Dark Holy Elf · « **Reply #852 on:** June 03, 2011, 05:35:04 AM »

Quote from: Captain K. on June 03, 2011, 12:45:45 AM

A Clash of Kings - This book lost a lot of what worked in Game of Thrones, namely that it *wasn't* high fantasy. Magic is talked about anecdotally by the characters, but it's really just old wives tales and such. GoT has some zombies at the beginning (which you quickly forget about), a guy with a flaming sword (which you later learn wasn't magic either), and then the stuff with Daenrys. Which worked because you were like, hey, there is some magic in the world. Then you get to the second book and there's magic shit everywhere. Wolf dreams (been there done that, thanks), shapeshifters, and all the shit with the R'lyeh worshippers. It really kills the mood of the series.

QFT. It might not be so bad except Martin sucks at writing magic. Needs to stick to the things he does well (since, well, he does them pretty damn well in some cases).

Way of Kings - About halfway done! I have some reservations about it which I won't elaborate on until I'm done, but despite them it just has that Sanderson effect of keeping me reading at a quick pace, so in the end I doubt I'll be able to complain about too much.

Shale · « **Reply #853 on:** June 03, 2011, 06:54:00 PM »

UPDATE: Speaking of Alan Moore being awesome, Top Ten is great.

NotMiki · « **Reply #854 on:** June 03, 2011, 08:17:34 PM »

Quote from: Shale on June 03, 2011, 06:54:00 PM

UPDATE: Speaking of Alan Moore being awesome, Top Ten is great.

Sierra · « **Reply #855 on:** June 03, 2011, 08:50:47 PM »

Yes, yes it is and everyone should read it. On that note, *avatar change*. (Best shot I could find, sadly.) I haven't read the last volume of it, honestly don't have much interest--haven't read much good about what the new writer did with it and it's damned hard to imagine someone else writing the cast properly, period. Initial twelve-issue run is fucking brilliant though. Spin-offs are very worth checking out if you like it--Smax is a lot of fun, Forty-Niners is just rather decent--but anyone with a functioning sense of humor should really try the first run. It's the best sort of humor, in my opinion: the kind generated spontaneously by a cast with perfect chemistry (the multitude of comic book in-jokes are great as well, mind). Mind, since this is Alan Moore writing about cops in a big city, there's plenty of nastiness and drama as well, but ultimately it's the dialogue that sticks with me most vividly.

Are the newer League books worth looking into for someone who didn't really dig the first two volumes? (It was such a cooler idea in theory than it was in practice. The only really great thing about it was Mina being a Badass Normal who kept a gang of lunatics functioning through force of will. Of course the movie shat all over that.)

Shale · « **Reply #856 on:** June 04, 2011, 01:23:09 AM »

Black Dossier is very weird, but mostly in a good way. The comic part focuses on Alan and Mina, the only remnants of the 1898 League, but they've changed so much at this point that they might as well be Moore's own creations. So the focus is on supporting cast members and cameos to keep the whole theme of a shared fictional universe going, which they do, but a rather generic (if well-written) action-hero couple mucking around in a world full of people like James Bond, Big Brother and Emma Peel is a bit different from Mina Harker/Murray, Henry Hyde, Hawley Griffin, Nemo and Alan Quatermain fighting Fu Manchu, as high concepts go.

The high point is the non comic part. There's a ton of background material on Leagues past and present, mostly prose, including a testimonial from Fanny Hill on her time in Lemuel Gulliver's League, or the absolutely amazing Jeeves/Lovecraft crossover that I mentioned as being the best thing ever written.

If you didn't particularly care for the first two volumes I wouldn't bother with Century, though. Unless you're a big Threepenny Opera fan.

Luther Lansfeld · « **Reply #857 on:** June 06, 2011, 12:56:42 AM »

Lord of Chaos: Delightful and awesome, favorite Wheel of Time book so far. One downside is Mat -- I think we could have replaced all his internal monologue with WHINE WHINE WHINE WHINE WHIIIINE and nothing about the story would have changed. He acts like a five year old who was told he couldn't get a lollipop. The Perrin relationship angst was not my favorite, but this is my favorite Perrin book so far. A mild amount of POV from him is best, I guess, and it was used well. I loved the Salidar stuff and especially everything Egwene-related. She's definitely my second favorite character in the series after Rand. Mat has definitely dropped after this book; his point of views were just genuinely painful to read.

Luther Lansfeld · « **Reply #858 on:** June 06, 2011, 04:45:03 AM »

Started Book 7 this evening.

"The chronicles could hardly record the years of the Last Battle without mentioning the Dragon Reborn, but she knew that one name would be written larger than all others. Elaida do Avriny a’Roihan, youngest daughter of a minor House in the north of Murandy, would go down in history as the greatest and most powerful Amyrlin Seat of all time. The most powerful woman in the history of the world. The woman who saved humankind."

Possibly my favorite quote from the series so far.

Dark Holy Elf · « **Reply #859 on:** June 06, 2011, 05:42:04 AM »

Way of Kings - I enjoyed it and I want to read more. Certainly am not yet willing to put it on Mistborn's level, but it's not like I think Eye of the World is the greatest thing ever either, and... this could certainly go places.

What I didn't like as much:

Some of it is pacing. Basically there are three main characters; cool fine. Two of them disappear for large portions of the book, so there are really two at any one time, and those two constantly swap. For some reason this bugs me a bit. It probably doesn't help which the one PoV that stuck around the entire book (Kaladin) was also the weakest. Just has a few too many Gary Stu traits (He is an amazing fighter! So amazing he kills a shardbearer! And he is the saviour of Bridge 4! Basically nothing can really stop him and his only real enemy is tendency to doubt himself.) and none of his supporting cast is especially interesting. (whereas the other stories have Jasnah and Sadeas who are both pretty cool) I think the only thing which prevents his story from being super-generic is his backstory being thrown in there. Rounds him out a fair deal.

What I did like:

It kept me reading certainly! Whatever I thought of the different points of view I never really wanted to put this book down, I finished it in about a week or so which is fast for me even before considering that this is, like, the longest book ever. Some very solid plot twists, blah blah Sanderson is good at these. Morality and honour is a big theme of the book and I like the way it was explored. The last ~50 pages was exceptionally good and I generally haven't -ever- said that about a Brandon Sanderson novel before (well, aside from The Gathering Storm if that counts). And I like that the book sorta has this overarching feeling of dread; the surface stories are mundane enough but there's some seriously epically Bad Things Waiting to Happen which all the points of view hint at and I generally liked the mood and how it sets things up for a longer series. All in all it... generally does everything a first book in a mega-series can be expected to do. I just hope future books either have less Kaladin or his PoVs get better, but both feel very possible.

Also, despite my aforementioned anger at the fact that Dalinar and Shallan are dropped for a long time? The fact that Shallan is dropped in part 4 pays off in a big way as the entire bread-jam-poison sequence is revealed to ahve actually gone down nothing like we thought when we finally get back to her, and I don't think this would have worked as well without 300 pages of us assuming we knew what had happened there, but there wasn't really much Shallan stuff that could have been put in the middle.

Top five characters (alphabetical order, although... could be the real order too! Certainly #5 is #5):
Dalinar, Jasnah, Sadeas, Shallan, Szeth

Top five scenes (major spoilers). These are in order.
1. "You soulcast while I had your soulcaster stolen"
2. Dalinar slaps sense into Elkohar. The entire scene, with bonus points for being punctuated with "by the way I am dating your mother".
3. Dalinar and Sadeas' chat after the betrayal. Mm politicky goodness, I am going to enjoy this.
4. Jasnah's entrapment soulcast-murderers-in-the-face episode, and the discussion that follows.
5. The prologue (millenia ago). Can't really justify this one, but I thought it was a good hook and set up an intriguing world.

Grefter · « **Reply #860 on:** June 06, 2011, 09:51:23 AM »

Spoilers for book 8, but that stuff totally happens and she is the new main character. The part where she kills Egwene straight up is the best part in the series. Who needs magic when you can impale someone on a candelabra?

Luther Lansfeld · « **Reply #861 on:** June 06, 2011, 10:38:33 PM »

That woman has iiiiiiiiiiiissues.

Luther Lansfeld · « **Reply #862 on:** June 08, 2011, 08:19:52 PM »

Crown of Swords - Finished. Don't judge me. Probably the weirdest book in the series, starts with a bang and ends with a whimper. Why the heck was the Ebou Dar arc not completed? Just bizzaro. Not sure what I think of the book as a whole; it has some great stuff, but it devolves into mediocrity after a while.

Captain K. · « **Reply #863 on:** June 11, 2011, 06:51:38 AM »

A Feast for Crows: Well, I'm going to be blunt here. This book was terrible. Too many new characters, none of them the least bit interesting. Reading the afterword, Martin says he wrote enough to fill two books, and decided to put half the characters in each. And here it is six years later and the other book still isn't out? This was a colossal fuckup from a design standpoint. Just because you wrote an entire chapter of Areo Hotah making love to his axe doesn't mean anyone else wants to read it. And somehow he even made the Arya chapters suck. How do you manage to screw up Arya?

The only bright part of the book is Jaime, whose character has matured a great deal from its beginnings. Really nice to see how he develops once he's been exposed to humility (and honor).

So to summarize:

A Game of Thrones: Great
A Clash of Kings: Poor
A Storm of Swords: Good
A Feast for Crows: About as pretty as Sandor Clegane x Tyrion yaoi.

Also, it's a pity Ser Ilyn Payne is mute. That is an awesome name for a rapper.

superaielman · « **Reply #864 on:** June 13, 2011, 04:02:12 AM »

Way of Kings: Took me ages to read it, due to the length and some of the PoV shifting. The last 150 pages (where Iw as stuck for ages) did quite a lot to relieve my worries about the book. Kaladin grew on me some later, but I really strongly prefer Kelsier or Raoden as mains. He still owns Vasher. Fuck Vasher.

Top five characters:

1. Dalinar
2. Sadeas
3. Jasnah
4. Shallan
5. Kaladin- In spite of the flaws, he did his job well enough and has room for improvement.

Top five scenes, spoilers.

1. Sadeas reveals his motivation for betraying Dalinar. He really is trying to do what he thinks is right for the king and his country in his own way. Kaladin had a great line about likable bastards being the hardest to kill, and this applies to Sadeas.
2. Szeth finds out who his master is. What a brutal fucking scene.
3. Jasnah is confronted by Shallan about the soulcaster. Great scene.
4. Kaladin in the highstorm. Very stylish.
5. Dalinar confronts the king, owns him hardcore.

Lady Door · « **Reply #865 on:** June 13, 2011, 04:44:18 PM »

Let's see, what have I been reading lately...

Sunshine by Robin McKinley. Maybe I was just in the right mood when I picked this up, but I LOVED this book. It's vampires, but it's vampires I -like-. It's got a few weird romance moments that I'll pretend don't exist (or exist differently, anyway, since sexual tension is important), but I really really loved the character who told the story. She's a believably flawed protagonist. The world is sort of post-apocalyptic, except with the hope that humans can pull it out of the gutter in this end game. It's got "corrupt" cops, curious relationships, and plenty of juice. I actually expected this to be set-up for a series. Apparently it's not?

Deerskin also by Robin McKinley. This one is very different, but it's closer to what I've found out are McKinley's roots: fairy tale re-imaginings. This one's based on an obscure tale, though, so it's enjoyable in its own right. It's a little more muddy than Sunshine was, but that's part of the charm; the character herself being lost/undefined as a person is a central plot point - she's starting to figure herself out as the book begins. I like princess stories. That helps.

Did a re-read of Old Man's War/Ghost Brigades/Last Colony. Read Fuzzy Nation. All those are by John Scalzi. Entertaining! That's what I like.

Awaiting the release of Dresden Files book #13 and the next installment in Song of Ice and Fire. Rest of my summer reading is non-fiction sadness -- business books -- and classic lit in preparation for the GRE.

Shale · « **Reply #866 on:** June 29, 2011, 02:16:41 PM »

The Historian: Ultimately disappointing. Elisabeth Kostova is a talented writer, but not so much a talented novelist. Her prose is great - rich without being flowery or ostentatiously wordy. But her storytelling gets so bogged down in the historical minutiae that she loses the driving thread of the plot for chapters at a time. When we do see vampires they're done very well, but the atmosphere you need in order for this to be a supernatural story, instead of just a book with vampires in it, isn't there. And what is there tends to be dry. I subscribe to history journals and I still got sick of the details of early-modern Romanian history and monastic pilgrimages by the halfway point. Almost all of the story is told through one character reading another character's journals -- some of it through one character reading another characters journals in which he details reading another character's journals -- which is just clunky as hell, but I chalk that up to the first-novel learning curve.

Also, I bought a hundred dollars' worth of comics instead of going for games at DLCon.

Atomic Robo vol. 1 and Atomic Robo and the Shadow From Beyond Time: It's Atomic fuckin' Robo. Read it. Love it. Brian Clevinger is amazing, and the art is universally excellent. I really need to get my hands on the fourth and fifth volumes; even if I wasn't sure they were great, how can you not love books called "Atomic Robo and the Revenge of the Vampire Dimension" (which also has Dr. Dinosaur) or "Atomic Robo and the Deadly Art of Science"?

Planetary: Strange Worlds - crossovers with The Authority and the Justice League. Really good stuff. The JLA crossover is full-on alternate universe for both groups, but it still answers one of the few dangling teasers from the main series.

Sleeper - finally finished this. Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips tell a damn fine crime story, the main character's identity crisis is extremely well-explored, and they make it work with the Wildstorm universe to boot - It's even got Grifter! Remember him? Highly recommended. I may reread it again just to focus on Miss Misery's character, because she was excellent.

Edit: In case you need a reason to read Atomic Robo, and I didn't show you this page at the con:

NotMiki · « **Reply #867 on:** June 30, 2011, 07:14:25 AM »

Neuromancer - trying to catch up on my classic sci fi. Good read, but it suffers considerably in the beginning from Noir-itis. That's where the writer gets so involved in describing the sensual details of a place, becomes so obsessed with fitting the reader into the character's shoes, letting the reader taste the acrid smoke, the damp stink of the acid rain and so on an so forth that the writer forgets that action scenes need to be described in such a way that the reader has a hope of understanding on a very basic level what is going on. It gets better as it goes, though. One of those books that feels underwhelming because its interesting ideas have become so well-known. Which is to say I've played Shadowrun.

Grefter · « **Reply #868 on:** June 30, 2011, 07:29:54 AM »

I misread that as it suffers considerably in the beginning from Noir Tits and was going to call you out on the fact that without tits Noir isn't nearly pulpy enough to be frue Noir.

Shale · « **Reply #869 on:** July 10, 2011, 02:24:15 AM »

I read the first volume of Gunsmith Cats on the plane ride into Austin, and liked it enough that I picked up and finished the rest of the omnibi. It's a really good series. Great art, action sequences with a real feeling of motion, fun characters, lots and lots of gun/car porn if you're into that sort of thing. A bit of the regular stuff, too.

I need to pick up Burst sometime, and should rewatch the OVA and Riding Bean now that I know the source material.

NotMiki · « **Reply #870 on:** July 10, 2011, 05:56:42 AM »

Quote from: Shale on July 10, 2011, 02:24:15 AM

Gunsmith Cats

Bitchin'. I need to read more of that, but what I have of it is a jumble of the old American comic book-sized issues, and I'm too stubborn to buy a squinty-sized version of a manga I've started reading in the old format. 'Cept the ones they stopped making American-sized issues of partway through. (Curse you, Cardcaptor Sakura, Blade of the Immortal, Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, Inu Yasha, and particularly Ranma 1/2!)

Lady Door · « **Reply #871 on:** July 12, 2011, 06:38:20 PM »

On the list:

The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume I
The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume II
A Song of Ice and Fire (A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, A Dance with Dragons)
Those graphic novels Jim gave me, as soon as I figure out where Andrew hid them...

What I just finished:

Daughter of the Blood
Heir to the Shadows
Queen of the Darkness
(all part of the Black Jewels Trilogy)

I'm not entirely sure how I felt about it. I think I enjoyed it? I know I finished reading it in ~4 days. It was weirdly prurient, though, and very obviously a book from (primarily) men's point of view written by a female.

The concept was well realized. I felt like the story flirted repeatedly with being Good, but never quite surpassed Adequate. As for characters, I loved Daemon, and Jaenelle was interesting though you never -really- got to know her -- that was the point -- and the supporting cast was entertaining. It's a shame the villains were so hideously one-sided. The arc about Jaenelle's real family was well handled, I thought, and the thread that trailed out all the way to the end was a fascinating study in relationships and power. The real shame is that's about it. And the author repeatedly used the same phrases and techniques. I shudder to think how many times the word "snarl" was used. Or how frequently the males groaned about the females' behavior being unfathomable, or so hilarious but they had to hold it back because... (well, I don't think I ever really figured that out. fear for their well-being?).

Eh. Well. Entertaining. Not sure I'd recommend it.

(EDITED)

Oh lord. Not only is it more than a trilogy, it has like ten books in the series. I'm not sure whether my completist morbid curiosity can handle that.

DjinnAndTonic · « **Reply #872 on:** July 13, 2011, 05:01:24 AM »

What kind of story is it? The titles make me think "Vampire", but they're pretty vague even for vampire novels.

Lady Door · « **Reply #873 on:** July 13, 2011, 05:11:55 AM »

Not vampires. It's... magic? With jewels? And demons/the dead? Mainly witches and magic (and dragons and demons and telepathic animals). It's unique, but it really, really made me think of Soul Eater, if you're familiar with that at all. Not the "weapons" concept - but witches, and spiders, and dreams, and the kind of power they can use.

It's heralded mainly for its inversion of male/female power structures, but I honestly think that's a cop out. It's just called that because the Queen witches are the ones with ultimate power, and the males are support/in harems/for use by the queens, etc. I don't feel it really stretched in any new directions of gender roles, just sort of flip-flopped bits and pieces of typical male power vs. typical female power. For example: raping women still breaks them, only this time it breaks their inner magic as well.

Hunter Sopko · « **Reply #874 on:** July 19, 2011, 04:46:45 AM »

A Dance With Dragons: ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH Martin whhhhhy must you keep writing in circles? He's become so obsessed with giving the reader EVERYTHING in the big picture that it lacks any real focus. Plus, there's very, very little resolution to anything, both internally and metaplot. There are some bones thrown in for questions from the end of Feast for Crows, but the book raises far more questions than it answers. It seems like the whole thing is a setup for Winds of Winter... what a bloody, fucking 1900 page cocktease (counting FfC).

I'll grant him the book was good for a while, until it became apparant that he had no desire to resolve anything here and waste whatever seeming potential he had. But honestly, due to this NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENS. It also has a habit of introducing backstory characters that were supposed to be dead. From here on, thar be spoilers...

Jon: This wasn't all that bad a read. There's legitimate things happening, but it ends up repeating itself in spirit over and over. The conclusion was interesting at least, and I'm wondering how that'll go.

Stannis: Lots of buildup, no resolution. As far as the siege of Storm's End? NOTHING. Nothing on Loras Tyrell's maiming or even anything on the battle. Less even than FfC!

Davos: Questions answered! Yay! Then he's not in the book at all! Boo!

Daenerys: Interesting at first, but follows the same path as Jon's in that it ends up being the same things over and over, although slightly more things happen here. But there's a slightly unsatisfying climax that you think is gonna be AWESOME and then Martin doesn't follow through on it. After that it's all "Where's Daenerys?" cause she is fucking Poochie from The Simpsons. "Whenever Poochie isn't on the screen, all the characters should be asking, 'Where's Poochie?'"

Barristan Selmy: Yep. He becomes the PoV after a point, and while he actually DOES something, the real potential for it is left for the next book.

Arya: YAY! This was a satisfying conclusion to the events of FfC at least.

Jaime: Iiiiiiiinteresting. One chapter and dissapears though.

Bran: Fuck. Bran. Reaches the Three-Eyed Crow and then disappears halfway through. The crannogmen might even be leaving! WTF!

Dorne: HAHAHAHAHAHA fuck Dorne. So much wasted potential here in Quentyn Martell in a truely Martin fashion. Though I guess I can respect him keeping himself honest.

Tyrion: More wasted potential. Vastly. Disappointing. Redeems himself slightly near the end.

Cersei: More of CERSEI. IS. BOWSER. Out of prison at least! Possibly back in the game!

The epilogue was intriguing at least. Was wondering why I hadn't seen Varys throughout the whole book. Should make the next book fun..... in 6 years.

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Author Topic: Books (Read 174152 times)