Author Topic: Books (Read 174307 times)

Dhyerwolf · « **Reply #625 on:** July 28, 2010, 09:08:01 AM »

Making this post mainly to really summarize these for myself, but also since I haven't made a post here forever. About...6 months ago? 8? Grefter gave me a long list of fantasy authors to try out! All of which I think I basically have by this point, so...(in semi generalized order of reading)

Deverry Series/Katherine Kerr (12 or 13 books?): Read all but the last, which came out within the past year or so and therefore is only hardback. Didn't like the series enough to grapple with a hardback book. Biggest standout feature is how realistic it is. Author was potentially some kind of medieval historian because everything feels so grounded. Deals with reincarnation cycles, but also has the least threatening villains ever. The magic isn't completely potent at all, but the villains are so lolzy that even the weak magic seems to completely over power them. Series worked very well overall despite this; just makes it feel like some kind of odd historical narrative. Too much pointless dragon hype instance 1. None of the books were best really as they were kind of all the same.

Riftwar Saga (4 Books, Don't remember the author off the of my head): Unlike Deverry series where the books are very even, Riftwar Saga is an exercise is great uneveness. Book 1 was solid setup, book 2 has the fascinating otherworld parts, book 3 has some quirky exploration but kind of ditches the book interested world, and book 4 falls apart! Granted, it can be hard to end a fantasy series, but felt like the author may have started drugs during the last book or something. Book 2 was by far the best.

The Caves of Eileanen/Kate Forscyth (6 books): No idea if the series was called, but going with my gut reaction. Took a while to deal with the damn subsitution of "ken" for "know." Otherwise, fairly entertaining series that was decently fast paced and interesting. Isabeau for the most part was great. Parts of book 6 kind of came out of nowhere, but it worked. Too much pointless dragon hype instance 2. Book 4 (at least I think it was book 4) was definitely the stand out for Isabeau's time with the Khan'coban.

The Crown of Stars/Kate Elliot (7 books): WIN. Awesome, awesome overall series. Great combo of epic with solidly rounded and not out there villains, several very interesting arcs and lots of twists and turns. I did finish the 7th book with 2 major questions, but looking online tells me one was never answered and rechecking the book heavily implies that the other wasn't either. Books 1 and 4 were likely the best, although I thought the series carried itself very well all the way through. +2 points just for going and hyping some other dragon animal besides a dragon! +2 more for what she did with the map. Disapointed that book 6 and 7 were so relatively short, but then I read that they were originally going to be one 1200 page book (Which is one, because the ending of book 5 was colossal enough to have milked out even more; Then again, I did find the world fascinating, so that could be why I wouldn't have minded 6 and 7 being 800-900 pages like the others).

The Way of Kings/Joe Abercrombie (3 books): Solid intro for a new writer. The main cast is immensely likable, so that was well done. Gut says that I think Grefter would enjoy at least the first two books of this series. Third kind of unraveled a little unfortuantely.

Rhiannon's Ride/Kate Forscyth (3 books): Follow up to Caves of Eileanen. Book 1 is fantastic. Unique, interesting, and very tense. Books 2-3 unravel though. Book 2 features formerly smart characters ignoring way too many premonitions. Book 3 features both annoying ressurection and a nearly pointless trip back through time! The drop between books was incredible, especially since book 1 may have been the best book she wrote.

Watcher of the Dead/JV Jones- Book 4 of the series. Was really looking forward to this because I felt like the series has actually been one of the best fantasy ones I've read. It's very unique and fast paced. Unfortunately, I feel about maybe 1/3 of the plot threads stalled a little in this book and that it should have been longer. I really like what she did with the plot threads that didn't stall (Well...Raif should have gotten more done), but I felt like the previous books accomplished more. I have no idea how long this series is supposed to be, but I'm guessing not 5 books since I just don't see all of the story wrapping up in 1 book.

Spirit Gate/Kate Elliot (3 books): Finishing up book 1. Big step down from Crown of Stars. The world feels less real (CoS was able to pretty quickly craft a reasonable political setup and give fairly strong reasons for it). Suppose this could be a setup book, but it's a bit underwhelming.

Know I'm forgetting some of the other books he recommended, but so it goes.

Grefter · « **Reply #626 on:** July 28, 2010, 09:24:45 AM »

Nice dude! Glad you have chewed through so much backlog of my old pulp favourites. Love hearing an older much more aware reader's point of view than my much younger self.

Feist did the Riftwar stuff, a little suprised you liked Silverthorn more than Magician (or did you read one of the versions with Magician split up?), it is a pretty huge series and I reccomend reading some more if you can stomach it. It loses some of the fun when the focus shifts off of Jimmy or Arutha for the sequels (Magician... plot outside of Pug or Thomas frustrated me a little for all that Arutha and Jimmy plot ends up pretty good), but generally it is a pretty indepth piece of epic fantasy. Edit - Oh and the spin off Empire series that is about the other side of the rift is pretty fascinating as well. Should be pretty readable with how far through the series you got. It dumps you in the politics of the empire and stays away from the actual fighting through the Rift mostly and shows kind of just how much of a force of nature the mages are in that world.

Of course you should also totally check out Betrayal at Krondor, freeware RPG that Feist helped write back in the day, great game.

Lady Door · « **Reply #627 on:** July 28, 2010, 05:31:26 PM »

Finished a re-read of American Gods. I still like it. The ending falls a little flat with me, as it doesn't seem to strike a balance between telling why things happened and alluding to them or showing, but that's okay. I like Shadow.

Occurs to me I haven't finished The City & The City yet. It was quite different from what I anticipated, hence the delay. It's not that it's bad. It's just that I was expecting something else and my taste for stories depends on my mood. Time to finish it!

Still working on Tales of the Dying Earth, but that one took a back-burner to everything else I have.

Next is probably Endless Nights (Sandman) if I can find it, or maybe Anansi Boys. I think the only copy of Anansi Boys I have is my signed copy, so that one may need to wait until I pick up a paperback.

I pre-ordered Shades of Milk and Honey (August 3), Dreadnought (September 28) and Towers of Midnight (November 4), so at least there's some new reading coming up.

Shale · « **Reply #628 on:** July 28, 2010, 05:55:37 PM »

I used to have a backup copy of Anansi Boys. Then I got that signed too. Now I just read my signed copies.

Dhyerwolf · « **Reply #629 on:** July 28, 2010, 08:28:43 PM »

Whatever copy of Silverthorn I had started with Pug being in the other world. I found the foundation and history of the other world to be more interesting, which is why I had it to be a superior book. Magician was a solid intro, decently tense, and well paced, but Silverthorn just had a more interesting social system. Oh right, forgot to add to that Random Dragon overhype v3! I plan on making my way towards the other Feist books. Spinoff of the other empire would definitely be the bigger draw.

Shale · « **Reply #630 on:** July 28, 2010, 08:35:23 PM »

Some printings split Magician into two books, Apprentice and Master, and make Silverthorn book 3.

Grefter · « **Reply #631 on:** July 29, 2010, 12:00:09 AM »

But yeah I checked Wiki last night and there is more Pug stuff in Silverthorn than I remembered. If it helps as well the Empire trilogy is written by another author that worked fairly closely with Feist. Not that I find Feist bad or anything, just the switching up of authors in the setting is nice considering how prolific Feist is and that it is a completely different tone and world than he works in the majority of the time.

Also forgot to say since you are almost done with Kerr's fantasy you should totally get into her Sci-Fi as well. Polar City Blues is a fun little murder mystery with drugs, mutants and baseball. Polar City Nightmare was co-written with another author, not as fun but still a nice little read (small books, kind of counterpoint to her Deverry stuff) and Palace is still a grand piece of Sociology to me, it doesn't hold up to really intense theory after three years of studying it with every elective at Uni, but it is still pretty solid and fun with massive points for you know, at least attempting (if not deliberately) to be cohesive within those schools of thought.

superaielman · « **Reply #632 on:** July 30, 2010, 09:03:36 PM »

Chris Jericho's biography- It's okay enough. I wouldn't pay much money for it, but it's a cool enough look at the journey he made from childhood to joining the WWF in 1999.

West and East- It was entertaining enough. I thought it was an improvement on the first book in terms of branching out. Apparently it is going to be a longer series, so we'll see how long it stays interesting.

metroid composite · « **Reply #633 on:** August 02, 2010, 03:31:44 PM »

Dead Until Dark (1st Sookie Stackhouse book; oh and I also finished the second).

Stuff happens. I like Bubba. The sex is good.

Yet somehow the book isn't fully resonating with me. And...I'm having trouble nailing down why; usually when I don't like a book, I'll have very clear flaws that bug me, whereas this is more apathy. I'll make a couple guesses. There were a couple sentences I didn't understand the first time, went back to reread (twice) and realized that they didn't make sense to me. (Perhaps a southern saying I'm not familiar with?) So it could be that the language rubs me the wrong way a little. I'm also not sure how I feel about the mythology as its presented; the main character walks away from vampire encounters completely unaffected--sure vampires can mindwipe other humans in the story...but not her. At several points it feels like the author doesn't really want to write about vampires so much as minorities and discrimination. Which is fine, I guess, just...maybe not what I was looking for in my research.

DjinnAndTonic · « **Reply #634 on:** August 02, 2010, 07:58:50 PM »

Sandman would be awesome if it didn't suffer from terrible 90s art.

Also, super, if you want to see Gaiman flexing his storytelling abilities without the recycled bits, grab one of his shortstory collections. His longer novels definitely have some very common patterns to them, but his shortstories are allowed to run off in a bunch of different directions to great effect (though there are some letdowns).

Shale · « **Reply #635 on:** August 02, 2010, 08:29:19 PM »

Everybody should at least read A Study in Emerald. That was awesome.

superaielman · « **Reply #636 on:** August 02, 2010, 09:28:05 PM »

Sandman's art was very hit and miss. I really loved the artist who did the final arc, at least.

Lady Door · « **Reply #637 on:** August 02, 2010, 09:40:47 PM »

Endless Nights.

I don't care that it's ancillary.

Lady Door · « **Reply #638 on:** August 04, 2010, 04:25:12 AM »

Anansi Boys reread complete. Turns out I actually really enjoy that one. I recall not liking it as much as American Gods the first time around, but this time I liked it more. It has more flavor, and tells the story about the narrator's struggles and change, versus American Gods which was more about the environment/a secondary character (Laura)'s struggles and change through the protagonist's eyes.

Shades of Milk and Honey came in today, so that's preempted the Neverwhere reread for now. So far, so good! Its common tag is "What Jane Austen would have written if she lived in a world of magic," and that is holding true so far. However, Kowell has the benefit of being a modern writer, and she has far more engaging characters and less exposition about propriety. It's fun!

Bardiche · « **Reply #639 on:** August 05, 2010, 04:11:23 PM »

Does anyone have a good recommendation for a good online bookstore? I've been looking for a hardback copy of Steven Erikson's Memories of Ice, but so far no luck. Checked BookDepository, but they only have the paperback version. I guess I'll buy that if I have to, but I like my hardback copies. :V

Tonfa · « **Reply #640 on:** August 05, 2010, 04:39:45 PM »

Read Sandman at super's recommendation. At the beginning it seemed like it just had to shoehorn in the chewed up superheroes seemingly present in every American comic, and the shock imagery was stupid, but it quickly gained its foothold (not that it ever got that much better about the latter) and the strength of the interwoven stories presented itself. Most of the big arcs, with the exception of Barbie's, had great narrative flow and were entertaining to read through. Oneshots were hit and miss - highlights are Prez Rickard and Emperor Norton. Overall worth reading, though very uneven.

Lady Door · « **Reply #641 on:** August 05, 2010, 05:22:03 PM »

Shades of Milk and Honey finished. It was a relatively short book, but it also read very easily. It is very much a story as written by Jane Austen -- (minor spoilers if you aren't familiar with what this means) focusing entirely on a pair of sisters who are in the midst of attempting to catch a husband, one of which is more smart than pretty, the other vice versa, men are doing man things, there is confusion, and the smart one ends up with someone she didn't even think to be interested in but who turns out to be perfect -- only with magic.

The magic part was interesting. It attempted to provide a style of magic that would fit into the historical timeline without changing it. It was women's magic, basicallly: beautiful, but not militarily applicable. However, it did provide the central conceit, and it was fairly well handled. I enjoyed the book overall, though I do have to roll my eyes a little at the "smart girl gets everything she never knew she wanted in the end" finale.

Working on Neverwhere again. It occurs to me that I only own an uncorrected proof, so I'm not sure what delightful surprises await me in here. I'm not sure I'll notice, either, as it's been a good 5 years since I last read Neverwhere.

superaielman · « **Reply #642 on:** August 05, 2010, 06:48:15 PM »

boys will be boys: THe biography of the Dallas Cowboys, from Jerry Jones's takeover to their final superbowl win. It is a great look at the team and how they got corrupted by drugs/money/etc. Everyone got fairly sympathetic treatment in the book even if they were scum or crazy, and the author does a good job in being even in how he presented the material.

One exception: He paints Skip Bayless as a total piece of shit, which should surprise no one.

Edit: Graveyard book finished. Gaiman captures the whimsy of childhood perfectly in the book, and it has his usual fun setting as well. I see why it got so many awards.

Hunter Sopko · « **Reply #643 on:** August 10, 2010, 09:16:59 PM »

So I wandered into a used paperback store to see if there was anything there, and in the Sci-Fi section, while I saw no Battletech books, somehow they had the entire catalogue of the Mechwarrior: Dark Ages series... including 15 or so books I never even knew they published. I'd thought the whole franchise went down a book or two after Fortress Republic. I guess they just weren't picked up in big box retailers. Couldn't help but grab one for the plane, since they were half off. It's amusing how many of the back synopsis can have "they fight crime!" added to the end and it'd still make total sense.

Lady Door · « **Reply #644 on:** August 10, 2010, 09:30:41 PM »

Finished Neverwhere the other day. Sort of on reading hiatus right now because work is being dumb, and hosting people takes up time too.

So. I still like Neverwhere a lot. I still think it may be one of my favorites, and I'm still glad it's the book of Gaiman's I read first. I think whatever real problems there in the book are solved by acknowledging two things: 1) Gaiman's characters are facets of the universe he writes; 2) this particular book is a novelisation of a TV miniseries.

I love Door. The whole ending sequence makes me think of Super Mario Bros. the movie, which I also adored for reasons that have nothing to do with how terrible a movie it really was.

So, <3.

Cmdr_King · « **Reply #645 on:** August 18, 2010, 04:55:21 AM »

Mistborn- just finished hero of ages. Good series, highly readable. I do feel like the series peaked early (the Sanderson rush at the end of the first book was really a highlight) but the continuation was largely enjoyable.
Admittedly, the conceptual part of book two didn't thrill me (EU fan) but the character work was of course still strong. The world building and mythos aspects of 3 were great, although for the most part the principle cast had already finished their character arcs by then so that aspect was fun but less engrossing. This leads to the odd situation in which my favorite chapters were the stuff with TenSoon. Ah well, even if he was more serious in this book the snarky-as-sin kandra is still pretty awesome.

So yeah, just a good read that does very little wrong and has compelling work throughout, just different strengths at different times.

superaielman · « **Reply #646 on:** August 18, 2010, 05:17:36 AM »

Quote from: Lady Door on August 10, 2010, 09:30:41 PM

Finished Neverwhere the other day. Sort of on reading hiatus right now because work is being dumb, and hosting people takes up time too.

So. I still like Neverwhere a lot. I still think it may be one of my favorites, and I'm still glad it's the book of Gaiman's I read first. I think whatever real problems there in the book are solved by acknowledging two things: 1) Gaiman's characters are facets of the universe he writes; 2) this particular book is a novelisation of a TV miniseries.

I love Door. The whole ending sequence makes me think of Super Mario Bros. the movie, which I also adored for reasons that have nothing to do with how terrible a movie it really was.

So, <3.

Yeah, I find it hard to argue with those points. Reread neverwhere on the way over to DLC, and still dug it. It was a fast reread on the second time through, and it never drags once it gets going.

Dhyerwolf · « **Reply #647 on:** August 18, 2010, 09:20:33 AM »

Quote from: Dhyerwolf on July 28, 2010, 09:08:01 AM

Spirit Gate/Kate Elliot (3 books): Finishing up book 1. Big step down from Crown of Stars. The world feels less real (CoS was able to pretty quickly craft a reasonable political setup and give fairly strong reasons for it). Suppose this could be a setup book, but it's a bit underwhelming.

Finished this series during con! Books 2 and 3 swung way upward in quality compared to book 1. Likely combo of the world felt a lot more fleshed out (for an obviously unique world, book 1 didn't really hammer out the uniqueness of the culture. Books 2 and 3 succeeeded there) and that the mystical/historical setup in book 1 started to get payoff right at the beginning of book 2. Characters were great and by the end, I was generally happy to read all the points of the view. I wouldn't have minded if Elliot had managed to retouch on Kirit's faraway tribe, but I guess that was so out there.

Once again, excellent job building up credible villains without going over the top or tacky (Although compared to Crown of Starts, villains really took a large backseat here).

Cotigo · « **Reply #648 on:** August 18, 2010, 03:11:36 PM »

Haven't read much fiction this summer, mostly class materials and other stuff that isn't as interesting. Regardless...

V for Vendetta - A lot better than the movie. About halfway through.

Blood Meridian - Maybe I'm just not in the mood to deal with McCarthy's style, but try as I might I can't get into it as much as I got into The Road. I'll give it another shot at some point, but this is going back on the shelf for now.

Kafka on the Shore - Murakami Haruki is absolutely brilliant. This is excellent surrealist fiction. Very well written, though you won't like it much if you have an allergy to allegory.

Bless Me, Ultima - One of those books I 'read' in college, and by that I mean "I read half of it before getting swamped/lazy and BSing my way past that portion of the course." Which was always kind of disappointing, because it's an excellent book; so I'm reading it properly now. It's in a similar vein as Kafka on the Shore, though the fantastic elements are closer to magical realism than they are to surrealism. It's also pretty interesting how Anaya occasionally writes things in English using Spanish word order and syntax. Another book I highly recommend to anyone who won't spend the entire time bitching about how everything is a metaphor to an extent.

metroid composite · « **Reply #649 on:** August 18, 2010, 07:53:27 PM »

Moon Called (Patricia Briggs) -- a.k.a. the book I had with me at DLC5

Actually very good.

It's basically hardboiled detective fiction. Except about a female VW mechanic who can change into a Coyote, was raised by Werewolves, was trained by a metalworking gremlin faerie, and is friends with a vampire. Despite how zany this sounds, the book is definitely more serious and less humorous than the last three vampire series I've read (not saying much, mind you, when the most serious of the three was Anne Rice).

Moon Called just has...good story flow, and layers of depths to the politics and underhandedness, strong characters with some development, and the book doesn't really have any "bad parts".

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Author Topic: Books (Read 174307 times)

Bardiche