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I don't think my library has Aaronovitch, but one of my friend's brother is THE guy who decides what books the library buys. So I'm gonna make a new best friend!!!!
Good idea! And they're probably happy to know what people want to read.
Definitely!
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'The Crimes Of Love' by the Marquis de Sade
And 'Dwellers in the Mirage' by A. Merritt, which was superb.
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'Synthetic Men of Mars' by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Also been back on the Gardner F. Fox - 'Kothar, Barbarian Swordsman' and 'Kyric - Warlock Warrior', to be precise, even if Kyric does absolutely no warlock-ing whatsoever, preferring to spend all his time eating and perving over young women instead, the lazy git.
And for non-fiction, 'Selected Works of Alexandra Kollontai', by the late Soviet ambassador to Helium.
I'm taking a break from Chapelwood by Cheri Priest. A lot of the POV characters are doing very repetitive stuff and there hasn't been a lot of action.
So I started The Tomb by F. Paul Wilson. It's the first of the Repairman Jack series. It's been updated from 1984 to 2004, so that's cool, too. :-) It's really good so far. It also has a bunch of POV characters, but they're all third person, not first person "letters."
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I'm taking a break from Chapelwood by Cheri Priest. A lot of the POV characters are doing very repetitive stuff and there hasn't been a lot of action.
So I started The Tomb by F. Paul Wilson. It's the first of the Repairman Jack series. It's been updated from 1984 to 2004, so that's cool, too. :-) It's really good so far. It also has a bunch of POV characters, but they're all third person, not first person "letters."
Welcome to the repairman Jack universe! you are in for some really sweet books.
Make sure to read The keep, too, before you get to book 4 or so in the Repairman Jack series. It is a prequel that's very important for understanding fully the plot of later books, and it is a smart enjoyable read on it's own. I liked it more than The Tomb, for example.
Thanks!
It seems like the Secret History of the Repairman 'verse has an odd chronology, and also features books outside of the Repairman Jack series. Is this true? Is there a recommended order of reading them?
The volume I have has a list in its back.
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Thanks!
It seems like the Secret History of the Repairman 'verse has an odd chronology, and also features books outside of the Repairman Jack series. Is this true? Is there a recommended order of reading them?
The volume I have has a list in its back.
the subject is overly confusing. Essentially, there's all the Repairman Jack books which should be read in order, and there's the "adversary cycle", which includes, in this order:
The Keep
(The Tomb)
The Touch
Reborn
Reprisal
(Nightworld)
the books in brackets intersect with the Repairman Jack series. You can read the first two RJ books without reading any of the Adversary Cycle, but you SHOULD read up to Reborn before reading Repairman Jack #3, where the plots begin to converge. Nightworld is the final book for both series.
Keep in mind that the Adversary Cycle books actually vary wildly in genre and style - I for example enjoyed the pulp adventure / horror themes of The Keep but connected less with the medical thriller style of the The Touch. The same is somewhat true with Repairman Jack - keep an open mind, because some of the books in the series are very different in tone than the others.
I'm reading a re-edit of The Tomb for 2004, so there are DVDs and cell phones and flatscreen TVs and not many typewriters anymore.
Nearing the end of Perfidia. Ellroy is still in fine form, keeping me up way past my bedtime. Dudley Smith remains my favorite villain in all of literature, by a wide margin.
I'm reading a re-edit of The Tomb for 2004, so there are DVDs and cell phones and flatscreen TVs and not many typewriters anymore.The way I found out about these re-edits spooked the hell out of me, as I encountered a casual Harry Potter Reference in a book supposedly written in the 80's.
Hahahaha!!!
I hate being freaked out by books. I remember being in church, and there was a reading from the Book of Habbakuk, and I was like, "from Dragonlance? WTF?" but it was just a crazy random happenstance. Just like Raistlin's magic incantations are all Indonesian, which I studied a bit 15 years after first reading Dragonlance. I was like "why do some of these words seem so familiar?" And didn't find out about until 10 years after that.
Those crazy Weis & Hickmans! ;-)
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Finished listening to The First Fifteen lives of Harry August, and if this will fail to be the best book I've read this year then I am a very lucky man for finding another masterpiece so quickly.
Next up in audio format is Proxima, by Stephen Baxter, another of the SFF books I bought blindly in a sale, so another risk. I have somewhat of a bad record with these, but we'll see.
This book is clever, very well written, touching, and extremely stimulating. It builds up a wonderfully deep character in the strange and intriguing situation of living the same life over and over and over again, a stagnant immortality. The writing is the exact pitch it should be, developing the character even as it combines beauty, humor, and a unique tone.
The structure of the book is very much perfect for representing the recollections of an immortal with untarnishable memory. It wonders and jumps back and forth, inserting scenes lifetimes away from "current" events as something reminds Harry August of them. The plot, such as it is, only comes into coherency in the second half of the book, and is much more understated than a drama about the betrayal of friendship and the end of the world would suggest - but it works very very well, especially in conjunction with Harry's character and how he would describe these events.
I do have some reservations, as I always do - as always, the "time travel" mechanic that drives the story completely baffles me and appears inconsistent (if anyone who read the books actually understands how it works, I would dearly love an explanation) and I don't really appreciate the surprisingly luddite theme of the story, which suggests that accelerating technological growth will end mankind. As if the only "stable" rate to discover technology is the one that actually happened, and as if immortals don't have the time to experiment more gently with time, to change very small things which over generations will have extremely positive effects.
However, this time the issues that bother me truly feel trifling, and did not for a moment stop me from enjoying the story or connecting to it emotionally.
Anyone has an opinion about Claire North's other books? which should I read next? (including those she wrote under other names)
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Finished reading Promise Of Blood (Power Mage #1 by Brian Mcllelan... pr something. Seriously, what is this name) and am on to Half The World (Shattered Sea #2 by Joe Abercrombie) which already shows signs of excellency, as I came to expect.
It turned out to be incredibly boring and I felt like the scene was 30 minutes long, even though it was probably no longer than five. The reason I couldn't scrap together the enthusiasm to care is that even as energy blasts tore apart concrete and glass as the villains and the heroes flew around skyscrapers trying to kill each other, the camera never focused on the characters themselves.
See, what's exciting about a chase is not that the cars are moving really fast - it's the people inside the cars, choosing to slam the paddle into the metal despite knowing how dangerous that is. It's about what the people do and why they do it. There has to be some sort of emotional connection. In that action scene I described earlier, I never once caught a glimpse of the expression of any of the characters, I was just watching cool vehicles moving about and things exploding. It never felt like those things were happening to people.
This same fault drags down A Promise Of Blood. It was just so freaking boring, and that's an achievement for such an action packed novel that takes place in a solid fantasy setting. I imagine the story may have made for a good movie, in capable hands, but as it is written, there's simply no opportunity to ever care about what happens. Emotions are never described, none of the characters have *any* inner voice, and the flatness of the characters flattens the book as a whole.
It's a shame, because I enjoy a lot of the ingredients in the story. You know how old monarchies used to claim an actual divine right to rule? Imagine a French Revolution where it turns out that God is real, and yes, he actually did promise to those kings that their lineage will always be in power, and He is coming to have a stern talking to with the revolutionaries. It's the story of a world where progress is threatened, clutched in place, dragged backwards by darker forces. It could have been really good, if there were actual people living in the world and not just organisms that advance the plot with all the passion of amoeba eating enough to split in half.
A final note: the author is a student of Sanderson, which is part of what drew me to try his books out (the awesome cover art helped in that regard too). While you can certainly see aspects of Sanderson's style influencing this book, it is it's own thing, and in the less superficial details, nothing at all alike Sanderson's writing. So if like me you are looking for more things that feel like Sanderson, turn elsewhere, and if you dislike Sanderson know that that isn't a strike against this book.
I really liked it. However, I was confused as to WHY the Field Marshall rebelled. He doesn't seem to give 2 $#!+s about the common people. I think he just got bored and thought a civil war would be a challenging diversion.
The characters DO get more depth in the later books. Also, probably the funniest character is mute, which was probably a mistake. The private inspector guy, in particular, has some really good motivations.
Also, not a big Sanderson fan. He named his slave race after ska music, which is just awkward. It's hard to treat a race called the jaz or pungk seriously, you know.
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** spoiler omitted **
It's not that I can't see the mechnical motivation for the characters, it's that it is so dry and distant. When reading a Nila chapter, for example, I never feel the overwhelming surges of feelings she has - hate for Tamas, love for Jacob. When she decides to essentially sacrifice her life to take care of him as Lord Vetas kidnaps the both of them, it just reads something like: "she looked at the man holding her. She could probably escape. She prepared. Suddenly she saw Jacob who was happy to see her. She went into the carriage without a fight." Cold, distant, thoroughly uninteresting.
Really, the book could have worked as a movie, where actors could give life to the characters with facial expressions and body language and such. But as the book is written, this aspect of it is seriously lacking.
I guess I just interpreted everything really differently. I flew through the trilogy last summer! I really liked it.
Half-a-World is great, too! Really different, but great.
Most recently, 'Halifax Cavaliers and Heptonstall Roundheads' by David Shires, and 'Lankar of Callisto' by Lin Carter
And alsoe, 'Romances and Legends of Chyvalrie', by A R Hope Moncrieff.
Just finished The Tomb by F. Paul Wilson. It's the first Repairman Jack novel, and not exactly what I expected. It reminded me of a 1980s action movie more than an urban fantasy novel. But in a good way. The main character has a lot of depth. I'm definitely going to look into reading more Repairman Jack novels.
Next up: I Am Princess X by Cheri Priest.
Next up: I Am Princess X by Cheri Priest.
Let us know how that goes for you; I've been debating whether to pick it up for myself.
Next up: I Am Princess X by Cheri Priest.Let us know how that goes for you; I've been debating whether to pick it up for myself.
I'm 3 chapters in and I really like it so far. It seems almost short story-ish right now, so I wonder if she can maintain it. I really hope so. It's much more engaging than her Chapelwood sequel to Maplecroft (Lizzie Borden vs. Lovecraftian Horrors).
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Just finished The Tomb by F. Paul Wilson. It's the first Repairman Jack novel, and not exactly what I expected. It reminded me of a 1980s action movie more than an urban fantasy novel. But in a good way. The main character has a lot of depth. I'm definitely going to look into reading more Repairman Jack novels.
Next up: I Am Princess X by Cheri Priest.
Glad you liked it! the RJ series is very unique in tone, a fact that only increases as it advances.
Yeah, I'll probably order the next in the series from the library soon.
Recently finished Bloodbound by Wes Schneider ***
The English Civil War by Diane Purkiss **
Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley ***** (seriously, read this)
and Freeport, City of Adventure by a whole bunch of people ****
After four or five bimonthly meetings, I am now up to Part 2 of Capital.
M-C-M, blah blah blah. This is now the most boring book I have ever read, I hear it picks up later with Britishiznoid peasants being driven off the commons. It better.
Fascism and Big Business was pretty good but I got bogged down in the chapter on economic policy. And next is a chapter on their agricultural policy, which I am sure will be even more fascinating. Regardless, rest of the book was pretty good, despite two boring chapters.
And, finally, the branch decided to re-read Christine Thomas's It Doesn't Have to Be Like This: Women and the Struggle for Socialism for the benefit of our three new members and three contacts.
Gotta read me some fiction soon.
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Blew through PKD's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and loved it. Started Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said this morning.
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Finished reading Transcendental by James Gunn last night and started reading the sequel Transgalactic.
Good story, although it reads more like a set up as opposed to a story that could stand by itself.
My copy says it was first published in 2010 and 2013, so maybe he made some changes when he started writing the sequel. The sequel came out this year.
I finished reading I Am Princess X by Cherie Priest. It was really good. I gave up on her KKKthulu v. Lizzie Borden novel, Chapelwood, because it wasn't holding my interest. I liked the prequel to it OK, but I think both so close together was a mistake.
I started Curtsies & Conspiracies by Gail Carriger. Book the Second in her Finishing School series for proper ladies and assassins.
Thinking about getting the first book in the series, Etiquette & Espionage. How is it?
I LOLed a lot. A lot. It's a prequel series to The Parasol Protectorate.
I'm rereading A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. Once again, it doesn't disappoint.
Indulging in some Viking mayhem via the first 3 books of Oathsworn series by Robert Low: The Whale Road, The Wolf Sea, The White Raven.
Knocked off "Flow My Tears" and "The Variable Man" last night and started "A Scanner Darkly."
Yesterday I started and finished both
Step Aside, Pops by Kate Beaton (comic strip collection) and Discount Armageddon by Seanan McGuire.
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Recently:
'Atlan' by Jane Gaskell
English translations of 'Dell'Arte di Scrima' by Giovanni Dall'Agocchie and a rapier & dagger manual by Saviolo which appears to be called 'His Practise, in Two Books'
And 'Enchanted Glass', by Tom Nairn, which is a very insightful look at the British Monarchy from some sort of sociololological or cultural theory viewpoint. Some interesting points, despite being 25/30 years old.
I just finished "Storm of Swords" in my slow re-reading of ASoIaF. I think it's my favorite book so far as so many characters are turned on their heads throughout the narrative. Not to mention so much death...
Finished up The Ideology of Slavery, an anthology of proslavery thought. Lesser-known works of big figures for the most part. I read a lot of really turgid nineteenth century prose. It was often excessive even by my standards and intensely repetitive as a bonus. And that's with editing out the redundant parts of each one. All in all, a horrid slog. Should have just read the introductions to each piece and gotten all the same content in half an hour.
Moved on to The Caning: The Assault that Drove America to Civil War. So far as I've been able to tell, it's the only work specifically about Preston Brooks breaking his cane over the head of Charles Sumner. That's a shame because it's already got me annoyed. The author is a trained historian who wasn't even courteous enough to footnote direct quotes. The subtitle is also a crazy overselling. The attack is certainly a new development in sectional tension and had a big effect on public opinion, but all of that's in the context of a trend going back at least to the 1820s (and I increasingly think to the early 1790s) and which was already the leading issue of the day. Slavery had been that overtly, especially with regard to the territories, at least since 1846. Even just going for a more immediate signpost that things had gone past the point of recovery argues for the Kansas-Nebraska Act two years prior.
Currently reading an anthology of original werewolf stories (Mark of the Beast). Prior to that Sharkpunk, an anthology of short genre fiction dealing with sharks, and the latest Ellen Datlow "best of the year" anthology of horror.
Sharkpunk wasn't horrible, but I find it has the same issues as the Mark of the Beast. It's an anthology that is very narrow themed and mostly has stories by folks of middling talent. There HAVE been a few good stories in both books, but you have to slog through the crap to get to them. Datlow of course is an amazing editor so nothing but praise for her anthology.
Feeling I might need to switch gears to some nonfiction soon. Honestly starting to feel burnt out on horror anthologies, because I have read so many recently that I have knocked off most of the stellar recent entries on Kindle, I keep coming across things reprinted elsewhere, And the stuff I haven't read is every decreasing in quality.
For those of you who like well written military history on obscure topics, I'd suggest "Medieval Maritime Warfare" by Charles D. Stanton. It covers pretty much all aspects of the topic including the ships, navigation, logistics, crews, strategy and tactics. To quote the back sheet "Covers the sea wars fought by the Byzantines, the Muslims, the Normans, the Crusaders, the Italian City States, the Vikings, the English, the French, the Hanseatic League". This is not a topic that has received a lot of scholarly attention and it's well written. Three of my degrees are in history, and sad to say, a lot of historians can't write. Really, really, can't. Not just kind of can't...
Anyway, the author is a retired U.S. naval officer who went off to Cambridge after serving to study history. His specialty, and prior book, is on the Normans in the Mediterranean. it's good too, but more specialized. This one is broader, a virtue in an underserved specialty.
Aside from being interesting in and of itself, my mind was ticking over the aspects of how it would adapt, and change, in an RPG. Always a bonus :)
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Finished Joe Abercrombies' "Half The World" (Shattered Sea #2) and, feeling that I need a palate clenser, started on China Mievlles' "Embassytown".
"Half the World" is very far from his best work, but it was still incredibly solid and entertaining, even if it doesn't have this lingering emotional impact that his other books - including the opening volume of this trilogy - ad on me.
Certain things Half the World does astonishingly well - the setting of the Shattered Sea is rounded and deepened, giving the characters a very unique feel and some Viking flavored fantasy speech (this is a highly quotable book), the action is somewhat sparse but exceptionally well written when it happens, and as always the characters are written in a convincing and touching and tragic way that cannot leave the reader uncaring. The idea of "elf magic" being modern technology is neat, and gets to play into the most interesting scene in the book, where a "witch" uses a gun to win a fight, and then sacrifices one of her friends (by shooting him in the head) explaining that "a price must be paid" - we as the readers know how untrue that is, but she doesn't, and her action is more a telling of her character than it is about how the "magic" works. The choice to tell the story through a pair of two new PoVs also truly helps the book be distinct from the first one while still remain very much the same story about the same people and troubles.
However, at the bottom line, past the twists and the grit, the story is just so... normal. There's a teenage boy and a teenage girl. On an epic journey they study under mentors and fall in love with each other (complete with a set of absurd miscommunications across the way) and complete the journey to adulthood. Of course, their story isn't quite over yet and they have an entire extra Joe Abercrombie book to live through, so I expect some trouble, but looked at its lonesome, Half The World tells us exactly the kind of story we've grown used to reading. This was a disappointment to me, as the subversive nature of Half A King was a large part of what I loved so much about that book.
So, Half The World was fantastic, miles better than the competition in the YA market and certainly worthy of adult attention despite the premise. It is fun, crunchy, well paced, well written and intelligent. I just wish it strode a less well-trampled path.
Lord Snow, Embassytown is really great too. You know how Mieville is trying to write in every genre? Embassytown is his stab at CJ Cherryh-esque "anthropological" SF, with an (also Cherryh-esque) focus on linguistics. I like all the little Cherryh Easter Eggs, even if I'm only imagining them.
Just finished Curtsies & Conspiracies Gail Carriger. Maybe not quite as good as the first Finished School novel. The stakes seemed a bit lower, even if the costs were higher. Probably should have been called Curtsies & Consequences. ;-) At least there were some real game changing developments. I already ordered the sequel from the library.
About to start Legacies by F. Paul Wilson. More Repairman Jack.
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I'm taking a break from Chapelwood by Cheri Priest. A lot of the POV characters are doing very repetitive stuff and there hasn't been a lot of action.
After how amazing Maplecroft was, Chapelwood kind of felt like Cherie Priest had moved on and was writing this because she had too, or something.
So I started The Tomb by F. Paul Wilson. It's the first of the Repairman Jack series. It's been updated from 1984 to 2004, so that's cool, too. :-) It's really good so far. It also has a bunch of POV characters, but they're all third person, not first person "letters."
The Tomb is an awesome book! The Keep is my other favorite by F. Paul Wilson. He goes quite a bit further with both concepts, with something like a dozen other Repairman Jack novels, but the Tomb, IMO, is the best.
Avoid the movie version of The Keep, which kicks puppies and destroys rainbows in it's terribleness.
I'm a little perturbed with F. Paul Wilson's series structure. It seems like there are two (or more) series that are kind of intertwined, but a lot of those series don't deal primarily with the main story.
At least F. Paul Wilson has a lot of books out, so he can be a long term project. Which is a good thing. No a "summer reading" project, but a "until the end of the twenty-teens" project.
:-D
dipping into nonfiction at the moment: Just "borrowed" via kindle and amazon prime "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond. Been wanting to read this book for years but it somehow never got on my read list. Should be interesting as someone interested in world building.
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I'm a little perturbed with F. Paul Wilson's series structure. It seems like there are two (or more) series that are kind of intertwined, but a lot of those series don't deal primarily with the main story.
At least F. Paul Wilson has a lot of books out, so he can be a long term project. Which is a good thing. No a "summer reading" project, but a "until the end of the twenty-teens" project.
:-D
The main story moves very slowly across books, which never mattered to me because each of them was so satisfying in it's own way and told a complete story arc. The structure of the RJ series is actually one of the things I love most about it, but I really don't want to spoil stuff for you. Let's talk about this more once you've made it to about book 5 or so of the RJ series :)
Oh wow, OK. I'm only in the single digit number of chapters in book #2. :-P
Good to know. Just as long as it isn't GRRM long. ;-)
(I'm pretty sure the Adversary Cycle is complete, right?)