Finished Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol,, started rereading Inferno. I'm pretty sure I'd only read these two once before, and so far (only a couple chaptets in) I temember even less about this one.
Back to M John Harrison's Viriconium stories. So far the two short stories "Lords of Misrule" and "Strange great sins", stories I didn't care much for the first time I read them. I like them more now, probably because I can appreciate Harrison's development as an author more now, and understand more of his 'deeper meaning' and character driven stories.
Man, how I've changed! I used to hate people expecting me to find deeper meanings in texts.
Now reading Harrison's A Storm of Wings.
Also reading Lichemaster by Carl Sargant and Rick Priestly. So far so good. I'm quite impressed with the amount of detail they give NPCs to make them easy to GM and vivid for players, especially for what amounts to be a pretty straightforward stop the baddie adventure.
In between Harrison I'm reading Night's Dark Masters - A Guide to Vampires for WHFRP by Steve Darlington and Jody McGregor. So far so decent. A lot of flavor text, which is good. Other than that it's pretty standard D&D-adjacent stuff.
My friend Katie Hallahan's debut novel, The Twice-Sold Soul, released yesterday, so I started reading that today.
"A Storm of Wings", and the Viriconium stories in general, were a lot bleaker and more depressing than I remember. I don't know if it's faulty memory or me just somehow not picking up on the setting and people and focusing solely on the action the first time I read them.
Still damn good stuff.
On to Neal Asher's Gridlinked, one of his Polity novels. This is first of his works I've read. So far it's entertaining. We'll see if it's memorable once it's done.
"Gridlinked" was fine. A bit predictable, let a couple characters off a bit easy, and I thought the 'start every chapter with an in-universe history book excerpt' was handled rather inexpertly, but overall a decent timewaster. Not enough to convince me to seek out more of his stuff but I might pick up more stuff if I find it at the used bookstore.
Back to Harrison.
More Adrian Tchaikovsky. Just finished Children of Time, Children of Ruin and Children of Memory. Where this guy excels is in world/culture building with non-human intelligences in particular. A more modern David Brin, although most of his non-human intelligences aren't strictly *alien*, so much as very different (like Brin's developments of chimpanzee and dolphin advanced intellects and cultures in his Uplift books).
Note that he deals heavily in Children of Time with spiders. If you're an arachnophobe, this is not the book for you!
I've been checking out various other books he's written, and am eager to see what his fantasy is like, having enjoyed at least six of his sci-fi books. Based on what I've read so far, I'm expecting some juicy exploration of fantasy races, and perhaps even sentient magic!
I had intended to finish the Viriconium stories in one go but again I only read a couple of the short stories, "The Dancer from the Dance" and "The Lamia and Lord Cromis", before wanting to try something else. They are good stories but I suspect I mostly just skimmed through the last (and first) time I read them and but they are depressing enough that I want to read something else before diving into "In Viriconium", the third novel.
Something else is Sterling Lanier's Hiero's Journey. Lanier's most notable achievement is probably getting "Dune" published after a score of publishers refused it. "Hiero's Journey" is set some five thousand years after the Cold War went hot and civilization is putting itself back together. It is one of the inspirations for Gamma World, a fact that was made clear by the psychic powers, roaming mutants, empathic moose, telepathic bears and anthropoid wolverines. And that's just the first chapter.
So far the greatest sticking point for me is not the blatantly unscientific psychic abilities but the idea that the names of the areas are basically the same after five thousand years of change, five thousand year old knives are still perfectly servicable, and a variant of the Catholic church is still a thing though less recognizable than the one in, say, "A Canticle for Leibowitz". People are strange.
Bjørn Røyrvik wrote: I
Something else is Sterling Lanier's Hiero's Journey.
Just in case you don't know, there is a sequel to this (The Unforsaken Hiero). Not as good as Journey but not bad (or so I thought many, many years ago when I read them).
I was a wee lad back then but I remember thinking them to be fairly entertaining post apolcalypse fluff.
This is a rather recent printing under Gollancz' Fantasy/Science Fiction Masterworks series, which has given me a lot of good stuff that I haven't had to track down used. Which is to say I don't think the sequel will be as easy to come by as this. I'll keep an eye open for it in any case.
Copies of 'The Unforsaken Hiero' do turn up secondhand on occasion.
I'm reading 'A Tour Through The Whole Island of Great Britain' by Daniel Defoe, 'Raven - Swordmistress of Vhaos' by Richard Kirk, and 'The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic', by Alan Moore and Steve Moore.
Tim Emrick wrote: My friend Katie Hallahan's debut novel, The Twice-Sold Soul, released yesterday, so I started reading that today. I finished this a week or so ago, and enjoyed it immensely. I'd highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys modern-day fantasies with clever plots, compelling characters, and a heaping dose of romantic tension.
I've been gaming with Katie for 20 years now (this very month, IIRC?) so I've known for quite some time that she was a talented storysmith. Getting to read her debut novel was a real treat!
In other reading news, I requested Dan Brown's Origin from my local library so that I can read the one Robert Langdon novel that I haven't yet. While I was picking it up, I saw Dante's Divine Comedy: A Biography, by Joseph Luzzi, on the new arrivals display. I've read all three parts of the Divine Comedy, and very recently reread Brown's Inferno, so decided to check this out, too. This book is more of a "bio" of Dante's poem, examining the history of its reception and criticism, rather than of the man himself. It's still fascinating stuff, given the ambitiousness (and bravado) of Dante's work, and its pivotal role in the formation of a vernacular, unified, "Italian" literature and language.
"Hiero's Journey" was good and now I want to find the rest of the books because the story is definitely not finished. Perhaps Thriftbooks has them. I'll wait until after Christmas because my 'unread' pile is too big as it is and will increase come Christmas, and I keep interspersing with rereads.
Speaking of rereads, I will finish off the Viriconium stories with In Viriconium and A Young Man's Journey to Viriconium. It's interesting to see how the nature of the titular city changes over time, from a distant and vaguely described but very definite existance to more and more probably modern time but vaguer existance.
I still think I prefer the less 'artsy' and more story-focus stories to the more personality-focused stories.
Harrison's writing undoubtedly improves as the Viriconium stories progressed even if I tend to prefer the older stuff. The city is less a distinct fictional world than it is a collection of familiar names to write different types of fiction around. Much like Terry Pratchett used the Discworld as a soapbox to poke fun at different things, Viriconium is a backdrop to write different types of fiction around.
And now for something completely different, Vidar Sandbeck's Heltene i Hungerholtet (The Heroes in Hunger Grove), a kids story with strong autobiographical elements. It's been languishing in my parent's shed for years, and I haven't read it since I was gifted it for my eighth birthday. I'm rereading it because I can't remember anything except the cover, and in a few years I will pass it on to my niece and nephew.
After that I will start on Elizabeth Gray Vining's Windows for the Crown Prince, an account of the author's time spent as a private tutor for Japan's crown prince in the wake of WWII.
"Heltene i Hungerholtet" ('Starvation' or 'famine' might be a better translation than 'hunger') was OK as a slice of life to a time and place not too long ago and not too far off, but was frankly rather poorly written. Not so much the minimalist writing but the constant use of full stops where convention would put a comma or a conjunction. Like "He was big. And angry." Not that this is a bad thing in itself. Because it gives a slightly interesting emphasis. But the author would do this multiple times. Per page.
Like that.
I'm not sure I want to pass it on because frankly I don't think kids these days will find it particularly interesting.
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