[HiddenOne]

started 1632 by Eric Flint in audiobook. The old guy doing the reading is less than inspiring. Already it's reminding me of the last John Ringo book I listened to...those 2 guys aren't actually the same person are they?

[Tiste Simeon]

Finished BAB! Would say onto DOD but I went away for the week to my parents and didn't bring it with me. I did find my copy of Iain M Banks' Use of Weapons though so I'll reread that before I go onto the double finale of MBOTF!

[QuickTidal]

firvulag, on 20 February 2014 - 03:10 PM, said:

QuickTidal, I would recommend carrying on with the books, while the later books aren't quite as good as the first two sequences, they're still great

Oh I'll defo keep reading them. They are really awesome...but I've slowed my consumption of them a bit since I know that the final GG Omnibus (which is how I've been collecting them) THE VICTORY doens't come out till at least late this year.

[Chance]

Finishing up On the Steel Breeze and while a bit slow occationally it is still pretty damn good.

Going for Emperor's Blades next for something different on the strength of recommendantions above.

This post has been edited by Chance: 20 February 2014 - 06:38 PM

[worry]

Reading The Stench of Honolulu by Jack Handey , and the book is not disappointing so far. Might just read it all the way through.

[Traveller]

Finished The Surgeons Mate... then followed it up with the Ionian Mission and Treasons Harbour.

Onto The Far Side Of The World now. This stuff is great, it's like one long single book that I can't put down.

This post has been edited by Traveller: 21 February 2014 - 10:18 AM

[Baco Xtath]

About the 50% mark in Tyrant's Law, Bookman, and Calde of the Long Sun. All very good in their different ways. Had set the former two down a while back and just now getting back into them before I forget too much.
Audiobooks: 7 hrs into Snow Crash. I almost quit at first, the whole college for pizza delivery made me cringe, but I've continued and am enjoying it a hell of a lot more - though the pizza bit is still lame IMHO. 1 hr into Broken Homes. Yet to really get started but still good. And, for my workouts, I just start Hard-boiled Wonderland at the End of the World. Not nearly far enough in for any real opinion but I've been looking forward to starting Murakami.

[Abyss]

THE PASSAGE goes way better as a book than an audiobook, albeit because i can skim the interminably wandering narrative when the author decides i need to know about someone's uneventful childhood for six pages to properly appreciate the remaining one page he's actually in the story. I like this book, i don't love it, at times it's pissing me off, but i want to see where it's going.

TOUR OF THE MERRIMACK bk 4 STRENGTH AND HONOR is fairly awesome, solidly consistent with the rest of the series so far. Meluch writes great space battles with a nice side of political intrigue and world eating tentacle monsters. Have purchased bk5.

[JPK]

Starting The Phoenix Guards by Steven Brust. I'd been planning on saving the Khaavren Romances until after I'd finished all of the Taltos novels, but then I read somewhere that one of the characters from these is a pov character in Tiassa. I suppose I could still wait until I finish Iorich, but I suspect I'll just straight from that into Tiassa. At least it'll be nice to finally have some of that history filled in.

[Tiste Simeon]

Finished Use of Weapons and it remains my favourite Banks book! That ending was still pretty shocking despite it not being a surprise this time round.

I shall be starting DOD soon!

[Chance]

Finished Emperor's Blade felt short and more like it ended near the starting point of actual interesting events with the rest being a bit of a prologue. Also it was dreadfully predictable on some key events, still it leaves off in a promising place setting up for a potentially interesting next book.


Started up Revelation Space and is mostly confused and intrigued so far.

This post has been edited by Chance: 23 February 2014 - 04:56 PM

[Serenity]

^^ I'm planning on re-reading Revelation Space in the next couple of weeks so I can finally get on to the rest of the trilogy.

Finished up the original Foundation trilogy. Now about halfway through Morgan's Broken Angels. Took a while to pull me in but I'm loving it now, think I might even be liking it more than Altered Carbon. It's got a 'Dirty Dozen' kind of feel to it that I'm enjoying muchly.

[QuickTidal]

Needed a change of pace after the latest Gaunt's Ghost's, and I've never read a proper mystery novel. Never even been into that section of the book store really. So I decided to give it a go.

Grabbed THE DEVOTION OF SUSPECT X by Keigo Higashino (translated from Japanese), which is one of a series of books about a brilliant physicist (Manabu) who helps the police solve tricky crimes.

The thing that's already great about it...it's not a whodunnit. There is a murder right at the beginning, and you know right away who did it, and why (a mother protecting her daughter from her nasty, stalker ex-husband)...and the book is instead a case of a neighbor of the mother (a brilliant Mathematician who was at school with Manabu, also called "Detective Galileo") trying to cover up her crime and protect her from the police. Instead of a whodunnit, it's a cat and mouse game between two geniuses. Very Sherlocky. Great stuff so far.

[Rictus]

Korladis, on 18 February 2014 - 11:24 AM, said:

Rictus, on 15 February 2014 - 09:56 PM, said:

I am reading the absolutely-awesome-bestseller The Way of Shadows by renowned and prestigious author Brent Weeks, who has taken over half the forum but is now trying to hide behind completely ordinary names.
It's actually pretty interesting though not in any way groundbreaking.

Night Angel is okay. I've found Lightbringer to be much more enjoyable.

You got that right. Reading the Black Prism now, and it really is much better than his assassino novels. Firstly, there's that magic system which, while being simple, is pretty clever, imo. Not Warren- clever, but interesting, at the very least. More, I found that his dialogues feel a touch more alive now. In TWoS, every word out of Kylar's mouth made me cringe. Durzo was about the only interesting aspect of that series, and I'm not sure I want to find out what happens to What's-My-Name-Kylar-Who-Isn't-Azoth.

This post has been edited by Rictus: 24 February 2014 - 06:41 PM

[D'rek]

Finished Best Served Cold a little while back. Overall I liked it quite a bit. There's several characters that you can really guess where their thread is going but Abercrombie writes the climax of these threads so enjoyably that it doesn't matter. ie:

Spoiler

I knew Day would turn on Morveer and that the two of them would get sneaky with their poisons and fake poisons, but the King of Poisons being made up was very crafty. Likewise, Cosca not-dying was extremely predictable but his return scene with the Thousand Sword captains was great fun.

The Eaters thing is still pretty weird and under-explained. I guess this is something that comes from the First Law trilogy, which I haven't read but heard is in the same world. But that kinda defeats the point of it being a standalone, no?


After that I read A Blink of the Screen which is a collection of short fiction by Terry Pratchett. There are very few of the common 30-50 page "short stories" in it - seems Pratchett does not like writing that sort of thing. Most of it is just little 4-12 page gimmicky little excerpts. Some of them are a bit basic or dull, as to be expected since some are from when he was 13, but there's a lot of great little shorts in there, too, especially the Death ones (some of which are not Discworld but the Death personage is pretty similar).


And now I'm reading The Shadow of the Wind, which was pretty boring for the first 100 pages or so, but now that the character of Fermin has been added there's good pacing between his comical arguments and the more serious/mundane sections. I'm about 200 pages in now, and there are some really great sections of prose and dialogue in this book, but at the same time the story does not really interest me at all so far. Obviously there's this whole parallelism thing going on between Daniel and Carax, but it doesn't seem like even if there is a point to it that it will turn out to be an interesting point.

This post has been edited by D'rek: 25 February 2014 - 08:16 PM

[QuickTidal]

D, on 25 February 2014 - 08:14 PM, said:

And now I'm reading The Shadow of the Wind, which was pretty boring for the first 100 pages or so, but now that the character of Fermin has been added there's good pacing between his comical arguments and the more serious/mundane sections. I'm about 200 pages in now, and there are some really great sections of prose and dialogue in this book, but at the same time the story does not really interest me at all so far. Obviously there's this whole parallelism thing going on between Daniel and Carax, but it doesn't seem like even if there is a point to it that it will turn out to be an interesting point.

This is one of those books that will all fit together and make MUCH more sense upon completion. It's a slowly drawing tapestry.

And Fermin really is my fave.

Hope you enjoy the rest!

[QuickTidal]

Needed a light read before WoR drops next week, so I'm doing up the first of Tamora Pierce's Lioness series, ALANNA. Defo YA, but really quite a fun little tale so far.

[JPK]

I have a late shift at work tonight while they rewax the floors so I'm hoping to use the time that I'm stuck here to finish The Phoenix Guards by Brust and start the tentically appealing Kraken at long last.

[End of Disc One]

D, on 25 February 2014 - 08:14 PM, said:

Finished Best Served Cold a little while back. Overall I liked it quite a bit. There's several characters that you can really guess where their thread is going but Abercrombie writes the climax of these threads so enjoyably that it doesn't matter. ie:

Spoiler

I knew Day would turn on Morveer and that the two of them would get sneaky with their poisons and fake poisons, but the King of Poisons being made up was very crafty. Likewise, Cosca not-dying was extremely predictable but his return scene with the Thousand Sword captains was great fun.

The Eaters thing is still pretty weird and under-explained. I guess this is something that comes from the First Law trilogy, which I haven't read but heard is in the same world. But that kinda defeats the point of it being a standalone, no?

Eh, it's marketed as a standalone but you should have read TFL first for maximum enjoyment. One of my favorite parts of BSC was seeing old characters show up unexpectedly.

[McLovin]

Returned to reading Black Company with...RETURN OF THE BLACK COMPANY (Bleak Seasons + She Is the Darkness).