[Whisperzzzzzzz]

QuickTidal, on 11 January 2016 - 04:02 PM, said:

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 11 January 2016 - 03:47 PM, said:

I'm 15 pages into Stand On Zanzibar and I have no idea what's going on.

From what I hear it's assembled into chapters that handle functions. Some chapters are visual camerawork, some are the linear narrative, some are atmosphere, others world building...and the headers are the indicator of what the particular chapter is meant o be about and how it serves the narrative.

This is something like what Haruki Murakami did in AFTER DARK, where he began and ended chapters with the POV being kind of like the eye of an audience camera that zooms and pans and basically sets up the scene as if it were a movie...not a book.

I hear Zanzibar is like that too.

Yeah, it seems to be like that, which isn't a unique style these days - I've read other books that use similar narrative devices (most recently, Tad Williams' Otherland books set the mise en scene using newsfeed snippets as epigraphs). The part of Zanzibar I'm most overwhelmed by is just the sheer amount of new vocabulary that is being thrown at me. In-universe slang, concatenated words, and proper names abound; presumably, one is intended to grok their meanings through context. I just don't have enough context yet.

This post has been edited by Whisperzzzzzzz: 11 January 2016 - 05:05 PM

[Andorion]

Finished Sword of the Lictor and I like it the best so far. Also I think the story might change a bit as several really important events have taken place.

[QuickTidal]

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 11 January 2016 - 05:04 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 11 January 2016 - 04:02 PM, said:

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 11 January 2016 - 03:47 PM, said:

I'm 15 pages into Stand On Zanzibar and I have no idea what's going on.

From what I hear it's assembled into chapters that handle functions. Some chapters are visual camerawork, some are the linear narrative, some are atmosphere, others world building...and the headers are the indicator of what the particular chapter is meant o be about and how it serves the narrative.

This is something like what Haruki Murakami did in AFTER DARK, where he began and ended chapters with the POV being kind of like the eye of an audience camera that zooms and pans and basically sets up the scene as if it were a movie...not a book.

I hear Zanzibar is like that too.

Yeah, it seems to be like that, which isn't a unique style these days - I've read other books that use similar narrative devices (most recently, Tad Williams' Otherland books set the mise en scene using newsfeed snippets as epigraphs). The part of Zanzibar I'm most overwhelmed by is just the sheer amount of new vocabulary that is being thrown at me. In-universe slang, concatenated words, and proper names abound; presumably, one is intended to grok their meanings through context. I just don't have enough context yet.

Hopefully you're rewarded for the extra work up front in the end. Let us know how it goes, I've always been curious about that book.

[Macros]

Finished at the gates of darkness.
As I suspected, another rushed conclusion, but overall the 2 books of tue demonwsr duet were better than the conclave of the shadow books and the middle trilogy.

Starting a kingdom besieged, just to get this done with, I have little faith in a resolution that will satisfy me

[Andorion]

Abyss, on 11 January 2016 - 03:23 PM, said:

Macros, on 11 January 2016 - 07:39 AM, said:

Andorion, on 08 January 2016 - 04:57 PM, said:

Macros, on 08 January 2016 - 04:39 PM, said:

A third into rides a dread legion.
One thing is bothering me, Im assuming he's just going to duex ex the problem away.
Pug has wards all over the world, yet the tarendal are banging open rifts and building cities with magic. Why isn't the alarm ringing on sorcerers' isle?

Out of curiosity, which Feist books are really good? I have only read Magician

Id read Magican (the revised edition if you can), Silverthorn, A Darkness ay Sethanon, the Empire Trilogy (coauthored with Janny wurts) and Honoured Enemy.
Definitely read empire trilo before reading Honoured enemy.

Silverthorn, Darkness, the Empire trilo and Enemy all flow directly from Magician and all are more or less a complete story.

Everything else follows after or is a prequel added after the fact.

I quit after the Serpent War and found that mediocre at best with a weak as fuck ending that felt tagged on for the sake of stretching a trilogy into four books. But... if you're going to push thru you should probably read (the decent) Prince of the Blood and (the wholly irritating borderline insulting to the reader) King's Buccaneer because they lay the groundwork for Serpent War.

I tried one or two other books after that and just couldn't do it.

So a reread of magician + 2 books, then a trilogy and a novella. Got it

[Abyss]

Andorion, on 11 January 2016 - 06:27 PM, said:

...

So a reread of magician + 2 books, then a trilogy and a novella. Got it

Right. And then pretend Feist retired.

[Slow Ben]

Finished Heroes Die.

OK, i get the love.

Off to mortgage my fucking home to get a copy of Blade of Tyshalle.

This post has been edited by Slow Ben: 11 January 2016 - 07:13 PM

[QuickTidal]

Slow Ben, on 11 January 2016 - 07:13 PM, said:

Finished Heroes Die.

OK, i get the love.

Off to mortgage my fucking home to get a copy of Blade of Tyshalle.

If you have a Kindle, or Kindle app on your device...it's $8 at amazon in digital form.

http://www.amazon.co...g=UTF8&qid=&sr=

[Puck]

QuickTidal, on 11 January 2016 - 07:17 PM, said:

Slow Ben, on 11 January 2016 - 07:13 PM, said:

Finished Heroes Die.

OK, i get the love.

Off to mortgage my fucking home to get a copy of Blade of Tyshalle.

If you have a Kindle, or Kindle app on your device...it's $8 at amazon in digital form.

http://www.amazon.co...g=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Or even less, depending on where and what data format (seen the .epub for about $5 on Google Play).

[polishgenius]

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 11 January 2016 - 05:04 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 11 January 2016 - 04:02 PM, said:

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 11 January 2016 - 03:47 PM, said:

I'm 15 pages into Stand On Zanzibar and I have no idea what's going on.

From what I hear it's assembled into chapters that handle functions. Some chapters are visual camerawork, some are the linear narrative, some are atmosphere, others world building...and the headers are the indicator of what the particular chapter is meant o be about and how it serves the narrative.

This is something like what Haruki Murakami did in AFTER DARK, where he began and ended chapters with the POV being kind of like the eye of an audience camera that zooms and pans and basically sets up the scene as if it were a movie...not a book.

I hear Zanzibar is like that too.

Yeah, it seems to be like that, which isn't a unique style these days - I've read other books that use similar narrative devices (most recently, Tad Williams' Otherland books set the mise en scene using newsfeed snippets as epigraphs). The part of Zanzibar I'm most overwhelmed by is just the sheer amount of new vocabulary that is being thrown at me. In-universe slang, concatenated words, and proper names abound; presumably, one is intended to grok their meanings through context. I just don't have enough context yet.

Yeah, I've got Zanzibar on my e-reader but I mostly read that on my commute when I'm pretty knackered in both directions and it's just too much effort to assemble it on a crowded train where I have to keep watching out for my stop. I'm gonna have to put a spare day aside one day to reading it.

[stone monkey]

Stand on Zanzibar is really designed to give a snapshot of a world. So it does come across as a bit fragmented at times. You're supposed to immerse yourself in it rather than seek a coherent narrative, I think.

[JPK]

I finished Gardens of the Moon on audio while cleaning today. It is now officially the book I've reread or listened to the most and yet I always find little bits that I either missed or forgot on previous reads. Next up is Dead Beat in all its awesomeness.

This post has been edited by The Incredible Kitsu: 12 January 2016 - 12:10 AM

[Macros]

Finished a kingdom besieged.
Its just getting silly now
Starting a crown imperilled, only 2 to go

[Chance]

Going through Tracker by C.J. Cherryh and I'm expecting it to be strange when it is over, waiting for the next one will be a pain. A great series and it is getting into very interesting territory, I expect most writers could take lessons in planning a series by Cherryh for whom the next event is always looming large at the horizon and who makes an occationally glacial pace interesting. Can't say enough of good stuff about the series and that is in a series with remarkably few explosions and space scale violence for a sixteen books sf series that still hold my interest.

This post has been edited by Chance: 12 January 2016 - 03:15 PM

[Mentalist]

Andorion, on 08 January 2016 - 03:33 PM, said:

Mentalist, on 08 January 2016 - 03:21 PM, said:

I'm about 200 pages into "A crown for cold Silver", and it's a good read. Still reads similar to "Best Served Cold", but there's several main PoVs with their own plot lines, and they ALL do their bits of flashbacks/retelling the story, so I'm constantly kept interested. The pacing is just right, too-no over-long action sequences and no over-long exposition/infodumps. The main plot is ok so far-I'm suspecting I see the clichéd plot twist/thickening coming, but it may yet get inverted.
Overall, I find the book hard to put away when I get home from my commute, so it's certainly doing something right.

Strange thing happened with me and this book. I started off really liking it and at about the middle I lost interest. Its still lying around, unfinished. I might try again later this year.

So I am chapters into Sword of the Lictor, and this book is much better than the previous books. The pace seems to have really picked up.

Part 2 has gotten more frantic. The build-up has (so far) not been used as well a it maybe could have, and there's a bunch of cliffhanger chapter endings before switching to other PoVs, who are also doin important stuff, but "dammit, X's life is in danger! Wha happened?"

Kin of reminds me of the second third of "The way of kings" actually, in the structural sense.

[Macros]

And on to the last one.

Book 2 was actually a slight step up. But still silly
I have no idea what rabbit hes going to pull out of what hat now, no doubt it will be an elvish rabbit that no one knew existed before and it will have demon blood and be part angel, part drealord, possibly a dread kings bastard child with sung.

I take it back, a kingdom besieged was ridiculous, I have no hopes for magicians end to be anything other than a protracted series of duex ex

[worry]

I dunno, man. I think it lives up to that kinda rep, but you're unpredictable. It's like the opposite of popcorn reading, but you do read plenty of complicated stuff. I can see someone complaining that it's too artsy fartsy, and sometimes you seem to dislike that kinda stuff but other times you seem to love it, depending on the specific book/author. I actually kinda doubt you'll be devastated by it or anything like that, but I am at least interested in your reaction. It's only ~300 pages so it's not a doorstopper by any means.

[Abyss]

NIGHTLIFE, Thurman's Cal n Nik series book one, in earbook, actually got so bad that I stopped halfway thru. The frustrating part is that the characters, the conflict, the actual story are good enough, but wow... The writing... It hurts. Thurman has clearly never seen a metaphor he didn't like, a simile he didn't love, a tangential narrative that wholly yanks the reader out of the scene to no helpful effect. It's like I walked into a store and got swept up in a wave of snow that drove the focus away from the story, like a rainstorm that makes you lose your way even tho I know that as sure as I can find my feet il walk in the sunshine again like a California summer that I experienced as a child back when I believed that the world was safe like a warm mattress that you sink into like a happy pile of marshmallows that smell like feet that have been walking all day through the snow that drove the focus away from whatever I was talking about on right goats...
Admittedly if I didn't have NEMESIS GAMES sitting right there in the earbook file, I may have persevered, but fuck, five minutes into Games I actually felt happier about life.
Anyway NEMISIS GAMES, The Expanse book 5... Alternating earbook and ebook and loving it.

[Andorion]

Abyss, on 13 January 2016 - 02:44 AM, said:

NIGHTLIFE, Thurman's Cal n Nik series book one, in earbook, actually got so bad that I stopped halfway thru. The frustrating part is that the characters, the conflict, the actual story are good enough, but wow... The writing... It hurts. Thurman has clearly never seen a metaphor he didn't like, a simile he didn't love, a tangential narrative that wholly yanks the reader out of the scene to no helpful effect. It's like I walked into a store and got swept up in a wave of snow that drove the focus away from the story, like a rainstorm that makes you lose your way even tho I know that as sure as I can find my feet il walk in the sunshine again like a California summer that I experienced as a child back when I believed that the world was safe like a warm mattress that you sink into like a happy pile of marshmallows that smell like feet that have been walking all day through the snow that drove the focus away from whatever I was talking about on right goats...
Admittedly if I didn't have NEMESIS GAMES sitting right there in the earbook file, I may have persevered, but fuck, five minutes into Games I actually felt happier about life.
Anyway NEMISIS GAMES, The Expanse book 5... Alternating earbook and ebook and loving it.

I had a few issues with the series myself, but after the first two books, things started improving

[JPK]

Raging Cajun Gator King, on 13 January 2016 - 02:10 AM, said:

Ok I've seen a few reviews on Amazon saying that after Blood Merdian they can't read another book right away. This is accurate or just something to say?

I think it could go either way. I had to jump to the other end of the spectrum with Discworld. The other book I'd had lived up was The Autumn Republic by McClellan. I would have gone into a hiatus if I tried going into that one right away. So, I'd say nothing dark, but comedy would work just fine.