[T77]

Finished book three of the Hell Divers series by Nicholas Sansbury Smith. I thought his Extinction Cycle series was just OK. Book one of Hell Divers was just OK too. HD2 was better than one and HD3 was his best work yet. He showed a lot of improvement in plot and character development, pacing and world-building. I definitely recommend his HD series if you can get it at your library. Abyss has been reading this too and seemed to like it more than I did. I have come around and concur with him after HD3.

This post has been edited by T77: 22 August 2018 - 04:56 PM

[acesn8s]

About 80% of the way through Children of Earth and Sky. Makes we want to reread Sarantine Mosaic. I've got too much in my queue to do it though.

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 14 August 2018 - 11:48 PM, said:

Tad Williams' collected paperback for To Green Angel Tower. Now this is a howling brick of a doorstopper at paperback size, 1000+ pages, and set in approximately 10pt type.

About 3/4 of the way through. As is typical for Tad, this book could be about 1/2 the length. Regardless, I'm enjoying it (especially as I feel no qualms about skipping the extraneous parts).

[QuickTidal]

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 22 August 2018 - 06:50 PM, said:

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 14 August 2018 - 11:48 PM, said:

Tad Williams' collected paperback for To Green Angel Tower. Now this is a howling brick of a doorstopper at paperback size, 1000+ pages, and set in approximately 10pt type.

About 3/4 of the way through. As is typical for Tad, this book could be about 1/2 the length. Regardless, I'm enjoying it (especially as I feel no qualms about skipping the extraneous parts).

What I love about Tad is that even in the books that seem like they should/could EASILY be shorter...I'm still not bored by the filler...I don't know how he pulls that off for me, but he does.

But yeah, you can skip over that stuff too and get the gist.

I think the only trope Tad employs that I dislike is the "adventure/fight/disorientation underground" stuff...and I skim those.

[Baco Xtath]

Recently listened to Senlin Ascends and The Arm of the Sphinx, both excellent books. Also almost finished listening to A Crown of Cold Silver; another great book. I highly recommend all three of these. Next up, Robert Jackson Bennett's new Foundryside.

[Macros]

Finished Thousand Sons of the Horus heresy

A slow start that turned into a superb book that's answered and created so many questions

Spoiler query/thoughts time

Spoiler

How much did the emperor know/suspect. Obviously he didn't expect Magnus to force the golden path and shatter the throne.

But surely had he been a bit more open with Magnus that never would have come to pass.

The vision that the primordial destroyer showed Magnus of the shrieking corpse on the golden throne, was that a true vision of what the emperor had planned for Magnus or simply a twisted misinterpretation of the future of the actual emperor stuck there, a fate more sure once Magnus has fucked up by forcing the path?

Is the Emperor as conniving and scheming as chaos in reality?
Everything points to chaos' resurgence being massively pushed by the emperor's actions, be it directly or indirectly. The council of Nikea, too many psykers brought on the old night. What is the emperor if not the most powerful one ever seen?

Kind of felt sorry for Magnus the whole way through, it was obvious he was being manipulated, my only wonder is how did the emperor miss chaos' involvement in the curing of the legion when he clearly couldn't (wouldn't?) Fix them himself

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 22 August 2018 - 06:56 PM, said:

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 22 August 2018 - 06:50 PM, said:

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 14 August 2018 - 11:48 PM, said:

Tad Williams' collected paperback for To Green Angel Tower. Now this is a howling brick of a doorstopper at paperback size, 1000+ pages, and set in approximately 10pt type.

About 3/4 of the way through. As is typical for Tad, this book could be about 1/2 the length. Regardless, I'm enjoying it (especially as I feel no qualms about skipping the extraneous parts).

What I love about Tad is that even in the books that seem like they should/could EASILY be shorter...I'm still not bored by the filler...I don't know how he pulls that off for me, but he does.

But yeah, you can skip over that stuff too and get the gist.

I think the only trope Tad employs that I dislike is the "adventure/fight/disorientation underground" stuff...and I skim those.

Contains possibly THE single most irritating throw-the-book-across-the-room moments I have ever encountered in fantasy lit.

[Abyss]

Baco Xtath, on 22 August 2018 - 09:09 PM, said:

Recently listened to Senlin Ascends and The Arm of the Sphinx, both excellent books. ...

Enjoyed these, an instance where the earbooks improved on the print version.

[Abyss]

T77, on 22 August 2018 - 04:55 PM, said:

Finished book three of the Hell Divers series by Nicholas Sansbury Smith. I thought his Extinction Cycle series was just OK. Book one of Hell Divers was just OK too. HD2 was better than one and HD3 was his best work yet. He showed a lot of improvement in plot and character development, pacing and world-building. I definitely recommend his HD series if you can get it at your library. Abyss has been reading this too and seemed to like it more than I did. I have come around and concur with him after HD3.

In a big Hollywood video game made sf book sort of way.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 23 August 2018 - 04:00 AM, said:

QuickTidal, on 22 August 2018 - 06:56 PM, said:

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 22 August 2018 - 06:50 PM, said:

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 14 August 2018 - 11:48 PM, said:

Tad Williams' collected paperback for To Green Angel Tower. Now this is a howling brick of a doorstopper at paperback size, 1000+ pages, and set in approximately 10pt type.

About 3/4 of the way through. As is typical for Tad, this book could be about 1/2 the length. Regardless, I'm enjoying it (especially as I feel no qualms about skipping the extraneous parts).

What I love about Tad is that even in the books that seem like they should/could EASILY be shorter...I'm still not bored by the filler...I don't know how he pulls that off for me, but he does.

But yeah, you can skip over that stuff too and get the gist.

I think the only trope Tad employs that I dislike is the "adventure/fight/disorientation underground" stuff...and I skim those.

Contains possibly THE single most irritating throw-the-book-across-the-room moments I have ever encountered in fantasy lit.

PARADISE is here bitches, on 23 August 2018 - 04:01 AM, said:

I was waiting for that

One does one’s humble best.

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Abyss, on 23 August 2018 - 04:00 AM, said:

QuickTidal, on 22 August 2018 - 06:56 PM, said:

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 22 August 2018 - 06:50 PM, said:

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 14 August 2018 - 11:48 PM, said:

Tad Williams' collected paperback for To Green Angel Tower. Now this is a howling brick of a doorstopper at paperback size, 1000+ pages, and set in approximately 10pt type.

About 3/4 of the way through. As is typical for Tad, this book could be about 1/2 the length. Regardless, I'm enjoying it (especially as I feel no qualms about skipping the extraneous parts).

What I love about Tad is that even in the books that seem like they should/could EASILY be shorter...I'm still not bored by the filler...I don't know how he pulls that off for me, but he does.

But yeah, you can skip over that stuff too and get the gist.

I think the only trope Tad employs that I dislike is the "adventure/fight/disorientation underground" stuff...and I skim those.

Contains possibly THE single most irritating throw-the-book-across-the-room moments I have ever encountered in fantasy lit.

What moment?

Finished M,S,T. On to Rjurik Davidson's Unwrapped Sky.

[Mentalist]

'Byss probably means the elvish rap battle.

[QuickTidal]

Mentalist, on 23 August 2018 - 02:38 PM, said:

'Byss probably means the elvish rap battle.

Yeah, he hates the Norns "vocal magic" moments from the Battle of Naglimund. I've never understood why.

[acesn8s]

I finished The Children of Earth and Sky during lunch. Another wonderful book by Kay.

I think I'm going to start The Crimson Campaign by McClellan. I already bought it, liked book 1 and have seen some positive reviews here for the series.

[Abyss]

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 23 August 2018 - 12:08 PM, said:

Abyss, on 23 August 2018 - 04:00 AM, said:

QuickTidal, on 22 August 2018 - 06:56 PM, said:

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 22 August 2018 - 06:50 PM, said:

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 14 August 2018 - 11:48 PM, said:

Tad Williams' collected paperback for To Green Angel Tower. Now this is a howling brick of a doorstopper at paperback size, 1000+ pages, and set in approximately 10pt type.

About 3/4 of the way through. As is typical for Tad, this book could be about 1/2 the length. Regardless, I'm enjoying it (especially as I feel no qualms about skipping the extraneous parts).

What I love about Tad is that even in the books that seem like they should/could EASILY be shorter...I'm still not bored by the filler...I don't know how he pulls that off for me, but he does.

But yeah, you can skip over that stuff too and get the gist.

I think the only trope Tad employs that I dislike is the "adventure/fight/disorientation underground" stuff...and I skim those.

Contains possibly THE single most irritating throw-the-book-across-the-room moments I have ever encountered in fantasy lit.

What moment?

Finished M,S,T. On to Rjurik Davidson's Unwrapped Sky.

Mentalist, on 23 August 2018 - 02:38 PM, said:

'Byss probably means the elvish rap battle.

QuickTidal, on 23 August 2018 - 03:21 PM, said:

Mentalist, on 23 August 2018 - 02:38 PM, said:

'Byss probably means the elvish rap battle.

Yeah, he hates the Norns "vocal magic" moments from the Battle of Naglimund. I've never understood why.

Spoiler

The good elves and the bad elves are singing at each other. Ogres and humans are slaughtering each other, and the two armies of elves are fucking singing.And when one of the humans points out that some help would be nice, the good elf says ‘yeah, sorry, we’re busy singing at those bad elf guys, carry on.’.Singing elves are one of the worse tropes in the genre. All that’s missing is Tom fucking Bombadillo prancing in with a bunch of not rhymes.

[Salt-Man Z]

I had been reading Mariam Petrosyan's The Gray House, but it's been... not bad, but not grabbing me. It's about a bunch of disfigured/deformed/disabled kids living (mostly unsupervised?) in the titular house. I saw it billed as "for fans of The Library At Mount Char" but ha-ha not really. I'll get back to it before too long, but in the meantime:

BK JPK was asking in the "have you read it?" thread (my proud legacy to this forum, if nothing else) about Caitlín R. Kiernan's The Red Tree, and I said I owned it and used that as impetus to finally start it. And boy did I. I read about 100 pages the first night, and 80 or so the second. I'm a little over halfway through now, and it's got me hooked real good. Very creepy, fairly erotic (but not, like, constantly.) It's about an author who rents an old farmhouse in Rhode Island with a huge old oak tree on the property, where she discovers the journal of the previous resident who was investigating the tree and the legends surrounding it. Oh, and it's presented as a posthumous publication of the author's journals (I believe she commits suicide? I forget if that was stated outright or not.) So at times we've got a writer writing as a writer writing about another writer's writing (in her journal she occasionally will transcribe the previous resident's papers.) Anyway, it's super atmospheric and creepy, and it's definitely less unnerving to read over lunch in a Taco Bell booth than it is at 1am at night in bed in the dark.

This post has been edited by Salt-Man Z: 24 August 2018 - 04:07 AM

[polishgenius]

By the way I started a quick re-read of Ada Palmer's Too Like The Lightning and ended up re-reading the entire damn series and wanted to re-iterate that those of you who haven't should really really pick this series up. She reads a little like an SF Guy Gavriel Kay in that it's a lot of very pretty prose describing a bunch of remarkable people where a lot of the most brilliant scenes are just about people talking in rooms, where the joy is in the shift of tension and balance of power throughout the conversation.
But quite honestly unless she really fucks up the landing in book 4 I think she might be a better writer than Kay, because none of his books, even the most brilliant ones, are as consistent all the way through as this series is so far - also like Kay she's not averse to letting odd narrative stylistic choices slip into the work, but it never detracts from the books like it often has with him for me.

It's a remarkable piece of work. The main character is something special, one of the most compelling protagonists of an SF story there's been for ages, but almost everyone involved in the story is of interest in one way or another.

[Puck]

^This, I cannot agree enough (except about the Kay stuff, because I have not read any Kay and cannot comment). Palmer has shot up very high on my favourite authors list. I love the prose and story and characters.

[JPK]

Salt-Man Z, on 23 August 2018 - 07:11 PM, said:

BK was asking in the "have you read it?" thread (my proud legacy to this forum, if nothing else) about Caitlín R. Kiernan's The Red Tree, and I said I owned it and used that as impetus to finally start it.

That was actually me, not BK. I plan on staying it tonight now.

[Salt-Man Z]

JPK, on 23 August 2018 - 11:32 PM, said:

That was actually me, not BK. I plan on staying it tonight now.

Gah, I knew I should have double-checked. Anyway, enjoy! I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's not going to be for everyone here, but man, I for one cannot put it down. (Heading to bed now, and I expect I'll be up until at least 1am again...)