[Abyss]

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 04 March 2019 - 10:02 PM, said:

Abyss, on 04 March 2019 - 05:07 PM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 04 March 2019 - 08:08 AM, said:

Macros, on 03 March 2019 - 07:32 PM, said:

Yeah I hated Karkanhas because words are hard.

The fall of the Irish as depicted in Family Guy is truly one of the abalacritious tragedies of our era.

ftfy

Maark will use a gutting knife to albacoriate anyone who disagrees!

Must be feeling pretty crabby.

[Aptorian]

Finished Carter and Lovecraft. It's a bad book and the author should feel bad. How an ending like that made it past an editor/advanced readers I don't get.

Started Kelanved's Reach. First chapter is certainly off to a strong start. As always I am looking at new names and trying to puzzle out if this is a known character.

[Maark Abbott]

Abyss, on 05 March 2019 - 02:20 AM, said:

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 04 March 2019 - 10:02 PM, said:

Abyss, on 04 March 2019 - 05:07 PM, said:

Maark Abbott, on 04 March 2019 - 08:08 AM, said:

Macros, on 03 March 2019 - 07:32 PM, said:

Yeah I hated Karkanhas because words are hard.

The fall of the Irish as depicted in Family Guy is truly one of the abalacritious tragedies of our era.

ftfy

Maark will use a gutting knife to albacoriate anyone who disagrees!

Must be feeling pretty crabby.

Arrrkakakakaka. My disgruntlement is always maximal. I must therefore ask why we are referencing a Weird Al song.

Also I finished Vending Machine vol.2. May try and push in with some more Kate Elliott.

[Mentalist]

Finished the Guide . Part 5 wasn't great, and I would've been perfectly happy if everything ended with Part 4, but I suppose some of those things were set up earlier and had to be wrapped up.

Continuing the great TRP-clearing project, i'll be reading "Anubis Gates" and "Angels and Demons" as my commute and at-home books, respectively.

[JPK]

Anubis Gates is Tim Powers isn't it?

[Maark Abbott]

Started on School-Live! volume 10 today. It's got a bright, cheery hopeful tone right now which experience tells me that something big is coming and that something will fuck up my day.

[Chance]

JPK, on 06 March 2019 - 05:19 AM, said:

Anubis Gates is Tim Powers isn't it?

It is, it is also pretty damn entertaining.

Currently reading Breakaway by Joel Shepherd which is entertaining and occasionally also pretty good. It is light reading but can't really do much in the few hours I get to read with new job. Lots of probably good books are piling up however but I don't want to ruin them by giving them a hour here and there.

This post has been edited by Chance: 06 March 2019 - 11:58 AM

[polishgenius]

Mentalist, on 06 March 2019 - 05:11 AM, said:

Finished the Guide . Part 5 wasn't great, and I would've been perfectly happy if everything ended with Part 4, but I suppose some of those things were set up earlier and had to be wrapped up.

Continuing the great TRP-clearing project, i'll be reading "Anubis Gates" and "Angels and Demons" as my commute and at-home books, respectively.

I think part 5 is pretty good on its own merits, but as part of the Guide it's far, far, far too cynical and depressing, something Adams acknowledged later that was a result of a bad time he was going through when he wrote it. He was writing a sixth book to wrap it up more in keeping with the nature of the series but passed before he got it done.

[JPK]

This year has been a slog for me so far reading-wise. I've just finished my third book for the year - Fool's Assassin - last week and I started it back around New Years. I'm just not connecting with this new trilogy the way I did her previous works. I'm still gonna finish it since the are only 2 books left, but I'm seriously questioning some of Hobb's decisions in this one.

I picked up Three Parts Dead for cheap during a sale last year after Macros led them and at the 60% mark I'm really enjoying this. Very interesting magic system.

Edit: to make sense since I apparently don't read what I'm posting before I hit the button.

This post has been edited by JPK: 06 March 2019 - 10:16 PM

[Cyphon]

Finished Assassin's fate. Hit all the fanboy notes and I even came around to the Bee PoV chapters half way through the book.

[Maark Abbott]

Finished School-Live! #10. Entirely an issue of setup, with very little happening - but as there are only two more volumes to come before the series is over, the implications of said setup are pretty huge.

Not sure what I go onto now as I still don't feel like I want to read full length novels right now.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 19 February 2019 - 04:07 PM, said:

Abyss, on 19 February 2019 - 05:11 AM, said:

In brighter news, Clines' latest, DEAD MOON, is as fun as a sack full of zombie heads in a bowling arena. Not his usual weird sf, or his usual EX HEROES type zombie thing, but good fun. I see why it's being marketed as some kind of trilo ender with 14 and THE FOLD, but at the 1/3rd ish point it seems a stretch. That's aside tho.

Another hour or so into this... look, it's zombies on the moon.

That's obvious from the blurb, the promos, everything. The challenge is how does Clines make a 'zombies on the moon' story work. The answer is he more or less goes full 80s action/horror with the plot, then has fun with it.
And it works. Even the obvious 'which member of the cast is going to die next' element is done well, considering it's a book and not a movie.

Still enjoying.

Occured to me i never 'just finished' this... it was great fun. Not his most intelligent book... that's PARADOX BOUND, if not THE FOLD... not his creepiest... that's 14... not even his most action packed because the EX-HEROES series just nails that... but as a sci-fi zombie story... which happens to take place on the moon... it just works on all levels even if those levels are relatively superficial. He pretty much nails the zombie elements, then goes beyond them.

It's also just abook screaming to be adapted into a screenplay, right down to the catchy one-liners and archetype characters.

Worth reading, don't expect REJOICE! A KNIFE TO THE HEART!, it's popcorn, but yummy popcorn.


On to Redick's MASTER ASSASSINS.

[QuickTidal]

Abyss, on 08 March 2019 - 04:42 PM, said:

On to Redick's MASTER ASSASSINS.

This is sitting on my kindle, so let me know how you like it.

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 08 March 2019 - 05:18 PM, said:

Abyss, on 08 March 2019 - 04:42 PM, said:

On to Redick's MASTER ASSASSINS.

This is sitting on my kindle, so let me know how you like it.

Halfway now, pretty good so far.
I appreciate the novelty of the setting, it treads on Bakker territory without going as theological or grimdarkrapeyrape. The characters are more complex than they initially appear, and being revealed little by little. Most of the action is fairly brief and story focused (as opposed to a blow by blow description of each fight) but there's one huge set piece that was simply awesome i-need-to-listen-to-that-again-immediately. There are occasional 'info-dump as flashback' charters that are a little clumsily inserted into the story, but they tend to add something worthwhile and pull me back even if they initially threw me out. If the second half is consistent w the first i'll be very satisfied.

[Cyphon]

QuickTidal, on 08 March 2019 - 05:18 PM, said:

Abyss, on 08 March 2019 - 04:42 PM, said:

On to Redick's MASTER ASSASSINS.

This is sitting on my kindle, so let me know how you like it.

I really enjoyed this book, my hunch was that you both would too.

Started the Dark Forest by Lui Cixin. Looking forward to this as I enjoyed the first book.

This post has been edited by Cyphon: 08 March 2019 - 09:05 PM

[Aptorian]

Been reading Cuckoo Calling. The detective novel written by J K Rowling under the pseudonym Robert Gilbraith.

So far it's your garden variety crime novel about a detective who's down on his luck and tortured by past blah blah blah - but it is well written. JK Rowling knows how to write characters.

One quirk the book has is that while Rowling writes the chapters from the perspective of a character she randomly interjects other characters observations and opinions in between paragraphs. I rarely see authors do this but she pulls it off.

[Andorion]

I have been avoiding this place like the plague because I haven't had time to read Kellanved's Reach yet.

But I might be able to start today.

[worry]

I hit the 50% mark of Black Leopard Red Wolf and I'm gonna take a short break. It's very good, but it's also long and not always an easy read. I'm sure someone else has said it already, but it's nothing like ASOIF. If it's similar to anything I've read before, I'd have to say Book of the New Sun. A different milieu informed by different storytelling and cultural tributaries, and very much its own thing, but BotNS definitely seems like a major contributor to its DNA.

So in between I'm gonna read Alice Isn't Dead, a novel by one of the Welcome to Nightvale guys. I'll let you guys know how it goes!

[Tsundoku]

Finished The Ember Blade (Darkwater Legacy 1) by Chris Wooding.

Not too bad. Mucks around with some of the tropes a bit, but kept to most of the boy-on-a-quest formula.
I guess after the Ketty Jay series I was expecting a bit more. I'd call it somewhere between YA and adult.

I did find myself looking back on some bits and thinking "Oh, that's a lot like this or that particular series" a few times.

An easy read, I'd give it six and a half legendary swords out of ten.

[Aptorian]

worry, on 10 March 2019 - 08:13 AM, said:

So in between I'm gonna read Alice Isn't Dead, a novel by one of the Welcome to Nightvale guys. I'll let you guys know how it goes!

Alice is the intern that got eaten by a haunted house or something like that and was reporting from a different dimension, right?

I thought they spun that off into a separate podcast?