[Macros]

Back to the Three Musketeers, about a third in. Speaking of overly wordy authors....

[Andorion]

About halfway through the latest Invisible Library book - The Secret Chapter. Pretty enjoyable.

Also trying something a bit different - I have started Gormenghast. I own the omnibus.
Its very grotesquely strange and intriguing so far.

[Chance]

Halfway into the Sunrise Land this is going fairly easily.

Macros, on 22 January 2020 - 08:38 AM, said:

He's not as smart as he thinks, and needs to stop with the pretentious faux history. Yes we get it's you're an amatuer historian, but Hodge podging history from all over into the casts speeches doesn't work, and a lot of it is hot garbage history. But hey maybe that was the point, with myth building happening as it is perhaps this misrepped history is a knowing wink at it all.,

...

And some of the prose is awkward in places, using ten dollar words when less will do.

The prose is awkward in some places but I think it gets better the further you go.

I think its kind of a point with the faux history, it is history as some not experts in north America think it was mixed with remnants of the modern world such as the gangs in Portland, Books, US military heritage of Havels outfit, the newage wickans and some modern knowledge applicable to pre-electric civilization. The protector of course as an expert is simply a raving megalomaniac but even he jokes with it such as adopting the eye of sauron for his symbol, the lord protector titles and such which he simply gets stuck with once things get going with no way to correct stuff once people take it serious. In the end it also bites him big time. In the next few books you will have older folk with pre-change experience become increasingly alienated by the strange and often absurd new world and especially its young people who take the strangeness deadly seriously.

This post has been edited by Chance: 22 January 2020 - 01:02 PM

[Tiste Simeon]

Absolutely TORE through CITY OF BRASS - what a richly textured and delightful world they have created here. Really dark ending too, I definitely want the next one but it's not on Kindle Unlimited so I can't start it right away sadly...

In other news, TO GREEN ANGEL TOWER PART 2 continues to utterly bore and frustrate me at every turn...

Spoiler

For goodness sake, I'm now halfway through it and still nothing has happened! Simon spent a huge part of it mooching around underground, and he finally came up and I thought maybe FINALLY something would occur and he met Elias in the tower and... He's now been captured and is mooching around underground but now a prisoner.

I thought maybe with Miriamelle and Binabik finally getting to Erchester they would get somewhere or find Memory or something... But no, they've gone down some catacombs and are now mooching around underground. And endlessly philosophising. Oh now Miriamelle has been captured by persons unknown. Yet another thing to be resolved, instead of the multiple threads that are still hanging despite the amount of time that has gone on...

The story with Josua et Al is a bit better and they've finally won a battle in Naban! Only taken them half the book to get to one battle and they haven't defeated the Duke or even met the main army! Huzzah! I'm guessing before they reach the capital city they'll take a diversion for some mooching around underground.

And finally Eolair and the Sithe. Maegwynn is still very annoying so she ruins those bits for me anyway but what could have been a real fist pumping epic bit with the siege was a semi-decent battle followed by endless talk of how bad it is for them all. Then they finally kill everyone and Jeriki is like "oh hey they've done some mysterious magic thing which means we can never get in and they can never get out oh well ʅ(ツ)ʃ"

Honestly the only thing I'll feel at the end of this is relief that it's over.

[Macros]

I meant more the scattershot historical references, one minute Havel is dropping Bulba into conversation (not historical but you get the point), next someone is shouting about the Etruscans (a very obscure branch of ancient med history, given how thoroughly the Romans tried to remove them). It all just smacked of smugness on the authors side, look at what I know!

[Abyss]

Tiste Simeon, on 22 January 2020 - 02:16 PM, said:

Absolutely TORE through CITY OF BRASS - what a richly textured and delightful world they have created here. Really dark ending too, I definitely want the next one but it's not on Kindle Unlimited so I can't start it right away sadly......

I TOLD YOU WHEN IT WAS ON SALE I TOTALLY DID!!!!


...anyhoo glad you liked. Bk 3 hits around June, pretty sure 2 will be on sale again before then.

[Tiste Simeon]

Yeah it was on sale in Canada but I thought it would be on Unlimited which I definitely should have checked haha

[Abyss]

Tiste Simeon, on 22 January 2020 - 03:17 PM, said:

Yeah it was on sale in Canada but I thought it would be on Unlimited which I definitely should have checked haha

.ca, .com, and i think some other sources. Who snoozes, loses i fear.
But don't wait forever to get 2, it follows close on 1 and is, imnsho, if anything, better. Daevabad isn't the MBF, but it is solid enjoyable fantasy, nicely outside of the standard setting tropes.

[QuickTidal]

Abyss, on 22 January 2020 - 03:49 PM, said:

Tiste Simeon, on 22 January 2020 - 03:17 PM, said:

Yeah it was on sale in Canada but I thought it would be on Unlimited which I definitely should have checked haha

.ca, .com, and i think some other sources. Who snoozes, loses i fear.
But don't wait forever to get 2, it follows close on 1 and is, imnsho, if anything, better. Daevabad isn't the MBF, but it is solid enjoyable fantasy, nicely outside of the standard setting tropes.

I have not read 2 yet, but it was also on a sale when I bought it, so I can dive in any time. Perhaps for my upcoming vacation in a few weeks. Book 1 was fantastic! I loved the setting.

[Tiste Simeon]

QuickTidal, on 22 January 2020 - 03:58 PM, said:

Abyss, on 22 January 2020 - 03:49 PM, said:

Tiste Simeon, on 22 January 2020 - 03:17 PM, said:

Yeah it was on sale in Canada but I thought it would be on Unlimited which I definitely should have checked haha

.ca, .com, and i think some other sources. Who snoozes, loses i fear.
But don't wait forever to get 2, it follows close on 1 and is, imnsho, if anything, better. Daevabad isn't the MBF, but it is solid enjoyable fantasy, nicely outside of the standard setting tropes.

I have not read 2 yet, but it was also on a sale when I bought it, so I can dive in any time. Perhaps for my upcoming vacation in a few weeks. Book 1 was fantastic! I loved the setting.

Yes it was! Not been hooked by a story like that for a while...

[Tiste Simeon]

Just started reading the first book in the Echoes of Empire series by Mark T Barnes. Only a short way in but it seems he's done a lot of work creating this world, which I do appreciate but it suffers from generic fantasy issues such as in the first couple of chapters loads of fantasy names are dropped. And having them all so quickly makes it hard to remember exactly who is who.

Enjoying it though looks like it will be fun and I picked up the whole trilogy cheap a while back so I can breeze through it quite quickly.

[amphibian]

I finished the latest Foreigner series book by CJ Cherryh, Resurgence. It's the 20th book in the series and a quite good one. Nobody does the "talk it out" conflicts like she does and again and again I marvel at how deeply I care about the characters she's created over the years.

I do think that the recent twobooks have followed so closely upon each other that it's a bit hard to move substantially forward in a way that sees seismic change like what happened in the last two trilogies. This is almost like a domestic consolidation phase after some truly bonkers international/interstellar action.

Ilsidi is a better character than Silk. There, Abyss, I said it.

[Andorion]

amphibian, on 23 January 2020 - 04:04 PM, said:

I finished the latest Foreigner series book by CJ Cherryh, Resurgence. It's the 20th book in the series and a quite good one. Nobody does the "talk it out" conflicts like she does and again and again I marvel at how deeply I care about the characters she's created over the years.

I do think that the recent twobooks have followed so closely upon each other that it's a bit hard to move substantially forward in a way that sees seismic change like what happened in the last two trilogies. This is almost like a domestic consolidation phase after some truly bonkers international/interstellar action.

Ilsidi is a better character than Silk. There, Abyss, I said it.

Cherryh is one author I have not yet been able to get my teeth into properly. I did not like Foreigner 1 too much mainly because the PoV protagonist was so confused all the time the book felt unfulfilling.

[Abyss]

amphibian, on 23 January 2020 - 04:04 PM, said:

...

Ilsidi is a better character than Silk. There, Abyss, I said it.

Not needing to having read the FOREIGNER series i can say with absolute certainty that you are wrong, deeply wrong, and sauteed in a wrong pan over an open fire of wrongness before being served with some nice wrong beans and a side of fried wrongs really can't say if that's as completely wrong as it probably is or just somewhat wrong accurate. And also wrong.

[Tiste Simeon]

So I'm finally coming to the end of the earbook of MST and I'm deciding which one to go to next. I have THE BLADE ITSELF and the trilogy that follows it, the RED RISING trilogy by Pierce Brown, which I know is highly recommended and also INFINITE JEST and 16 WAYS TO DEFEND A WALLED CITY or whatever it's called.

Which one do you think would be best?

[amphibian]

Andorion, on 23 January 2020 - 04:24 PM, said:

amphibian, on 23 January 2020 - 04:04 PM, said:

I finished the latest Foreigner series book by CJ Cherryh, Resurgence. It's the 20th book in the series and a quite good one. Nobody does the "talk it out" conflicts like she does and again and again I marvel at how deeply I care about the characters she's created over the years.

I do think that the recent twobooks have followed so closely upon each other that it's a bit hard to move substantially forward in a way that sees seismic change like what happened in the last two trilogies. This is almost like a domestic consolidation phase after some truly bonkers international/interstellar action.

Ilsidi is a better character than Silk. There, Abyss, I said it.

Cherryh is one author I have not yet been able to get my teeth into properly. I did not like Foreigner 1 too much mainly because the PoV protagonist was so confused all the time the book felt unfulfilling.

Bren grows up over the course of the books, but essentially the core conflicts of the books is him acting as a mediator representing humans to Atevi and Atevi to humans. There's a ton of talking, a ton of political/ancestral conflicts, and establishing new protocol that fits within old protocol (something that the Atevi value highly).

So the uncertainty never fully goes away, even as Bren grows into his role from the first book where he just got the job.

[Mentalist]

Finished "The Prefect". Fun little space-detective story set int he glory days of the Glitter Band, as the detective stumbles into a conspiracy and the only way to stop it is to unearth another one.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 25 January 2020 - 07:51 PM

[JPK]

I just finished Spellslinger. Macros, you're completely right about this one. It's not a bad book, but it really isn't comparable to the Greatcoats books at all. You hit it on the head with the comment about being very YA. I'll keep going with the series because I think it has an interesting setup and I love the homicidal squirrelcat, but I'm not going to be rushing into it anytime soon.

Next up I'm kicking into The Burning White. Weighing in at 39 hours, I think I'll be on it for a couple weeks. As usual, a bit nervous going into the final book of a series I've enjoyed so much.

[Aptorian]

Just finished Chris Jericho's first book "A Lion's Tale: Around the World in Spandex", which tells his life story from when he was a kid till he joined the WWF.

It's an excellent auto-biography. I didn't know anything about Jericho's backstory besides that he was in WCW before he came to WWF. He had a heck of journey to the top, most of it earned in a five year window. I had no idea he wrestled in Germany, Mexico, Japan and ECW before coming to WCW. He's a very accomplished journey man wrestler.

Already picked up the sequel about his first decade in the WWF/WWE.

[QuickTidal]

Macros, on 20 January 2020 - 09:07 PM, said:

Did you ever try any of the Eagle books by Scarrow?

Diving back in Mac. Wish me luck.

 0C7EEC85-9982-47E9-A11C-63C9A4E43EBA.jpeg (82.63K)
Number of downloads: 0

EDIT: These covers kick ass.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 26 January 2020 - 04:51 PM