[Macros]

Huh, BSC is probably myleast favourite Abercrombie, followed by Red Country.

Favourite is Probably Heroes

[Macros]

Just finished The Priory of the Orange Tree.

the cover caught my eye in the airport a few times, so finally picked it up on a buy one get one half price deal.

A hefty tome, I can't help but feel could have been 2 books, with the last 10% being expanded considerably, things fell together very quickly at the end.

That aside, not a bad offering at all, a few characters are a bit cookie cutter, but plenty have depth and very human motivations in their actions.

Here there be dragons, would have liked more though

[Abyss]

Macros, on 04 September 2024 - 12:43 PM, said:

...
Here there be dragons, would have liked more though

I had other issues w the book, but this was my biggest.
Set up a fantasy story around interactions between two different 'races' of dragons, and then give it so little screen time? Meh.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 06 August 2024 - 03:12 AM, said:

JPK, on 05 August 2024 - 04:56 PM, said:

Abyss, on 05 August 2024 - 04:22 AM, said:

Next up, Carol Berg's SONG OF THE BEAST.

I've actually got this one queued up for the near future as well. I'm curious to see your thoughts on it because it's a reread for me, but it's been 15-20 years since I read it so my recollection is limited to vague positive vibes.
...

About 2/3rds and enjoying it. It's very much an older style of fantasy, two povs, one MC, the lore is there but it isn't deep, the pace is steady towards a specific goal, and since it's a standalone there's a nice sense of moving the story to a conclusion. More when i'm done but so far so good.

Just Finished. Interesting, this very much felt like an 80s fantasy novel. I haven't quite decided whether the ending was a satisfying tieing together of all the plot threads or a contrived oh-isnt-that-conveeeeeenient, but i'm content with the read either way. Earbook narrator was solid.

The proceeded to marathon John Scalzi's INTERDEPENDENCY trilogy, also Just Finished. It was... fine. I like Scalzi, sometimes i love Scalzi, for me this was mid Scalzi. Interesting story but entirely too much time spent on characters talking about things and not enough time with them doing the things. There were satusfying SF elements and while far from hard SF, there was enough science in the fiction to keep it closer to that than scifant. Overall an ok read, no regrets but i wouldn't hurry to reco.

Short break to clear the palate, have been running thru THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES audiodrama, S4. Brilliant set up and ending.

Next, some upthread posts are nudging me towards SIDEWINDERS, tho Seanan McGuire has a new LOST CHILDREN story out as well. Spoiled for choice, really.

[Mentalist]

All right, having finished the Red Country re-read, I'd definitely rate The Heroes as the bottom of the Caul Shivers Trilogy (sorry, Maccy). The limited scope just doesn't resonate as much for me. While BCS has Monte Christo vibes, and Red Country evokes a bunch of frontier short stories vibes, from Jack London to O'Henry, and those just influences just happen to resonate stronger with me.

Guess I'll be finally moving on to "a Little Hatred". I've got about 2 weeks to read that, and to pick up some stuff for vacation reads.

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Abyss, on 04 September 2024 - 02:11 PM, said:

Macros, on 04 September 2024 - 12:43 PM, said:

...
Here there be dragons, would have liked more though

I had other issues w the book, but this was my biggest.
Set up a fantasy story around interactions between two different 'races' of dragons, and then give it so little screen time? Meh.

I just read Lyons' The Sky On Fire. If you want more dragons, then this is a good book to read.

Separately, I read through all of Tchaikovsky's Shadows Of The Apt series. This was a lot of fun! He's definitely grown as an author since he wrote these.

I'm currently reading Peter McLean's War For The Rose Throne series. This is a total blast! It feels like Locke Lamora meets The Godfather with influences from the narrative style of Cook's Black Company. Highly recommend so far (though I'm only on the 3rd book).

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 04 September 2024 - 02:25 PM, said:

... some upthread posts are nudging me towards SIDEWINDERS...

3rd of the way in, and must say, Forumies, you did not steer me wrong.

[Hammerhead88]

Re-reading Dresden for the first time. Onto book 2 almost immediately! So good.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 09 September 2024 - 01:38 PM, said:

Abyss, on 04 September 2024 - 02:25 PM, said:

... some upthread posts are nudging me towards SIDEWINDERS...

3rd of the way in, and must say, Forumies, you did not steer me wrong.

This book just gets better and better....

The sequence

Spoiler

at the oasis, from the theft to the chase to the ambush to the spider....

damn, that was some solid writing.

[amphibian]

Abyss, on 11 September 2024 - 02:17 PM, said:

Abyss, on 09 September 2024 - 01:38 PM, said:

Abyss, on 04 September 2024 - 02:25 PM, said:

... some upthread posts are nudging me towards SIDEWINDERS...

3rd of the way in, and must say, Forumies, you did not steer me wrong.

This book just gets better and better....

The sequence

Spoiler

at the oasis, from the theft to the chase to the ambush to the spider....

damn, that was some solid writing.

Want to see something cool? I am proceeding on the assumption that you do indeed want to see.

Look up the Danakil Depression, Dalliol Sulphur Springs, and other elements of Ethiopian geography like the waterfalls and mountain fastnesses/churches.

These provided such a cool base for my imagining of what was happening in Master Assassins and Sidewinders.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 12 September 2024 - 03:12 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

I finished listening to Sidewinders a few days ago. Before stating my reaction, here's some context first...

While I try to minimize subscriptions, and I do have a large backlog of audiobooks in my TLP, a few months ago I decided to start on Audible's three months for $1 each offer. Looking through the Audible Plus catalog I was pleasantly surprised to see their fantasy offers have gotten much better and more extensive... but I'd already read or listened to everything I recognized that appealed to me.

However, it does feature two popular fantasy authors I'd avoided based on vague impressions of their reputations---Tad Williams and Brian Saunderson. For Williams, only his very first book, which is about a cat. Also Saunderson's first book series, and one standalone. Reasoning that I might prefer their first books over their later styles, I set my schedule. I also noticed A Court of Thorns and Roses, Dramatized Adaption---which I was certain I'd dislike, but which has some sociological interest, as I'm curious what it is about these trashy romantasy books that appeals to so many women---and (since it's a dramatized adaptation) what sort of male voice and vocal delivery might particularly appeal to them.

So I started with Tailchaser's Song---and very low expectations. The audiobook performer's voice is terrible. He just shouldn't be doing audiobooks unless he can change it. Still, I was pleasantly surprised to find that most chapters begin with nice selections of quoted poetry---ranging from Milton to Poe to some obscure then-contemporary poets. And the literary quality of the book is higher than I was expecting. OTOH much---but far from all---of it is largely "fantasy genre, but with cats instead of people", some parts of which I found very meh, though some of the more horror-fantasy tropes were more appealing. He also tries to make the wild cats out to be like indigenous peoples, and gives a very bleak depiction of domesticated cats, which could have used a bit more humor.

For me the major highlights of the book are in the mythology of the cat religion. Particularly the origin of humanity, which I found hilarious.

Overall, I'd say it's worth reading, but probably not worth subjecting yourself to this audiobook.

On to Saunderson's first book, Ellantris---dramatized adaptation. I expected the writing style to be bland, so I was pleasantly surprised to find him whipping out aphorisms, witticisms, and poeticisms in the intro---as if he were trying really hard to demonstrate that he actually can write well, while simultaneously not being too literary or complex or poetic for the mass commercial market. I found myself pausing the audio to write down some particularly nice quotes:

Quote

Spoiler

This is what I will become[...] It has already begun. In a few weeks I will be nothing more than a dejected body, a corpse whimpering in the corner

[...] will break the bones of every person here, and leave them to rot in their agony

Oh right... the audio. Most of the voices have appealing voices. But in terms of the sound effects, the terrible attempts at British accents, and much of the acting... it's unbelievably awful. Like what you might expect from a bad amateur regional theater group out in US flyover country doing a radio show for children. The dramatized adaptation replaces some textual descriptions with soun effects or the actor's vocal tone---so I don't know for sure that Sanderson's didn't cue up plenty of cartoonish villainous laughter, but the actors deliver far too much of it. Unintentionally laughable laughter.

I was seriously wondering if they were some sort of Mormon theater group that Sanderson was giving work because they're part of his church (... or maybe his relatives?). Also didn't care for the---possibly Mormon?---morals being presented by the story. "People need to do work to have dignity! They can't just be given handouts!" What a crock of crap.

OTOH Sanderson is good at plot twists, even though I saw some of the clunkier and cheesier ones coming. Good plot and pacing overall.

Audible Plus also has the two Ellantris novellas, so on to those it was... both dramatized adaptations by the same company. The first one is a badly written and insubstantial short story that is not worth bothering with, and makes the annoying (Mormon?) morality even more shrill. The second one doesn't actually have any substantial connection to the previous Ellantris material except being set on the same planet, and it's also badly written, so I gave up on it.

On to Sanderson's standalone, Warbreaker, which I guess is his mature writing style. The prose style seems to aim at being unremarkable---transparent and easy to read, I guess. But in terms of visual and kinetic imagination the inventiveness is impressive. Worldbuilding not quite so much, but still good, and it seems surprisingly original. (I guess his fixation on god-like characters who are worshipped as gods is partly a Mormon thing? In heaven they get their own planet to be god over or something?) Lots of plot twists but without the occasional clunkiness of Ellantris. OTOH his myriad attempts at witty dialogue---there's one character who's basically a font of would-be witticisms---are decidedly subpar.

But it's a dramatized adaptation... by the same company. Instead of terribly fake sounding posh British accents they do atrocious "Scottish-ish" and Cockney accents. The sound effects and music---oh I forgot to mention the cheesy background music--seemed less egregious, though it could just be that by this point my brain had learned to tune them out.

Next up was Court of Thorns and Roses... at which point I saw Amphibian's recommendation of Sidewinders and was pleasantly surprised to find it on Audible Plus. Started on Master Assassins, the first book in the series.

Since I'd only seen Amphibian mention Sidewinders I had low expectations for Master Assassins... but coming from Sanderson's Warbreaker, I was like, holy shit, similes and metaphors are a thing... here are some quotes I stopped the audio to write down:

Quote

Spoiler

"one leaf in a forest of flame"

"No tears in the grave son"

"he's walking underwater, against the current, adrift"

"the cliff looms behind them like a suspended wave. 'We really are on the floor of the sea'"

"whose shape was less hole than winding incision"

"We're like ants fighting on a leaf. But there's a tree as well, isn't there? And we can't pretend we're not a part of it."

Overall, it's very good---world-building, plot (though it starts a bit slow), characterization, etc.

On to Sidewinders, the first book I had high expectations for. In some respects it's more fantastical than Master Assassins, and yes it has some impressive extended sequences. I liked the contrast between the sequence Abyss was referring to and the section right before the ending where

Spoiler

they're held for a prolonged period with a large group of refugees being refused entry into the supposedly humanitarian former empire

. And the nice choice of including pov sections from

Spoiler

the yatra inside Kandri

---at first I thought it would have been better if he'd kept us guessing longer, but later developments made me reconsider, since

Spoiler

it's partly a fake-out to make us think Mektu isn't being influenced by a yatra---OTOH I liked Kandri's yatra's initial suggestion that it might be some sort of evil power other than a yatra, so the reveal that it ultimately was just another yatra---if a particularly nasty and powerful one---was a minor disappointment

. Here are some quotes I stopped to write down:

Quote

Spoiler

"a dead hand on the rudder, a cry on the wind"

"a sunbeam like a pillar of fire"

"Famine's Table"

"even in dreams, the tortured miasma of them, the quaking landscapes"

"his legs were two drowning children he rescued endlessly from the sea, lift the first leaden body over the water"

"grateful for the guiding star of her anus when his mind began to drift"

"even his friends made strange by moonlight, and behind them all, the accumulating dead, incandescent the rattle on the serpent's tail"

"his screams tore the night wide open"

"in desperate faith"

"its blundering preludes"

"glimpsed the lake of fire they call love"

(Incidentally, the audiobook performer is decent---not great but good. Though his

Spoiler

performance from the yatra's perspective took on a bit of an annoying timbre during some of the yatra pov's later sections

.

The pacing at the very end was maybe a bit rushed, setting up the next (expected to be the final) book in the trilogy, but overall, very good.

Now, naturally, to maintain the cosmic balance, having followed your recommendations, it seemed like a good time to try going completely against them, so I finally started on A Court of Thorns and Roses---dramatized adaptation. Shockingly it's the same damn company that did the Sanderson. So I guess they're not some regional Mormon theater group after all. Even more shockingly, the first sentence contained what seemed like a decently poetic phrase---"a labyrinth of ice and snow"---until I googled it and realized it had been used innumerable times before. I'm a few hours in now and it does mainly seem to be of sociological interest (if that...). I find it hard to imagine that the actor playing the male lead is really doing a voice that the target audience would find near-optimally sexy or appealing, but it's deep and commanding, so IDK. Ah, good, the electrodes have finished charging---I'm going to spend the next five hours electrocuting my abs while I listen to A Court of Thorns and Roses.

[Macros]

Druss Druss Druss!!!

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Azath Vitr (D, on 13 September 2024 - 08:09 PM, said:

I'm going to spend the next five hours electrocuting my abs while I listen to A Court of Thorns and Roses.

A sentence that has likely never been sung, spoken, or written before.

This post has been edited by Whisperzzzzzzz: 14 September 2024 - 06:13 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Finished A Court of Thorns and Roses. One interesting thing about it is that the author makes the heroine an aspiring painter as an excuse for the first person narration to go into great lots of visual detail, especially about colors---though they tend to be described as a succession of colors largely or completely unmoored from physical contours... on the one hand it reminds me of guided imagery for trance induction, and the other (probably more saliently) of how many women apparently see colors during sex/orgasm.

It flirts with rape fantasies and some very graphic sadism. Lord Rapey Golden Retriever and Lord Bad Boy Playful Sadist who

Spoiler

takes hold of a large bone sticking out of her skin and twists it around... but he has such pretty violet eyes! And at least he didn't stick the bone up her butt like Neil Gaiman... oh wait she might actually have enjoyed that. Whatever works...

The actress who plays the protagonist has a nice voice, but she's one of the worst professional actors I've ever heard. Though I generally have a very high tolerance for overacting, theatricality, and artifice, she sounds like an actor playing an unappealing caricature of bad acting. I don't ultimately care whether the actor really is feeling the emotions or just pretending to, but they shouldn't make the emotions sound obviously feigned unless they're doing something like Brechtian theater... or parody. Granted, she does seem to actually feel it---and tone down the overacting---during the more "romance-y" parts.

There's a riddle that is extremely

Spoiler

easy and obvious, that will solve all the heroine's problems... I was hoping it would turn out to be something other than the obvious thing that almost anyone without a severe cognitive disability could easily guess, but no, it really is that, and the heroine doesn't even consider anything close to the correct answer until right before she "dies". And then of course gets brought back to life....

Still have about a week and a half left in my "three months of Audible for $1/month" deal... thought I'd scrolled through all the science fiction/fantasy in the Plus Catalog and saw no (appealing) fantasy standalones or series (that I hadn't already read/listened to) that could reasonably be gotten through in time, but it turned out that was just the first 500---they won't let you scroll through more than that, you have to search for specific titles or authors.

I did see Blindsight, which I'd been meaning to read at some point.

Quote

Blindsight is the ability of people who are cortically blind to respond to visual stimuli that they do not consciously see [...] Type 1 blindsight is the term given to this ability to guess—at levels significantly above chance—aspects of a visual stimulus (such as location or type of movement) without any conscious awareness of any stimuli.

Blindsight - Wikipedia

It's a psychological/neuorological phenomenon that I find interesting, and I'd read that this novel is hard science fiction with philosophically interesting takes on it, so I started listening and... was a bit shocked to hear something like

Spoiler

vampires died out during the dawn of human civilization because of their aversion to right angles

. Suffice it to say it seems more like satirical science fantasy with hard science elements. As with so much science fiction it appears to be stuffed full of dystopian strawmen and demagogic fearmongering about future technological developments. Maybe it will get better; of course humor/satire and serious hard science fiction and philosophy can be mixed together, but I'm a little concerned that hard science aspects I'm not already familiar with might just be wildly misrepresented. Some of it is very obvious---for example the protagonist says

Spoiler

he knows by the way somebody's fingers twitch that their favorite color is green. Nothing about a green object being nearby. I guess that's intended as a joke...

The performer has a particularly annoying voice, though not quite as bad as the guy who did Tailchaser's Song. This one's more of a generic whiny old American man. I'd suppose I'll continue the slog. The image of

Spoiler

being blind inside a coffin drifting through space

is nice, though I'm not sure if it's been done before...

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 18 September 2024 - 12:42 PM

[Macros]

pat5150, on 21 August 2024 - 03:45 PM, said:

I've been reading a lot of non-fiction works focusing on the Middle East in the last year or so. A while back, another reviewer recommended Kim Ghattas' Black Wave and I finally read it. Boy was it it a brilliant and well-researched book! Most of the works I've read so far focus on one country/region, but Ghattas fills most of the gaps found in those other books and demonstrates how the conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia spread across the length and breadth of the Middle East and had repercussions everywhere around the globe.

Even the CIA recommends this one:

While other journalists and scholars have written about specific aspects of this story, to this reviewer’s knowledge, none have attempted the kind of sweeping examination of the Saudi-Iranian rivalry and its impact on the Middle East—and beyond—as has Ghattas. Her achievement is significant and should be required reading for anyone who seeks to better understand how we got here, particularly those whose duties or responsibilities necessitate it. Intelligence officers, in particular, will find nuanced explorations of the roots of many of the regions’ current conflicts, but also glimpses of the deeply-held hopes for a better future among some of the people who live there.

If you're interested in the rise of extremism and how it affected the Middle East and the West, Kim Ghattas' Black Wave covers a lot of ground and is a fascinating read. Furthermore, it's an accessible work that can be enjoyed and understood by neophytes and aficionados alike.

If you only want to read one book on the topic, make it this one! You can find our more about Black Wave here​​​​​​​.

Started this as my lunch time non fiction read.
It's interesting, but man I find it hard to keep track of the names. She needs to give them all cool nicknames for me to be able to track it a bit more coherently

[Tsundoku]

Macros, on 18 September 2024 - 08:57 AM, said:

pat5150, on 21 August 2024 - 03:45 PM, said:

I've been reading a lot of non-fiction works focusing on the Middle East in the last year or so. A while back, another reviewer recommended Kim Ghattas' Black Wave and I finally read it. Boy was it it a brilliant and well-researched book! Most of the works I've read so far focus on one country/region, but Ghattas fills most of the gaps found in those other books and demonstrates how the conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia spread across the length and breadth of the Middle East and had repercussions everywhere around the globe.

Even the CIA recommends this one:

While other journalists and scholars have written about specific aspects of this story, to this reviewer’s knowledge, none have attempted the kind of sweeping examination of the Saudi-Iranian rivalry and its impact on the Middle East—and beyond—as has Ghattas. Her achievement is significant and should be required reading for anyone who seeks to better understand how we got here, particularly those whose duties or responsibilities necessitate it. Intelligence officers, in particular, will find nuanced explorations of the roots of many of the regions’ current conflicts, but also glimpses of the deeply-held hopes for a better future among some of the people who live there.

If you're interested in the rise of extremism and how it affected the Middle East and the West, Kim Ghattas' Black Wave covers a lot of ground and is a fascinating read. Furthermore, it's an accessible work that can be enjoyed and understood by neophytes and aficionados alike.

If you only want to read one book on the topic, make it this one! You can find our more about Black Wave here​​​​​​​.

Started this as my lunch time non fiction read.
It's interesting, but man I find it hard to keep track of the names. She needs to give them all cool nicknames for me to be able to track it a bit more coherently

I wish Colleen McCullough did more of the same with her Masters of Rome series. Only a few nicknames and in a great series, the hardest part was keeping track of who was whom considering all male relatives had essentially the same name!
Especially when you have a couple of years between each installment.

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 18 September 2024 - 11:19 AM

[pat5150]

Macros, on 18 September 2024 - 08:57 AM, said:

Started this as my lunch time non fiction read.
It's interesting, but man I find it hard to keep track of the names. She needs to give them all cool nicknames for me to be able to track it a bit more coherently

Had the same problem early on, but it gets better the more you go on.

[Gust Hubb]

Loving Mordew (the Cities of Weft) series by Alex Pheby. Really great writing and learning lots of new words (this guy's vocabulary is off the rails). Also enjoying Marlon James (Red Wolf, Black Leopard) and Vandermeer's Ambergis trilogy.

[Mentalist]

Been feeling like shit yesterday, so I powered thru "A little Hatred".

I can only hope Savine ends up as Queen and destroys everyhtign Bayaz has been trying to build through his schemes.

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

This won't necessarily sway anyone who found The Silmarillion too dense or confusing, but if anyone's looking to try it I really recommend the audiobook read by Andy Serkis.

I started listening to it today and he's absolutely nailed the tone - he's delivering it like an elder might tell myths around a fire, which is perfect. He's putting a lot of work into the pronunciation as well so it might help people who find all the similar names blur into one.