[QuickTidal]

After a LONG reading slump in which I found myself reading comics, GN's and playing assorted video games and catching up on Anime....I finally sat down with a new book.

Current IT book THE CITY OF DARK MAGIC by Magnus Flyte, which is compelling, well written, and just a little cheeky...great stuff.

That will, of course, keep me busy till Tuesday's release of AMOL, after which I will be reading that.

[Abyss]

 Abyss, on 27 December 2012 - 07:53 AM, said:

About halfway through Scalzi's REDSHIRTS and all i can say is BWAaAaaaahahaHAHaAhhaaaaAahahaahahahahahahaheeeeee.....

Finished REDSHIRTS, enjoyed it.
I'm a bit on the fence about the three epilogues... they were clever but really moved an already meta story into serious existentialism territory. That said, the book itself is brilliantly good fun. I haven't laughed that hard at a book in a while. Worth your money if you are even a little bit of an original Star Trek fan.

 Captain Beardface, on 28 December 2012 - 08:48 PM, said:

Picked up an anthology edited by John Joseph Adams called Epic ...

I've spotted this a few times... and maybe you can help me out here... how can anything in a short story be considered capital-E 'Epic'? Do they address this in a foreword or something?

[pat5150]

Just finished Ian Cameron Esslemont's Blood and Bone. . .

The weakest Malazan installment to date and a major, major disappointment to start off the year.

Check out the Hotlist for the full review. . .

Happy New Year to everyone!

Patrick

[Tiste Simeon]

Am reading Peter F Hamiltons Pandora's Star. I love his scale in the storytelling & I usually read a book like that with the 65daysofstatic album "Silent Running" playing which makes it feel even cooler!

[Kruppe's snacky cakes]

I recently started Dawnthief: Chronicles Of The Raven by James Barclay. I'm only a few chapters in, but so far it's what I wanted and expected Dragonlance to be when I read that for the first time last year. Dragonlance did not live up to my expectations. In contrast, I'm loving Barclay's writing style, so I'm not anticipating disappointment...

[kcf]

 QuickTidal, on 02 January 2013 - 02:27 PM, said:

Current IT book THE CITY OF DARK MAGIC by Magnus Flyte, which is compelling, well written, and just a little cheeky...great stuff.

really? I thought it was pretty terrible.

[Abyss]

 Kruppe, on 02 January 2013 - 05:37 PM, said:

I recently started Dawnthief: Chronicles Of The Raven by James Barclay.... In contrast, I'm loving Barclay's writing style, so I'm not anticipating disappointment...

I enjoyed the Chronicles. It has some flaws, but overall it's good fun in a classic fantasy-as-derived-from-RPG sort of way.
But I LOVED LOVED LOVED Legends.

[QuickTidal]

 kcf, on 02 January 2013 - 06:29 PM, said:

 QuickTidal, on 02 January 2013 - 02:27 PM, said:

Current IT book THE CITY OF DARK MAGIC by Magnus Flyte, which is compelling, well written, and just a little cheeky...great stuff.

really? I thought it was pretty terrible.

Yup, I'm liking it a lot.

To each their own.

Mind you, I'm only 50 pages in...so that opinion could change once Sarah gets to Prague? I'll keep going for now.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 02 January 2013 - 07:27 PM

[Abyss]

Amazon tells me that Ellis' GUN MACHINE and Abercrombie's RED COUNTRY arrive this week (probably AMOL next week, but fuck the zeitgeist, i'm reading GUN MACHINE first!).

Which should give me just enough time to finish Hearn's HAMMERED.

Speaking of the IRON DRUID series... i think i'm seeing a re-occuring flaw... Hearn's use of Irish mythology is great fun. It's original, interesting and well thought out. But his vampires and werewolves and even his Norse gods are uninteresting... boring even. And bk 3 is suffering in my brainz because the story largely revolves around those less interesting elements, unlike the prior two. And while his use of Catholic 'mythology' in bk 2 was brief, and even clever in a plot-driven way

Spoiler

hunting demons? get the Virgin Mary to bless your weapons! even if you yourself don't worship her!!!

, in bk 3 thus far it borders on annoying

Spoiler

or put another way, hippy Jesus didn't add anything to the story and got old real quick

.

And i recognize that the typical urban fantasy series can't stick one mythology in a vacuum and pretend that no one else's gods or beasties are out there, so fine, he has to acknolwedge the bigger sandbox.

But it reads like he felt he had to include those elements - the pack-centric werewolves, the grim vamp, etc - , but he lacked the enthusiasm that he gives his Irish elements and even the less 'popular' elements like his witches and Native American gods, and the story suffers a bit for it.

I'm still in, but i'm way less engaged in this particular book so far.

[Use Of Weapons]

I finished Celia Friedman's _Legacy of Kings_, which finished off her Magister trilogy with a satisfying thump. While perhaps not as evocative as her Coldfire trilogy, it was still great storytelling with excellent characters.

Now I'm in a hiatus until AMoL comes along.

[QuickTidal]

 Briar King, on 02 January 2013 - 11:15 PM, said:

QT when you gonna pick up Salute again?

Probably spring, after AMOL and GUN MACHINE. Not to worry, I won't let it linger too long.

[JPK]

Kicking 2013 off with a bang. Reading An Autumn War.

[worry]

Awesome, that's my favorite of the bunch I think, though I'd never call the final book a step down by any means.

[polishgenius]

Just finished the second of NK Jemisin's Hundred Thousand Kingdom's books, The Broken Kingdoms. I thought the first one was a book with a lot of promise let down slightly by a tad too much restraint in letting the stranger aspects of the magic plot go, and a tad too little restraint in the romance (including one infamously bad sex scene). The second one fixes both of these flaws and has put the third one very much higher on my read-soon list, coz it was cracking.

Next up is Legacy of Kings, though I may squeeze in Tim Lebbon's The Heretic Land if I feel it enough as that's a library loaner.

[Defiance]

Just finished The Shadow Rising. These books just keep getting better and better. I think a big strength of this one was how it was structured differently from the first three. Rather than having all of the main characters scatter at the beginning of the book then conveniently wind up in the same place at the end, the characters are now genuinely split up and each group received its own climax.

A have a few posts of thoughts in one of the Wheel of Time threads, but here's my thoughts on the climax:

Spoiler

I enjoyed what happened in Tanchino, although I think it was my least favorite conclusion of the three in this book. The Black Ajah's intentions are still left pretty vague, with no discernable rhyme or reason except being evil (in The Great Hunt they're working with Darkfriend Seanchan, in The Dragon Reborn they are with Be'lal, and now they don't seem to be working with anyone other than maybe coordinating with fellow sisters in the Tower). I don't need to know all of their dark secrets and motivations, but I would like to see it go beyond "the Black Ajah wants this, we have to stop them!"

Good stuff in the Two Rivers. I knew that Slayer was Lan's half brother! Still have no idea what his motivations are, though; it seems like he was turned to the Shadow in the Blight, but I really can't line up his actions. It would have been easy for him to ensure that all of the Two Rivers got burned to the ground; instead, he aided in building the village defenses, the very same things that made sure the Trollocs and Myrdraal failed.

Didn't see the false He Who Comes With the Dawn coming, although my predictions about Lanfear and Asmodean being around were spot on. Rand speaking calmly to the Aiel while Couladin was shouting like a crazy person was probably the most intense part of the climax. Also, this was the best 1v1 between Rand and a Forsaken so far, but it still relied a lot on Rand just randomly doing stuff that he doesn't understand. Yes, it makes sense in the context of the Wheel of Time, but I've never been a big fan of abilities manifesting right when characters need them.

Diving right into The Fires of Heaven. Here's to hoping for another fantastic book, although I am expecting it to be very slow for the first two hundred pages as all of the previous books have been (well, The Eye of the World was slow throughout, and had a rather sloppy climax...don't know how other people stand, but so far I've felt that it was decidedly mediocre compared to all of the others).

[End of Disc One]

 Defiance, on 03 January 2013 - 03:41 AM, said:

Just finished The Shadow Rising. These books just keep getting better and better. I think a big strength of this one was how it was structured differently from the first three. Rather than having all of the main characters scatter at the beginning of the book then conveniently wind up in the same place at the end, the characters are now genuinely split up and each group received its own climax.

A have a few posts of thoughts in one of the Wheel of Time threads, but here's my thoughts on the climax:

Spoiler

I enjoyed what happened in Tanchino, although I think it was my least favorite conclusion of the three in this book. The Black Ajah's intentions are still left pretty vague, with no discernable rhyme or reason except being evil (in The Great Hunt they're working with Darkfriend Seanchan, in The Dragon Reborn they are with Be'lal, and now they don't seem to be working with anyone other than maybe coordinating with fellow sisters in the Tower). I don't need to know all of their dark secrets and motivations, but I would like to see it go beyond "the Black Ajah wants this, we have to stop them!"

Good stuff in the Two Rivers. I knew that Slayer was Lan's half brother! Still have no idea what his motivations are, though; it seems like he was turned to the Shadow in the Blight, but I really can't line up his actions. It would have been easy for him to ensure that all of the Two Rivers got burned to the ground; instead, he aided in building the village defenses, the very same things that made sure the Trollocs and Myrdraal failed.

Didn't see the false He Who Comes With the Dawn coming, although my predictions about Lanfear and Asmodean being around were spot on. Rand speaking calmly to the Aiel while Couladin was shouting like a crazy person was probably the most intense part of the climax. Also, this was the best 1v1 between Rand and a Forsaken so far, but it still relied a lot on Rand just randomly doing stuff that he doesn't understand. Yes, it makes sense in the context of the Wheel of Time, but I've never been a big fan of abilities manifesting right when characters need them.

Diving right into The Fires of Heaven. Here's to hoping for another fantastic book, although I am expecting it to be very slow for the first two hundred pages as all of the previous books have been (well, The Eye of the World was slow throughout, and had a rather sloppy climax...don't know how other people stand, but so far I've felt that it was decidedly mediocre compared to all of the others).

Sounds like you're going to love the series for the most part if you like it getting more complex. TFoH is my personal favorite and you're right it does start very slowly.

[QuickTidal]

Okay. So KFC (I know that's not his name, but I like calling him that. It's more fun!) is totally right. I'm 160 pages into CITY OF DARK MAGIC by Magnus Flyte, and while it started out as interesting, well written (in a thriller-y way at any rate) and fun to read....quickly descended into bizarre dialogue and sentence choices, the authors (two women whose names I forget just now) have the main character kind of randomly forget Beethoven (which is what her area of study is) and ramp down her believability in two ways as a protagonist.

A. She is supposedly a Boston area Beethoven/musicologist scholar who loves nothing more than what she studies...who throughout the narrative can't seem to stand it when anyone talks about history. I find that horribly incongruous. So history is boring, UNLESS it's about Beethoven? Right. I'm sure people like that exist, but I'd wager anyone who enjoys music history...would enjoy history as much.

B. She is super-sexual. Like can't seem to think straight if she's horny...and proceeds to either fantasize about raucous anal sex, or engage in doggy style with quasi-strangers in bathrooms, up against religious statues to relieve the tension and be able to "think"...and then just goes about her day. Oh and the person she has sex with is (obviously) the greatest sex she's ever had and in some cases defies gravity and physics. I don't mind sex scenes at all, but here they are almost BEYOND pointless and serve only to titillate on a completely vacuous level.

The above two things wouldn't be TOO bad, if they didn't happen so frequently. Couple this with the fact that large portions of the mystery at hand are forgotten for periods of time, aren't really all that interesting, and every time I think I'll get a nice little bit of info about an area of Prague, Sarah gets bored with the orator about said place and she fuzzes off into daydreams (presumably about effing princes against the gates to hell) and we are no further illustrated about the city. I'm not kidding, it's treated as kind of a sentence-at-a-time worthy info drop *insert place name* *insert WWII fact about it* *quickly move on* (rinse, repeat).

The lead will say things like "Yowsa". Right. A Beethoven, music scholar (top of her class, impressed the stodgy professor) walks around using phrases best left to high-schoolers.

If it weren't for the rampant, explicit sex scenes I'd say this reads as YA...written by an author who ASSUMES this is how young people act and talk.

Terrible. Perfectly awful. I'm not going to bother finishing it. 2013 has FAR too many good books to be read than to waste more time on this one.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 03 January 2013 - 02:19 PM

[T77]

 Abyss, on 02 January 2013 - 06:29 PM, said:

 Kruppe, on 02 January 2013 - 05:37 PM, said:

I recently started Dawnthief: Chronicles Of The Raven by James Barclay.... In contrast, I'm loving Barclay's writing style, so I'm not anticipating disappointment...

I enjoyed the Chronicles. It has some flaws, but overall it's good fun in a classic fantasy-as-derived-from-RPG sort of way.
But I LOVED LOVED LOVED Legends.

I enjoyed it too. It seems most don't like this series, just me, you and Abyss. It feels like Malazan light to me. This has prompted me to bump up book 2 on my TBR pile.

[QuickTidal]

 T77, on 03 January 2013 - 03:22 PM, said:

 Abyss, on 02 January 2013 - 06:29 PM, said:

 Kruppe, on 02 January 2013 - 05:37 PM, said:

I recently started Dawnthief: Chronicles Of The Raven by James Barclay.... In contrast, I'm loving Barclay's writing style, so I'm not anticipating disappointment...

I enjoyed the Chronicles. It has some flaws, but overall it's good fun in a classic fantasy-as-derived-from-RPG sort of way.
But I LOVED LOVED LOVED Legends.

I enjoyed it too. It seems most don't like this series, just me, you and Abyss. It feels like Malazan light to me. This has prompted me to bump up book 2 on my TBR pile.

I like it too, but the CHRONICLES books are REALLY hard to get a hold of these days....NOONSHADE is out of print in the version I have of DAWNTHIEF. Every place I seek has the LEGENDS books, but NOONSHADE is apparently persona non-Grata to book stores. I need to order it.

[Abyss]

 QuickTidal, on 03 January 2013 - 03:25 PM, said:

 T77, on 03 January 2013 - 03:22 PM, said:

 Abyss, on 02 January 2013 - 06:29 PM, said:

 Kruppe, on 02 January 2013 - 05:37 PM, said:

I recently started Dawnthief: Chronicles Of The Raven by James Barclay.... In contrast, I'm loving Barclay's writing style, so I'm not anticipating disappointment...

I enjoyed the Chronicles. It has some flaws, but overall it's good fun in a classic fantasy-as-derived-from-RPG sort of way.
But I LOVED LOVED LOVED Legends.

I enjoyed it too. It seems most don't like this series, just me, you and Abyss. It feels like Malazan light to me. This has prompted me to bump up book 2 on my TBR pile.

I like it too, but the CHRONICLES books are REALLY hard to get a hold of these days....NOONSHADE is out of print in the version I have of DAWNTHIEF. Every place I seek has the LEGENDS books, but NOONSHADE is apparently persona non-Grata to book stores. I need to order it.

i see them second hand all over the place. Try here: http://www.betterworldbooks.com