[QuickTidal]

Salt-Man Z, on 13 May 2013 - 03:36 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 13 May 2013 - 03:26 PM, said:

Spoiler

Bazel Warv. Best heroic death scene, and best death scene since Anakin Solo died in the EU. Sacrificing himself in a hail of gunfire to protect Allana had me tearing up.

Spoiler

Better than The Ganner? I think not. Anyway, I never felt attached to Bazel "Barv" Warv as a character, so his death didn't do much for me.

Come to think of it, I haven't really felt emotionally invested in any of the characters outside Jacen, Ben, and maybe Luke, since the NJO ended.

Hmmm.

Spoiler

Fair enough. I'm always a sucker for heroic deaths, and even though I didn't know Bazel long...Allana's upset at seeing his demise hit me.

[Hound]

Finished all the Joe Ledger books by Maberry. Very, very addictive popcorn reading! Loved it. The 2nd book (Dragon Factory) a bit less so, but the series picks up after that (Assassin's Code was really, REALLY good).

Currently reading Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding.

QuickTidal, on 13 May 2013 - 03:26 PM, said:

[...]

Hey, you're back!

[worry]

Finished Alera 2...still not loving it, but it was definitely an uptick from the first book. Don't mean to sound so negative about it though, as long as the upward trajectory lasts. If I can say a nice thing about it compared to Dresden, it's that I like that he's brought over his tendency to create an insane deadline before everything hits the fan (like two or three days, start to finish), and everyone just has to switch gears immediately and deal with the crises.

Now I'm reading Horns by Joe Hill. Guy wakes up with horns on his head, thinks he's hallucinating, but everyone he meets starts telling him their darkest impulses and secrets, seeking his approval. Just at the beginning stages, but it's already pretty dark and quite wickedly funny.

[Ukjent]

Started with Daniel Abraham's The Dragon's Path, looks interesting so far.

[Kruppe's snacky cakes]

94. Something Magic This Way Comes edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Sarah A. Hoyt - One of dozens of DAW fantasy anthologies, and not one of the better ones. These were great in the 80s and early 90s, but I think they've churned out so many that they sometimes have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for stories.

95. Star Wars: Death Star by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry - I really haven't been all that impressed with many of the pre-original-trilogy novels, and this was no exception.

96. The Unremembered by Peter Orullian - This has been compared to Jordan's WoT, usually unfavorably. I didn't mind the similarities. Honestly, I wouldn't even have noticed, except for the prologue. However, it just became increasingly boring and tedious after about page 400 or so. A shame, because I really wanted to like this one.

97. Incredible Change-Bots Two graphic novel by Jeffrey Brown - Second volume spoof of Transformers. This one starts with the Megatron character (Shootertron) living with an old married couple on a farm (ala Clark Kent), after having lost his memory. Funny stuff.

98. The New Vampire's Handbook: A Guide for the Recently Turned Creature of the Night by Joe Garden et al. - Spoof how-to guide. I'm starting to get bored with these, although this was a decent spoof, as spoofs go...

99. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Mortal Fear by Scott and Denise Ciencin - So-so Buffy novelization. The only one that really impressed me was The Lost Slayer by Christopher Golden.

100. The War of the Worlds, Plus Blood, Guts and Zombies by H. G. Wells and Eric S. Brown - My search for a decent mash-up novel continues. Closer, but no cigar.

101. The Season Of Passage by Christopher Pike - Circa 1980s horror novel about astronauts going to Mars to investigate the disappearance of a Soviet expedition. Not bad, but nothing to write home about either.

102. Time Riders by Alex Scarrow - Three teenagers are rescued from disaster at different points in history. They have been recruited to protect the timeline from interference on the part of less benevolent time travelers. Good concept and characters, but I found the plot a bit dull.

103. Inside The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader by Devin Brown - An exploration of the book/movie. For me, the gold standard of Narnia guides is Companion To Narnia by Paul F. Ford.

104. What's Science Ever Done For Us?: What The Simpsons Can Teach Us about Physics, Robots, Life, and the Universe by Paul Halpern - Uses Simpsons anecdotes to teach science. Recommended for science novices and/or diehard Simpsons fans only. The information is way too basic to be of much interest to anyone who already knows a lot of science.

105. The Waters Rising by Sheri S. Tepper - Another one I had high hopes for, but it just started to bore me about halfway through and never recovered my interest.

I'm reading some good stuff now, so more positive comments forthcoming with the next batch...

[Abyss]

Kruppe, on 13 May 2013 - 09:56 PM, said:

...

100. The War of the Worlds, Plus Blood, Guts and Zombies by H. G. Wells and Eric S. Brown - My search for a decent mash-up novel continues. Closer, but no cigar.

...

EX-HEROES and sequel EX-PATRIOTS. Superheroes, zombies, pure fun. Go get em.

[Orlion]

Abyss, on 14 May 2013 - 03:45 AM, said:

Kruppe, on 13 May 2013 - 09:56 PM, said:

...

100. The War of the Worlds, Plus Blood, Guts and Zombies by H. G. Wells and Eric S. Brown - My search for a decent mash-up novel continues. Closer, but no cigar.

...

EX-HEROES and sequel EX-PATRIOTS. Superheroes, zombies, pure fun. Go get em.

Sheesh, won't people just stop trying to bastardize classics? (Not refering to Abyss' suggestions. Those sound like original works, not a cheep attempt at writing)

[polishgenius]

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes. Those of you who are fans of Warren Ellis' novels should definitely look into this, especially if you like Gun Machine. Also quite reminiscent of Gaiman or Mieville at their least weird.

An interesting direction for Beukes, whose previous two books were straight up post-cyberpunk swagger (even though Zoo City had no actual cyberpunk in it at all, being a fantasy). This is more reserved, both in attitude and premise.

[QuickTidal]

Whilst re-reading THE SILMARILLION....I am also chewing through Clavell's TAI-PAN. I've got Helen Wecker's THE GOLEM & THE DJINNI and ALIF THE UNSEEN by G. Willow Wilson on deck.

[Dolorous Menhir]

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. Tough going. Sentence structure and flow of language strangely difficult. Nothing against the author, read Neuromancer years ago and loved it.

[QuickTidal]

Dolorous Menhir, on 16 May 2013 - 05:22 AM, said:

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. Tough going. Sentence structure and flow of language strangely difficult. Nothing against the author, read Neuromancer years ago and loved it.

He went a bit weird later in life...IDORU was the first novel I noticed where the sentence structure went wonky...ALL TOMORROWS PARTIES was the same.

[Abyss]

Orlion, on 14 May 2013 - 03:03 PM, said:

Abyss, on 14 May 2013 - 03:45 AM, said:

Kruppe, on 13 May 2013 - 09:56 PM, said:

...

100. The War of the Worlds, Plus Blood, Guts and Zombies by H. G. Wells and Eric S. Brown - My search for a decent mash-up novel continues. Closer, but no cigar.

...

EX-HEROES and sequel EX-PATRIOTS. Superheroes, zombies, pure fun. Go get em.

Sheesh, won't people just stop trying to bastardize classics? (Not refering to Abyss' suggestions. Those sound like original works, not a cheep attempt at writing)

My suggestions are as you say, but the WotW thing, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and the rest of their ilk, are spoofs, not quite 'bastradizations'. And for reasons incomprehensible, as most of them are pretty weakly written, they seem to make money, so i think we're stuck w the genre until it runs out of classics to mess with.

QuickTidal, on 16 May 2013 - 12:50 PM, said:

Dolorous Menhir, on 16 May 2013 - 05:22 AM, said:

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. Tough going. Sentence structure and flow of language strangely difficult. Nothing against the author, read Neuromancer years ago and loved it.

He went a bit weird later in life...IDORU was the first novel I noticed where the sentence structure went wonky...ALL TOMORROWS PARTIES was the same.

As much as i deeply love the SPRAWL trilo, i thought THE DIFFERENCE ENGINE was dull (shocking because i like Sterling too), and VIRTUAL LIGHT is where Gibson started to derail for me, and i really didn't enjoy PARTIES or IDORU and stopped reading his stuff. PATTERN has been in the TRP for years without any sign of moving up any time soon, and that only because Warren Ellis praised it and i spotted it in a 2ndHS. I want to like everything he writes because NEUROMANCER fuck, but even so...



QUANTUM THIEF finally picked up around the p150 mark and has improved. I can't say i'm blown away... nothing there yet that Stross or Banks or Asher haven't done better imnsho, but it's drawn my attention back.

[amphibian]

He really started experimenting with making the language fit the characters in mood, not just describing them, at that point.

I think it works and particularly like his writing. Others may think differently and be just as correct. The only quibble I have with his writing is that he seems to love the idea of the reclusive researcher to an extreme that provides for some very strange action late in the books.

[Abyss]

amphibian, on 16 May 2013 - 02:33 PM, said:

He really started experimenting with making the language fit the characters in mood, not just describing them, at that point.

I think it works and particularly like his writing. Others may think differently and be just as correct. The only quibble I have with his writing is that he seems to love the idea of the reclusive researcher to an extreme that provides for some very strange action late in the books.

Who are you referring to now?

[amphibian]

Abyss, on 16 May 2013 - 02:54 PM, said:

Who are you referring to now?

Gibson was whom I was referring to in that post. His work has consistently been some of my favorite stuff because of his writing style and clever meshing of technology/otherness with a very self-interested cast of humans viewpoint. His Blue Ant trilogy that starts with Pattern Recognition really cut out on the freaky stuff and focus more onto a world that's pretty close to our actual world. I think he also cut out most of the choppy talk in those books because the characters that get POVs are more educated and trained than the dystopian mercenaries/accidentals that he picked up as characters for the Sprawl trilogy and the Bridge trilogy.

Keep on with The Quantum Thief. It picks up. Rajaniemi is pure delight when things click into place for the reader.

[QuickTidal]

Okay, so I stopped by the bookstore and it was Rewards Member Day...an extra like 25% off plus my usual 10%...and so i got Dan Brown's new one INFERNO for $9 total! I was gonna wait till the paperback came out...but I wasn't about to pass up a deal where I'd get the hardback for that price.

I'm in the mood for a thriller, so I'm starting it tonight.

[JPK]

Finished Railsea tonight. Really glad to have finally read that and gotten it off from my trp. It had been sitting there since the week it was released. Have to keep reminding myself to read more Mieville.

Back to the reread of Inheritor. Then I'm probably going to split my attention between continuing on with Covenant with White Gold Wielder and starting The Dragon's Path by Abraham.

[QuickTidal]

Briar King, on 17 May 2013 - 02:40 AM, said:

Is that one in the Tom Hanks movie series about the Church?

Well, not always about the church, but yeah both THE DAVINCI CODE and ANGELS & DEMONS concerned the church. This one is about Dante's INFERNO.

I'm 100 pages in, and so far it's made two or three spectacular leaps in logic:

spoilers, even though the two instance are innocuous and not plot-concerning...

Spoiler

1. Langdon and his companion (this time it's a female British Doctor with a high IQ) call the American consulate in Florence, Italy (where the events take place) to find out what's going on, and then hide out across the street in the girls apartment (<----!!!!!!!?!) from the address they give to see if they can trust them...and then STAY in the building across the street (<----!?!?!?JFJVSJRGJS) till the baddies realize they must be in the vicinity....and Langdon uses the girls HOME COMPUTER to log into his Harvard Edu email...and they raid the building.

2. The baddies (just as stupid as Langdon apparently) arrive in the apartment and realize that the IP address is not registered to Langdon (Derrr)...and the lackey guy says it's registered under the initials "S.C."...and that "it shouldn't take too long to find out the persons whole name and proceeds to go about electronically finding it out...Me: Hey....Chauncy.....how's about you go to the fucking front door and find some mail? Huh? What do you think of that detective work chuckles?...Fuck. Like seriously.

Those logic leaps aside, I am moderately more entertained so far than I was with LOST SYMBOL....it's not remotely DAVINCI CODE of A&D quality story mind you (maybe Dante's Infero and the Medici's aren't that interesting a topic for me?)... but defo better than the 3rd turd book...just not by as much as I think I'd like it to be.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 17 May 2013 - 11:34 AM

[Hound]

I started reading Inferno too and I couldn't agree more about what you spoilered, seriously, the stupidity, oh my oh my..... And don't get me started about that stupid Mickey Mouse watch, GET OVER IT LANGDON!!!! argh! The story so far failed to grab me, I find the plot uninteresting, the characters stupidity jarring (it pulled me right out the story) and... I dunno, it's all so... dull? Bland? I really liked Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code, I even enjoyed the other books to some extent, but this one? Nah, I doubt I'll finish it.

Ah well, a few weeks and we'll have The Eye Of God by Rollins :-)

[James Hutton]

I finished the Prince of Nothing trilogy's final book THE THOUSANDFOLD THOUGHT by R. Scott Bakker. I really liked these books, will probably read them again and will buy/read the Aspect Emperor trilogy as well.


Now on to WORLD WAR Z by Max Brooks.