[Chance]

Finished up The Scarab Path in a single sitting more or less, Tchaikovsky did something smart when he changed the way he does things in this one. Focusing on a smaller core cast and a single problem at a time gives a very neat book and easily the best so far even with a third of the core cast being Totho who continues to be barely readable both Che and Thalric are great .

Also listening to The Years of Rice and Salt which so far seems awesome.

This post has been edited by Chance: 08 November 2015 - 09:24 PM

[worry]

amphibian, on 08 November 2015 - 09:00 AM, said:

Do you need food?

[amphibian]

Worrywort, you forgot this from Sixteen Candles?

[worry]

My goodness, I did. I have to admit, Sixteen Candles is the entry in the MOLLY RINGWALD HOLY TRINITY I've seen the least.

[Mentalist]

Chance, on 08 November 2015 - 09:23 PM, said:

Finished up The Scarab Path in a single sitting more or less, Tchaikovsky did something smart when he changed the way he does things in this one. Focusing on a smaller core cast and a single problem at a time gives a very neat book and easily the best so far even with a third of the core cast being Totho who continues to be barely readable both Che and Thalric are great .

Also listening to The Years of Rice and Salt which so far seems awesome.

Years of Rice and Salt is great. Esp. the middle bits, before they get to the "pseudo-modern-history".

[acesn8s]

Finished Tad William's Otherland 1 this weekend. I'm not going to hurry into book 2. I'm not really feeling this series.

I'm trying to decide on Katherine Kerr's Daggerspell or Chris Wooding's Ketty Jay 1.

[Andorion]

acesn8s, on 09 November 2015 - 01:24 PM, said:

Finished Tad William's Otherland 1 this weekend. I'm not going to hurry into book 2. I'm not really feeling this series.

I'm trying to decide on Katherine Kerr's Daggerspell or Chris Wooding's Ketty Jay 1.

Ketty Jay is really good if you are in the mood for something light and entertaining

[QuickTidal]

Started and stalled on Anthony Horowitz's TRIGGER MORTIS, which is a new James Bond story set directly after GOLDFINGER...and you know what? All the stuff that I don't like about classic Bond (the rampant sexism, the careless smoking, pretty much alcoholism)...is all (by dint of the story taking place in the 60's) present and accounted for in force. And as much as I can ignore it in the old movies, it's really jarring to read a new piece of fiction which has all those tropes. So I think I may not bother with this one.

[T77]

Andorion, on 06 November 2015 - 05:01 PM, said:

Finished Shadows of the Apt 10: Seal of the Worm Good series, definitely worth a read, be patient for the first three books, payoff is good.

Now resuming my Game of Thrones journey, starting A Clash of Kings

With all of the Apt talk recently I figured it was a good time to jump back in. I read the first two books a few years ago and enjoyed them, but found the second book a bit of a slog. I believe a few of you in this forum told me to continue as it gets better. I'm in the middle of book 3 now and I am really liking it so far, best in the series up to this point. Good to hear it gets better after book 3.

I also finished up on my Tad Williams binge. I finished the last 3 books in Shadowmarch and found the series to be really solid and a great read. I also finished Bobby Dollar #3, Sleeping Late on Judgement Day, which was great. With all of this Tad has moved into my top tier of authors. Looking forward to the new book in Memory, Sorrow and Thorn next year. I need to reread the first three before then.

[Abyss]

Abyss, on 21 April 2015 - 10:30 PM, said:

polishgenius, on 21 April 2015 - 08:30 PM, said:

Currently I'm reading Evensong by John Love. A massive departure from Faith in setting, being a near-future techno-philosophy-thriller, though it shares some themes with the previous work. It's a book that seems clearly inspired by Richard Morgan - the Consultants here have blatant parallels to the Envoys and Thirteens in their respective books - but as anyone who's read Faith might attest, it quickly goes off into stranger, more uncertain places.

I'm not quite enjoying it as much as Faith at this point (but I loved Faith, so that's not a knock), but the potential is there for a stronger ending.

Coolness... I didn't know he had a new book out.

polishgenius, on 22 April 2015 - 05:17 PM, said:

Abyss, on 21 April 2015 - 10:30 PM, said:

Coolness... I didn't know he had a new book out.

It didn't get a lot of attention, but then neither did Faith. Night Shade books don't seem to have much of a marketing arm, even the new one.


Anyway, finished. The ending is... well, huh. In some ways it's better than that of Faith (it hangs together more strongly in a structural sense), in some ways it's worse (it relies on a narrative technique that I'm really not fond of). Overall I like the book a little less but strongly suspect that a large part of that is my preference for the setting, and strongly suspect that anyone who prefers relatively low-tech thrillers as opposed to bombastic space opera will lean the other way.

Finished.


Didn't like.

Despite an interesting set-up, I found it to be it was slow, repetitious verging on tedious at times, the characters' decisions often made no sense in the context of everything he felt the need to tell us multiple times, and the twist ending was ... meh. Illogical... flowed poorly from the build-up... just made no sense given the set-up.

The one major action scene was fairly awesome.... had there been six more i may have overlooked the other stuff and enjoyed the book, but as it stood... not a read i'm satisfied with.

Not even remotely close to the epic space opera done-in-one grandeur of FAITH, but perhaps that's an unfair comparison. Love does solid sf, his concepts are neat, his deeply flawed characters are compelling, but the overall story here and the storytelling didn't work for me.

[acesn8s]

Briar King, on 09 November 2015 - 09:58 PM, said:

acesn8s, on 09 November 2015 - 01:24 PM, said:

Finished Tad William's Otherland 1 this weekend. I'm not going to hurry into book 2. I'm not really feeling this series.

I'm trying to decide on Katherine Kerr's Daggerspell or Chris Wooding's Ketty Jay 1.

Imo Otherland 1 was by far the best so you may in trouble if you didn't like it. I'd skip.

I'll probably get back to it at some point, but not any time soon.

I started Daggerspell over lunch yesterday. I'm digging it so far. I believe Kerr has a decent number of books written in this series, so I'll be busy for a while.

[Chance]

Started The Sea Watch but wasn't in the mood for more apt just yet after reading 1-5 back to back. Jumped to Magic Shifts which is hillarious much of the time, perfect to listening to when working. Hopefully I'll finish Magic Shifts and posibly the Dread Wyrm soon I hate when having four or more books that I'm going to finish but lying around kind of started or even most way though.

[Mentalist]

Making my way through "Prince of Fools". So far, the same problem I've had w/ Broken Empire- I love the world, but couldn't care less for any of the characters.

At home, Malaz re-read continues with OST, before jumping into a DoD/tCG. Just like SW, since I remember what the big surprise is, I'm not particularly excited. Mostly re-reading for the sake of Vitr and the rest of minor storylines. At least it seems ICE isn't throwing in as many PoVs in every single chapter as SW, so it's a smoother read.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 10 November 2015 - 01:57 PM

[QuickTidal]

Halfway through the first ASSASSINATION CLASSROOM manga...pretty great stuff so far.

And I've started S.E. Grove's THE GLASS SENTENCE, which is the first in a new YA series called the Mapmakers...where in 1799 a strange catastrophe (called the Great Disruption) causes the world to split into "Ages", Eastern America becomes New Occident (living pretty much in the time in which it takes place [1890's]), while Canada becomes a largely uninhabited prehistoric wasteland, England was thrown back to the 12th century...ect. It's pretty fun and immersive so far.

[Abyss]

Started Beckett's DARK EDEN but wasn't feeling it, switched to SM Stirling's CONQUISTADOR.... damn that man can write.

[polishgenius]

I finished the Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu. While fun, I can't say that I loved it- the science just annoyed me so much. I mean, I'm hardly one to need plausible science in my SF, but the problem was it reads in a very Neal Stephenson way, 'let's explore all these cool concepts together' sort of thing. But though Stephenson goes to some very out-there places, there's always some sort of logical progression from an acceptable starting point so I don't have trouble following his lead. Liu, mixed in with some discussion of actual cool, buyable-if-not-realistic ideas, has far too much which makes my inner physician just go 'BULLSHIT!', and at least one painful moment where he made up some extremely spurious and contrived science to handwave a much simpler failure of science he'd apparently discovered in his concept.


But, by far, the most distracting thing was that

Spoiler

in a book called The Three Body Problem, not one person - no-one in the entire, million-year history of the TriSolarian civilisation, and none of the people playing the game on Earth - pointed out that a triple star system with one planet is not a three body problem. Something that I could have grudgingly accepted if they'd just pretended the planet was negligible, but then they started banging on about how chaos theory applies and even the tiniest variable can have a huge effect long-term. And didn't once mention the planet.

I also had huge problems with the idea that scientists would start killing themselves just because their results didn't make sense. I mean, fuck you. I'm pretty sure most scientists would be like HOLY SHIT SOMETHING NEW AND UNDISCOVERED LET'S FIND OUT WAGWAN!

On the other hand, at least Da Shi was awesome.

Abyss, on 09 November 2015 - 09:09 PM, said:

Finished.


Didn't like.

Despite an interesting set-up, I found it to be it was slow, repetitious verging on tedious at times, the characters' decisions often made no sense in the context of everything he felt the need to tell us multiple times, and the twist ending was ... meh. Illogical... flowed poorly from the build-up... just made no sense given the set-up.

The ending was just weird so I can see the dissatisfaction there. I didn't mind the repetition, though - it helped sell me on

Spoiler

Anwar's descent into madness, which I think was what the book was in the end really about.

I didn't like it near as much as Faith, which I loved, but it got into my head in a weird way.

Abyss, on 10 November 2015 - 04:45 PM, said:

Started Beckett's DARK EDEN but wasn't feeling it, switched to SM Stirling's CONQUISTADOR.... damn that man can write.

Dark Eden gets a lot of love and I don't really understand it. It's very, very average imo.

This post has been edited by polishgenius: 10 November 2015 - 07:20 PM

[Baco Xtath]

1/2 way through listening to the Night Watch; really liking it. Enjoying the characters, plot, ...basically every aspect of it. Can't believe I've never read it before. Anyway, glad I'm in it now. Also, just started listening to Queen of Fire. Hopefully 95% of the review are bullshit and amph ;and abyss are right.

[Chance]

Finished Magic Shifts and nearly through the Dread Wyrm. The Kate Daniels series is at its worst so-so but when it is good it beats Dresden into the dust this book had moments of both. Unlike many urban fantasy series it does have much more continuity between books, it does have a monster of the book set up like most other but there is a greater story that does advance visibily (at least in these later books) which most Urban Fantasy fail even when they deliver good standalone adventures.

Baco Xtath, on 10 November 2015 - 09:57 PM, said:

Hopefully 95% of the review are bullshit and amph ;and abyss are right.

They are, don't worry about it.

Briar King, on 10 November 2015 - 07:42 PM, said:

Sea Watch is just so fucking cool! It's so disorienting at 1st ut at a certain point everything just pops in the right place.

Damn now I want to know why it is cool, it seemed slightly boring with all that politicing in the begining .

This post has been edited by Chance: 10 November 2015 - 11:45 PM

[Andorion]

Chance, on 10 November 2015 - 11:44 PM, said:

Finished Magic Shifts and nearly through the Dread Wyrm. The Kate Daniels series is at its worst so-so but when it is good it beats Dresden into the dust this book had moments of both. Unlike many urban fantasy series it does have much more continuity between books, it does have a monster of the book set up like most other but there is a greater story that does advance visibily (at least in these later books) which most Urban Fantasy fail even when they deliver good standalone adventures.

Baco Xtath, on 10 November 2015 - 09:57 PM, said:

Hopefully 95% of the review are bullshit and amph ;and abyss are right.

They are, don't worry about it.

Briar King, on 10 November 2015 - 07:42 PM, said:

Sea Watch is just so fucking cool! It's so disorienting at 1st ut at a certain point everything just pops in the right place.

Damn now I want to know why it is cool, it seemed slightly boring with all that politicing in the begining .

Yeah Magic Shifts was excellent. And I will second the Sea Watch is cool thing

[Serenity]

Finished McCullough's Caesar (Masters of Rome bk 5). Fabulous stuff.

Now reading Daniel Polansky's The Builders novella.