[Tiste Simeon]

I'm more interested to see his families reaction to the Children of the Dead Seed, personally.

[Slow Ben]

As awesome as those ideas are, unless its My Little Pony or Daniel Tiger, my 2 & 4 year olds wont give a shit.

[Mentalist]

Finished "Assassin's Quest". Eh, not a bad ending after all, plot stupidities aside. Making most of the book a pain-filled travelogue certainly didn't do its pacing any favours, but it's not terrible, and there's some okay payoff in the end.

At home, I find myself not very interested in continuing "The Dervish House". Mostly because any type of finance talk bores me to death, and I regard the whole "making money out of nothing" field with part superstitious dread, part disdain.

I think I'll make it a commute book just to get through it. Next payday (Fri) I'll be buying the e-book of "Farlander" and also probably ordering "Vellum", so I need a short-ish book to fill the remaining 6 days.

Which leaves me with a question of what to read at home.... I have the Tolkien re-read staring me in the face, but I think I'll hold off on that just now, and read "Red Knight" first to see if that's a series I'll be interested in.

[worry]

Fwiggin' Dwagons!

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

Slow Ben, on 03 May 2018 - 02:04 AM, said:

Finished GotM, on to Memmmmorrrrieeeesss ooooofffff IIIIIIcccccceeeeeeee!!!!!!!

Re-reading it myself at the moment.... I think that's how I'm going to read the phrase in my head now!

[Puck]

I finished Godblind the other day, in case anyone cares about my opinion after the discussion we had a couple pages ago. It only took me this long to read it because I was too busy with other things and I'm not a two-page-reader, I prefer to read in big chunks. ANYWAY, I'm sorry to disappoint, but I LOVED it. I mean, it wasn't particularly original or brilliant, and some things were a bit 'reaaally?', BUT I loved the overall feel and all the details and the characters and I wish I could jump straight into book 2. At leats it's coming this year. Didn't see the promised decline in quality halfway through or anywhere else, either.

Have started Blackdog by K.V. Johansen and enjoying it so far as well. It's been sitting on my shelf in dead-tree for years.

This post has been edited by Puck: 04 May 2018 - 11:47 PM

[Chance]

Finished up the re-read of Dust of Dreams a while back and it was pretty awesome, didn't really like it the first time I read it when the book first came out so it was a pleasant surprise. It probably just was too depresing on a first read.

Also got through Assail with ease which is likely Esslemonts best book I've read so far, it might not be exactly what was expected but might actually make it a stronger book. It is also likely the only Malazan Empire book where most of the viewpoints weave into the same story forming a greater whole, it promises good things for Paths of Ascendency which should be next after a The Crippled God re-read.

Malazan Empire Book Rank after finishing it is likely Assail -> Return of the Crimson Guard -> Orb Scepter Throne -> Night of Knives -> Stonewielder -> Blood and Bones which however really should be on a scale of its own way way behind the rest.

This post has been edited by Chance: 05 May 2018 - 03:07 PM

[Tiste Simeon]

Chance, on 05 May 2018 - 03:04 PM, said:

Finished up the re-read of Dust of Dreams a while back and it was pretty awesome, didn't really like it the first time I read it when the book first came out so it was a pleasant surprise. It probably just was too depresing on a first read.

Also got through Assail with ease which is likely Esslemonts best book I've read so far, it might not be exactly what was expected but might actually make it a stronger book. It is also likely the only Malazan Empire book where most of the viewpoints weave into the same story forming a greater whole, it promises good things for Paths of Ascendency which should be next after a The Crippled God re-read.

Malazan Empire Book Rank after finishing it is likely Assail -> Return of the Crimson Guard -> Orb Scepter Throne -> Night of Knives -> Stonewielder -> Blood and Bones which however really should be on a scale of its own way way behind the rest.

Interesting. I've got SW as the best and BaB as being miles above OST which is my least favourite of all Malazan books...

[Chance]

Tiste Simeon, on 05 May 2018 - 04:59 PM, said:

Interesting. I've got SW as the best and BaB as being miles above OST which is my least favourite of all Malazan books...

Writing wise I think Esslemont only improves along the way and BaB is probably the second most well written, its just that the barely interconnected stories really are too self contained and have too little synergy to really be worth the effort. It is also pretty boring for a very long time.

On the whole thou I think none of the Esslemont books rank well against any of Eriksons books even if both Return and Assail are more entertaining then some of Eriksons writing its no where close in style and elegance.

While there where fine characters in Stonewielder the book never made me care for them which RotCG, OSC and Assail did.

This post has been edited by Chance: 05 May 2018 - 05:45 PM

[Tiste Simeon]

Fair enough. I have enjoyed the ICE books loads more this time around so maybe I'll like OST better then I did before.

[Andorion]

I finished reading Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie.

Finishing this book reminded me of why I don't like Abercrombie.

The book started off excellently, about halfway in, I could hardly stop reading. But then Abercrombie's tendency to invert and corrupt everything kicked in, which immediately saw the storytelling and plot points sacrificed. Competent characters became insufferably stupid. By the time I finished I was sighing in irritation.


I also finished Necronomicon by Lovecraft. I think my favourite is At the Mountains of Madness, followed by Colour Out of Space and Shadow out of Time. I really did not like Innsmouth much though.

[Yllana]

@Andorion: I'm currently reading the Annotated Lovecraft and I must say that so far, Innsmouth was probably the one I liked best. Now I'm stuck at At the Mountains of Madness and not really motivated to read on.

About Abercrombie: I've only read the First Law Trilogy, because for me, reading Abercrombie is exactly as you described. It starts fine and then everything goes down the drain. I guess that's because everything has to be as grimdark and hopeless as possible.

[Andorion]

Yllana, on 06 May 2018 - 07:47 AM, said:

@Andorion: I'm currently reading the Annotated Lovecraft and I must say that so far, Innsmouth was probably the one I liked best. Now I'm stuck at At the Mountains of Madness and not really motivated to read on.

About Abercrombie: I've only read the First Law Trilogy, because for me, reading Abercrombie is exactly as you described. It starts fine and then everything goes down the drain. I guess that's because everything has to be as grimdark and hopeless as possible.

This was my first Abercrombie after First Law and it immediately reminded me why I stayed away for so long. His overemphasis on grimdark to the exclusion of everything else is just irritating.

[Macros]

Best served cold is a book I didn't really like, and I'm a huge Abercrombie fan. I think it maybe typifies or highlights thinks that people don't like about his writing.
Heroes is (imo) his best individual book, although I'm aware this statement could set the slavering hordes loose.

Myself I've read another few caiphas Cain novels because all I have is my Kobo and all I have unread on my Kobo is 40k or the Darren brown angels and demons or whatever doggerel trilogy (not sure how they ended up there)
Read Horus Rising today. A really good take on how the split etc happened. A cute opening that works at the time as a bait and switch but kind of feels cheap.

But I want to read another to see how quickly it all goes to shit, or if it's a constant exacerbation of the problems Horus is already dealing with that takes time

[Puck]

Andorion, on 06 May 2018 - 01:38 AM, said:

I finished reading Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie.

Finishing this book reminded me of why I don't like Abercrombie.

The book started off excellently, about halfway in, I could hardly stop reading. But then Abercrombie's tendency to invert and corrupt everything kicked in, which immediately saw the storytelling and plot points sacrificed. Competent characters became insufferably stupid. By the time I finished I was sighing in irritation.

Agreed. I dropped Abercrombie like a hot potato after BSC. Partly because of this (I don't mind all doom and gloom, provided it does not make the characters act like idiots, though), partly because it dragged on way too long and partly because he used the same character archetypes as in his first trilogy but no way near as effectively. I still like the First Law trilogy, but there's a lot of other stuff out there to read.

Though I remember that my opinion was very unpopular on here back when BSC was freshly released.

This post has been edited by Puck: 06 May 2018 - 06:40 PM

[Macros]

Puck, on 06 May 2018 - 06:39 PM, said:

Andorion, on 06 May 2018 - 01:38 AM, said:

I finished reading Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie.

Finishing this book reminded me of why I don't like Abercrombie.

The book started off excellently, about halfway in, I could hardly stop reading. But then Abercrombie's tendency to invert and corrupt everything kicked in, which immediately saw the storytelling and plot points sacrificed. Competent characters became insufferably stupid. By the time I finished I was sighing in irritation.

Agreed. I dropped Abercrombie like a hot potato after BSC. Partly because of this (I don't mind all doom and gloom, provided it does not make the characters act like idiots, though), partly because it dragged on way too long and partly because he used the same character archetypes as in his first trilogy but no way near as effectively. I still like the First Law trilogy, but there's a lot of other stuff out there to read.

Though I remember that my opinion was very unpopular on here back when BSC was freshly released.

IIRC there were a few of us that didn't like it, I actually struggled to finish I think, certainly have no desire to revisit it anyway. But if you did enjoy the first law trilo I'd say give The Heroes a bash, it has everything that was good about it and a lot less of what was bad about BSC

[Slow Ben]

Macros, on 07 May 2018 - 03:35 AM, said:

Puck, on 06 May 2018 - 06:39 PM, said:

Andorion, on 06 May 2018 - 01:38 AM, said:

I finished reading Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie.

Finishing this book reminded me of why I don't like Abercrombie.

The book started off excellently, about halfway in, I could hardly stop reading. But then Abercrombie's tendency to invert and corrupt everything kicked in, which immediately saw the storytelling and plot points sacrificed. Competent characters became insufferably stupid. By the time I finished I was sighing in irritation.

Agreed. I dropped Abercrombie like a hot potato after BSC. Partly because of this (I don't mind all doom and gloom, provided it does not make the characters act like idiots, though), partly because it dragged on way too long and partly because he used the same character archetypes as in his first trilogy but no way near as effectively. I still like the First Law trilogy, but there's a lot of other stuff out there to read.

Though I remember that my opinion was very unpopular on here back when BSC was freshly released.

IIRC there were a few of us that didn't like it, I actually struggled to finish I think, certainly have no desire to revisit it anyway. But if you did enjoy the first law trilo I'd say give The Heroes a bash, it has everything that was good about it and a lot less of what was bad about BSC

Agreed. Best Served Cold is the only Abercrombie book that i've not enjoyed. And like Ando, I enjoyed about the firs half, and that was about it.

[Abyss]

Slow Ben, on 07 May 2018 - 05:04 AM, said:

Macros, on 07 May 2018 - 03:35 AM, said:

Puck, on 06 May 2018 - 06:39 PM, said:

Andorion, on 06 May 2018 - 01:38 AM, said:

I finished reading Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie.

Finishing this book reminded me of why I don't like Abercrombie.

The book started off excellently, about halfway in, I could hardly stop reading. But then Abercrombie's tendency to invert and corrupt everything kicked in, which immediately saw the storytelling and plot points sacrificed. Competent characters became insufferably stupid. By the time I finished I was sighing in irritation.

Agreed. I dropped Abercrombie like a hot potato after BSC. Partly because of this (I don't mind all doom and gloom, provided it does not make the characters act like idiots, though), partly because it dragged on way too long and partly because he used the same character archetypes as in his first trilogy but no way near as effectively. I still like the First Law trilogy, but there's a lot of other stuff out there to read.

Though I remember that my opinion was very unpopular on here back when BSC was freshly released.

IIRC there were a few of us that didn't like it, I actually struggled to finish I think, certainly have no desire to revisit it anyway. But if you did enjoy the first law trilo I'd say give The Heroes a bash, it has everything that was good about it and a lot less of what was bad about BSC

Agreed. Best Served Cold is the only Abercrombie book that i've not enjoyed. And like Ando, I enjoyed about the firs half, and that was about it.

Counterpoint: BEST SERVED COLD was his bestest book, for being the most original, with the most interesting protagonist, and a great combo of revenge, heist, and big battle elements.

[Mentalist]

BSC is a grimdark, fantasy version of "Count of Monte Christo" . And it's awesome.

"The Heroes" , otoh, was a drag

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 07 May 2018 - 02:04 PM

[QuickTidal]

I disliked BSC too...and I couldn't finish THE HEROES.