[QuickTidal]

Aptorian, on 23 March 2019 - 05:28 AM, said:

Added Permafrost to my Kindle library. No idea when I'll get around to reading it.

.

I grabbed it as well.

[Aptorian]

I lied. I'm 40% into Permafrost. It's good though the real timey wimey stuff hasn't kicked in proper yet. But it is good.

[Aptorian]

Finished Permafrost.

A fine time travel story, a la twelve monkeys but I'm not as hot on the book as Stone monkey. It's a competent time travel take but not much more than that. I was hoping for more recursive nonsense and paradoxes.

Spoiler

I feel like we were missing some kind of confrontation with Miguel. Antii or what ever heshe was called supposedly killed Miguel but I was half expecting a double turn where Antii was actually the bad one.

I feel like we could have had past Miguel's controller jumping to the present, taking over present Miguel, to stop the protagonist from destroying the project.

Technically we're not even certain the brothers were actually the white machines of the future.

Also feel like Cho bought on to the protagonists warning a little too easily

But all in all it was a good story with a poignant ending.

Bit grim though, right? Even if those seeds will grow the whole world is a wasteland. A sliver of hope is better than nothing but I think I'd just rather jump on the euthanasia bus.

This post has been edited by Aptorian: 23 March 2019 - 03:45 PM

[Aptorian]

Since I'm already on Kindle, I skipped the next Belgariad or Cormoran Strike book and jumped into Kelanved's Reach.

In to chapter 2 it's a fast moving book.

On a side note, using kindle on my phone rather than my old kindle tablet is a revelation. Maybe it's just because it's a phone app or maybe my old Kindles are out dated, but the interface and options are so much more versatile and user friendly on my phone.

[Abyss]

Mentalist, on 23 March 2019 - 06:04 AM, said:

Finished "Angels and Demons". What a twisted little drama this turned out to be.

Now I feel tempted to just power through a Da Vinci Code re-read (I originally read it in a day), and then also read "Last Symbol" (I got it as a gift many years ago; I should probably read it).

If you enjoyed ANGELS and CODE, you probably shouldn’t.

Quote

In commute, finished "Gunmetal Magic" . A bit too heavy on the emotional side for my tastes, but once the murdering of mythical things took centre stage, it became a good urbf fix. There's another novella in the volume, but I think I need to power through that at home, so I don't finish it in half my trip home from work and then get stuck with no book.

The struggle is real. ... I suspect the second story is either Magic gifts or Magic Mourns. Either is worth the read.

[Aptorian]

I'll second the pooping on Dan Brown. His novels are fine, cool suspense novels, but if you've read more than one of them, you'll realize they're all the same formula. Twist follows twist follows twist.

Angels and demon and Davinci are his best books, the rest just feels like rehashes.

...

As for Kelanved's Reach, I'm twenty percent in. Like the last two I am surprised by how much I enjoy Esslemonts writing now.

I agree with the criticism that the books pace is too fast and I want much more detail but the writing is really solid. There's absolutely no fat that needs to be cut away. Every chapter, every pov is great and the book just goes and goes.

[stone monkey]

Re: Permafrost - and seeing as it was only published in the last week...

Spoiler

My theories:

I didn't mind the lack of confrontation with Miguel, because it made it clear that by the time, in their frame, that Antii, Vikram (ouch!) and Miguel went back to meet Valentina/Tatiana things had gone horribly wrong, which was, as it turned out to be (in Tatiana's frame that is), before Valentina started piloting Tatiana (but afterwards from the pov of Antii et al). And we really only get the information that Valentina has in the story. We also know Miguel couldn't access the past until months (in 2080, that is) after Valentina could, so presumably he wasn't accessible to the White Machines until then. Which never got to happen due to Cho and Valentina's later (but also earlier) actions.


I would hazard that the White Machines were whatever the Brothers became when left to their own devices, with a power source and some fairly sophisticated machine shops, after the failure of the Permafrost Project and the eventual extinction of humanity; which, of course, they themselves helped bring about.


Cho, I think, had been in on it from the very beginning, because of the completely uncoincidental siting of the project over Valentina/Tatiana's crash site - which we see change when the GPS coordinates are misremembered. So I would assume he was waiting for validation from Valentina to avoid the paradox problem. I would guess that he was in the temporal equivalent (i.e. paradox + not-paradox) of a superposed quantum state for almost the entire duration of the story (kind of like Eugene Wigner's proposed Wigner's Friend extension to the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment - which, as someone who was a professional physicist in a previous life, I'm pretty sure Reynolds is probably well aware of)

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 23 March 2019 - 07:33 PM

[Aptorian]

Well, when you put it like that, my brain just feels all full of fuck!

I guess there are layers or time related Chess moves to factor in, but the plot on the surface could have used a bit more oomph.

[stone monkey]

Of course, I may just be overthinking the text a little. Which is what I do, I suppose

[Andorion]

Abyss, on 23 March 2019 - 05:20 PM, said:

Mentalist, on 23 March 2019 - 06:04 AM, said:

Finished "Angels and Demons". What a twisted little drama this turned out to be.

Now I feel tempted to just power through a Da Vinci Code re-read (I originally read it in a day), and then also read "Last Symbol" (I got it as a gift many years ago; I should probably read it).

If you enjoyed ANGELS and CODE, you probably shouldn't.

Quote

In commute, finished "Gunmetal Magic" . A bit too heavy on the emotional side for my tastes, but once the murdering of mythical things took centre stage, it became a good urbf fix. There's another novella in the volume, but I think I need to power through that at home, so I don't finish it in half my trip home from work and then get stuck with no book.

The struggle is real. ... I suspect the second story is either Magic gifts or Magic Mourns. Either is worth the read.

I will always argue that if you read Angels and Demons, and only Angels and Demons, you would consider Dan Brown to be a very competent thriller writer.

[Mentalist]

Abyss, on 23 March 2019 - 05:20 PM, said:

Mentalist, on 23 March 2019 - 06:04 AM, said:

Finished "Angels and Demons". What a twisted little drama this turned out to be.

Now I feel tempted to just power through a Da Vinci Code re-read (I originally read it in a day), and then also read "Last Symbol" (I got it as a gift many years ago; I should probably read it).

If you enjoyed ANGELS and CODE, you probably shouldn’t.

Quote

In commute, finished "Gunmetal Magic" . A bit too heavy on the emotional side for my tastes, but once the murdering of mythical things took centre stage, it became a good urbf fix. There's another novella in the volume, but I think I need to power through that at home, so I don't finish it in half my trip home from work and then get stuck with no book.

The struggle is real. ... I suspect the second story is either Magic gifts or Magic Mourns. Either is worth the read.

It was Magic Gifts. Makes sense, since it takes place same time as events of Gunmetal. Anyway, finished now. Cool background bits on the Neo-Vikings.

[Abyss]

Andorion, on 24 March 2019 - 12:59 AM, said:

Abyss, on 23 March 2019 - 05:20 PM, said:

Mentalist, on 23 March 2019 - 06:04 AM, said:

Finished "Angels and Demons". What a twisted little drama this turned out to be.

Now I feel tempted to just power through a Da Vinci Code re-read (I originally read it in a day), and then also read "Last Symbol" (I got it as a gift many years ago; I should probably read it).

If you enjoyed ANGELS and CODE, you probably shouldn't.

Quote

In commute, finished "Gunmetal Magic" . A bit too heavy on the emotional side for my tastes, but once the murdering of mythical things took centre stage, it became a good urbf fix. There's another novella in the volume, but I think I need to power through that at home, so I don't finish it in half my trip home from work and then get stuck with no book.

The struggle is real. ... I suspect the second story is either Magic gifts or Magic Mourns. Either is worth the read.

I will always argue that if you read Angels and Demons, and only Angels and Demons, you would consider Dan Brown to be a very competent thriller writer.

I’d extend that to CODE.


Unfortunately everything else of his i’ve read, the opposite.

[worry]

Finished Black Leopard Red Wolf. Like I said before, it's a long, sometimes difficult book, and the first third or so is dedicated strictly to character and world building. The plot doesn't really kick in till about then. Once it does, it's actually (and somewhat surprisingly) a quest fantasy, and a really smart, engaging one at that, full of well-drawn characters, tension, and some truly great monsters. I really zoomed through the back half (after I took a short break), and so much of what happens is rewarding due to all that stage-setting before. I'd still say its closest antecedent, in my limited familiarity, is Book of the New Sun, though Tracker is a much different personality than Severian, and it's eventually more plot-driven, with the promise of bigger things to come.

I will say, for such a long book there aren't that many errors in it (have it on Kindle). But the ones that are there aren't typos so much as when the author or editor misidentifies who said what (like, wrong pronoun) and you have to go back through the dialogue chain to the last person identified to make sure who said what. That only happens two or three times, but with this writing style it always stands out.

[worry]

Oh and now I'm gonna read Permafrost, just to see what's up!

[Aptorian]

Looked up the blurb for Black Leopard Red Wolf.

Quote

Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard.

As Tracker follows the boy's scent—from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers—he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying?

Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a saga of breathtaking adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truths, the limits of power, the excesses of ambition, and our need to understand them all.

Is this secretly the dark gritty fantasy version of the jungle book and is Mowgli actually the chosen one?

[polishgenius]

worry, on 24 March 2019 - 07:11 PM, said:

I'd still say its closest antecedent, in my limited familiarity, is Book of the New Sun, though Tracker is a much different personality than Severian, and it's eventually more plot-driven, with the promise of bigger things to come.

Yup, this was exactly my take. The GoT comparisons are assinine. New Sun isn't a perfect comparison (it's also much less densely written, for one thing), but it's way closer.

[Morgoth]

I am very much enjoying the Raven Tower by Ann Leckie.

[Maark Abbott]

What is reading?

All around me are familiar faces...

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

209 pages into King's The Stand. Not sure how much more I'll read today, as I seem to be coming down with a wee cold. Going to venture out to the store to get some aspirin...

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Briar King, on 26 March 2019 - 10:00 PM, said:

Are you trying to make a funny hunny?

No, I'm totally fine, I prom--cough cough cough...--ise.

This post has been edited by Whisperzzzzzzz: 27 March 2019 - 01:08 AM