[Morgoth]

Remorseless Emperor;369291 said:

A great read, I love McCarthy's style. I'm sure you've already been warned of the violence.

I'm currently reading the Neil Gaiman anthology 'Fragile Things'.

Aye, I've already read the Road and No country for old men, both of whom were excellent. Blood Meridian, I was told, should be of the same caliber.

The conan doyle meets lovecraft story in fragile things is brilliant

[DarkGothicGirl]

I am now reading Warrior by: Marie Brennan

[Scifreak]

Gene Wolfe's Sword of the Lictor. Severian remains Fantasy writings most unreliable narrator

[Deornoth]

Just finished reading John Scalzi's 'The Ghost Brigades', a tale of one very special recruit to the Colonial Defence Force's Special Forces, a group of soldiers created from the DNA of the dead...
After a stodgy start (too many info-dumps) 'The Ghost Brigades' rocked in more ways than one. A book that makes you laugh, pretend that you've got dust in your eye and also think about some of the issues that Scalzi raises. My full review is over Here.
No idea what I'm going to read next but I reckon it'll be something fantasy based this time round...

[kcf]

I posted my review of Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi over at FantasyBookSpot. I have to say that this one is Scalzi's best book yet and I really enjoyed it. Hopefully I'll be getting a Questions Five interview within him soon. I'm now reading The Man on the Ceiling by Melanie Tem and Steve Resnic Tem - I think this one may well freak me out more than any book I've read in a long time (and yes, I've read Neuropath recently)

Review excerpt:

Quote

Zoë’s Tale is far and away Scalzi’s best book yet. The voice of a teenage girl is always tricky, yet Scalzi, a male in his upper-30s, manages to get it rather right. Zoë is just as snarky, inconsistent, short on judgment, emotional, and remarkable as any teenager can be. She really comes alive through Scalzi’s witty dialogue and uncertain internal discourse – it’s very easy to imagine Scalzi channeling his pride of his own young daughter into Zoë, and I get the feeling that his daughter is his number one audience. (full review)

[pat5150]

Just finished reading the Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy anthology.

The short stories are as disparate as the authors who wrote them, and the pièce de résistance is, of course, Patrick Rothfuss' "The Road to Levinshir," a novella-length piece which will appear in the forthcoming The Wise Man's Fear.

Mike Carey, Tim Powers, Kage Baker and a few others have interesting short stories as well.

Check the blog for the full review.

Patrick

[Astra]

Finished a bunch of books.

Child of Flame (Crown of Stars 4) by Kate Elliott.
One of the best in the series so far, but I am now more than 2/3 through book 5 and it is even better. Looks like the writer matured while writing the series.

Farnham’s Freehold by Robert A. Heinlein
Not bad.


Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Some of the ideas are brilliant. A few glimpses of future which is now are so true that I cannot imagine how someone could predict it so many year ago (it applies to Heinlein's book as well).

[Werthead]

Broken Angels by Richard Morgan. Better than Altered Carbon so far.

[Mentalist]

just finished TTH today

no thoughts here, as we have a special forum for it
now, time to dig up my "Books of the South" omnibus by Glen Cook and resume where I left off..
at the same time, further attempts to read "the 3 cards" in French.. a chapter a day or so

[Dr Trouble]

I finished my Re-read of House of Chains today.

I decided to skip from Deadhouse Gates straight to House of Chains without reading Memories of Ice, arguably Eriksons best. And I am glad I did. Minor spoiler material below, I suppose. I'll tag it just in case.

Spoiler

A lot of people say House of Chains is not very good, I just don't see it. I think one the main reasons is because it followed the emotional Juggernaut that is Memories.
What I see though is a cast of characters that lead you through a wonderful story without the common build up that most of the Other books have.
One we have the second introduction of Karsa, we see him grow from a selfish barbarian to a thoughtful and just ... barbarian - And this is one of the greatest character transformations I've read and I know it gets better with further books.

Then we have Fiddler battling with his new responsibilities, Pearl and Lostra's sexual tension on the felisin path, we see L'oric and Osserc. Not to mention a host of others. The only main character that I didn't appreciate this time was Kalam. His story didn't really add anything for me and I think he could have been used better in another novel.

If anything, I think this compliments Deadhouse Gates more then Memories of Ice. But oh well.

I'm starting MoI now. I'll post my thoughts when I am done.

[Dark Wolf]

With great sorrow I have to say that the vacation days are over .
Still the holiday was great, and even though I couldn't carry "The Name of the Wind" with me because of its format, I still had some reads. Mainly easy ones suited for vacation.
I read "School's Out" by Scott Andrews, "Meat" by Joseph D'Lacey and "30 Days of Night" by Tim Lebbon. I wrote the review for "School's Out" and posted it on my blog. It's not a difficult read, it's just plain simple and fun. It is quite perfectly suited for lazy vacation days.
I will work on the other reviews this week and also I will enjoy Patrick Rothfuss' novel too, I'm really liking it so far.

[Salt-Man Z]

Finished Reaper's Gale on Thursday, and was mildly disappointed. (More here.)

Continuing my read through H. P. Lovecraft. I finished The Shadow Over Innsmouth the other night, and it was okay. The sequence in the hotel was great, but the ending fell a little flat for me. I guess my biggest complaint is that Lovecraft explains everything away in the beginning of the story, even though the main character refuses to accept it. This has the double effect of dispelling any sense of mystery right away, but also making the main character look rather obtuse.

I'm currently finishing up The Shadow Out of Time, which suffers from the same problem I identified above, but it's a better story so far.

[Fist Gamet]

Just getting to the end of Black Man (Thirteen for the sanitised American version) and thoroughly enjoying it. I had read that fans of AC, WF and BA might be dissappointed but I wasn't, considering that AC is one of my favourite books.

[...]

A Shadow in the Summer by Daniel Abraham

[Pallol One Eye]

Just Finished KJ Parkers Devices and Desires (Bk 1 Enginer trilogy). Good read but not the Hurricane to the Genre one of the quotes the back cover says. More, again another blurb quote, "complex, Literary, Leisurely yet engrossing". Enjoyable so I will read the next in series.

Up next is book 4 in Modesitts recluce saga, The Order War.

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

Just started Glenn Cook's Instrumentalities of the Night first book. It's grabbed my interest within the first couple of pages, but I am not pleased to see

Spoiler

a freaking cannon. No firearms in my fantasy, please. He should pull it off anyways though.

I'm impressed by the immediately noticeable different voice from the Black Company books. He's got skilll.

[Use Of Weapons]

Am still trying to finish 'The Origin of Species' May give up and start 'Longevity, Senescence and the Genome'

[Riot]

Just started War & Peace, nae bad so far

[Dark Wolf]

I reviewed the second book I read on vacation, "Meat" by Joseph D"Lacey.
Unfortunately even though the author is a very nice guy and I know he put a lot of work in his novel, "Meat" failed to meet any of my expectations.

[Cougar]

Riot;372147 said:

Just started War & Peace, nae bad so far

That is the best (partial) review of War and Peace ever, arguably the greatest novel written by Tolstoy and a landmark in literature, especially amusing for the use of the Scots accent, gives the words a ridiculous sense of understatment have rep.

I've just finished 'Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee' a great book. I'd have to say I doubt some of the historical rigour in the research of things presented as facts and there is a certain bias in the way that it is written but still very good stuff.

Makes you feel ashamed though, the way the Europeans have effectively committed genocide against so many aboriginal peoples is appaling.