[Ain't_It_Just_]

While I was away, I devoured Abercrombie's Before They Are Hanged, The Bonehunters, 1984 and The Shark Net.

Now am reading...well, nothing. Goddamnit I want the next First Law book!

[Salt-Man Z]

I'm reading Glen Cook's Garrett, P.I. books. Finished the first book, and (due to an ordering mixup on my bookshelf) am currently reading the third instead of the second. (Whoops!) Anyway, they're very good. Basically hard-boiled mysteries in a fantasy setting, but with maybe a bit more action. Garrett's voice is great. Fans of the Black Company books will enjoy these.

[Abyss]

Salt-Man Z, on 04 October 2010 - 03:07 PM, said:

I'm reading Glen Cook's Garrett, P.I. books. Finished the first book, and (due to an ordering mixup on my bookshelf) am currently reading the third instead of the second. (Whoops!) Anyway, they're very good. Basically hard-boiled mysteries in a fantasy setting, but with maybe a bit more action. Garrett's voice is great. Fans of the Black Company books will enjoy these.

What about fans of the Black Company series who became jaded and dissappointed with that series but still like Cook as a writer but are scared of being hurt again and thus shunning the relationship?


Still reading Kraken. Still enjoying muchly.

[Obdigore]

Abyss, on 04 October 2010 - 03:37 PM, said:

Salt-Man Z, on 04 October 2010 - 03:07 PM, said:

I'm reading Glen Cook's Garrett, P.I. books. Finished the first book, and (due to an ordering mixup on my bookshelf) am currently reading the third instead of the second. (Whoops!) Anyway, they're very good. Basically hard-boiled mysteries in a fantasy setting, but with maybe a bit more action. Garrett's voice is great. Fans of the Black Company books will enjoy these.

What about fans of the Black Company series who became jaded and dissappointed with that series but still like Cook as a writer but are scared of being hurt again and thus shunning the relationship?


Still reading Kraken. Still enjoying muchly.

As I mentioned before in one of the Cook Threads, these books are much better than the later black company (glittering stones and whatnot) books, and seem to be a mix of that and Dresden Files. I enjoy them, although some of the middle books have been out of print for a while and are not currently being re-released which makes them hard(ish) to find.


Since Dresden started me on an urban/crime fantasy kick, I've been trying to find more, and these are certainly the best I have found so far.

[Abyss]

Obdigore, on 04 October 2010 - 04:01 PM, said:

...Since Dresden started me on an urban/crime fantasy kick, I've been trying to find more, and these are certainly the best I have found so far.

Noted and tnx.

re UrbanF, if you haven't yet, check out Mike Carey's Felix Castor series. A bit more of a slow boil noir to Butcher's Dresdencrack, but very enjoyable and outright brilliant at points. Five books out in mmpb and the fifth ends on a solidly complete note, notwithstanding that there may be a sixth in 2012 or so.

[Obdigore]

2 bucks on Kindle for the first one? I will give it a shot, thanks Abyss.

[Abyss]

Obdigore, on 04 October 2010 - 04:46 PM, said:

2 bucks on Kindle for the first one? I will give it a shot, thanks Abyss.

Most welcome. First book is slow, esp compared to Dresden, but it builds nicely and intros an interesting world.
Each book escalates in quality from there.

[Salt-Man Z]

Yeah, the Garrett books certainly have much wider appeal than the Black Company books; if nothing else, they're short. I think the longest one is still under 400 pages. The style reminds me very much of the first BC book: very blunt and straightforward, almost daring the reader to keep up. The voice is very reminiscent of Croaker, but with more of that hard-boiled "noir" vibe. Funnier, too.

It's an interesting series to contrast with the Dresden books: where those involve a wizard in a (mostly) real-world setting, these feature a mundane P.I. in a fantasy setting. In Dresden, the big draw is the fantasy elements and the strong characterizations; with Garrett, the fantastical is mere backdrop, and the focus is on the case and accompanying twists of plot.

[kcf]

Well, after a couple of weeks of procrastination, I finally wrote up my review of The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin for the SF and Fantasy Masterworks Reading Project. It's good, really good. It earns the right to at or near the top of 'best of' lists for SF. I also finished up Tome of the Undergates by Sam Sykes - a review will come shortly.

Now I'm reading the Swords and Dark Magic anthology edited by Lou Anders and Jonathan Strahan while I wait on my copy of Towers of Midnight.

[Harvester]

Still reading Thunderer, it's growing on me.

[stone monkey]

The Amazon fairy should be bringing me The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajuniemi some time next week, I've read a bit of his short fiction (which is fantastic btw) and have been looking forward to this one for some time...

I should also be getting the new Iain M. Banks; which I expect will be a giggle.

[Mentalist]

Since my last time here, I've had virtually ZERO time for Fantasy lit.
Whilst on a 2 hour plane ride from Winnipeg to Toronto, I've made a big dent in "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel", and I hope to finish it befor ei'm back to school on Tuesday...


After that, in whatever scraps of free time i might find, I will dig into "Canticle" by Ken Scholes.....

[Use Of Weapons]

Reading Banks's latest Culture novel, Surface Detail, which grabbed me immediately with its premise, and has all the hallmarks of Banks at his very best. I can't decide which of the many different story strands is my favourite at the moment, which is a very good sign indeed.

[Salt-Man Z]

Now reading Lord Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter and it's really good in a dreamy fairytale kind of way.

[Astra]

Salt-Man Z, on 11 October 2010 - 02:50 PM, said:

Now reading Lord Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter and it's really good in a dreamy fairytale kind of way.

On my TBR list.

[Chance]

jitsukerr, on 11 October 2010 - 11:46 AM, said:

Reading Banks's latest Culture novel, Surface Detail, which grabbed me immediately with its premise, and has all the hallmarks of Banks at his very best. I can't decide which of the many different story strands is my favourite at the moment, which is a very good sign indeed.

Just having put it down I can only concur, found the first hundred or so pages a bit unfocused but it grew and it is interesting amongst culture novels for including references to several of the earlier books and not sure but I think it is the first one to share a character with another culture book. The culture universe continue to grow in depth and interest.

This post has been edited by Chance: 11 October 2010 - 03:35 PM

[QuickTidal]

Needed something light, so I picked up and started TOO MANY CURSES by A. Lee Martinez. So far, pretty fun.

[polishgenius]

Chance, on 11 October 2010 - 03:33 PM, said:

I think it is the first one to share a character with another culture book.

The main woman in Use of Weapons is also in the short story The State of the Art, and it's theorised though afaik there's no heavy evidence that she might be the woman in Inversions as well, but other than that yeah, I think so.

I'll be waiting for a few opinions before buying this hardcover, as I was so disappointed with Matter and The Algebraist, but it's good to hear that it's got a good reception so far.


Anyway, I'm currently reading Anthony Huso's The Last Page, a debut novel which so far is entertaining me, a not-quite-steampunk thing somewhere along the lines of China Mieville and Stephen Hunt (more of the latter than the former atm, but his prose is better than Hunt's and he has a Mieville-esque delight in the grotesque, though he hasn't as yet taken it as far).

[stone monkey]

I'm currently about halfway through The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi (spelled his name right this time ) What can I say about it? It's utterly brilliant and engrossing and perplexing in pretty much equal measure. I can definitely say that it's not a book for everyone. If you're not used to the terminology of both the hardest of hard sf and the singularity speculations of people like Charles Stross or Greg Egan then I suspect, as a reader, you're going to be in for a very bumpy ride. There are no convenient infodumps to help you make your way through this startling world of walking Martian cities where time is a currency, personalities can be encoded in chocolate and the swapping of hierarchically encrypted memories is how people communicate with one another. This is a book where you either sink or swim; it makes no concessions to the, possibly uninformed, reader. I'm swimming at the moment but it is very hard work, of the best kind.

Starting off in a prison in the Outer Solar System where multiple copies of the first person viewpoint character, the eponymous Quantum Thief who is not entrely himself, (there are other viewpoint characters but only one of them is written in the first person) are engaged in a particularly nasty version of The Prisoner's Dilemma that is designed to rehabilitate him, we then move on to Mars after a fairly spectacular escape that leaves him in entirely another kind of prison, of sorts. We also have the Oort Cloud warrior woman and her lippy, and kinky, spaceship. Not to mention the teenage (in Martian years), possibly autistic, posthuman detective. What we have here is an old fashioned picaresque detective/adventure story hidden within multiple layers of cutting edge sf speculation where almost all of the characters have moved so far beyond what we would call merely human that they're practically aliens. They're not, not yet at least, so far gone that they're unrecognisable as people, but they're right there on the edge. It is a tribute to Rajaniemi's skill that the reader (this reader anyway) can find these rather extreme characters attractive, interesting and even compelling.

I'm not sure where it's going just yet, but I get the feeling that something huge and pretty mindblowing is possibly just a page turn away. Some reviews are calling this one of the most important 1st novels of the decade in sf, and I do suspect that this one will be all over next year's awards. It's certainly the emergence of a new and distinctive voice and I really can't wait to see where he goes from here. This is sf at its purest.

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 11 October 2010 - 11:18 PM

[MTS]

Currently reading Justin Cronin's The Passage after picking it up the other day, and I am not disappointed. Very engrossing and very interesting plot.