[Use Of Weapons]

Briar King, on 17 December 2011 - 04:27 AM, said:

I have a similar dislike of Brooks work. I ordered ALL of his Shannara books from SFBC for cheap. I had like 8 of them at the time and they were the big omni's. I read the prequel(cant remember the title) where Allanon is a little kid and they still had Druids in the Land. I liked that one actually. Then I read Sword and Elfstones. Now it took me atleast 3 yrs to even read those last 2 and Ive never touched another Brooks novel except to throw them all in the trash when the Ex and I decided to divorce.

Hey, waitaminute, I didn't say I disliked all of Brooks. I'm swearing off any new Brooks. I still love Magic Kingdom, Elfstones and Wishsong, and the Word and The Void series. But he's clearly jumped the shark with his new writing.

[Fist Gamet]

Just finished The Cold Commands. Now, I didn't have book one to hand, and I read it a while ago, but I had a recurring feeling throughout this book that I had missed something important from the last book. It was as though Morgan kept referring back to events shared by Eg and Ringil that I hadn't read about. Have I simply forgotten them? Or were they never specifically written about? Just me?

Anyhoo, now turned to The Iron Jackal and expecting a lot of laugh-out-loud-moments and seat-of-the-pants fun!

[worry]

Ever since the pretty cool stuff he did in Jerle Shannara, Brooks has seemingly given up on raising the stakes at all. He's always been repetitive plot-wise and it's clear he's made everything up as he goes along, but for a good long while he managed to avoid diminishing returns. But he's passed the tipping point on that, I think. I couldn't believe how weak his depiction of the Forbidding was, for instance.

[Tapper]

Fist Gamet, on 17 December 2011 - 03:22 PM, said:

Just finished The Cold Commands. Now, I didn't have book one to hand, and I read it a while ago, but I had a recurring feeling throughout this book that I had missed something important from the last book. It was as though Morgan kept referring back to events shared by Eg and Ringil that I hadn't read about. Have I simply forgotten them? Or were they never specifically written about? Just me?

Certain things were already known from the previous book: Egar and Ringil killing the dragon together, being comrades in arms during the war - but Morgan expanded slightly in TCC, just adding a few details in memories without really filling things in. For me, it is one of the things that shows that RM improved as a writer since the Kovacs novels: Land Fit for Heroes consistently shows he is very capable of adding stray thoughts or non-important (for now) flavor things which come natural to the PoV of that moment... with Kovacs, memories and flashbacks were always a bit more foreboding or forcefully closed-up to pique interest without giving hints.

[Tattersail_]

Just finished Dead Beat after reading Blood Rites and I cannot get enough. These books are getting better and better and better.

Wow. I want me some "Proven Guilty" asap, I get paid on Friday but may even borrow money to get this one!!


Speculation on some of Dead Beat plot below, so spoilered just in case

Spoiler

He is starting to accept the Denarian within himself and this is bad news, if he becomes more and more dependent on her power then he could become the bad guy rather than the hero we all love. So many things could happen. I am pumped.

[QuickTidal]

Tattersail, on 19 December 2011 - 02:29 PM, said:

Just finished Dead Beat after reading Blood Rites and I cannot get enough. These books are getting better and better and better.

Wow. I want me some "Proven Guilty" asap, I get paid on Friday but may even borrow money to get this one!!


Speculation on some of Dead Beat plot below, so spoilered just in case

Spoiler

He is starting to accept the Denarian within himself and this is bad news, if he becomes more and more dependent on her power then he could become the bad guy rather than the hero we all love. So many things could happen. I am pumped.

Oh man, you've got plenty of good stuff to go! Get PROVEN GUILTY, that's my second fave of the series!

[Morgoth]

Picked up Ready Player One for the trip back to Oslo. So far I'm having a blast.

This post has been edited by Morgoth: 19 December 2011 - 04:20 PM

[Abyss]

QuickTidal, on 15 December 2011 - 03:45 PM, said:

Maia Irraz, on 15 December 2011 - 02:55 PM, said:

wade-newb, on 15 December 2011 - 12:46 PM, said:

Alternating (with the obvious side heavily favoured) between The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and Memories of Ian C Esslemont

I never quite understood the praise for that whole Millennium trilogy, ... Maybe the movie will be better?

Yeah, I couldn't even get past book 1. I just don't see what the attraction is.

QuickTidal, on 16 December 2011 - 01:09 PM, said:

worrywort, on 16 December 2011 - 12:09 AM, said:

I just finished Dragon Tattoo, actually, in preparation for the movie. I enjoyed it quite a bit. ...Anyway, I am very excited for the movie, and Fincher is probably the single best choice to direct it. His efficiency will do the story well.

My issues with the book were that the historical mystery (girl in the picture) aspect absolutely FASCINATED me....but then book spends FAR too much time establishing the other plot-threads which I didn't truly care about. I dunno. So I started off liking it and then really disliked it in the second half.

That said, I've seen the swedish versions of the films and they aren't great......

I've also seen the Swedfilms, which i mostly enjoyed (2 dragged, 3 felt like trying to cram 6 hrs into 2, but generaly enjoyable) but because of having seen them i'm utterly reluctant to pry the first book from it's position somewhere in the buried foundations of the TRP.

The fact that half th world seems to be reading the book on the bus isn't helping.

UseOfWeapons, on 16 December 2011 - 10:07 PM, said:

Tried to read Terry Brooks _Bearers of the Black Staff_. God it was awful. No more Brooks ever. Faugh! I feel like I want to clean my mind out with soap and water. Made even worse by the fact that it was following my read of Morgan's _Black Man_.

I stopped after the VOYAGE trilo' and am glad i did.

Fist Gamet, on 17 December 2011 - 03:22 PM, said:

Just finished The Cold Commands. Now, I didn't have book one to hand, and I read it a while ago, but I had a recurring feeling throughout this book that I had missed something important from the last book. It was as though Morgan kept referring back to events shared by Eg and Ringil that I hadn't read about. Have I simply forgotten them? Or were they never specifically written about? Just me?
...

Ringil, Eg and Archi have a colorful and messy violent history from the Lizard War and subsequent events and we've only learned of bits and pieces of it. Most of the refs in TCC build on TSR, but some of it, notably the fact that

Spoiler

Ringil is ALSO a Dragonslayer

is new.

QuickTidal, on 19 December 2011 - 02:56 PM, said:

Tattersail, on 19 December 2011 - 02:29 PM, said:

Just finished Dead Beat after reading Blood Rites and I cannot get enough. These books are getting better and better and better.

Wow. I want me some "Proven Guilty" asap, ...

Oh man, you've got plenty of good stuff to go! Get PROVEN GUILTY, that's my second fave of the series!

What he said.
And if you want to theorise, go to the Butcher subforum. Much discussion there.


Finished Tony Ballantyne's TWISTED METAL. It was... fine. It was a 2h purchase and on that basis i don't feel ripped off. There were some neat concepts but little wow overall, and the book suffers from a severe case of being PART ONE OF A SERIES!!!!!! . I might grab the next one at some point, but likely only 2h or on sale.


Statred Barclay's LEGENDS OF THE RAVEN bk 2 SHADOWHEART and plowed through 200 pages right off. Barclay's fight scenes are brilliant in this book. Exhausting and thrilling and painful and crazy. He puts his characters through stabby ker-sploody hell for almost 100 pages straight and it's frikkin rivetting.

Extra points for somehow making elf ninjas cool and then setting them on fire. A lot.

[Morgoth]

Well, I finished Ready Player One and found it a thoroughly satisfying read. It suffers now and then from what I think is the author's lack of experience, but not to the extent that it takes away from the overall enjoyment I got from the book. There's a part towards the center of the book which is a little too much of an overused romance cliche for my taste, but apart from that it was fine.

There was little in the way of astonishment or surprise in the vein of for instance Iain Banks, Stephenson or Gibson (the last two clearly being major inspirations for the book) but then the book never aimed towards that sort of feel. In relation to the book as a whole the ending was very satisfying in my opinion.

So, to use our patented rating system I'll award this book 6 overweight neck-beards out of 8.

[JPK]

Finally pulled myself out of the hole that I like to call Skyrim and started reading again. Taking QT's advice and jumping into the Riyria books. Only a couple chapters in but really liking it so far.

[Abyss]

MuttonChops, on 16 December 2011 - 03:02 PM, said:

Finished The Great Hunt yesterday and then took a quick detour through the land of non-fiction with The Last Lecture, the wife had been on me to read it and it was quite moving. Now with that finished I'm moving on with my first reading of the Wheel of Time series with The Dragon Reborn. I am enjoying it so far but I have heard that it loses quality in the mid books.

MODGOD NOTICE OF THREAD SPLIT - FOURTEEN POSTS SUBSEQUENT TO THIS ONE MOVED TO THIS THREAD OVER IN THE RJ/BS SUBFORUM.

[Fist Gamet]

Tapper, on 19 December 2011 - 01:27 PM, said:

Fist Gamet, on 17 December 2011 - 03:22 PM, said:

Just finished The Cold Commands. Now, I didn't have book one to hand, and I read it a while ago, but I had a recurring feeling throughout this book that I had missed something important from the last book. It was as though Morgan kept referring back to events shared by Eg and Ringil that I hadn't read about. Have I simply forgotten them? Or were they never specifically written about? Just me?

Certain things were already known from the previous book: Egar and Ringil killing the dragon together, being comrades in arms during the war - but Morgan expanded slightly in TCC, just adding a few details in memories without really filling things in. For me, it is one of the things that shows that RM improved as a writer since the Kovacs novels: Land Fit for Heroes consistently shows he is very capable of adding stray thoughts or non-important (for now) flavor things which come natural to the PoV of that moment... with Kovacs, memories and flashbacks were always a bit more foreboding or forcefully closed-up to pique interest without giving hints.

Ah yes, many thanks. Adding what Abyss said, I realise I was not too far wrong. I was having trouble distinguishing between what I knew and what was new . If anything, I now appreciate more the techniques he is using to tell the story. I have always enjoyed the 'clued-in' approach and I am a big fan of being told just enough to pique my interest and then being allowed to fill in the details myself. Well played, ser!

[LadyMTL]

I finished Furies of Calderon and I...liked it. I'm still on the fence about getting the rest of the series, to be honest, because although the last quarter of FoC was exciting, the rest of it got on my nerves. I mean, how many runs of bad luck can the same small group of people have? X gets captured then Y gets captured then hey! Z gets captured too and omg, the bad guys keep popping up at the "worst possible moment." Maybe SE has spoiled me for non Malazan fantasy, I don't know.

Anyway! All that to say that I am now switching it up, I'm reading Robert K. Massie's book about the Romanovs, called "Nicholas and Alexandra: the classic account of the fall of the Romanov Dynasty." So far, I love it...the author is really good at making it all come alive, no pun intended.

This post has been edited by Maia Irraz: 21 December 2011 - 05:47 PM

[Salt-Man Z]

Maia Irraz, on 21 December 2011 - 05:47 PM, said:

I finished Furies of Calderon and I...liked it. I'm still on the fence about getting the rest of the series, to be honest, because although the last quarter of FoC was exciting, the rest of it got on my nerves. I mean, how many runs of bad luck can the same small group of people have? X gets captured then Y gets captured then hey! Z gets captured too and omg, the bad guys keep popping up at the "worst possible moment." Maybe SE has spoiled me for non Malazan fantasy, I don't know.

Don't give up! I haven't read Codex Alera yet, but everyone here who has says it gets waaay better after the first book.

[Abyss]

Salt-Man Z, on 21 December 2011 - 06:08 PM, said:

Maia Irraz, on 21 December 2011 - 05:47 PM, said:

I finished Furies of Calderon and I...liked it. I'm still on the fence about getting the rest of the series, to be honest, because although the last quarter of FoC was exciting, the rest of it got on my nerves. I mean, how many runs of bad luck can the same small group of people have? X gets captured then Y gets captured then hey! Z gets captured too and omg, the bad guys keep popping up at the "worst possible moment." Maybe SE has spoiled me for non Malazan fantasy, I don't know.

Don't give up! I haven't read Codex Alera yet, but everyone here who has says it gets waaay better after the first book.

Maia - if you look upthread you'll see i posted at you pretty much exactly what SMZ reiterated.

Trust me on this... everything you say about FoC is utterly true, and i had the exact same reaction, but after about the first 25 pages of the second book you will know the series is in a WAY better place than FoC leaves it and only escalates from there.

[QuickTidal]

Abyss, on 21 December 2011 - 06:24 PM, said:

Salt-Man Z, on 21 December 2011 - 06:08 PM, said:

Maia Irraz, on 21 December 2011 - 05:47 PM, said:

I finished Furies of Calderon and I...liked it. I'm still on the fence about getting the rest of the series, to be honest, because although the last quarter of FoC was exciting, the rest of it got on my nerves. I mean, how many runs of bad luck can the same small group of people have? X gets captured then Y gets captured then hey! Z gets captured too and omg, the bad guys keep popping up at the "worst possible moment." Maybe SE has spoiled me for non Malazan fantasy, I don't know.

Don't give up! I haven't read Codex Alera yet, but everyone here who has says it gets waaay better after the first book.

Maia - if you look upthread you'll see i posted at you pretty much exactly what SMZ reiterated.

Trust me on this... everything you say about FoC is utterly true, and i had the exact same reaction, but after about the first 25 pages of the second book you will know the series is in a WAY better place than FoC leaves it and only escalates from there.

^^This, thirded.

[End of Disc One]

I finished FoC not long ago, and it ended up being a lot better than I expected based on what everyone here said. I wasn't expecting it to get that epic at the end. I'm guessing I'm in for a treat with the rest of the seris.

[Abyss]

End of Disc One, on 21 December 2011 - 07:27 PM, said:

I finished FoC ... I'm guessing I'm in for a treat with the rest of the seris.

If not for caution re FoC and shameless praise for the rest of the books here in Forumland, i would have shelved the series after FoC even notwithstanding my vicious addiction to Butcher's dresdencrack. So glad i didn't. In classic Butcher manner, the series just gets better and better and better.

- Abyss, convert.

[LadyMTL]

Alright, I've been convinced...I've added the second book (Academ's Fury, I think?) to my Kindle and will commence reading as soon as I've finished with the Russian Revolution.

[QuickTidal]

In the run up to Christmas I'm re-reading THE HOBBIT on my Kindle, and doing my first read of SANDMAN by Neil Gaiman (which so far I am blown away by!)