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gmw · 06-01-2019, 08:34 AM

Life has led to disrupted reading time, but what I have read lately includes:

The Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden:

The Bear and the Nightingale : After start that felt a bit slow and awkward, I enjoyed this very much. A pleasing mythical tale set in medieval Russia, and since I knew nothing of Russian mythology it was all very new and intriguing. I liked the characters and it moved along at a good pace. I gave it 4/5. This first book can be read on its own without needing to go on if you don't want to ... but I wanted to.

The Girl in the Tower : Picks up straight from the first book and starts well, but then dragged for a while before ending really well. It lacked the novelty of the first book (for me), but was still an entertaining tale. I ended up giving this 4/5 as well.

The Winter of the Witch : It seemed to me that this book was not as smooth as the first two - but that may be due to events that really disrupted reading this book. It is certainly an interesting tale, and as explained by the author, a fantasy built with historically accurate events which added verisimilitude often lacking in such stores. I will refrain from scoring this until I read it again (I have liked the series enough that I expect to give it another read before too long).

I also read The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman - which we discussed over in the NLBC. A wonderful story, whatever your age. This is a 5/5 from me, and was from the first time I read it some years ago.

And then a short novella (29k words), An Etiquette Guide to the End Times by Maia Sepp. I had expected it to be funnier than it was - the humour is mostly dry and fairly subtle (or so I found it, humour is one of those personal taste things so YMMV). But as a post-apocalypse story I thought it was very good: with the world ending a whimper rather than a bang it felt quite disturbingly realistic. It is mostly quite gently told, and the lack of overt drama works to emphasise how the world has changed. There are some sentences that felt like YA romance, and these felt out of place in an otherwise well told and interesting story, but not much of that. Overall, I found this was very good, and I gave it 4/5.

06-01-2019, 08:34 AM	#28314
gmw cacoethes scribendi Posts: 5,818 Karma: 137770742 Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kobo Aura One & H2Ov2, Sony PRS-650	Life has led to disrupted reading time, but what I have read lately includes: The Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden: *The Bear and the Nightingale* : After start that felt a bit slow and awkward, I enjoyed this very much. A pleasing mythical tale set in medieval Russia, and since I knew nothing of Russian mythology it was all very new and intriguing. I liked the characters and it moved along at a good pace. I gave it 4/5. This first book can be read on its own without needing to go on if you don't want to ... but I wanted to. *The Girl in the Tower* : Picks up straight from the first book and starts well, but then dragged for a while before ending really well. It lacked the novelty of the first book (for me), but was still an entertaining tale. I ended up giving this 4/5 as well. *The Winter of the Witch* : It seemed to me that this book was not as smooth as the first two - but that may be due to events that really disrupted reading this book. It is certainly an interesting tale, and as explained by the author, a fantasy built with historically accurate events which added verisimilitude often lacking in such stores. I will refrain from scoring this until I read it again (I have liked the series enough that I expect to give it another read before too long). I also read *The Graveyard Book* by Neil Gaiman - which we discussed over in the NLBC. A wonderful story, whatever your age. This is a 5/5 from me, and was from the first time I read it some years ago. And then a short novella (29k words), *An Etiquette Guide to the End Times* by Maia Sepp. I had expected it to be funnier than it was - the humour is mostly dry and fairly subtle (or so I found it, humour is one of those personal taste things so YMMV). But as a post-apocalypse story I thought it was very good: with the world ending a whimper rather than a bang it felt quite disturbingly realistic. It is mostly quite gently told, and the lack of overt drama works to emphasise how the world has changed. There are some sentences that felt like YA romance, and these felt out of place in an otherwise well told and interesting story, but not much of that. Overall, I found this was very good, and I gave it 4/5.