Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading?

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by fantasyISbetter

If you are looking for a similar series to Butcher's Dresden, try Mike Carey- starting with Vicious Circle- it's more serious, and it doesn't have as many weird creatures as Dresden, but at least you have ghosts and demons. Very well written. And it's the start of a good series.

I read one of Mike Carey's books (Can't remember the title.) It had some good spots, but boy it had some dragging ones too. In the end, the mystery came together pretty well, but the characterization wasn't there for me. Not enough to pursue to the next book anyway.

[carld]

Soft Apocalypse, currently free from B&N. Sadly, I'm reading it on my phone instead of my Kindle, not sure how long I can put up with that.

[rogert]

Have just started this and find difficulty with tracing the numbers of characters by using the appendix does anybody know if a family tree has been made?-Also a map would be useful although the website does not have one-not usually into fantasy but due to the reviews thought would give this a go! Quite like long novels but another 6 to go is a bit daunting-however due to my OCD will have to finish them all!

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by rogert

Quite like long novels but another 6 to go is a bit daunting-however due to my OCD will have to finish them all!

I wouldn't worry over the length. You're going to get a good, long break from the series after you finish book five.

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by rogert

Have just started this and find difficulty with tracing the numbers of characters by using the appendix does anybody know if a family tree has been made?-Also a map would be useful although the website does not have one-not usually into fantasy but due to the reviews thought would give this a go! Quite like long novels but another 6 to go is a bit daunting-however due to my OCD will have to finish them all!

Have you tried the fan site westeros.org? I haven't tried it but it's supposed to be the biggest online ressource about the series, maybe you'll find what you want there.

I bought (re-bought) the first volume in e-book form but haven't started re-reading yet.

[kennyc]

Just started Anna Karenina as it won the MR Book Club Poll...

[Solicitous]

2/3 of the way through of Genesis by Paul Chafe. Its ok, for some reason I went into it thinking it would be a little like the Mars trilogy in terms of depth and research.

Still a reasonable read though, 7/10 so far.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

another Agatha Christie, her 12th book, The Murder at the Vicarage.

A splendid murder mystery, and her first book featuring Miss Marple.

Next: the last of my September 2010 webscription purchase, Ragnarok by Patrick A. Vanner

This is really the 'also ran' of the webscription package for me. I explicitly wanted What Distant Deeps, The High Crusade and Generation Warriors. But the cheapest way to get those three is through the webscription package. Ragnarok is just a bonus. (I already had the other three books in the September 2010 Webscription package.)

[ATDrake]

Finished Fortress on the Sun by Paul Cook, which was another of Phoenix Pick's former Free Book of the Month selections, and have decided to get at least 1 other Cook book during their 50% off with coupon sale on the strength of it.

This was a surprisingly good hard sf tale about a futuristic prison camp of the sort that Terence M. Green had a character muse would be a good thing in his Barking Dogs, upthread.

Only this one shows how having prisoners stripped of their libido, their memories, and sent away to an unescapable place below the surface of the sun to fend for themselves to live and die on their own terms with only a basic supply of materials to use and automatic execution for anyone who tried to leave can go horribly, terribly, wrong.

Especially when all may not be what it seems on the "outside" and thus also "inside" people are beginning to have their doubts about what the authorities really are trying to do with them, given that none of them have any memory of what they actually did, only a recorded sentence pronouncement for the category of crime they committed to be sent there, and the inmates are beginning to sicken from a mysterious ailment which may or may not have been brought in by the latest batch of condemnees or might perhaps have been a ticking time-bomb embedded all along.

A rather good sf/mystery/thriller which did a good job of showing how the futuristic setup worked and came to be, while also presenting a rather interesting whatdunnit to unravel, which it does in a mildly unexpected, but story-congruent way.

Moderate-highish recommend for people who like their mystery and sf mingled with a touch of exploring society building and concepts of justice that high tech might make capable.

Now moved on to Stephen Leigh's Dark Water's Embrace (another former freebie) about an alien archaeological discovery on an frontier-type of colony world might change everything. Interesting so far regarding forging new social structures and gender roles on a new world (or reverting to old ones under pressure) and I've already determined to buy the sequel during the sale. Includes the author's drawings and notes, which is always a nice bonus to have.

[kainne]

Originally Posted by fantasyISbetter

If you are looking for a similar series to Butcher's Dresden, try Mike Carey- starting with Vicious Circle- it's more serious, and it doesn't have as many weird creatures as Dresden, but at least you have ghosts and demons. Very well written. And it's the start of a good series.

Looks interesting. I googled it & found out The Devil You Know is the first book. (I'm a little ocd about reading books in the proper order.)

"Felix Castor is a freelance exorcist, and London is his stamping ground. It may seem like a good ghostbuster can charge what he likes and enjoy a hell of a lifestyle--but there's a risk: Sooner or later he's going to take on a spirit that's too strong for him. While trying to back out of this ill-conceived career, Castor accepts a seemingly simple ghost-hunting case at a museum in the shadowy heart of London--just to pay the bills, you understand. But what should have been a perfectly straightforward exorcism is rapidly turning into the Who Can Kill Castor First Show, with demons and ghosts all keen to claim the big prize. That's OK: Castor knows how to deal with the dead. It's the living who piss him off..." from Amazon

For you Dresden fans that need something to tide you over check this link
http://ask.metafilter.com/119782/Har...ix-Castor-then

[Ron.]

I just finished The Underground City by Jules Verne, it was surprisingly good kind of spooky! and only about 120 pages a nice quick read

[amward]

Just finishing A Canterbury Crime, the fourth of the Belinda Lawrence series by Brian Kavanagh. There are four in this cosy mystery series; they are a light fun read with lots of interesting historical information woven into the plot.

[carld]

Finished Soft Apocalypse, kind of depressing, not as depressing as Earth Abides but still a downer, but then it is a story of survival in a declining world. I also recently finished How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe. It was a decent read but I was expecting more considering all the praise the book has received.

Not sure what I'll read next. I may look into the Mike Carey books mentioned up-thread.

[ATDrake]

Finished Stephen Leigh's Dark Water's Embrace, a former Phoenix Press Free eBook of the Month giveaway, and Speaking Stones, the sequel which I bought during their April sale.

The blurb on this one compares it to Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness for its gender role exploration, and the author's webpage says it won a Spectrum Award, as well as nods from Locus and the James Tiptree Awards.

But really I got more of a sense of Always Coming Home (my personal favourite Le Guin work) for the world-building, which was fleshed out with "in character (in culture?)" poems and myths which punctuated the regular text, as well as a number of lavish appendices that explained the stuff which would have been clunky to put in the story itself. I'm a sucker for this kind of thing, which nets the books which do it bonus points.

Both books were a sort of sf with a touch of mystery/suspense, centered around cultural change issues and social tensions, as well as each "solving" the case of how a particular corpse came to be very, very dead in ways that illustrate said change and tensions.

The sfnal premise of this is one of those inadvertenly stranded colony missions who have to adapt to a hostile world or die. This world seems to be actively out to get them, with a very high rate of mutation affecting the population, which adapts to try and increase their viability and ironically, has become set in their ways to preserve the new societal structure.

First book deals with an alien archaeological discovery which might have bearing on altering the population's chances for the better, if only they would accept it; second book follows some generations after and deals with the fallout of integrating the discoveries made in the first book.

Medium-high recommend for people who like medium-hard sf with exploration of forced societal change due to inescapable circumstances, especially with regard to gender and race roles and "out-group" treatment in tightly knit communities, and lovingly detailed world-building supplements. It's a bit of an idiosyncratic novel, stylistically speaking, and the mix of 3rd person observation, 1st person direct narration, and journal entries/cultural artifacts might take some getting used to.

My amortized cost for both books between the freebie and the sale is probably around $3.25 CAD. It turned out to be money well spent, and I'll have to keep an eye out for the author's other e-books, since it looks like he sells his self-repubs DRM-free. Hopefully they'll turn up at Kobo and be couponable.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Ragnarok by Patrick A. Vanner

Very Mil-SF. I wasn't engaged by the characters, but the situation is interesting enough that I'll to read the follow-on novels when they come out. Definitely part of a trilogy - more Lord of the Rings (in terms of one book in three parts) than the original Earthsea Trilogy (three separate books making a whole).

Next The Best of Frederick Pohl. A collection of his shorter fiction from 1975. The next (chronologically) in the first Pohl bundle at webscription.net