Hey!! Let's get some action going! What are we reading? - Page 1708

Ravensknight · 03-24-2017, 07:12 PM

A Shadow of All Night Falling (The Dread Empire: A Cruel Wind #1)
Glen Cook
3.5 Stars

This felt very much like "The Black Company, The Early Drafts". Still enjoyed it though.

ATDrake · 03-25-2017, 01:44 AM

Finished The Queen of Blood by Sarah Beth Durst (whose last name my earlier read Lingo informs me is a now disused past tense of “dare”, although undoubtedly it's derived from other roots), which is 1st in her new Queens of Renthia series and was on the library's feature shelf with a sticker proclaiming it to be “Virginia's Staff Pick”. Virginia seems to have pretty good taste, as this had some of the more interesting worldbuilding I've read in recent years. The plot setup was pretty standard and executed well enough with a few pleasant misdirections of my expectations: the titular “Queen of Blood” ended up being someone other than I thought the narrative was setting it up to be, among other nice surprises.

But the background culture and revealed details of the setting were quite novel and engaging and done in a convincingly cohesive manner (back cover flap blurb says the author has previously won a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award), taking place in an elemental magic world where tree-dwelling mostly non-magical humans (albeit with unusual skin colours, for which leaf-green is an option)—who've built skybridge-connected cities within a megaforest and may have never set foot on the actual forest floor—live in uneasy harmony with destructive nature spirits kept in check by a non-hereditary merit-based queen who is selected from women with the rare ability to control the spirits. There are nice touches like a science-based tech trick being considered “magic” by people who use and are used to actual spirit magic, and a complex DIY transportation system outside the cities, apparently consisting of one part Tarzan swinging and one part ski-lift-style wire-gliding, plus counter-weighted lifting baskets. Although some part of me can't help but wonder about the public sanitation arrangements for the tree cities, though it's probably for the best that there wasn't a Victor Hugo-style Parisian sewer digression chapter.

Recommended if you think you might be interested in a mildly non-standard coming-of-age/world-problem-solving fantasy with slightly YA sensibilities (the author usually writes YA, and this shows some traces of it in the training montages for the girls studying for queen-candidacy and the important life lessons they learn) literally elevated by taking place in a rather unusual setting. I really liked this novel, which turns out to have been a self-contained pre-emptive stealth prequel (author's note in the back said that editor liked the original idea she pitched, but proposed that it become #2 in the series and give the backstory of another character as #1), and look forward to seeing more of the world in future installments, as well as what some of the characters eventually went on to do.

Ravensknight · 03-25-2017, 07:41 PM

The Lord God Made Them All (All Creatures Great and Small #7)
James Herriot
Unrated

Had reached my fill of animal stories and small time farmers who were "characters". So I abandoned this at 10%. Should have quit the series about 2 books back...

drjd · 03-26-2017, 06:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by drjd

All in all, it was an okay read, and since I have already bought all the four books in the series, I will read the next one Ancient for now, to observe the development in the character of Brian Sadler and his next adventures.

Finished Ancient, the second book of the Brian Sadler series by Bill Thompson. In this book, the author has greatly improved upon my expectations, which encourages me to read the third book of the series, The Strangest Thing.

Rumpelteazer · 03-26-2017, 12:42 PM

The Broken Window by Jeffery Deaver.
I took a ten month break from the Lincoln Rhyme series, I'm not sure if that has anything to do with me liking this book better than the previous books, but I did. It took me a while to get into (mostly due to a new computer game, not the fault of the book), but once I was past the half way point I finished it in a day and a half.

Lately, I'm getting annoying with crime series where the main character(s) always end up in personal danger. This was one book I didn't mind it when the bad guy went after the good guys, because it fit with the story and it wasn't used because that's what the writer always does.

I've started my second non-fiction book of this year (of this month, actually). I somehow missed that Bill Bryson wrote a follow up to Notes from a Small Island, The Road to Little Dribbling. It would be nice to finish it, plus another book by the end of the month; than I would have managed to read 30 books, an average of 10 a month, this year.

CRussel · 03-26-2017, 02:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CRussel

Still reading Stiff, and enjoying it.

Well, I've hit a dead spot, if you'll pardon the pun. But kind of forcing myself through it, hoping to get to something more interesting. Skimming over stuff I really just don't care about. It's come down from a 4 to a 3 at this point, but we'll see.

Quote:

Now starting Blood Lure, the 9th Anna Pigeon book by Nevada Barr. This one is set in Glacier Park and features grizzly bears.

What a winner! This completely disrupted my sleep cycle. A solid 5 stars, one of the best of the Anna Pigeon series, and really has me psyched for the next one.

Quote:

Meanwhile, on the audio book side, next up is The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny. #5 in the Chief Inspector Gamache series of Three Pines mysteries.

A struggle, primarily because it's a library MP3, not an Audible book, so it's just harder to keep track of where I am and the overall behaviour of the book. And this book is complicated. I think if I go on, I'll bite the bullet and read them in Audible format, even though it will cost me a full credit. (The WhisperSync prices are not especially enticing, even on these earlier ones in the series.)

Dngrsone · 03-26-2017, 09:02 PM

Okay, so I didn't get very far in David Copperfield. Just far enough to see the writing on the wall that his new home was going to become a miserable experience (c'mon, it's Charles Dickens).

Fortunately for me, a book came in from my Library that I had put a hold on, and I read that gladly instead: A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers is the recently-published sequel to The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, and was a very good read for me. The characters in this book are secondary from the first, and frankly, there is little reference to the said first book, but it is useful to have read them in order.

At any rate, my reading has slowed down a bit due to personal issues and the fact that I am playing Minecraft every few days (and getting my butt handed to me in single-player mode).

Meanwhile, I have started a favorite short read, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynn Truss.

ATDrake · 03-26-2017, 11:20 PM

Finished The Dragon, the Witch, and the Railroad by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, 5th in her Songs from the Seashell Archives series, and we finally get to see the actual seashells and find out what they're for. I really enjoyed the original series when I got them from Fictionwise and an RAEBW sale years ago, so I picked this up during a Kobo coupon promo. This was apparently revived via Kickstarter campaign (and comes with nice B&W interior illustrations that were probably a stretch goal) and takes place a century or so into the future with a cast that seems only vaguely related to the original characters.

This is even more whimsical and tongue-in-cheek than the previous novels, which were intentionally silly situation-based comedic fantasy to begin with—I thought for sure that this story was being set up as a pseudo-Victorian plucky beleaguered orphan adventure parody—so it's probably just as well that the tone of the formerly vaguely medieval-ish world has also changed. It's now a dragonpunk Industrial Age where the usefulness of readily-controllable flame, heat, and steam have made dragons exploited commodities under working conditions that bring to mind the plight of Lady Sybil's Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick Dragons in Ankh-Morpork, and also the overt use of magic has faded from the public consciousness for reasons which provide for a little more complexity in the plot.

Mild recommend if you enjoyed the original series and would like to see more of the world, albeit at an unexpected future evolution. This was a nice light read and it did tie into and wrap up some loose developments from the previous novels. But it mostly feels sufficiently disconnected from the earlier generationally ongoing storyline that it's more like the humorous world-hopping epilogue in Steven Brust's Iorich than a further chapter of adventures. (I should also note that the Kobo version via Smashwords has suffered mildly from the Meatgrinder, with double spacing between lines throughout. But at least that's an easy fix with ePub.)

pdurrant · 03-27-2017, 04:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Next up: The Mislaid Magician by Patricia C. Wrede. The third and final Kate and Cecelia adventure.

Which was also excellent. I highly recommended this regency fantasy series.

Next up: Rats and Gargoyles by Mary Gentle.

pdurrant · 03-27-2017, 02:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Next up: Rats and Gargoyles by Mary Gentle.

I'm not finding this as fun as I'd hoped. I'll continue for a bit, but I might be abandoning this.

MickeyC · 03-27-2017, 02:40 PM

Just finished Vicious Circle by C J Box and it was one of his best. Easily give it four plus stars!

Next up: The Devil's Cave by Martin Walker

astrangerhere · 03-27-2017, 04:43 PM

Finished up The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams [2.5/5], which I have to say just wasn't for me.

Then while waiting for some stuff to process at work, I read A.C. Wise's freebie "novellette" (why aren't we just calling it a short story, Tor?) Excerpts from a Film (1942-1987). I was quite taken with the style and found it an excellent dark piece of noir in the middle of a sunny, spring day.

Dazrin · 03-27-2017, 05:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by astrangerhere

...(why aren't we just calling it a short story, Tor?)...

Because the Hugo and Nebula Awards (and others, but Tor caters to the Fantasy/Science Fiction crowd) split books up into Novels (40,000+ words), Novellas (17,500 - 40,000 words), Novellettes (7,500 - 17,500 words), and Short Stories (7,500 and less) so they follow suit.

astrangerhere · 03-27-2017, 07:41 PM

Huh, I learned something new! Thanks!

Fbone · 03-27-2017, 08:58 PM

I read the first Issue of Forever Magazine edited by Neil Clarke.

Ken Liu (“The Regular”) --- 2 stars [C-]
Susan Palwick (“The Fate of Mice”) --- 3 stars [C+]
Peter Watts (“Firebrand”) --- 1 star [D]

I liked The Fate of Mice the most. Interesting perspective from an intelligent talking mouse.

The Regular was basically a near-future catch-the-bad-guy who is identified from the beginning. The manner in which he is caught was unbelievable ridiculous.

Firebrand was just boring.

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03-24-2017, 07:12 PM	#25606
Ravensknight Serpent Rider Posts: 1,123 Karma: 10219804 Join Date: Jun 2009 Device: Sony 350; Nook STR; Oasis	A Shadow of All Night Falling (The Dread Empire: A Cruel Wind #1) Glen Cook 3.5 Stars This felt very much like "The Black Company, The Early Drafts". Still enjoyed it though.

03-25-2017, 01:44 AM	#25607
ATDrake Wizzard Posts: 11,517 Karma: 33048258 Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: Roundworld Device: Kindle 2 International, Sony PRS-T1, BlackBerry PlayBook, Acer Iconia	Finished The Queen of Blood by Sarah Beth Durst (whose last name my earlier read Lingo informs me is a now disused past tense of “dare”, although undoubtedly it's derived from other roots), which is 1st in her new Queens of Renthia series and was on the library's feature shelf with a sticker proclaiming it to be “Virginia's Staff Pick”. Virginia seems to have pretty good taste, as this had some of the more interesting worldbuilding I've read in recent years. The plot setup was pretty standard and executed well enough with a few pleasant misdirections of my expectations: the titular “Queen of Blood” ended up being someone other than I thought the narrative was setting it up to be, among other nice surprises. But the background culture and revealed details of the setting were quite novel and engaging and done in a convincingly cohesive manner (back cover flap blurb says the author has previously won a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award), taking place in an elemental magic world where tree-dwelling mostly non-magical humans (albeit with unusual skin colours, for which leaf-green is an option)—who've built skybridge-connected cities within a megaforest and may have never set foot on the actual forest floor—live in uneasy harmony with destructive nature spirits kept in check by a non-hereditary merit-based queen who is selected from women with the rare ability to control the spirits. There are nice touches like a science-based tech trick being considered “magic” by people who use and are used to actual spirit magic, and a complex DIY transportation system outside the cities, apparently consisting of one part Tarzan swinging and one part ski-lift-style wire-gliding, plus counter-weighted lifting baskets. Although some part of me can't help but wonder about the public sanitation arrangements for the tree cities, though it's probably for the best that there wasn't a Victor Hugo-style Parisian sewer digression chapter. Recommended if you think you might be interested in a mildly non-standard coming-of-age/world-problem-solving fantasy with slightly YA sensibilities (the author usually writes YA, and this shows some traces of it in the training montages for the girls studying for queen-candidacy and the important life lessons they learn) literally elevated by taking place in a rather unusual setting. I really liked this novel, which turns out to have been a self-contained pre-emptive stealth prequel (author's note in the back said that editor liked the original idea she pitched, but proposed that it become #2 in the series and give the backstory of another character as #1), and look forward to seeing more of the world in future installments, as well as what some of the characters eventually went on to do.

03-25-2017, 07:41 PM	#25608
Ravensknight Serpent Rider Posts: 1,123 Karma: 10219804 Join Date: Jun 2009 Device: Sony 350; Nook STR; Oasis	The Lord God Made Them All (All Creatures Great and Small #7) James Herriot Unrated Had reached my fill of animal stories and small time farmers who were "characters". So I abandoned this at 10%. Should have quit the series about 2 books back...

03-26-2017, 12:42 PM	#25610
Rumpelteazer Grand Sorcerer Posts: 5,335 Karma: 27919658 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Utrecht, the Netherlands Device: Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition	The Broken Window by Jeffery Deaver. I took a ten month break from the Lincoln Rhyme series, I'm not sure if that has anything to do with me liking this book better than the previous books, but I did. It took me a while to get into (mostly due to a new computer game, not the fault of the book), but once I was past the half way point I finished it in a day and a half. Lately, I'm getting annoying with crime series where the main character(s) always end up in personal danger. This was one book I didn't mind it when the bad guy went after the good guys, because it fit with the story and it wasn't used because that's what the writer always does. I've started my second non-fiction book of this year (of this month, actually). I somehow missed that Bill Bryson wrote a follow up to Notes from a Small Island, The Road to Little Dribbling. It would be nice to finish it, plus another book by the end of the month; than I would have managed to read 30 books, an average of 10 a month, this year.

03-26-2017, 09:02 PM	#25612
Dngrsone Almost legible Posts: 1,457 Karma: 4611110 Join Date: Dec 2013 Location: In a high desert, CA Device: Galaxy Note 9, Galaxy Tab A (2017), Likebook P78	Okay, so I didn't get very far in David Copperfield. Just far enough to see the writing on the wall that his new home was going to become a miserable experience (c'mon, it's Charles Dickens). Fortunately for me, a book came in from my Library that I had put a hold on, and I read that gladly instead: A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers is the recently-published sequel to The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, and was a very good read for me. The characters in this book are secondary from the first, and frankly, there is little reference to the said first book, but it is useful to have read them in order. At any rate, my reading has slowed down a bit due to personal issues and the fact that I am playing Minecraft every few days (and getting my butt handed to me in single-player mode). Meanwhile, I have started a favorite short read, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynn Truss.

03-26-2017, 11:20 PM	#25613
ATDrake Wizzard Posts: 11,517 Karma: 33048258 Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: Roundworld Device: Kindle 2 International, Sony PRS-T1, BlackBerry PlayBook, Acer Iconia	Finished The Dragon, the Witch, and the Railroad by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, 5th in her Songs from the Seashell Archives series, and we finally get to see the actual seashells and find out what they're for. I really enjoyed the original series when I got them from Fictionwise and an RAEBW sale years ago, so I picked this up during a Kobo coupon promo. This was apparently revived via Kickstarter campaign (and comes with nice B&W interior illustrations that were probably a stretch goal) and takes place a century or so into the future with a cast that seems only vaguely related to the original characters. This is even more whimsical and tongue-in-cheek than the previous novels, which were intentionally silly situation-based comedic fantasy to begin with—I thought for sure that this story was being set up as a pseudo-Victorian plucky beleaguered orphan adventure parody—so it's probably just as well that the tone of the formerly vaguely medieval-ish world has also changed. It's now a dragonpunk Industrial Age where the usefulness of readily-controllable flame, heat, and steam have made dragons exploited commodities under working conditions that bring to mind the plight of Lady Sybil's Sunshine Sanctuary for Sick Dragons in Ankh-Morpork, and also the overt use of magic has faded from the public consciousness for reasons which provide for a little more complexity in the plot. Mild recommend if you enjoyed the original series and would like to see more of the world, albeit at an unexpected future evolution. This was a nice light read and it did tie into and wrap up some loose developments from the previous novels. But it mostly feels sufficiently disconnected from the earlier generationally ongoing storyline that it's more like the humorous world-hopping epilogue in Steven Brust's Iorich than a further chapter of adventures. (I should also note that the Kobo version via Smashwords has suffered mildly from the Meatgrinder, with double spacing between lines throughout. But at least that's an easy fix with ePub.)

03-27-2017, 02:40 PM	#25616
MickeyC Grand Sorcerer Posts: 16,731 Karma: 12185114 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Florida Device: iPhone 6 plus, Sony T1, iPad 3	Just finished Vicious Circle by C J Box and it was one of his best. Easily give it four plus stars! Next up: The Devil's Cave by Martin Walker

03-27-2017, 04:43 PM	#25617
astrangerhere Professor of Law Posts: 3,755 Karma: 68428716 Join Date: Sep 2010 Location: Chapel Hill, NC Device: Kobo Elipsa, Kobo Libra H20, Kobo Aura One, KoboMini	Finished up The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams [2.5/5], which I have to say just wasn't for me. Then while waiting for some stuff to process at work, I read A.C. Wise's freebie "novellette" (why aren't we just calling it a short story, Tor?) Excerpts from a Film (1942-1987). I was quite taken with the style and found it an excellent dark piece of noir in the middle of a sunny, spring day.

03-27-2017, 07:41 PM	#25619
astrangerhere Professor of Law Posts: 3,755 Karma: 68428716 Join Date: Sep 2010 Location: Chapel Hill, NC Device: Kobo Elipsa, Kobo Libra H20, Kobo Aura One, KoboMini	Huh, I learned something new! Thanks!

03-27-2017, 08:58 PM	#25620
Fbone Is that a sandwich? Posts: 8,296 Karma: 101697116 Join Date: Jun 2010 Device: Nook Glowlight Plus	I read the first Issue of Forever Magazine edited by Neil Clarke. Ken Liu (“The Regular”) --- 2 stars [C-] Susan Palwick (“The Fate of Mice”) --- 3 stars [C+] Peter Watts (“Firebrand”) --- 1 star [D] I liked The Fate of Mice the most. Interesting perspective from an intelligent talking mouse. The Regular was basically a near-future catch-the-bad-guy who is identified from the beginning. The manner in which he is caught was unbelievable ridiculous. Firebrand was just boring.

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