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

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by issybird

The things I didn’t like about this were legion, so I’ll limit it to a few. An advantage of epistolary books is that it gives the author different voices, but the voices here were all the same (and nothing at all like immediately post-war Britain). Moreover, a limitation is that you really can’t use them as info dumps with any credibility; you have to give up the third-person omniscient author voice.

The heroine was ridiculous, a perfect person universally adored. And the history was exploitative; it was used to give the story heft, but there was no reality to it. Akin to Holocaust stories with the same fatal flaw — oops, the author went there too. Where didn’t she go?

But I acknowledge mine’s a minority opinion!

I can definitely see the points you were making. It may even reinforce their validity that while reading those exploitative passages, I thought more of my friend growing up in Scheveningen through the war, a Jewish friend whose family fled to Switzerland and others I know or know of who lived the experiences for real rather than her recounting of them.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Next up: Rumpole at Christmas by John Mortimer. A collection of Christmas stories, one previous published in an earlier collection of stories, but the other six previously uncollected in book form. As I count them, the sixteenth book of Rumpole stories, but this is a series where reading out of order causes no problems. Bought yesterday.

Collecting them all in one places points out some similarities that would otherwise go unnoticed. But a fun, quick read, as expected. 4/5

Next up: The Span of Empire by Eric Flint and David Carrico. The third in Eric Flint's Jao Empire series, the first two being written with K. D. Wentworth.

I probably read the first in 2003. I read the second in 2010, when I gave it 4/5.

I confess I've forgotten the books entirely. Hopefully there'll be enough in the third volume to remind me.

Hmm.. back in 2010 I wrote "The story came back to me fairly quickly, and I enjoyed the sequel.". Let's hope the verdict is the same this time!

[Uncle Robin]

Nearly 2/3 through House of Correction by Nicci French, and only sticking with it because I want to know whodunnit. The book and its author are highly rated, it seems, but6 it's a dull slog for me. The protagonist is unlikeable, unsympathetic and tedious. My first foray into the 'psychological thriller' genre (sort of), and reflecting on the fact without any exceptions. Every.Single.One of the books in that genre are Always and Invariably described as having a "shocking/surprising/amazing/etc teist you won't see coming" I already know hat twist would fir that description here: If I gave a damn by the end.

[Uncle Robin]

One of the nice features of The StoryGraph is being able to give scores in other than whole numbers. So House of Correction got 0.25 out of 5, because I was feeling generous. One quarter done with Carrion Death by Michael Stanley now, which I started for two main reasons (a)A very dear friend married a Motswana and lives in Gaborone, and (b) - it ain't Precious

[gmw]

re: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

I didn't mind it. I have no experience reading epistolary books, so I don't know good from bad, and maybe I cut it more slack than it deserved. It seemed very disjointed and stilted, but I assumed that was a consequence of the epistolary style.
It's more likely that I gave it a pass for teaching me things I hadn't known about what happened in Guernsey during the war, and because its descriptions of life in Belsen and Dachau made me think of "friends of friends" I knew who'd been in those camps, and much closer friends whose stories were similar to those told in the book of the Guernsey occupation.

As a contrast to issybird's comments: I thoroughly enjoyed the book (in fact my comment posted here at the time was "loved it"), and I think the movie was a good adaptation.

I can see the merit of issybird's criticisms, and I often steer clear of war stories because they can feel exploitative. But it might also be argued that any emotive fiction (and Guernsey was deliberately emotive) is exploitative, so the true measure of success for the story is whether the reader feels exploited or whether they feel the emotions. For me this one worked.

And I agree there were some technical/execution issues with the writing, but as is so often the case, since I was enjoying the ride those issues didn't concern me overly much. Had I been bored I'm sure I would have been more critical.

[Uncle Robin]

Thanks for your view on the movie gmw, that's good to know

[bizzybody]

Just finished "The Way of Kings" by Brandon Sanderson. Book one of the Stormlight Archive.

The ebook went on and on and on and on and... just had a look at the dead tree page count. Egads! 1001 in hardcover 1258 in paperback.

I liked it. It's set on on the rather different fantasy world of Roshar. The planet has periodic "highstorms" that have winds so strong they blow rocks horizontally through the air. Buildings are made of stone, with roofs that slope down to the ground in the direction of the "origin" where all highstorms blow from. Over most of the land the plants have hard shells and retractable leaves and tendrils. Far from the origin is the land of Shin, where the plants don't hide from the weather and they actually have soil.

Semi-magical tech is called "fabrials", powered by gemstones. The gemstones are charged by putting them outside during a highstorm. For money they use gemstones encased in glass spheres, and they glow - the glow charged by exposure to a highstorm.

The sphere-money, or bare pieces of gemstone, is also used for lighting. Small diamonds are fairly plentiful so a glass goblet of stormlight charged diamond spheres makes a good white light for reading or doing surgery. Some characters can draw power from charged gemstones or spheres. One is an outcast from Shin, an assassin with a "shardblade" (see below) who must do whatever anyone holding his "oathstone" commands. He charges up from spheres to perform "lashings" that allow him to walk on walls and ceilings, and make objects fly across rooms, or stick to things. Quite effective to "lash" some guards to the ceiling, but not fun at all for the guards when the stormlight powering the lashing runs out.

Gemstones also power certain ancient tech such as "soulcasters" which can transmute materials, depending on the skill of the person using the soulcaster. Need iron? Soulcast some plants into it. Need basic food? Soulcast small rocks into bread. Of course the soulcasters charge for the service. The gemstones powering their casters eventually break and need replacing.

Another gemstone powered ancient tech is "shardplate" suits of armor. Unlike ordinary metal armor, shardplate totally encases the wearer, with tiny articulated plates at the joints providing 100% protection. The only point vulnerable to conventional weaponry is the vision slit in the visor, which is an odd thing to have since with the visor down the helmet turns transparent from the inside. Shardplate will repair itself and even regenerate destroyed parts. A new suit can be generated from a small part like a lost gauntlet but it takes a large amount of gemstones and attention to complete the process. Left alone, lost or discarded pieces will disintegrate.

What can damage shardplate? A "shardblade", a sword around six feet long, summoned by its owner. It takes ten heartbeats to appear and forms from a mist, coated with drops of condensation. Drop it and it mists away, unless deliberately set down or stabbed into something. A shardblade cuts almost effortlessly through non-living matter but doesn't cut anything alive. What it does to living things is worse, it destroys the nerves. Slice an arm and from the slice down the arm is forever dead. Go through a person's spine and he's dead, with his eyes burned out.

A person wearing shardplate can leap great distances, jump down from heights that would break bones or kill a person, and have the strength to damage another person's shardplate, with or without a shardblade.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by bizzybody

Just finished "The Way of Kings" by Brandon Sanderson. Book one of the Stormlight Archive.

The ebook went on and on and on and on and... just had a look at the dead tree page count. Egads! 1001 in hardcover 1258 in paperback.

I liked it.

I agree. A good start to a fantasy series. I've already read the next two, Words of Radiance and Oathbringer, which are equally long, possibly longer! And now I'm waiting for the fourth volume (Rhythm of War) to go on offer...

[bizzybody]

Rhythm of War is listed on Amazon for Kindle at $15.99. There's even 11 used hardback and 2 used paperbacks listed there.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by bizzybody

Rhythm of War is listed on Amazon for Kindle at $15.99. There's even 11 used hardback and 2 used paperbacks listed there.

I'm in no rush. I bought The Way of Kings for £1.99 in October 2017, I bought Words of Radiance for £1.99 in December 2016, and I bought Oathbringer for £0.99 in July 2018. I didn't start reading them until December 2019.

I'm happy to wait for a year of two for Rhythm of War to be a daily deal or otherwise on offer.

One of the advantages of having 900+ books in my TBR pile.

[Luffy]

The Way of Kings is still the best book I've read. Needless to say, I've got my copy of Rhythm of War already. Will stall and read it when I have more time during December.

[Uncle Robin]

Carrion Death was a very enjoyable read, and taught me one thing about Gabs that McCall Smith never did - it's 1000m above sea level. That puts my friend's complaint about the heat there in a new light. 45C at that height is quite impressive!

[Apache]

I just started a reread of 1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies. I want to refresh my memory before I start the sequel 1637: No Peace Beyond the Line.
Apache

[Uncle Robin]

Time for a change of genre, with Ann Leckie's Provenance

[bizzybody]

Originally Posted by Apache

I just started a reread of 1636: Commander Cantrell in the West Indies. I want to refresh my memory before I start the sequel 1637: No Peace Beyond the Line.
Apache

That's a series I read. There's quite a number of new books in it all getting released soon.