Recreational Literary Endeavors

[zerohour]

I recently read Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff. It was a nice change of pace to see a Japanese Steampunk instead of Victorian Steampunk. The next book in the trilogy comes out in spetember, so I'm looking forward to that.

Also been planning on reading The Salvation War. The basic plot is that God and the Devil declare the Apocalypse, and humanity basically says: Screw You! and INVADES HELL.

The idea seems really interesting, so I'm really sad that the last book in the trilogy won't be written because some asshole posted a torrent of it.

 

[grant]

Redshirts.

I want to say right now that it's not a bad book alright? It's not bad. I just don't think it's good. My problem with it is in two parts. The first is that it doesn't seem to have any idea what genre it wants to be. Is it supposed to be humor? A serious drama with some thriller parts? What? It doesn't know and it keeps hopping around. The second is that it either should have been shorter and with a shorter ending to compensate or longer so it could properly use that ending. Also the sudden shifts into telling the story as though it were a script or a forum at the end aren't interesting to read.

 

[elof]

currently reading the Tome of Bill series. Nice funny and modern take on vampires.

 

[grant]

Snuff and Winterborn.

Snuff... how did he go from Thud! to this? Sure Thud! had that contrived resolution, but least it admitted that things weren't fixed yet. Here, a single goblin playing a harp saves her people? Yeah, funny. You know those Poles, Jews, Serbs, Albanians, Armenians and other groups in real life? They never got saved by producing a good composer. And at the end Vetinari seems so far out of character that I could very well believe that there were five separate patricians in the series. The odd one from the early books, the nutjob, the bastard, Vetinari and whoever this is.

Winterborn. Seems decent so far. It might have been written to get some of the appeal ASOIAF created, but it's not bad so far (except for a few characters being dumb but the story seems to think that they're in the right).

 

[Glimmervoid]

I just finished The Apocalypse Codex by Charles Stross, the latest in his The Laundry Files series. They've very good, a mixture of spy fiction and Lovecraft. Magic has a very computery feel and the main character is a computational demonologist.

 

[grant]

I just finished The Apocalypse Codex by Charles Stross, the latest in his The Laundry Files series. They've very good, a mixture of spy fiction and Lovecraft. Magic has a very computery feel and the main character is a computational demonologist.

I still want to know why Nyarlathotep is supposed to be the awful power that can't be let loose. Stross did read Lovecraft, right? Nyarlathotep is supposed to be relatively low on the cosmic power level and actively messing around with the universe.

Edit. Removed pointless comment.

 

[Glimmervoid]

I still want to know why Nyarlathotep is supposed to be the awful power that can't be let loose. Stross did read Lovecraft, right? Nyarlathotep is supposed to be relatively low on the cosmic power level and actively messing around with the universe.

Edit. Removed pointless comment.

Depends what you mean by 'low powered'. Most rankings place him as one of the Big Three Outer Gods: Azathoth, Yog-Sothoth and Nyarlathotep, though he is generally the least of them and their messenger. Others replace him with Shub-Niggurath, but even then, he's still just one rung down and still one of the most important beings in the universe.

It's also important to remember than in the Laundry Files books, Lovecraft was a in-universe author. He was on to something, yes, but his books are not canon back story.

EDIT:

Assuming N’Yar lath-Hotep (as Stross styles it) has walked the earth in the past as depicted by Lovecraft, it was probably only part of the entity, which we know can happen.

 

[Glimmervoid]

Just finished 'A Confusion Of Princes' by Garth Nix. Young adult Sci-Fi but I still really liked it. Finished it in a single sitting, over the course of a day.

 

[the DragonBard]

Tracked down a copy of the Roads of Heaven, which is a compilation of the Silence Leigh trilogy

It's a science fantasy series set in the distant future where magic (or the Art) has replaced technology in the interstellar empire, and Earth has been nothing more than a legend for centuries, since a group of planets blocked it off from the rest of the universe.

Silence is a starship pilot, who uses symbolism and harmonics to enter Purgatory and travel from planet to planet, and eventually tries to find her way to Earth, using an old guide book from before Earth was hidden away.

First read it 15 years ago at a library, but couldn't find a new copy since it's gone out of print a while ago.

After I finish it, I'm going to reread the Books of Amber.

 

[grant]

Tracked down a copy of the Roads of Heaven, which is a compilation of the Silence Leigh trilogy

It's a science fantasy series set in the distant future where magic (or the Art) has replaced technology in the interstellar empire, and Earth has been nothing more than a legend for centuries, since a group of planets blocked it off from the rest of the universe.

Silence is a starship pilot, who uses symbolism and harmonics to enter Purgatory and travel from planet to planet, and eventually tries to find her way to Earth, using an old guide book from before Earth was hidden away.

First read it 15 years ago at a library, but couldn't find a new copy since it's gone out of print a while ago.

After I finish it, I'm going to reread the Books of Amber.

Just the Zelazny ones or the Betancourt ones too?

 

[the DragonBard]

After I finish it, I'm going to reread the Books of Amber.

Just the Zelazny ones or the Betancourt ones too?

Only have copies of the Zelazny ones.

 

[daniel_gudman]

Over the course of the last two days, I read The Mote in God's Eye, and it was every bit as god as I had expected, and more.

I can really tell which parts came from Niven (interesting aliens) and which parts came from Pournelle (stupid Future History). I blame the 2D characters on both of them.

As an aside, it would fail the Bechdel test... maybe. If we only use humans it would fail, but if we include the aliens, it would pass. The rigid gender roles dated the novel in a way that the goofy zeerust technology does not... but other than that it was really, really good.

 

[da_fox2279]

Read Ender's Game last week. Pretty good read.

 

[pidl]

Read Dan Brown's Inferno and I kept expecting Ezio to show up.

 

[sith2886]

Reading Mistborn for the second time. First time didn't go so well but am really getting into it now.

 

[daniel_gudman]

This weekend turned into Alan Dean Foster Weekend for me.

Yesterday: A Call to Arms
Today: Nor Crystal Tears

In all... I like what he's doing, but since each of the alien species* gets reduced to their Hat without really having exceptions, it just feels too pat.

*Including humans BTW. He usually casts humans as the "paranoid psycho killers" among aliens. The most interesting part is, the way humans are so good at war is usually deplored and decried, but at the same time, there's some Evil Alien Empire that needs defeating, so... it's kind of a broken Aesop when you criticize a species for it's irrational and unnecessary violence in one breath and set them up as the Saviors of Rightness because they can Win the Good Fight in the next, I guess. I would think that uncertain dichotomy would be what he's intending except that the moral divide between the Good Guys and Bad Guys never really gets challenged or questioned.

 

[Glimmervoid]

I just finished two books (or their audio book equivalents anyway).

First, Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch. It's the fourth in his Rivers of London series, about Peter Grant, a mixed race police officer who gets recruited into the Mets magical unit (Met is London police for those who don't know). Its full of understated British humour, good characters and fun magic.

Second is The Long War by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. This is the squeal to The Long Earth, also by those two. It's about universe were a simple device (called a stepper) is invented, which allows you to step into a new universe. It wasn't as good as the first book but I still enjoyed it.

 

[grant]

Just started Last Days by Adam Nevill. Not very far into it so we'll see if it actually can match the Guardian's claim of "Britain's answer to Stephen King".

 

[Watashiwa]

Last week I bought a book called "Shaman's Crossing" at a used book store. Liked it a fair bit, it read like a frontier fantasy with high fantasy undertones... until the academy portion started up. I love these kinds of stories so I was okay with it. What I was not okay with was where the sequel went. Bought an omnibus from Amazon, read the first chapters of book 2 and the last chapters of book 3, hated it, and returned it.

Believe me, this was a good idea.

At another bookstore this weekend I picked up The Lives of Tao, which looks like it's about stranded aliens cohabiting human bodies fighting a holy war, with a side effect of making their human hosts into major players in world events, historically acknowledged and... not. Hope it'll be fun.

 

[elof]

rereading Paul Crilley's Lazarus Machine in preparation for the second book of the series. Nice steampunk story wherein Professor Moriarty returned from the dead is the villain.

 

[da_fox2279]

Currently reading Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts. Some real great stories in here. Definitely see the influence of his father, but Hill goes off in his own direction and proves to be more than SK JR.

On a side note: does anyone have a good site to buy the WildCards books? Amazon doesn't seem to carry all the ones that are available since the move to the current publisher. I've checked the publishers site, but there's no purchasing option.

 

[Emerald Oracle]

Just finished the original Mistborn Trilogy and the Alloy of Law sequel all by Brandon Sanderson, good times though AoL is not as strong I think. Then again it IS just the first book in a new trilogy that he wasn't originally planning to write so I'll withhold judgement until there's more.

 

[the DragonBard]

Finally finished the Zelazny Amber books.

Still trying to figure out just what the Amberites can do after walking the Pattern besides dimensional/Shadow traveling when they have enough light and freedom of movement.

Now I'm reading The Goliath Stone by Larry Niven and Matthew Joseph Harrington.

Usually prefer fantasy to sf, but it sounded like an interesting read, and I'm enjoying it.

Scientists sent out a missile with nanotech on it to deal with a large asteroid, and make it suitable for mining. They lost contact, and the project scientists went their separate ways. Now, some 26 years later, there are signs that the nanites are on their way back to Earth, and no one knows what's going to happen when they get there.

 

[grant]

Got around to finishing Last Days. Good enough. Would have been nice if we had gotten some better explanation for why the hell the cults were chosen out of all of them and if the dreams were a bit more coherent.

I wonder if he decided to make his story part of a larger universe.

 

[Herdo]

I finished the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle yesterday. It was really good.^_^