December's Diabolical Deviations (what are you currently reading?)

[j d worthington]

Been reading a lot of Fantasy lately and after sprinting through Lies..., it's now time for Something Completely Different. The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins.

I am curious to see what you think of that one. I found the intimations of the weird in that one to be very skillfully done....

fjeronimo: I hope you enjoy it. I found it a surprisingly uplifting piece....

 

[soulsinging]

Been reading a lot of Fantasy lately and after sprinting through Lies..., it's now time for Something Completely Different. The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins.

I really liked that book. Even though it sometimes suffers from the usual wordiness of 19th century Brit lit, it has such a creepy vibe running throughout that it succeeds at suspense in a way I'd never have guessed from an author of that time and place.

I finished Last Good Kiss, which was the best hard-boiled detective novel I've read in ages. A true classic.

Now on to Blood's a Rover by James Ellroy, the last in his underworld trilogy. The second was good, but a definite dip from the first, so I'm tempering my expectations. I will try not to rush it because I'm thinking of revisiting Game of Thrones after.

 

[dask]

Finished VATHEK. Got really good towards the end with an ending which helped put all the intolerable behavior on the part of the Caliph and his mother in perspective.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I'm still reading a lot of YA fantasy. This time it's Sapphique, by Catherine Fisher. It's the sequel to Incarceron.

 

[Connavar]

I finished The Last Call by Tim Powers and now i have started Servants of the Wankh by Jack Vance. The second book in his sword and planet series Planet of Adventure.

I had to put in another fav author book before i have to read several plays for class.

 

[Ursa major]

I've not been recording my December reading, so I'd better get some of it recorded before midnight.

Okay, first up is Eon by Greg Bear.

First paragraph of the "Prologue", which has four different POVs:

"It's going into a wide elliptical Earth orbit," Judith Hoffman said. "Perigee about ten thousand kilometres, apogee about five hundred thousand. It'll make a loop around the moon every third orbit." She pulled back from the video screen to let Garry Lanier have a look from where he sat on the edge of her desk. For the time being, still resembled a baked potato, with no meaningful detail.

As one can see, we're in BDO (big dumb object) territory, and as with the ones I've read, that means secrets revealed and Eon doesn't disappoint on this score. I don't like to give spoilers, but there's a lot more than meets the eye than usual here.

All in all, I quite liked the book, but it did have some issues. One of them is perhaps a sign of its age, in that while it's mostly written using the strict POV system, the author does have numerous examples of head-hopping, which does disturb the flow. Some of the description was a bit wayward; oddly enough, this seemed more so when the scene being described was limited, which is perhaps just as well given the vast scale of the novel's "world". I had less problems with the science; perhaps this is because I read a lot about TOE stuff and have learnt to skim over the really difficult stuff o). (I had a look through the Amazon reviews: others seemed to have tried to really understand the science, which was probably a mistake on their part.) My biggest problem concerned the characters; not the one or two cardboard villain types (which were minor characters), but the POVs: I found it hard to like any of them. On top of that, I sometimes felt that their behaviour was in support of the plot.

All of which is a shame: the author has come up with an interesting premise and while I'm glad I've read the book, I wish it could have been better. (I will, though, read at least the first of the sequels, as the premise is so intriguing.)

 

[AE35Unit]

Not been a good month for reading- really struggling with Childhoods End.

 

[Ursa major]

My next book was The Family Trade by Charles Stross, the first in his Merchant Princes series. As with Eon, the author had an interesting premise.

The first paragraph:

Ten and a half hours before a mounted knight with a machine gun tried to kill her, tech journalist Miriam Beckstein lost her job. Before the day was out, her pink slip would set in train a chain of events that would topple governments, trigger civil wars, and kill thousands. It would be the biggest scoop in her career, in any journalist's career---bigger than Watergate, bigger than 9/11---and it would be Miriam's story. But as of seven o'clock in the morning, the story lay in her future: All she knew was that it was a rainy Monday morning in October, she had a job to do and copy to write, and there was an editorial meeting scheduled for ten.

The genre is unclear, a nice mixture of SF, modern-day fantasy, alternate history and guide to business organisation. In spite of that, the novel knows where it's going and the author knows how to get the reader there.

I really enjoyed this book: it's a real page-turner, with a lot going on, and yet at the same time, the reader can safely stop to think about what's going on. (It reminded me in this respect of the same author's Saturn's Children, which also operated on two levels, one fast and furious, the other thoughtful).

Recommended.

 

[Ursa major]

...and as it was so enjoyable, I've already read the first sequel: The Hidden Family (by, obviously, Charles Stross).

First paragraph:

The committee meeting was entering its third hour when the king sneezed, bringing matters to a head. His Excellency Sir Roderick was speaking at the time of the royal spasm. Standing at the far end of the table, before the red velvet curtains that sealed off the windows and the chill of the winter afternoon beyond, Sir Roderick leaned forward slightly, clutching his papers to his bony chest and wobbling back and forth as he recited. His colourless manners matched his startling lack of skin and hair pigmentation: He kept his eyes downcast as he regurgitated a seemingly endless stream of reports from the various heads of police, correspondents of intelligence, and freelance informers who kept his office abreast of news.

This book follows on immediately after the first, almost as if it's the second part of The Family Trade. The book has the same virtues as the first, although the universe in which it's set gets even more complicated.

Recommended.

 

[littlemissattitude]

Quick...before the December thread is closed...

I haven't read any science fiction or fantasy, but in the past couple of weeks I have read:

Wonderland Avenue: Tales of Glamour and Excess, by Danny Sugerman
Spider Bones, by Kathy Reichs
My Life Among the Serial Killers, by Helen Morrison M.D. and Harold Goldberg
The New York Regional Mormon Dingles Halloween Dance: A Memoir, by Elna Baker

All non-fiction excpet for the Reichs book, which was a mystery novel.