April's Anticipated Ascent of Aspiringly Artful Words

[J-Sun]

That's a little surprising to me because we saw so little of the Wankh in their book. It was largely about getting there.

Another thing I didn't like about #2 is what it did in relation to #1 - can I spoil the middle of a series? Fair warning, just in case - basically everything that was accomplished in #1 was discarded in #2. And much of what forward progress was made (other than strictly geographically) was discarded even within #2.

Here's my favorite passage regarding the Phung:

Good excerpt. I remembered that scene after the first couple of lines.

 

[Rodders]

I finished T. C. McCarthy's Exogene last week and found it very enjoyable.

Now on to The Age of Ra by James Lovegrove. Interesting start.

 

[Grunkins]

Since I've got Jack Vance on the brain currently I read The Last Kingdom last night. Short (107 pages, not sure how many words, probably around 25k), and hard packed with Vance prose, action, and words I had to look up in the dictionary. Good stuff.

 

[Connavar]

Since I've got Jack Vance on the brain currently I read The Last Kingdom last night. Short (107 pages, not sure how many words, probably around 25k), and hard packed with Vance prose, action, and words I had to look up in the dictionary. Good stuff.

I have read about, researched every Vance novel for my collecting,complete reading of his work and i cant find any info about Last Kingdom. It must be another title for a novel of his or a novella of his released on its own. Like Sjambak novella was released recently.

Speaking about Vance on our brain i have lost myself very pleasantly in his SF language(since his prose is different in his fantasy), his weird alien human worlds in Demon Princes series. I just finished The Face and i have started on the same bus trip The Book of Dreams. I wonder sometimes why many other quality SF authors dont invent their own language,style for their worlds,books.

Too often its like you are reading present time humans when the books was written just in SF future worlds. You cant blame Gersen and co for being too similar to modern human cultures.

 

[nomadman]

Have been dipping into a few of Fritz Leiber's Selected Stories during my lunchbreak at work. Most of his stuff is still pretty unknown to me, though not the names of the pieces which seem to have stuck in my memory from brief flickthroughs of old best-of collections. Couple of spoilers ahead. Smoke Ghost, earliest of the stories, is a rather eerie little piece of quasi psychological horror, with an effective buildup of tension via an office worker's fragmented glimpses of a sooty shambling form seen crawling over rooftops on his daily trainride to work. A Pail of Air is a rather neat little study of isolation set in an Earth that's been wrenched from its orbit around the sun, thus causing its atmosphere to freeze. Not bad, but a bit too short to really allow itself to breath. I first read The Girl With the Hungry Eyes in ST Joshi's American Supernatural Tales, and recalled it being very good. A little dated perhaps in its language, but with a wonderfully clever main premise, that of psychic vampires using the medium of advertizing to feed. Midnight by the Morphy Watch is another horror tale, this time combining Leiber's love of chess and chess history with his love of the supernatural. I first read this in Heroes and Horrors, along with a couple of other first rate pieces, some of which are included here. It's a pretty fun and well developed piece, but I'm a little surprised it made it over something like The Dark Gondolier or A Bit of the Dark World, both of which are superior and more well-regarded stories IMO. Gonna Roll the Bones is one of my favorite Leiber stories and I loved coming back to it again. It's one of those darkly seductive and erotic dances with death that Leiber did so well, with just the right touch of weirdness to make this piece sing in your imagination.

I've decided to skip the Lankhmar stories, which I've read several times before, in order to focus on those pieces which I've yet to experience. Next up: Coming Attraction.

 

[Grunkins]

I have read about, researched every Vance novel for my collecting,complete reading of his work and i cant find any info about Last Kingdom. It must be another title for a novel of his or a novella of his released on its own. Like Sjambak novella was released recently.

Speaking about Vance on our brain i have lost myself very pleasantly in his SF language(since his prose is different in his fantasy), his weird alien human worlds in Demon Princes series. I just finished The Face and i have started on the same bus trip The Book of Dreams. I wonder sometimes why many other quality SF authors dont invent their own language,style for their worlds,books.

Too often its like you are reading present time humans when the books was written just in SF future worlds. You cant blame Gersen and co for being too similar to modern human cultures.

Sorry, Connavar, I'm a fool, I meant The Last Castle.

Something great about Vance's SF books is that he writes them all as translations of that land's native SF language (and often gives the great footnotes about untranslatable words).

My Vance collection consists of: Planet of Adventure omnibus, Tales of a Dying Earth omnibus, Demon Princes omnibi, Lyonesse, A Blue Planet, The Last Castle

Are there any of his books that I should make a point of adding to my collection immediately?

 

[Perpetual Man]

Have managed to finish Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson, not that it was hard going, I just did not seem as enthused by it as most of his other stuff - that and time seems to be vanishing again.

Next up the dice decided upon Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay

 

[Connavar]

Sorry, Connavar, I'm a fool, I meant The Last Castle.

Something great about Vance's SF books is that he writes them all as translations of that land's native SF language (and often gives the great footnotes about untranslatable words).

My Vance collection consists of: Planet of Adventure omnibus, Tales of a Dying Earth omnibus, Demon Princes omnibi, Lyonesse, A Blue Planet, The Last Castle

Are there any of his books that I should make a point of adding to my collection immediately?

Jack Vance Treasury, Wild Magic, Green Thyme collect his best short story,novella stories that is weird SF or science fantasy novellas like Miracle Workers, Chateau D'if ,The Dragon Masters and his best and most acclaimed short story in Moon Moth.

The Jack Vance Reader omnibus Emphyrio(maybe his best stand alone novel), Languages of Pao and The Gray Prince (my least fav Vance story,bitter colony story that lacks the heart,wit usual with Vance)

His SF series collected in the omnibuses you and i have are great and all but Vance best stories is in novella,short story length. DE stories, the short story collections you dont have that i listed convinced he is better shorter stories writer than in novel length. He can do more sometimes in 50-60 pages story than he does in a SF or Fantasy novel of his.

 

[Grunkins]

Last night I started the third book of the Iron Druid Chronicles, Hammered by Kevin Hearne. It's a very fun series, and the fourth book comes out in a couple weeks.

Thanks, Connavar, I'll check those out.

 

[FireDragon-16]

Last night I started the third book of the Iron Druid Chronicles, Hammered by Kevin Hearne. It's a very fun series, and the fourth book comes out in a couple weeks.

Thanks, Connavar, I'll check those out.

Read that awhile ago. Can't wait for the next one!

 

[Fried Egg]

I've started something that I've been meaning to read for quite some time now: "The Adventures & Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" by Arthur Conan Doyle. So far I haven't yet finished the first story ("The Bohemian Scandal") but I'm already really enjoying it.

 

[Connavar]

Im reading Book of Dreams by Vance and Natten är Dagens Mor a modern swedish play that is very famous for lit class

 

[Lord Soth]

Finished my reread of Deadhouse Gates, brilliant as remembered. Looking forward to progressing through the series again.

For a change of pace I picked up the Sten Omnibus by Chris Bunch and Allan Cole, first book was okay but its gone really downhill. I wasn't expecting too much and unfortunately it delivers even less, I think this one will be left alone from now on. It has the most annoying Scottish character called Alex in which the author tries to phonetically spell out his very strong Aberdeen accent. It may have been okay to try and read the gibberish in small parts but he's a large part of the second book and I've just started to skip any dialogue he is in.

Anyway, I have Off Armageddon Reef up next by David Weber or perhaps Deadhouse Gates in my reread cycle to choose from next...

 

[J-Sun]

Finally finished Zelazny's Dilvish, the Damned, amidst some other reading. Eh. Some decent stuff but no great shakes to me. Not very stylistically or structurally consistent. He has characters saying things like "Perhaps 'twere better an' I were" in the earliest stories and things like "Up yours!" and "Sh*t! Why didn't you strike?" in the latest. And where the heck did Reena go? And what took Black so long to learn the keen and neato fire-breathing trick? And so on. This isn't necessarily fatal (the stories were written from '65-'67 and '79-'82, after all) but it's just indicative of my not being blown away that that's what springs to mind to say. And we trade things off without ever putting it all together. Generally better plots in the later stories (especially the two with Reena) but generally better... um, "sense of evocation" or something in the earlier. Despite the artificial and ineffective verbal style, the earlier ones did a better job of pointing to a larger background or had a greater feeling of dimension despite being slight in other aspects. Whereas the more detailed ones lose that while gaining other aspects... Again: "eh".

The novel sequel (which was released first), The Changing Land, is next. Jury's out as to whether I finish but I'll give it a try.

 

[Extollager]

I've started something that I've been meaning to read for quite some time now: "The Adventures & Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" by Arthur Conan Doyle. So far I haven't yet finished the first story ("The Bohemian Scandal") but I'm already really enjoying it.

Imperishable stories... but when does "The Red-Headed League" occur?

 

[Grunkins]

Last night I started Cordelia's Honor the Lois McMaster Bujold omnibus. Pretty fantastic thus far. I'm very happy to have found a new series to dig into.

 

[J-Sun]

The novel sequel (which was released first), The Changing Land, is next. Jury's out as to whether I finish but I'll give it a try.

So far, so okay. I particularly liked this bit - Dilvish, Our Hero, and an Esteemed Wizard meet (ominous bell toll and all):

"I am Meliash," he said.

"And I am Dilvish. You are the Brotherhood's warden in this area?"

Meliash cocked and eyebrow and smiled. "I know not from what place you might have come," he said, "but we have not been known by that name for some fifty or sixty years."

"Really?" said the other. "What are we now?"

"The Society."

"The Society?"

"Yes, the Circle of Sorceresses, Enchantresses, and Wizardesses raised a fuss, and finally got it changed to that."

It's not exactly breaking the fourth wall or anything, but its anachronistic irony has a similar effect.

 

[nomadman]

Finally finished Zelazny's Dilvish, the Damned, amidst some other reading. Eh. Some decent stuff but no great shakes to me. Not very stylistically or structurally consistent. He has characters saying things like "Perhaps 'twere better an' I were" in the earliest stories and things like "Up yours!" and "Sh*t! Why didn't you strike?" in the latest. And where the heck did Reena go? And what took Black so long to learn the keen and neato fire-breathing trick? And so on. This isn't necessarily fatal (the stories were written from '65-'67 and '79-'82, after all) but it's just indicative of my not being blown away that that's what springs to mind to say. And we trade things off without ever putting it all together. Generally better plots in the later stories (especially the two with Reena) but generally better... um, "sense of evocation" or something in the earlier. Despite the artificial and ineffective verbal style, the earlier ones did a better job of pointing to a larger background or had a greater feeling of dimension despite being slight in other aspects. Whereas the more detailed ones lose that while gaining other aspects... Again: "eh".

More or less agree with this post. It's certainly not Zelazny's best work by a long shot, but I do recall a few of the later stories being quite fun to read at the time.

 

[thatollie]

I finally got my hands on the first part of A Dance with Dragons.

 

[J-Sun]

More or less agree with this post. It's certainly not Zelazny's best work by a long shot, but I do recall a few of the later stories being quite fun to read at the time.

Yep, I'd agree with that, in turn. Now that I've finished it, about the same goes for The Changing Land - interesting enough for the most part but nothing I'll read again. Oddly detailed in its depictions of sorcery despite not having any real framework laid for it. If it were science fiction, people would criticize those parts for being clunky infodumps - literally "wiring diagram fantasy" (thinking particularly of Holrun tracing out the mirror mechanism, but there are at least a couple of bits like that). Also kind of frustrating in that it seems very imaginative, yet under-utilizes its elements. Black is missing an unduly long time and never sufficiently explained nor left completely mysterious. All the ladies are quite intriguing and not much is done with them. Dilvish seems ripe to be either a fantastic hero or anti-hero and yet... And stuff I can't say without spoiling. But basically a lot of sound and fury, it seems to me.