February's Febrile Focus For Finding Fulfilling Fiction

[Grunkins]

Feel free to skip the sequel

Aw, that's disappointing. I have it on order, and am enjoying the first one thus far, so I'll probably give it a shot. What are it's shortcomings?

 

[Mangara]

Still working through Uquenchable Fire it is a book that demands a lot of attention as a lot is going on, but I'm sure a lot of it is going straight over my head! Picked up The Day of the Triffids in the library whilst stranded today due to the snow and devoured 50 pages in super quick time. The images contained in those first 50 pages! The horror! Also a fantastic idea for a book!

 

[Lady of Winterfell]

Finished The Mystery of Marie Roget by Poe. I didn't enjoy it as much as The Murders in the Rue Morgue. It didn't feel like a mystery or story to me, altough it was interesting in that it was based on real events.

Now I'm reading The Mummy Case by Elizabeth Peters. I have to say so far the couples son is driving me crazy, but other than that its fun so far.

 

[AE35Unit]

Aw, that's disappointing. I have it on order, and am enjoying the first one thus far, so I'll probably give it a shot. What are it's shortcomings?

Well I posted a review of Forge of God on here with thoughts about the sequel there. But in summary its a totally different scenario and concerns itself with a bunch of annoying kids with silly twee names, on a ship out to...well its impossible to review any further without giving away spoilers to the first one.

 

[J-Sun]

Well I posted a review of Forge of God on here with thoughts about the sequel there. But in summary its a totally different scenario and concerns itself with a bunch of annoying kids with silly twee names, on a ship out to...well its impossible to review any further without giving away spoilers to the first one.

Grunkins: while I admit those shortcomings to Anvil of Stars (and at least one more), I still liked it overall - it also has many virtues (not least of which is being a space opera about retribution with some neat ideas and experiences along the way) - The Forge of God is better, though (IMO). Still, I'd recommend them both and some people prefer Anvil.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

About to start Of Men and Monsters by William Tenn.

 

[Lord Captain Woden]

Finished Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, Thought it was great. I don't know how to describe it other than it was easy to read, I don't mean in terms of the story being simple, I just mean that I was reading a lot quicker than I normally do. I'm looking forward to reading more of stuff.

Next in the list is The Stars My Destination which I have very high hopes for as I've seen on a number of occasions being described as the best in the genre or at least one of the top five.

 

[Southern Geologist]

I just finished Foundation. It was a bit disjointed at times, but I was quite impressed overall. I just got my Kindle Paperwhite in yesterday so I decided to take a break from the Foundation series to start on Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men lest Kindle withdrawal set in. Once that's finished I'll go back to the library books and start on Foundation and Empire.

 

[J-Sun]

I just finished Foundation. It was a bit disjointed at times, but I was quite impressed overall.

Yeah, it's very disjointed for a novel but it's five separately published stories, so not disjointed at all in regard - or did you mean you found such problems within the stories themselves? But glad you liked it overall.

As far as the next two, they are also collections but of only a longish and long story each and so come much closer to actual novels as there's only the one slight bump in each and the parts are more closely related anyway.

 

[Grunkins]

Finished Greg Bear's The Forge of God a little while ago. The book dragged in places, but the finale was pretty intense. Reading more Bear isn't a priority for me, but this was good enough to warrant a few more books of his at some point.

On to the second book of Stephen R Donaldson's Gap Cycle, Gap Into Vision: Forbidden Knowledge. I'm excited to get deep into this series.

I'm glad to see that you enjoyed it and that it didn't put you off the series. Sheer brilliance awaits. Make sure to keep reporting back when you start on the next volumes in the series.

Will do. I've read only the first chapter (prologue?) of the book thus far, but it's a great example of what an outstanding writer Donaldson is. Characterization, mood, tension and conflict, and of course excellent prose. I'm very impressed with him.

 

[Southern Geologist]

Yeah, it's very disjointed for a novel but it's five separately published stories, so not disjointed at all in regard - or did you mean you found such problems within the stories themselves? But glad you liked it overall.

I meant disjointed in the sense that the leaps in time between sections aren't always tied together well, not that the stories themselves are disjointed. If it's a fix-up of five separately published stories that explains a lot.

 

[AE35Unit]

Yeah, it's very disjointed for a novel but it's five separately published stories, so not disjointed at all in regard - or did you mean you found such problems within the stories themselves? But glad you liked it overall.

As far as the next two, they are also collections but of only a longish and long story each and so come much closer to actual novels as there's only the one slight bump in each and the parts are more closely related anyway.

I read the original trilogy twice,a few years ago. Quite tedious and I put them on bookmooch for someone else to read

 

[Vertigo]

Finished Sheri Tepper's Grass. A very good read; I found the first half had an almost Hitchcock-like claustrophobic feeling of suspense with a sense of menace that stays just beyond your ken. Then, after a fairly big revelation moment half way through, the pace picks up with plenty of action and excitement and along the way it poses some interesting moral questions.

More thoughts here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/516533866

 

[HoopyFrood]

Still reading the H.P Lovecraft Book of Horrors. Read The Horla. I reckon the guy was just mad. He said himself how people create all sorts of monsters and ghosts that haunt them through the person's own fear of such.

Then Ambrose Bierce's The Damned Thing, which I really enjoyed. I read it in a South American accent for some reason.

And then The Upper Berth. I loved this, it was terrifying. No wonder everyone leapt out of bed and bolted off the ship if they woke up with that dead thing in your bed, staring at you!

 

[Perpetual Man]

Finished The War Gate by Chris Stevenson, review for which can be found here: The War Gate

And am moving onto another Chronicles author in the form of Bane of Souls by Thaddeus White

 

[Lord Captain Woden]

Finished The Stars My Destination, probably the best book I've ever read. Everything about it was phenomenal but the last fifty pages was some of the best writing I've ever read.

Next on to Lord Of Light.

 

[nomadman]

Currently reading My Secret War, an autobiography by Communist double agent Kim Philby. Philby wrote this whilst in exile in Moscow so it's a given that it was probably heavily edited before publication. Thus far it's an interesting enough read, given one a good insider's look at the British Secret Service, though the more meaty details of how Philby came to work for the Russians and the manner in which he continued to do so are conspicuously absent, nor is there very much on Philby himself who remains very much an invisible observer. Nonetheless, it's briskly written and quite humorous in places.

Also just finished John le Carre's A Small Town in Germany. This was quite a slog. I'd initially begun it back in July of last year, but trailed off two thirds of the way through. Finally decided to see it off this month, though given the large number of details in the novel and the long hiatus I took I should probably do it the honor of a re-read at some point. I'm not sure how much I'm going to like le Carre (I have a few more of his novels to read). Whilst an excellent writer there is an oppressive grimness to his work that becomes wearing after a time. Perhaps that's how the Secret Services really were, though Graham Greene was able to compose a quite excellent novel set in the same world in The Human Factor that makes for much better reading. I get the feeling that le Carre revels in grimness and despair. And whilst that worked in the tighter and more plot focussed The Looking Glass War, here where the bulk of the book involves hunting down a missing Foreign Office official, the whole thing gets bogged down in endless office politics and a tiresome search for dead end clues.

Am also currently reading Carmichael Smith's Cold War thriller Atomsk, on my new kindle app (actual copies of the book retail in the hundreds). Smith, better known by his SF pseudonym Cordwainer Smith, was outside of his writing career an accomplished military advisor and expert in Far Eastern culture, as well as a pioneer in the field of psychological warfare. The book's quite a breezy read, more a character study than a real thriller, though those aspects are definitely not skimped on. There are definite signs that this was an early work: it lacks the hypnotic poetry-prose style that Smith employed in his SF (perhaps naturally, given the genre), and suffers a little from slightly two-dimensional characters and a somewhat jaunty tone that doesn't entirely befit the story. Quite a fun read though, and worth it for a look at another aspect of the endlessly fascinating Smith's oeuvre.

 

[The Judge]

I've not read A Small Town... but I wonder if the grimness and depression arises from when he was writing -- optimism was largely gone, and so had the comforting certitude that we were on the right side doing the right thing. It didn't worry me in the books of his I've read, but I can see how it might prove wearing.

I've finished Margaret Atwood's In Other Worlds, which was interesting though the structure wasn't wholly satisfying. I've also raced through a re-read of Wilkie Collins's The Haunted Hotel which was fun, and then my first encounter with Brendon Sanderson The Final Empire, which I'm still undecided about.

 

[nomadman]

I've not read A Small Town... but I wonder if the grimness and depression arises from when he was writing -- optimism was largely gone, and so had the comforting certitude that we were on the right side doing the right thing. It didn't worry me in the books of his I've read, but I can see how it might prove wearing.

No doubt it was a reflection of the times, and I'm not averse to a bit of grime and moral ambiguity in my spy fiction, provided it's leavened with other qualities to make a balanced and readable novel. But le Carre seems (in those works I've read of his, mostly early ones) to lay it on a bit too thick. It worked in The Looking Glass War due to the tightness and relative raciness of the plot, and to a lesser extent in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (which I also found a bit tedious in places, but which was short enough to sustain my interest over the stretch) but in Small Town the whole thing is too bogged down in local politics, bureaucratic infighting and the like, to make for an enjoyable experience. As a snapshot in time of a nation undergoing transition is probably where its main strengths lie, but as a novel I found it far from gripping.

 

[Lobolover]

Finished Ruthven Tod's The Lost Traveller yesterday. Definitely a surreal piece, and definitely worth a read, reminded me a bit of Brown's Smallcreep's Day, but it does seem to be a bit fast in it's transition from set piece to set piece, where alot of detail is set up setting up each new location/situation but then it's left mostly unexplored.

I understand this is due to a large chunk of the original manuscript being, rather ironically, culled by Tod to ensure it could get published with the limited paper supply during the war, right before a "sudden snowfall" allowed for the publisher to print a second edition, which would probably have all served better for getting more of the manuscript out there, especialy since Tod notes he never managed to recover any of the text.

Moved on to Spencer's The Lady Who Came to Stay