December's Daring Descent into Dynamically Divergent Documents

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Last night I finished Guy Gavriel Kay's River of Stars. Another beautiful book. There is no writer on Earth like Kay.

This one, like his last book Under Heaven, is written with a delicate emotional remove (compared to his more bombastic earlier books like Tigana or The Lyons of Al-Rassan where the emotional impact is immediate). I assume that has to do with the subject matter, a more formal, subtle China, vs the passionate city-state Italian peninsula or caliphate Spain. The characters and world are no less engrossing for that emotional remove, and the beauty of the work is undiluted.

His prose in this book is more poetic than in any previous book (poetry a major theme of the world of Kitai). The story was, as is typical with Kay, heartbreaking. As with his more recent works the subtleties of the court are prominent, and warfare plays a major role in the story, as does justice, injustice, duty (the word "filial" appears many times), and the possible unfolding of events had one simple thing or another gone a different way.

River of Stars is an improvement over Under Heaven in almost every way (of course I loved Under Heaven too).
 
Grunkins said:
Last night I finished Guy Gavriel Kay's River of Stars. Another beautiful book. There is no writer on Earth like Kay.

This one, like his last book Under Heaven, is written with a delicate emotional remove (compared to his more bombastic earlier books like Tigana or The Lyons of Al-Rassan where the emotional impact is immediate). I assume that has to do with the subject matter, a more formal, subtle China, vs the passionate city-state Italian peninsula or caliphate Spain. The characters and world are no less engrossing for that emotional remove, and the beauty of the work is undiluted.

His prose in this book is more poetic than in any previous book (poetry a major theme of the world of Kitai). The story was, as is typical with Kay, heartbreaking. As with his more recent works the subtleties of the court are prominent, and warfare plays a major role in the story, as does justice, injustice, duty (the word "filial" appears many times), and the possible unfolding of events had one simple thing or another gone a different way.

River of Stars is an improvement over Under Heaven in almost every way (of course I loved Under Heaven too).
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I think I should just start copy/pasting your comments :) Exactly how I felt about reading it, GGK is another automatic hardback of mine.
 
Grunkins said:
Last night I finished Guy Gavriel Kay's River of Stars. Another beautiful book. There is no writer on Earth like Kay.

This one, like his last book Under Heaven, is written with a delicate emotional remove (compared to his more bombastic earlier books like Tigana or The Lyons of Al-Rassan where the emotional impact is immediate). I assume that has to do with the subject matter, a more formal, subtle China, vs the passionate city-state Italian peninsula or caliphate Spain. The characters and world are no less engrossing for that emotional remove, and the beauty of the work is undiluted.

His prose in this book is more poetic than in any previous book (poetry a major theme of the world of Kitai). The story was, as is typical with Kay, heartbreaking. As with his more recent works the subtleties of the court are prominent, and warfare plays a major role in the story, as does justice, injustice, duty (the word "filial" appears many times), and the possible unfolding of events had one simple thing or another gone a different way.

River of Stars is an improvement over Under Heaven in almost every way (of course I loved Under Heaven too).
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This writer i havent read because i didnt really read epic fantasy of this type before recently and i have decided to try him now after hearing for years praise for his prose. The fact he writes fantasy worlds set in other cultures like Caliphate Spain, Chinese culture makes him even more appealing to me who is sick of the same North European medevil fantasy setting in the subgrenre. I ordered Under the Heaven as interlibrary loan.

I hope his storytelling ability is as good as how his books sound when i read about them.
 
He's a beautiful writer, Conn. That's the word I think is most used when describing him: beautiful.

Along with China (Under Heaven and River of Stars) and Caliphate/Reconquista Spain (Lions of Al-Rassan) he also has a fantastic two book series based on Byzantium circa 600CE (starting with Sailing to Sarantium and finishing with Lord of Emperors).

I can't recommend him highly enough.
 
Grunkins said:
He's a beautiful writer, Conn. That's the word I think is most used when describing him: beautiful.

Along with China (Under Heaven and River of Stars) and Caliphate/Reconquista Spain (Lions of Al-Rassan) he also has a fantastic two book series based on Byzantium circa 600CE (starting with Sailing to Sarantium and finishing with Lord of Emperors).

I can't recommend him highly enough.
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I cant wait to read him and hope the librarians work before the christmas week too. Specially seeing high praise from fellow Vance fan like yourself. For understandable reasons we have more in common than with non-Vance fans with taste in SFF authors.
 
Rosemary Sutcliff's Eagle of the Ninth. As a teenager, I loved Sutcliff's books for the sense of wonder and wilderness they evoked. I've read the first five chapters then put the book aside until Christmas, when I should have time to immerse myself in Roman Britain.

Hugh Howey's Wool. I've just finished the ebook sample, and I think there are some parallels that may make it interesting to read after Eagle of the Ninth.

Stephen Baxter's Proxima. I found this book so frustrating that I gave it up half way through, but a couple of weeks later I'm still thinking about it (still arguing with it!) so i may pick it up again. Subplots built almost to climax but were interrupted by changes to alternative plot lines. When the original plots resumed, the events around the climax were briefly sketched a out as background to further plot development. I could endure this because i had little investment in the story, due to the sketchy plot and character development. More annoyingly, I found the scientific world-building unconvincing and contradictory, but there was so little exposition that I couldn't refute its logic.

I did appreciate the originality of Proxima, however, and i certainly have found it thought-provoking, even if not all the thoughts have been favourable
 
I'm on the final chapter of Steven Erikson's Gardens of the Moon. Man, am I hooked on it! People have given me mixed reviews on his series. Some say his characters are flat, the dialogue is poor and so forth. Maybe they're kind of right about some characters, but I love it nonetheless. He's done a fantastic job at making his world seem massive, with all sorts going on around it. Can't wait to start Deadhouse Gates.
 
Sequois said:
I'm on the final chapter of Steven Erikson's Gardens of the Moon. Man, am I hooked on it! People have given me mixed reviews on his series. Some say his characters are flat, the dialogue is poor and so forth. Maybe they're kind of right about some characters, but I love it nonetheless. He's done a fantastic job at making his world seem massive, with all sorts going on around it. Can't wait to start Deadhouse Gates.
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I keep meaning to re-read this book. I remember really liking it but read it around 6 years ago, and it was a particularly stressful time of my life so I don't recall much. I bought Deadhouse Gates years ago and there it has sat on a shelf. Maybe 2014 is the year I take the plunge and devour Erikson.
 
Sequois said:
I'm on the final chapter of Steven Erikson's Gardens of the Moon. Man, am I hooked on it! People have given me mixed reviews on his series. Some say his characters are flat, the dialogue is poor and so forth. Maybe they're kind of right about some characters, but I love it nonetheless. He's done a fantastic job at making his world seem massive, with all sorts going on around it. Can't wait to start Deadhouse Gates.
Click to expand...

I enjoyed Gardens of the Moon too. I think it was the rooftop chase scene that really sealed it for me. The best thing about the book: it's the weakest in the series. The series gets amazingly good. Like nothing else in fiction. Deadhouse Gates is one of the best in the series. I'm a bit envious that you get to experience it for the first time. Have fun!
 
Finished Lois McMaster Bujold's Memory. Best Miles yet. I've been reading the series in chronological order (largely through the omnibus editions), and the books just keep getting better and better. The last Miles book I read was Mirror Dance, and I had thought that had been the best Miles yet. Memory eclipses it, and everything that's come before.

It's not the slam bang military SF that the previous Miles books have been. This is a contemplation on life, purpose and identity (with a slam bang mystery story in the second half). Bujold not only manages to pull off writing a compelling book about introspection in a series where readers expect SF gunfights and clever extraction tactics, but she manages to make it the best book of the series thus far. She is a fantastic writer. (Shortly after finishing Memory, I started Rimrunners by CJ Cherryh, another fantastic writer, and it's amazing the difference between them in tone, style, and content - it's hard to imagine a much bigger chasm between two writers from the same genre.)

Miles's new job of Imperial Auditor (don't think it's a spoiler to say that, it's mentioned in the book description) is perfectly suited for him. It's almost as if the job were created specifically with Miles in mind. Of course it was, but Bujold is so good that one forgets it's all just invention. In Memory, shortly after Miles suffers a stonewalling and humiliation which pained me to read, I found myself giggling evilly as he was made an Auditor with all inherent power the post comes with. It's a fantastic moment in the book. A character who is so well flushed out, so deeply known to us, is presented with a change of circumstances so large, and, because of that depth of knowledge of the character and the way in which the change is presented (for example, after a humiliation I felt viscerally), a reader's response is audible evil giggling. That's good writing! That's writing that succeeds on every level.

I can't wait to see where the series goes next.
 
Finished CJ Cherryh's Rimrunners. She's such a good writer. I get the feeling that her books would read about the same if she were writing in any other genre. Her ultra-tight third person POVs read as nearly steam of conscious, and more so in this book than any of her other books I've yet read.

This book is part space opera, part confused and complex love story, and part One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. As with all the works I've read by her she includes a totally broken character, a broken person--and in this case that person is NG, not the POV character as was the case in much of Merchant's Luck and some of Downbelow Station--and this character usually finds some form of redemption. The redemption in this book is slim, but gratifying. The main character (Bet Yeager, former Fleet marine) is satisfyingly proactive throughout. All of Cherryh's characters are shades of grey, none good or bad, and all are very lifelike and strongly rendered even if they are only a very small part of the book.

I have a few more of her books in my TBR and look forward to reading them. She's one of my favorites.
 


Needed something short to finish out the year with and have been wanting to read this for a long time. Twenty-four pages into it and no problems yet.
 
Halfway thru an Asimov 'short story' (134 pages on my new Kobo touch ereader!)
The story is called Youth and was published in The Martian Way and other stories.
 
Finished George RR Martin's Dying of the Light. This one had been sitting in my TBR for a very long time and I was happy to get to it.

This was an uneven book. The first half was fairly boring and filled with infodumps--Martin was then not yet the elegant storyteller he would become (he wrote it in his late 20s). The second half was almost all action and had quite a bit going on with character interaction. Overall it finished strong and was an enjoyable read.

The world building was interesting despite its execution via infodumps. His love for Jack Vance is very obvious in this book. More so than any other I've read by him.

The characters were not close to as strongly developed as they were in his excellent Fevre Dream that he wrote just a couple years later, but by the end were fairly well rounded.

I wish Martin wrote more long form SF. I still have his Tuf Voyaging to get to, and I look forward to that.
 
Picked up Slow River by Nicola Griffith. Loving all the biochemistry!

So far this month I've read:

Never Let Me Go - Kzuo Ishiguro. Incredible, haunting, powerful and odd. *****

Storm & Conquest: The Battle for the Indian Ocean, 1809 - Steven Taylor. If anyone wan't to know what it was like to be an Indiaman during this time period read this. Some absolutely incredible characters! ****

Carter Beats The Devil - Glen David Gold. Read as part of our bookclub, the author does a great job in recreating the height of magic and vaudeville, but drags its out far too long by not being focussed enough and diverging his attentions on accessory story lines that were indulgent bordering on unnecessary. ***

The Seeds of Time - John Wyndham. I love his plain, simple writing, it is so effective at getting over his story. An interesting collection of 50's SF short stories, very much of its time, and very entertaining. ****
 
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