October 2015: What are you reading?

[Mark Ragland]

tracy i quite liked the series and that's the only thing i can say lol there will be one new one nº11 next year according to amazon might be poorly edited, which honestly i didn't find it, maybe because english is not my primary language but over all i found it a great series

Tobl: Haven't found The Mountain yet, and I guess you know that The Traveler, the next book in the series, comes out in July of 2016.

 

[tobl]

Tobl: Haven't found The Mountain yet, and I guess you know that The Traveler, the next book in the series, comes out in July of 2016.

yes i know mark, thanks sometimes it just schaffs when we have to wait for years sometimes for the next installement of a series. can't béguin to tell you how i felt when i was Reading the first Harry potter lol that's why i love when i discover a new author especially one with many books

 

[Mark Ragland]

yes i know mark, thanks sometimes it just schaffs when we have to wait for years sometimes for the next installement of a series. can't béguin to tell you how i felt when i was Reading the first Harry potter lol that's why i love when i discover a new author especially one with many books

That's how I feel waiting for the next GoT book by George RR Martin. Can't wait!

 

[ratsy]

I finished The Ember War by Richard Fox and it was a fast-paced SF military adventure story. It reminded me of a video game at times but in a good way. Ill be sure to check out the sequel.

I'm going to move on to Julia Knight's Swords and Scoundrels.

 

[EJ Heijnis]

Since it was free, I tried the first of David Weber's Honor series. I'm not impressed with the lack of characterization, or the tendency to dump massive amounts of marginally relevant information on the reader (I skipped six straight pages of pure background info at one point and didn't miss it,) but the space navigation and combat was well done and the main story was just interesting enough to make me keep reading. The second book was also free, so I downloaded it for later, but I don't think I'll be buying any of them.

Now I'm reading Call to Arms by Joshua Dalzelle - not great, but a guilty pleasure.

 

[Extollager]

Just finished Sterling Lanier's first book, intended for young readers, 1969's The War for the Lot. A boy visiting his grandfather's rural home becomes the general in a defensive campaign, the woodland birds and mammals versus a horde of invading rats from the city dump. Lanier seems well-informed about the Connecticut wild flowers and animals, and he takes his time, but I didn't get the sense of something bogging down in natural history lessons. The boy has been granted a telepathic ability to communicate with the animals by Manibozo, the forest spirit. He is able to see through the eyes of a spy (a wood rat) who is taken to the innermost fastness of the dump rats, who turn out to be rather ghastly; I was reminded of Lovecraft's unpleasant "Rats in the Walls." It seems that J. R. R. Tolkien read and was impressed by this book.

Tolkien Letters to Sterling Lanier; tangential Dune association

When Bantam paperbacked Lanier's postapocalyptic sf novel Hiero's Journey, it promised a chronicle as fantastic as LOTR!

 

[Ray McCarthy]

the dump rats, who turn out to be rather ghastly

Not like the rats that escaped from N.I.M.H.
or Maurice's Amazing Rodents.

We have a fascination with rats?

 

[thaddeus6th]

EJ, you may prefer to just read the second, then.

It's much the stronger of the books, I think. Info-dumping is an issue, but there are also some very nice space battle descriptions (in both).

 

[EJ Heijnis]

EJ, you may prefer to just read the second, then.

It's much the stronger of the books, I think. Info-dumping is an issue, but there are also some very nice space battle descriptions (in both).

I'm glad to hear that. The science, the space navy speak and the combat are enough to give it another shot.

 

[tobl]

Since it was free, I tried the first of David Weber's Honor series. I'm not impressed with the lack of characterization, or the tendency to dump massive amounts of marginally relevant information on the reader (I skipped six straight pages of pure background info at one point and didn't miss it,) but the space navigation and combat was well done and the main story was just interesting enough to make me keep reading. The second book was also free, so I downloaded it for later, but I don't think I'll be buying any of them.

Now I'm reading Call to Arms by Joshua Dalzelle - not great, but a guilty pleasure.

you're right, the first one is a bit though to get in the series. However it gets better from nº2 forward especially with the big battles

 

[EJ Heijnis]

you're right, the first one is a bit though to get in the series. However it gets better from nº2 forward especially with the big battles

Do the characters get any more interesting? I found them all to be entirely static and shallow. Honor lacks flaws of any kind, and everyone else either loves her (if not right away, then later) or is mwuhaha evil. I'll read it just for the space battles (call it research) but I'm hoping things improve in other departments as well.

 

[thaddeus6th]

From memory (perhaps a year since I read it) the characterisation is better in the second book, though the strong point remains space battles.

 

[EJ Heijnis]

From memory (perhaps a year since I read it) the characterisation is better in the second book, though the strong point remains space battles.

Good enough for me! There was a time after I started learning the craft of fiction when I allowed a few flaws to ruin my enjoyment of a book with legitimate appeal. I'm trying to cut down on the analyzing enough to enjoy the good bits. Well-written space battles are a fine reason to read anything.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

I am about to start reading -- well, more "looking at" -- two coffee table art book type of things.

Bradbury: An Illustrated Life: A Journey to Far Metaphor (2002) by Jerry Weist

Besides having too many subtitles, this appears to be a collection of all kinds of photographs of the great fantasist, along with a huge number of book covers and such.

Jack Davis: Drawing American Pop Culture: A Career Retrospective (2011) (no author)

Besides having too many subtitles (is this a trend?), this appears to be a collection of the great cartoonist's work with little or no text.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Just finished Master & Commander, now reading; Post Captain, O'Brien.
Now Reading Role-Playing Mastery, Gary Gygax
Also read sundry other books this month, inc Mortal Engines Philip Reeve, better than I thought it would be.

 

[tobl]

Good enough for me! There was a time after I started learning the craft of fiction when I allowed a few flaws to ruin my enjoyment of a book with legitimate appeal. I'm trying to cut down on the analyzing enough to enjoy the good bits. Well-written space battles are a fine reason to read anything.

it gets much more profound the farther it goes into the series, especially with the personal tragedies. but if you want also great space battles might i suggest: h paul honsinger - Brothers in valour series? the lost fleet series? Stephen w bennett - koban series? christopher g nuttall ark royal series? evan currie into the black? Raymond l weil?mike resnick?

 

[Extollager]

Jane Gaskell's Strange Evil, written when the author was 14 and published while she was still in her teens. It's a pity that, for me, temporarily at least the interest is dropping a bit now that we are in the Otherworld.

 

[tobl]

finished a few books:
killing floor blues
the martian ambassador and now Reading alice 9. there's a new kris longknife yupi

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

About to start Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1939), a collection of three novellas* by Katherine Anne Porter.

*(Apparently the author didn't like this term, and preferred to call these "short novels.")

 

[Bugg]

Just finished Master & Commander, now reading; Post Captain, O'Brien.

I only recently finished reading that series myself. I enjoyed both those books you mention, but it's with HMS Surprise that it really takes off, IMO


I'm currently 200 page into Only to Die Again by Patrick Lee. I read the first book in the series, Runner, last year and loved it. This one's another break-neck paced thriller. The main character, Sam Dryden, is very much like Jack Reacher, only flawed and not omniscient. Patrick Lee's books do read very much like Lee Child's, except each story is built around a central SF premise