July 2018: Reading Thread

[janeoreilly]

I've currently trying to read the books that have been in my TBR the longest, so am almost finished with Outlander by Diana Gabaldon and I'm enjoying it very much.

 

[Vertigo]

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem - A classic but heavy, dense and ultimately unsatisfying. More here.

Currently thoroughly enjoying lightening the mood with @Toby Frost's Pincer's of Death!

 

[MemoryTale]

I've just finished The Falcon Throne by Karen Milner. I would describe it as Game of Thrones Lite, it's got all the political backstabbing you could wish for. A key difference is that you get chapters written from the villain's eyes. While this humanizes them and makes them more believable characters, it does take away from the shock of those characters turning out to be villains, and especially takes away from the shock of events at the end of the book - imagine if Game of Thrones had

Spoiler

scenes from Littlefinger's perspective as he plans to betray Ned.

On the whole I'd recommend it, but not wholeheartedly.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Momentum has taken me into the third book in the series, Children of Dune. It's not as bad and there's a better sense of story in this book. However, the story doesn't feel consistent: the treatment of Alia's character especially, and the omission of an heir on Salusa Secondus come immediately to mind.

Finished reading Children of Dune today, and the same comments apply. It's not a bad book, but not a great one either. I can't shake the feeling that Frank Herbert lacked an overall plan for the Dune series and ended up winging it as he went along.

 

[Vince W]

Finished reading Children of Dune today, and the same comments apply. It's not a bad book, but not a great one either. I can't shake the feeling that Frank Herbert lacked an overall plan for the Dune series and ended up winging it as he went along.

I can see this. When I went to Messiah after Dune I was expecting more of the same, but was disappointed. This happened again when reading Children. I don't think Frank really started planning until God Emperor. What that plan was we'll never really know, because I think GEoD, Heretics, and Chapterhouse were all meant to come together in the never completed 7th book.

 

[dask]

Started this:

Thirty-seven pages into it. Competent but don't yet feel I'm in the hands of a master the way I do with Doyle and Christie. There's a lot going on but not much happening. Gifford has several novels to his name so I suspect things will pick up. I'll give it the 100 page test and see what happens.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I started God Emperor of Dune, thinking I may as well get the badge for reading the entire series - but on second thoughts, there are other books I'd prefer to read and am likely to enjoy more.

So I've gone back to Gridlinked by Neal Asher, which threw me a little at first by the POV changes. However, a little deeper in and I'm liking the setting - I'd actually like less action in order to explore it more. I'm not sure about the characters, though - or whether I'm even supposed to like Cormac. We'll see, I guess.

 

[The Judge]

I've finished both books I started last week. John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids continued to enthral me -- and surprise me, so evidently I hadn't read it before -- and though very much of its time (it was written in 1951) it held up well, though I wasn't very forgiving of the "plague" sub-plot which was a tad too convenient. My only real grouse was Mason's belief, which I imagine Wyndham intended to be the true explanation, in how the world-wide blindness originated. I'm not sure how plausible it was, though the knife-edge of which he talks was certainly real, but for me it was a disappointment, undermining the plot somewhat.

Spoiler

I'd thought the "comet" was in some way connected with the triffids, but he posits that it was actually the destruction, accidental of otherwise, of a weaponised satellite which emitted radiation to destroy the optic nerve. If so, the fact the triffids also blinded people was simple coincidence, which felt a little contrived. And the triffids knowing so quickly that almost all humans were now blind and therefore easy prey became, for me, less believable -- they'd know the humans were less active because the noise levels were dramatically reduced, but it was still too fast for sheer opportunism to my mind.

I had mixed feelings about Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss. The setting on board the generation ship in which the people exist in a state of ignorance and semi-savagery was very well done, and the sting in the tail of the denouement clever. But I could never credit the religion which had developed, the characters were uniformly unpleasant, the evolution of the rats and the mind-powers of some other creatures implausible, and the character arc of the protagonist -- effectively a wholesale change in personality and intelligence -- improbable. I also didn't much like Aldiss's actual writing style/technique which didn't help matters.

As well as the two SFs, I've also read a fantasy, Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen Donaldson, which by way of contrast with the Wyndham I was convinced I hadn't read, but I now wonder if in fact I had. Anyhow, I was less than impressed with its wordiness and repetition, the sub-Tolkeinian style of language, dialogue, names and creatures, the cod-philosophising, the hole where the protagonist should have been, the lack of credible characters and characterisation, and baddies who are evil simply because, and who speak portentously and laugh maniacally... Yet despite all that, he had my full attention -- goodness knows how -- and I raced through it.

 

[Hugh]

I started God Emperor of Dune, thinking I may as well get the badge for reading the entire series - but on second thoughts, there are other books I'd prefer to read and am likely to enjoy more.

Very sensible. I well remember grinding my way through it: it seemed to go on forever, much like the God Emperor himself.
I have read them all, but the only one I read more than once (three times at least) was the first. While I think it's definitely worth reading them all eventually, for curiosity if nothing else, my heart sinks at the thought of reading them in sequence. Like others, I also found Dune Messiah disappointing. I'd wanted more Dune.

 

[Danny McG]

Bit of light reading today. Surprisingly scripted differently from the film, I think he tried to develop the characters a bit more.
The Goonies by James Kahn

 

[MemoryTale]

Bit of light reading today. Surprisingly scripted differently from the film, I think he tried to develop the characters a bit more.
The Goonies by James Kahn

Oh yes, I think I've still got that around somewhere. They also included some content which I'm sure was deleted from the film, like the octopus.

 

[Paul_C]

Just finished Accelerando, which I liked, though it does have its weaker moments.

At the beginning I was reminded of Transmetropolitan, so the mention of Spider Jerusalem later on didn't come as a surprise.
There were a number of things that passed by without much in the way of explanation and like a number of my recent reads, the end seemed to rush by so I was left with a feeling of "yes, but . . . ?" when the last page was read.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

About to start 11th Annual Edition The Year's Best S-F (1966), edited by Judith Merril, the second to the last in her series of anthologies.

And I guess I forgot to mention that I finished the tenth volume.

 

[Alexa]

Age of War by Michael J. Sullivan. This is the 3rd book in the prequel series to both Riyria sets.

I finished it last night and absolutely loved it.

Spoiler

Michael made me cry again for killing some of my favorite characters, Arion and Raithe. I do understand Arion was old and had to let the place for Suri, but Raithe deserved a better death. I still bear a grudge against the author for killing Minna in the Age of Swords.

Can we really talk about these books as prequels ? The story is indeed three thousands years before Riyria. We do have a young Mawyndule in it and learn about Persephone, Nyphron, the first Teshlor and Cenzlyor. We also meet Tekchin and remember Mauvin's fascination with his technique. We learn about the first Gilarabrywn and who created them. So we could say the books are prequels, but someone can read them as stand alone, too without feeling they miss something from the history.

I can't wait to read the next book, Age of Legend.

 

[Anthoney]

Spoiler: Age of War

Raithe's death was sad but like you I found the death of the wolf to be saddest.

 

[Parson]

Just finished listening to Relic Hunters by David Leadbeater. It was not great. It started off well, the characters were interesting and had interesting back stories, but as the story progressed it became too cartoonish. The main characters kept getting in more and more no win situations and kept coming out with nothing more than scratches. Toward the end I found I just wasn't that interested in the story.

 

[HareBrain]

Not feeling up to reading anything remotely challenging at the moment, I raced through The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander, the second of his Chronicles of Prydein. I read the first, The Book of Three, a while ago, and didn't think it worked for me as an adult reader, but this one felt better structured and a little more mature, though the pieces to resolve the main problem perhaps fell into place rather obviously. Anyway, I really enjoyed it and will probably devour the other three books in short order.

 

[Extollager]

C. P. Snow's Time of Hope, chronologically the first in the Strangers and brothers series, and The Saga of Gösta Berling by Selma Lagerlöf; stories from Compulsory Games by Robert Aickman (not findingthem all that compelling), etc.

 

[Rodders]

I finished the final book of Neal Asher's Transformation series. WOW! It was very, very good. I haven't been this excited over a sustained period of reading since Abnett's "The Lost" omnibus.

Now on to Elysium Fire by Alistair Reynolds.

 

[Hugh]

Colin Duriez “J.R.R.Tolkien, The Making of a Legend”. A pleasant read, but very little here that is not in the other Tolkein biographies, from which he quotes regularly. One point of interest for me is that he briefly quotes Peter Lawlor’s memories of Tolkien, which I have not seen referenced before (still new to this stuff). These give insights into aspects of Tolkien the person, though of course one has to be careful here:
“He remembers Tolkien’s seemingly bottomless grief on seeing his undergraduate son Christopher’s final results.”
“His habitually mild and benevolently quizzical temper was capable of absolutely volcanic upheaval.” He then goes on to give an example of Tolkien going ballistic at a fellow Inkling who was entertaining others at the Magdalen High Table.
I’m interested in Tolkien the person, so all personal reminiscences make my ears prick up. (And what was so bad about Christopher's results? They can't have been that bad...)

Raymond Edwards “J.R.R.Tolkien, His Life, Work & Faith”. This was a pointless buy as I’d already read Edwards’ biography, but thought that this short booklet for the “Catholic Truth Society” concentrated specifically on Tolkien’s Catholicism. In fact, while it may be a good introduction to Tolkien’s life, it says nothing that is not already in the biography. I'm truly ignorant re Catholicism and it was very important to Tolkien.

Tolkien’s “On Fairy Stories”. I hadn’t read this before, and as it’s so frequently quoted in biographies etc, I thought I’d better check it out. It is of course great to read his own thoughts, and I really enjoyed his turn of phrase, for instance:
“The bridge to platform 4 (at Bletchley Station) is to me less interesting than Bifrost guarded by Heimdall with Gjallarhorn.”
And in reference to the development of myths and stories: “They have been put into the Cauldron, where so many potent things lie simmering agelong on the fire….”

Stratford Caldecott “The Power of the Ring, the spiritual vision behind the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit”. I was looking for a book that would attempt to focus on the “spiritual”/ Christian aspects of Tolkien’s writing/ belief-system. I thought it started well, but faded….or perhaps it began to lose me.