November 2021 Reading Thread

[AE35Unit]

I bailed on the Simon Scarrow book, didn't like use of modern language in a book set in pre medieval times, and none of the characters bar one were remotely likeable. Then it got boring. And I felt more sympathy with the people who were supposedly barbarians. No, just humble gentle people trying to survive.
Onto The Life and Times of Henry VII by Neville Williams.

 

[Vertigo]

Fated Sky by Mary Robinette Kowal - the second book in this excellent hard science fiction alternate history series. More here.
The Saints of Salvation by Peter F Hamilton - the third book and possibly the best so far in the Salvation Sequence. More here.

 

[Danny McG]

Tonight I'm reading a novella by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Elder Race.

A post tech colony on a forgotten planet needs help from an original founder who spends most of his time in stasis

 

[williamjm]

This sounds really interesting. It looks like it's #4 in a series. Do you need to have read the first 3?

It's a very loosely connected series, I think the primary connection is that one of the protagonists in The Galaxy and the Ground Within was previously a supporting character in the first book. I don't think there would any problem with reading out of order.

 

[Danny McG]

The Saints of Salvation by Peter F Hamilton - the third book and possibly the best so far in the Salvation Sequence

I'm starting the three books tomorrow.
I think I've already read the first one but I'll reread it to get the story fresh

 

[HareBrain]

I had a quick go at The Great Hunt (Wheel of Time #2) by Robert Jordan. I should have felt warned by the fact that although I read #1 about four years ago and could remember little of it, I had no urge to read it again before this one. Anyway, I DNFed soon after the prologue. @The Big Peat has been blogging a read-through and it was his relative enthusiasm that persuaded me to give the series another go, but he is a much, much faster reader than I am, which I think makes a big difference to stuff that's 2-4x as long as it should be.

So I'm back to Storyland by Amy Jeffs, a retelling (with commentary) of myths relating to Britain. I've also started Gothic by Roger Luckhurst, a lavishly illustrated exploration of the "genre" in all its forms from Medieval architecture to Japanese horror films, and The Wildest Hunt by Jo Zebedee.

 

[The Big Peat]

Ah that's a shame, although I guess I'm not that surprised.

 

[HareBrain]

Ah that's a shame

I do like the nostalgic idea of getting into a big old (and finished) fantasy epic, but quite apart from any wordiness in WoT, I think my tastes have got shorter over the past couple of years.

 

[HoopyFrood]

@The Big Peat has been blogging a read-through and it was his relative enthusiasm that persuaded me to give the series another go

Bah, I thought my rambling, useless reviews from six or so years ago had finally got through.

 

[HareBrain]

Bah, I thought my rambling, useless reviews from six or so years ago had finally got through.

Eight.

They did almost make me pick it up again at the time (or did I actually read #1 afterwards? -- the wheel of time rolls on, crushing memory beneath its iron rim...). I've just had a look at one of your reviews from back then, and it seems to be along the same lines as I've heard elsewhere -- some truly amazing scenes separated by vast expanses of pointless nothing.

Can't someone rewrite it keeping the first and ditching the second?

 

[elvet]

@The Big Peat I will be checking out your blog since I've started Wheel of Time (my first read).

Eight.

They did almost make me pick it up again at the time (or did I actually read #1 afterwards? -- the wheel of time rolls on, crushing memory beneath its iron rim...). I've just had a look at one of your reviews from back then, and it seems to be along the same lines as I've heard elsewhere -- some truly amazing scenes separated by vast expanses of pointless nothing.

Can't someone rewrite it keeping the first and ditching the second?

I am almost done The Eye of the World. I don't mind the details. It's like each adventure is complete enough for its own little story, and that does reflect back as to how bards tell tales. You can imagine a time when a gleeman would recount the Voyage of the Spray. Maybe after book 4, I'll be wanting it to speed up some, but so far I like soaking up the world building and wondering how what is happening is fitting into Min's prophecies.

 

[HoopyFrood]

Eight.

I thought seven perhaps, but eight, good lord, where is my life

 

[Fiberglass Cyborg]

This sounds really interesting. It looks like it's #4 in a series. Do you need to have read the first 3?

They're all pretty self-contained except for the 2nd. One of the main characters in this one is the girlfriend of the ship captain from the first book, but that's the only connection.

 

[Hugh]

Groff Conklin “17 X Infinity” (1963)

A collection of seventeen short stories edited by Groff Conklin. While fifteen of these date from 1948 to 1962, there are two earlier stories, by E.M. Forster and Rudyard Kipling, presumably to demonstrate that there was life before the Golden Age.

I thought the collection distinctly variable: there were several stories I liked: “Come into My Cellar” by Ray Bradbury, “The Last of the Spode” by Evelyn Smith, “Short in the Chest” by Idris Seabright, and E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops”, but there were several that I found unusually tedious, including, I’m afraid the Kipling (“As Easy as A. B. C.”).

 

[Ian Fortytwo]

I'm currently reading The Driver's Seat, by Muriel Spark.

 

[Vertigo]

Tonight I'm reading a novella by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Elder Race.

A post tech colony on a forgotten planet needs help from an original founder who spends most of his time in stasis

That one's on my wish list and I'll probably be buying it in my next buying session in, I'd guess, about 8 weeks time. I'm a bit worried how I'll get on with it as it sounds a bit like an SF/fantasy crossover which I'm never as keen on. I have his Doors of Eden coming up first.

 

[Danny McG]

That one's on my wish list and I'll probably be buying it in my next buying session in, I'd guess, about 8 weeks time. I'm a bit worried how I'll get on with it as it sounds a bit like an SF/fantasy crossover which I'm never as keen on. I have his Doors of Eden coming up first.

It's more sci Fi.
The planet primitives think the guy is a wizard because of his advanced tech - to them it seems like magic

 

[tobl]

It's more sci Fi.
The planet primitives think the guy is a wizard because of his advanced tech - to them it seems like magic

any sufficient advanced... i guess i have to try it one of this days but Adrian never caught my interest

 

[Dave Vicks]

Currently THE NEIL GAIMAN READER:Selected Stories. 2020
Picked up RETOGRADE by Peyer Cawdron.2016

 

[Parson]

I finished Fire With Fire - Caine Riordan Book 1 by Charles E. Gannon. Probably to no one's surprise, I did not find it better than the Honor Harrington series. On the positive side, I really like Caine Riordan as a hero. He earnestly is trying to do the right thing with his life and actions. I think that there is potential for some really good books in the series, but therein lies my difficulty. This book really reads like an overlong introduction to the rest of the series. As an example of this at one point two days ago when I wasn't paying any attention to the percent done notation in my Kindle I was growing really bored of the extended scene of a Council meeting (If I say more I give a pretty serious spoiler) and I thought, "Maybe I should just skip this section and get to the real story. Only to find that I was within 40 pages or so of the end of the book. When I finished the book I realized that the part where I was growing weary and bored was actually the climax of the story. A second thing that aggravated me about the book was that one of the chief abilities of the hero is his ability to understand subtle nuances in alien presentations. When this character or no other human (as far as is known) has studied them. This ability just rings completely false to me. I would believe that it would be very unlikely that any alien nuanced communication, to say nothing of several different species of aliens' nuanced communication, could be closely parsed until a lot of study and time has gone into it. ---- I might be prejudiced here because I think I've been brainwashed by reading C. J. Cheeryh's "Foreigner" which I find a master's course in communicating with an alien race. (Weak 4 stars)

I've started something rather light. Galactic Survey by Richard F. Weyand (The fourth book in the Colony Series). Not wonderful S.F. but I find them fun with some interesting ideas. The Hyper-Super Computer intelligence at the base of this series I find more than a little fascinating.