September 2022 Reading Thread.

[Lostinspace]

I am currently reading C.J. Sansom's seventh and latest Matthew Shardlake Tudor detective story, Tombland. This has about 800 pages and I am only just over a quarter in. However, it is already clearly a good story combining as usual a murder mystery to be solved whilst desperately avoiding becoming fatally entangled with the horrors of Tudor politics.

Historical novels share with Science Fiction a need for world building or at least explaining how things used to be to their ignorant audience. There is a fine example of "As You Know, Bob" early in Tombland with the twist that the speaker is told off for saying something so obvious:
"Both manors are farmed on the usual three-field system, two fields planted with crops and the third left fallow each year, on a rotating basis. Each field is divided into strips, and each tenant holds one or more strips in each field.’
‘Serjeant Shardlake is a land lawyer, Lockswood,’ Copuldyke said heavily. ‘I imagine he and even his young assistant know how the three-field system works.’

 

[Parson]

I've finished the first three books of The Fallen Empire by Lindsay Buroker. Star Nomad, Honor's Flight, and Starseers, plus the Prequel Last Command. And my greatest fears were not realized. The story has not (or more ominously) has not yet been overcome by the potential romance of the two main characters, nor the near Fantasy parts of it. -- think Jedi. Perhaps unfortunately, the prequel shows what a wonderful series this could be if it focused on the elite warrior, as the prequel did, and not on the tramp freighter pilot as the series does. The warrior is filled with duty, honor, compassion, courage, and sensibility. In short the kind of person I wish I was. She is a the typical female lead of the twenty-first century, sassy, irreverent, always follows her feelings which are inevitably right, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they should not be right. All in all, I still give the series a solid 4 stars, and have bought book 4 Relic of Sorrows.

In the mean time I've read a short Honor Harrington story, Let's Dance. A story in the collection named In Fire Forged, which takes place before her deployment to Basilisk Station. It's another great story. The last page left me with tears in my eyes. I remember why I love these stories so much.

I'm unsure what to read next. My TBR pile has grown uncomfortably large with a lot of interesting stuff.

 

[Danny McG]

Starting it now

 

[Elentarri]

@ Danny: Please let us know how the new Stephen King novels turns out. I've never read anything by him and thought this one sounded interesting.

 

[Elentarri]

Crawling Horror: Creeping Tales of the Insect Weird edited by Daisy Butcher and Janette Leaf.
This is a deliciously creepy collection of 16 short stories by various authors that include a variety of insect creepy crawlies such as beetles, bees, moths, butterflies, ants, a hornet, a cockroaches, a flea, caterpillars, a stick insect and a praying mantis. The stories cover a time range from 1846 to 1938. The earlier stories in this collection are more Gothic in nature than the rest; at least one story has a science fiction flavour; and several stories pit humans against intelligent insects out for control of a territory. Some of the stories included show insects in a more beneficial light even though they still exhibit strange or supernatural elements.

 

[Cat's Cradle]

Starting it now

That's my next book, Danny (Fairy Tale). Very excited for this one! Hope you enjoy it, CC

 

[Bick]

Alien: Out of the Shadows by Tim Lebbon

Rated this 4 stars out of 5 - quite good. A mining colony uncovers planetside the remains of an ancient alien civilization that had encountered our Xenomorphs. Really felt as though it belonged in the world of the original two Alien films. Good characterization, some very clever/spooky on-world scenes. Most of the action takes place in space, and is very well done. I'm becoming a fan of Lebbon's writing.

Sounds quite good. I’m sufficiently intrigued myself, so I ordered a copy. I quite like to read the occasional tie-in book, and had wondered about Alien books, so that was a useful post to read, ta.

 

[Danny McG]

@ Danny: Please let us know how the new Stephen King novels turns out. I've never read anything by him and thought this one sounded interesting.

No probs - it's very good so far
(And I keep getting like a Ray Bradbury tingle from it but I don't know why)

 

[Elentarri]

Upgrade by Blake Crouch
This is my first Blake Crouch novel. If you want a fast paced thriller with futuristic, dystopian window dressing, and lots of chasing and shooting then you might like this book. If you were expecting an intelligent science-fiction book exploring the implications of genetic modification and what it means to be human, you need to look for something else. Interesting concept, inferior execution.

 

[Randy M.]

Crawling Horror: Creeping Tales of the Insect Weird edited by Daisy Butcher and Janette Leaf.
This is a deliciously creepy collection of 16 short stories by various authors that include a variety of insect creepy crawlies such as beetles, bees, moths, butterflies, ants, a hornet, a cockroaches, a flea, caterpillars, a stick insect and a praying mantis. The stories cover a time range from 1846 to 1938. The earlier stories in this collection are more Gothic in nature than the rest; at least one story has a science fiction flavour; and several stories pit humans against intelligent insects out for control of a territory. Some of the stories included show insects in a more beneficial light even though they still exhibit strange or supernatural elements.

I only recognize two of those (per ISFDB), "Leiningen versus the Ants," which never impressed me that much, and "Caterpillars" which I found effective from the first time I read it, and which still makes me a bit queasy when I read it. Interesting looking collection.

 

[Elentarri]

I only recognize two of those (per ISFDB), "Leiningen versus the Ants," which never impressed me that much, and "Caterpillars" which I found effective from the first time I read it, and which still makes me a bit queasy when I read it. Interesting looking collection.

They are all old stories, so fairly tame in terms of horror for today's audience. I did like Warning Wings by Arlton Eadie, which involves a ghostly moth delivery an SOS message. The Wicked Flea by J.U. Giesy, which involves an over enthusiastic scientist and his newly created "pet" flea, came across as a comedy... if you can ignore the horror of a giant biting flea on the loose.

 

[Cat's Cradle]

Sounds quite good. I’m sufficiently intrigued myself, so I ordered a copy. I quite like to read the occasional tie-in book, and had wondered about Alien books, so that was a useful post to read, ta.

Cool, Bick! I think this was made specifically for Audible (could be wrong), and I am curious as to how it works on the page, vs. as an audiobook. I hope you enjoy it, CC

 

[Dave Vicks]

INCREDIBLE GOOD FORTUNE poems by Ursula k le Guin.

 

[Bick]

INCREDIBLE GOOD FORTUNE poems by Ursula k le Guin.

Any thoughts on them?

 

[Danny McG]

@ Danny: Please let us know how the new Stephen King novels turns out. I've never read anything by him and thought this one sounded interesting.

I'm not sure until I finish the book, but my Spidey sense has picked up on a major fault in one of the plot arcs... If so then I'll be mega disappointed in the Bangor bard

 

[The Judge]

I am currently reading C.J. Sansom's seventh and latest Matthew Shardlake Tudor detective story, Tombland. This has about 800 pages and I am only just over a quarter in. However, it is already clearly a good story combining as usual a murder mystery to be solved whilst desperately avoiding becoming fatally entangled with the horrors of Tudor politics.

Historical novels share with Science Fiction a need for world building or at least explaining how things used to be to their ignorant audience. There is a fine example of "As You Know, Bob" early in Tombland with the twist that the speaker is told off for saying something so obvious:
"Both manors are farmed on the usual three-field system, two fields planted with crops and the third left fallow each year, on a rotating basis. Each field is divided into strips, and each tenant holds one or more strips in each field.’
‘Serjeant Shardlake is a land lawyer, Lockswood,’ Copuldyke said heavily. ‘I imagine he and even his young assistant know how the three-field system works.’

I love the Shardlake books, but I have to say I was a little disappointed in this one -- I'd noticed that the novels were getting longer and baggier as the series went on, and historical stuff was being dumped on the page instead of properly integrated into the novel, but this one was just waaaay too much for me. To my mind it needed a ruthless editor to deal with all the repetition and the egregious info-dumps -- that one about the three-field system was a minor (and witty) blip compared to most of them. And the actual murder mystery gets forgotten for whole chapters at a time while he delves into the Kett rebellion, much of which could have been left to the long historical note at the end, which in the event just repeated everything he'd told us in the novel itself. So a good story there -- as always -- but I'd have preferred it at half the length.

By coincidence we had a short holiday in Norfolk a few months after I read it in 2019, and it was interesting seeing some of the places he mentions in the book, not least Tombland itself, while knowing a bit about the history of the rebellion.

 

[Danny McG]

I'm not sure until I finish the book, but my Spidey sense has picked up on a major fault in one of the plot arcs... If so then I'll be mega disappointed in the Bangor bard

I spoke too soon, Mr King has cunningly resolved the issue, I should have continued reading

 

[Dave Vicks]

Currently I,ROBOT, by Isaac Asimov. 1950

 

[Bick]

Currently I,ROBOT, by Isaac Asimov. 1950

Classic collection - it will good to hear your thoughts on it...

 

[kythe]

I just read the full Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift for the first time. It's hard not to be familiar with the story, but movies and abridged versions seem to skip the political satire. Without that though, it seems more of a Sinbad-like adventure which misses the point of why this was written.