January 2023 Reading Thread

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I have just read the 5 Wyndham & Banerjee novels by Abir Mukherjee back to back. Really interesting detective novels set in and around Calcutta shortly after WWI. The racism of the British is laid on a with a thick knife, but otherwise the characters develop nicely over the course of the novels (and the author develops too.) Recommended.
 
Toby Frost said:
I'm still reading Night Watch by Terry Pratchett, which I think is probably a very good book but not quite for me.

I must admit that I'm in the doldrums with reading. Not a lot has gripped me of late. The last books that I read quickly were biographical ones about Peake and Orwell: I wasn't entirely satisfied with the Orwell one, but I still felt the need to read it quickly. I've not read any really good SF for a while. I picked up a book of Raymond Chandler's short stories recently, and thought "What are the chances of reading anything new that's as good as this? Very low." Which is probably not the right attitude.
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But if that's your attitude, why not feed it what it wants? Glut it with rereads of your favourites then look for something new when you tire of that. Doesn't get me out of every such mood, but does have a good hit rate.


Anyway recently I read Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers which I found utterly charming and delightful save for the mystery

I'm now forging through An Alien Heat by Michael Moorcock, which has a fun premise and is cheerily mad but not very absorbing.
 
You are most welcome, Toby.

Vertigo, his shorter stories have all been very interesting and I've enjoyed them all a lot. Ogres really impressed me. I still need to get Ironclads.
 
Rodders said:
You are most welcome, Toby.

Vertigo, his shorter stories have all been very interesting and I've enjoyed them all a lot. Ogres really impressed me. I still need to get Ironclads.
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I think I found Ironclads the weakest but still good and an interesting take on future 'warfare.'
 
Finished The Spare Man, Mary Robinette Koval. Tor Books, 2022.
Overall, I enjoyed it. Picked It up based on a review elsewhere from last year and Koval's Lady Astronaut series, which I greatly enjoyed. There, In addition to the fluidity of the writing Koval performed the difficult task there of incorporating concerns that loom large today, the role of women and racism, into an alternate past that has undergone one major change.
In Spare Man, she again takes current viewpoints into an invented world. It's sort of a locked room mystery, although thankfully she doesn't stage a big reveal with the suspects to tie things up. The first reviewer that I read was charmed by the main characters, which including an oh so cute biologically adapted companion West Highland Terrier. I agree that she was adept, portraying distinctive characters and unusually (for our genre), a strong loving couple.
Quoting that review, "--- the mystery has enough twists and turns and red herrings peppered throughout to keep the reader guessing. MRK doesn’t just throw these things out randomly, though, they are twists just for the sake of keeping the reader guessing, they are logical to the plot and make sense in the context of the larger whole of the novel. "
I thought the twists et al were excessive. And though it is not a rule that the reader must get clues to possible solutions in a mystery, Koval's dropping in new characters and evidence willy nilly to further the plot was done excessively. As was the repeated charm of the above mentioned demonstratively loving smart detecting couple with a little dog. I am sure that you get the reference.
But as stated above, Koval is adept. She keeps things moving with no letdowns.
As I read the review that got me started, it would give SM an A or A+. I'd give it a B or B+ as well done and creative but a little too contrived.
 
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I read Leigh Bardugo's Hell Bent, the second book in her urban fantasy series set at Yale University. I thought the early part of the book was perhaps the weakest, as in the first book the chapters are not in chronological order but while I think that served a purpose in Ninth House I don't think it added much here and made the pacing inconsistent with the switching between time periods. However, the later parts of the book are back to being sequential and I thought the pacing became much better - although perhaps a bit more time for the characters to reflects on events that had just happened to them might be welcome. I thought the main plotline with Alex and Dawes attempting a rescue mission and having to deal with some of the consequences of trying to do something exceedingly risky was compelling. Some of the subplots were less interesting, in particular the Eitan subplot felt contrived. The first book had mostly focused on Alex and Darlington and there's still a lot of focus on Alex here but other characters do get a lot more development, particularly in the Gauntlet scenes, and become more interesting as a result. I also liked the portrayal of magic in the series as something that can be extremely powerful, but always coming with its own dangers and often requiring moral compromises to be able to make use of it.

I've now gone back to reading through Ursula Le Guin's Hainish stories. I've read through three loosely-connected short stories all focusing on the development of a new and unpredictable method of instantaneous travel between star systems. I thought both The Fisherman of the Inland Sea and the ambiguous narrative of Dancing to Ganam were very good.
 
pogopossum said:
Finished The Spare Man, Mary Robinette Koval. Tor Books, 2022.
Overall, I enjoyed it. Picked It up based on a review elsewhere from last year and Koval's Lady Astronaut series, which I greatly enjoyed. There, In addition to the fluidity of the writing Koval performed the difficult task there of incorporating concerns that loom large today, the role of women and racism, into an alternate past that has undergone one major change.
In Spare Man, she again takes current viewpoints into an invented world. It's sort of a locked room mystery, although thankfully she doesn't stage a big reveal with the suspects to tie things up. The first reviewer that I read was charmed by the main characters, which including an oh so cute biologically adapted companion West Highland Terrier. I agree that she was adept, portraying distinctive characters and unusually (for our genre), a strong loving couple.
Quoting that review, "--- the mystery has enough twists and turns and red herrings peppered throughout to keep the reader guessing. MRK doesn’t just throw these things out randomly, though, they are twists just for the sake of keeping the reader guessing, they are logical to the plot and make sense in the context of the larger whole of the novel. "
I thought the twists et al were excessive. And though it is not a rule that the reader must get clues to possible solutions in a mystery, Koval's dropping in new characters and evidence willy nilly to further the plot was done excessively. As was the repeated charm of the above mentioned demonstratively loving smart detecting couple with a little dog. I am sure that you get the reference.
But as stated above, Koval is adept. She keeps things moving with no letdowns.
As I read the review that got me started, it would give SM an A or A+. I'd give it a B or B+ as well done and creative but a little too contrived.
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I'm really not that keen on alternate histories and whilst I enjoyed the Lady Astronaut books I'm not sure I'm up for another alternate history and detective or detecting books are generally not my thing. I might keep it in mind though.
 
Now reading Grunts! by Mary Gentle.
Had it on my bookshelf for over 30 years, finally getting round to it.
Its a book about Orcs , but as the good guys I suppose. Though I'm not sure using someone's head as a football counts as good!
 
AE35Unit said:
Now reading Grunts! by Mary Gentle.
Had it on my bookshelf for over 30 years, finally getting round to it.
Its a book about Orcs , but as the good guys I suppose. Though I'm not sure using someone's head as a football counts as good!
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I loved that book, especially when they're fighting the Xenomorphs from "Aliens"
 
Vertigo said:
I'm really not that keen on alternate histories and whilst I enjoyed the Lady Astronaut books I'm not sure I'm up for another alternate history and detective or detecting books are generally not my thing. I might keep it in mind though.
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Describing Koval's earlier series seems to have gotten into a mush where one content was taken to resemble another
To be clear. Spare Man is not any sort of alternate history. It's an adventure w. detectives, set on a future inter-planetary liner.
The resemblance to Lady Astronaut is that the author throws in bits, loving couple sleuths, who dunnits, and woman under fire, that give it a contemporary flavo(u)r. Read it for sass and humor, not alternate anything.
 
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