Return of the Book Thread

[Stewie]

Im suprised that no one has commented on the passing of Jack Vance. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10090094/Jack-Vance-tributes-pour-in-for-Seventies-sci-fi-writer.html

I really enjoyed a great many of his books including the dying earth series wich inspired D&D's magic system.

[Viin]

Finally read Cold Days, been forever since I read Ghost Stories - had forgotten a few things, but Butcher was nice enough to remind us about some of them. Dresden is getting a bit stale though, so I hope he wraps up the series soon and starts a new one (say, about Andy?).

Started reading The Second Ship (The Rho Agenda), which is somewhat interesting (alien ship crash lands, guy figures out how to get in .. drama) but I'm fairly sure this is a YA book that somehow missed the categorization.

[Khaldun]

Vance was such an interesting stylist--pretty much all his characters were similar, and his plots were just standard picaresques but there was something about his language that was like a dream. Him and Mervyn Peake--both of them made me feel like I was reading while having a mild fever, in the best possible way.

[lamaros]

I recently read A Crime of Privilege. It was ok. A bit heavy handed and loses its way a bit in the second half, but the writing is decent.

[murdoc]

I'm rereading "The Black Company" because I haven't in a few years and have been recommending it to people a lot lately.

[dd0029]

Just finished up The Long Earth by Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett. I'm not sure they are good together, but they were at least interesting. It's the first of what appears to be a series. The initial premise is interesting with the idea being some mad genius develops and distributes simple plans to something called a Stepper, an interdimensional travel device constructed by bits found at Radio Shack, powered by a potato. You flip the rocker switch and "step" one way or the other to an apparently infinite number of earths. They ask questions about what would happen if almost everyone could do this. They have fun with what you might find out there and if what was out there might have come here in the past. I really liked the first quarter to half, but the story that shows up in the second half is rather weak and not all that interesting. It was interesting enough that I have a hold on the next The Long War at the library.

[WayAbvPar]

I'm rereading "The Black Company" because I haven't in a few years and have been recommending it to people a lot lately.

I wish you hadn't mentioned that...now I want to read it again. But I will be a jackass and buy all of it for my Kindle (have all paperbacks now). I have so much to read before I get to it though..hopefully the urge will subside.

[murdoc]

I'm rereading "The Black Company" because I haven't in a few years and have been recommending it to people a lot lately.

I wish you hadn't mentioned that...now I want to read it again. But I will be a jackass and buy all of it for my Kindle (have all paperbacks now). I have so much to read before I get to it though..hopefully the urge will subside.

I admit, I bought it all for my Kindle for my reread. I have all the books on the shelf, but couldn't resist.

[murdoc]

So JK Rowling wrote a crime novel under a pseudonym.

I took a break from the Black Company books and read "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" by Neil Gaiman with a friend and thoroughly enjoyed it, but I am admittedly a Gaiman fan.

[Bzalthek]

Yay, new Gaiman.  I'm sure I'd have heard about this from his twitter first, but unfollowed him for spamming the fuck about everything.

[Numtini]

Yay, new Gaiman.  I'm sure I'd have heard about this from his twitter first, but unfollowed him for spamming the fuck about everything.

FFS that. A friend shared his facebook post about one of his books being free and it was "sponsored" and there to greet me at the top of my feed for the next two weeks.

[Evildrider]

So finally got around to reading the Repairman Jack Novels.  I'm about 4 books in and I'm loving it so far.

[MrHat]

I know the Wool series got some love here.

It's on sale today Wool Omnibus (1-5) for $1.99 (Kindle).

[Khaldun]

Really, really enjoyed James S.A. Corey's series The Expanse (Corey is a pen name for two guys who do some kind of editing work for George R.R. Martin--I would not be at all surprised to find out that they have some kind of contract to finish the Song of Fire and Ice if George drops dead suddenly...)  There's a character who is just a wee bit of a Mary Sue but the whole thing reads really well and is very interesting in its basic set-up.

[Abagadro]

Wasn't crazy about the last one (the priest characters were all really corny IMO) but was a solid series overall.

[lamaros]

Bought it. I need something good to read. Or decentish.

[Ironwood]

Read Brookmyres 'Bedlam' and it was yet another Scottish Author giving their take on Digital Consciousness.

It was awful.  I mean, really, really childishly awful.  The whole thing was an offering to the Computer Games industry and was just soooo badly written, especially since Morgan and Banks did it all first and better.

STOP IT,

[ghost]

Currently reading John Connally's Book of Lost Things.  I can't decide if I like it or not, but it's keeping me interested at least. 

[shiznitz]

I am 70% through Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings and recommend it.  The characters are deep and the world is interesting.  It is written in a character chapter format.  There are no fantasy races, just human sub-types.  Magic plays a small role.

[Xilren's Twin]

I am 70% through Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings and recommend it.  The characters are deep and the world is interesting.  It is written in a character chapter format.  There are no fantasy races, just human sub-types.  Magic plays a small role.

While i liked it as well, i have to disagree with your "magic plays a small role" note.  Yes its not traditional high fantasy magic, but one of the things Sanderson is known for is his systematic approach to building magic systems and how they impact the worlds in which they exist, and that is also true in this book.  My spoiler will make more sense to you once you have finished it.

[Goldenmean]

Currently reading John Connally's Book of Lost Things.  I can't decide if I like it or not, but it's keeping me interested at least. 

I read that a few years back. I'm still not certain whether I liked it or not. I think it probably suffered greatly from me having read it in close proximity to Catherynne Valente's Orphan's Tales, with which it shares some similarities, but is greatly inferior to in every possible way (IMHO)

[ghost]

Currently reading John Connally's Book of Lost Things.  I can't decide if I like it or not, but it's keeping me interested at least. 

I read that a few years back. I'm still not certain whether I liked it or not. I think it probably suffered greatly from me having read it in close proximity to Catherynne Valente's Orphan's Tales, with which it shares some similarities, but is greatly inferior to in every possible way (IMHO)

Meaning you liked the Orphan's Tales better?

[Threash]

I am 70% through Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings and recommend it.  The characters are deep and the world is interesting.  It is written in a character chapter format.  There are no fantasy races, just human sub-types.  Magic plays a small role.

Book 1 of a ten book series? yeah sorry but no, maybe when he's up around 6 or 7.  I am swearing off unfinished series.  Everything else Sanderson has done i have loved though, including the ending to WoT.

[Goldenmean]

Meaning you liked the Orphan's Tales better?

Yeah, I thought I might be stretching the pronoun to death there.

Yes, I liked Orphan's Tales multiple orders of magnitude more, though it's not for everyone. Book Of Lost Things is a fairly straightforward story involving fairy tales. Orphan's Tales is much more of a fairy tale in its own right, or rather, many dozens of different fairy tales, as it's a series of incredibly nested stories. One character will start telling a story, and a page or two later, a character in that story will start telling a story, and so on. I'm sure it will annoy the hell out of a lot of people, as it becomes difficult to keep all of the threads straight, and can be viewed as literary wanking, but I loved it.

[ghost]

Sounds like a pain in the ass. 

[lamaros]

Really, really enjoyed James S.A. Corey's series The Expanse (Corey is a pen name for two guys who do some kind of editing work for George R.R. Martin--I would not be at all surprised to find out that they have some kind of contract to finish the Song of Fire and Ice if George drops dead suddenly...)  There's a character who is just a wee bit of a Mary Sue but the whole thing reads really well and is very interesting in its basic set-up.

I've read the first two in the last couple of days, but I'm having misgivings about the third. Is it worth finishing the series? (is is the last in the series?)

Anyone have any SF/F recommendations? The best stuff they've read that I might not have gotten to yet? I feel the need for a really really good book.

[Abagadro]

Even though I didn't love it, it is worth finishing up the series.

[lamaros]

Fair enough. It's a shame, because about halfway through the first I was in love.

Then it got really lame and cliche. Why do SF/F writers always fall into the 'the only way to advance the story and continue the drama is to make everything more complicated, give characters more power, and make some big bad alien shit that undermines the original power of the story so much that the readers will see the deus ex machina 500 pages in advance!' trap?

Don't they realise that people have been writing perfectly brilliant stories without this sort of crap in it for years?

[Chimpy]

If you are looking for SF that isn't completely cliched, you might try out C.S. Friedman's sci-fi stuff. In Conquest Born or The Madness Season are both pretty good reads. Actually, I think the only one of her sci-fi books I have read that I didn't particularly care for was The Wildling which is ostensibly a sequel to In Conquest Born but it really doesn't have the feel of the original at all.

[Reg]

Luckily, I looked back and saw Murdoc's post or I was going to recommend You Know What by You Know Who. 

[RhyssaFireheart]

If you are looking for SF that isn't completely cliched, you might try out C.S. Friedman's sci-fi stuff. In Conquest Born or The Madness Season are both pretty good reads. Actually, I think the only one of her sci-fi books I have read that I didn't particularly care for was The Wildling which is ostensibly a sequel to In Conquest Born but it really doesn't have the feel of the original at all.

I haven't read The Madness Season but I also liked her Coldfire Trilogy books - Black Sun Rising, When True Night Falls, and Crown of Shadows.  There is a scifi element (humans traveled to another world) but then it goes off into a more fantasy direction... kinda. 

[dd0029]

Anyone have any SF/F recommendations? The best stuff they've read that I might not have gotten to yet? I feel the need for a really really good book.

Not sure what qualifies as something you haven't gotten to yet, but a couple of good recent ones are The Last Policeman by Ben Winters and Cowboy Angels by Paul J McAuley, both are blended genre novels rather than straight SF/F.

The Winters book has as it's premise that an asteroid is heading to destroy the earth in 6 months and thinks about how a murder investigation might pan out in that environment. It's more of a police procedural, but the hook is enough to pull it out. I was really caught by the tone and the feel of the book. There is a follow up out or due shortly, but it's strong enough to stand on it's own.

Cowboy Angels is a spy thriller set in a world where one Earth has discovered how to make portals of some sort to different timelines. It gets a bit lost in the action thriller at times, but interesting enough.

That reminds me, I just finished Skinner by Charlie Huston. It's one part techno thriller, one part spy thriller and one part who knows. First off, I'm in the tank for Huston. I love everything he's written. The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death is one of my top ten books. This wasn't quite up to that level, but it was still really good. I will say it was tough to get into, his writing in this one is very stylized. Short, choppy and random, but it works once you let it flow.

[veredus]

I'm rereading "The Black Company" because I haven't in a few years and have been recommending it to people a lot lately.

I wish you hadn't mentioned that...now I want to read it again. But I will be a jackass and buy all of it for my Kindle (have all paperbacks now). I have so much to read before I get to it though..hopefully the urge will subside.

Was looking for a new series to start and decided to check out The Black Company. Almost done with book 2 now and really bummed it took me this long to hear of and start this series. Really enjoying myself.

[ghost]

Anyone have any SF/F recommendations? The best stuff they've read that I might not have gotten to yet? I feel the need for a really really good book.

I found Mythago Wood, by Robert Holdstock, to be decent and it's obscure enough that you may not have read it. 

[Sky]

I'm about halfway into the first book of Zahn's Cobra trilogy (which is bound into a silly fat single volume). It's actually pretty crappy, but it moves on just fast enough to keep me reading. Weird.