Return of the Book Thread

[Rasix]

Errr.. uhh.. Reaper's Gale is after Midnight Tides.

STILL angry at Toll the Hounds Reaper's Gale.  

Starting on WoT book 11.  Came out in paperback at the end of September.   Finished "The Passage" prior to that.  Excellent book and I enjoyed it a lot, although a lot of it felt like someone trying to one up Stephen King.

edit: Reaper's Gale is the one with the ending that makes you want to jump off a bridge, right?

[Chimpy]

So finished Gardens of the Moon, was going to run tot he library and pick up the next one but decided to check the shelf status....IT IS CHECKED OUT.

Sigh.

I liked it, need to read at least one more in the series before I make a final decision on Erickson tho.

[Johny Cee]

Errr.. uhh.. Reaper's Gale is after Midnight Tides.

STILL angry at Toll the Hounds Reaper's Gale.  

Starting on WoT book 11.  Came out in paperback at the end of September.   Finished "The Passage" prior to that.  Excellent book and I enjoyed it a lot, although a lot of it felt like someone trying to one up Stephen King.

edit: Reaper's Gale is the one with the ending that makes you want to jump off a bridge, right?

The Bonehunters is book six, which follows the Bonehunters and Tavore and wraps up some things in Malaz City.... and Esselmont's The Return of the Crimson Guard really follows this book chronologically.

Reaper's Gale is the one dedicated to Glen Cook, which is a big hint as to some of the things that happen at the end of the book.

Toll the Hounds is all about forcing yourself through 700 pages of shit for a pretty awesome 200 page climax/wrap-up.

So finished Gardens of the Moon, was going to run tot he library and pick up the next one but decided to check the shelf status....IT IS CHECKED OUT.

Sigh.

I liked it, need to read at least one more in the series before I make a final decision on Erickson tho.

Gardens of the Moon is the least polished book in the series, and overall probably the weakest.  It reads like a pastiche of Martin, Jordan, and Cook but it is the man's first novel.  I personally disliked the last three books more than GotM, but that was because I didn't like the style they were written in.  GotM is a much weaker book which I enjoyed more, but again I'm not holding the guy's first novel against him.

Deadhouse Gates and Memories of Ice (books 2 and 3) are both great epic fantasy books. 

[Johny Cee]

Also:

Patrick Rothfuss has turned in the final manuscript for the sequel to The Name of the Wind, with a hard publication date of March 2011.  Basically, his publisher made him do some significant rewrites which were delayed by his girlfriend having their first child, and one of his parents passing away.


Rasix is dead on about The Passage.  It does feel like "in his prime" Stephen King.  It was engaging enough that I ripped right through it in a day or two.

[Xuri]

I'm simultaneously reading The Way of Kings, a random "Age of Conan" () novel I bought because it had "Age of Conan" on the front page , Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas (having just recently finished The Three Musketeers) and soon - after posting this and watching Family Guy and/or Dexter - Towers of Midnight.

[Ironwood]

Just finished the Evolutionary Void.

Guff.

On reflection, the whole Void trilogy :  Not Worth It.

[tgr]

It's making the tram ride to/from work less tedious, so in that regard it's worth it, but I'm not going to read through it a second time I don't think.

(the fact I managed to start with book 2 probably doesn't help, but PFH hasn't gotten the pageturning magic quite going like in the night dawn's trilogy.)

[Ironwood]

When you get to the end, you realise he's taken a pamphlet sized short story and made it into 3 huge volumes by a twofold strategy :

1 - Use a big Font.
2 - Put fuckloads of characters and unneccesary characterisation as well as plonking every single person that was in his other books in there.

It's not worth it.

[tgr]

Don't forget adding some multi-sex in there to keep us reading.

[Ironwood]

No sex in the third one.

None.

 

Glad I'm not the only one that liked Araminta getting multi-rumped though.

[dd0029]

Someone somewhere recommended a YA series similar to by Patrick Ness beginning with The Knife of Never Letting Go as similar to the Hunger Games.  The first book was ok.  It was interesting enough and ended on a doozy of a cliff hanger so I gave the second one a try and am really glad I did.  The Ask and the Answer is really something else.  It also ends on a whoopper of a cliff hanger, but the strength of the book means I am looking forward to the last one.

[Sky]

The Bonehunters is book six, which follows the Bonehunters and Tavore and wraps up some things in Malaz City.... and Esselmont's The Return of the Crimson Guard really follows this book chronologically.

Interesting, just started the Bonehunters...I'll slot in the Esslemont before I more to Reaper's Gale. Unfortunately, the budget crisis hit just as she put in the big order, so we only got three or four Eriksons and one Esslemont (night of knives?). Looks like I'll be tracking down a copy of Crimson Guard for my own shelf.

Edit: just checked the catalog and Crimson Guard is supposed to be on order. I don't know what that means anymore, but there is some hope it might show up if the funds were charged pre-austerity. Processing is god-awful slow.

[Johny Cee]

The Bonehunters is book six, which follows the Bonehunters and Tavore and wraps up some things in Malaz City.... and Esselmont's The Return of the Crimson Guard really follows this book chronologically.

Interesting, just started the Bonehunters...I'll slot in the Esslemont before I more to Reaper's Gale. Unfortunately, the budget crisis hit just as she put in the big order, so we only got three or four Eriksons and one Esslemont (night of knives?). Looks like I'll be tracking down a copy of Crimson Guard for my own shelf.

Edit: just checked the catalog and Crimson Guard is supposed to be on order. I don't know what that means anymore, but there is some hope it might show up if the funds were charged pre-austerity. Processing is god-awful slow.

Wait until after Toll to read Crimson Guard.  The bulk of the book is a logical continuation to Empire politics after the Bonehunters, but towards the end there are a couple (important) bits of Toll referenced. 

There are also a couple of important deaths in Crimson Guard which may really change your view of the other books. 


Night of Knives is schlocky.  It's Esselmont's first novel, and reads like one...  it's not unreadable, but it's not very good.  Crimson Guard is much better, and reads very much like the early Erikson books.

[Rasix]

The Bonehunters is book six, which follows the Bonehunters and Tavore and wraps up some things in Malaz City.... and Esselmont's The Return of the Crimson Guard really follows this book chronologically.

Reaper's Gale is the one dedicated to Glen Cook, which is a big hint as to some of the things that happen at the end of the book.

Toll the Hounds is all about forcing yourself through 700 pages of shit for a pretty awesome 200 page climax/wrap-up.

Well, I was just responding to:

I am reading book 3 of the Lisbeth Salander/Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy.  I was hoping for better.

Glad to hear Midnight Tides is great.  I had trouble sticking with Reaper's Gale.

which was highly confusing.

I think to get back into Erickson, I'll need to reread. I tried a little bit of Toll the Hounds and I was just lost.  That's a lot of pages to get back through, although it should be enjoyable.  I'll likely also get a lot more out of it this time.

Even though it's dedicated to Cook, what he did in that series (even The Silver Spike), didn't feel as cheap as what happened in Reaper's Gale. 

That'll have to wait until I get done with a few books I purchased recently.  It sucks having to pick between gaming and reading.  Alas, parenthood..

[murdoc]

Night of Knives is schlocky.  It's Esselmont's first novel, and reads like one...  it's not unreadable, but it's not very good.  Crimson Guard is much better, and reads very much like the early Erikson books.

Good to know. "Night of Knives" was very poorly written imo and I was avoiding 'Crimson Guard" because of it.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Ahhhh, new job = money = I can hit up the book store again!  YAY!

I've been wanting to get the Esslemont books to see what I "missed" in the Malazan storyline, so now I can finally afford to.  I'm kind of afraid to go to Borders though because I fear I'll go crazy buying up books I haven't been able to for the past year.  While I'm enjoying reading my older books, there are so many new ones I've had to put off until now.

Plus going by the good things that have been said here in the thread, I'll probably be picking up the Mistborn books as well.

[FatuousTwat]

Crimson Guard is just as good as the Erikson Malazan books, IMO, and I'm really looking forward to Stonewielder.

Just read The Mark of Ran by Paul Kearney. I liked it a lot more than what I had read of The Monarchies of God. Unfortunately, the series abruptly ends after the second book, due to Bantam dropping the series unexpectedly.

I tried to read Zoe's Tale by Scalzi, but the main character is a teenage girl and the events that happen in the book had already been told in another P.O.V., so I got tired of it pretty quickly.

Up next is an anthology of Conan stories by Howard titled The Bloody Crown of Conan, or Stories of Your Life by Ted Chiang.

[Sky]

Ahhhh, new job = money = I can hit up the book store again!  YAY!

I've been wanting to get the Esslemont books to see what I "missed" in the Malazan storyline, so now I can finally afford to.  I'm kind of afraid to go to Borders though because I fear I'll go crazy buying up books I haven't been able to for the past year.  While I'm enjoying reading my older books, there are so many new ones I've had to put off until now.

Plus going by the good things that have been said here in the thread, I'll probably be picking up the Mistborn books as well.

Err....library?

[RhyssaFireheart]

Ahhhh, new job = money = I can hit up the book store again!  YAY!

I've been wanting to get the Esslemont books to see what I "missed" in the Malazan storyline, so now I can finally afford to.  I'm kind of afraid to go to Borders though because I fear I'll go crazy buying up books I haven't been able to for the past year.  While I'm enjoying reading my older books, there are so many new ones I've had to put off until now.

Plus going by the good things that have been said here in the thread, I'll probably be picking up the Mistborn books as well.

Err....library?

Err.. sucky selection, sadly enough.

I do have a library card now (only took me 9 years to get one at this residence) but their selection seems to not include the latest releases.  Plus I tend to keep my books when I buy them, which is why I have over 800 paperbacks now.  I have found the library to be good for when I'm looking for compilations though, which is where I found some Sheri S. Tepper books I hadn't read before.  Stupid reason for not using the library though - I really don't like reading hardbacks, as odd as that may sound.  It bugs me to juggle such a bulky book when I'm trying to read.  Yes, I'm weird.

[Sky]

Does your local branch belong to a system? Generally when we're adding to the collection, we weight system-wide holdings. So you may not see a book on our shelf, but you can get it in a couple days through interlibrary loan.

[RhyssaFireheart]

Yeah, we're part of a fairly large system.  At least, I'm pretty sure they can request books from anywhere in Chicagoland.  It's that instant gratification thing I've got going for me though.  If I can buy it, I'll get it, but if a book's not available I have no problems with asking for it through the system.

[Johny Cee]

Crimson Guard is just as good as the Erikson Malazan books, IMO, and I'm really looking forward to Stonewielder.

Just read The Mark of Ran by Paul Kearney. I liked it a lot more than what I had read of The Monarchies of God. Unfortunately, the series abruptly ends after the second book, due to Bantam dropping the series unexpectedly.

I tried to read Zoe's Tale by Scalzi, but the main character is a teenage girl and the events that happen in the book had already been told in another P.O.V., so I got tired of it pretty quickly.

Up next is an anthology of Conan stories by Howard titled The Bloody Crown of Conan, or Stories of Your Life by Ted Chiang.

I liked Crimson Guard, though so far I think Esselmont still needs some maturing as a writer.  I don't think the characters were very good, though it might just be that they didn't live up to the hype since many of the fairly famous "Old Guard" types made their first appearances here after being mentioned in the main series and came off as non-entities.

Paul Kearney's The Ten Thousand is a pretty good entertainment read.

If that Conan collection is the second of the Howard Conan collections, you're in for a treat.  Some wonderful and surprisingly deep stories there like "Red Nails" and "Beyond the Black River" that delve into Howard's beliefs about the cyclical nature of civilization and barbarism, and some just plain awesome over the top Conan stuff.


Just ordered a bunch of stuff from Amazon, including a bunch of hard to find Zelazny stuff.  Whenever I order from Amazon, I always forget that I've been meaning to order a bunch of thing like Jeffrey Ford, Kelly Link, Michael Swanwick and the hard to find older Tim Powers stuff.  I just blank.

[Chimpy]

So I decided to pick Les Miserables up off my shelf and try to read it again (I bought it before I went to Australia several years ago thinking I would need a LONG book to read on the plane, never got more than a third through the book).

I am going to see how far I get before the library gets a copy of the second malazan book in 

[Khaldun]

I actually find Les Miserables a pretty good read.

[Morat20]

So I decided to pick Les Miserables up off my shelf and try to read it again (I bought it before I went to Australia several years ago thinking I would need a LONG book to read on the plane, never got more than a third through the book).

I am going to see how far I get before the library gets a copy of the second malazan book in 

Get the abridged version. Anything Victor Hugo ever wrote, get the abridged version. Why? Because he wrote his work for a serial -- publishing chapters in a newspaper. He got paid by the word.

Abridged versions are basically "What Hugo would have written, if he'd been paid for the book not for the length, and had an editor".

[Surlyboi]

What Morat said.

The full version of Les Miserables is something you should read once, but after that, you don't miss the filler parts upon re-reads on the abridged versions.

I'm halfway through Banks' Surface Detail now, and liking it a lot. Then again, even bad Culture novels are readable.

[Chimpy]

Seeing as I have the unabridged version. And I don't ever plan on reading it again, I will just keep plodding along 20-40 pages in a sitting. I'm sure it would help if I still had been in classes that were covering the post-revolutionary period in France as the names of famous people and events would not be so vague and cloudy.

[Ironwood]

I'm halfway through Banks' Surface Detail now, and liking it a lot. Then again, even bad Culture novels are readable.

Matter absolutely sucked balls.

While not a Culture book, Transitions was also fucking awful.  I'm going to read Surface Detail when the old man's finished with it, but I'm not holding out much hope.  Banks has 'gone off' recently.

[Morat20]

Seeing as I have the unabridged version. And I don't ever plan on reading it again, I will just keep plodding along 20-40 pages in a sitting. I'm sure it would help if I still had been in classes that were covering the post-revolutionary period in France as the names of famous people and events would not be so vague and cloudy.

I think the part of the unabridged version that almost made me break down was what felt like 200 fucking pages on the battle of Waterloo. Why? To let you know that M. Thénardier looted some dead people there, and happened to (and quite by accident) save another character's dad's life.

A fucking nightmareish, never-ending sequence on the history, setting, tactics, terrain, and outcome of Waterloo for something that could have, and should have, been done in about a page. Maximum. Especially since the character whose dad was saved finds out IN A LETTER. I mean, Jesus.

I didn't know Surface Detail was out....I'm still trying to sort through the new 'catagories' feature on my Kindle, which is something that should be filed under "About goddamn time, morons" category, next to "And make a fucking PC interface for God's sake, so I can sort this shit iTunes-style".

[Chimpy]

So my Malazan book showed up at the library through inter-library loanage.

It is an obviously many-times read Trade paperback. And it is in better shape than any TOR hardcover after it's second reading.

How can a company make trade paperbacks that are more resilient than their hardcovers. The mind, it boggles.

[Reg]

TOR used to have problems with their regular paperbacks too. I remember reading some larger TOR books and having the pages literally fall out as I turned them.

[Surlyboi]

I'm halfway through Banks' Surface Detail now, and liking it a lot. Then again, even bad Culture novels are readable.

Matter absolutely sucked balls.

While not a Culture book, Transitions was also fucking awful.  I'm going to read Surface Detail when the old man's finished with it, but I'm not holding out much hope.  Banks has 'gone off' recently.

Transition sucked only in that it started off well and then rambled into incoherence. Matter was great in concept, crappy in execution. This one, while still no Use of Weapons hasn't been bad so far.

[Khaldun]

Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional World, is a lot of fun.

[Reg]

I just finished Against All Things Ending - Book 3 of the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.  It wasn't that great. If you aren't a big Donaldson fan and haven't been keeping up with this latest series it's probably best not to bother until he's written book 4 and finished it up.

[Morat20]

Just finished Surface Detail. Interesting exploration of some of the outcomes of 'widely available' technology (in this case, the ability to store and run mind-states in computers).

It's a different take than, say, Stross' -- but very interesting. Especially the notion of Heavens and Hells.

Also, I remain fond of the Culture ROU's and, most especially, the snarky way they talk to practically everyone else. The text-based communications between the Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints and both the NR vessel and the Me, I'm Counting were particullarly amusing.