I’ve been trying to go through the books that were nominated to lose the Hugo this year. Finished Six Wakes, a interesting Sci-Fi locked room mystery.
I’d recommend New York: 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson, though it seems to be mostly addressed to a very specific audience, those utterly enamored with NYC.
It’s me. But I’ve already read Kavalier and Clay, so…
What, you only have so much space in your reading schedule for award worthy NYC fellation?
finished Genocide Organ by Project Itoho this week. Man is it a cool book with a great idea. Can’t go to much into the meat of it with out spoilers but it does a very good job of looking at Americas foreign policy.
I’m planning to read The Savage Detectives by Bolano. Just waiting to find a copy in Spanish, since for some reason I am adamant about reading it in its original language.
Finished NY:2140 on Friday night, and I do recommend reading it. It’s an interesting entry in that category of Science Fiction where the world is the primary character more than any particular individual is.
And it’s probably also worth it since we’re actually ahead of the book’s timeline for the first pulse.
I got sick of reading about the poor being systematically oppressed, which is every good history book. Branching out into fiction in the hopes I’ll find new ways of writing if I expose myself to more literary styles.
The shillings are used as collateral for a loan, the loan being taken on something like 99.999 percent of the value of the shillings. The duration of the loan is ten seconds. … the Greater Asian Trading Company’s main computer realizes that the ten-second loan has not been repaid, and forecloses. … Thibodaux withdraws the rubles from the Sony Bank of Uruguay for another series of stock purchases in Chicago.
Don’t read Consider Phlebas first. It is the weakest novel of the entire series. Start with Player of Games.
Also: reading order corrected http://www.sfbrp.com/archives/1284
I did start with Consider Phlebas. I’m sticking to published order.
I didn’t particularly like either book, but I agree that Player of Games was better.
Finally getting back into fiction after several years away from it. Having a friend recommend and talk about books really liked me get back on the wagon. Since I’ve missed so many of the popular titles, I decided to start there.
Strangely, I actually think this book works better without Lizbeth at all. She seems entirely shoehorned into the plot with very little to do until the end. Also, the main character, Blomkvist, is entirely a self-insert character for the author. I can see why the author had written the book for friends without intention to publish it at first. Blomkvist is a intrepid, dashly investigative reporter who is a defender of women! And he has the ability to seduce every women he meets! The village hottie, his best friend with a husband, the elite anti-social hacker, all fall to his charms! It’s a bit much but the mystery itself is very fun to read and engaging. The setting too is very interesting as I know little to nothing about Sweden. Overall 3/5, I have little desire to keep reading the series since neither of the main characters interest me too much.
The Name of the Wind is pure Mary-Sue hero’s journey mush. And yet, it’s very well done Mary-Sue hero’s journey mush that I could not put down. Patrick Rothfuss is not charting new ground with NOTW but does it in a remarkable fun way. I could criticize Denna’s characterization or Kvothe’s never ending talents but I plain like the book too much to care. 4/5 for quality writing and fun.
The Wise Man’s Fear, however; is strangely very slow for the 2nd book out of a trilogy. The continuation of the school stuff in the beginning of the book is good, if a little bit too much of a re-tread. But the courtly intrigue, the hunt for bandits, the faerie sex goddess, and the shaolin monk training arcs, all felt like side quests of an rpg. The author has to build the reputation of the legendary man established in the first book but he takes too long to do it and not enough consequences and plot movement is achieved. Still, it’s well written and fun but it shows worrying signs that the third book will not deliver on the setup of the first. 3/5.
The first third of this book is a fun little heist, and then the main character gets dumped into the latrine, beat up, stabbed, burned, reintroduced into the latrine, and then has a bit of a victory the end? The alternating storylines is done as well as it can be done in the beginning of this book, which is to say still annoying, but clever enough that it pushed me to read more instead of giving up. I don’t think I liked the pacing of the end of the book, which is break neck compared to the middle sections. What I would say about the author, is that narratively he’s a fairly clever author in the amount of callbacks and connective tissue between chapters, but I’m not sure I actually like his writing style enough to continue reading this series. The descriptions of the city and the world was not that engaging, nor was the dialogue very expressive of the character’s voices. I fear that if the author runs out of narrative tricks, the series won’t be that interesting. Still, I mostly enjoyed the first book and may continue the series some time in the future, if my friend wants to, but it does not fill me with an immediate desire to keep going. 3/5.
I did not finish American Gods. Maybe it was because I was reading the author’s preferred text, but I think this book is in a desperate need of an editor and a better plot device to drive action forward. I just stopped caring about any of the characters once the roadtrip kept dragging and dragging. A shame because I think Shadow having to reconcile with the ghost of his cheating wife is fairly interesting but not worth the slog. I think Coyote Blue by Christopher Moore did this plot better. 2/5
Finished the Slog of Slogs the White Luck Warrior last night. The first third was fun and so was the last part but the middle dragged a bit. Also found most stuff involving Kelmomas really dull. Like I get that its his whole birthright thing to manipulate people. But man was his parts boring and annoying. I can only hope that he buggers off somewhere else in the next books.
Started on The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino. I’m about 50 pages in, it hasn’t grabbed me right out the gates but I am a bit interested. Plus its pretty short so that helps in its favour.
Re Gaiman. Yeah I feel his shorter stuff is really his strong point. I loved Neverwhere but like you found American Gods to be really dull half the time. Dude needs an editor that will say no at times I feel.
I also found American Gods so dull and unexciting that I gave up. I even tried it twice, and gave up on both attempts.
I vastly preferred Anansi Boys. It’s so much softer than American Gods and the characters are more sympathetic.
Granted, I am not known for remembering the details of books that I have read. I’m especially bad at remembering things like character names and such. That being said, I read American Gods just once cover to cover. I don’t even remember the general plot.
Something like, a stranger comes to some small American town. There are these people, but they are actually gods of various mythologies and legends. At the end, surprise one of the characters was Loki the trickster, doing his thing tricking everyone. That’s literally all I remember.
A really weird thing happened a while ago. I was talking with my partner about movies and I asked “what was that film where they had the car on the ice and they bet money on when it would fall through and there was the body in the car?” and she totally didn’t know what I was talking about. I said I thought it was Fargo or something, which it wasn’t, but I was sure I wouldn’t have seen whatever it was without her.
I was remembering the scene from American Gods which I read when we were first dating. Somehow I remembered it as a movie we’d watched together!
It’s a solid 6/10 or so. Not great, but does a good job of being analogous to some famous Japanese killers.
Ah that is interesting. I kind of looking forward to seeing more about the detective, I’ve been told he is a pretty interesting character. I did have trepidation reading this though as the friend that recommended it to me has just the worst taste in books.
I recently read Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law trilogy. In many ways, its a very generic fantasy story in its setting but the action and pacing of the books is gripping. The last book ties the plot together incredibly well and it was one of my favorite reads of 2018.
When describing the characters of The Blade Itself, other reviewers typically say that its main characters would have been villains in other fantasy stories. That is a bit of an overstatement as the fan-favorites of Ninefingers (the barbarian), Glotka (the torturer), and Bayaz (the wizard) all operate with some sense of a moral code despite their casual use of violence. These three characters are all lovable anti-heroes rather than villains, which is why I actually find two of his other characters more interesting, West and Jezal. West is the Miles O’Brien everyman character but unlike Miles O’Brien from Star Trek, West has everyman character flaws that are harder to forgive. These problems – without getting into details – make me uncomfortable, but I appreciate novelty even if it borders on being shooed in. Jezal on the other hand is the archetypal haughty young noble who gets his comeuppance by the plucky protagonist. I like that Abercrombie eschews this typical narrative by not only making him a main character, but by also making his character development slow and at times in regression. Jezal actually gets more than he rightly deserves which is a bold choice. The best parts of book is that the characters are within close proximity of each other for most of the book and we get to hear their opinions of each other as the story unfolds. Abercrombie’s writing and plotting is utilitarian but good enough to keep the story flowing at a good pace. I’ve come to appreciate clearer writing like his even if it sometimes is lacking in depth.
Finished 12/28/18
3/5 stars
The writing and character work of the sequel, Before They Are Hanged, is better than the original. However, I prefer the plot structure of the first book which had characters interacting with each other more. Fan-favorite Glotka gets to show off the most as he tortures, cajoles, and surprises his enemies with both his humanity and lack thereof. But the larger problem with Before They Are Hanged is the over-usage of the “idiot-ball.” Too many side characters are characterized plainly by Abercrombie as idiots who make bad decisions. These characters exist only to keep the plot moving quickly rather than being interesting by themselves. Abercrombie’s storytelling is too simplified and too obvious in his attempts to get past the setup and straight to the action scenes already. Still, his action scenes are a ton of fun and I breezed through the book in a little over a day. 3/5 stars.
Finished 12/30/18
3/5 stars
Joe Abercrombie’s twitter handle is LordGrimdark, perhaps a bit tongue-in-cheek but he truly does demonstrate what grimdark fantasy means in Last Argument of Kings. Grimdark isn’t simply the physical punishment and deaths of characters, it’s also destroying their mental wellbeing and their moral center. It makes the characters question the worth of humanity and worse, makes them stop believing in man’s ability to change for the better. Abercrombie really relishes in the suffering of his characters with over 100 pages in the end exploring the consequences of their actions. In some ways, it’s refreshing to experience a straight bitter rather than bittersweet ending (okay there is maybe 2g of sugar in a kilogram of cacao), but it’s not an experience I would seek again. Well done, Abercrombie but I’m going to avoid you for a while.
Spoilers: Isn’t there a plot hole with locking up Tolomei in the Maker’s House? It’s said several times that Bayaz tricked her into unlocking the front gate while she was on the balcony. Therefore, the front gate being locked does not lock the balcony. Tolomei is touched by the other side and cannot die, so if she wanted to escape, couldn’t she simply jump off the balcony once more?
Finished 1/3/19
4/5 stars