Book Thread 2018^H9

Ahhh, so this is correct:

http://www.robinhobb.com/novels/

Good good. Thank you.

Per a quick search I came up with this recommendation from a poster at Reddit…

If you want the whole story read them in publishing order. Farseer >> Liveship trader >> Tawny man >> Rainwild chronicles >> fitz and the fool

You can only read the fitz books but you would be missing out on a great story by skipping them. the tawny man books spoil some of livetrader’s plot.

Yeah, what everyone said. I actually never got around to reading Rainwild Chronicles, but when the last series came out I wanted to jump in, so I got a quick synopsis from my wife. That trilogy is probably the most “skippable” of the bunch.

It’s also four books. Unlike any of her other series.

This is a great site to look up authors and their books:

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/

I use this site a lot.

Ha, I had no idea!

I’d also stay away from her Soldier’s Son series. It’s not in the same world or connected to her other stories, and the conclusion is pretty disappointing.

That site looks fantastic! Thank you!

http://www.isfdb.org/ cross-indexes both books and stories.

I decided, on a whim, to pick a book off my backlog and read it. I had started John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War series before I began studying for a series of finance exams, and The Human Division gave me a great re-entry into the series.

The short-story format was great for an nightly read or a commute, and he strings together these different threads pretty well, but I deeply enjoyed crossing something off my list, especially since it’s been there since 2013 hah. It’s such a rare yet satisfying activity for me.

So I tried The Ember War. My one word review: boring.

The only interesting part is the setup. Everything else is cardboard characters, USA USA USA jingoisms, 100% predictable storyline and an antagonist that lacks any agency or purpose beyond DESTROY ALL and thus is no more interesting than having the military fight a tornado.
I’m also quite certain Dick Fox is a Trump voter.

I also tried Gnomon and… yeah. I’m not going to plow through half a book of undirected babbling to get to a possible good part. When the book veered off for no reason to consider the existentialism of a tram carriage, I decided that this book could go F itself and the pretentious tram it rode in on.

Every bit of Gnomon is there for a reason.

A good editor could cut half of Gnomon and the result would be an improvement. As I read it kept veering back and forth between genius and tedium, but the last 20% goes full tedium.

I think it’s possibly the most brilliant book I’ve ever read.

MY ONE-WORD REVIEW OF YOU: BORING.

It might be. I don’t know. What I do know, however, is that what I read so far is not for me.

Think of it like a two course dinner. The main course is, apparently, the most delicious thing ever. However, the appetizer to make it the most delicious thing ever… is a shit sandwich.
Now some people might be willing to chew through the shit sandwich to get to the main course, but given the availability of different meals I have zero interest to continue eating shit—especially given that I know that tastes in what people like in novels are all over the place, so the main course might not even be that good.

Point in case:

So angry. D:

https://www.amazon.com/Forged-Fire-Destinys-Crucible-Book/dp/B0799SP9J6/

I mostly finished this… “mostly” because the audiobook kind of cut out with what it says was an hour to go in the narration. I’ll try re-downloading it tonight to see if my copy was simply corrupted. But it hardly matters because the climax and what I assume was the denouement had already happened. The only thing I might be missing is a clue as to whether the author intends to continue in this setting or not.

Overall, it a pretty good conclusion to the series. I can’t say that Thorensen’s awkward prose and humans-don’t-talk-like-this dialog got appreciably better since the last book, and his tendency to repeat every plot point three of four times in exposition continued unabated. A spoiler-free summary of the book is this: The heroes come up with a plan; they review the plan; they set up for the plan; they review the set-up for the plan; they meet to reaffirm their commitment to the plan; they execute their plan; they review the results of the execution of the plan.

If that doesn’t sound riveting… well, it actually was pretty interesting. Thorensen does have a talent for writing action, and when stuff is actually HAPPENING, it’s a great book. The last two fifths of the book is really solid military fiction. If you have been looking forward to this last book in the series, you won’t be disappointed. Though if you’re like me, you’ll find yourself rolling your eyes at the massed contrivances that make up the first half.

Just finished two series, both in the fantasy genre though generally quite different, both great:
Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne, an epic fantasy trilogy by Brian Staveley. Follows three children of the Emperor of the most powerful civilization in the setting, who is of course murdered early in the first book. One is the heir apparent, sent to spend years as a student at a remote mountain monastery worshipping The Empty God, eldest of the gods, whose precepts are all about negation of self. He has no idea why his father sent him for what is fairly brutal and ascetic training that does not appear to have any relevance to his eventual rule, but of course as events proceed the reasons become clear. One, the second son, has been training to join an elite military special forces unit known as the Kettral for the giant predatory birds they ride, which is also very harsh and uncompromising but in a very different way. He stumbles onto the conspiracy that threatens them all first. And then there’s the daughter, eldest of the three but ineligible to rule because of her gender. But she’s the one who’s stayed with her father and learned the ways of the capital, administration, and power. Their father’s murder is, as I hinted at earlier, the result of conspiracy, and there are dimensions to the conflict at hand beyond even simple control over the empire. Each sibling has to scramble to keep themselves and their empire whole but incomplete information and a shifting web of motives and players makes it very hard to know what the right moves are and leads to working at cross purposes not infrequently. In the wrong hands, these sorts of plots can make all the characters seem like bumbling idiots where all the conflict and drama emerges from authorial fiat and arbitrary failures to communicate, but here it all makes sense given what’s at stake and what the characters know and desire. And man, the situation just keeps getting more difficult and awful and complicated until it seems impossible to pull things out. And then…well, you’ll just have to see!

Heartstrikers from Rachel Aaron. Lovely 5 book urban fantasy series where magic has come back to the world and dragons have emerged as major players, along with various spirits and human mages. The spirit of the Great Lakes, Algonquin, was so infuriated by the damage done that she destroyed Detroit and then rebuilt it, claiming it as a nearly lawless zone that’s become a center of industry and magic due to the lack of regulation and taxation (to both good and bad effect). There’s one big one, though: no dragons. Which is of course why Bethesda the Heartstriker, matriarch of the Heartstriker dragon clan, dumps the runt of her many litters and only abject failure of a son, Julius, there with instructions to shape up and be a proper dragon or die. His problem? He’s too nice. He has morals, and wants the best for other people, which is not draconic at all. Of course, you can probably see where this is going (i.e., being nice is actually his ace in the hole) but hey, it’s an entertaining tale with lots of properly scary threats and stalwart niceness solving problems by making friends and influencing people. All with setting ideas that are pretty original by the standards of this well worn genre. And they’re $5/pop so easy to charge through.

I’ve had little time to read the past months, but got some reading done the past week.

Finished The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin. Had some interesting ideas, and definitely a PKD vibe. The premise is intriguing, and there is something special about how Le Guin manages to not draw things out but gets to the point.

Then I read All Systems Red (Murderbot Diaries #1) by Martha Wells. It is a novelette, quite short and a fast read. Reads like a Mass Effect side quest (in a good way), and an interesting take on cyborg constructs.

Just started Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. This is going to take a while.

Started reading Annihilation since I wrapped up The Fall of Hyperion a week or so back. I liked that, and I’m liking Annihilation so far. Plan to get through the whole trilogy, but I also plan to take my time with it. Got a bunch of new books lined up that will probably get me through the year, my reading has really dropped off since I had kids but I’m trying to get back into it.

Fair warning that Cryptonomicon appears to be the first book in a series that was never completed. Or else it’s even worse than the usual Stephenson in not having an ending at all… Also all the big questions left hanging in that book are not at all answered in the same-universe setting of the “baroque” trilogy, which likewise ends very flat.