Well, you’re kind of describing Faithful Place too, except instead of upper class grad students living together and trying to impress each other with how smart they are, you’ve got Frank Mackie’s “we get drunk and beat on each other” working class poor family. So it’s about the consummate Undercover cop going undercover as himself in his old neighborhood. It’s also less about uncovering the truth than it is about how the characters deal with the truths that are uncovered.
Almost without realizing it, I managed to take a quick peek into Mech (B. V. Larson) on Sunday and promptly threw my plans to read math and science to the wind. Well written, fast-paced story about the return of an evil hive race to a planet of humans who have just kicked off their own internal coup or civil war.
I’m halfway through and really liking it, even though I’d like to bond with a character or two in particular a bit more. That’s probably not going to happen, because this seems to be setting itself up to be a story where everyone’s a bastard.
Even if my love turns out to be premature, I think for $0.99 (Kindle ed.), you could do much worse.
OK, the House of Lost Souls would be a AMAZING novella, but unfortunately, it has been seemingly artificially expanded to novel length. For the past hundred plus pages, the book has been a flash back within a flashback which detours for unrelated narrative within one of those flashbacks.
I know that eventually, we’ll return to where we departed at page 30 or so and then the book will try to bring all these grand conclusions when it should have concentrated on just being an excellent shorter work.
The tale of a man whose life falls apart after encountering something not of this Earth would have been a far better tale than…whatever it is we’re going to eventually get.
Surrender to the Will of the Night by Glen Cook. The latest in his Instrumentality of the Night series.
I think this one is better than the other two books so far. Haven’t finished it yet, and so I guess the series will continue for a while past this book unless there is an astonishingly abrupt ending. In some sections there is a “and then this happened and then that happened” kind of historical account going on which is a bit dull, but for the most part it’s pretty good.
Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear. A nice twist on the generation ship concept, sort of a mix of System Shock and BioShock going on there. Not too deep, but still a pretty good SF novel with horror elements.
The plot basis is profoundly and fundamentally implausible, but if you can swallow the assumptions (which are only revealed over time as you read the book) it’s not that bad. It’s always fun to start with an amnesiac character in a seriously weird setting and to see how things unfold from there.
got 40 pages from the end of The House of Lost Souls and gave up. As I said before there is a GREAT novella in here stretched out to a rather meh novel. I will however state that I did enjoy the somewhat clever reversal of Mother Maiden Crone in the three male characters who come together to try to combat the “demon” conjured up in the house.
I started to read Nixonland and realized quickly that I’ll have to buy this on my Kindle as it’s way too bulky and unwieldy to even attempt to read on the subways in rush hour.
I have Confederate Reckoning waiting in the wings and I’ve got a ton of stuff on my Kindle to read but I feel somewhat at odds with all of it and am half tempted to just read some Terry Pratchett comfort food.
Started The Guards, which I think was recommended here. Interesting, but what a bizarre and awkward writing style…
you get used to it.
i hated the hell out of it for the first 40 pages or so, but thankfully it reads really quick so you become quite acclimated quite fast
I ended up just trying to push through and finish Last Argument of Kings thanks to the trains this morning, I got about 20% done between last night and my morning commute. Everyone is holed up in the capital city while various plots tie themselves up. I’ve got about 21% more of the book to go. I’ll try to finish it tonight, I think.
Y’know, I was scrolling through this and that totally looked like Surrender to Will Wright, which I think would be an excellent book where Will Wright turns his gigantic brain to conquering the world, except instead of waging war, he just talks everyone into letting him run their countries.
I’d read it.
Anyway, I finished Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile and it turned into gun porn. Also, when the last transmission from the IT guy at the Wall Street Journal was a cry of, “If they’d only let us have guns more people would’ve survived!” I knew I was off in crazy land. Oh, and it was as poorly written as the rest of the book, but then again, I suppose the WSJ editors had been eaten by then. Oh, and there’s a big twist at the end of the book which pretty much makes me not want to read anymore of this continuing series.
So I picked up Edge by Thomas Blackthorne in which near future Great Britain makes knife dueling legal and there are blood sport TV shows. I’m not very far into it, but it’s an early publication by a new SF publishing house called Angry Robot. They’ve been around since July, and they seem to be going gangbusters.
I’ve thought of picking this up once or twice, the cover has drawn my attention. If you have time when you’ve finished it, I’d be interested if you feel it is worth picking up or not.
Starting the new Garrett PI.
wrapped Last Argument of Kings last night. So much for happy endings. I guess just one character gets a “Good” ending and it’s the one who is most morally reprehensible.
Currently reading Confederate Reckoning by Stephanie McCurry which is a dense academic tome about how the failure for the Confederacy to take into account political actions of slaves and white rural women lead to what was going to be a racist anti-democratic utopia. It’s revisionist history at its best providing a counter narrative to the well known “states rights” myth and abundance of martial histories. What’s really interesting so far is the mental and rhetorical gymnastics undertake by the CSA to redefine what “We The People” meant.
I always tell people that this was the series that brought out my inner child and punched him in the face.
I loved the ending. Imagine if it had ended just as it seemed it was going to end while you read the second book. Bleh.
I also at first felt punched in the face, then after a few seconds chuckled and then broke into laughter mixed with some colorful expletives.
I have The Bonehunters on hiatus and have started The Half Made World by Felix Gilman. I’m about 25% in and liking so far the Western/Steampunk/Supernatural setup.
I’m currently reading “The Lost Fleet: Dauntless” by Jack Campbell, and it’s just like Horatio Hornblower in space, and by that I mean fucking awesome. Totally gonna snag the rest of the series when I can.
I have read the whole series to date and really enjoy it.
It’s a good pulp series. There is a lot of filler, though. The first 20% of each book is exposition of the previous books. By three or four volumes in, it seems like half the pages amount to, “Previously, on Hornblower in Space…” flashbacks.
Yay!
I saw this mentioned on the wiki article about the series, and apparently the author does that so people can jump in in any book.
If you want some more creepy spaceship horror, “Nightingale” by Alastair Reynolds (collected in Galactic North) is a good one. Characters explore a derelict starship filled with horrors, terrible things happen.