Books and Reading

[Vol]

Reading Fire and Blood, there's an implication that Maegor the Cruel might have become that way due to external forces. During the succession period after Aenys died, Maegor declared himself king over the true heir. Ends with a battle between 7 Warrior Sons and 7 of Maegor's champions (himself included), which Maegor wins, but takes a head blow in the process. Goes into a coma for a month, no maester can rouse him, then some of his supporters from Essos and his mother, the dowager queen, boot them out and manage to get him up and about through unknown means. At which point he immediately hops on Balerion and torches the Faith encampment in Kings Landing.

So he was always an aggressive man, but seems like the head wound or the means to revive him might've twisted that into the evil he became.

[Raga]

You know, I'm increasingly of the opinion that GRRM is just a better editor and/or worldbuilder than he is a storyteller. That stuff just seems to make him happier for one. I've gotten to a point where I have pretty much 0 interest in any narratives he produces, but am totally interested in things he helped build or compile.

[Vol]

Maybe he's an old man who's made it rich in a field people don't usually get rich in, and he really doesn't want to be arsed to finish a complicated magnum opus? I couldn't blame him for that, as much as I would still blame him.

Fire and Blood is pretty good though. Just got to Jaeharys running off with his sister to Dragonstone to elope before the queen regent and the Hand can arrange marriages for them.

[magnuskn]

My hypothesis is still that he doesn't know what to do anymore, since he changed his original plans. For anyone who doesn't know, there was supposed to be a five to six year time skip after book three, but GRRM decided not to do this, since he thought that there was one viewpoint whose story needed to be told (and I still have no idea who that is... though he probably meant Cersei). Thereby nullifying lots of foreshadowing from the first three books (Arya/Gendry, for example) and forcing him to re-write lots of character arcs.

Hence the delay with every book thereafter and the declining quality as well.

[Vol]

Really should've had that time skip. I've heard he writes like I do, the gardener approach. Throw out a handful of seeds, vague idea of what'll happen, then let it grow. Very chaotic. But he's gotten to the end game, where dozens of plots are all fucking twisted up and people need to be places and do things but they're not there yet and need to do X and Y first and plot holes have to be avoided and why are there so many goddamn tomato plants?!

Whereas Fire and Blood, it's all past events. He's already effectively created the outline for how everything goes, the opposite writing approach. Structured. So it's much easier to bang it out. Which is kinda funny to me.

Also, keeps up the habit of girls barely "flowered" being sexually active. One of which was allegedly, in the setting, the basis for an infamous novel mean to warn good girls away from a life of debauchery (read: It was thinly veiled smut). The youngest daughter of a noble house who lost her virginity to a 30-something stableboy, an ugly fellow, but had a cock as thick as a stallions (this is stated), and so she's locked up and her bastard sent off to be a ward of someone else, eventually used by the King's Hand to try and tempt the 15 year old king into cheating on his sister-wife so they can annul the marriage. The girl ends up failing and seducing another older man and fleeing to Essos where she fucked her way through numerous cities and jobs before returning to Westeros and becoming a septa.

My point being, it's nice to see that the mainstream exposure hasn't changed his commitment to keeping the setting congruent, even with distasteful subject matter. It is also nice to see how many people grossly underestimate how goddamn dangerous dragons are when plotting to screw over Targs.

[Raga]

My theory is that his natural medium is mostly sci-fi short stories, novellas, and to a lesser degree single novels. If you look at his historical writing record, he doesn't write epic fantasy. And in his own words, he used to somewhat disdain the genre. Then he read Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn and was impressed and wanted to try it, but...

The thing is that being a writer and being a writer who can write successful, congruent *LOOOOONNNGGGG* epic fantasy series aren't the same thing. It might be possible to be a writer who isn't highly structured and doesn't plan in advance and who can write a long, consistent, coherent, and structured epic fantasy series in less than half a lifetime but I've certainly never heard of anybody who has.

Which is why he can still bang out short stories, screenplays, edited anthologies, and big tomes like this which are basically short stories in a faux historical framework narrative. It's what he's actually good at and what he spent most of his life doing before he decided to give Robert Jordan and Co. writing a whirl.

There is a reason that most epic fantasy writers who don't write trilogies write exactly 1 magnum opus series and pretty much nothing else of consequence.

[magnuskn]

Well, the first three novels were plotted exquisitely, with huge "OMG!!!" reveals at every of the last few chapters in book three. So I think that he is totally capable of writing long coherent plotlines. It's that he went off his original plan which fucked him up, I think.

That is why I love Jim Butcher's writing so much. The guy had a plan for an entire 20 + 3 novels series and he has stuck to it, improving his writing with (almost) every book along the way.

[magnuskn]

Woo, the Peace Talks manuscript is done (only the wrap-up chapter left). Will be still half a year or a bit longer until it comes out, but at least there's light at the end of the tunnel!

[Vol]

Alright, new lore, the kind that makes me giddy.

State of dread Valyria:

► Show Spoiler

It is not dead. Long story short, dyke Targ's lover leaves, steals dragon eggs to finance boat and expedition beyond the Sunset Sea, dyke's daughter is 13 and very wild. Wild child just lost her role as heir because Jaehayrs (sp) has a child that survives. Wild Child goes nuts, steals Balerion and flies off. Nobody can find her despite everyone checking everywhere, and Balerion being very obvious. Shows up years later, landing in Kings Landing, skeletal and feverish with "something writhing inside her." Her body literally cooks from the inside out when the maesters try to treat her, eyes bursting and everything, and these parasites are found inside her, "snakes with hands" and with "human faces" and so forth, that die instantly when they drop her in ice water to stop her heart and end her suffering.

Records from the time conclude that while she claimed Balerion, she did not have the means to control him, and he took her to where he came from. Valryia. The dead freehold is very much alive, and some sorts of awful chimeras and magics are still active, and then it is noted that Balerion himself, the biggest dragon to ever be seen in Westoros, is covered in half-healed scars and a 9 foot wound on his side still dripping smoking blood.

Awesome.

[Sinekein]

Eh. Well considering the setting, that makes Valyria Australia. And the probable geolocation is probably not that far off either.

[Vol]

It's basically volcano Australia, yes. Of course, there's also the Shadowlands and Sothoryos, and the whole world there is a fucking nightmare.

[Vol]

It seems that the Targ resistance to disease had officially faded by the time of Jaehaerys' offspring. One of his daughters dies to the Shivers, a plague that hit the entire kingdom from Essos. Killed in about 2-3 days, 80% fatality rate, wiped out a ton of people high and low, no one ever figured out what spread it.

Which is interesting, because if we suppose the resistance was magic related, there were plenty of dragons in Westoros at the time, of all ages. Balerion was still alive even.

[magnuskn]

Hm, how does this book differ from the The World of Ice and Fire book?

[Raga]

Starting rereading 1984 on a whim. It's way more philosophical than I remember it being.

[Vol]

Hm, how does this book differ from the The World of Ice and Fire book?

It takes the Targ section from World and goes into greater detail. Half of it anyway, there's to be another book to get us up to Aerys II (possibly Aegon and Dany depending on how timing works out.)

It's worth it if you like the lore and care even slightly about Targ tax policy, which it literally does go into for some of them.

[magnuskn]

Hrm, not sure. I think the World of Ice and Fire book was enough in that regard. Thanks for the info!

[Vol]

Yeah, if you're not a sperg about the setting like I am, probably not that interesting.

Also seems like Targ instability starts showing up around this time too. Jaehaerys has a bunch of kids, but they have more extreme personalities than previous ones, plus 2 of the girls die in childbirth, which before only happened to...I believe his mother or aunt, who managed to get pregnant in her late 40s. Sadly, the best of his daughters, a lusty girl who rode her husband so hard during the bedding that "they heard her moans of pleasure in Duskendale" died on her third child, instead of the 20th as she wanted. They also had a son who was so introverted and a NEET that they had to ship him off to go live and die in a library at the Citadel, because he'd never do anything else but read. The other daughter that died was terrified of everything, and the king got so fed up with her shit that when she was 15, he demanded she be wed to anyone she showed any interest in.

[magnuskn]

Yeah, GRRM is hitting that "inbreeding bad" button pretty hard, it seems. ^^

[Vol]

2/3s of the way through Fire and Blood, roughly, and we're at the Dance of Dragons. The last two kings have been a cluster of proper nouns, all very clearly building to this.

I'm sympathetic to the greens, they want to go by the Great Council ruling and confirm the male heir of the queen as king, whereas the late Viserys wanted his daughter to be queen. Succession war, ho!

[Joblom]

Finally started reading Dune after a friend insisted on lending it to me. However I've found it difficult to read much lately. Instead I began listening to the audiobook for it on a 10 hour drive a week or so back. Pretty good. Initially I was put off by Dune because of its aesthetics; it came across to me as being more space opera than true science fiction, which I don't care for that much. However that wasn't doing it justice. I'm about half way through the audibook now. Will save that later portion for another one of those drives.

[Sinekein]

4.5/7 Witcher books.

The one thing I wish the author should tone down is female beauty, because the more I'm advancing, the more overwhelming and absurd it becomes. First it was Yennefer, then there was Essi, then Triss, the student whose name I don't remember atm (Shani?), then there's Filippa, Sabine, a couple more sorceresses encountered in the great gathering, and then all of them somehow get toppled by Francesca. And the majority of those would gladly get in bed with Geralt, too. I know fantasy is wish fulfillement but it's really extreme. The only sorceresses that are not supposed to make every straight man or gay woman automatically drool are the Nilfgaardian witch (who is depicted as envious because it would be unsafe for her to grow supernaturally beautiful due to where she lives), Tissaia de Vries (mostly because her OCD is oft-putting) and (thankfully) Ciri - who's not really a sorceress anyway.

The bad part is that I find the explanation, despite existing, really flimsy. Yennefer is explicitly described as being formely ugly, so becoming unbelievably stunning through magic would be some kind of revenge...but it's the case of almost every single one of those witches. And while getting the upper hand on former mistreatment can be one natural reaction, I feel it shouldn't be that common. I assume many of those would try and look good given the opportunity, but some would stop it at being "normal", "handsome" or "pretty".

Especially as most of them have interesting personalities, they aren't one-not...but apparently they're all vain. It's not a bad trait per se, Yennefer puts it to good use, but when every single woman with magical characters behaves similarly to Snow-White's Queen, it becomes a bit unfortunate.

And apparently in the games, the one witch who is repeatedly described as dressing modestly (Triss)...does not. Meh face.

I know that the series happily endorses some clichés, like dwarves being boisterous alcoholic burly craftsmen, but on other topics it tends to be subtle enough for it to be ignored. But when I got treated to Geralt's jaw dropping after seeing Francesca, even if he had already spent 3+ books surrnounded by 9s and 10s...it made me roll my eyes.

[Raga]

I just thought there were way too many of them. They all ran together in my head. There's also a running theme in the Witcher that any magic user who isn't a druid is wildly ambitious, manipulative, and involved in convoluted political machinations. This is true of all the male wizards as well. There are just very few male wizards depicted for some reason.

[Alienmorph]

Oooph, finally climbed that mountain. Finished all six books of the Uplift saga I started all the way back before Xmas.

It usually doesn't take me this long to read a novel series, but it was the first time I've read a whole sci-fi series in its native language, plus I took a couple months off while I got used to my new sleeping hours due to ze new job.

Overall, I really liked it. The second trilogy was one cohesive story, which was my main complaint against the first one, that was made of a 3 more disjointed stories. A few plot threads left loose, just in case the author wanted to make more books, which hasn't happened yet, but the main story and cast of characters gets a pretty satisfying conclusion, and the final book gets really crazy in the best way.

► Show Spoiler

Story goes from being focused on a backwater isolated world, to crazy cool stuff about dyson spheres and nitrogen-based aliens. Did not see that coming, ehe.

So yeah, still recommending the whole thing, if you can find it.

And now to read something a bit lighter, while I decide what long novel or series of 'hem to read next. Thinking Revelation Space, or The Expanse as of now.

[Vol]

Started reading "Red Tithe," the first of two 40k books about the Space Sharks chapter, and it's decent, pulpy fun so far. In the sense that a lot of people have had their heads pulped by Chaos marines who're just loving it. Really drives home how a couple of regular humans with lasguns _can_ kill a space marine in theory, in practice, you need an open field and more time to focus than he'll give you. Cramped, poorly lit corridors on a ship or in a prison mining colony, they'll rip through thousands without trouble. At one point, one of the spiky boys let's an arbiter (Judge Dredd knockoffs) unload a shotgun into his chest at point blank. It does scar his armor, and 3 pellets penetrate, but the damage is absolutely minimal.

Stormtroopers would fuck them up tho.

Also slowly finishing up Fire and Blood. The Dance of Dragons is done, now dealing with the last bit of Aegon II as he retakes his throne. It was a miserable civil war, honestly. Not fun to read about, everyone got fucked over in such depressing ways, without pause. It's like reading Transmetropolitan without the payoff, you feel dirty and unhappy about it.

[Alienmorph]

Finished a small funny book about cryptozoology, called Cryptozoologicon Vol1:



Was looking for something a bit lighter than the 2k+ pages of science fiction I've finished to read a few weeks ago, and this one definately definately was a good pick. It's basically a bestiary of famous cryptids, quite nicely illustrated too. Each entry in the book describes a creature, its proposed explanations... and then debunks it rather mercilessly, but also offers a fun, speculative alternate explanation. Lots of snarkiness for a "sciencey book" and some fun outrageous creatures, like giant lock-necked turtles and marine platypuses, to "explain" the various supposed cryptids sigtings.

It's relatively easy to find on Amazon and eBay, so if the argument interests you, look it up. It gets my thumbs up for sure.

[Joblom]

You know, I'm increasingly of the opinion that GRRM is just a better editor and/or worldbuilder than he is a storyteller. That stuff just seems to make him happier for one. I've gotten to a point where I have pretty much 0 interest in any narratives he produces, but am totally interested in things he helped build or compile.

He's like George Lucas or Dan Akryoid; very creative and imaginative, but to flourish a really good and strict editor is needed to filter their ideas.

George went off the rails when he got a new editor after publishing his third ASOIAF book. Same with Lucas and his prequel trilogy (and to a lesser degree, ROTJ). At this point I'm only invested in the narrative of those books because I want to see more updates for the wonderful Crusader Kings 2 mod.


In other news, I listened to the audibook for "The Postman" about a month ago. It was very interesting... ahead of its time in some ways. Also a rather strange book. The film, whatever its flaws or reputation, is much more grounded story. The novel actually has a lot in common with Fallout in some ways. It is clear that a lot of Fallout's ideas actually come from the Postman. It had some ideas and concepts that were prophetic in some ways, though I think the author's implementation for his ideas was a bit clunky in places and he misses the right conclusions as a result of his ideology.

[Raga]

I had a sort of epiphany the other day that pretty much every story I've ever read based on Arthurian legend I've liked a tremendous amount. I think it might be my favorite mythological thing. To that end, I'm going to give these a try:





I believe that later one is also a TV show, but I have no idea if it's any good. Along with this epiphany was the realization that I really love historical fantasy in general. Which is to say historical fiction that works really hard at accuracy, but also happens to have fantasy elements. I've only read around a dozen or so books that qualify as this subgenre (the Temeraire series, that Mary Stewart Merlin trilogy I posted earlier, and a few others) but I loved all of them. I think I'm going to make a concerted effort to hunt up some more.

[Raga]

I just finished the first of those books "The Last Kingdom" and it is good. It is about the Viking invasion of Britain in the 9th and 10th centuries and the eventual unification of the various kingdoms of England into one country.

As it turns out, reading historical novels is a better way to remember medieval history than just reading medieval history because the people are fleshed out as characters and actually memorable, whereas true records in antiquity are comparatively scanty and frequently apocryphal and hagiographical when it comes to biography . I knew vaguely who Alfred the Great was, but now I'll actually remember him and why he matters.

The main character Uhtred is a sort of irredeemable lout and brute by modern standards, but I appreciate that the author didn't pull any punches on historical accuracy and try to make him a bizarrely forward thinking and inoffensive Saxon warrior raised by Viking Danes. He behaves as you would expect a Saxon warrior raised by Viking Danes to behave.

Even so, I hope he develops some more complexity if for no other reason that the series will quickly become boring if it's nothing but an unending description of people bashing out each other's brains in shield walls and fighting blood feuds. The first book only covers his life up until age 20 so I hope he gets more interesting as he gets older and more political intrigue develops with less emphasis on highly monotonous battles.

For now, I'm enjoying it enough that I'm moving on to Book 2 "The Pale Horseman."

[Raga]

*Three post obsessive limit*

I finished the Pale Horseman and the main character did indeed start showing signs of developing and maturing so I will carry on with the series. However, I find I can't marathon on a series like I used to as a teenager because I get burnt out on it. After two or so books, I have to break it up with something else or I start getting sick of it. So gonna give one that I've been meaning to read for a while a try:

[Vol]

Been reading the first (?) Ciaphas Cain novel. It's quite entertaining seeing an entirely rational person deal with the crazy bullshit of 40k, while still being involved and having supernaturally poor luck. The writer, however, uses the tact of describing constant small physical gestures to establish a character's mood, but when it's not important to the scene. That's what I do when I write, so I see it more acutely, and it's annoying.

Otherwise, Cain is a gem. Stopping to reread a passage to figure out if he's lying about his cowardice in the moment, or genuinely being one, is more interesting than you'd think. Also the lady Inquisitor, who in-universe is editing the story as they are the memoirs of Cain, adds footnotes on many pages to give more context or comment on the events. It is entirely charming and the author is cunning for having done it.

At times, the familiarity Cain and other characters have with information within the setting seems excessive, but for the sake of brevity, and this being a more light-hearted grimdark story, I can't get too hung up on it. It's quite fun.

[Alienmorph]

Finished another trilogy of books, the West of Eden series by Harry Harrison:



It's al old-ish, but quite interesting tale set in an alternate Earth where the K-T mass extinction didn't happen and dinosaurs and other prehistoric reptiles survived 'till geologically modern times. The story is set at the beginning of one of the latest ice ages: a civilization of cold-blooded reptiles, descendent from mosasaurs, who inhabits in living cities where everything is made of selectively bred and/or genetically engeneered plants and animals, moves from the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea to the coast of Florida, looking for places away from the cold. But since a major portion of North America was gradually abandoned by reptiles as the planet cooled eons prior, now the continent sports mammalian fauna and megafauna, including primitive humans. You can guess what happens when the two species meet.

The story itself is pretty basic, but it's a very interesting setting, with some very cool world-building. And while of course you're meant to root for the humans, neither civilization is depicted as entirely right or wrong, as thei're both just trying to survive, and thei're so alien for one another that it's almost impossible for them to understand each other.

There also was a short story by the same author that imagined the reptilian civilization from this series being around in OUR timeline, 65 million of years ago when the killer asteroid hit the planet. Needless to say... it doesn't end well for them.

[Alienmorph]

Soo...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF8quxyYQHA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geyQ2IK_XY4

... started to read this series. Got all the 8 books, and already finished the first one. It's pretty well written indeed, you can definately tell the writer is an history buff (a history teacher to be precise) and did his homeworks on the human side of the conflict. The aliens are well written too, and most of the books are very character-focused, so even going through those two video-summaries you're not spoiling yourselves much.

Plus... there's other 4 books set AFTER WWII...

Yeahh... probably gonna take me a while to get through everything, but when I do I'll write something more in-depths.

Still, liking what I've read so far.

[Alienmorph]

As expected. It's April, and I'm halfway through the WorldWar series. I read a chapter or two every night before sleeping, which considering I'm reading it in english instead than my own language (there IS an italian edition, but it's pretty abysmal from what I've seen and hard to find, so I went to the source). Still enjoying my time reading through it. At the end of Book4 the alternative version of WWII with the aliens involved is over, most characters and main plotlines are resolved, but there's plenty set up for a continuation. Feels like the season finale of a good sci-fi show.

Now onto the sequel series Colonization, set a couple decades later. Quite curious to see who's gonna show up again from the first half of the story, and how hot the alternative version of the Cold War is gonna get... considering a bunch of major cities get nuked into oblivious even during alternative WWII, I expect... quite a lot.

[magnuskn]

Been reading the first (?) Ciaphas Cain novel. It's quite entertaining seeing an entirely rational person deal with the crazy bullshit of 40k, while still being involved and having supernaturally poor luck. The writer, however, uses the tact of describing constant small physical gestures to establish a character's mood, but when it's not important to the scene. That's what I do when I write, so I see it more acutely, and it's annoying.

Otherwise, Cain is a gem. Stopping to reread a passage to figure out if he's lying about his cowardice in the moment, or genuinely being one, is more interesting than you'd think. Also the lady Inquisitor, who in-universe is editing the story as they are the memoirs of Cain, adds footnotes on many pages to give more context or comment on the events. It is entirely charming and the author is cunning for having done it.

At times, the familiarity Cain and other characters have with information within the setting seems excessive, but for the sake of brevity, and this being a more light-hearted grimdark story, I can't get too hung up on it. It's quite fun.

I can second that sentiment, although I personally didn't have a problem with the "small physical gestures" thing. The books get a bit repetitive after a while, especially the latter ones, where in one the writer misses the opportunity to use a more interesting plot thread, instead sticking to the more rote one. The last one was pretty good again, however. The repetition is kinda charming in a way, though, because you want to return to spend time with these characters and their mannerisms.

In general I prefer the ones where Cain is still a commissar with the 597th Valhallan Soldiers, although paradoxically the two best novels are the ones where he is not, i.e. Death or Glory and The Last Ditch. These two (and the connecting novel Duty Calls) are where the novel series is at its absolute best and I can highly recommend getting the Ciaphas Cain: Defender of the Imperium omnibus, which contains all three novels.

[Vol]

@Alien: Do you normally read English editions? I would enjoy reading a Japanese novel in Japanese, but the time it would take to translate would be exponentially longer than my interest in any given sentence.

@magnus: It's a useful way of updating a character's position and mood, really. The repetition of those gestures, and plot beats, is the weak point of the stories. Though it mostly only bothers me in conversations that could stand to be truncated. A few pages to talk to some random low-rank officers to demonstrate Cain "pretends" to be a caring, informed commissar, say. Though given these are meant to be individual stories, rather an omnibus, I suppose you have to repeat these moments for that exact reason.

I have the first 2 (I think) omnibuses. Haven't finished the genestealers on the planet of plateaus yet, been reading Meditations and other light reading. Need to work on that. All around improvement, dammit.

[Alienmorph]

@Alien: Do you normally read English editions? I would enjoy reading a Japanese novel in Japanese, but the time it would take to translate would be exponentially longer than my interest in any given sentence.

Not usually, but in the last couple years I've been doing it a lot more. Mostly because I keep finding sci-fi novels and comics that either didn't get an italian edition or that they only got the one, and it's so rare and pricy to get that I'm better off looking for one of the english versions. First few times was a bit of a chore... there's a big difference between reading a few forum posts and 4 hundred something pages novel in a language that isn't your own, but now I'm doing much better, and it's one more way to keep my english fresh so... yeah, think I'll keep doing it.

[magnuskn]

@magnus: It's a useful way of updating a character's position and mood, really. The repetition of those gestures, and plot beats, is the weak point of the stories. Though it mostly only bothers me in conversations that could stand to be truncated. A few pages to talk to some random low-rank officers to demonstrate Cain "pretends" to be a caring, informed commissar, say. Though given these are meant to be individual stories, rather an omnibus, I suppose you have to repeat these moments for that exact reason.

Good advice, thanks.

I have the first 2 (I think) omnibuses. Haven't finished the genestealers on the planet of plateaus yet, been reading Meditations and other light reading. Need to work on that. All around improvement, dammit.

The middle book of the second omnibus (that's the one where you're at) is also pretty good, with the Sororitas and all that. The one after that is the single best book of the entire series. I think you'll agree when you get there.

Also, unrelated: Two Harry Dresden books this year, bitches! Yeah!

[Alienmorph]

Aaaand done with the Worldwar series. Wow... that... was a project. Again xD

Overally, I'm quite glad I went trhough it, it's a long series, but it's very interesting and well-written. Although the second half of it was rather slow.

► Show Spoiler

The 3 "Colonization" books, set 20 after the alternate version of WWII, mostly focus on humanity and the aliens learning to live togheter, and how things in that regard are made harder by invasive livestock species, terrorists and guerrilla warriors in the Middle Eas and China, oh and by the Nazi trying to invade Poland again and then getting nuked almost to near-extinction. But there is no major ongoing conflict and most of the Colonization series focuses around the character and the general world-building elements, which are both very well written and interesting, like I said.

The final book, Homeward Bound, is about the first human expedition towards the alien home-planet, in the Tau Ceti system, and it sees even less action than the Colonization trilogy, as it's basically all focused around the diplomatic effort to ensure the free human nations and the aliens don't get in a second huge conflict that might spell doom for both civilizations. The most disappointing thing of the final book is how several characters from the rest of the series are only barely mentioned, but given the story they went for, I have no idea how it could have been done better.

The series concludes on an ambiguos, but hopeful note, with the US discovering FTL travel and officially gaining the technological edge over the aliens, which terrifies them, but also gives them no choice but to finally start treating humanity as equal to them and not as just barbarians from another world, thus offering better prospects for peace and long-term surival for both species.

[SciFlyBoy]

I've started reading 'A Tale of Two Cities'. It's my second Dickens story.

I'm three chapters in and I think it's a satire, because usually satires takes me the longest to figure out the point and I haven't gotten to a point yet.

I don't know the edition I'm reading, there's no publishing date, but my grandma's maiden name is in it, so it's before 1941.

So far, I'm following the whereabouts of a mail carriage in England. I've never seen so many run-on sentences. I'll comment more when I'm farther in the book.

[Vol]

Finishing 'Thoughtful Theism' after sitting on it for a good long while. It's an interesting book if you're in that tentative stage of doubting your own theism or atheism, and want the simplified opinion of someone who has studied a great deal of texts you never will. Goes over the Aquinas proofs in some detail, then spends a great deal of time lambasting the New Atheists (Dawkins, Krauss, etc) for their intellectual dishonesty. Also applauds them for some very good points they make. For the most part, remains firmly in the natural theist camp, but the author is a Christian (Takes some shots at Luther).

Could be distilled down to, "It is rational to state that a creator God whom is aware of humanity exists, science and religion are not oil and water, fuck the New Atheists, and it's distressing how far the western intellectual tradition has fallen from centuries past."

Good as a springboard in deeper topics.

@Sci: Satire usually builds up with me, then a specific sentence will make the flip switch. Few odd lines, begin to wonder if the author is taking the piss or earnest, then bam, they lay a joke on too thick, and the charade is revealed and I feel so witty. I don't actually know if that novel is satire or not, mind you.

[Alienmorph]

Just finished another trilogy of books, courtesy of the second lockdown:



I stumbled across this series almost by accident, while looking for other things to read, but I thought it was intriguing and I found the books for a decent price on eBay, soooo... I dug in.

It's set into a (mostly) peaceful and optimistic future, where mankind has managed to survive the fuckups of the 20th and 21st century, and starts to make its way into space, and even into becoming a multi-species mixture, with humans turning themselves into mer-people or using various types and nanotech and genetic engeneering to live for centuries instead of decades. Each book is set further into the future and further away from Earth, and it follows through a few generations the Akinya lineage, a family of african origin (in this series, Africa near the end of the 21st century becomes a federation of countries and manages to become a major player in humanity's future) who turns out to be pivotal for the future of humanity and its offshoots. It's hard-scifi, the author has degrees in physics or astronomy I believe, but it's very well written and optimistic on a very fundamental level, which these days, with even Star Trek being turned into a sad dystopic parody of itself, feels like we could use more of. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

[Ragabul]

Also got a lot of reading done. Some of the highlights:



I am slowly going through the Malazan Book of the Fallen series which is a monster of a series. 10 books and each are in the 800+ page variety. I have read the first four but am pacing myself on them so I don't burn out. They are probably the most complex books I've ever read in terms of number of characters and overlapping plot lines. The author also seems to pride himself on *not* giving exposition or not building up so he just dumps you into the middle of this extremely complicated world and leaves you to figure out how it works for yourself. Because of this they are borderline impossible to listen to on audiobook for the first 2 books or so without missing a huge percentage of what's going on. The first book, Gardens of the Moon, is also very slow but somewhere around the middle of book two it really starts hitting its stride. It probably has the best and most epic writing of battles and military campaigns of anything I've ever read. It's also an extremely interesting world from a worldbuilding perspective and the guy is a talented writer. He does not bog down under the weight of his own complexity as Robert Jordan unfortunately did at times. It is a very good epic fantasy series but it is also extremely dense. I think the effort of getting into it is very worth it, however, because it has excellent payback.



A very good historical fantasy novel about the Napoleonic Wars but with wizards. The magic system is very nerdy and bookish and complex which are my favorite types. The writer does great writing in period appropriate sounding style. She also does an excellent job writing about Faerie, which like unicorns, have mostly been stripped of all their wildness, danger, and feyness by modern writers (as have vampires) and thus been rendered banal and trivial. Faeries, which are really more like Tolkien high elves than little wing-a-ling tinkerbell type creatures are dangerous, unpredictable, and entertaining in her books The other book is a book of short stories written in the same world. There is a pretty decent BBC miniseries based on this novel as well.



A crazy book written by some madwoman who apparently wanted to prove she could write a Jane Austen novel using dragons. This is so unbelievably stupid that it should not work, but it absolutely does. I read this one mostly for the novelty factor and was pretty impressed she pulled it off. The story is also perfectly decent on its own merits as well, novelty aside.

I also read a ton of nonfiction or continuations of series I had already started but that's some of the better new stuff.

*Edit*

I am also currently reading:



It's a bit of slog to be honest. It hasn't aged very well and the stories are very redundant. However, it's also a huge hole in my "history of fantasy" nerd cred so I'm pushing myself through it. I think I will try Solomon Kane next. I have a feeling I will enjoy those more.

[Alienmorph]

I've only ever read a few stories with Conan... I can see the appeal, but frankly the character is so one noted that the setting is the thing I've found the most interesting. The only story I remember enjoying in its entirety was the one homaging Lovecraft's work where Conan ends up wandering in the ruins of a pre-human civilization and he's a bit less of his usual one note unstoppable badass.

[Ragabul]

Yeah, Howard was apparently friends with Lovecraft and even wrote some stories in the Lovecraft mythos. The entire magic system in Conan has a very Lovecraftian feel. The sorts of powers that evil wizards (who are the bad guys in like 75% of the stories) traffic with are extremely Cthulhuesque. The setting is interesting because it's basically just a heavily mythologized thin overlay of Earth in a made up past time period. It's kind of a cheat because it means Howard doesn't really have to do much worldbuilding but can just borrow from barely disguised real world stuff and stick in some fantasy elements (the country of Vendhya, south of the Hemelian Mountains for crying out loud? There is also a country called Iranistan).

This is in some ways really trivial but in others is damn impressive. I am *constantly* having to look up words I don't know and they are almost invariably highly specific, obscure historical terms. Voivode is one I just had to look up. So on the one hand his worldbuilding stunt is super cheap but on another it's super impressive because his detailed knowledge of the history of apparently every random place on Earth lets him flesh things out in stupid detail. He also committed suicide at the age of 30 and had no particular education in history or writing to speak of which means he managed to amass all that knowledge at an insanely young age on his own, which is also damn impressive.

It's one reason I want to read some other of his stuff when I am done. Conan is as you say just so one note that it's stifling but there is clearly so much potential of what this writer *could* do.

He's also from my neck of the woods in North Texas which I did not know and was a nice surprise. And apparently Cimmeria (at least in the way it looks) is loosely inspired by the terrain around the Texas Hill Country near Fredericksburg. Fantasyland almost always looks like England or New Zealand or Norway so something closer to home is kind of nice.

[Sinekein]

I read Strange & Norrell last year, but I have very few memories of it...I spent most of the time thinking that Naomi Novik's Téméraire series (basically Napoleonic Wars WITH DRAGONS) was way more entertaining.

I also never appreciated the character of Norrell, as we are never given a reason for him to be such an uptight asshole. I mean, some people don't need an explanation to behave like this, but in his case from a Doylist perspective I felt it was only a convenient way to slow down the story whenever required.

[Ragabul]

I probably had more fun reading Temeraire (my old forum avatar was actually some fan art of Temeraire), but I think the Susanna Clarke book is a bit more impressive from a craft perspective. Temeraire is in many ways a more modern book series at least thematically and Clarke is really trying to make everything about her book feel old.

Also, I don't think you are meant to like or understand Norrell in some relatable sense or he was supposed to have an explanation as such. He serves as the book's antagonist and I think the most you are supposed to get by the end is some vague sympathy for how small and pathetic he really is. The only thing that makes him remotely redeemable is that he becomes desperate and *has* to get over some of his own neuroses, but that's hardly a very laudable reason for character change. It's a slow book anyway so I guess I didn't notice him being used to slow it down. And I found him plausible because I have encountered people in RL that are that threatened by not being the absolute best at something or not having complete control over some enterprise. I used to have one for a boss actually and it was hands down the most miserable job I ever had.

My favorite Naomi Novik book is actually probably Uprooted. I also read Spinning Silver but found it such a huge downgrade from her usual quality that it sort of put me off of her entirely. I think she has another book out now but just from a brief read of the description, it seems like another Spinning Silver type book and thus doesn't look very promising. She seems to have jumped full onto the "feminist retelling of fairy tales" bandwagon that is so vogue right now. I can only read so many of those before I get sick of them. And just as with most other fantasy, I actually usually find that the best feminist fantasy is older stuff (Ursula K. Le Guin, Vonda McIntyre, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and so on).

[Sinekein]

Uprooted was very good too, and an interesting twist of the fantasy romance genre.

I read MZB's books (Ladies of the Lake, that's it?) roughly fifteen years ago, so I can't speak much about them anymore, even though I remember enjoying them. Haven't gotten into Ursula Le Guin, Earthsea is sitting in my library yet untouched. I don't know Vonda McIntyre. I would add Lois McMaster Bujold to the list even if her craft is Science-Fiction, but it's feminist sci-fi and Vorkosigan it's one of the greatest book sagas ever created.

As for "newer feminist stuff", I read the first book of both the Inheritance Cycle and Broken Earth by N.K. Jemisin, and while the former was insufferable, the latter was very interesting - also "fantasy-sci-fi", but centered around geological themes which is rather uncommon, plus the plot is very well crafted. But in her case, she wrote the book I disliked first, so in my opinion she has been improving over time.

However I tend to prefer female fantasy authors because they tend to craft more character-driven stories (like the Liveship by Robin Hobb). I also tend to prefer the kind of violence they depict, many male authors tend to enjoy going overboard with sadistic details (Scott Lynch, Abercrombie, GRRM, Rothfuss...okay, maybe not Rothfuss, but he has so many other flaws I count him anyway).

[Ragabul]

I read that one Lois McMaster Bujold book a couple of years ago (Curse of Chalion) and like it quite a bit. I have been meaning to read the sequel. Her sci-fi is also on my list but since I like fantasy more than sci-fi, I tend to have to make a particular point of reading sci-fi and it only ever gets like 10% or 20% of my reading time for any given year.

N. K. Jemisin is tricky. I personally think she is one of the most overrated writers in fantasy at the moment, but you have to be careful how you criticize her because you will get hit with the usual fanboy/fangirl defensiveness that any really popular fantasy writer has but also with accusations that you dislike her because you are a reactionary or racist or whatever. I usually just dodge talking about her with some generic "it didn't do much for me" type statement and move on. I do concede that she got *way* better between Inheritance (which I thought was hot garbage) and the newer trilogy which got up to the level of "fine."

I don't think I clearly prefer male or female authors anymore. Once upon a time, I probably would have said I preferred male because my favorite fantasy is still Tolkienesque stuff and male writers just seem more likely to write stuff like that. My tastes have expanded enough that I read a lot of non Tolkienesque things and besides a lot of that stuff is really pretty awful and you have to shift through a bunch of crap to find the good stuff. Grimdark violence such as gets put in like A Song of Ice and Fire is just sort of puerile and I tend to roll my eyes at it. But I actually really like well written battles and stories about wars and such so violence as such is not a put off. I do tend to prefer the very traditional "here is a guy on a quest" type framework though and I also prefer fantasy that has non human races and a lot of magic. Most of that kind of stuff is written by dudes, but at this point in time, there has been so much written by women as well that seeing a male or female name on the cover has sort of become meaningless. It really doesn't have any impact on what I chose to read or not. Most fantasy that specifically sells itself as having been written by a woman I have not liked that much.

The Temeraire series is actually a perfect example of the sort of good "genderless" book I tend to like the most. Female writer but her main characters are male. The story is largely about wars and battles and there are some truly epic fight scenes but there's also a lot of character development and down time dealing with other things. Deals with modern "identity" themes but abstracts them enough (by focusing on dragons) that it doesn't feel like a sermon or something written to score morality points. World building is interesting and complex without getting bogged down in pedantic detail (which seems to be something male writers are more likely to do).

Temeraire didn't really feel like a book series written by a woman in any particular way to me. I'd say any time I come away thinking "this was written by a dude" (Rothfuss) or "this was written by a woman" (Jemisin) that those pretty consistently end up being books I like a lot less. However, even this is not universal. Bernard Cornwell is a very "a dude wrote this" author and I like his books and MZB is a very "a woman wrote this" and I like what I have read of her.

Another good "genderless" series of the type I am talking about is just Harry Potter.

To go back to Conan, it's a very "a dude wrote this" set of stories and that's part of its problem.

[magnuskn]

I've really never made a difference between male and female writers mentally, except in the urban fantasy genre, where female writers predominantly seem to favor romance as a heavily exploited theme, with of course some hot vampire and werewolf fawning over the female main character.

My favorite author at this time, and for the last decade, has been Jim Butcher, who writes the Dresden Files and some fantasy books (Codex Alera and Cinder Spires). He's one of the very few writers who actively becomes better with each book from him, although the last three Dresden Files seem to have plateaued at a very high level. Most writers seem to lose the plot of their long-form book series after a while, but not him. He's as close to the "perfect writer" I've found, with no off-putting writing traits, like for example David Weber has.

George R.R. Martin used to be my favorite writer for some time, but I lost a ton of respect for him with his infinite delays and the last two Song of Ice & Fire books, which were honestly much worse than the first three. Before that (talking about 20 years ago now), Michael A. Stackpole was my favorite author, because he was the main writer for the BattleTech books and always brought the good political stuff in them.

Other than that, I like Brandon Sanderson, David Weber, Naomi Novik, Aaron Allston (sadly deceased), Robert Weinberg (ditto), Victor Milan (ditto), Patricia Briggs, Sandy Mitchell, Peter F. Hamilton and Jay Kristoff. There are lots of writers I've read between the years, but these are the ones who've stuck out as being extraordinary and memorable in some way.

I kinda went through the urban fantasy genre in 2019 and came away with positive impressions of some series, like Jim C. Hines Libriomancer series and Rick Riordan's Magnus Chase series, but not enough to check out their other work.

I kinda want to to go for some exploration in the sci-fi genre, with the emphasis on books which have long on-going storylines and involve space battles. I'll have to start looking into that, soon.

[Ragabul]

I don't know that I can say I have favorite authors anymore. It's more like "what authors keep mattering to me a lot as I get older through thick and thin."

In that case, it would definitely have to go to C. S. Lewis in the #1 spot and probably Tolkien as #2. Larry McMurtry specifically for the novel Lonesome Dove and Richard Adams specifically for the novel Watership Down are also ones that have stuck with me for years and years and years. If I need to provide an answer to "what's your favorite book" for some reason, I will usually give one of those two novels. I think Ursula K Le Guin will eventually become one of these as well because I first read her like 5 years ago and find myself still thinking about her stuff all the time. If you read nothing else, the short story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" which is a very short, easy read is haunting in a way very few stories are. At the popcorn fiction level, I consistently love the writing of Tad Williams especially Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn and the Otherland series.

There's also some nonfiction which has served such a bedrock of my thinking for consistently years now that it should probably go on the list but these people aren't really my "favorite" authors in the sense I think people really mean.