What are you reading in 2023?

[ichabod]

Finished the Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. It was okay. I did like the characters, I thought they were well done. The world building was not bad. It's an intrigue book, which is not my usual fare. I gave it a shot, but I was not really impressed with the intrigue. Almost all of it seemed really obvious.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I finished reading Merritt's The Ship of Ishtar. Way more action-packed than some of the other Merritt tales I've read. Still has his signature weirdness, strong dichotomy of good and evil (both frequently embodied in two women).

Now I'm reading Robert E. Howard's Conan, the first Ace Books release that is.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

About 100 pages into Jade City by Fonda Lee. It's ok so far. People do rave about this series though, so hoping it picks up

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Finished Doc Holliday: A Family History and, man, only family members would care as much as the authors do about what Doc's extended family were doing back in Georgia. (Not getting into fights at the OK Corral, for one thing.)

A very dry book that will no doubt be the basis for more entertaining books. Not really recommended unless you intend to write one of those books yourself.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

About 100 pages into Jade City by Fonda Lee. It's ok so far. People do rave about this series though, so hoping it picks up

I liked it, but would call it a good read, not a great one. Like a lot of books that go over 400 pages, I think it could've been shaved down to a tighter story. Worldbuilding is tops in it, though.

 

[Mistwell]

Listening to The Stranger Times, which is a very funny and entertaining fantasy novel (first in a series). The reader is excellent too.

A weekly newspaper dedicated to the weird and the wonderful (but mostly the weird), it is the go-to publication for the unexplained and inexplicable.

At least that's their pitch. The reality is rather less auspicious. Their editor is a drunken, foul-tempered and foul-mouthed husk of a man who thinks little of the publication he edits. His staff are a ragtag group of misfits. And as for the assistant editor . . . well, that job is a revolving door - and it has just revolved to reveal Hannah Willis, who's got problems of her own.

When tragedy strikes in her first week on the job The Stranger Times is forced to do some serious investigating. What they discover leads to a shocking realisation: some of the stories they'd previously dismissed as nonsense are in fact terrifyingly real. Soon they come face-to-face with darker forces than they could ever have imagined.

The Stranger Times is the first novel from C.K. McDonnell, the pen name of Caimh McDonnell. It combines his distinctive dark wit with his love of the weird and wonderful to deliver a joyous celebration of how truth really can be stranger than fiction.

 

[Parmandur]

Well, finally finished listening to the audio book for Memory of Light. Liste ING to the Wheel of Time took me all year, taking breaks for other material.

The ending sticks the landing so, so well. Still cannot believe that the sprawling, byzantine morass thst is thisnseries ended up having a coherent ending.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Well, finally finished listening to the audio book for Memory of Light. Liste ING to the Wheel of Time took me all year, taking breaks for other material.

The ending sticks the landing so, so well. Still cannot believe that the sprawling, byzantine morass thst is thisnseries ended up having a coherent ending.

Maybe having Sanderson tie the knot was the secret sauce?

 

[Parmandur]

Maybe having Sanderson tie the knot was the secret sauce?

Possibly: I do think that Jordan could have finished it, but maybe not in just 3 books. Looking back, he was writing at a pretty good clip: in 15 years, he published 12 huge novels. And knowing the ending now, and knowing how much was Jordan's intended ending...he was getting there.

But Sanderson is way, way more organized, that's for sure.

 

[Autumnal]

Our Oldest Companions by Pat Shipman is about the beginnings of domestication, and is a delight. She delves into archeology, genetics, and other angles into what’s knowable and known about the wolf-dogs who chose to settle with us and how we’ve co-evolved to make better use of each other. Along the way, she offers up insights that often made me think “oh, uh, yeah, I should have seen that”. For example, she points out that the ancestral wolf-dogs likely weren’t much interested in our ancestors’ fires, because they had the fur and metabolism to survive fine without. More likely, she suggests, our ancestors noticed how wonderfully warm the wolf-dogs were and lured them into spaces warmer than they’d have preferred with bribes like yummy things to eat.

A really enjoyable read, and one I highly recommend.