[September] What are you reading?

[S. Baldrick]

Death Angel's Shadow by Karl Edward Wagner

 

[Gregor]

Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie. His style is very gripping and I look forward to future publications. In my car I have the first Sookie Stackhouse novel. I started reading it after watching a few episodes of True Blood. It's pretty good as a casual read.

How are you liking this book in comparison to his First Law trilogy?

 

[Gregor]

I am currently finishing off "A Cave of Black Ice" by J.V. Jones. I picked it up on a recommendation from a friend and was a bit skeptical at first. However, I really ended up enjoying this book. The author's portrayal of a northern barbaric clan-based culture is top-notch and has served for some major inspiration in an upcoming 3.5 campaign I am going to run. Her writing and her world are very deep and the style of fantasy is distinctly sword and sorcery. I highly recommend it.

I have also started re-reading "Diplomacy" by Henry Kissinger which I pull out of my bookshelf every few years ... it seems to coincide with how often I get big postal Diplomacy board-games running.

Since "Dance With Dragons", the next title by George RR Martin and "Republic of Thieves", the next work by Scott Lynch are delayed well into 2010 (I'm shocked! ) I am now poised to start into "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss and "The Assassin's Apprentice" by Robin Hobb.

Question for you fellow readers out there: Is the Wheel of Time series worth checking out? I never managed to start into it and I have heard varied reviews.

 

[Mallus]

I'm taking a break from SF/F and reading The Inimitable Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse.

 

[Wombat]

Just finishing Mean Spirits by Will Kingdom (Phil Rickman) and preparing for my annual October reading schedule

 

[delericho]

I am currently finishing off "A Cave of Black Ice" by J.V. Jones. I picked it up on a recommendation from a friend and was a bit skeptical at first. However, I really ended up enjoying this book.

I really enjoyed the first two books in this series. The third one is rather weaker (there was a long real-time gap between them, and it seems the author has somewhat lost the plot in between-times). Hopefully, the series will end on a high note with book #4 (soon).

Question for you fellow readers out there: Is the Wheel of Time series worth checking out? I never managed to start into it and I have heard varied reviews.

If you haven't started it, I would strongly advise staying away. The series starts okay, then gets really, really good from books 2-5 or so. Having read that far, I was in the position where I really needed to stick with it to see how it ends...

Unfortunately, from book 7 or 8, the author seems to badly lose focus, and the whole thing starts to drift. There's at least one 1,000 page volume in which the most exciting thing to happen is "Elayne drinks a cup of tea"! (No, really.)

It's mostly the "Wheel of Time" that has soured me on the "whole giant sprawling fantasy epic" thing. Well, that and the "Sword of Truth" series by Terry Goodkind, and the constant delays in "A Song of Ice and Fire" (which also seems to be spinning beyong the control of the author). Now, I won't start a series until the end is at least in sight, and generally favour trilogies and stand-alone novels. Frankly, there are very few stories that require more words to tell than "Lord of the Rings" that are really worth the telling.

 

[drothgery]

Unfortunately, from book 7 or 8, the author seems to badly lose focus, and the whole thing starts to drift.

It's not book 7 or 8. It's book 8, period. Book 7, A Crown of Swords, is one of the best in the series, and vastly underrated. Book 8, The Path of Daggers, badly needed another round of editing and was probably the weakest in the series.

There's at least one 1,000 page volume in which the most exciting thing to happen is "Elayne drinks a cup of tea"! (No, really.)

No, there's not. The only 1,000 page volumes are books 4-6, at least in the US paperbacks (in the US hardcovers, there are no 1,000 page volumes). Crossroads of Twilight, or the WoT book where nothing happens (Book 10), was under 700 pages in hardback. With larger than normal type and line spacing (also seen in the US hardcover of The Path of Daggers, which is by far the shortest in the series, but isn't much smaller on a bookshelf).

If I hadn't started WoT yet, I'd hold off until The Gathering Storm has been out for a while and most people have an idea of how Brandon Sanderson is finishing the series. I rather like Sanderson's other writing, but his style really doesn't have a lot in common with Jordan's (it's almost certainly going to be very obvious what RJ wrote before he died and what Sanderson wrote). One thing you can be pretty sure of is that Sanderson will be done with the mainline WoT books with book 14 in 2011; he is not a slow writer.

 

[delericho]

No, there's not. The only 1,000 page volumes are books 4-6, at least in the US paperbacks (in the US hardcovers, there are no 1,000 page volumes). Crossroads of Twilight, or the WoT book where nothing happens (Book 10), was under 700 pages in hardback.

Yeah, okay, I exaggerated the page count somewhat. Still, the series runs to 11 volumes, each several hundred pages in length, and three of the most recent four volumes have been dire, IMO.

My advice remains: if you haven't started, I would stay away. There are better uses for all that time.

 

[Gregor]

My advice remains: if you haven't started, I would stay away. There are better uses for all that time.

Any suggestions on what to read with all that newly acquired spare time on my hands? Im always looking for good reading suggestions in the fantasy genre.

 

[delericho]

Any suggestions on what to read with all that newly acquired spare time on my hands? Im always looking for good reading suggestions in the fantasy genre.

It's a tricky question, both because I don't know what you've read, and also because an awful lot of fantasy is, frankly, bad.

If you enjoyed J.V. Jones' "Cavern of Black Ice", you might want to check out her previous trilogy "The Book of Words", which I quite enjoyed. It's not as good, but still interesting. (It's also set in a different part of the same world, and there are a couple of links between the two series.) She also wrote a stand-alone novel, "The Barbed Coil", but I didn't enjoy that as much.

Bernard Cornwell wrote a trilogy about Arthur that is very good. The first book is "The Winter King". It's sort-of historical fiction, but there are definate fantasy elements. (He also has various other series, including the Sharpe novels, but those are definately historical fiction rather than fantasy.)

I was also a big fan of David Gemmell's work, although he did tend to retell essentially the same story over and over. My recommendations would be to go for "Legend" and his "Troy" trilogy, and dip into the rest if you want. In much the same vein is Conn Iggulden's Emperor series (about Julius Caesar), although that's sort-of historical fiction. (He's taken some serious liberties with actual history.) Oh, and the "Black Company" novels by Glen Cook.

Pretty much anything by Neil Gaiman is good, and China Mieville is considered one of the most inventive new fantasy authors. ("Perdido Street Station" was fascinating, but a very tough read; "The Scar" I enjoyed immensely, while "Iron Council" wasn't quite as good, IMO.)

"Watership Down" was surprisingly good, as was "The Princess Bride". And the Conan stories (though only the ones by Howard) were excellent.

Does any of that help?