What are you Reading? Noctilucent November 2019 edition

[Kramodlog]

That sounds, if you'll pardon the repetition, refreshingly fresh. When you finish please let us know your thoughts and if you'd recommend it.

I can draw lots of parallels with Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer. Both authors are scholars and both are inspired by ancient periods of Western history (Enlightment and Classical). Both reference Western philosophers. Both also use a more literary writing styles (to mixed, but mostly positive, results). Both try to envision alternative to our current liberal economies and democracies. It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, and both authors, Palmer and Lucazeau, try to take up that challenge.

I'll keep you posted, but as far as I know, there aren't any English translation of Latium.

 

[KahlessNestor]

I finished The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett, and also finished the Ron Chernow biography of U. S. Grant.

Now I'm reading the next Pratchett book The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents. For my next "in between" book, I will be reading The Right Side of History by Ben Shapiro.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Finished Andre Norton's Witch World. This book clicked for me in a way that prior attempts at Norton's writings had not.

Next is Feist's Magician: Master.

 

[RobShanti]

I'm currently reading The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the stuff they don't teach you in school. Next on my list will be Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation Against America by Mary Grabar, actually refuting the stuff they teach you in school. They're actually quite inspirational for RPGs, given that truth is often more dramatic than fiction.

 

[carrot]

Just finished The Wolf’s Call by Anthony Ryan. its a continuation to the Blood Song trilogy, but seems to be suffering from the law of diminishing returns. It was all a bit meh, and didn’t really hold my attention. It did get better towards the end, enough for me to interested in the next one, but I doubt I’ll rush to read it.
Dispel Illusion by Mark Lawrence is my current read, and this is a much more engrossing novel so far...

 

[Celebrim]

The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
Three Parts Dead by by Max Gladstone
An Army at Dawn by Rick Atkinson

It's actually been a good month for me. The last three years have produced very few winners in my reading, but none of the three currently on my desk is a loser, all have been fun, and 'An Army at Dawn' is exceptionally well written.

I do continue to feel a dearth of good science fiction. Kowal's story is fun, but it's not good science fiction. Science fiction (and even fantasy) to me feels increasingly like it has become a set of trappings that someone hangs on some other genre to make it flashier.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I absolutely loved this book. The Craft Sequence is great; the urban fantasy world-building is so imaginative and visually appealing.

Three Parts Dead by by Max Gladstone

 

[Celebrim]

I absolutely loved this book. The Craft Sequence is great; the urban fantasy world-building is so imaginative and visually appealing.

It was better than I expected. I enjoyed it, but for slightly different reasons than you. I found the world-building a bit trite, and felt that I was in someone's slightly experimental home-brew Eberron like setting, but thought that the characters had a Pratchett-like heroic appeal, but played straight and without the goofy humor, and I was quite willing to root for their success and happiness. I particularly liked the chain smoking junior priest of the god of fire slash mechanical engineer.

 

[Nellisir]

Finished up Judge Dee At Work last night; more good solid mysteries. There's a lot to mine in the Judge Dee books for a campaign or adventure.

I'll probably read Abhorsen next; I've had it for a little while but have been miffed because I ordered a "very good" used copy and got a beat-up, barely-held-together, ex-library copy, complete with stickers and stuff. Ah well.

 

[Blue]

Finished Andre Norton's Witch World. This book clicked for me in a way that prior attempts at Norton's writings had not.

Next is Feist's Magician: Master.

When I was a pre-teenager ("tween" didn't exist yet) back in the early 80s I really liked her work, but that may have been a reflection of what was available in my town library back then. Zero Stone and it's sequel Uncharted Stars are the ones I remember. My first taste of psionics, and what was effectively an Ioun Stone.

But recently I tried to read one of her books and I couldn't finish it. Heck, I couldn't even middle it. Don't know if it was that book or just a more experienced palette and matured tastes. I do find that many of my childhood favorites don't carry as a adult.