What are you reading in 2025?

[Richards]

I just finished Jonathan Maberry's Relentless, so now it's on to the next in the series, Cave 13. This time Joe Ledger and the Rogue Team International is up against some newly-discovered Dead Sea Scrolls that might actually contain workable magic. (They've been up against zombies, vampires, alien technology, cyborgs, and more, so why not?)

Johnathan

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

So, as expected, Lucy Undying is fantastic, especially for people who know the original Dracula well.

Dracula, of course, is an epistolary novel. Which is to say, it's told through diaries, letters, a ship's log, newspaper articles, etc. And Lucy Undying, in addition to saying "wow, Bram Stoker and his characters were extremely sexist and gross toward Lucy Westernra" also asks the question "what if some of those first person narratives in Dracula were lies?"

What results is not only a feminist take on Dracula -- if Vampire: The Masquerade is vampirism as addiction/STDs, Lucy Undying is vampirism as rape culture -- but also a great nesting doll full of twists (don't skip ahead to see whose name is on each chapter, as you'll spoil the very fun surprises).

As always, I think vampire novelists are almost always highly influenced by vampire RPGs. Not only do we have memory loss as a key component of vampires (as in Thousand Year Old Vampire, where it's the dominant theme), but we also get an amazing twist on a blood cult (this book should probably be required reading for anyone who wants to pull off a non-cliched blood cult in their VtM/VtR game), references to "the Final Death" and other items that read very much like someone inhaled a whole lot of White Wolf or Onyx Path back in the day.

I am a tough audience for vampire fiction and I think this probably the most satisfying vampire novel I can remember reading since the original Dracula.

 

[prabe]

Dracula, of course, is an epistemological novel.

I hate to be that guy, but I think the word you want here is "epistolary."

 

[gban007]

So, as expected, Lucy Undying is fantastic, especially for people who know the original Dracula well.

Dracula, of course, is an epistolary novel. Which is to say, it's told through diaries, letters, a ship's log, newspaper articles, etc. And Lucy Undying, in addition to saying "wow, Bram Stoker and his characters were extremely sexist and gross toward Lucy Westernra" also asks the question "what if some of those first person narratives in Dracula were lies?"

What results is not only a feminist take on Dracula -- if Vampire: The Masquerade is vampirism as addiction/STDs, Lucy Undying is vampirism as rape culture -- but also a great nesting doll full of twists (don't skip ahead to see whose name is on each chapter, as you'll spoil the very fun surprises).

As always, I think vampire novelists are almost always highly influenced by vampire RPGs. Not only do we have memory loss as a key component of vampires (as in Thousand Year Old Vampire, where it's the dominant theme), but we also get an amazing twist on a blood cult (this book should probably be required reading for anyone who wants to pull off a non-cliched blood cult in their VtM/VtR game), references to "the Final Death" and other items that read very much like someone inhaled a whole lot of White Wolf or Onyx Path back in the day.

I am a tough audience for vampire fiction and I think this probably the most satisfying vampire novel I can remember reading since the original Dracula.

Been a long time since read Dracula, but main takeaway i still remember from it is that Van Helsing seemed pretty bad at his job, and that to my mind it is his fault Lucy became a vampire, and I just felt sorry for Lucy.

 

[jian]

Read Entitled by Andrew Lownie, which is a biography to date of the Duke and Duchess of York - or Andrew and Fergie, since they’ve recently been stripped of those titles. Lownie is an old hand at biographies of rogue royals, having covered Louis Mountbatten and Edward VIII - he’s said that he hopes this book will help pay for his lawsuits with the Royal Family (who have repeatedly blocked his Freedom of Information requests), and I strongly suspect it will.

It also made me start reading The Story of My Life by Marie of Romania, generally considered the first royal autobiography to start showing royalty as normal (and often rather ordinary) people. Marie was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and the last queen of Romania; her book came out in 1935. She’s also immortalised in this short poem by Dorothy Parker:

“Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea,
And love is a thing that can never go wrong,
And I am Marie of Romania.”

 

[gnarlygninja]

My tendency to pick up books mentioned in things I'm watching has had mixed results recently. Picked up God's Little Acre after watching Mister Roberts and it didn't really work on me, I stopped after the first 15 pages. I might go back to it later. But I grabbed a couple Jim Thompson novels after they make an appearance as a plot point in The Lowdown and have enjoyed The Killer Inside Me so far. Crime is a genre I've almost completely overlooked until this year and I think that was a mistake.

 

[Autumnal]

Jim Thompson is pretty amazing.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Just read Tower Dungeon v 1&2. Quite good dark fantasy. v2 broadens the world, and brings in political intrigue, rival parties and creates a "home base". This literally feels like it could be a West Marches campaign. Princess taken by necromancer and the party has to make it to the top of an 1800 level (or meter? it wasn't clear) tower that's 3000m (1.86miles) across to rescue her? Tons of weird monsters that Tsutomu Nihei is known for. Art style is expressive, and let's the reader fill in gaps. My only complaint is that besides the protagonist, everyone else has shoulder length (within a decimeter or so) blond hair, so it's sometimes tough to separate the characters.

Characters are a bit tropey - country bumpkin who is very strong is sent as the representative of his village to the "Bastion" that's the place that gets within a 2m gap of the base of the tower. He's the protagonist. Then other members of the party are a cranky fire magician and the leader an expert archer.

Will keep reading, very much enjoying it.

Tower Dungeon - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Clint_L]

I've just started Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. I normally love his books, but the premise of this one just didn't grab me, and it's a bit of a beast. However, I've read everything else he's published and this was on for like 3 bucks or something on Kindle, so I figured I should check it off the list.

It's pretty boring so far, but I'm only a hundred or so pages in. Lotta exposition.

Prior, I was on a bit of a Stephen King kick - i just needed some page turners, and that is his speciality. I quite liked Dr. Sleep - I'm not sure The Shining really needed a sequel, especially one so tonally different, but as its own thing, it's fun. You could tell it was written by someone with some serious addiction experience!

Also, It reads so much better if you just skip the chapter where Beverly "guides" them out of the sewers. Just sayin'. Normally I don't like authors "fixing" their earlier work, but in this case, King should consider it.

 

[Autumnal]

I’d gladly buy a trimmed It like that.