What are you reading? [June]

[Someone]

Right now I´m finishing "Los dientes del dragón", by Juan eslava Galán. He´s not a fantasy writer, but thenovel is an interesting fantasy book. Several knights of the third crusade, along with a half-elf maiden and an orc they rescue from a galley travel looking for the twelve stones they need to complete the Mirror of Solomon, a table that can be used to divine the true name of God. And I´m not joking.

 

[Aus_Snow]

now: The Dreaming Tree (by C J Cherryh).

next: ... too many options. not sure yet.

 

[Digital M@]

I am almost done with A feast for Crows by Martin. It is a long book filled with tedium and an almost impercevable progression of characters or plot. He kills of several secondary characters in the back ground of the book and is getting a bit fixated on sex in the books. So far I rate this at a c-. I am sure all of this small stuff adds up to something later, he does not seem the type to write an entire book of fluff.

 

[paradox42]

Pandora's Star by Peter F. Hamilton. And I still have not read The Naked God, which I think I'll start after this.

So far it's very interesting. Like in his Night's Dawn series, we're introduced to characters and situations that seem unconnected at first to the whatever the main plot will be. But it's so entertaining, you don't care. The Commonwealth is very unlike his Confederation: there is no space-travel per se. Permanently-open wormhole portals connect the worlds and people just take a high-speed train to the planet they want. Spaceships are almost anachonistic. They know how to make them, even build FTL ships, but there's no reason to do so.

I quite liked that, but it was painful waiting for the sequel (I'm still waiting, in fact, because it's not in paperback yet- though the hardcover is out now). But the aliens from the titular Star are quite scary when they finally make a contribution to the plot.

The Naked God was a good finish to Night's Dawn IMO, though (as you can guess from the title) it's got a bit of a deus ex machina.

My most recent read was Sunstorm, by Stephen Baxter and Arthur C. Clarke, the second in their "Time Odyssey" pair. Quite a good apocalyptic yarn! The first one, Time's Eye, was a slower read for me but would probably make a really interesting role-playing game campaign. I actually think it could be made to work in almost any system, except perhaps Toon or Paranoia. Also, the two books aren't really a series so much as a pair of self-contained stories related by the machinations of the aliens- one could read them in either order, I think, or even just singly, and not miss much.

Their previous collaboration, The Light of Other Days, is one of my all-time favorites, exploring the consequences of the development of a technology to literally look across time and space at will. Without spoiling anything, by far the most important such consequence is the total loss of any ability to keep secrets or privacy. Very good book!

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I just finished reading A Hat Full of Sky from Terry Pratchett, another Discworld Novel, this time aimed at young readers. It was a very enjoyable read (as always). I find it amazing how he always manages to end a book in way that leaves me in a certain emotional state - a mixture of contentment and enlightment, and general mindfullness.

Before that, I read the 7th book of the New Jedi Order/Yuzaahn Vong series. I wasn't certain if I should continue reading the NJO books - it seemed a bit to dark and dull. This book gave me hope that it might be worth to at least finish the series... Which is good, because it might give me some more reading material for my weekend railway travels... (3 hours in train and bus + 3 hours at the afternoon are usually enough to finish a book).

 

[DanMcS]

Lately, I've read Armor (Steakley), Kleopatra (Karen Essex), and just finished re-reading Starship Troopers. I'm re-reading Flatlander (Niven), the collected short stories about Gil the Arm. It's been just long enough that I don't quite remember all the details of the mysteries, so rereading them is rewarding.

I plan to read Pharoah (the sequel to Kleopatra), reread Forever War and then get into Forever Peace and Forever Free, and then there's some more Niven I need to track down (like Protector, because I think those guys are neat). I've read all the Ringworld books, so the stuff set in the same timeline looks interesting.

After that, probably Stephenson's Diamond Age and Snow Crash, because I haven't done them yet, and there's some Turtledove alt-history that I haven't read yet because I'm pretty sure he writes books faster than I can read them. Harry Turtledove is secretly a team of super-fast author clones locked up somewhere cranking out books. I'm sure of it.

 

[WayneLigon]

Still reading on Pandora's Star. Hamilton continues to deliver the Cool, but I found that it's the first part of at least a two-book series. Boo. I switched briefly to Niven's Building Harlequin's Moon, and I'll finish that soon but so far it needs to get back to cool planet-building stuff and swing away from the angsty talk. I am dying to know what happened to Ymir, but I'm afraid we'll never find out.

 

[S. Baldrick]

Jim Butcher's "Proven Guilty", the latest in the Dresden Files. I'm about 100 pages in and so far, I have enjoyed it.

 

[S. Baldrick]

Time for a new thread.

I just read The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy. Holy crap, was it good. One of the best novels I've read in a long time.

If you get a chance, check out Ellroy's "The Big Nowhere", the sequel to "The Black Dahlia". As much as I liked "Dahlia" and “L.A. Confidential”, I liked "The Big Nowhere" even more. One of the 3 main characters in the book is Turner "Buzz" Meeks, one of my favorite anti-heroes in all of literature. “The Big Nowhere” is also introduces Dudley Smith, one of my favorite villains in all of literature.

 

[Jamdin]

I have been reading Wonder Woman: Mythos by Carol Lay. Not a bad book in the Justice League of America novel series. I have read Batman: The Stone King and JLA: Exterminators. I will probably have to special order the rest of the series.