Author Topic: Books (Read 49796 times)

Captain K. · « **Reply #975 on:** February 17, 2012, 11:46:37 AM »

A Discovery of Witches: I would say it's a Twilight ripoff. Awkward woman with hidden power falls hard for super-cool vampire. But there's enough science and history mixed in to make it a hell of a lot smarter than Twilight.

But! The book is designed to be a series, and as such, nothing really happens. It's all just buildup for the next two books. This is not the way to write a series. Hunger Games has sequels, but the first book is a complete story in and of itself and stands on its own. Same with Mistborn. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo climaxed early, but at least it had a climax. This book does not. All buildup and no climax leaves you with literary blue balls.

Shale · « **Reply #976 on:** February 17, 2012, 04:49:31 PM »

Finished the Millennium trilogy (AKA the Dragon Tattoo books). What a weird set of reads. Good overall story, good characters. Neither Lisbeth Salander nor Mikael Blomkvist fits nicely into generic protagonist boxes – Salander is antisocial to the point where it damages her life in tangible ways over and over, Blomkvist's manwhoring even gets on polygamists' nerves. And the villains are pretty well-drawn, although we don't get to spend much time with them before they go down. Blame that on the books being so slow to develop – every one starts with a good 50-100 pages of background and infodump, then setup, and then the plot finally gets moving around page 200. The third book changes that up a bit, since it picks up right where part 2 left off, but the infodump still shows up eventually. It also has problems with the idea of “tension.” The good guys spend nearly the entire book a step ahead of the bad guys. They know it, the reader knows it and the bad guys don't. Thus the “climax” is everything playing exactly into the heroes' hands (although the last fight is nifty). This is why the old cliché where the only plan that goes right is the one the reader doesn't know about is so tried and true – it's not really exciting to see things happen exactly as we're expecting them to.

Now I need to track down the movies (Swedish version, from what reviews I've read). Should be fun – the books would benefit tremendously from an editor, and even a long movie based on them would be edited down substantially.

Started on Old Man's War (John Scalzi's first book) this morning, about sixty pages in. Good stuff so far. I was expecting something more brutal than the actual “youth” treatment, but this looks like it'll have some entertaining fallout regardless.

Captain K. · « **Reply #977 on:** March 05, 2012, 01:01:54 AM »

The Castings Trilogy by Pamela Freeman: Overall I liked it. It was a nice departure from the standard sword-and-sorcery fare. What I didn't like was the minor character POV chapters. They were more distracting than informative.

Shale · « **Reply #978 on:** March 05, 2012, 03:32:26 PM »

Finished Old Man's War and burned through the other Scalzi books that were sitting on my shelf - The Android's Dream and Agent to the Stars. Old Man's War was great. Very Starship Troopers-ish, except I can't freaking stand Heinlein's writing and OMW was a really engaging, affecting war story.

Android's Dream was the opposite - an adventure yarn with the depth of a wading pool, but still well-written and fun. Also a little creepy, because apparently the author is stalking me; my current and former workplaces are major settings in the book, and the female lead has the same name and description as my ex-girlfriend. That was kinda weird.

Agent to the Stars was his first book, and it shows, but it's still fun. Not too twisty, but the characters are good and it moves pretty damn well. Plus it's free online (legitimately so!), which was nice when I left the book at home by accident.

Hunter Sopko · « **Reply #979 on:** March 15, 2012, 01:38:05 PM »

Hunger Games: Hmm...

Pros: Very readable. Breezy, well-paced and well-written for what it was. Didn't waste my time at all. Honestly? If I had to compare it to anything, I'd compare it to Redline. The pacing is everything: if it is there, it is only there because it serves a purpose to the story. There's no endless pages of pointless world-building. It has a tight story, it tells it well, damn everything else.

Cons: First... anyone who says this isn't Battle Royale with a splash of Running Man is in complete denial. I honestly expected Killian to walk out to host the Games. The comparison to BR does fall apart due to... it's hard to exactly call it a failing of the book since that's it's aim to focus on just her, but none of the characters in the fight are engaging except Kat. Some interesting, but not engaging. In BR, you got a sense of everyone's motivations and it used the shifting viewpoints well, to great effect. Granted, it's aimed at a higher age-group.

This in itself would be forgivable, but the games themselves... there was no... levity. No gravitas. It just sort of breezed by, the harsher moments sort of glossed over (I may be a bit jaded to call these glossed over though) or happen off-screen, and literal DEM rains from the sky. She DOES do better with the Sword of Damocles hanging over Kat after the games are over, but... it's just not enough. Kat makes or breaks the book. Haymitch is fun, but there's just not enough of him.

Honestly, I can't wait for the movie, because that's what this felt like. A movie treatment, not a book. As it is written, it'd make a killer movie but it's a meh book. Maybe I should cut it some slack, again due to the age range, but I don't know. It's frustrating, because it's still a relatively good read and there was potential. The previously mentioned comparison to Redline kinda falls apart though because while Redline is meant to be watched and be more or less eye-candy with the story there to just provide a decent framework (and it totally works and it's fucking amazing at it. Watch it). This... the author was obviously going for a little more than that. Maybe I guess it's unfortunate I'm not in the age range, but I wasn't in Harry Potter or other series' and still rightly enjoyed them enough. Mrf. Not honestly sure where I'm going with this. Maybe it'll come together reading the other books, because there were very obvious plothooks the DM author left in there for the sequels not just at the end, but throughout.

Captain K. · « **Reply #980 on:** March 15, 2012, 06:51:22 PM »

The Girl Who Played With Fire: I think the problem with these books is that Lisbeth is so damned perfect. She solves Fermat's last theorem in her head. She boxes better than professional boxers twice her size. But when the plot is required to advance, she does something idiotic like make the password to her apartment security system a word that anyone who knows anything about her will guess. When you make your main character Superman, er Girl, it's that much more glaring when you have to bring them down to earth.

Still an absorbing read though. I'm assuming Faste and/or the jerk from the security company will be the villain of the next book due to the general theme of men who hate women.

Lady Door · « **Reply #981 on:** March 15, 2012, 08:31:32 PM »

Yay for Scalzi love!

Boo for the ambivalence toward Hunger Games. I liked them, though I was decidedly disinclined to impose any sort of understanding on them. They were fun to read, not terribly deep, and I'm ecstatically looking forward to the movie. Good enough for a $5 book I bought because I needed something else to read and people had been saying good things. I kinda equate this one to Twilight in that it's pure mental cotton candy, and after reading the first book I really, really wanted to see where it was going next. With Twilight, that motivation was much more "let's see where this train explodes" than the "there are a few places this could go, I really liked this first one, I need to know what happens now, let's do it!". Also, I'm going to stop comparing this to Twilight because thinking of Twilight as a book I compare other things to is making my stomach and brain hurt.

--

Have been reading grad-school-related non-fiction, including study books. Now that I don't have a bus commute, I have no clear-cut time for reading, and my lack of commitment to it shows.

But I've learned a hell of a lot about humanities academe, so there's that.

Hunter Sopko · « **Reply #982 on:** March 15, 2012, 08:50:21 PM »

Quote from: Lady Door on March 15, 2012, 08:31:32 PM

Yay for Scalzi love!

Boo for the ambivalence toward Hunger Games. I liked them, though I was decidedly disinclined to impose any sort of understanding on them. They were fun to read, not terribly deep, and I'm ecstatically looking forward to the movie. Good enough for a $5 book I bought because I needed something else to read and people had been saying good things.

Oh yes. It's very good as this. I guess after the hype I expected a little more. Catching Fire is much better at the moment though.

EDIT: It's kind of strange in retrospect. Usually pretty good at taking things on their own and judging them based on what they are. Then again, maybe I still am.

Hunter Sopko · « **Reply #983 on:** March 15, 2012, 11:45:20 PM »

Catching Fire: Much, much better! Now I'm grooving with the tune it's pumping out. Nearly every problem I had with the previous one was addressed. Like Suikoden II to Hunger Games Suikoden, really. Much more refined, and the characterization is much, much better in that it at least tries. Despite the same lack of general detail and grit, pacing is still king here and really pushes everything along.

EDIT: I also realized that while Hunger Games is Battle Royale with a splash of Running Man, Catching Fire is totally Running Man with a splash of both BR1 and 2.

Hunter Sopko · « **Reply #984 on:** March 26, 2012, 02:28:55 AM »

Mockingjay- Was really liking this until the ending, where it sort of pulls one of the worst TWEESTs since Code Gaess' Euphy. The best analogy I can make for the series as a whole is a race where the runner got off to a slow start but has pulled into first, only to trip and fall 10 feet from the finish line and injuring themselves as they tumble to a halt.

The book didn't quite know what it wanted to be this time around, but that's okay. It was doing well, even with the fly-by-the-seat-of-pants action movie end, until...
Gotta spoiler post this one..

Seriously? That thing with Prim dying was so WTF stupid I nearly threw the book across the room. The justification was pretty poor and it served no purpose other than to OMG SHOCK the readers. I don't know if Collins thought she was being clever with the reason Coin thought that was a good idea, but it was a terrible decision all around from a strategy standpoint. It also sort of invalidates the whole, what, third of the book building up to this? I mean, I can understand sometimes you want to be unconventional and with different outcomes the curveball could have been great, but goddamn it was fucking frustrating to go through that whole sequence only to have it end with THAT.

This was immediately remedied by the following events. I liked Katniss' final dialogue with Snow, and totally dug her killing Coin and her justification. Was sort of iffy on the drugs thing at first, but it was kind of okay at the time, kinda gutsy for the genre. But the more I thought about it, the more it ended up feeling like it was less Katniss avoiding having to face the consequences of her actions and more Collins avoiding having to write the consequences of her characters' actions, and also gives no real consequences for said drug use, spinning that into kinda HAPPY ENDING!

I even tried to be fair and take the books from a different perspective, going with say, the books really being about Katniss' journey to a place in her life where she isn't being controlled by others, or other such themes, but they all just sort of fall apart due to a writing style that just sort of glosses over any sort of genuine meaning behind the characters' actions. First person limited is not easy to pull off, and while it's sometimes used well in the trilogy as a whole, it just... doesn't do enough for it to justify picking that over a slightly more omniscient POV.

Oh, and I also stopped giving a shit about the love triangle like, halfway through Mockingjay. Seriously. I'm usually a sucker for that stuff but everyone involved just fucking got on my nerves.

Veryslightlymad · « **Reply #985 on:** April 07, 2012, 07:05:52 AM »

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu

I surmise the following, based on my own personal experiences and opinions:

1)At some point during his life, Mr. Yu has partook in psychadelics of some sort, be they mushrooms, peyote, or LSD.

2)He has also suffered from depression, or at least been intimately involved with someone who has.

This book, for the most part, is so, so depressing. At times I actually laughed out loud, not because it was particularly funny (as the reviews suggest), but because I had no idea what else TO do, because it was easily the single most depressing thing ever. Like those sports movies where an athlete gets a horrible disease or injury, only instead of an athlete, it's a kid who just sort of liked sports and admired athletes, and instead of a horrible disease or injury, they have a painfully slow, nebulous slog of a life until all their hopes and dreams have wilted away through the sheer ravages of time.

That said, it was an enjoyable, albeit short read (I finished this novel in 5 hours? Jesus, I'm getting fast. Time was a novel would take me a whole day.) Mr. Yu certainly is a talented writer, certainly for how he's described experiencing out of time events--but that might just be my brief experiences with psychadelic drugs talking.

Veryslightlymad · « **Reply #986 on:** April 12, 2012, 01:38:19 PM »

Battle Royale by Koushun Takami.

Brilliant from start to finish---I dunno how so many novels manage to be better than their movies, and with the translation from Japanese, I really expected this to be one of the sole exceptions, but I see I was horribly, impossibly wrong.

This is a novel with a living, breathing soul. With few exceptions, the characters are extremely realistic, highly detailed, and many are sympathetic. It's gorey, gritty, and blunt, but at the same time, I see it as a very positive, uplifting work, if only because as stories about the dark side of fascism go, it's worth keeping in mind that this one takes place in an alternate reality present as opposed to a grimdark future. I find that makes considerable difference in the content.

I noticed a thing about the writing style that reminded me, of all things, the Haruhi novels, and I'm wondering if it's an accepted part of Japanese literature: namely, idiosyncratic parenthetical asides. In many cases, it felt like the author was randomly inserting a joke into the work, and the interview with Mr. Takami at the end of the translation I read does little to sway my opinion on the matter---he's a very funny seeming guy.

Characters exercised poor trigger discipline which would have drove me nuts if they weren't largely innocent 14-15 year old kids. If bullet proof vests worked nearly as well as the one in the book did, then there'd be less war, or possibly somehow more gross and violent wars, depending on how bitter you're feeling today.

The homosexual character kind of irritated me because of how flaming he was, but he wasn't the only character like that, so I later revised my opinion and decided instead of a mincing fairy stereotype, he was actually just a narcissist. Also, I had to keep in mind that I was reading a book from 1999 Japan---knowing only what I can glean from anime and other media I digest, I have no way of knowing if this was actually a progressive portrayal of a homosexual---merely having him be in the book and vaguely competent, albeit not Kiriyama competent) Speaking of the book's time being Japan 1999 (actually, the book takes place in 1997, I believe) it was really jarring to me, even though I knew it was a fascist country, that only like, two people had cell phones. In Japan. Then I remembered "OH YEAH. This was fifteen years ago."

Lastly, Chapter 70 is the most ludicrously out of place thing I've ever read before. And the worst part is I HAVE KNOWN OR KNOWN OF GIRLS EXACTLY LIKE THAT, so it still somehow manages to be quite realistic. Just one of the more amazing tension breaking chapters ever---I have to think good ol' Takami wrote that one with a big ol' shit-eating grin. I know I would have, had I the brilliance to do it first.

Captain K. · « **Reply #987 on:** April 30, 2012, 12:48:10 AM »

Catching Fire and Mockingjay: Not particularly bad, but I really didn't enjoy them. Primarily because they were so damned predictable. I knew how Coin was going to result as soon as she was introduced. Nothing in either of these books surprised me. It was just point a to point b to point c writing.

OblivionKnight · « **Reply #988 on:** May 04, 2012, 07:14:44 PM »

Tails Gets Trolled

Currently on chapter 5. It is an AWESOME webcomic. Definitely up there on par with such classics as My Immortal.

Dhyerwolf · « **Reply #989 on:** May 04, 2012, 08:37:23 PM »

Quote from: OblivionKnight on May 04, 2012, 07:14:44 PM

Definitely up there on par with such classics as My Immortal.

Sold!

Shale · « **Reply #990 on:** May 05, 2012, 08:16:01 PM »

Hooray for Free Comic Book Day! And double hooray for stores where the only limit on the number of books you can grab is that you can't take doubles. I got like 20 issues. The highlight, of course, is Atomic Robo. "Other than everything going wrong, it's all going according to plan!"

Hunter Sopko · « **Reply #991 on:** May 05, 2012, 09:37:27 PM »

My limit was 3. They didn't have all that much left by the time I got there. Although they did have 50% off on stuff, so hellooooo Incorruptable 5

Dark Holy Elf · « **Reply #992 on:** May 18, 2012, 09:08:30 PM »

Alloy of Law: Read this entirely in one day, which suggests that it is both short and a bit of a page-turner in that Sanderson way. Quite fun though a bit unsatisfying. It's certainly Sanderson's weakest novel (generally failed to get me to care about its characters; most of them are fairly stock Sanderson characters. Wayne is different, but he's different by being gimmicky rather than interesting) but it was enjoyable enough. The best thing about it is certainly the brilliant setting work; pretty much perfect for a Mistborn sequel meets late 19th century. I really liked the broadsheets.

Plot twists were quite predictable too (I thought it was pretty obvious how a certain "useless" power would own the villain, for instance) and the mysteries I was actually intrigued by... weren't resolved and were left for a sequel, although I feel like I can guess at them too. Oh well. Still a book I recommend reading for all Sanderson fans since it's fast and enjoyable in that same way the rest of his books are, and if setting's a big thing for you this one's pretty darn cool.

Also oi, I just noticed what a profoundly horrible pun the names Wax and Wayne are.

Luther Lansfeld · « **Reply #993 on:** May 24, 2012, 09:42:41 PM »

Winter's Heart - Done. Pretty good book, although it lies in the bottom half of the series for sure. Just read the 100 page prologue of Crossroads of Twilight as well.

Dark Holy Elf · « **Reply #994 on:** May 26, 2012, 04:17:08 AM »

Dragon Keeper - More solid Robin Hobb goodness. It had been... 8-9 years since I read the predecessor series to this but fortunately my memory of it was good enough + the essential things are explained well enough that it didn't matter.

Quite liked some of the character work in this, which is no shock I suppose. All four human PoV characters are very solid, and at times I really wasn't sure who or what I was supposed to be cheering for, which was nice. Quite liked Alise and Sedric in particular (and would have liked Hest but I think I'd like him more if he was less of a dick. Not that this is a problem narratively, he's a dick in an all-too-believable way). Dragons were interesting enough certainly, definitely a bit of a subversive take on the normally majestic creatures... but definitely the human/human interactions were the highlight, and there was plenty to like there.

My biggest criticism of the book is it ends on a note that could just as easily have been the end of any random chapter in the middle of the book. Nothing is resolved at all, it's like Xenosaga 1 (except without the pretensiosness and I actually give two shits about the characters). Ultimately this isn't too big a concern when I have the second book ready to go, though.

Luther Lansfeld · « **Reply #995 on:** May 27, 2012, 06:31:57 AM »

Crossroads of Twilight - Hum. Better than expected.

Lady Door · « **Reply #996 on:** May 29, 2012, 08:01:39 PM »

Was in the mood for some epic fantasy re-reads, and decided I wanted one of the newer ones. I sadly remembered I'd lent my copy of Name of the Wind to Gate -- so I bought it for Kindle.

Even on a re-read, books like these put me in the mind of lazy summers in childhood, where I could drag my books up into the trees and do nothing but read all day. Appropriately, I cracked this open just before a three-day weekend and breezed through it. Just finished downloading book #2 to my Kindle.

Books so nice, I bought them twice, yes indeed.

Yoshiken · « **Reply #997 on:** May 31, 2012, 07:29:21 AM »

Finally got round to reading The Heroes after having had it sat on my shelf for the last 2 years or something. (The Heroes is.. pretty much a direct sequel to the The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie.)
Solid book. Bit of a slow start, but once I got into it, I really couldn't put it down. Bremer dan Gorst and Corporal Tunny are fantastic, and I'm still a big fan of the changing perspectives throughout. Bayaz continues to be an underhanded bastard, and so well-written, and Calder is really fun to read about.

I know some people here had read The First Law. I've not had a chance to pick up Best Served Cold yet, wondering if anyone's read either that or The Heroes. ;o

Edit: Took a look at Best Served Cold earlier, although didn't have the money for it. It's set between The First Law and The Heroes. Fuck.

superaielman · « **Reply #998 on:** June 01, 2012, 08:03:22 PM »

Supervolcano: Harry Turtledove at his worst. He takes an interesting concept and buries it under a layer of bad writing and his own patented laziness. You can play turtledove bingo with the book: Constant ED references from the older male characters, a fuckton of jewish characters (Judging by the Turtledove universe, jews make up roughly 40% of the world population), the same lazy profane jokes he's been using for the past two decades, and so on. The cast is horribly unsympathetic as well, especially the mother.

Also, he tries to be hip and fails miserably at it. If you are going to try and be relevant, at least get your Calvin and Hobbes references right. It's spelled Hamster Huey, you bastard.

Luther Lansfeld · « **Reply #999 on:** June 01, 2012, 10:41:05 PM »

With a title like that, it couldn't have ended well. A shame! I liked the one book I read of his.

As for me, I'm just reading Knife of Dreams and I just bought the book Ashley's talking about on amazon. I've been trying to remember since minimeet what it was called!