Books

[Dhyerwolf]

I will only pick up the rest of the the In The Name of the Wind series if it turns out that Kvothe is a villain, and what we are actually watching is his gradual descent in madness and evil as life continually screws him over at every conceivable turn. One book that boiled down "Kvothe laughed at a rich boy, now his life is ruined" was enough for me.

[Lady Door]

The dislike for Kingkiller Chronicles makes me very .

I am reading 1Q84. It is definitely Japanese.

[Grefter]

It is just very unfulfilling at times Ash.  There is definitely something there!  I mean I went out and picked up A Wise Man's Fear straight after I finished Name of the Wind, but there is also a reason I had dropped it originally.  The Denna stuff is better than I was expecting, but he dwells on it an awful lot (which is perfectly in character obviously).

That said I don't think Dhyer is going to read the final book.  I would bet money that he gets angry and stabs a rich dude then is vindicated then regrets it by the "present".  You know, just like most of his other encounters.

It is a little one note is what I am saying.  It is a consistent application of themes repeated over and over in various scenarios (and then Kvothe loses all his money).  Would be more fun (not necessarily better!) if we got more Elodin and Devi instead of Denna and losing money.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Towers of Midnight - Done! I have my reservations about the book, mostly in Perrin POVs and Rand-related POVs, but the Elayne and her extended family stuff was worth the admission price, especially Galad. This or 10 is my favorite Mat book in the series, lots of action and stuff actually happening in his chapters. Perrin's were good when interacting with Galad and the Faile stuff was fine, but the wolf dream stuff is so unbelievably boring and there is a lot of it. Egwene stuff makes me happy as always. This book is definitely a worthwhile entry to the series, though not as good as TGS, though it might be if it had less wolf dreams and less Rand-related chapters (only the second time I might say the latter about a book in the series). I will withhold overall judgment on the subject of Rand altogether until the end of the series, but I don't like where they angled.

[Dhyerwolf]

It is just very unfulfilling at times Ash.  There is definitely something there!

In fairness, you can generally find something decent in most books in some manner (Looking it up Shadowmarch which was completely awesome is near ranked 380,000 in Amazon books. Feast of Souls is 370,000. River of Shadows is 50,000. Way of Kings is 17,000. In the Name of the Wind is 3,700. The first four are all really good for more than a little something there! A Cavern of Black Ice, which is a few years older, but actually uses that constantly throwing of shit on top of the  character to actually build a story and develop characters is 400,000).

[Grefter]

J.V. Jones has a bit more experience as a published author by now (it didn't really work as well back in Baker's Boy for example).  She also used a setting that is a bit more actively aggressive than that in Kingkiller (which is hostile at some points, but things like the University just don't exist in Jones' work).  Tarbaen is rough, but it isn't an arctic wasteland infested with various kinds of dark magics.

[Dhyerwolf]

Baker's Boy was well balanced though by having a lot of offsetting semi comical perspectives (I don't remember any of these being in In the Name of the Wind, and they probably would have gone pretty far. Even the end of In the Name of Wind promises that the character will at least be shit on twice majorly before he catches up to modern day). Have you read the Cavern of Black Ice series? When I reread it a few years ago it really went up in my estimation.

[Grefter]

I read the first two books, liked them well enough.  Meant to get to them again but lost track of it half way through Uni when I was busy with this.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Not a book, but I read I Have No Mouth, But I Must Scream on Djinn's request. Good stuff.

[Veryslightlymad]

The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya

This book really needed more Koizumi, which is the case for all Haruhi books. Otherwise....

This is a heavily Asahina based book... it's odd that this is the largest book of the series so far when... so very little actually happens. We get introduced to some new villains of the story, finally, but almost all of the action takes place in Kyon's head. This is usually the case, and Kyon is an excellent narrator most of the time, but this book really felt like it could have had a few parts just cut out and be turned into one of the many short-stories that are part of the canon.

I'm actually starting to get annoyed at how little Haruhi and Koizumi are starting to operate in these stories. Haruhi is the titular character and probably deserves some more page-time simply for that reason, but really, she hasn't even been a macguffin in the last several big stories. She's barely had any presence at all, and in this story, she actually seems to factor in less than fucking Tsuruya does, which is just wrong.

Koizumi, for his part, has been my favorite character for most of the books, and the entire anime. Kyon is awesome, but I like the longwinded massive speculation and possible scenarios that the guy brings up, and how he usually says something incredibly disturbing and then shrugs his shoulders and declares "But I'm not an expert". The comedy of the character sits extremely well for me. I also like how he's more obvious of an actor than the two girls are.

At any rate.... it just felt bloated in some parts and stingy in other parts. It was worth reading if you like Haruhi novels, but it was.... oddly disappointing. It's like.... an elephant ear. It's too much food, but even after you're done, you're hungry again like an hour later.

[Lady Door]

I read nothing for a while, then read a whole lot of shit at once. Brief reviews. Probably full of spoilers:

Fifty Shades of Grey, plus the other two the names of which I can't be arsed to remember
They are as advertised. It is much like Twilight in that the writing is decent enough that I keep reading, but also much like Twilight in the shitty ideas department in that it's pretty damn obvious this woman was like "I liked Twilight, what would happen if..." I'm normally a fan of that kind of logic, because it leads to some fantastic fiction, but this is not one of those cases.

If you brave this, be ready for a lot of sex. A LOT of sex. I think the "story" that does not have sex could be boiled down into a slim novella. (If you take out all of the wish fulfillment, you would have neither Twilight nor Fifty Shades of Grey.) I am still utterly amazed at the number of grown-ass women who publicly declare this is their favorite book, or who buy onesies for their children that say shit like "Conceived after mommy read Fifty Shades of Grey" or whatever.

A net plus for the BDSM community, I guess? Even though I'm pretty sure they're whining about how "inauthentic" the BDSM in the book is.

The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career
Do you read the internet? Are you familiar with entrepreneur culture? Okay. You can skip this book. (EDIT: Also, this.)

Coraline
Despite loving Neil Gaiman, reading the shit out of everything he writes, and having seen the movie, I'd actually not read this before. Now that I have, I appreciate how fucking brilliant the film adaptation was. The book was pretty excellent, and did some things better than the movie could, but overall the film version is pretty spot on for themes and characterization.

Graceling and Bitterblue
Two different books in the same world. Interesting, a decent read, but much more Dark Lord of Derkholm than, oh, Mistborn. Made for an interesting enough read, but they felt really shallow. (A slightly unfair comparison. I fucking love Dark Lord of Derkholm, and these weren't parodies.)

My favorite thing was heterochromia being a signifier of magic talent.

Everneath
This is pretty obviously a teen romance kind of setting, but you know what? I don't care. I like teen books sometimes. I like when the world is simple enough to be nothing more than what problems you have right in front of you, whether they be an irresistible attraction to a boy or a fight for the fate of the world against some supernatural shit. Kinda interested in reading the next one, even.

Legend of the Oceina Dragon (The Dragons Saga #1)
I am glad I read this because I had forgotten how bad fiction can be. Good god. Considering I read this shortly before I started Fifty Shades, I think I understand a bit more why Fifty Shades didn't seem so bad.

Lilith's Brood (Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago)
Alien sex.

Okay, okay -- it's about what would happen if aliens came to save us from ourselves, and what our future could be if part of the bargain was to iterate in ways that were no longer human. It felt a little like the Mars Trilogy in asking questions about what the future could hold, but it didn't have nearly the depth (or science) that those books did. It was a pretty simple story, all told, with some aliens thrown in. And the alien sex was only gratuitous in the first book.

1Q84
I am still finishing this (83% through, according to my Kindle), but I will say this: this book is not for the faint of heart. This is 900-fucking-pages of partially-translated literature. I say "partially translated" because it is steeped in so many things that are so Japanese that they can't be adequately localized for an English-speaking audience. I say literature because, well, it is. With all those connotations -- including the ones about pretentiousness and unnecessarily thick plot.

But hey, I'm still trying to finish it, so there's that. And it is interesting.

Stormdancer
New release by a new(?) author. This is Japanese steampunk, and it fucking rocks for that reason alone. But also griffins and sci-magic and a female protagonist and tattoos as a status symbol and eco-terrorism and fucking chainsaw katanas.

You should read it. If nothing else, it's fun and fairly brief.

About 10 Pern books
I grew up reading this shit, thought it was time for a re-read. Also read a few ones by her son. They are obviously a product of their times, but I saw in them what made me get into internet fandom communities all the same.

Her son is a terrible, terrible follow-up. He gets away with publishing fan-fiction because a) the McCaffrey lawyers were dicks about letting anyone else write any; b) he has her last name.

--

On the list:

Jhereg, as soon as I figure what the fuck I did with my copy
Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury, when I get in the mood to read shorts again
Sundiver, when I need a paperback to occupy me

Pre-ordered:

Cold Days C'mooooon Dresden Files! (end of November)
A Memory of Light Can't not finish it. Duh. (beginning of January)
4-Hour Chef If you can get past the marketing bullshit, which I admit is pretty damn thick, there are some genuinely interesting nuggets in what Tim Ferriss has to say. Doesn't mean you have to forgo hating him for being a douchebag, but still.

[Dark Holy Elf]

So I decided to re-read the last few Wheel of Time books in anticipation of A Memory of Light coming out in a few months. I began with Knife of Dreams, since it's one of my favourites, and have just finished it.


(spoilers for pretty much the entire book, it's been out long enough. If you don't want to see 'em, don't read this post)


It's pretty easy for me to see why this is one of my favourites. There's some excellent plot movement on a large number of fronts; in particular, all the characters get to see important stuff happening (often resolving things which had been building for a book or two), and there's really only one character arc in this book I find at all shaky. The book really gets inside the head of its different mains well, and following what each of them does is a lot of fun. Additionally, as is common for the later books in the series, there are some really effective sub-arcs in the book, with Pevara and, of all people, Romanda, getting some surprisingly good chapters in.

Breaking it down a bit...

Rand: There is some great stuff in this book as Rand recovers from cleansing the taint only to realise that while things have gotten better for his Asha'man followers, they haven't gotten better for him, as he fights off his own dissociative personality disorder and the sickness which seems caused by his contact with Moridin's balefire in Shadar Lagoth. He behaves like a bit of a megalomanic and wonders why his followers (Cadsuane, Logain, and Min in particular) seem to "conspire" to spite him... very much forshadowing his stuff in the next book. While he doesn't actually personally DO all that much besides slaughter a lot of trollocs, agree to make Darlin the King of Tear as per the agreement hammered out by his Aes Sedia followers, and spend a Forsaken fight dazed on the ground after Semirhage burns off his hand, his point of views are generally a joy to read nevertheless.

Egwene: She only has two chapters in this book, but they're extremely, extremely good chapters. You can argue she's a bit too perfect in them but her ability to stand her ground in the face of pressure, maintain her composure as the Amyrlin Seat, all while helping win the Aes Sedai civil war from inside the heart of her enemies, is pretty impressive, and makes for great reading. Her dialog with the people she seeks to convince is fun to read, particularly with her assigned torturer Silviana, and she gets in some goo lines elsewhere ("It's in the thirteenth depository, which you wouldn't know about, since you're not the Amyrlin. Only the Amyrlin and Sitters are allowed to know about it... which means I probably shouldn't just have told you right now. Oh well.")

Elayne: So Elayne's pretty great, not much is news here. A big theme of her chapters is how the power is pretty much a drug, and Elayne's going through withdrawal for a while which makes her irritable as hell. She, being the rational creature she is, even realises she is being unreasonable and the dissonance there is fun to read. Also when the Windfinders hold her up to complain to her about trivial shit for half an hour and then say "oh you should get out of those wet clothes, they're not good for a pregant woman" she just screams in their faces and walks off which is pretty boss, because seriously there are no words for that (fuck the Sea Folk). Once that's done we get the fun stuff where she plays politics and recruits the thief, Hark, to spy for her with some pretty classic Aes Sedai misdirection to make sure he's too scared to betray her, and finally her gambit to cut off her Black Ajah enemies, which bad luck kinda scuttles but it makes for some great tension, until finally the conflicts with both the Black Ajah and the battle for the Andoran crown are resolved. My only complaint about her chapters is that there isn't enough Aviendha, as she disappears after the first few.

Perrin: Normally I'm not a big Perrin fan, but there's a lot to like in his chapters. Wonder of wonders, there aren't more of them than the plot deserves. I like his interaction with the Seanchan commander Tylee, the scene with the guy who vomits beetles until he shrivels up and dies is probably the most haunting of several effective "oh shit the Dark One is breaking free" scenes in the book, and his battle plan to finally end the Shaido conflict is straightforward and fun to read about. Plus we're reintroduced to Tam, although it's little more than a cameo. While the character work here is probably the weakest (Perrin thinks about little besides rescuing Faile, which is understandable but boring), the action in the books, which is plentiful, is never dull to read about, and some long-awaited resolution to the damn Shaido arc is cathartic.

Faile: While Faile is never the series' best character, her chapters are pretty fun. Being away from Perrin does her character a lot of good; she doesn't mope around but instead seeks to better her own situation, and her fight against captivity as she navigates the snake Galina, the well-meaning but definitely creepy Rolan, and her cruel captors is pretty solid stuff. I'm still not sure what to make of the bit where Perrin kills Rolan. Neither is Faile herself, it seems.

Mat: Sigh. If only Mat's chapters were better. Undoubtedly the black mark on the books, there's little that happens in them, and they're a serious step back from the character's same chapters in Crossroads of Twilight. Mat's chapters tend towards extremely boring whenever Tuon isn't on screen, in part because Mat himself is kinda insufferable in his self-pity but also because the rest of his supporting cast is so dull (Noal, Thom, Aludra, etc.). It isn't all bad; we get to see Valan Luca being Valan Luca which never fails to make me smile, and there is some decent Mat/Tuon stuff mixed in there, and the scene about Moiraine's letter is pretty effective. But generally, meh. The last chapter deserves note for being a particular mess; not only is it a dull, one-sided battle the way only Genius General Mat can have them, but the concept of the battle is kinda nonsensical... ten thousand men so blinded by greed that not one of them even considers surrender! What. Oh well.

Others: Two villains, Galina and Suroth, get their long-awaited comeuppance in this book, and Galina's in particular just has such a feeling of justice to it that it's great, as she is whisked off to centuries of tyrannical slavery. Their chapters leading up to these points are pretty effective as well. Birgitte, a character I often find a bit blind, finally gets a chance to shine here as she manipulates the Windfinders into helping save Elayne and leading to the defeat of Arymilla. We get to see inside the thoughts of long-time Salidar antagonist Romanda, and while she'll never be the most wonderful human in the series, the chapter does a lot to humanise her, and I thought it was neat to watch her unmask Aran'gar (not who I would have pegged to do it). And Pevara continues the plot arc of the Tower Black Ajah hunters, which continues to be one of my favourite side-arcs, before plunging into the Black Tower and making a deal with a disturbingly villinous Mazrim Taim.

Good stuff.

[superaielman]

While we generally have strongly differing opinions of a lot of Knife of Dreams (Elayne, Mat), I am with you on the Pevara stuff. It's sad but fitting that the last thing that Jordan himsef published was 'Let the Lord of Chaos rule'. There is such an air of menace there, and it makes you want to read more of that arc.

[Luther Lansfeld]

The final Mat chapter in the book is one of my least favorite chapters in the series, it is really long and really lame. I generally agree with you aside from a bit less Elayne love (which I suspect is why I don't like KoD as much as you do!). I do really like Black Ajah hunter Elayne though. Mat does feels like a pretty big waste of space in that book, and I think that CoT is maybe his best book in the whole series to date (13 is the best). I guess taking Tuon away was a pretty big blow for the readability, even if I understand why. I've always felt like that Rand generally gets the best draw of supporting cast and is the person who least needs it, which is kind of funny. Mat has struggled a lot with cast since Book 9.

I do loooove that last Pevara sequence. So good. <3

12 next?!

[DjinnAndTonic]

I am reading 1Q84. It is definitely Japanese.

What is that story actually -about-? I'd heard of it but no one ever gives a summary.

[Lady Door]

That's because it's hard to summarize.

Ostensibly, it's the story of a 30-something author and a 30-something fitness instructor trying to find one another after 20 years apart. But it's also about a 30-something author getting into a questionable writing deal with his long-time editor friend. And that 30-something finding a way to connect with his father. And the story of a 15-year-old girl with a mysterious past and an even more mysterious present. And the story of a secret religious group and their strange beliefs. And the story of an elder rich woman with an unusual agenda. And the story of a professional underground information gatherer who has one of his hardest jobs yet.

It's definitely a 900-page book for a reason.

[Fenrir]

In a conscious effort to continue showing my neutrality in the epic feudal internal DL fight between western and eastern games, I used Amazon to order the Witcher 2 and the two new Pokemon games.

I got this instead:

http://www.jodavis.net/videos.html

And obviously read a little.
In these times of endless parody I didn't think this kind of thing still actually existed.
It is written exactly like Antonio Tony's erotic stories in Dinosaur Comics.

Lieutenant Howard "Six- Pack" Paxton loves three things: being a firefighter, riding his Harley, and his bachelorhood. That is, until the curvaceous Kat McKenna falls into his arms at the scene of a fire—and melts the six-foot-six tower of bronze muscle...

But just as passion ignites between them—and they explore new heights of ecstasy—a ruthless arsonist with a deadly secret and a thirst for vengeance becomes their worst nightmare.

[Luther Lansfeld]

She seems to be obsessed with firefighters. Well, I guess they are pretty muscly.

[AndrewRogue]

Legion - Brandon Sanderson - Short story, listened to the audiobook.

It was okay? Seemed a LOT more like a pilot to a new television series then a short story. Had a longer falling action arc then most Sanderson works?!

Would give it a watch if it was done! Concept was fun (I know I've seen it somewhere, but I'm blanking). Reader was kind of bad.

[Grefter]

Wyrd Sisters - So I first read this when I was a teenager and thought it was really quite good.  It definitely got me in line with Witches stuff being my second favourite Discworld novel type (at the time).  This was before I had more than a passing pop culture knowledge of Shakespeare or anything, I think I might have watched a movie version of Macbeth or something but that was it.  I haven't read it since and maybe listened to it not really paying attention once or twice.

Now like a decade later after having read a bit and watched Macbeth on stage this year (we also did it at high school a couple of years after I read the book), man I really love this.  There is plenty of jokes I missed first time around and you can tell Pratchett really enjoyed the source material.  It is something of a labour of love and definitely is the roots of Narrative Causality thing that Discworld novels commonly have in place.

That said, it still ranks the witches as third on the scale, mostly because while consistently good they don't ever reach the amazing highs of Guards/Vimes books and Moist novels definitely get some benefit out of being fresh and new to the setting, giving you some new world views

[superaielman]

Harry Potter: Read this series over the past few weeks to break up the pain of essay writing. It was very, very good. Starts off as a children's series and then promptly gets much darker (and longer) halfway through the fourth book.

[Lady Door]

Speaking of Harry Potter...

I just finished The Casual Vacancy, JK's follow-up "for adults and seriously there is no magic" novel. It was... well, very different. It's a big, messy dive into contemporary British life. It lives off what talents Rowling has for crafting characters and a serviceable plot. Whether you read this book, and whether you like it, will depend very much on how you like to read about normal people, because they're the ones that inhabit this story, and their fits and foibles are what drive it.

I won't call it a favorite, but I think it's a strong novel. It has a whiff of melodrama that cements its verisimilitude. (Because, seriously -- have you seen the way people act in the suburbs?)

Ultimately, it's a book about petty lives. It is crude, and grim, and basically pits ~20 people of various ages, social statuses, and maturity against one another. It digs into things that drive people down ugly paths. The ending is very bittersweet, and fitting. It has and is schadenfreude, and whatever levity you get is Britcom (ie, not laugh out loud funny, but dry and twisted funny).

[Grefter]

is there a stephen fry audio book version though?

[Cmdr_King]

<Grefter> not gonna lie I would listen to cats having sex as long as it was Stephen Fry doing the howling.

[Grefter]

I am actually going to get around to listening to the HP books.  But if she has a legit piece of adult fiction that fits that description voiced by Fry it is far more worthy of being my introduction.