Books

[Dhyerwolf]

Hang on, because depending on where you are in the book, there potentially 3-4 more women for him to still sleep with!

[Grefter]

Again, this is classic elements of fantasy hero stuff here (See Conan, John Carter of Mars and the like). 

Y'all just hating on his Batman Sex Training.

[superaielman]

A wise man's fear- This book started out much better. The unviersity characters started clicking, it changed things up a little from the constant shitting on Kvothe, and hey Rothfuss fleshes out Devi and Sim a little!

About a third of the way through the book Kvothe takes a break and travels to a faraway land to find a patron. The entire arc is pretty good and flies by at a good clip. Then we get to the bandit section. That's slightly less good and drags on for far too long, but I can forgive that because hey, going back to Seavern-

Then we get the Fairie section. It's bad. The section with the oracle is fantastic conceptually, but everything else is awful and totally without redeeming value. This goes on for far too goddamn long. Eventually he's spit back out with manwhore powers fully ready. Merciful gods, now back to the main storyline- oh wait, you say? Kvothe is going to spend like 200 pages training with the noble savages? Oh christ. Content aside, these sections go on for too long.

Things get better with the second group of bandits and returning to Kvothe's would be patron, and the wrapup of Kvothe's story at the end of day 2 is good too, if obviously cut off to create a (false) happy ending. I read the book pretty quickly. Rothfuss is a compelling writer when he isn't making his main character run around literally penniless and brutalized constantly.

Issues with the book, in descending order:

1. The Fae and Adem arcs, lesser honor goes ot the bandit arcs. These should have been compressed down.

2. Kvothe's magic penis. Good lord is this dumb, literally every woman he meets of absolutely any relevance falls head over heels for him in some way or the other. This extends to more than sex though. Kvothe either tends to be perfect at a task or utterly clueless with nothing in between. It dovetails nicely with Rothfuss pissing on him so much that his middle name should be Urinal. 

3. Denna. She wanders in and out too much. Her relationship with Kvothe does not advance at all in particular, they're doing the same song and dance routine they were at the start of book 1.  I have some sympathy for what the character goes through, but she's used in a completely obnoxious and insufferable way. She feels like the woman least relevant to Kvothe's life because she's so rarely in it, and has no real connection (so far, this probably will change) to the Chandre or the major events in his life.

4. The villains. They all suck. From Ambrose to that women Adem who hates Kvothe to Hemme. They have zero depth and personality besides being evil/hating Kvothe. The Chandre also fall into this category so far. The fuck was the head of the Chandre doing as a random bandit? This makes zero sense in the 'let the lord of chaos' rule sort of way.

5. Bast. Fuck off forever, thanks. Character just annoys me.

I wouldn't recommend these books to people. There are too many issues. There is a fascinating overarching plot to be had and some great writing, but you have to dig through a mountain of shit to get to it.  I'm not surprised it's as well received by authors/fans as it is though, Rothfuss is really talented at writing in a way I haven't seen since probably RJ. If you combine his ability to make great prose with say CS Friedman's ability to write characters/worldbuild/structure things, whoof. You'd be onto something.

[Dhyerwolf]

I'm not surprised it's as well received by authors/fans as it is though, Rothfuss is really talented at writing in a way I haven't seen since probably RJ. If you combine his ability to make great prose with say CS Friedman's ability to write characters/worldbuild/structure things, whoof. You'd be onto something.

The problem is not that he isn't CS Friedman level at that, the problem is that he's basically near bottom of the barrel for that (honestly...I'm trying to come up with a fantasy series I've read lately with this bad a plot. Barring things that I will flat out not read because the little I read of them was utter trash (Brooks/Shannara, Modesitt), Rothfuss is near dead last of characters/story (especially story, which is honestly nearly non-existant so far).

And you know that there's probably at least another 2 major dumps that Rothfuss will be taking on Kvothe guaranteed (something regarding Denna, and something regarding political station IIRC based on something mentioned in the first book. I suppose the second one could be at the resolution of book 2, but I could have sworn that Kvothe at some point will become some high ranked military swordsmen. Oh right, he also loses the ability to really use magic, so we'll make that 3 big dumps).

That said, I thought the university stuff was actually worse than the last book. But blissfully it ended. Honestly, that mess of a plan to take down Ambrose took an eighth of a second to backfire as anyone could have predicated; it was really just another Ambrose/Kvothe section where Kvothe makes super boneheaded decisions. Adem arc was actually my favorite section of the book because it actually showed the Rothfuss could write at least a semi non-typical culture and...honestly, by this point, everyone else in the book was either irrelevant or annoying, so ditching them all for 200 pages was welcome. I guess that's the core problem with the book. 2,000 pages in and the only interesting characters aren't even in the main story at this point. But as noted, I really don't care overall for these boks.

[superaielman]

There's a basic framework of a very compelling story in those books, they're just lost in pages of rambling about the university. That all said, Rothfuss is a *really* talented writer. His books are super easy to read and he has an excellent grasp on how to make the mundane worth reading.

Major dumps on Kvothe still left that we know about:

1. Expelled from University
2. Denna's death
3. Losing most of his powers
4. Causing a gigantic war/possibly civil war due to killing the King which led him into hiding

E: To elaborate, I'm highly frustrated by these books. Rothfuss is an exceptionally talented writer! And then you get to the Fae section and want to punch him in the nose. Or any time Denna interacts with Kvothe.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Empress by Karen Miller - Finally finished this book. It's a very strange book, the main character is an unabashedly terrible person and it seems fully possible that all of the main characters in the book worship a dark god but I'm not sure. Second book looks like it has a different primary character, from reading the back of the book? I'm interested to see how it pans out but not interested enough to read the second one immediately. Working on C.S. Friedman's Feast of Souls now.

[NotMiki]

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Read the first 120 pages.  Will not be reading the rest.  I like the prose, but nothing happens, and I have been reliably informed that nothing ever will.  Susanna Clarke displays an immense talent for writing stupid characters then ripping them to shreds, but...things need to happen!  Plots need to tweest!

[Lady Door]

Not only do things not happen, the things that happen don't matter, and I swear nothing changed for the characters, either. Then it just... ends. It feels like there's no resolution.

I suspect it got so much critical success because it was so goddamned long everyone zoned out while reading it and assumed the lack of ending showed great literary prowess and they wanted to feel smart.

--

Read the Wool Omnibus. Nothing too special or new -- post-apocalyptic society where the people didn't realize they were an experiment (spoilers! but it won't change anything for you -- but I enjoy it. It's on the simple side, but watching characters navigate through the knowing and not knowing is a good read. The opening chapters are kind of amazingly emotional so be prepared for that.

Also re-read Game of Thrones (just book 1 so far). I forgot how much egregious violence and sex there was, which is really special when you consider what the HBO show is doing with the material.

[Shale]

Strange & Norrell is very, very English, in ways both good and bad. Plus it's like eight hundred pages of worldbuilding for fifty pages of payoff. I liked it, but mainly for the atmosphere and how much of a complete dick Norrell is.

[NotMiki]

The Englishness of it, the focus on gentlemen and society and doing things The Right Way and all...would be more palatable if high society were not 99% populated by petty idiots.

[Sierra]

Accompanied parental units today in clearing out late grandfather's apartment. Wasn't interested in taking stuff; just there because family. But because family, wound up with stuff anyway. Relevant to topic at hand, went home with 1864 printing of de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. So that's pretty rad.

(Other highlights: Japanese rubber plant peace lily, lamp constructed from torpedo casing. Or it might have been a mortar shell, I'm not exactly an expert on the subject.)

[Lady Door]

Finished Wool.

I'm not going to bother analyzing it because I don't like to English major everything I read. In short: it's a relatively simple sci-fi book with some probably unrealistic premises that I nevertheless found entertaining. I liked the characters, I got frustrated with their choices and what happened to them, and though the ending was a little corny it did very well against the lead up.

--

I'm reading the rest of the Giver Quartet because why not. I opted to try out Kindle Unlimited because I was fast coming up against the limits of my digital library and not looking forward to spending hundreds of dollars on new reading material, plus it's free for 30 days. I'd been meaning to read the other books in the series since I found out there were other books in the series. They're very short reads, anyway, and definitely for the younger YA set.

I don't find them particularly interesting, not the way The Giver was. It all takes place in the same world (and roughly at the same time) and it has a lot of the same conceits. I'm wrapping up book 3 now and will probably be most of the way through 4 tomorrow so I'll reserve judgment until I finish reading.

--

Nerem was complaining about Honorverse after we segued from a discussion on how wrong he was about the unforgivable sins Kingkiller Chronicles has committed against literature. Since the first two books are free even without Kindle Unlimited, I downloaded them and will probably start reading them next week.

--

I have no idea why I am reading so much sci fi lately. I guess I just haven't found another good fantasy series to draw me in yet. Other books on my docket are all sci fi, too, including Scalzi's latest which will be out on Tuesday. I kind of miss my happy escapism and it depresses me to read so much near-future post-apocalyptic narrative. Why can't someone just be goddamned happy that technology is so awesome and deal with the problems that come up in everyday life like, you know, dumb romances? (Are there sci fi romance novels? Hmm...)

[Fenrir]

Brothers Karamazov was great. I liked Crime & Punishment more, thanks to Raskolnikov's internal monologue. (and because of Brothers Karamazov's less interesting religious backstory to develop Aliocha for the future books that never came)

Super-omniscient-narrator-bastard spoils everything for some reason. I know we're not supposed to read this for the plot twists but COME ON!
Ivan stole the show.


White Noise next then the Idiot

[superaielman]

Words of Radiance: Finished.  I missed a ton of minor stuff (connections to other Sanderson works, I -still- always forget who Hoid is). It was fun. I liked it more than book 1, which is pretty standard in an epic fantasy fare like this. The only issue I have is that I've read enough Sanderson that some of the plot twists were easy enough to figure out ahead of time, but eh. I read it because it's fun, not because I have to be shocked with every turn of the page.

Characters:

1.  Shallah. Lots of good character work for someone I thought wasn't great in book 1. Helps that she tied up a lot of loose ends (Gaz!) and showed us a new part of the world in her chapters.
2.  Kaladin. I like the Bridgemen more than Elfboy (Rock is cool) but they are not super memorable. 
3. Adolin. He could be going in very dark places. Literally every other important person in his life (Brother, father, sorta bertrothed) have become Knights Radiants. He definitely could be left behind and oh hey, Shallah/Kaladin looks like it will be a thing and well what else is left for him? I was surprisingly engrossed by the character though, I do have a weakness for that type.
4. Dalinar. Obvious. He rules, could easily go higher but he was lacking in camera time.
5. Lift. Her PoV was a very definite callback to Vin from Mistborn, in style and substance. It was tons of fun and was the best of the side PoV's we got.

Scenes!

This is harder to pick, as I haven't read some of the earlier chapters in a while.

1. The rigged duel. It has Kaladin and Adolin being awesome and then Kaladin being an exceptional dumbass. Just a lot of fun there.
2. Last scene with Adolin. That was brutal. Also because that should wrap up the drama with the Alenedi princes. That was fun, but I don't want another four books of scheming from Sadaes. As listed above, it also strongly implies that Adolin has a dark path ahead of him.
3. Lift's PoV. It wins.
4. Shallah finds out that Tyr was meant to assassinate Jasnah. Very nice end to book 2. I could nominate a bunch of her scenes (Killing her dad, convincing the deserters to join her, Jasnah's 'death' but this works.
5. Kaladin's duel in the clouds. That scene reminded me of Rand's duel in The Great Hunt with Ishy for a bunch of reasons. It was fun conceptually.

[Ranmilia]

Worm

Worm is a well acclaimed and long (LONG!) running, but now complete, web serial about superheroes.  I finally got around to starting it 3 days ago.  Currently I'm on Arc 19, so about 2/3 through, and after three straight days of reading I am both impressed.... and thoroughly sick of it.

The writing is fine, heavily character focused most of the time, if a little simplistic.  Decent set of characters, especially the protagonist, Taylor/Skitter.  It's very good at changing things up, moving from earlier frames of reference to new and completely different ones while still feeling natural.  Fight scenes are described in more detail than they really need to be, and are about four or five times the length they need to be, but it IS a superhero story so I can forgive some "then the villains moved to THIS position and we shot MORE LASERS" writing porn.

The plot, though, whoof.  So far the progression has been along these lines (minor spoilers for arc directions, though I'll try to avoid specifics):
- New young heroes starting out, vs minor villains and gangs.   Sure, fun and expected.
- Heroes vs villains on the city level.  Also expected, and probably still the highlight of the story with all the interplay involved.
- Heroes and villains together vs an "unstoppable" kaiju-esque monster.  Oddly boring for what it was, but sets up what I assumed would be the second half of the story, with the monsters threatening to destroy the world.
- Minor villains, gangs and anarchy in the monster's wake.  Your leaders are not who they seem to be, whoo-ooo spooky!  Still by the book though.  Providing character development in downtime, or it should have anyway.
- The unstoppable supervillain team full of baby-eating psychopaths arrives in town!  Lots of back and forth and this power beats that power.  The world is threatened with obliteration, again.  Three times during this arc, actually.  These guys are the worst.  This arc is the worst.  Unrelentingly grim to a previously untouched level, the villains are insane and evil for evil's sake, and everybody's hax powers prevent the status quo from being radically altered.  A requisite few characters die, but the reader can predict exactly who with a quick mental count of "how much pagetime did they get?" 
- More politics!  Totally expected betrayals!  Things take another turn for the grimmer and darker!  The world is threatened with destruction, again.  Everything is interrupted constantly with flashbacks and interludes from characters no one cares about.
- Heroes and villains together vs an "unstoppable" kaiju-esque monster, who is also a baby eating psychopath, who is also a former ally with a grudge!  Dark Phoenix nods everywhere!  The world is threatened with destruction, again.  More horrible things happen to our protagonists.  The sheer amount of grim darkness and world destruction convinced me I must be near the end, so I caved and checked the table of contents to see how much was left, because the slogging was getting to me and I figured it had to be near the end.

It's not.  There's still an entire third of the story left.

I... I don't care anymore.  I don't care if the world gets destroyed.  I don't care if Skitter's secret identity gets revealed, or if she gets maimed or lobotomized into an earthworm.  In fact I'm kind of expecting it now, from the title.  I don't care if Bitch or Grue die, or if Legend can stop the evil corporation that's been teased so many times it's all out in the open now. 

I can't even really say the story did anything specifically wrong, it's just drastically overplayed its hand so many times that I've built up an immunity to the emotional impact it's trying to strike with.  Flaws that used to be excusable are coming into higher and higher relief as they get repeated.  The Protectorate is STILL getting on Skitter's case about the Slaughterhouse Nine, with the same accusations that they attracted them or didn't pacify them.  That made sense as an arc point when they did it once, but this is going on what, the tenth time now and nobody's even noticed?  I know the author is trying to hammer a message about victim blaming, but we got that ages ago and it's still repeating ad nauseum. 

Maybe the true message is that I'm supposed to be a bad person for getting tired of it.

I don't know. 

I'll keep reading to see how it turns out, but it's already nearly self-parody and some sort of space alien transcendence ending has been foreshadowed enough to blot out the sun. 


EDIT:  Finished.  The last third caught me off guard and was not nearly as good as the first 2/3s.  Same basic complaints stand.  The story is good on a micro level, but breaks down pretty hard on a macro level.  This could be attributed in no small part to its serial nature.  Still, the first parts and the characters are good enough in their own right.  I really wish this had an editor with a giant axe, and another editor with a rolled up newspaper to swat the author over the head.  It DOES make some good points, it does entertain, just... wears it all out, and keeps running until the wheels fall off.

[AndrewRogue]

Raising Steam: Sort of a weird book. Much more segmented and separated than I'm used to in Discworld books. Character focus is sort of weird too, as it bounces between a lot of POVs. Still, I like the world development.

[Captain K.]

The Killing Zone by Frederick Downs:  Not the kind of book I usually read but my kid had it for English class and I started thumbing through it.  Account of an officer serving in Vietnam.  Interesting stuff and it's pretty crazy to think how untrained the people we sent off to war were (18 year old medic?  ouch).

[Luther Lansfeld]

Finished Feast of Souls finally. Really good book, filled with characters I really enjoyed and an interesting setup. WTF is up with slipping between third person limited and omniscient, though? She mostly seemed to slip into this only in Magister conversations for whatever reason.

[Shale]

Super's been bugging me to read CS Friedman, and lo and behold the next book in my SF/F book club is The Madness Season by CS Friedman. I liked it okay, but the way it played out was not nearly as appealing to me as the "vampire on a spaceship" high concept. There was so much worldbuilding crammed into a relatively short book that the plot ended up being really rushed. The last third would have been better off as a sequel - it's such a sharp break from the earlier stuff, and it would give everything more room to breathe. Oh well.

Also, Friedman really likes reminding you that the Marra species is called Marra, and they have Marra senses because they are Marra.

[Lady Door]

Oryx and Crake.

I really need to stop reading near-future apolocalyptic stories. The fun part about near future is that it's not too hard to make it feel realistic! If a particular group justifies this, and another tries to make money off it, and society keeps along this path, etc.

Of course, that is also what makes them so horrifying. I could wish that these kinds of books would have an impact a la The Jungle, but no, I think we're too saturated with the entertainment aspect of it thanks to Hollywood (lol, that could never happen) to really take these books at face value. The decline of literature as a form of communication is the real disaster. Where's the reading between the lines? Blackfish comes to mind as an example of this. No one who's being all activist about the documentary seems able to understand that documentaries like that don't make their money by providing a fair and balanced view of the picture. Nor does it seem likely that they've internalized that the whole story might be a metaphor on a greater issue. No, it's "save the poor abused whales! down with Sea World!"

Ugh, jesus, the book is making me so pessimistic.

The basic what-if behind the book: What if corporations turned into segregated, protected groups and a genius-level sociopath found a way to science up a devastating disease and distribute it globally? (Spoilers, probably. I don't know, it's a fairly literary book in that you know what's going to happen, it's the how that makes up the novel.)

[Luther Lansfeld]

Just finished up the second two books in the C.S. Friedman Magister Trilogy. The second book is definitely the weakest but it does a pretty good job of setting up the third book, which I found pretty excellent. Unravelling all of the mysteries of the story was enjoyable, and I actually ended up liking Coliver quite a bit despite being a little lukewarm to him early. I'm debating what to tackle next.

[Luther Lansfeld]

I decided to read Harry Potter, since I've never finished the series. Just finished the first two books. They are about what I remembered -- the first is engaging and fast-paced, and the second tries to emulate that but isn't as successful at it. I stopped reading a few chapters into the third, so I'm mostly going in blind from here.

[Fenrir]

I started the David Foster Wallaces' unfinished The Pale King and it is Infinite Jest -.
Sometimes I'm just not understanding the point of it all and then it randomly drops this kind of thing:

“The next suitable person you’re in light conversation with, you stop suddenly in the middle of the conversation and look at the person closely and say, “What’s wrong?” You say it in a concerned way. He’ll say, “What do you mean?” You say, “Something’s wrong. I can tell. What is it?” And he’ll look stunned and say, “How did you know?” He doesn’t realize something’s always wrong, with everybody. Often more than one thing. He doesn’t know everybody’s always going around all the time with something wrong and believing they’re exerting great willpower and control to keep other people, for whom they think nothing’s ever wrong, from seeing it.”

[Luther Lansfeld]

Read Angela Davis's 100-page essay Are Prisons Obsolete?. It's an interesting essay with lots of well-reasoned facts, but seems to brush over how to deal with people who need to be incarcerated long-term (the essay alludes to being asked the question about murderers and rapists, but gives a bit of a pie-eyed answer to that question). Overall, though, it was a good read, although obviously the discussion of the prison industrial complex is quite chilling and the sexual assault that is pervasive in prisons is a disgusting human rights violation.

[Cotigo]

Going Postal:

Terry Pratchett books are like Disney Movies for the idealistic college student. Fortunately I'm an idealistic college student under my scabs of misanthropic cynicism.  Slow start but once Lipwig got going the book basically read itself.