Ellis Peters: The three first Brother Cadfel.
Brandon Sanderson: Hero of the Ages (Mistborn)
Richelle Meade: Succubus Heat (Georgina 3)
de Lint: The Blue Girl
Which takes my Book Race 2009 number up to 16
- Mood:
stressed
"Intrepid" by Mike Shepherd 3+
This is another book in the Kris Longknife series. I saw in an interview that the author was asked by his editor if he couldn't write space opera like Weber or McMaster-Bujold. I don't think the result was really like those authors, instead these book are like a presentation of the stereotypical space opera themes (and very very like Elizabet Moons books actually). The books are not bad, the feeling is more like you recognize everything from your old loved SF of the 50th.
They are entertaining but nothing to remember, but on the other hand there are so much worse space opera out there so give them a chance if you want some reading that is easy on your brain.....
2009 bookrace: 10
- Mood:
cheerful
Love, stress and general angst is not a good source for blog posts apparently ...
Anyway I really have to begin to put my books on record or I will loose the book race!
"Space Captain Smith" by Toby Frost
This was supposedly a satire of the whole space opera genre ... I was expecting a bit more of the book than a some lame jokes every other chapter about a famous movie. The author do play with the stereotypes of the space opera milieu, but .... The Matrix? At two points i laughed aloud but that is not enough for me. The rest is cut and paste from any pulp book, with a search and replace on the names.
A quite uninteresting piece of writing actually ...
Bookrace 2009 number 9 ....
- Mood: cheerful
To stressed out to do anything constructive, but have to register two books in the Book race ...
"Skuld" av Karin Alvtegen
Bra, lite kärv svenska ... intrigen biter sig i svansen i slutet...
" Mage-Guard of Hamor (Saga of Recluce)" by L. E. Modesitt 4
As always Modesitt can be trusted to deliver what you want, together with Flint, he is a kind of default fantasy author I rely on when I need my fix of fantasy. Kind of what space opera do for my SF reading ...
2009 bookrace : 8
As I read this in swedish my rewiev will keep with that language....
"Monkeewrench-morden" av Tracy, P. J. 3+
En underhållande och småkul deckare, det känns som om författarna har blivit tvugna att skära i texten för det finns ganska mycket potential hos historien och karaktärerna som aldrig utnyttjas. Boken kunde helt enkelt varit en bit längre. Översättningen är bra, utan uppenbara konstighter.
En nöjsam deckare helt enkelt!
2009 Bookrace : 6
- Mood:
restless
Affinity Bridge by George Mann
This is a steampunk written in what I see as the tradition of Arthur Conan Doyle. I get the same feeling of restrained feelings and distant victorian upper class britishness. This is ofcourse good for getting the feeling of gaslight and steam, but it also makes the story a bit .... dull ... The characters get a bit stereotypical and the plot extremely predictable. It is a bit of ... no very much of pulp adventure feeling when reading this book.
Soo it will get a quite low mark, and I will probably not read the next book as I frankly not care about whats happening with the loose ends in this book. The author also get a bit too smart in the end and tries to create some kind of twisty end, but it just falls to the ground with the sound of a desiccated corpse ...
(2009 Book race:
- Mood: happy
"Concrete island" by J.G. Ballard 3+
This is a very short novel or a very long short story, it has a very interesting idea as basis and Ballard can handle both the situation and the characters ... it is slightly dated and have a certain 70th speculative fiction feel but is still enjoyable and interesting.
It was a bit predictable, but I begin to suspect that I have reached a point where I have read so many stories and they are so imprinted in my mind that I recognize the different path you can choose for a story and thus seldom feel surprised of the different turns a story goes.
2009 book race : 4
- Mood: satisfied
This is actually a compilation of short-stories published on the net. It was used to be free stuff but K.A. get an opportunity to collect them for charity purposes so she stitched them together. If you are familiar with K.A. this is a book about Clayton bracketed by Jeremy. That is the first and the last story is about Jeremy and explains a lot why he is so strange as he is (besides the fact that he is a werewolf...) and those two stories are actually the weakest one, everything in between is focused on Clayton instead (who then is focused on Jeremy, but anyway).
I have always disliked the Clayton character as I always had the feeling that it was a one dimensional character and a quite boring one, this adds some depth to it and makes it a bit more believable.
K.A. writing is as always quite sound, but without any pretentious ambitions as is to common in the paranormal romance/urban fantasy genre.
So it get a 4 (on the weak side, I didn't really like the Jeremy stuff).
The 2009 Book Race : 3
(Catching up honey)
- Mood:Longing
"A Murder in Marienburg (Warhammer)" by David Bishop 3
A very linear book without any surprises. It was like Pratchetts Watchmen books, but without the funny stuff. All characters are stereotypes and behave in a predetermined pattern. The local colour is just in namedropping but do not add anything new to the setting (what was know from the rpg module). This book is not worth to spend more attention on than this short paragraph!
- Mood: rejuvenated
"Spirits white as lightning" by Mercedes Lackey 2
It is always difficult to read a book in the middle of a series and that may be the reason I didn't like this one. There is (in my view) several silly ingredients that destroys any "suspension of disbelief", but perhaps those are intentional. I find that it is quite common in US movies/literature that nothing can be serious for to long. They just have to put in some slapstick jokes (complete with large signs saying "Laugh NOW"). Time-traveling is always a problem in any story and creates paradoxes, and nothing good comes from feeble attempts from the author to explain them either. Sooo .. I hiss and boo at this one.
- Mood: loved
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fantasywithbite , it is supposedly from a list of the thousand books you need to read. Thi is the SF fantasy part of that list. It is 150 books, and I have read like one third of them. There are some I'm a bit unsure if a I have read them or not, but those in bold are the one I have a clear memory of:
( Read more... )
- Mood: loved
This entry was totally messed up and refused to get back into order so I rewrote it above!
- Mood: irritated
yay ... iiiik ... uhuh ..
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scott_lynch I guess he suffers from writers block, but he exists at least ...
One small step at a time!
- Mood: cheerful
"Fatal Revenant (The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant)"
by Stephen R. Donaldson
I really like Donaldsons style of writing, at least in the unbeliever series, it is a blend of fantasy and real life passions/angst. I actually dislike to call his books fantasy as it is in my opinion so much his fantasy as the philosophical discussions about feelings, hero hood and falsehood that is the core of the books.
Nevertheless they affects me in a way no other books do, I don't think they are books for everyone, they touch to much of personal feelings and experiences to be in every persons taste, but they are in my taste, and that is enough for me.
And he surprises me, which few author do these days. *Hand stapled to forehead*
- Mood: mellow
"Faerie Tale" by R. Feist
As usual with this author is the writing solid, the characters are archetypes without being stereotypical. The plot is good but without being exceptional ... but this book is by far the best one I have read by him. It has much more of presence than his usual writing. perhaps it is because he has a slightly higher adult factor in it which makes it feel a bit more...... meaty, or something.
It is a bit uneven but is very engaging in parts and takes the plot and the faeries seriously. It has some fine point that is excellent and is an good source of inspiration for the rpg Changeling. It is not listed as an source of inspiration but some stuff is so close to what is presented in that game that I'm convinced that it must have been.
2009 book race: 2
- Mood:
giddy
"Sons of the Oak (Runelords)" by David Farland 1
Basic fantasy, with one or two interesting twists. The problem with this book is that the author suffers from what I call "the Hollywood syndrome", that is that each book has to be larger, more colourful, the evil evilier and goodness gooder than the ones before. In this case it means endless descriptions of cruelties and betrayal, and it has moved from earth-shattering epic to ultra-epic on cosmic level ... so I put this aside until I suffer from a really bad case of boorness.I made a new trý and put it aside again... woudn't it be that I liked some of the earlier books in the series this would probably get a 0...
- Mood:
bouncy
"The Well of Tears: Book Two of The Crowthistle Chronicles"
by Cecilia Dart-Thornton
I'm not sure what to say about this book ... It is to long in a way, and meanders a bit in the middle, OTH it reminds me a lot of Jack Vance in style and structure. A line here and there, a description of scenery and the pace of the tale, all reminds me a lot of the old master. It has a feeling like the Lyonesse books, but the big failure, I think, is the characters. She doesn't succed in creating the multi-dimensional personalities that makes the strange stories lift from the ground and dance away amongst the clouds, like J. Vance. Instead the it is more like it plods on and just sometimes is lighten up by a great turn of events, or something like that.by Cecilia Dart-Thornton
Hotet från norr, Kampen om Akacien, av David Anthony Durham 3
Detta är en bok som känns som en GRRM wannabe. Den lyckas inte på långa vägar uppnå detta men är en ganska ordinärt skriven fantasy med ett par bra ideer som inte blir riktigt bra genomförda. Det är möjligt att den är dåligt översatt, men språket känns ganks oengagerat och personporträtten är platta. Likaså tycks författaren vilja mycket mer än vad som tillstlut hamnar itexten och det känns på det hela taget lite... ofullkomligt.
Bra ideer, inte så bra genomförande.
2009 Book race: 1
- Mood:
blank
"The Twilight" saga by Stephanie Meyers
I prefer to review these books as a unit rather than one by one. The reason for this that I speed-read them in less than a week and thus has only a very general sense of what happened in which book. In general I would say that the first two is paranormal romance with a lot of emphasis on the romance part, the latter two moves a lot towards urban fantasy especially the fourth and final part although the romance between the two (three) main characters are the driving force behind what happening.
There is several reasons I like these books and one that makes me really hate them (more about that later). The vampire myth as a way of describing the teenage-love-angst is on the borderline of a genius. I mean, a lot of the feelings described are like most teen age love stories, the difficulties around a girls love for an older more experienced boy could possibly be described in the same way whatever the boy in question is a vampire or not, here the vampire part just gives the story a stronger contrast. If the same words/feelings/angst had been displayed for a mere mortal a grown up could just dismiss it as teenage angst, but here they are rally true, the girl is much more fragile/inexperienced/whatever and the boy is dangerous (no kidding) and not of her world so to say.
In the beginning I was a bit annoyed by the main character (Isabella) being very passive and just going by the flow, but I think the passive narrator style is a bit more preferable than the I do, I did, I, I, I, style which plague some other authors style when the writing is in first person. Isabella is here a narrator of a story where she has no way of controlling. This change in the last book, but I say no more about that as it would spoil the fun.
I can see why this book appeals to teenagers, the teenagers parents are aloof and stays out of the way pretty much, neither do they really understand the situation (Isabella is dating a vampire and of course her parents can’t really be informed about that). When her father acts she takes the punishment bravely and carries her cross stoically, because he can not understand her.
The book can be seen as an allegory of an average teenager’s view of life, scarily enough.
In general I think the paranormal element is handled good enough, but one critical part the author fail … completely. It makes me scream silently and I really have to edit it out of my mind or it would ruin the book utterly, and that is in the physical part of the vampires, their powers and so …. I mean the reason for vampires not being able to be in the sun is that they ... sparkle, please give me a break; it is by far the worst explanation I ever have heard. The vampires’ powers are quite ludicrous also; it is more of Marvel superheroes than anything paranormal. If for this last point I would have giving it a five, now I give it a weak 4, instead of a 5.
One last comment (or two) one of the strong points of this book is that the author lets the book take its time to grow. I know some author that would have put all the happening in the two first book in one chapter and spent the rest of the book the happenings in the fourth book (ignoring the third book), my second comment is that I read them a month ago now and I still shivers when I see the books, but that can mostly be a residue from me speed-reading them, I have discovered some interesting stuff about how stuff is stored in my brain (and is accessed as memories).
- Mood: crappy
"Coyote" by Allen M. Steele
A good one, a interesting bit hard SF, but the first half is more interesting and better than the latter part. It lost some of its "aim" after the first half and gets a bit anecdotal and then just in the end introduce some new not-so-hard SF. So although the writing and the ideas are good, the structure of the book didn't really work out. I get a feeling of Heinlein with some specks of K.S. Robinson here and there.
