The Book Thread

[LaZodiac]

Also that. And I really loved how odd the ending was. It's basically like reverse Superman.

That was enough to find it, thanks! Added to the list. Will be a while, I bought vastly too many books last month, so I think March is gonna be another no book buying period. Some people have dry Januaries, I have no bookshop months. Mostly so I can pretend to catch up on reading. But I'll definitely read it and let you know what I think (if you want me to talk about it here that is. If not, I won't.)

I certainly don't mean to give anybody anxiety, so please don't read my posts as a commandment to agree with my takes on anything. Honestly I'm surprised when anybody is interested in my take on any book, as I'm pretty used to my tastes being very niche and basically ignored by everybody. Certainly nobody I know IRL reads any of the stuff that I do.

Which sounds sort of sad, but is sort of a great thing about books. There's so many, and they are so diverse that nobody is pigeon-holed into reading the same stuff. It isn't like movies or something, where there's a relatively small number total, and an even smaller number that attract all the attention. There's just books and books and books for miles, so with a bit of looking there's probably something for pretty much everybody. And if not, they can write one!

(Yeah sure there's popular books, and books that suck up a lot of press. But why would I care? I haven't seriously paid attention to book reviews in years, if ever, and I'm hip deep in stuff I want to read. Reading stuff that reviewed well, or was reviewed at all, would be a really bad filter for me because it would just miss so many things that have brought me so much joy. Generally much more joy than the stuff that everybody talks about for like two weeks and then forgets about.)

I think the thing I adored the most is how they really tried to make each world feel unique, and make each of the standard fantasy races feel unique, but still themselves. It's no surprise I love Magic the Gathering so much for a similar reason...

Sweet! When you do get around to it, absolutely talk about it here! I'd love to hear it, and reviews/discussion gets more eyes on it, which is good!

Oh don't worry, that was me talking in general, not about anyone here. Also; I find pretty much every opinion is at least worth reading. This might me the nascent mind-flayer talking but I love to see people go indepth on something they like. I've always found that even when the opinions are one I heavily disagree with, when it comes to Media I do enjoy hearing what others have to say. Typically, anyway.

This also causes problems. I have massive brain-worm issues and if I find something I should like that doesn't gel with me it break a little, and it all kinda spirals out from there.

[Peelee]

I've just recently finished reading through everything I have by Barbara Hambly.

Based on your positive reaction, I must conclude none of these were her Star Wars entries.

[Tarmor]

Based on your positive reaction, I must conclude none of these were her Star Wars entries.

:) They weren't... I hadn't even thought of those. They are on a different bookcase... I have 2 of her SW books. As much as I enjoy my Star Wars novels, I can't remember anything about either of them. I probably thought they were okay at the time... I do recall "The New Rebellion" (Kristine Kathryn Rusch) dissapointing me more than most of the others books in the series. I don't have much written/set after the 'Hand of Thrawn', and looking back now I consider that was a good point to stop.

[Mechalich]

:) They weren't... I hadn't even thought of those. They are on a different bookcase... I have 2 of her SW books. As much as I enjoy my Star Wars novels, I can't remember anything about either of them. I probably thought they were okay at the time... I do recall "The New Rebellion" (Kristine Kathryn Rusch) dissapointing me more than most of the others books in the series. I don't have much written/set after the 'Hand of Thrawn', and looking back now I consider that was a good point to stop.

Hambly's Star Wars novels are mostly just bizarre. They are part of a large number of works Bantam-Spectra blitzed into existence after the smash success of the Thrawn Trilogy with minimal coordination, no concern for canonicity, and simply absent a huge amount of knowledge that later authors would be able to access (the very title Children of the Jedi becomes rather absurd considering the Prequels). She was also laboring under a truly counter-productive editorial mandate to write the love of Luke's life only to have that yanked away when it became clear that fan support had already placed Mara Jade in that slot. The result is a bizarre, fever-dream (literally in a sense, Luke spends a shocking amount of both novels in various states of serious injury) set of science fiction adventures bookending the significantly worse Darksaber that mostly don't have anything to do with anything connected to the overall plot of the New Republic Era.

[Ionathus]

I started the second book in the Earthsea series - Tombs of Atuan. I'm not very far into it, but thus far it's just as evocative as book one.

Even more so, actually, since the second book opens with some of the most captivating fantasy ritual imagery I've ever read -- a young girl kneels before a throne caked in centuries of dust and is fake-sacrificed, then dark liquid is poured out to run down the steps...it's the kind of scene that makes you go "I haven't a blessed clue what's going on but I am HOOKED."

[Rynjin]

All of the Earthsea novels are great. I don't think any of them QUITE recapture the sheer wonder of the original novel, but they're all great in their own right.

Apropos of nothing, over a decade later I am still malding over the fact that in a high school national trivia contest the difference between our team winning and losing was decided by my answering "Who was the author of the Earthsea series" with "Ursula K. LeGuin" when they just wanted to hear Ursula LeGuin.

Waving one of her books in the proctor's face to show off the big fat K. in the middle apparently did not matter.

[Batcathat]

Apropos of nothing, over a decade later I am still malding over the fact that in a high school national trivia contest the difference between our team winning and losing was decided by my answering "Who was the author of the Earthsea series" with "Ursula K. LeGuin" when they just wanted to hear Ursula LeGuin.

Waving one of her books in the proctor's face to show off the big fat K. in the middle apparently did not matter.

Wow, that's horrible. I'm not usually one to hold a grudge, but I suspect that if that had happened to me, I would have become a supervillain (probably some sort of trivia themed Riddler knock-off).

[IthilanorStPete]

I started the second book in the Earthsea series - Tombs of Atuan. I'm not very far into it, but thus far it's just as evocative as book one.

Even more so, actually, since the second book opens with some of the most captivating fantasy ritual imagery I've ever read -- a young girl kneels before a throne caked in centuries of dust and is fake-sacrificed, then dark liquid is poured out to run down the steps...it's the kind of scene that makes you go "I haven't a blessed clue what's going on but I am HOOKED."

It's been a while since I've read Earthsea (and I only read the first trilogy), but I remember Tombs of Atuan being the book that stood out the most. That said, when looking at those three books together, they show a pretty impressive range of themes and styles.

[Anarchic Fox]

Whoa, other people who read Mercedes Lackey! What do you think of her newer work? I find that her writing has increased in empathy and insight over the years, and the relatively low stakes of the latter half of her career are a welcome change from the cavalcade of nation-threatening enemies that came before. (Which, IIRC, were mostly the same person.)

The "horses", in this case, are not really horses; more like angels in horse form, psychically bonded with good people (Heralds) to help make the kingdom safe. IIRC, there's indication that they may reincarnate, or be reincarnated Heralds, but it's never confirmed (in the books; fully read the link, and Misty has said it, and that is WOG).

So, while the Companions might accidentally share their assignations with their partners, to the partner's consternation, it's likely that the Companions know about human <ahem> relations... and might be better able to block it out if they're tired of listening to horny teenagers be horny teenagers together.

It's confirmed in the Mage Storms trilogy, to the trilogy's MC Karal. He compares them to Karse's Firecats, who are reincarnated popes.

Far from being "experiencing horse sex," those scenes seem to be the psychic equivalent of living in a college dormitory with thin walls. Mercifully, in later trilogies the main characters learn to filter their abilities better and sooner, so the weirdness is confined to the early books. The weirdness is entirely real, I'll admit. Mage Winds, in particular, has it in spades, like the sex-slave catgirl who becomes an important character.

[warty goblin]

On a ahort break from the horny magic blacksmith books; I had read all the ones in my immediate possession and decided to return to the book I'd been reading when my girlfriend was hospitalized. I'd put it on pause because it demanded concentration, which was in rather short supply for a while there.

That book was the Dragon Charmer by Jam Siegal, sequel to Prospero's Children. This series is also technically urban fantasy, in the sense that it's present day (or was present day 20 years ago when published) but full of magic and stuff.

However, where urban fantasy generally are pretty ty much what if reality but magic, these books are a lot more, perhaps esoteric is the word? The cosmology they inhabit is vast and expensive, and Siegal does an excellent job of invoking a huge, creakingly ancient universe that operates just beyond sight.

For one thing, the books steadfastly have resisted the usual urban fantasy plot trajectory where in the first book it's reality but with, like, werewolves, and by three books in it feels like everybody and their aunt is a shape-shifting vampire blood mage child of a fae God queen, and there's probably one actual normal human left on earth*.

No,the magic is kept both vast and at a great remove from the world as a whole. The neighbors are not secret werewolves, but you can step out of the world into other places, where the eternal Tree grows the heads of the dead, or back to Atlantis, or through the ruined and deserted halls of the dead. The imagery is fantastic, and it feels like a genuinely magical world in a way not a lot of fantasy manages.

I really like these books. They are actually good and well written, they play with mythology in clever ways that keep me engaged and reading closely because a lot of points are only hinted at, and they are expansive in an uncommon way. The character work is good, but generally takes a backseat to the odd, captivating cosmology. They remind me a bit of some of Tanith Lee's work, albeit generally more accessible and less dark. Which isn't to say they're all sunshine and buttercups, but they don't get into the really disturbing depths that Lee's darkest novels plunge into.


*Her name is Doris, she's 72 and lives in a small town outside of Atlanta. It is absolutely critical that nobody turns into a dragon werewolf to fight a dark spider God where she could see, because we are not barbarians and we do not upset Doris.

I think the thing I adored the most is how they really tried to make each world feel unique, and make each of the standard fantasy races feel unique, but still themselves. It's no surprise I love Magic the Gathering so much for a similar reason...

They did do a really excellent job there. I still remember just being blown away by the world of giant trees, and the water world full of floating islands in a vast ocean of breathable liquid is next level cool. Why has nobody ever done more with an idea like that?

Sweet! When you do get around to it, absolutely talk about it here! I'd love to hear it, and reviews/discussion gets more eyes on it, which is good!

Will do! Just wanted to check, getting reviewed is not necessarily fun, and the forums should be fun.

[Rynjin]

They did do a really excellent job there. I still remember just being blown away by the world of giant trees, and the water world full of floating islands in a vast ocean of breathable liquid is next level cool. Why has nobody ever done more with an idea like that?

There's quite a few other series like that. Piers Anthony's Mode series is one with effectively infinite dimensional travel, with D.J. Machale's Pendragon series being a different take on the "fixed number of worlds" idea, even if one of them is taken up by time travel (one of the worlds is literally "Earth but in the past" for reasons I can't remember).

[IthilanorStPete]

*Her name is Doris, she's 72 and lives in a small town outside of Atlanta. It is absolutely critical that nobody turns into a dragon werewolf to fight a dark spider God where she could see, because we are not barbarians and we do not upset Doris.

Only a monster would upset Doris!

[LibraryOgre]

Had Jury Duty yesterday (didn't get picked), so I had a ton of time, which I spent starting "The Rising Storm" of the Star Wars High Republic stuff. I've read a few other parts of it... Light of the Jedi and Into the Dark, as well as the mid-grade Test of Courage... but had fallen off The Rising Storm last time I started it; I wasn't in the right headspace at the time.

I really like the High Republic stuff. It shows the Jedi as a functional institution. It's not Knights of the Old Republic (or the OT, or the ST), where the order is fragmented, if not down to one person. It's not the prequel trilogy or Clone Wars, where the Jedi have ossified and become simply an arm of the Republic... they're a vibrant, semi-independent, group. They have healthy relationships with their emotions ("It's ok to have feelings, just don't let them control you"). They're heroes, not generals (though they're often called on to act as military leaders). It is a time when the Republic is trying to be all it can be, and while the Jedi have struggles, those are either external ("These are aliens, these are pirates, they must be stopped") or purely internal ("I am having trouble continuing to do my work because of grief, and I feel guilty about my grief because I am a Jedi")... they're not "Being a Jedi is more or less incompatible with being a human." (using the term human loosely)

And Light of the Jedi gave us the great line "We are all the Republic." Second only to "Amazing. Everything you just said is wrong."

[Bohandas]

Currently I'm reading "The Selfish Gene" It's dark and it's bleak and it 's educational and I love it

[Kareeah_Indaga]

While unplugged on vacation I finally finally finally got both the time and opportunity to read The Hobbit. Generally enjoyed it, was surprised to find the Arkenstone and the rock giants really did occur in it (the latter made much more sense in the book, thankfully), but I did get hung up on one little thing near the end…

Spoiler: Seems like a valid question to me…

Show

When the king of Mirkwood and the future king of Dale roll up to Thorin’s newly-reclaimed doorstep, being surprised to find Thorin and co still alive inside, during the back-and-forth Thorin asks them why they showed up armed to the teeth.

So, yeah. Why did they?

They know the dragon is dead at this point. No mention is made of Smaug having any minions they would need to defend against. As far as they know the place is empty. Why the weapons? I could see them coming back with weapons after Thorin makes it clear he’s not feeling friendly, but for that first meeting, it’s odd.

[Eldan]

Well, they are still kings, travelling outside their own lands. And they also know there's goblins about. And everyone being paranoid and a bit of a **** is a running theme in the book.

[theangelJean]

Currently I'm reading "The Selfish Gene" It's dark and it's bleak and it 's educational and I love it

I wonder if I should re-read that one to see how well it holds up to current-day models. I read it and "The Blind Watchmaker" at a young and impressionable age. Loved the latter, can't actually remember what I thought of the former. But there's a lot I didn't know about back then.

[Mechalich]

I wonder if I should re-read that one to see how well it holds up to current-day models. I read it and "The Blind Watchmaker" at a young and impressionable age. Loved the latter, can't actually remember what I thought of the former. But there's a lot I didn't know about back then.

My guess would be that it doesn't hold up all that well. Evolutionary biology underwent major changes beginning in the 1990s, due to the combination of widespread acceptance and use of cladistics and the development of viable genetic sequencing techniques. I never read much of Dawkins myself, his style always felt needlessly antagonistic to me, but much contemporary writing on similar subjects, such as works by his erstwhile academic opponent Stephen J Gould, is now seriously dated.

[GloatingSwine]

My guess would be that it doesn't hold up all that well. Evolutionary biology underwent major changes beginning in the 1990s, due to the combination of widespread acceptance and use of cladistics and the development of viable genetic sequencing techniques. I never read much of Dawkins myself, his style always felt needlessly antagonistic to me, but much contemporary writing on similar subjects, such as works by his erstwhile academic opponent Stephen J Gould, is now seriously dated.

The Selfish Gene isn't really about the details of evolutionary biology as it was understood at the time, but about reframing the manner of thinking about evolution and behaviour as being a thing genes do instead of a thing individuals do, which helps to resolve some apparent conflicts between behaviours and the expected optimal outcome for individuals.

The title is based on the idea that a gene being selfish can produce the opposite outcome in behaviour (because "being selfish" for a gene means advantaging all copies of the same gene no matter what body they happen to be in).

[warty goblin]

Finished The Witch Queen, the conclusion to Jan Siegel's excellent trilogy last night.

This was excellent, with some really clever subtle mythological patterns woven in. And the ending hit me really hard, just a perfectly executed and unusual sort of bittersweet. If you have a taste for a more esoteric and expansive sort of modern fantasy, I would highly recommend this series.

The ending

Spoiler

Show

So in the first climax of the novel, the heroine kills the titular Witch Queen, who is Morgause of Arthurian legend. This is upsetting and unpleasant, but then she discovers that her lover, who is highly implied to be the reincarnation of her lost love from Atlantis in the first book, and is structurally suggested to be Lancelot, has made a deal with the devil to deliver her to said devil. In the ensuing struggle, she kills him with a spear that is probably the Gae Bolg. It's also rather implied that he let her do this

This just emotionally destroys the heroine, and she falls into a state of deep, possibly permanent, depression. This isn't helped by the devil still trying to kill her.

So to escape, she drinks a vial of water from the river Lethe, and obliterates all memory of magic, or being a witch, of maybe everything. And the book just ends there.

In context it is absolutely crushing, and delivered beautifully.

That ending left me a bit shook up, so I grabbed something deliberately low impact off the shelf, Travis Baldree's Legends and Lattes, which the back cover describes as "high fantasy, low stakes." So far it's living up to the claim, being about an orc who retires from being an adventurer to open a coffee shop. The setting is Ye Typical High Fantasy universe, so can sort of just be sketched in or inferred as needed, structurally it seems immune to needing to care about deep lore or backstory, and it seems content to just putter along doing its own pleasant thing.

[Rynjin]

Travis Baldree sounds familiar to me. Where have I heard that name before?

...Ah! He narrates the Mark of the Fool audiobook that just came out, neat. I don't listen to audiobooks but the author of Mark was super excited for it. I didn't know he was also an author in his own right. Cool!

[halfeye]

Finished The Witch Queen, the conclusion to Jan Siegel's excellent trilogy last night.

This was excellent, with some really clever subtle mythological patterns woven in. And the ending hit me really hard, just a perfectly executed and unusual sort of bittersweet. If you have a taste for a more esoteric and expansive sort of modern fantasy, I would highly recommend this series.

The ending

Spoiler

Show

So in the first climax of the novel, the heroine kills the titular Witch Queen, who is Morgause of Arthurian legend. This is upsetting and unpleasant, but then she discovers that her lover, who is highly implied to be the reincarnation of her lost love from Atlantis in the first book, and is structurally suggested to be Lancelot, has made a deal with the devil to deliver her to said devil. In the ensuing struggle, she kills him with a spear that is probably the Gae Bolg. It's also rather implied that he let her do this

This just emotionally destroys the heroine, and she falls into a state of deep, possibly permanent, depression. This isn't helped by the devil still trying to kill her.

So to escape, she drinks a vial of water from the river Lethe, and obliterates all memory of magic, or being a witch, of maybe everything. And the book just ends there.

In context it is absolutely crushing, and delivered beautifully.

There was a musical track "The Witch Queen of New Orleans", I find it online by Redbone, but I think I remember that sequence of words being used in a song (the song having another name?) by Dr. John.

[warty goblin]

Travis Baldree sounds familiar to me. Where have I heard that name before?

...Ah! He narrates the Mark of the Fool audiobook that just came out, neat. I don't listen to audiobooks but the author of Mark was super excited for it. I didn't know he was also an author in his own right. Cool!

He also developed the games Rebel Galaxy and Rebel Galaxy Outlaw. Truly a Renaissance man.

[Sapphire Guard]

A Discovery of Witches There's nothing actually wrong with the writing, but I'm finding it very dull.

[Bohandas]

I wonder if I should re-read that one to see how well it holds up to current-day models. I read it and "The Blind Watchmaker" at a young and impressionable age. Loved the latter, can't actually remember what I thought of the former. But there's a lot I didn't know about back then.

I read one of the later editions which has a bunch of endnotes where he points out a bunch of things in the text which were either ambiguous, out of date, or in error. The errors I remember are that one of the prisoner's dilemma strategies which he said was stable turned out to actually be meta-stable, and that someone discovered a viable model for the sexual-selection handicap principle, which he had wagered would be shown to be unstable.

I'm onto reading "Blind Watchmaker" now. One minor thing that bugs me more than it should is that in it Dawkins makes two pedantic statements and one otherwise uncontroversial statement, which when taken together make a contradiction. The first bit of pedantry a statement to the effect that birds and mammals should properly be classed as reptiles because they are descended from reptiles and that more generally things are supposed to be classified by descent (basically, the entirety of chapter 10), the second bit of pedantry is that whales aren;t fish because they are mammals, and the third otherwise innocuous statement is the phrase "modern fish, other than sharks" in chapter 4. This last part demonstrates that he does not define "fish" to specifically mean the ray finned fish (and nor does he define them specifically as the sharks). Given this we have a definition of fish that includes the last common ancestor of both the bony and carilaginous fish, and therefore all the bony fish, including the lobe-fins, and therefore, by the monophyletic clades argument, also the reptiles, birds, and mammals.

EDIT:
Unless he means to define "fish" exactly as class Chondrichthyes

[LaZodiac]

"Fish Aren't Real" is one of those things that trip up a lot of people. It's one of the few things I wouldn't like, ding him for.

[Bohandas]

"Fish Aren't Real" is one of those things that trip up a lot of people. It's one of the few things I wouldn't like, ding him for.

I normally wouldn;t if it weren;t for the fact that 1.) This was the point he was actually trying to make and somehow he still missed it, 2.) He also made the other conflicting pedantic statement re. reptiles and mammals and 3.) He didn;t leave himself the out, discussed in the thread on this topic, ofndefining fish specifically as the ray fins

[LaZodiac]

I normally wouldn;t if it weren;t for the fact that 1.) This was the point he was actually trying to make and somehow he still missed it, 2.) He also made the other conflicting pedantic statement re. reptiles and mammals and 3.) He didn;t leave himself the out, discussed in the thread on this topic, ofndefining fish specifically as the ray fins

The problem (a problem, really) with Dawkins is that he's smart enough to think he's smart at all things, when he's in fact smart at exactly a handful of things.

[Eldan]

Finally started on Gideon the Ninth, after it got a lot of discussion in this thread at some point last year. Three chapters in: kinda clumsy writing*, uninteresting main character. At least, they haven't, in two scenes over three chapters, done anything to recommend them, except lose a fight that was kind of glossed over and then make faces at people during a ceremony. Mostly because they are old and dull? Anyway, looks like plot is going to happen in the next chapter, I'll be back with more opinions then.

*It feels unnecessary for characters to just say to each other's faces that they hate each other quite so often.

[warty goblin]

Finally started on Gideon the Ninth, after it got a lot of discussion in this thread at some point last year. Three chapters in: kinda clumsy writing*, uninteresting main character. At least, they haven't, in two scenes over three characters, done anything to recommend them, except lose a fight that was kind of glossed over and then make faces at people during a ceremony. Mostly because they are old and dull? Anyway, looks like plot is going to happen in the next chapter, I'll be back with more opinions then.

*It feels unnecessary for characters to just say to each other's faces that they hate each other quite so often.

I felt that there was a very tame first draft of that book, then either the author or editor realized it was very boring, so the second draft added all the clunky over the top bits.

Anyway, finished Legends and Lattes. If you want a book that more or less guarantees everything works out just fine and is very pleasant, this is worth a read. If you want high stakes fantasy adventure or action or intense drama of literally any kind, this is not the book for you.

On to Forged in Fire, the third of the JA Pitts horny blacksmith novels. Nothing particularly horny has happened yet, but the author continues to show more courage than sense by opening on the heroine killing a troll, only to discover the troll's two infant children. Yes, the book starts with the what about the baby orcs gotcha.

So now a side character is raising baby trolls. I'm intrigued as to where this goes, but it's gonna be dramatic, I guarantee it.


Because reading one book at a time is too dull, I also started the archeologically old Raven: Swordmistress of Chaos, which is a sword and sorcery novel from the late seventies. I rather enjoy the more sinister, gritty tone of S&S on occasion, and this delivers pretty well. The writing is surprisingly good, with a solid sense of metaphor and feel, which gives the rather pedestrian plot of convenience a heightened, more mythic tone that works well. It's also a solid reminder of just how much more efficient prose used to be, in about half of its slim 175 pages, it's packed in flight from slavery, giant magic ravens, training montages, mystic visions, quests, shipwrecks, and it shows no sign of stopping. I've read entire novels that do less in 300 pages than this does in under 90.