Mangler's awesome book thread.

[Alayla]

Oh and I finally let myself read book 3 of 'The Expanse' series - Abbadon's Gate. I think probably better than book 2, an enjoyable space opera series. Looking forward to the TV show now!

Not to derail, but have you watched it yet? I'm on episode 5.

[Mangler]

Yes. I think they've done a pretty fantastic job so far. Although I'm a bit let down by the casting of the 'crew'. I feel they should be older. It's different to the books, but enjoyable.

[Kordin]

Tried reading One Night in Sixes by Arianne "Tex" Thompson. Don't understand the need for a nickname, but okaaaay....

On the cover it said something like (don't have the book near me for an exact quote); "If you love S. King's The Dark Tower, this book is right up your alley." - not even close, imho anyway...

I felt like reading another "Weird West" type of story and didn't bother checking online for reviews.

The story starts slow, you meet the two main characters and you're slowly and clumsily introduced to some elements of the world, where you can quickly pick up on what were they inspired by (Native American culture, US-Mex relations during the Wild West time period etc.) and then things just become boring. Things are happening yet nothing is happening...it's like watching a political debate...a lot of talk, but nothing really being said...

I had to force myself to read through the first fifty or so pages, hoping the story will become interesting soon or just pick up the pace. It felt like alpha testing a rollercoaster ride; starts slow, begins to pick up the pace, then slows down even more, then theres a turn you just don't understand why it's there, then a bit more of fast-slow-fast-slow-turn-go back-turn-fast-slow storytelling pace, all during which I found myself going back a couple or dozen pages to reread some things so I could understand what and/or how was being explained/described. Half-way through the book I just gave up.....

After reading the reviews on sites like Goodreads, I found that most of them are either "it's good and interesting" or (the way I see it) "nowhere near The Dark Tower, at time unnecessarily complicated and just plain boring".

Since there are relatively a lot of good reviews about the book, in the end it could be just a matter of taste. Not a horrible book, but not really something I'd recommend.


And to the current read;

The Locke Lamora trilogy by Scott Lynch

Got the trilogy recently, and started reading the first book (also apparently the authors first book ever) The Lies of Locke Lamora.
About a hundred and twenty-ish pages into the book and I'm loving it. Got hooked about twenty-thirty pages in. Not sure if anyone cares about such numbers/things, but for me, if the first dozen or few dozen pages don't interest me, the book will probably be like the one above....kind of-sort of-imho-pretty much crap.....

The story feels a bit like a caper story with a bit of film noir set in an interesting fantasy world. The world is amazingly detailed, the writer has a good way of introducing it, describing it and how it works and the characters feel "alive". So far, none of them exist simply to fill a scene or a few pages, and none of the scenes are hard to imagine.

So, yeah, so far so good.....

And the Expanse series is really good....

[Mangler]

Lies of Locke Lamora is superb. Along with The Name of the Wind it kind of renewed my faith in starting recently written fantasy series.

If you want some weird west style try David Gemmel's John Shannow books, starting with 'Wolf in Shadow'. Gemmel is the king of easy to read, enjoyable fantasy, and his foray into western stuff is of a similar ilk.

[Mangler]

After being fairly disappointed in the last book, I finally bought Peter Brett's 'The Skull Throne' now it's out in paperback.

Definitely a better turn of pace than the last, and an enjoyable fantasy read in many ways. I still find the way he writes from and about his female characters really quite crappy, maybe I'm just imagining it from how bad it was in the first book? Any female readers care to comment ?

[Khazar]

I don't know if I got the rec off here or just through Amazon, but I thought Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid Chronicles is worth a mention. I read the ones out a couple years back and then just read the latest. It's not superb, but the action is always happening and I do like reading about all the various pantheons he describes. Granted he cherry picks some of what they do and how they are, but it's still fun. Quick, interesting, and action-oriented.

[Jomin]

I don't know if I got the rec off here or just through Amazon, but I thought Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid Chronicles is worth a mention. I read the ones out a couple years back and then just read the latest. It's not superb, but the action is always happening and I do like reading about all the various pantheons he describes. Granted he cherry picks some of what they do and how they are, but it's still fun. Quick, interesting, and action-oriented.

Possibly, I did mention it back on page 2.

After being fairly disappointed in the last book, I finally bought Peter Brett's 'The Skull Throne' now it's out in paperback.

Definitely a better turn of pace than the last, and an enjoyable fantasy read in many ways. I still find the way he writes from and about his female characters really quite crappy, maybe I'm just imagining it from how bad it was in the first book? Any female readers care to comment ?

Fair enough, I enjoyed the series due to the fact that it is never entirely clear which of the males is the lead character.

Enjoyed a rather nice Paranormal Fantasy recently with Deborah Harkness's All souls Trilogy {A Discovery of Witches (2011); Shadow of Night (2012) and The Book of Life (2014)} - they do tell authors to write about what they know and you can see that as a American Historian having worked at Oxford University there has to be some crossover into the characters she writes about. The books are thick and another commentator (a librarian at my local Library) thought this (Time-travelling Witch & Historian) / Vampire / Daemon tale was a bit slow going but I did not think so (but then I couldn't put the 500+ page books down) - though I didn't do much else whilst I had them in my lap. I am pleased to see that further fiction in the same setting is planned.

[ecthus]

Some recent reads:

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. "foo." Haven't read anything by Dick in over a decade, and thought this one was really amazing. Definitely a different feel from Blade Runner--maintains the questions about human vs. android life, but also includes questions about the value of animal life. Also appreciated that it featured Seattle. Briefly.

Emma - Jane Austen. Love plot resolved by paranoid dad afraid that people will break into his house. Need to watch Clueless now.

Robinson Crusoe - Danny Defoe. Found out there's ten pages in the end that never made it into the illustrated children's classic: Crusoe and co. wandering through snowy mountains and being attacked by wolves; Friday baits a bear for two pages, everyone laughs, then he shoots it through the head.

Encounters with the Archdruid - John McPhee. McPhee's a nature writer whose books I'd seen for years, but finally got around to reading him. This one's about a former president of the Sierra Club, David Brower, as he gets kicked out of the Sierra Club and hangs out with property developers, dam constructors, and mining speculators.

Dance, Dance, Dance - Haruki Murakami. Features a Sheep Man on an unlisted level of a weird hotel.

[khazar]

So I just finished Lies of Locke Lamora and the sequel (using a kindle means I easily forget the names of what I am reading ). It actually took me a while to get into it, but once I did, I enjoyed the first a lot. I have to say, Scott Lynch's bouncing around in the timeline is sometimes really dumb. Sometimes it's totally fine, but go forwards 5 hours, backwards 2, forwards 5.5, backwards 3, forwards 6... blah. After giving us the reveal, we don't need a lengthy detailed description of getting there. That problem of added pointless description became an issue in book 2. It should have been half as long. Still enjoyed em a lot. I think I need to take a break from reading. Too many days mostly laying lifeless in bed

[lilith]

Right now I'm about 2/3 thru Andy Weir's novel The Martian: a novel. It's really awesome!