Mangler's awesome book thread.

[Itesh]

Working my way through Benedict Jacka's Alex Verus series (about a mage with divination powers) where "Light" mages are not particularly caring about anything other than Light mages and Light "Council" matters and "Dark" mages are not particularly caring about anybody else, period. The protagonist, as a former apprentice of a initially absent, presumed missing, Dark mage, is trying to steer a neutral, safe passage through the middle of both parties where being a loner does not have a lot going for it and having been "taught" (though perhaps the better word is "tortured") by a Dark mage means he is automatically viewed with suspicion by nearly everyone.

Having started with Fated I've just finished Hidden where Alex's missing former Master has returned but why and what for is not yet clear...

Most enjoyable!

Tenuous link - my wife's best friend's husband was at university with Benedict Jacka. That said, I enjoy his books, but feel like he's trying to be a slightly less good Ben Aaronovitch. I mean, I still read/own all his, because I am a massive whore for easy fantasy reads.

[ecthus]

Just finished reading the Purple Cloud by MP Shiel. Really bizarre early sci-fi novel. Arctic explorer returns from the North Pole to find out that the human race has been wiped out by a toxic cloud. He starts going around the world setting fire to cities.

Just got around to picking up Perdido Street Station, since Mieville's gonna be reading in Seattle next week.

[Mangler]

The Purple Cloud looks muchos interesting Ecthus, good shout. Not sure if you ever picked up Inverted World? Another great sci-fi classic.

Big fan of Perdido Street, possibly my favourite of the Meiville books. Although City and the City is also superb.

I just finished the final book of Robin Hobb's Fitz and Fool series. A superb meeting and ending for all the threads woven over the course of her various books in that world. Great read if you've been following the series.

Also read the first of Sebastien de Castell's books 'Traitors Blade' - one of the more enjoyable action-packed fantasy I've read in quite a while.

Also finally got round to Jeff Vandermeer's 'Southern Reach' trilogy. Read 2 and have the third on the shelf. Really enjoying so far.

Bunch of others:
Hanging Tree - continuation of Rivers of London, enjoyable and readable series of urban fantasy.
A Family Trade - very first Charles Stross book I think? Page turner but nothing special.

And about a hundred other things I can't remember.

[aish]

Anyone read Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend? I just finished it and it's in my top five best books ever list.

[Mikhan]

I just finished the final book of Robin Hobb's Fitz and Fool series. A superb meeting and ending for all the threads woven over the course of her various books in that world. Great read if you've been following the series.

I just finished this one too. It made me a little misty eyed at points. What a beautiful book. And you have to admire how Hobb churned this last trilogy out in only about three years.

[Mangler]

Yeah I was not dry-eyed by the end, which is a pretty fantastic sign. There were weak points in her series (Dragon Keepers stuff was a slog at times), but as a way of threading together 2 decades worth of books, that was a pretty amazing novel.

[Razhak]

At the moment I am reading Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

Great read so far

[Jomin]

The Purple Cloud looks muchos interesting Ecthus, good shout. Not sure if you ever picked up Inverted World? Another great sci-fi classic.

Big fan of Perdido Street, possibly my favourite of the Meiville books. Although City and the City is also superb.

I just finished the final book of Robin Hobb's Fitz and Fool series. A superb meeting and ending for all the threads woven over the course of her various books in that world. Great read if you've been following the series.

Also read the first of Sebastien de Castell's books 'Traitors Blade' - one of the more enjoyable action-packed fantasy I've read in quite a while.

Also finally got round to Jeff Vandermeer's 'Southern Reach' trilogy. Read 2 and have the third on the shelf. Really enjoying so far.

Bunch of others:
Hanging Tree - continuation of Rivers of London, enjoyable and readable series of urban fantasy.
A Family Trade - very first Charles Stross book I think? Page turner but nothing special.

And about a hundred other things I can't remember.

Has China Meilville got any more full-length books in the offing?

I am also a fan of Charles Stross and remember him as a Linux enthusiast and his contributions to the UK Monthy Computer Shopper magazine. A Family Trade is the first in the series of The Merchant Princes and a second series in that universe has started with Empire Games - although he is better known for the ongoing series of novels in The Laundry Files in which the character Bob Howard, a one-time I.T. consultant turned field agent, has been recruited to work for the British government agency "the Laundry" which deals with Lovecraftian occult threats. The Laundry detected his code when he re-discovers certain mathematical equations that contact other worlds when operated on a PDA; the disturbance cause them to swoop in and to give him a mandatory job offer. ("I thought I was just generating weird new fractals; they knew I was dangerously close to landscaping Wolverhampton with alien nightmares.")

Curiously enough, Bob Howard was also the name given to his personification in the CS articles...! I think that he did say somewhere that he had had to reassess his writings in the SciFi field when reality started to copy some of the initially far fetched tropes that he had written about, but I cannot find where that was or about which things...

Consequently I am waiting to get my hands on the eight main book in the series (there have been some novellas as well) The Delirium Brief!

[ecthus]

A few recent reads:

The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne. Kind of a Robinson Crusoe story, except it features 5 prisoners of the Civil War who escape by hot air balloon, are blown away in a storm to a Pacific island, and spend 700 pages building dung while weird stuff happens. More adventure than sci-fi, but still kind of a sequel to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

The Invisible Man by HG Wells. College student turns himself invisible then regrets it. Fun and fast read, and a sci-fi classic.

Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes. Pulp detective fiction from the 60s about a bale of cotton stuffed with money that goes missing in Harlem.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Kid steals a painting from a museum after a bomb explodes and kills his mom, spends the next decade dealing with it. Good read, but very long.

[Decae]

If you like marathoning book series, Dragonmount has a category in their ebook store of discounted series bundles.

http://dragonmount.com/store/category/65-bundled-deals/