What Are You Reading?

TwoShedsJackson wrote: »

I thought Darwin's Radio was fantastic and I would definitely recommend finishing it - read it years ago but it was the first book in a long time that scared me.

Dades wrote: »

Likewise. Yet to read the sequel.

Zapp Brannigan wrote: »

Had to abandon Night Angel (first time I've ever done that) it's just too bad.

Finished "The Way of Shadows" by Brent Weeks, the first book in his Night Angel Trilogy.

I had good hopes for this book initially, based on a high score on Amazon's reviews. The enthusiasm was dampened by some lukewarm reception on boards. Unfortunately, lukewarm and indifference is the best I can muster for this - one of the most over-rated fantasy novels that I've read in the last few years.

What's wrong with it? The premise is sound enough - a young orphan (Azoth) becomes the apprentice of the city's best assassin (Durzo) amidst a backdrop of some political intrigue. The problem is nothing is done very well.

For starters the world is poorly drawn. The action is set in one city, which is meant to be a melting pot of the surrounding cultures but we never get a feel for any of this. The city is bland. Even worse is that we don't get a feel for the aggressor nations that threaten them - we barely know anything about them so it's hard to feel them as a source of intimidation.
Other flaws include the magic system used in it. It feels poorly executed - it doesn't have the thoughtfulness and detail put in in (and I'll be using this as a comparison more than once) Sanderson's "The Final Empire".

Now a poorly drawn world need not necessarily be an issue if there is a good plot woven through it. The plot is probably the strongest element in this book but it feels very disjointed. In the earlier stages of the book there are leaps of years. It creates a poor sense of pacing. There are some interesting twists in the book but they don't generally feel like they were set up well, where you could have picked up on them. It's generally a sense of "ta da!" The final third of the book is substantially better in plotting but it's too little too late.

The characters growth also suffer from this pacing. Skipping years we don't see how characters progress to become the best in their business. Deep friendships form in this time, again with no real feel for how they got there. Since I read it recently, "The Final Empire" springs to mind as a book that also took an orphan, and trained them, but had a much more natural and believable progression.
Even when the pacing stops jumping years, the characters we're left with are varied. Durzo is just an emo dressed up in assassin's garb. Constantly prattling on about death, and the worthlessness of life he is tiresome to listen to. Azoth is Emo Lite, torturing himself and the readers at time with his self absorption. It's hard to take them seriously at times because I'm rolling my eyes. If your characters need to have streaks of self loathing, then see how much better Joe Abercrombie does it lacing it with black humour.
One of the more interesting characters is unfortunately cursed with one of the worst names I've seen in all my time reading fantasy. A high-powered pimp, she's called Momma K. I expect her to be releasing a rap single soon.

The other element is Weeks' writing ability. It's perfunctory at best. The dialogue at times is just embarrassing. He has a number of the bad guys cackle manically and his good guys play the emo vibe heavily enough that the Cure would probably wince. Oh and he also used the word "BOOM". He just forgot to have the cartoon birds whirling around characters heads afterwards.

Is there any redeeming features? To be fair it gets a fair bit better in the final third and there are some half decent plot reveals. The problem is I just don't care for the characters, I find the world half-baked and dull and the writing too flat. There's too many good books out there waiting to be read for me to invest in reading the sequel. Not recommended.

Started Kraken. Confusing, but he has me hooked to find out what's going on.

mcgovern wrote: »

Next up, and I know this is not everyone's cup of tea, is Villainy Victorious, Bk 9 of Mission Earth by L. Ron Hubbard. I really liked the first 8 books years ago, but could never find 9 instock anywhere, even have 10 sitting on the shelf for about 5 years, but got it on Kindle from Amazon for about €4.60 so went for it.