What Are You Reading?

5live

OwaynOTT wrote: »

I got it when it was 99 cent (does that make me a fantasy hipster?) and read the first few chapters and was not impressed. It just seemed like I seen it all before, it was all a bit generic.
Does it begin to pick up after the first 100 pages or so?

Cant answer. Still reading:P



Its a standard 'boy taken in by mysterious order and trained for war and discovers he has an aptitude for it' story. Similar to 'Left hand of god' but the charachters are a bit more rounded and nuanced for me.

Do the Liverpool fantasy readers get their own thread? Oh goody goody gumdrops:D

ixoy

OwaynOTT wrote: »

I got it when it was 99 cent (does that make me a fantasy hipster?) and read the first few chapters and was not impressed. It just seemed like I seen it all before, it was all a bit generic.
Does it begin to pick up after the first 100 pages or so?

Yes and no. There's no mind bending twists or the like and, in one sense, it is somewhat generic. However, I found that Anthony Ryan had a real skill with delivering the "one more chapter" effect by making the characters likeable and his prose very accessible. Whereas the book I'm currently reading - The Stormcaller - is less generic but I can't get into it due to the manner in which it's written and not really engaging with the characters.

Nate--IRL-- wrote: »

Speaking of the Peter Hamilton.... I think I'm the only person I know who thinks the Commonwealth Saga was far superior to Night's Dawn.

No I do too - the Night's Dawn series is a fantastic idea but its execution is a little poor at times and the ending is down right bad.
The Commonwealth Saga is much more assured and it worked very well for me. The Void trilogy follow up is, for me, even better due to its smart mix of fantasy and sci-fi.

mcgovern

Nate--IRL-- wrote: »

Speaking of the Peter Hamilton.... I think I'm the only person I know who thinks the Commonwealth Saga was far superior to Night's Dawn. Haven't gotten to his Void Books yet, I have them, just haven't read them.

Nate

I also prefer the Commonwealth Saga to Night's Dawn, once Al Capone etc turned up, it took a big nose dive for me.

OwaynOTT

5live wrote: »

Cant answer. Still reading:P



Its a standard 'boy taken in by mysterious order and trained for war and discovers he has an aptitude for it' story. Similar to 'Left hand of god' but the charachters are a bit more rounded and nuanced for me.

Do the Liverpool fantasy readers get their own thread? Oh goody goody gumdrops:D

We could petition for our own forum, it will provably get as much traffic as the spurs one :pac:

Must give Blood Song another chance so. College is started back up soon so I should have plenty of excuses to get some reading done.

Dades

Have downloaded Blood Song to give it a lash as soon as I'm done with Lucifer's Hammer (which is great).

AnCapaillMor

mcgovern wrote: »

I also prefer the Commonwealth Saga to Night's Dawn, once Al Capone etc turned up, it took a big nose dive for me.

The crappy\half assed ending didn't help either. Commonwealth was far far superior.

ixoy

AnCapaillMor wrote: »

The crappy\half assed ending didn't help either. Commonwealth was far far superior.

Wasn't it almost a literal deus ex machina ending? It really came across as Hamilton writing himself into a corner. He learnt his lesson with his later books.
Commonwealth / The Void series also did better with characterisation.

I could still see Night's Dawn being sold for the movie rights because it'd be an easy sell: Vicious possessions from the past! Giant battle! Massive carnage! Al Capone in spaaacccee!

whereas how'd you sell MorningLightMountain to a general audience?

nesf

ixoy wrote: »

Wasn't it almost a literal deus ex machina ending? It really came across as Hamilton writing himself into a corner. He learnt his lesson with his later books.
Commonwealth / The Void series also did better with characterisation.

I could still see Night's Dawn being sold for the movie rights because it'd be an easy sell: Vicious possessions from the past! Giant battle! Massive carnage! Al Capone in spaaacccee!

whereas how'd you sell MorningLightMountain to a general audience?

Night's Dawn I could forgive mainly because you really could see the author regretting much of the first and second book midway through the third and almost writing an apology in the margin. :P

old hippy

"A Feast for Crows" - it's not as fast paced as I'd hoped, compared to the previous in the series. Please tell me it picks up...

nesf

old hippy wrote: »

"A Feast for Crows" - it's not as fast paced as I'd hoped, compared to the previous in the series. Please tell me it picks up...

Kinda. I won't lie, it and Book 5 aren't that popular.

Nate--IRL--

ixoy wrote: »

I could still see Night's Dawn being sold for the movie rights because it'd be an easy sell: Vicious possessions from the past! Giant battle! Massive carnage! Al Capone in spaaacccee!

whereas how'd you sell MorningLightMountain to a general audience?

Funny, I had that exact thought after reading them too.

Nate

Notus

Reading The Heresy Within by Rob J. Hayes, cost £0.77 .....30% into it,nice read and keeping my attention. worth a read for anyone into the swords and swashbuckling type fantasy.

Over the Christmas I read The BlackGuard By A.J.Smith, another £0.77 book on amazon, really enjoyed it, another simple fantasy to read between the usual big reads.
Also read Enders game, which was OK, and UBIK which I thought was over rated. SF Classics they are but they didn't thrill me as much as the recent Fantasy books by Erickson/Sanderson/Lynch/Ryan or Rothfuss.... plenty of brilliant fantasy out these in the past year....... more to come :-)

Probably need to read more SF to get a taste for it, why is Asimov foundation not on amazon?

Raif Severance

Any Fans of Brent Weeks here?

Read the first few Chapters of Way of Shadows, and found too many leaps in logic for my liking.

I also found the Characterization, to be quite bland.

So does it get any better?

I switched reading to Tattered Banner by Duncan M. Hamilton, for now. But would go back to it, if there are people here, who'd found it Good.

Paddy Samurai

I have now read 300 pages of this book. It's so good I stayed up till 3am reading. Could'nt put it down.

IMO the best fantasy debut in years that I have read

Paddy Samurai

5live wrote: »

Well i got Blood Song in a sample from Kindle and liked it so i bought the book yesterday. Stayed up till 3 reading it. That hasnt happened since The Lies of Locke Lamora. Brilliant book so far.

Btw, im blaming you for my sleep deprivation:mad::p

Snap:D...........only read your post now.

Thargor

Im loving it aswell, going to finish it tonight, another unfinished series with a couple of years to wait for resolution on my reading pile though

Zapp Brannigan

Raif Severance wrote: »

Any Fans of Brent Weeks here?

Read the first few Chapters of Way of Shadows, and found too many leaps in logic for my liking.

I also found the Characterization, to be quite bland.

So does it get any better?

No, it gets worse IMO. His other series is better though.

Paddy Samurai

Thargor wrote: »

Im loving it aswell, going to finish it tonight, another unfinished series with a couple of years to wait for resolution on my reading pile though

Part 2 Tower Lord due out in July

And so it ends… Oct 16 2012

By Anthony Ryan
I delivered the finished draft of Tower Lord to my editor yesterday. The final word count, including appendices, came in at a little over 238,000. If you’ve read my previous updates you’ll know I was expecting rewrites to take me up to December but the fact is I simply couldn’t find anything else I wanted to change. I have to stress this doesn’t mean the book is finished, there will inevitably be notes from my editor, probably some future rewrites, plus copy edits, proofs etc, but for now at least, I’m done.
As ever, I have no idea when it will actually come out, since the publisher’s version of Blood Song isn’t likely to appear until next year. But at least those looking forward to the next instalment will have the comfort of knowing there won’t be a decades long wait for it. As for the third book though…

He has a audio interview on you tube if your interested,

If I get time I, might try his sci-fi as well.

Thargor

Nothing in your link to suggest July?

Paddy Samurai

Thargor wrote: »

Nothing in your link to suggest July?

He says it in the audio interview below

Raif Severance

Paddy Samurai wrote: »

He says it in the audio interview below

Destined to Rule? So he's going to be King?

Thargor

Excellent thanks.

TwoShedsJackson

Paddy Samurai wrote: »

About 50 pages in ,and loving it so far. If this lives up to even half the hype it will be an epic read. Time will tell.............




Review link: http://singmuses.wordpress.com/2014/01/01/blood-song-by-anthony-ryan/

Thanks for the recommend, bought it, this morning stayed an extra stop on the Luas past where I normally get off so could read an extra couple minutes although it meant five minutes extra walk to work - hell it's only work, I'm in no rush

Sleepy

old hippy wrote: »

"A Feast for Crows" - it's not as fast paced as I'd hoped, compared to the previous in the series. Please tell me it picks up...

nesf wrote: »

Kinda. I won't lie, it and Book 5 aren't that popular.

There's very much a pace shift in AFFC and ADWD and, on first read, I found AFFC really tough going. On a re-read before ADWD was released though I got a lot more from it. I think moving straight from the breakneck pace of the first 3 books into Feast leads to a lot of disappointment. There's almost more happening between the lines of the story in AFFC than there appears to be on the page. It needs a slower, more careful read than the previous books to pick up on all the machinations happening as it's a more political phase of the story than the blood-letting of the earlier books.

Started the first few sections of the prologue of The Gathering Storm last night. Knife of Dreams really was a return to the form of the earlier books in the Wheel of Time, it was the first of the books since early in the series that lead me into "just one more chapter before sleep" territory, due in large part I think to the focus on

Mat and Perrin

(only spoilers in so far identifying characters as still alive at this point of the series). Even when their chapters don't involve much plot progression, it's still far more engaging than the frequent chapters about Aes Sedai you barely care about attempting to find the Black Ajah, the interactions between the foresaken and darkfriends that so much of the previous books were taken up with.

Interested to see how I feel about the change in authors when I've read more. I devoured the Mistborn trilogy and have intentions to read more of Sanderson when I finally get to the end of the WOT.

Raif Severance

Just finished reading Tattered Banner by Duncam M. Hamilton, and I must say that I really liked it.

For a Debut, it's not as good as Blood Song. But then again, few books are.

But if you liked Blood Song, I'm quite sure, you are going to like this one too. The 2 Books, bears alot of similarities.

Now, I'm off to read Huntsman's Amulet. It's the 2nd Book in the Series. And hopefully, it's as good as the 1st one.

Nody

Started yesterday Germline: Bk. 1: The Subterrene War (Subterrene War 1) by T. C. McCarthy. Only a handful of pages in but appears to be interesting in the focus on the war induced stress and behaviour changes rather then pure gun porn so far (and I picked up the next two as well so I hope it stays decent :P ).

Dades

Just started Blood Song, too.

Finished my last book in a marathon session last night (an hour :P) and got stuck in on the train this morning.

If I'm honest, I'll be happy to have it finished for the release of the sequel!

ixoy

On "Blood Song" - the author is very sound. He had just gotten his print publishing contract so he had to withdraw his self-published eBook version from Amazon.com for a number of markets as it would now be published by Orbit instead. This shouldn't have included Ireland but, as it was messy, Ireland lost access to any version of the eBook.

Disappointed, I wrote to him and - fair play - he got on to his publishers and put up the eBook on Amazon.com for Irish customers again until the full publishing contract was sorted.

OwaynOTT

ixoy wrote: »

On "Blood Song" - the author is very sound. He had just gotten his print publishing contract so he had to withdraw his self-published eBook version from Amazon.com for a number of markets as it would now be published by Orbit instead. This shouldn't have included Ireland but, as it was messy, Ireland lost access to any version of the eBook.

Disappointed, I wrote to him and - fair play - he got on to his publishers and put up the eBook on Amazon.com for Irish customers again until the full publishing contract was sorted.

He sorted me out with a signed copy of his book as well. Very nice chap and I would also say that David Hair is another author that is very nice. His book Mage's Blood he on my to read pile and is also meant to be very good. Second in the series came out recently too.
God my to read pile is getting unwieldy.

ixoy

Reading the Doctor Who novel "Harvest of Time" by Alastair Reynolds. I'm a fan of Reynolds so was delighted when I heard he was penning a 3rd Doctor story set in the UNIT era (Season 8) with Jo Grant. 18% in and he's done a great job capturing the era and characters. Everything is spot on and he's still managed to put a small bit of proper sci-fi in (less likely to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow anyway).
If you're reading Doctor Who novels then this looks like it's going to be an unreserved recommendation.