What Are You Reading?

[TheEconomist]

If you do read it, let me know. It was super cheap and I bought without really knowing if it was for me. It got good reviews, but that means even less for books than it does for movies and games.

[TheEconomist]

I got done reading a fairly large chunk of novelage a month ago but just now realized I never posted about that. I must apologize, I know you've all been anticipating my responses.

Gardens of the Moon - The first novel in what has to be the most complex series of novelized stories ever written. Even judging by the first book which is shorter and simpler than the rest, reading this book is less like escapism but more like studying for a history exam with subject matter you're actually interested in. Take that as you will. The characters are complex (at least how the relate to each other is) but it still pretty hard to connect with them (even harder than normal for me). There's also crap tons of them and you're never really explained everything about them or the factions they represent. Someone on a Malazan forums once compared reading this first book to watching the first episode of a tenth season of a twenty season TV show. That feels about right. There's so much back story and it's all so hard to understand that it can be really a hard chore to get into. I'm sure the majority of people would hate this but I kind of liked it. It presented a challenge. The story wasn't spoon fed to me, I had to analyze and investigate history like I would in, say, an MMO with volumes and volumes of back lore that you have to connect yourself. Depending on how much you like long ass lore info dumps you might hate this or absolutely love it. Given most of us here like to scour wikipedia articles for abtract lore, I'm sure more of us would like it more than most.

Pandora's Star - Great book with incredible scale, but I was ultimately disappointed. I wanted something more like a space opera. What I got what something closer to an in-depth analysis of a futurist's dream about the future with a lot of introspection on how these changes affect the people living with this universe. It's large and complex but still feels a bit dry. What parts I liked were great. The alien species is one of the most well-thought out and explained alien species I've ever read. But, so much focused on future human societies that I tended to get bored. Long, drawn out chapters dealing with the history of a colony which tended to represent an extreme of some human ideas. A lot of information and analysis is giving about these societies that is it amazing for a non-fiction novel, but I do that all day everyday as both my hobby and my job so I couldn't appreciate it as much as I wanted to since I was expecting something completely different. Like I said before though, the alien species and the scale of some technologies is amazing but there's just not enough of it.

Black Sun Rising - I enjoyed this book a lot. A lot more probably than anyone else would. It was sort of a consolation for the Diablo fan in me that was disappointed with the cartoonery of Diablo 3 and wanted a truly dark fantasy novel. So many novels these days call themselves dark but they're really just violent. This is dark. Actually dark. Mankind's dark nature is basically a character of its own as its constantly being analyzed and referred to through-out the series and has a direct influence on the world. Sounds cliche, I know, but it's done well. It's even got a bit of science fiction to it. The story is set in the future when mankind has expanded to the stars. However, this planet has a special quality in that the "nature" of the planet is heavily influenced by intelligent thought The worst parts of people, in a way, shape the evolution of the animals and life to the fears of the people living there. I'm doing an awfull job of explaining it, I know, but it's interesting and actually dark. One of the "protagonists" is probably one of the most anti-hero of any anti-heroes there ever were. If he ate babies, that would be him being nice. I was also slightly spoiled about some of the story of the future books which is one of the reasons I buckled down and read this. It gets progessively more dark fantasy-science fiction which is a style of story telling that almost never gets done, especially done right. If anyone's played Phantasy Star, that's about what it becomes, even if in an incredibly vague way.

Red Seas Under Red Skies - Quite possibly the most humorous and just plain fun novel I've ever read. The entire book was an absolute pleasure to read. It dealt with serious and light-hearted themes side by side and was amazingly effective at doing so. If this series isn't turned into some kind of movie or television series, the media will be losing out. I could easily see this being the next Pirates of the Carribean big ticket movies.


I could have gotten a whole lot more reading and I had planned to do so, but I had the brilliant idea of reading two of the biggest novels in the genres in one round of reading so I pretty much bit off more than I could chew. After I was done with them, I didn't want to form a single thought that wasn't about something right in front of my face for close to two weeks. I'm about to dig into some more novels now so hopefully I'll have some more to talk (to myself) about soon.

@Gradius: You ever get around to Chasm City? Likin' it?

[Visions of Khas]

So I started in on some CJ Cherryh novels, namely the Foreigner Trilogy, Econ, but I still haven't read Cyteen. So far, I'm pretty disappointed. If this series is an example of how she writes scifi, or novels in general, then I'm sticking to her short stories.

In other news, I've breezed through Ishmael, and am working my way through 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Pretty good so far.

[TheEconomist]

That's disappointing to here. The Foreigner series was something I was looking forward to getting into sometime down the road. What don't you like so far?

[Visions of Khas]

Well, it was interesting at first. I suppose the lack of a number of perspectives is what bothered me. At the end of each book in the first trilogy is a mass of exposition informing both Bren Cameran, the protagonist, and the reader, of what's really been going on behind the scenes. However, not of these events are telegraphed in any way; you cannot guess at them, and are barely tangential to the plot.

Secondly, the core of the series revolves around the exploration of an alien psychology. However, I still found the atevi to be far too human. Finally, the books are introspective, yes; much of what you read are Cameron's exploring the depths of atevi psychology and justifying actions. However, by the time you reach the end of the second book, he's essentially beating a dead horse. :\

But you may find it more interesting than I did.

- - - Updated - - -

Well, it was interesting at first. I suppose the lack of a number of perspectives is what bothered me. At the end of each book in the first trilogy is a mass of exposition informing both Bren Cameran, the protagonist, and the reader, of what's really been going on behind the scenes. However, not of these events are telegraphed in any way; you cannot guess at them, and are barely tangential to the plot.

Secondly, the core of the series revolves around the exploration of an alien psychology. However, I still found the atevi to be far too human. Finally, the books are introspective, yes; much of what you read are Cameron's exploring the depths of atevi psychology and justifying actions. However, by the time you reach the end of the second book, he's essentially beating a dead horse. :\

But you may find it more interesting than I did.

[TheEconomist]

Ever read the Coyote series? That's another colonization themed series that I was interested in.

[Visions of Khas]

I Am Malala, by Malala Yousafzai.

Beautiful book about a badass little girl from Pakistan. What, the Taliban's going to shoot me in the head? Nope, I'll live just to spite them and campaign to bring peace to the world!

[TheEconomist]

Should just campaign to have the Middle East nuked. That's what I would do if I was Middle Eastern, racial and cultural loyalty be damned.

[Visions of Khas]

^Not sure if trolling or.... damn, did I just ask whether or not TE's trolling? HAH!

[TheEconomist]

I'm half trolling. Yes, only half. If I were Middle Eastern and somehow such a decision were made, I would cheer my own destruction if it meant the backwardness of the Middle East were removed forever.

But, this thread must not be derailed! Prepare deflector shields!